Goes down easy: Roped into romance (5 page)

He stopped breathing, waiting, certain that any moment she’d drop her hand. She’d back away. She’d give him a hard shove toward the door and out of her life. But she didn’t do any of the above.

Instead, she stepped closer, stroked her fingers close to his ear and said, “Listen.”

He couldn’t hear a thing but his own labored breathing and the rolling-thunder beat of his heart. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Are you sure?” This time she whispered, ran her fingertips over the shell of his ear. “Be very quiet. Close your eyes.”

He did both. He stood still. He was aware of nothing but Perry in the kitchen.

Her fingers were cool, her wrist warm where it grazed his cheek. Her hand smelled like lemony dish soap, but he caught a hint of her spicy scent beneath.

“Do you hear her now, Jack? Do you hear her singing? Pining for the lover who done her wrong?”

Ah.
Her.
The ghost. He opened his eyes, saw nothing but Perry, heard only her whisper’s echo. “I hear an occasional car on the street outside. I hear your bracelets. I hear both of us having trouble breathing.”

Her hand drifted down his neck to his shoulder. “I think you’re imagining things.”

“And you’re not?”

She shook her head, squeezed his biceps, his forearm, finally his fingers as she laced them through hers. “C’mon. I’ll prove it to you.”

He didn’t put up any fight at all as she tugged him out of the kitchen and through the beaded curtain. The streetlight from the corner shone through the store’s front windows, glittering off the jewels and crystals scattered around the room.

It was an eerie sight, a magical and otherworldly sensation, surrounded as they were by darkness while vibrant colors flashed and sparked with no reason or rhyme.

Perry had stopped when he’d stopped. She stood now, watching him take in the fairy tale of colors and shapes, squeezing his hand when he shook his head.

“See what happens when you open your mind, Jack? Isn’t it beautiful?”

Her voice was beautiful, and he couldn’t help but turn toward her when she spoke. The room’s kaleidoscope of colors swirled in her eyes, but that didn’t stop him from bursting her bubble. “It’s refracted light, Perry. Not bluebirds flying over a rainbow.”

She smacked his shoulder teasingly with her free hand, leaned in close and whispered, “Don’t you get tired of digging through the barrel for the bad apple?”

He brought her flush to his body. “What I get tired of is people not buying into the truth because they don’t like what they see.”

And the truth right now was that the threat to Della wasn’t the threat on either of their minds.

He saw the mirror of his thoughts in Perry’s eyes, the absolute honesty of this uneasy attraction weighing heavy between them.

Her throat worked as she swallowed. Her eyes, already large and dark, drank him in. She wet her lips, drawing his gaze to her mouth.

“Jack?”

“Perry?”

“Do you hear it now?”

“Hear what?”

“The truth.”

“Is that what you call it?” he asked, hearing nothing but the rush of blood to his head.

She leaned in, brushed her lips to his. “I can hear it. Doesn’t that mean that it’s true?”

He slid their joined hands to the small of her back and pressed her body closer. She was soft and pliable, molding herself to him, fitting him like his favorite pair of worn jeans.

“Yeah, sure.” He breathed the words against her mouth, not even certain what it was either one of them was saying. He was too full of feeling to think. “It’s the truth.”

She tightened her fingers laced with his, placed her other hand on his chest where his heart was working on a chain gang. “Well, good. There may be hope for you after all, now that you’ve come around to my way of thinking.”

He had? When had that happened? he wondered, threading his fingers into her hair. “How so?”

Her hand rose higher, her fingertips pressing into
the tendons of his neck, her lips nipping at the corner of his. “I can tell you. Or you can kiss me.”

As if that was even a choice.

He canted his head to the side where she waited and covered her mouth with his. It was a soft kiss, lips teasing and rubbing. A light nuzzling pressure. Her optimism working to loosen his pessimism while all he cared about was her taste.

She tasted good. She tasted sweet. When he nudged her lips with his tongue, she opened to let him have her. And then she kissed him back, pulling her hand from his and lacing her fingers at his nape.

She held him there tightly, sliding her tongue into his mouth to curl around his, massaging his neck with her thumbs, moving into his body…

N
O ONE WOULD KNOW
if she kissed him
.

