Goes down easy: Roped into romance (13 page)

But then his fingers began rubbing tight little circles on her hip, and his voice was dark when he said, “I’m not going to talk about it. About the reading. But, yeah. Whatever she can tell me about seeing Eckhardt? I’ll pay attention.”

J
ACK WOKE
feeling beat instead of rested. Beat and cramped and uncomfortable, due to more than the bed. He was uncomfortable with the situation—being here with Perry and her aunt being upstairs, and her aunt knowing a lot more than he wanted anyone to know about his past.

It had been an off-the-books operation, an undercover assignment to infiltrate a human trafficking ring moving laborers from rural Thailand to L.A. He’d been taken on as a crew member on the cargo ship, and assigned to the galley, peeling potatoes, washing dishes, carting loaves of bread and buckets of broth to the men chained in the hold.

They had no clue that once they reached their destination they’d be working eighteen-hour days and have their contact with the outside world restricted. That they’d be subjected to slave-like labor conditions, held by induced indebtedness, and suffer non-payment of wages and the threat of deportation.

And what he’d done—freeing the men who’d been
unaware they’d sold their souls to the devil when they’d paid for illegal transport to the States—had pretty much been the mission’s end.

It had pretty much been the end of his military career as well. Part of him regretted that it had gone down the way it had. But he’d considered his options, and found the good of the few to outweigh the good of the many.

Obviously, his superiors hadn’t agreed. When his choices came down to desk work or a discharge, he’d whipped out a quick “
Hasta la vista,
baby,” and gone into business for himself.

That business had now brought him Perry Brazille, and he was at his wit’s end. What the hell was he supposed to do when his work took him everywhere, and he had no idea when he’d get back to New Orleans? He didn’t even know her middle name.

He lay on his back, one arm hooked beneath his head, the other hooked around Perry where she’d backed up to him and was using his biceps for a pillow.

He wanted to wake her up slowly, to make love to her while she was still half asleep. No more of this power banging to rid himself of demons. He wanted to take his time with her, to learn and explore and enjoy.

But it was too late for any of that this morning, because in the next second he saw the light from the kitchen beaming down the hall and heard running water. Della filling the coffeemaker, he figured, easing out of the bed and slipping into his clothes.

He left his shoes for later and padded toward the
only aroma guaranteed to get him moving. He found Della standing in the open back doorway, staring out at the rising sun.

He shivered, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he reached up into the cabinet for two mugs and set them next to the pot. Then he crossed his arms and leaned against the edge of the counter, waiting for whatever she’d been saving up to say.

And since he’d expected something of the sort, her words didn’t surprise him. “I never was much of a parent to Perry,” she began. “I’m much too self-involved to take care of anything but myself. So realize that this is as disconcerting for me to ask as it is for you to hear, but what are your intentions toward my niece?”

He wasn’t sure what to say. The question was so traditional, and Della was anything but. Still, with the way she was staring toward the courtyard fountain…

Jack felt his face heat. “Honestly? I don’t know.”

“And it’s absolutely none of my business.” Della sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that Perry is all I have and I don’t want to see her hurt.”

Which made her a pretty good parent in his book. “I don’t want to hurt her. I’m just not sure these circumstances are the best for starting up anything with anyone.”

She turned from the doorway and faced him. “You don’t believe in trial by fire?”

What was he supposed to say to that? “I believe it happens. I don’t believe it’s always a healthy situation.”

“You don’t believe strong relationships can be forged under trying conditions?”

He didn’t want to be having this conversation. Not when the subject of last night’s reading was sure to come up, and Perry would be waking any minute.

And so he said, “Is that how it happened with you and Franklin? The murder and break-in and all?”

She smiled, the emotion more personal than a response to what he’d said. Except then she surprised him by saying, “Yes. And because of our circumstances, my circumstances, I’ve been afraid to believe.”

He shook his head. “I’ll never get that. How you can believe in things that can’t be explained, but not in things staring you in the face.”

“When it comes to looking inside ourselves, blindness seems to be more common than insight.”

She closed the back door and came toward him, pouring the coffee into both cups. He sipped, she sipped, neither of them speaking further of the last several hours, the truth of what had passed between them a strangely solid bond.

Moments later, Della set her cup on the counter. “He’s drowning, Jack. I don’t know if he’s literally in water, or if he’s ill, but he can’t breathe. He’s gasping and struggling.”

Jack’s pulse exploded. “Eckhardt?”

“Yes.”

“You tell this to Franklin?”

She nodded. “I called Book when I got up to my room last night. I saw orange. Rust or mud, I can’t be sure. It could have been dried blood.” She shook her
head, let it droop on her shoulders. “Or it could be that drowning was how he died.”

