Bayou Bad Boys (15 page)

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Authors: Nancy Warren

BOOK: Bayou Bad Boys
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She sat up, nudging him out of her arousal zone and refusing to answer because they both knew he was right. “I should get back.”
“All right.” He rose, then held out a hand to help her up.
Once on her feet, she took the necklace off with her own hands. “It's beautiful,” she said. “Thank you for letting me wear it.”
“You're welcome. And,” he said, white teeth flashing in a grin, “if you're interested, I give a very nice family discount.”
Three
“Can you get me a cab?” she asked when he'd locked up and they were once again on Charles Street, which seemed busier than before. This really was a party town.
“I'll see you home.”
“But you have your own place. I don't want to take you out of your way.”
“My mother would kill me if I didn't escort you home.”
Ah, mothers she understood. “Okay.”
His car was a low, sleek BMW convertible. He left the top down and the air streaming through her hair felt good after an evening of far too much heat. They purred to a stop in front of his mother's house and he turned to her.
“Thanks for a . . .” What to say? “An interesting evening.”
“I enjoyed it very much. I look forward to getting to know you better,
cousine.
”
She licked her lips, a nervous gesture that annoyed her. “Good night.”
She pushed her car door open before he could do anything really aggravating like kissing her again or running around and opening the car door for her. She needed some space and quiet in her room in order to think about this. Perhaps he understood, for he didn't move, merely sent her a smart salute and pulled away.
She stared after the car wondering what she was getting herself into and knowing there was no way out. The car purred smoothly forward, and as she turned to go up the path, the sound of the engine changed. Puzzled, she turned. To her amazement, the BMW slowed and made a sharp right into the driveway of the Italianate mansion next door to his mother's house.
No. It couldn't be. Sure enough, he cruised around a circular drive and stopped right in front of a double-doored entrance. He got out, put the roof up, beeped the car lock, and strolled to the front door.
She ran to the wrought iron fence between them. “Hey,” she called in a sharp whisper.
He turned. Gorgeous, piratical, and mysterious. “Yes, Lucy?”
“You live next door?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you lived in the French Quarter.”
“No. I live here. I like to keep an eye on things for Mama.”
“You're insane, you know that?” She had no idea why she should feel so irked, but somehow she felt like the victim of a practical joke. She'd been so delighted to find he wasn't living under the same roof, but now she found they were next-door neighbors.
“Good night, Lucy.”
“Claude?”
“Yes?”
“Are you ever going to tell me where your family got all this money?”
She thought he glanced swiftly up to where his mother was no doubt sleeping. He put a quick finger to his lips. And nodded. Then he made a farewell gesture and disappeared into his house.
Slowly, she made her way back to the front door of Beatrice's home, thinking furiously. Since her hostess had furnished her with a key, she was able to let herself into the house and pad up to her own bedroom.
She washed up, undressed, and changed into a cotton nightgown. She got into bed, turned out the lights, and lay there, staring up at the ceiling. The bed was comfortable and she was tired from the combined stresses of traveling, meeting new relatives, and making out with her distant cousin.
She ought to have been sound asleep the instant her head hit the pillow, but she wasn't. She turned the clock around so she wouldn't keep watching the torturous parade as minutes and hours slipped away. She knew from experience that clock watching only made her occasional insomnia worse. She got up for some water. Went back to bed. And finally gave up. She knew herself well enough to know that sleep wasn't coming anytime soon.
Too much on her mind. Most of it concerning Claude. It was all too complicated to figure out tonight and she resented her many-times-removed cousin for robbing her of sleep.
She got out of bed to sit by the window. At least, if she couldn't sleep she could enjoy the mansions by moonlight. There was a banana tree, she thought, across the way, and some huge live oaks with waving curtains of green Spanish moss. The padded window seat was made for star gazing. Curling up with the quilt off her bed, she decided to count stars as though they were sheep until she grew sleepy.
What she counted was one man walking across his back garden at—she glanced at the clock on the bedside table that was now facing her—one-forty-five in the morning.
There was no question as to the identity of the man.
Even though he'd changed the white shirt for a black long-sleeved T-shirt and it was dark enough that she didn't see him clearly, her body recognized him instinctively. Already, after a day's acquaintance she recognized his walk, the way he held his shoulders, and the shape of his head. He was as familiar to her as a man she'd been intimate with for months.
