“Actually, these smell like roses, and I guess you could just get roses if you like that smell, but I’ve always thought that peonies were prettier.”
His gaze dipped to where she held them. “They are.”
Rosie’s smile kicked up a notch. “They’re yours if you want them.”
A moment passed and then he reached out to take the flowers. His fingers brushed hers as they curved around the bundle of stems. Her gaze flew to his face. There was a slight tilt to the corner of his lips. The touch was brief, but she thought . . .
Ugh. It sounded out there, but Rosie thought it was on purpose.
“I don’t imagine people do this often,” he said, looking down at the peonies and then back to her.
“Do what?” She lowered her hand.
“Search someone down in a cemetery to replace flowers they carelessly dropped,” he explained, lifting his gaze to the hum of a plane flying above, heading toward the airport. Then that pale gaze focused on hers again with the same intensity as before. “I’d figure most people wouldn’t have spared it another thought.”
Rosie lifted a shoulder. “I hope that’s not the case.”
“It is.” He said that like he didn’t have one ounce of doubt in his mind. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He nodded and then turned back to the crypt. Rosie took a moment to recognize the craziness of the situation. She was actually standing here, conversing with Devlin de Vincent, and she wasn’t badgering him about his haunted property.
She deserved a pile of beignets for resisting the urge and proving that she did, in fact, have the common decency to respect the fact that they were in a graveyard and this was neither the time nor the place for such topics.
She figured it was time for her to leave him, since she really needed to get to Nikki’s and he was owed his privacy, but she felt like she needed to say something. “I’m sorry about your father.”
And that was all she said, because she knew that when people lost someone the way Devlin had, no one processed it the same way. Some wanted—needed—the acknowledgment and wanted to talk about it. Others weren’t at that point yet, and his father’s suicide was recent.
Devlin faced her once more. His head tilted to the side as a wry look settled into his striking features. “You know who I am?”
Rosie laughed softly. “I’m pretty sure everyone knows who you are.”
“True,” he murmured, and that made Rosie want to laugh again. There was no reason to deny it. “Did you know who I was when I dropped the flowers?”
She did laugh again then. “No. Your back was to me and you were too far away. All I knew was that you were a guy.”
The way he studied her made her wonder if he believed that or not, but there really wasn’t anything she could say to change it if that was the case. A cloud passed overhead, and Rosie pushed her sunglasses up. She’d smoothed her curls back into a topknot this morning. If she hadn’t, she was confident her hair would be a frizzy mess in the humidity.
Something . . . weird flickered across his face as he stared at her. She had no idea what it was as she spun the key ring on her pointer finger. “Well, I’ve taken up enough of your time—”
“These aren’t for Lawrence,” he said, and she thought it was strange that Devlin called him that instead of Father. He stepped forward, crossing over the stone. “You have me at a disadvantage.”
“I do?” She watched him kneel, and that was when she saw the name. Marjorie de Vincent. Was that his mother?
Devlin placed the peonies in the vase. “You know me, but I don’t know you.”
“Oh.” Rosie almost said who she was. It was on the tip of her tongue, but Rosie had kind of fixed Nikki up with a mutual friend who had been attempting to investigate the de Vincents for the local paper, unbeknownst to Rosie. She didn’t know if Devlin knew anything about that, but there was no point in running that risk. “It doesn’t matter.”
He turned to her, brows knitted in a slight frown. “It doesn’t?”
“No.” She smiled as her gaze flickered from him to where she saw the father’s name etched into stone. “You know, I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but it’s true. You may never really understand why your father did what he did, but it gets easier to . . . deal with.”
Devlin’s lips parted as he stared at her.
She felt her cheeks warm, because of course he knew. He already had experience with this, with his mother, and here she was, dispensing unnecessary advice like an idiot.
He stepped toward her, coming over the stone. “What is your name?”
Before she could answer, a phone rang. For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer it, but then he reached into his pocket, pulling it out.
“Sorry,” he said. “I have to answer this.”
“It’s okay.”
Devlin turned away, placing his hand on his waist as he spoke into the phone. This was her chance to make a clean exit. Taking just one more second to soak in the line of his jaw and the breadth of his shoulders, she slid her sunglasses back down as she backed up.
Turning with a soft smile on her lips, she walked away from Devlin de Vincent, knowing it was very unlikely that she’d see him again.
Chapter 2
Princess Silvermoon was her trade name, but Rosie simply knew her as Sarah LePen. Princess Silvermoon was, no question about it, a really absurd name, but in Sarah’s line of work, she had to stand out. Especially in a city where you couldn’t throw a rock and not hit a tarot card reader or a psychic, and calling yourself a princess did get you a lot of attention.
But Sarah was the real deal Holyfield.
She was a psychic medium whose feelings were almost always premonitions, and not only that, she was able to communicate with honest to goodness spirits. Rosie knew it was more than Sarah relying on finely honed intuition or being able to expertly read people’s body language. She’d seen Sarah in action many times over to know that she was connecting with someone, able to answer nearly impossible questions and impart shockingly accurate information to those who had her do readings.
Rosie had met Sarah through her friend Jillian several years ago. Jilly was the creator and co-owner of NOPE—the New Orleans Paranormal Exploration team, and in Rosie’s opinion, one of the best paranormal investigation teams out there. Jilly brought Sarah in while NOPE was investigating a house out in Covington. They had a previous owner of the home who hadn’t moved on and was making herself quite the nuisance in the home, banging around, stealing things and placing them in weird locations to scare the bejesus out of the kids. Sarah had managed to get the old lady to cross over, much to the family’s delight. And as far as Rosie knew, they still lived in that house. But sometimes spirits could be stubborn. There’d been times that Sarah couldn’t get them to cross over, and then it became up to the owners to either attempt to forcibly remove the spirits or learn to live with them.
Sarah had been engaged up until about four months ago, when a feeling had led her to come home earlier than normal, catching her fiancé with, as cliché as hell, his secretary.
So she’d recently moved into an apartment over on Ursulines, which wasn’t too far from Rosie, and where she was currently begging for forgiveness.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she told Sarah as she dropped her bag on the couch. “Today has been—it has been all over the place. I had to help my friend Nikki move and I had to help Jilly with one of the ghost tours. You know how those things are.”
“A mess and they always run over?” Sarah laughed as she walked out of her kitchen. Her blond hair was pulled up in a messy knot that looked Instagram ready. She was a gorgeous woman who reminded Rosie of an older version of the actress Jennifer Lawrence. When Sarah was officially working, she wore flowing gowns and bracelets that sounded like wind chimes every time they clanked together. When she was off, like she was now, she wore black leggings and a black tunic. “You have no reason to apologize. It’s okay. I have nothing else planned tonight. I never do on this night.”
“But it’s Friday—”