“My mother?” she echoed, her voice even softer, taking on more of that smoky, sultry flavor. “I don’ know anythin’ at all about her. Well, just what Bodrie told me. He met her backstage at a concert and she was strikin’. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. But honestly, Bodrie couldn’t take his eyes off of most women.”

Remy was aware of Saria’s sharp glance from him to Bijou and back. She was smart, and she knew Remy didn’t bother with small talk. He interrogated people for a reason. He was good at it, sounding conversational and interested, putting whoever he was interrogating at ease and slipping in questions so easily no one knew how much information they actually gave up. If he was bringing up the uncomfortable question of Bijou’s mother, he was doing it for a reason.

He flicked one look at his sister, and she pressed her lips together, getting the message to keep her mouth closed.

“Did he ever talk about her family? Where she was from?”

Bijou shrugged. “He mentioned they came from someplace near Borneo. He always said she was exotic, but he never talked about her family. I got the impression they were dead.”

“You have a lot of money, Blue,” Remy pointed out. “Hire a PI and find out.”

“Why?” Bijou regarded him steadily over the rim of her coffee mug. “Why would I want to do that now? It isn’t as if Bodrie wasn’t known around the world. He went on world tours all the time. I ought to know. He dragged me along on most of them.” She took another drink of the aromatic coffee and gave another shrug. “I needed them when I was a child. Even knowing someone was out there fightin’ for me would have helped, but they didn’. They left me with him.”

Again, he couldn’t detect bitterness in her voice. Just resignation. She accepted that most people loved, even revered her father and thought he could do no wrong. She went her own way, made her life and made no apologies for it.

“I think it would be difficult,” Saria said to Remy, “if I was Bijou and I inherited all that money, to trust anyone comin’ out of the woodwork and claimin’ they were related. Money makes people do crazy things.”

“It comes with the territory, Saria,” Bijou said. “I learned that in school. Real friendship is a treasure and that’s why I always appreciated you. I knew if I came home, nothin’ would have changed between us.”

Remy was prouder in that moment of Saria than he’d ever been, and she was pretty extraordinary in his book. The fact that someone as wary as Bijou would have complete confidence in his sister when they hadn’t seen one another in several years, made him respect Saria all the more.