The Setup Read Free Page B

of Jackson Square in one of the original blocks of the French Quarter, the hotel gave welcome shelter to tourists who flocked to New Orleans, especially during Mardi Gras season.
    As far back as Sylvie could remember, her mother had been a workaholic, a type-A personality whose batteries never seemed to need recharging. After her husband died, Anne only became more driven, more dedicated to the hotel. The heart attackhad stopped her cold, but Anne insisted she needed to get back to work. There was a second mortgage on the hotel and Anne was afraid that business might drop off if she wasn’t there to oversee everything.
    Charlotte was convinced that the only way their mother could be persuaded to back off a little from her intense workload—and probably from working herself to death—was if she knew that her daughters were taking over the family business.
    So Charlotte, who was already entrenched in every aspect of the hotel’s inner workings, stepped in to their mother’s position as general manager and sent out the call for Renee and Melanie, who had returned dutifully, if not completely eagerly, to the fold. Melanie brought her culinary skills into the kitchen of Chez Remy, the restaurant their father had made famous, while Renee, who had been a PR executive and producer at a mid-size studio in Hollywood, set about making sure the hotel retained its four-star rating.
    As for Sylvie, well, her talents had always been in the arts. Not that many years ago, she had dreamed of becoming an artist herself. For a time, it had seemed she was on the right track. She’d been lucky enough to have a few minor shows of her work in a small gallery in New York, where she’d led a bohemian life and was willingly contemplating starving in some garret, preferably in Paris, for her craft. But her life had taken a different direction after a visit to Renee in Los Angeles. Sylvie had found work designing sets and had begun her short-lived affair with Shane. She’d still been living in L.A. when her mother had called and asked her if she would run the art gallery.
    Sylvie had spent exactly a day debating whether to uproot her life again. She’d “talked” the decision over with a wide-eyed Daisy Rose at the playground, knowing full well that her little girl was going to say yes if it meant being close to her grandmother.
    So, Sylvie had returned to New Orleans, the place that represented home in her dreams, and she had adjusted to her new, very respectable position. Running a gallery was not exactly the direction she had once seen her life going in. But it did allow her to stay very much involved with the art world and local artists, whose work she put on display in the two-story gallery.
    Besides, she mused as she stood on the ground floor, just shy of the gallery’s street entrance, overseeing the removal of several crates from a truck, the focus of her world had completely changed since she first left New Orleans. Then life had been all about her. She’d focused on her dreams, her path, her future. In Los Angeles, despite religiously practicing good birth control, she had become pregnant. And swiftly found herself abandoned.
    After spending eight months lamenting her pending loss of freedom, she had found herself falling in love with the tiny baby she’d pushed out into the world after an excruciating fourteen hours of labor. With Daisy Rose in her arms, Sylvie had left the hospital knowing that she no longer had theluxury to be a reckless kid. Not when this perfect little being was depending on her.
    So, she’d grown up. Sort of. But not completely. Her bohemian streak was still alive and well and thriving within her.
    Her older sister Renee approached through the hotel entrance, waving a paper at Sylvie, and announced that it contained the profile of her prospective “date.”
    Sylvie stopped mid-gesture. She’d been about to signal the brawny, overweight trucker to put the crate against the wall. The gallery’s parquet