Celebration's Baby. Nancy Thompson Robards

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      “Your decor looks exquisite. Who did your decorating?”

      Maya beamed. “Thank you. I did it myself. I tried to give the front of the house a similar feel to my shop in St. Michel. Similar, but maybe a touch more modern. More American. I wanted it to feel like home, since I will be spending a great deal of time here.”

      “Let’s see,” Bia said, flipping through her reporter’s notebook, searching for the brief bio she’d gathered on Maya. “You’re from St. Michel in Europe. Are you moving to Celebration?”

      Maya stopped, considering the question. “I will be here for the time being. Because my heart is telling me Celebration is where I belong right now, especially while I am getting the new location off the ground. I must make sure it does well.”

      Bia jotted down more notes and anecdotes for use in her story. “Who is looking after your St. Michel shop while you’re away?”

      “I have promoted my assistant, Grace, to the managerial position. If anyone knows the shop as well as I do, Grace does. I trust that the place is in good hands.”

      Maya paused again, as if weighing her words. “As you can imagine, the Celebration location will need much tender loving care while I get the business off the ground.”

      Bia nodded. “I’m curious, though. Why in the world did you choose Celebration, Texas, as the location of your first U.S. retail store? I mean, no offense to this town. It’s a great place. It’s my home. But of all the places in the world...why Celebration?”

      Maya’s eyes shone as she regarded Bia, and for the first time Bia noticed that the older woman’s eyes were a gorgeous shade of hazel infused with intriguing flecks of amber and green, accentuated by the color of her skirt. The same mossy color was also echoed in the silk scarf that she had artfully arranged around her neck. Leave it to the French, Bia mused. They could create something enchanted out of a yard of silk and a bolt of tulle.

      Maya’s hair was magical, too. Bia’s hair, when left to its natural devices, was almost as curly as Maya’s. But Bia straightened hers since it never wanted to do the same thing twice. A few months ago, she’d opted for a keratin treatment so she wouldn’t have to fight with it during the humid days of summer. It was only May, but the oppressive damp-heat days were already bearing down on them, as if someone were misting the entire town with a gigantic vaporizer. At this rate, by the time August rolled around, humidity would hang in the air like a billowing stratus cloud. Thanks to the magic of keratin, at least Bia’s hair was armed and ready to take on the summer...and the pregnancy.

      Oh...the pregnancy.

      She swallowed hard and blinked away the thought.

      “Why Celebration?” Bia urged.

      She looked up from her notepad and caught Maya staring at her with an odd expression. In an instant the look was gone, replaced by Maya’s placid, Madonna-like smile.

      “I have...friends here. Do you know Pepper Meriweather, A. J. Sherwood-Antonelli and Caroline Coopersmith?” Maya asked.

      “I know Caroline. Her husband, Drew Montgomery, is my boss.”

      Maya gave a quick flick of her wrist. “Of course he is. Well, I met Caroline, A.J. and Pepper through a mutual friend who went to school with them. This was a few years ago, before any of them were married. They’d come to St. Michel to help another friend. Margeaux Broussard? Do you know her?”

      Bia shook her head and continued to furiously scribble notes as Maya talked.

      “Anyhow,” Maya continued, “the girls had come to St. Michel with Margeaux to help her make amends with her father, from whom she’d been estranged for the better part of her life. Once they’d accomplished that mission, they returned to Celebration, luring my good friend Sydney James away from St. Michel with the promise of a job with Texas Star Energy right here in Celebration.”

      Bia raised her head and looked at Maya. She knew Sydney pretty well, since the woman had just married Miles Mercer. Miles was good friends with Bia’s best friend, Aiden Woods. The four of them got together a lot. Bia would’ve called it double dating if she and Aiden had been a couple, but they weren’t. She’d known him since kindergarten and cared too much about him to ruin their relationship by dating him.

      “Texas Star Energy, huh?” Bia said.

      Maya nodded and quirked a brow that seemed to indicate she knew all about the scandalous demise of the corrupt energy empire. Bia had been the reporter who had broken the story that had started the conglomerate’s unraveling. In fact, her investigative reporting and subsequent awards had helped her clinch the editorship of the paper after Drew Montgomery had decided to give up editing to focus more on the publishing end of the paper. But Texas Star was in the past. It was a can of worms Bia didn’t want to reopen.

      “So, you followed your friends to Celebration?”

      “Oh, mais non. It’s a little more complicated.” Maya pursed her lips. “At first, I visited them. I attended each of their weddings. In fact, some might say that I even had a hand in bringing each of them together with their soul mates.”

      “You introduced them?”

      Maya gave a noncommittal one-shoulder shrug. How very French her gestures were. But wait...hadn’t Drew met Caroline at a wedding...? Yes. It had been Caroline’s sister’s wedding. It had been right around the time that everything was coming to a head at Texas Star.

      “Technically, non. I didn’t physically introduce them. It’s another complicated story, really.”

      “You’re full of complicated stories, aren’t you? If you’d care to expound, I’m here to listen.... That’s what I do.”

      Maya studied her as if she was deciding whether she would take Bia up on the offer of a listening ear.

      “Well, I do love to talk.” Maya laughed, an infectious sound that made Bia smile.

      “Over the years, the girls—Pepper, A.J. and Caroline—have become very dear to me. So, I’ve always looked out for them, and that’s how I had a hand in bringing them together with their soul mates.”

      Again, Bia paused and looked up at the woman. Soul mates. There was that word again. Bia filed soul mates in the same category as happily ever after. She wasn’t sure she believed there was such a thing, especially after being left at the altar by the man who should’ve been her soul mate if there was such a thing. Nope, in her book, love was an urban legend. People talked about it. Some even claimed to have experienced it, but real love—the kind that grafted your soul to another person’s for better or worse, the type that could withstand bleached-blonde strippers and the relentless paparazzi—had managed to elude Bia her entire life.

      Actually, she’d read somewhere that soul mates weren’t always lovers. Sometimes they were parent and child, sometimes best friends. If that were true, the closest thing to a soul mate she’d ever had was Aiden. Their relationship had survived some pretty treacherous hurdles. It had actually transcended sex. That’s probably why it worked. They hadn’t ruined things by getting physical.

      God knew there had been plenty of times Bia had been tempted to give in to his charm. The guy was gorgeous—in a more rugged and down-to-earth way than Hugh’s pretty-boy looks. Women СКАЧАТЬ