CHAPTER 55 GIGI
GIGI
Gigi could not fault Helena Thorp’s hospitality.
The room was spacious, the bed king-sized and very soft.
Granted, Gigi had not intended to become an overnight guest, but que será será.
Sometimes when you walked up to the gates of a mansion and handed the guard a note that said, It’s called the Crucible, and I think deep down you want to tell me about it, reactions were had.
Fortunately, Gigi did not, as a general rule, mind being held semi-hostage. Besides, Knox had come with her this time, so it was really more like a slumber party. But try telling Knox that. He’d slept with his back against the bedroom door all night—if he’d slept at all.
Sitting up in bed, Gigi eyed her bodyguard/buddy. “I know you’re faking, Knox.” Gigi paused. “Either that, or you’re having sweet, sweet dreams about a certain lawyerly someone.”
No reply. Maybe he really was asleep. Gigi turned her attention to thinking about what she was going to say when the lady of the manor finally—hopefully—consented to a little chat.
“I can hear the wheels turning from here,” Knox said, eyes still closed.
Gigi crawled to the end of the bed and hopped off. “I knew you were faking.”
“Did not.”
Gigi grinned. “How much longer do you think we have before Toby Hawthorne storms the castle?”
Toby’s reaction to the word crucible had been, in a word, intense.
“Toby’s not the one I’m concerned about,” Knox said. “Your boy’s the wild card.”
Slate. Gigi did not allow herself to linger on that thought for all that long. “What happened to Slate with Eve and the bullet and the blood, the betrayal… It has to remind you of—”
“No.” Knox cut her off.
Gigi plopped herself down on the floor next to him and bumped Knox’s shoulder with hers. “Just no?” What Eve had done to Slate, it had to remind Knox of his own Calla Thorp good-bye.
Gigi laid her head on his shoulder. I’m here, broody buddy. I am right here, and the dark place doesn’t scare me, because I see your light. Even if you don’t. Even if you can’t. I see it.
“Just no,” Knox said, but he didn’t shrug Gigi off his shoulder, and after three or four minutes, he voluntarily spoke again. “I hate this place.”
“This not-so-humble abode or St. Adelaide Parish?” Gigi asked.
“Both.” Knox looked up, glaring at the crystal light fixture on the ultra-high ceiling. “Out in the bayou, it was easy sometimes to forget who Calla was, but she clearly never forgot who I was.”
“And who was that?” Gigi asked, bracing herself for words that Knox had spoken before: a barely literate, backwoods nobody…
“A Landry,” Knox said harshly. “Trash. Whole family’s trouble, and even they looked down on my mother.
If she wasn’t drunk, she was high, and if she wasn’t drunk or high, she was mean.
On the rare occasion there was food in the cabinets, she fed the dogs before she fed me.
Beat them less, too. If it hadn’t been for Severin, for Brady and his mama…
” Knox ground his teeth, every muscle in his face going taut.
“And Calla grew up here. High and mighty. Destined for greater things.”
You believed in her. You believed in what the two of you had. You believed she saw more in you. Gigi didn’t say any of that out loud. She just stayed there, her head on his shoulder, their backs against the door, cuddled up—until there was a knock.
Knox was on his feet in an instant, and he waited for Gigi to get behind him before he opened the door.
There was no one there—just a coffee tray.
Before Knox could stop her, Gigi squeezed past him and squatted to get a better look at the tray. There was a handwritten note propped up against the sterling silver coffee pot:
Parlor, 9 AM. Just the girl.