He didn't walk with particular stealth, but the fact of him leaving his house by the back door at this time of night was in itself suspicious.
Instinctively, she shrank back from the window, and almost the second she did, she saw him turn as though he felt her gaze and glance up at her window. She knew he couldn't see her but she felt a shiver run down her spine anyway.
After a moment he turned around and opened an obviously well-oiled gate since it swung open soundlessly. He passed through and was soon lost to her sight. A minute later she heard a car pulling away.
Where was Claude going? And what was he doing?
As an aid to sleep, staring out her window tonight hadn't been a real winner. She counted thousands of stars, but it didn't help. She'd never been so wide awake.
A woman, probably, Lucy decided. One of those unsteady ones his mother didn't need or want to know about.
Lucy wouldn't care a bit if he hadn't been kissing her earlier in the evening. Had the secrecy been for her benefit? Maybe he thought, Hey, Lucy's not into sex tonight. No problem. I'll call a friend.
Well, he was going to find that Lucy didn't share. Not even for a holiday fling that would only last a few weeks.
She got back into bed deciding that this promising beginning with Claude was pretty much done for. Well, better she should learn the truth about him now, she thought, punching the pillow and bunching it under her head one more time. Perhaps this was a good lesson to her not to stray from her usual research-heavy getting-to-know-you period. Obviously, Cousin Claude was going to be receiving a failing grade. For all his sexiness and the undeniable wow factor when he touched her, kissing cousins was all they were ever going to be. Too bad, she thought, shifting around trying to get comfortable.
No. Not too bad.
Best to know in advance that this guy was a walking sex god and a man who didn't worry much which woman was on his arm, so long as there was one.
Okay. Fine. Not for her.
If only she could convince her overstimulated and currently undersexed body of that fact.
As the hours crept by she became more and more irritated with her next-door neighbor for robbing her of sleep. This was all his fault. And a man who robbed her of sleep for all the wrong reasons was going to be forced to pay.
At one point she heard sounds of movement coming from Beatrice's room and hoped she hadn't telegraphed her restlessness to her hostess.
Around five she heard something. She couldn't have said what, but her senses were so attuned to what was going on next door that, sure enough, when she crept to the dormer window to peer down at Claude's backyard, there he was, sneaking back in to his own house as stealthily as he'd snuck out earlier.
The tom cat was home from his alley prowling.
Meow.
Four
The banging on his front door roused Claude from a sleep as deep and sweet as it had been short. A glance at his bedside clock confirmed he'd been in bed for less than two hours.
Muttering a string of obscenities in French, because that was the language he'd first learned to swear in, he grabbed the gun from his bedside drawer and made his way to the window in his bedroom that overlooked the front door.
“
Merde
.” What was his all too appetizing
cousine
doing on his doorstep at seven in the morning?
For a brief moment he wondered whether she'd go away if he ignored her, then realized his car was still out front so she'd assume, rightly, that he was in the house. Sure enough, another banging on the door accompanied by the peal of his doorbell informed him that his visitor wasn't going away.
Stuffing himself into a pair of plaid boxers, and deciding that if she came calling at this time of the day, that's all the trouble he was going to take to protect her modesty, he shoved the gun back in the drawer and shuffled his way downstairs to the front door.
She was already knocking again when he yanked the door open, so she almost fell inside. He resisted the grin that tried to surface at her surprised expression.
“What?” he demanded.
She looked as fresh and cool as the country she hailed from in a white top that showed a hint of cleavage and blue shorts that gave him ideas about how fast he could get them off her. When he got a good look at her face he saw dark circles under her eyes. She started to speak and was interrupted by a yawn. Hmm. Maybe she hadn't had any sleep last night either. Wishing she'd taken him up on his offer?
“You want coffee?”
She blinked in surprise. “You've made coffee? I thought . . .”
“I haven't made coffee yet. I was in bed.” He looked at her skinny but muscular body and thought about how it would feel wrapped around him. “I could be back there in under a minute, and you with me,” he said, reaching to cup her cheek in his palm.
Even as her eyes darkened in response, she looked away from him and turned her head so his hand fell away.
What had happened to the passionate woman who'd been as into him last night as he'd been into her? Well, almost. He wouldn't have ended the night at the same point she did, but he didn't think she'd called a halt because she didn't want him.