“Then what about the warehouse? What you saw there? The way it hit you? If he was already dead—”

“I don’t know, Jack. I just don’t know.” Della reached over, wrapped her fingers around his wrist and squeezed. “What I do know is that this is where you take what I’ve given you and run.”

And that would mean doing it his way, the feds, the NOPD and Detective Book Franklin be damned.

A
BROKEN HEART
. She’d never known how the shattered shards could cut like the blade of a knife. Her two men, they were so very different. And she loved each so very very much
.

Drake was an artist. A sensitive soul who knew life was best lived in bright colors, that chances not taken were fortunes not made. She talked with him about dreams and desires.

Bruiser was a protector. A man of authority who understood black and white, right and wrong. She talked with him about wanting new curtains for the bedroom.

She slept with them both. Sang to them both. And when she loved one, she never considered she was betraying the other. She was the only one naive enough not to see the truth
.

For the truth was that all Drake wanted was his music. He was moody, and he took to drink. He often forgot that she was in the same room, or even that she was in the same bed
.

And Bruiser wanted respect. He wielded his power
as a knight of old wielded a lance, a Greek god a lightning bolt. She’d felt the sting of both.

She couldn’t live with the one man. She couldn’t give up the other. Her only choice was to start over. To make a new life on her own. If she fell in love again, then she would know this decision was the one she’d had to make.

Bags packed, she looked over her shoulder one last time. She even blew a kiss at the room she’d loved so much. Smiling, she turned to go…tripping over the vase Bruiser had bought her, Drake’s flowers falling with her as she tumbled down the stairs.

G
ROANING
,
Perry climbed onto the stool behind the counter in Sugar Blues, swearing she would never be able to walk right again. Who knew that thirty daily—if rather lazy—minutes on the treadmill wasn’t enough to keep her thigh muscles in shape?

Her next round of celibacy was definitely going to include a whole lot of leg lifts and cycling. Of course, she would prefer sleeping with Jack to sleeping alone, but she wasn’t just anyone’s fool.

He could stay in New Orleans for her, but why would he? He had a life, a career that took him places, one that didn’t involve inventory and stocking and customer satisfaction, not to mention spreadsheets so accurately detailed, grown accountants wept with joy.

And really, she loved what she did. Her complaints weren’t so much complaints as they were a comparison between his life of following leads left by kidnappers and hers, of filing. His background of shivs and bullets and traveling the world, and hers, of being unable to stick out four years for a degree at Loyola.

Not that she had anyone to blame but herself, if she was going to be dishing it out. She’d chosen the safety
of this life, the comfort of the familiar, her own version of hearth and home and live-in ghost.

Yet after the sheltered life she’d lived, how could she have anticipated meeting a man like Jack? A man so utterly unique that she’d found herself falling for him in a matter of hours, falling into bed with him in a matter of days?

She couldn’t have known. She couldn’t have guessed. She was still reeling that it had happened.

When she’d finally woken this morning, he’d been long gone, the sun had long been up and Della had been standing at the foot of the utility room’s bed with a cup of coffee for who knew how long. Not one of Perry’s finer moments, in the face of the woman who’d raised her.

But Della had stayed, and they’d talked, they’d bonded, they’d shared an honest heart-to-heart about Perry’s life. About Della’s life. About choices they’d both made. About Book. About Jack. Mostly about Jack, though nothing about the midnight reading.

By the time Perry had climbed from bed, made her way upstairs for a shower and a change of clothes, all she’d wanted was to see him. Last night had not been an easy one, this morning equally troubled. They needed to talk. But he was gone, and she had work to do.

Della’s first appointment was scheduled for ten. So when the bell on the door chimed fifteen minutes later, Perry glanced up expecting to see Mrs. Nielsen. The woman walking through the door, however—her designer heels clicking on the hardwood floor—was no one Perry knew.

A younger woman wearing baggy black jeans and a tight black turtleneck, her hair an unnatural red, followed. She stopped to browse the bookshelves, while the first woman headed straight to the counter at the rear of the shop, flashing a business card the moment she arrived.

“My name is Dawn Taylor. I’m a reporter with the
Times-Picayune
. I was wondering if you might be Della Brazille, and if I might ask you a few questions.”

Perry took in the platinum-blond hair, the platinum watchband, the diamond teardrop in a platinum setting resting in the hollow of her improbably smooth throat. This woman was not the grieving widow of whom Perry had drawn a mental picture. This woman was anything but.

Her heart racing, her mouth dry, Perry glanced over her shoulder toward the beaded curtain covering the entrance to the hallway, then quickly looked back. The reporter already had her pencil and notebook in hand.

