Page 29 of Cursed

“You’re enjoying yourself,” he said, and the return smile she gave him was unfeigned.

“I honestly can’t remember enjoying myself quite this much in a long time,” she said, staring around as yet another bottle of wine was opened and an appreciative cheer went up. “They’re all so . . . happy. Genuinely happy.” She looked back to him again. “They can’t always be like this, and yet it’s gone on too long to simply be good behavior for a guest.”

“Good behavior, it is not,” barked Vince with a laugh. Still, his own grin rested easily on his face, and his expression was lit with appreciation as he watched his extended family debate loudly the possibility that South Carolina was protected by hurricanes because the Greek gods knew the Rallis family lived here. He shook his head as the argument rose in volume. “They’re family, and part of that is being loud and happy to see each other, in good times and in bad.”

“Yes . . .” Edeena kept her smile fixed, but her gaze once more roved the room, and that touch of melancholy was back. Family meant something else to her, she supposed. But Vince’s definition certainly had much to recommend it.

Vince eased away from Edeena and let his family take over again, the women plying her with after-dinner drinks and asking her everything about Garronia she was willing to share—its people, its traditions, its men. On this last, of course, Edeena was more of an expert than he would have preferred, but the laughter rising up from the group made everyone in the house happy—men and women, old and young. Even he felt the tensions of the day slipping away.

He realized, with sudden surprise, that he hadn’t even checked his cell phone since he’d collected Edeena that morning. That was so unlike him as to make him wonder if he’d caught the flu. He pulled it out now, some sixth sense alerting him in time to shield the move from the watchful eyes of his mother. A quick scan of the phone’s display, though, made him realize he’d need to respond to the multiple texts that had come in. He joined a throng of his singing cousins for long enough that his mother turned away, then he slipped to the back of the yard where the fence had been taken down years ago because the magnolia bushes had provided more than enough barrier.

Now he stepped through a break in those bushes with the familiarity of long practice, and paused in the cool shadows. Without bothering to scan through the messages, he struck the few keys needed to reach Marks.

“What’s going on?” he said sharply, when the call connected.

“You didn’t read my texts?” Rob replied, but his voice was easy, calm, and Vince relaxed a fraction. If there’d truly been a problem, Marks would have been all business.

“You sent five of them. I figured I’d cut to the chase.”

“Just regular updates. Sisters safe in town, sisters returned safely to house, Marguerite delivered to her job at the Cypress Club bar, and—”

“Whoa, whoa. Bar? I thought she worked breakfasts.” Vince passed a hand over his brow. At least the club was a normal nightclub in the main part of the resort. Edeena would kill him if she thought they’d allowed Marguerite to moonlight in the shadier section of the resort.

“Cindy confirmed it, shortly after Marguerite arrived for work. She appears to be happy with the change, but we wanted to keep you apprised if it came up with Edeena.” Marks paused a beat. “How’s Operation Chillout going?”

“Better than I’d hoped,” Vince said, smiling as the sound of guitars started streaming through the air. At least his cousins were good musicians. He had a feeling their neighbors would not be so forgiving if they were forced to listen to bad karaoke on the all-too-frequent nights that the family gathered. Normally there were no guitars, but tonight was special, his mother had assured him. Edeena was special.

And on that, she was certainly right.

“You there, Vince?” Rob’s voice startled him back into focus and Vince straightened, nodding though there was no one there to see.

“I’m good. Edeena is solid, maybe a little drunk, but solid. I’ll be bringing her back by midnight, if you could inform her aunt.”

“Well . . .” Rob dragged the word out a little too long, and Vince frowned.

“What?”

“I sort of told dear Cousin Pru that Edeena would be spending the night in the city. At your place.”

“At my . . .” Vince didn’t even try to hide his shock. “Are you crazy?”

“No sir, I am not. But Prudence was all up in arms over some new boxes that had arrived today while Edeena was out.” Marks slipped easily into Prudence’s cultured southern drawl. “And bless her heart, but Edeena seemed to know exactly what Prudence was thinking before she even knew it herself, so there was simply no way she could hide those boxes from her, and yet how horrible was it going to be when Edeena returned, fresh off her lovely day in the country with that charming young Prince, and here Prudence had to ruin it all because she could not possibly lie to her cousin.”

“You’ve got to be joking me.”

“So, of course, since we’re in the business not only of assuring peace of body but also of mind, I stepped in with the most chivalrous response I could muster.”

“By telling her I was going to be hooking up with her niece at my place.”

“By telling her that I would kindly suggest to the charming young Prince that he put up Edeena in one of the several safe residences we’d established in the Charleston area for the evening, assuring her of a safe and restful—and did I mention safe?—evening on the mainland, far away from frightening things like . . . boxes.”

“You told her I had a safe house?”

“Several of them, yes. She was ever so grateful for our thoroughness.” Once again Rob was talking in Prudence’s distinctive southern drawl, and Vince winced. “She’s expecting you back after breakfast, and you might want to come up with fresh clothes for the woman and attribute it to a shopping spree.” He gave a short laugh. “God knows that’s a language the girls speak. Cindy said they flashed enough plastic wipe out a third-world country.”

“Noticeably so?”

“She didn’t think so, and she knew you would ask,” Rob said, chuckling. “Just girls being girls. Girls who maybe didn’t get out all that often.”

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