“What?” he asked, looking, puzzled, at her averted face. “What is it?”
“Nothing. I came to tell you that your mother's got the stones for the patio. She wants to know if you can start laying them today.”
“Yeah, I can come over,” he said, not taking his eyes off her. “What's happened since we were steaming up each other's windows last night?”
As he watched, she ran a thumbnail over the fluted edge of the Directoire table in the hallway. He doubted she even knew she was doing it. Her face was still turned away, the skin fine-textured and creamy with a scatter of pale freckles across the bridge of her nose and upper cheeks.
“I saw you last night,” she said, talking to the table.
“We saw each other. We had a date.” He dropped his voice. “A date that ended too soon.”
She turned to look straight at him and there was a hint of hurt swiftly hidden in the depths of her green eyes. “After that. Around two. I watched you go out the back way.”
Merde. Fils de putain. Christ!
He'd felt her watching him, he remembered now. He'd felt something and looked back at his mother's house to find it dark and still. He held his expression and his tone in check, saying evenly, “That's right. I went out.”
Her gaze didn't waver. “Whatever your personal life is, it's none of my business.” She said it with a tone of finality and an unspoken addendum: and it never will be. Then he understood what she was getting at.
“Lucy, I wasn't with another woman last night.”
Her gaze searched his and a tiny crease appeared between her brows. “Then where were you at that time of night and why did you sneak out the back way?”
He opened his mouth and a dozen lies popped up. But he didn't spout any of them. Instead he took her hands and held them. “I can't tell you where I was and I'm sorry about that. But believe me, I'm not interested in any woman right now except you.”
Her hands twitched in his grasp but she didn't pull away. She looked puzzled, frustrated, pissed. “I've known you less than twenty-four hours.”
“What's that got to do with anything?” he said, letting his impatience show. He held her hands against his chest and heard her quick intake of breath. Her fingers clutched, then relaxed as though she'd forced them to let go. “I don't get this kind of rush every time I touch a woman. I'm guessing you don't get it with the men you've known, either.” He paused long enough for her to decide to answer the implied question, which she did with a shake of her head.
“It wasn't pleasure that took me out last night, Lucy. It was business. I can't tell you any more. I'm sorry.”
She gazed at him for a long moment more. “I'm only down here for three weeks. A vacation fling is a really bad idea, anyway.”
“Seems like a good idea to me,” he said, keeping his tone light.
She sent him a swift smile and took her hands back. “Well, I'll tell Cousin Beatrice the handyman's on his way,” she said, backing out the door.
“Merde,”
he said, as he'd said far too many times this morning considering how early it was. He shut the door and stumbled back to the kitchen. When he opened the coffee tin he found a scattering of black at the bottom, exactly enough to tease his nostrils.
“Aw, shit.” He tossed the tin in the sink where it made a nice loud clang and then decided that, based on the first half hour, his day was going to be a real sweetheart.
What if he told her? What if he came right out and told her where he'd been?
No, he decided. Too dangerous.
 
Lucy kept herself busy all that day. This was a working holiday, after all. She was glad she'd made her decision not to get involved with Claude. Glad he hadn't tried to argue her into his bed when he wore nothing but boxer shorts. There were too many excellent reasons why sex with Claude was a very bad idea. And only one reason why it was a good one. Because her body wanted his.
Now she had two burning questions. Where had the family money really come from?
And what possible business did an antiques dealer conduct between the hours of two and five
A.M.
?
She rode the St. Charles Streetcar to Tulane University campus where she was doing some local research.
Lucy loved research. Not only would she dig into the campus library and archives while she was here, but she wanted a sense of place, the atmosphere and conditions her ancestors would have faced. She wanted to feel their plight so that when she wrote about the expulsion and starting over in Louisiana, her book would be more than a series of dry facts.
Victims of the wars between France and England, the Acadians had been French settlers to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. They'd displaced the Micmac Indians and settled the land for themselves and their families. Some of the Acadians had been there for generations when the British expelled the French settlers from the rich land. More than eight thousand of them were thrown out. They'd forced the young men and boys out first. The present and future soldiers were sent off on boats, the women and children to follow. She could never think about that part without hearing the wails and the tears, the begging that must have gone on. Longfellow's
Evangeline
always made her cry.