“No. I’m not Della. But I can schedule you an appointment to see her.” Swallowing hard, Perry reached for the plumed pen.

Dawn Taylor’s gaze flickered in the same direction Perry’s had before returning to her face. She tapped her pencil to her paper. “Would you be her niece then? Perry? Perry Brazille? I understand her niece works for her. I don’t see other employees…”

She looked away, glancing around the shop as if wondering how a business so small kept from going under. It was all Perry could do to stop herself from whipping out the shop’s tax return.

“I manage Sugar Blues, yes,” she said, sitting straighter. “But I don’t know how I can help you unless you’d like me to show you around the shop.”

Dawn shook off Perry’s offer. “One of my sources tells me that your aunt was at the old Eckton warehouse yesterday before the site was raided.”

“Raided?” Perry arched a brow, praying it hid the tic she felt at her temple. “I didn’t know one could raid an empty building.”

The other woman reached into her bag for a second pencil when the lead broke on the first. “Were you also there, then?” she asked, blinking rapidly. “Since you’re aware of the building being empty?”

Shoot. Was it not common knowledge? Or had she just screwed up? “Everyone knows the building is empty.”

“I doubt everyone has reason to know any such thing,” Dawn Taylor said, jotting notes, her cell phone ringing before Perry could respond.

“Excuse me.” The woman—a girl, really—who’d come in behind the reporter, dropped a text on sun signs on the counter. “I can’t find a price on this book.”

Perry grabbed two incense burners before they rolled to the floor. “If there’s not a price on the spine, there should be one penciled inside the cover. See? Nineteen ninety-five.”

She darted a quick glance at Dawn Taylor, who’d turned to take her call, then said to the girl, “Would you like me to ring that up for you?”

“No. That’s okay. I’ll come back for it. I didn’t bring enough money.”

“I’ll keep it for you here at the counter until the end of the day,” Perry said, but the young woman was already out the door.

Taylor clipped her phone shut to end the call and returned her notebook and pencil along with the cell to her purse. “I have an interview that’s been bumped up in my schedule. I’ve got to go, but I will be back for your story, Ms. Brazille.”

“I’ll be waiting with bells on,” Perry muttered under her breath, watching the reporter breeze out of the shop. She took a deep breath, wondering what the hell that had been about, and if she’d really messed things up, then slid the astrology book under the counter.

The bell hadn’t finished its closing chime before Jack pulled the door open and came barreling down the center of the shop toward her. “What was Dawn Taylor doing here? What did she want?”

First things first. “Listen. If I’d had your cell number, I would’ve called you the minute she told me who she was.”

He grabbed a crystal from the counter, rubbed it with his thumb. “Did she question you? Or talk to Della?”

Perry shook her head, returned her gaze from the crystal he held to his face. “She asked what I knew about the warehouse discovery yesterday. I told her to talk to my literary agent since I’ll be selling the story, and that she’d have to make an appointment to see Della.”

“Where is she now? Where’s Della?” he asked, ignoring her sarcasm and bouncing the crystal in his palm.

“She must be in the kitchen, why?” she asked, glancing toward the door at the sound of the entrance chime.

Book came charging toward them, his face drawn. “Where’s Della?”

Frowning now, Perry pointed over her shoulder. “In the kitchen.”

He was around the corner and through the beaded curtain before she finished speaking.

“What’s going on, Jack?”

“With him? I don’t know. But Della told me this morning that she saw Eckhardt drowning. Guess what one thing never clicked?” he asked, his eyes sparkling, his excitement nearly palpable.

She, unfortunately, had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. “What?”

“Taylor. He killed himself by jumping from the Causeway Bridge. But it wasn’t the fall that killed him. I pulled the information this morning. Coroner’s report said it was death by—”

“Drowning,” she said, finally catching on.

“Exactly. What if what Della was seeing was Taylor instead of Eckhardt?” he asked, lobbing the crystal to her over the counter. “It’s way too much of a coincidence that both men drowned—”

“She’s not in the kitchen,” Book barked out, the curtain swinging in a wild tangle of beads behind him. “She’s not in the utility room or in the courtyard.”

Perry got up from the stool, a flitter of worry tickling her spine. “I’ve been here all morning. I would have seen her go upstairs.”

“I’ll check,” the detective said, already climbing.

“The reading room, maybe?” Jack asked, heading toward the corner of the shop. “Did she have an appointment booked?”

“Yes, but the client never showed up, and the rest of her morning is clear,” Perry said, grabbing the appointment book and scanning the page. “We had breakfast, then I showered and changed upstairs. When I came back down, she was finishing up the dishes. I’ve been out here ever since. I would have seen her if she’d gone upstairs.”

