Although, she understood that even her grandmother hadn’t always been the wise woman she remembered. Josie’s mother and aunt stood as clear reminders of that. When Josephine Villefranche had been younger than Josie was now, she’d fallen for a man. A brush salesman traveling through town. A handsome white man whose name Josie had never learned, although he had been her grandfather.

“Beware of love, Josie.” She heard Granme’s voice as clearly as if she’d been standing right beside her. “Love is the one thing over which you have no control. It can make you stronger or it can destroy you.”

Josie had been all of ten at the time and had knocked on her grandmother’s door during one of her “spells,” short periods of time when she’d withdraw from hotel duties and stay in her rooms, shut off from the world.

“Which did it make you, Granme?” she’d asked, settling into an armchair across from where her grandmother sat staring toward the windows. Windows that had been covered by sheers, blurring the scene beyond.

“Both.”

Josie opened her eyes and stared at the plaque.

If you didn’t have a choice in who or how you loved, did you then not have a choice in how that love affected you? Could you decide whether it made you stronger or destroyed you?

And therein lay the danger she suspected her grandmother had been trying to make her aware of.

Here she was with problems piled on her doorstep, and rather than seeking ways to save a hotel that was as much a part of her heritage as her grandmother had been, she was instead searching for answers to questions that had no practical relevance.

“Men are the devil, Josie. Especially white men. They mean no harm. They saunter in with their natty clothes and charming grins and make you feel like the most beautiful woman on earth. But then they’ll leave you behind like a bag of garbage at the curb.”

“How are white men different from black men, Granme?”

She’d pointed a gnarled finger at Josie. “Because you expect the black men to stay.”

So had her grandmother expected, or at least hoped, that her white lover would stay and marry her? Had he even known their brief affair had produced a child?

And had Josie’s mother decided not to make the same mistakes her own mother before her had? Had she seen her chance to get that forever and sacrificed everything in order to get it?

Were there days she regretted her decision? Or was she even now completely happy and content?

Josie dropped her hand from the plaque.

“This place, this hotel, it will never betray you, girl. It will never take up with another woman, or leave you pregnant, or move on to the next town without you. Remember that. Respect that.”

Josie opened her purse and fished inside for a silver dollar, which she placed on a small shelf below the plaque. She left her fingers on top, pondering the many words her grandmother had imparted. The advice, the warnings, the wisdom. Never had she considered the possibility that much of it was born of a woman scorned.

She squared her shoulders. “I’m going to save the hotel, Granme. Of that you can be sure.”

Then she turned and made her way back through the graveyard, a new resolve filling her.

DREW KNEW ONE THING and one thing only: he had to come clean with Josie. Tell her exactly who he was and what he had come there to do…and what he now wanted to do. Or, rather, wanted to help her to do. And that was to save her hotel.

At around nine-thirty the next morning, after having made calls to check the liquidity of his cash resources, he headed to the hotel, only to find a note on the door meant for Josie’s employees. He read it, then returned it to where it had been.

Where was she? While he would be the last to profess to know Josie better than anyone else, he sensed that she wasn’t the type of person just to up and leave her hotel with the Closed sign hanging in the window if there wasn’t a good reason.

Was she inside?

He rang the bell then stepped back to look up at the doors to her rooms. In fact, the doors to all the rooms were closed. It was the first time he’d seen that.

He knew a moment of concern. Then another thought quickly followed: had she given up and was even now arranging to sell the hotel to Dick Rove?

He dialed his client, his back teeth clenched tightly together at the thought of Rove taking the hotel from her.

Rove’s secretary told him he was unavailable but offered to take a message. Drew didn’t leave one. Instead he slapped his cell phone closed and looked around the street. He wouldn’t know where to begin looking for her. He just hoped she wasn’t with the other “closer” Rove had hired to work Josie.

A person Drew suspected might be setting him up to take a fall, as well.

Damn.

A bar across the street had just opened its doors and a young man wearing an apron was spraying down the sidewalk and curb.

Drew held out a twenty-dollar bill. “Have any coffee in there?”

The kid smiled. “No, but I will.”

Drew took a seat right near the door with a clear view of the front of the hotel. He had no choice but to wait.

“WHERE IN THE HELL have you been? I’ve been waiting here for over an hour.”

Josie considered Philippe where he’d appeared next to her. It was just after two in the afternoon and it had been a long day for her so far.

She unlocked the front door and took the note and the Closed sign off before leading the way into the lobby.

“Seeing to a few things,” she said noncommittally.

“I’ve been worried sick. What do you mean by closing the place like that? You could have waited until I came in to do whatever business you needed to do.”

She wanted to reassure him, but she was so physically and mentally weary that she merely spared him a look as she put her purse away under the desk.

“What was so urgent that you needed to see to it so early, anyway?”

“Business matters.”

“What business matters?”

Josie stared at him for a moment. Philippe had never taken that much interest in the business aside from wanting to know when he’d get paid.

He ran a hand through his already tousled hair. “Sorry. I guess I’m just all worked up.”

She shuffled through some papers.

“I was worried about you.”

She smiled at him.

He smiled back. “Why don’t I go fix us a bite to eat and we’ll have a chat.”

Josie tucked the papers under her arm. “Can’t. I have some things to do.” She started toward the stairs. “And you don’t have the time, either. Open up the balcony doors to air out the rooms and see to the front desk until I come back down.”

“Josie?”

It wasn’t Philippe who’d said her name. Rather, someone who’d just entered the lobby had. And he wasn’t alone.

Claude Lafitte and FBI agent Akela Brooks.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Claude had been a regular at the Josephine. Then he’d been accused of the murder of Claire Laraway and had then taken Akela hostage at gunpoint.

That had been almost three weeks ago and all had turned out well so far as Josie could tell. The newspaper had been filled with the news that a romance had developed between the former captor and captive. A definite case of opposites attract, given Claude’s deep bayou roots and Akela’s high-society family background.

“We heard about the second murder,” Akela said, not bothering with niceties. Something for which Josie was thankful because she wasn’t in a nice mood.

Claude cursed. “More like we were paid a visit by Chevalier to check up on my whereabouts on the night in question.”

She eyed Claude for a long moment. The first murder had never been solved, and since Claude had been with the victim the night before she’d been killed, he’d been the police’s first-and apparently only-suspect.