“You know, if you keep smiling like that for too long, your face just might get stuck that way.”

The sound of Mom’s voice, amused and yet somehow sad, pulled me out of my reverie and I looked over at her. She held her wine glass in one hand and her sunglasses shielded her eyes. The day was miserably hot, but she’d still wanted to sit outside to eat, so here we were, on the balcony overlooking the slow, muddy waters of the Mississippi as we cracked open crawfish and ate with gusto. The meal would’ve been just fine if it had simply been the mudbugs and the andouille sausage, but it came with buttered corn and potatoes and I was already so full, I knew I shouldn’t eat anymore.

But I’d missed the food from this little Cajun café on the banks of the river. Not to say there wasn’t good food in New Orleans, but between cramming for two finals, working four nights a week in my part-time job as a carriage driver, and entertaining my customers as I worked on perfecting my craft, I wasn’t exactly rocking the party life—or the foodie life.

Most of my free time was spent studying or practicing, so my meals were almost always delivery or something out of a can, save for lunch and that came from the dining hall.

Now that I was home for a couple of weeks between taking summer classes, I was making up for the lousy food I’d been eating, and Mom and Dad were enjoying the time I spent with them as we met for lunch or cooked out several times a week. Granted, my younger brother Harry wasn’t loving it as much—he said if he had to have much more family time, he’d gouge an eye out.

I doubted the kid would go to that extreme, but I understood his dilemma.

Mom had told me about his girlfriend.

He was sixteen, had his first girlfriend, and he wanted to spend any and all time with her—not that Mom and Dad would let him. But who was I to spoil his fantasies?

Of course, Mom had just interrupted one of mine.

“You’re thinking about Thea, aren’t you?” she asked, pointing a crawdad at me before cracking it open.

Eyeing how low the pile of food had gotten, I grabbed another mudbug and did the same, taking the time to pluck the tender meat from the shell before responding. “Thea?” I finally said, wondering if she’d buy the innocent act.

Of course, I don’t know why I tried to fool her.

“No. Tammy.” Mom rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t know why my boys think they can fool me,” she muttered in an eerie echo of my thoughts. She sighed, reaching for a napkin and delicately wiping her fingers.

As she leaned back in the chair, I reached for my napkin too.

I had a feeling we were getting ready to have a conversation.

We weren’t just going to talk.

We were going to communicate.

“You know there’s some history between your father and her mother.”

Frowning over the job of cleaning my hands, I gave the task an inordinate amount of attention as I thought my response over. “I heard that she had a thing for Dad, yeah.”

“It wasn’t just a thing. It was more like an…obsession. She was quite convinced the two of them would marry. Then I showed up…” She shrugged, lifting one hand as if to say, Here I am. “Terrible of me. Bad enough that anyone catch your daddy’s eye, but there I was, moving in with Granny after my mama died, coming here from New Orleans, all brash and mouthy.”

“And black.” I eyed her as I reached for my water glass. Dad hadn’t said as much but I had no doubt Mama’s skin color played as much into the history she was referencing as anything else.

“And black,” she agreed. “You never knew him, but the man she married looked…well, the resemblance he bore to your father was something else.”

“You already said she was obsessed.”

“Yes.” Toya looked away, her eyes seeing off into the past. “She didn’t let him go easily, either. They had a handful of dates, but I get the feeling her mother had been whispering in her ear that Brax was the man for her and she grew up thinking she’d be the next Mrs. Vanderbilt. Then he up and falls in love with me.”

I smiled a little. “He says he took one look at you and fell in love.”

“It wasn’t as quick as that.” But the look in her eyes was smug, pleased…and there was just as much love in her eyes as I knew I’d see in Dad’s eyes if I asked him about it. “I think he just liked mouthy girls.”

I’d heard the story a hundred times and while she didn’t tell me again, I thought about it briefly and wondered if maybe she wasn’t right. I’d seen how Dad was treated around here—Yes, sir, No, sir, how is the weather, Dr. Vanderbilt… I’d been treated much the same way most of my life because of who my father was, who my family was.

Mom had moved here from a different part of the state and hadn’t given a rat’s ass about the blond boy who’d intervened when she’d been telling off some guy who’d decided he could invade her personal space. Mom had handled the guy, then turned her temper on my father.

While she read him the riot act, my dad told me he was already thinking about how he’d convince her to marry him.

Whether or not that was true, I had no idea.

“That girl could bring you a lot of trouble.”

Jerking my head up, I looked at Mom. “I barely know her,” I said mildly. But I found myself thinking of her big, dark gray eyes. Deep, mysterious… beautiful.

“I know. And your dad barely knew me,” she pointed out. “You were looking at her the same way he looked at me, LeVan. Trust me…I’ve been on the receiving end of the Vanderbilt charm. I know what I’m talking about.”