The men were shipped off, or escaped to hide in the bush. And later, when the women and children were shipped out, they didn't always end up in the same place as their fathers, husbands, and sons.
So many families broken apart, or finding each other but having to begin again from nothing. What must it have been like?
After a day with genealogy charts and obscure texts, sometimes in old French, Lucy was glad to leave. She made her way back home only to find Beatrice and Claude working together on the masonry.
Her girly bits got pretty excited when they spotted Claude. Could the man never be fully dressed when she saw him? He was shirtless again, looking manly and sweaty as he hefted flagstones in a pair of well-worn leather gloves. Beatrice was happily aiding him.
“Oh, honey, here you are home and I haven't even started supper. We got carried away in the garden. Give me a minute to clean up and I'll get your dinner on.”
“No, really,” Lucy said. “I'm not that hungry. And I've been inside all day. Why don't I change and then I can help you get the rest of those in.”
So, she found herself five minutes later outside in one of her old running T-shirts and a pair of shorts.
It was good to have something manual to do after a gorgeous day spent inside a stuffy library. She liked the feel of the cool, rough flagstones and the dirt creeping under her nails, and there was something satisfyingly artistic about the emerging pattern. They left the big pieces to Claude, naturally, and if she indulged herself with the odd sideways peek at his muscular torso at work, that was her business.
“So, what's this book about exactly?” Beatrice asked her.
“I'm planning to write about the expulsion of the Acadians through the eyes of one family. Ours. We've got a great network because of the family newsletter and we try to have the odd family reunion, so lots of us are in touch. I'm trying to trace what happened to the ones who left and what happened to the ones who remained. I want to make it a sort of living history, I guess.”
“So you're going right up to modern times?”
“That's the plan.”
“Will I be in your book?”
“If you give me your permission, I'd love for you to be in my book.”
“Well, imagine that Claude. We could be in Lucy's book.”
“It's an interesting project,” he said. Not sounding as excited as his mom about being in her book.
Beatrice wasn't a silent stone layer, and while they worked, she chattered about her day and the people she'd seen at the market and the women she'd had coffee with. She'd pause to fill Lucy in on who the characters were every once in a while, until Lucy was certain she'd recognize these people if she bumped into them at the market. Even the gossip was entertaining until Beatrice said, “Oh, and Claude, you must have heard about the robbery last night.”
Lucy glanced up sharply to find Claude's gaze flash her way for a second before flicking away again. “Yes. I heard. Some customers talked about it in the shop.”
“What robbery?” Lucy asked.
“The Guillotine diamonds. They're famous.”
“The what?” She dusted off her hands and stood straight.
“Well, they're famous here. A French noblewoman who was to be guillotined during the French Revolution bartered her release and that of her children with a priceless set of family diamonds. Some greedy revolutionary took the diamonds one piece at a time, as her children were smuggled out of the country. I always thought she must have had a sense of humor, for she swapped the final piece, her tiara, for her head.”
“That's quite a story.”
Beatrice chuckled, like someone about to share a favorite joke. “The best part is that she bargained with the paste copies she'd had made years earlier. She rarely wore the real jewels—too frightened to lose them, I suppose. Anyway, her copies fooled the revolutionary and I'm sure she and her children enjoyed wearing them even more after they escaped to England.
“Her granddaughter came here, to Louisiana, bringing the set with her. They were only sold out of the family a couple of years ago.” Beatrice shook her head. “They'd held on to those jewels through so many turbulent times, it was a tragedy. And dreadful dotcom people bought them. But they got a very good price, so the woman who had to sell them was able to keep her home, at least. Claude can tell you more. He handled the sale.”
“You did?”
“Yes.
Cousine,
you are mangling that plant.”
She hadn't even noticed, but sure enough, her right hand was pulling on a pretty flowering plant in the walled planter behind her. “Oh.”
He was at her side, his skin gleaming with exertion, smelling like a hard-working, sexy man. Carefully he took out the plant and used his gloved hand to make a dent in the earth. Where had he been last night, she wondered, as she watched him engrossed in saving a small plant. Did his mysterious disappearance have anything to do with stolen diamonds? He was so close to her that his arm brushed hers when he turned the plant and carefully spread its roots before replanting it. “There,” he said, turning and looking down at her. “Now it will grow better.”

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