She glanced up at the sound of Book’s voice calling Della’s name. As he came thundering back down the stairs, Perry’s throat began to burn.

And she could hardly find her voice to ask Jack, “What’s going on?”

He shook his head, scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Dawn Taylor is involved. She’s gotta be.”

“Dawn Taylor? The widow? What about her?” Book demanded.

“She was just here,” Perry whispered, her eyes beginning to water, her chest growing tight. “She was looking for Della.”

And now Della was gone.

“Perry. Walk me through exactly what happened,” Book said, digging through his suit pockets. “Everything you can remember.”

She started slowly, mentally retracing the morning’s steps. “I was behind the counter. I’d just climbed onto the stool and was thinking about a conversation Della and I had earlier. I heard the chime and looked up, and
that’s when Dawn Taylor came in.” Blew in. Like a hurricane. “She obviously wasn’t here to shop because she marched right up to the counter and asked me if I was Della.”

Book finally came up with a pen and notebook. “Did she tell you what she wanted with Della?”

Perry thought back, nodded. “She introduced herself first, then asked if I was Della because she had a few questions for me.”

“Then what?”

“When I told her she could make an appointment, she asked if I was me. She knew I worked here. I told her I didn’t see how I could help, but that I’d be happy to show her around the shop.” Perry stopped, pushed her hair back off her forehead. “That was when she said a source told her that Della had been at the warehouse before yesterday’s raid.”

Book bit off a string of foul words. “Who the hell is talking to this woman? Where is she getting her information?”

Jack looked from Book back to Perry. “What did you tell her then?”

“I told her I didn’t know you could raid an empty building, and she asked how I knew it was empty.” She shrugged sheepishly. “I thought it would be obvious. I didn’t even think.”

“Don’t worry about that now,” Book said. “What else?”

Eyes closed, Perry rubbed at her temples. “She broke her pencil. Her cell phone rang. While she took the call, another younger woman brought a book up to
the counter to check on the price. I told her what it was. She left, and then Dawn Taylor left, saying she had an interview.”

Book scribbled a line of notes. “Tell me about the other woman.”

“She was about twenty with bright red hair. Wearing dark jeans, a dark turtleneck and sneakers. She was looking at a book on sun signs.”

“Did she buy it?”

“No. She said she didn’t have enough money with her. I told her I’d hold it for her until we closed for the day.”

“Did she say she’d be back?”

“Uh, no. She just left.”

“Where’s the book now?” Book asked.

Perry glanced beneath the counter. “It’s right here.”

“You don’t think…” Jack started to say, letting the sentence trail off.

She looked from one man to the other. “Think what?”

“She may have been a diversion. Dawn Taylor came in and steamrolled you,” Book said, and then he began to pace, gesturing with one hand as he talked. “The phone call could have been a signal.”

“You’re saying Dawn Taylor could be behind the Eckhardt kidnapping? And that maybe she’s taken Della to keep her quiet? But why? Della doesn’t know anything.”

“If Taylor’s not behind it, then she’s being fed information from someone following the case—”

“Or from someone involved,” Jack finished for him.

“So what are you going to do?” Perry wasn’t even sure who she was asking.

“The book. The one the woman didn’t buy.”

Perry reached for it, and stopped when the detective held up a hand. And then she broke the bad news. “If you’re thinking about her prints, you won’t find any. She had on mittens.”

“Mittens?”

Perry nodded, shrugged. “It’s cold outside.”

“I’m calling in a unit to go over the kitchen,” Book said, grabbing his phone from the holster at his waist. “Lock up the shop. Don’t let anyone else in, and you two stay out of the kitchen as well. I’ll get a unit out here ASAP. And a patrol car to check up and down the block, find out what anyone may have seen.”

“What about her walking stick?” Perry asked.

Book frowned. “What about it?”

“She’s had it with her ever since getting her foot stitched.”

The detective ran both hands down his face. “Damn. It’s on the kitchen table. I just saw it. I didn’t even think.”

Perry swallowed hard, fought back tears. “What do you want me to do?”

“You stay by the phone. I’ll make the calls and secure the kitchen,” Book said, already halfway there. “And then I’ll be at the
Times-Picayune
offices.”

Perry turned to Jack. “Does he really expect me just to sit by the phone?”

But Jack didn’t answer because now he was the one pacing.

“Jack! What am I supposed to do?”

He stopped, looked back up. “You do what Book says.”

“And you?”

“I figure while he’s at the newspaper, I’ll pay a visit to the Taylor home.”

B
OOK LEANED
against Della’s kitchen door, his hands on either side of the new window, bearing his weight. Her walking stick lay on the table behind him—a big fat reminder of the support she’d provided him with the last two years.