Perfect Together by Kristen Ashley

Colette was an only child of two only children. Thus, Colette had inherited her family’s estate. Something they’d managed to build even if it had been 1883 when her great-grandfather left the plantation he could no longer maintain as he’d lost his free labor of enslaved human beings. So, he’d sold it, moved to the city, and made a second fortune in printing.

However, that fortune took a turn for the worse when Colette’s father died of polio when she was little.

Since she was too young, and her mother didn’t feel any need to keep her eye on things, the printing business suffered. This was due to the fact Mrs. Cormier left it in the hands of men who preferred to siphon money from her and her cossetted daughter, rather than keeping them in the style to which they were accustomed.

It took years, but that business eventually went bankrupt.

Even though Colette was of age when that happened and had a degree in English from Tulane, neither of them considered procuring paid employment.

Therefore, Colette and her mother were barely hanging on when Guillaume entered the picture.

I had no idea why they chose to make their official home in New Orleans rather than in Toulouse, where Guillaume’s family was from, and where his family’s business, which centered around shipping, was still maintained.

I just knew that Guillaume swept into Colette Cormier’s life like a tornado, dashing her into a whirlwind of international travel, parties on yachts, gambling in Monaco, frolicking on the Riviera, and turning around the Southern belle’s drooping fortunes, including spending tens of thousands on a complete restoration of her family home.

The inside, even I had to admit, was a dream of peaches, creams and pale yellows, greens, pinks and blues with ornate furniture, heavy, perfectly swagged draperies and Aubusson rugs.

The sitting room (my favorite, outside—something else I didn’t like to admit—Colette and Guillaume’s bedroom, which was impeccable) had a ballerina-pink wall that depicted a hand-painted mural of a grove of trees.

What I had never understood, even before I knew how his parents treated him, was how Remy grew up in that place.

It was gorgeous.

But it was like a museum.

I also knew, before what I’d recently learned, that Remy didn’t have an emotional attachment to the home he grew up in, and he had plans for it when it was his.

He’d told me years ago he intended to sell the house and donate the proceeds to the EJI.

“Far too little, far too late,” he’d muttered. “But that money should take care of the people who earned the man the means to build that house in the first place.”

Needless to say, with three astute children who knew they had deep roots in Southern upper-class society, they’d asked the question, and Remy and I’d had an uncomfortable conversation with them to explain that they were the descendants of slave owners.

Their reactions told me not one of them would make a peep when Remy sold his childhood home, part of their legacy, and invest it in a better legacy, justice.

But now, I had less unpleasant things to turn my mind to.

They still weren’t pleasant.

This was because Guillaume had come to stand outside the side door.

He was tall and straight and remarkably handsome, even in his eighties.

And it was an odd sensation to intensely dislike a man who looked so like three I adored.

But there it was.

“You good, Sah?” Remy murmured before he opened his door.

“I won’t tackle him and punch him in the face, if that’s what you’re asking,” Sabre answered.

My eyes again darted to the back.

“He’s good, Dad,” Manon threw in, her gaze on me.

She nodded to me.

She’d keep her brother in line.

But I knew the children I’d raised, and I knew she wouldn’t have to.

He might not ask the man for a game of catch, but Sabre would be civil.

I still nodded back to my girl because she was being sweet, looking after her dad.

We got out, and although Guillaume came down the steps and allowed his fond gaze to linger on all of us, his arms didn’t open to anyone but Remy.

I felt my hands clench into fists.

Remy walked into those arms, and that was when I felt my daughter’s fingers close around my tightly balled ones.

I shifted so I was holding her hand.

Perhaps noting that Remy did little more than pat his father on the back before he started to pull away, he wasn’t going to push it with an audience, so Guillaume let him go and turned to me.

“Ma belle Wyn,” he murmured, his voice throaty, his eyes soft with shimmers of wet, openly and unabashedly overcome that Remy and I were back together.

“Guillaume,” I replied, letting my daughter go and walking to him.

I kissed his cheek and suffered my own hug.

He then turned right to Manon like Sabre nor Yves were standing there and gave her the biggest smile imaginable.

“And how is the most beautiful girl in the world?” he asked.

“I’m good, Pépé,” she muttered, jumping forward to give him a quick hug and a peck on the cheek.

I stiffened when he corrected her, because when he did that, it always rankled me.

“Je vais bien,” he said. “Où ça va, merci, Pépé, et toi?”

He was constantly on all the kids to speak French (especially Manon), something they were all haltingly fluent in because their father spoke it and we’d been to France often.