Blood Ties in Chef Voleur

His frustration was that the people whose throats he most wanted to cut were already dead. His Aunt Lilibelle, for one.

She’d yanked him free of the harsh ruling of juvenile court when he was seventeen and raised him as her own, and he’d worshiped her as much as he’d hated her husband, Con. She’d always promised him that he would have her journals. Promised that even after she died, her best friend, Con’s sister, Claire, would keep them safe for him.

But years later, when Cara Lynn graduated from high school, she’d been presented with the journals by her mother, who told her that Grandmother Lilibelle had wanted her to have them. Paul protested, but when he saw the first journal, the inscription inside the cover read To Cara Lynn, in his beloved Aunt Lili’s flowing, decorative hand.

He’d never dreamed that Lili would betray him, not after taking him in to rear along with her own two sons. Not after all the times he’d comforted her when Con was photographed in the company of other women. Not after everything Paul had done for her and everything she’d done for him. They’d always protected each other, and they’d sworn that they always would.

And now, once again he felt the sting of Lili’s betrayal. Her last journal, the one that could destroy the Delancey family, had also gone to Cara Lynn along with the Guillame tiara, worth so much it was generally referred to as priceless.

As fascinated as he had always been with the tiara, he wasn’t concerned about it. There was an unreal quality about jewels that large. Plus, what good would having the tiara do if he couldn’t sell it?

Still, although he was terrified at what someone might find in Lili’s last journal, it was some comfort that none of the Delanceys had gotten their hands on it, either. He’d felt a thrill almost as satisfying as a climax when the lights had gone off and people had started shouting and panicking. The seemingly superhuman Delanceys had been as helpless as ordinary people in the face of the sudden, temporary blackout that lasted for only a few minutes until the emergency generator had kicked on.

But the idea that nobody in the room could see, or know what was happening or who was causing it, had given him a particular thrill. Then when the emergency lights came on and the table was empty—the journal and the tiara gone, he nearly went over the edge.

It had taken every ounce of self-control he had to keep from literally rubbing his palms together with glee. The thief had walked into the Delancey mansion and walked out—or run out—with the journal and the tiara right under the noses of the Delanceys.

But the most exciting thing of all, precisely because he’d been watching Cara Lynn like a hawk all evening, and had made sure his eyes were on her and no one else when the lights came on, was that she had covered something with her hand just before the lights went out. Something white and flat, like a sheet of paper or an envelope.

Once the lights were back on, whatever the bit of white had been, it had disappeared as if it had never been there. Three Delancey men were hovering over her, and her husband was standing on a chair, apparently trying to get a good look at the thief.

Paul had kept his eyes on Cara Lynn, but whatever she had found in the journal, she must have secreted it in her purse.

Now, as he picked up the tumbler of bourbon and water he’d left on the nightstand the night before, and drained it, he let his imagination play with what it could be. The most obvious answer was a letter from Lilibelle Guillame to Cara Lynn. But what would Aunt Lili have said to a child who was barely a teenager when she’d died? Congratulations. Hope you enjoy the nice presents? Paul didn’t know, but he was damned sure going to find out.

He swallowed the last of the watery bourbon and felt its warmth spread through his insides. The evening had ended better than he could have hoped, for the most part.

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