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grandfather and I never saw eye to eye to begin with. He always wanted me to be like him, but I wasn’t. I was like my mother. So he gave up trying to make me into something and that’s when he discovered your father. He spent the last twenty years of his life turning your father into the anal retentive accountant he is.”
    “ Dad would disagree with you there, Uncle Lance. He thinks he has been the responsible one by keeping the family business going.”
    “ That’s what Lionel Beauvoir taught him to think. Your father, on the other hand, always wanted to be an artist when he was a kid. Wanted to go off and study art at some fancy school until my father shut him down. He had dreams of being the next Monet. Just like your grandmother.”
    I gazed in astonishment at my uncle. “Grandma Rita was an artist?”
    “ That’s how she and your grandfather met. She was selling her paintings right here at Jackson Square.” He looked about the square beside us. “Lionel saw her here and fell in love with her at first sight.”
    “ What happened to her paintings?” I asked as I watched my uncle’s profile.
    “ Only one is left,” he stated. “The one of Lionel hanging in your father’s office. My mother painted that just before she died. My father gave away all of the others.” He sighed. “I would have liked to have had some of her paintings to remember her by.” He turned to me and winked. “And you thought you were the only one in the family in love with an artist.”
    I reflected for a moment on what my uncle had just told me. I looked around the square and thought of David. “The first time I saw David’s paintings was here. He had been selling them just around the corner in Pirate’s Alley,” I said as I pointed to the front of St. Louis Cathedral. “I had come to the Quarter to do some shopping and stopped to view some paintings I saw displayed in the alley because I was intrigued by the style. Then I ran into David and found out the paintings were his. We had met only a few weeks before at one of the debutante teas given by Myra Chopin. Everyone at the party thought he was just another of Sammy Fallon’s gigolos. And so did I, until I saw his paintings and realized there was much more to him than what I had initially believed.”
    Sammy Fallon. I shuddered as I thought about my father’s old business rival. A ruthless woman who viewed people more as chess pieces than as human beings, Sammy had hired David to seduce me and feed my father false investment information. She had hoped to bankrupt my father’s business, but David’s love for me had thwarted her plans.
    Uncle Lance laughed. “Yep. You and David started out just like Momma and Lionel. Weird, huh?”
    “ I have to admit I’m surprised that no one has ever mentioned this to me before.”
    “ Well, I was going to, but I figured there was no point in bringing it up. You were so devastated after David died and then you found Dallas and …” He looked back at the square. “You do realize, Nic, that no matter what we learn you still have one hell of a problem waiting for you when you go back to Connecticut.”
    I shook my head “Dallas said he didn’t want me to return to Connecticut until I’m ready to marry him.”
    “ Ouch!” He grimaced. “You better figure out how you plan on handling that situation. Because sooner or later you’re gonna have to face the fact that you’re not in love with the boat builder.”
    My jaw dropped slightly as I gawked at my uncle “I love him—”
    “ But you’re not in love with him,” he injected. “Don’t get me wrong, Nic, I like Dallas. And personally I love the fact that he’s a better cook than half of the chefs in this town. But I see how you two are together, and you’re definitely not in love with him. You’re just using him.”
    “ Uncle Lance! Care to be a bit more diplomatic.”
    He shrugged. “Why? We all use somebody at some time for something, Nicci. Humans are not known