No one would need find out. If she slipped up behind him while he sat there tuning his sax and planted her lips on his neck. Just to let him know she was around. Just to make sure he understood how often he played in her mind.

She’d been waiting, wanting a quiet moment, a private moment. The sort that came only when the club had closed down for the night, when the crowd had come and long gone. When everyone else in the band had packed it in, and Blind Billy had nothing more on his mind than wiping down the bar and counting up the night’s take.

Her skirt swished against the velvet curtain as she stepped back onto the stage. The lights were out. Drake
didn’t need them for what he was doing, making sure his instrument was in fine working order, a necessity after the way he’d treated his baby tonight. She could still feel that mournful wail raising goose bumps all over her skin.

His head was down when she reached him, bent forward as he fondled the instrument. She could smell him. The smoke and the sweat, the bite of gin. The shiver that hit her took a whole lot of effort to suppress. She leaned down, blew against the shell of his ear, let her lips linger there at the base of his skull for no more than the length of a breath.

He straightened slowly and turned, and then gave her the smoky smile she’d wanted to feel forever. And she swore her heart forgot how to beat when he said, “Sweet Sugar Babin. Kissin’ on me like that. What in the world would your husband say?”

J
ACK GROWLED
,
and it wasn’t a very nice sound. It was the sound of his impatience, his frustration, his inability to be polite and still tell her to take off her clothes.

The kiss that had started out as a simple connection no longer was. It was about complications and how far they were going to go.

He made his first effort at finding out by bunching the material of her skirt into his fist at her hip. But she was wearing a hell of a lot of fabric and his hand was only so big. He wasn’t getting anywhere and hated to stop.

Perry put him out of his misery with a sound that was half chuckle and half sigh before wiggling against him until he dropped her skirt. When he started to remind her that he had come around to her way of thinking after all, she pressed a finger to his lips and shushed him.

“This is the best part.”

Or so he’d been on his way to find out before her skirt got in the way. She turned around then, tucked her head underneath his chin and snuggled her back to his front. And because it seemed like what he was meant
to do, he wrapped his arms around her waist and held her.

It was seconds later when he was settling in to test the waters, when his focus along with his blood had begun the slow return trip to his head, when he realized exactly how perfectly her body fit his that he heard it. The singing. The low smoky voice lamenting love gone wrong.

That was her reason for bringing him here. It wasn’t about showing him the shop at night or wanting to jump his bones. A trick, that’s what it was. Another lame attempt to convince him the stairwell was haunted. To get him to…come around to her way of thinking.

Hell on freakin’ wheels. A part of him raged at the deception. She could have brought him out here and told him to listen without the hot and heavy act. Thing was, he would swear on the closest voodoo priest that she hadn’t been acting.

But then all his pondering over the ins and outs came to a screeching halt. Because he wasn’t just hearing the ghost. He was seeing her.

He and Perry stood behind the counter, five feet from the corner where the frame around the stairwell’s entrance no longer held a door. The outside wall between the first floor and the landing shared the exterior’s brick.

And that was where Jack saw the light.

Not a direct source like a lamp or a flashlight or even a flickering candle flame. This was a wisp. And it floated. Floated and swirled over what he swore was a woman’s figure in a long, formfitting dress.

He stepped from behind Perry, but she grabbed his
elbow and stopped him from moving closer. He frowned, but he didn’t argue. He was too busy arguing with himself.

He could not believe, did not believe, that he was seeing what he was seeing. It had to be the same trick of the light from earlier, the one that had turned the shop into Munchkin Land. He wasn’t buying that he was seeing a ghost. No flippin’ way.

“I’ve only seen her three or four times in my life,” Perry whispered. “Della’s seen her more, but then she’s lived here longer than I did. This was the apartment building where she and my father grew up long before she opened Sugar Blues.”

He filed that away, still certain this was all about boxes with false bottoms and suspended panels he couldn’t see. “She died here, you said. The singer?”

Still holding on to his arm, Perry nodded. “From a fall down the stairs. Though everything pointed to the fall being suspicious.”

“Was there an investigation?” he asked, watching the ebb and flow of the ethereal light, listening to the faint murmur of song.

“A cursory one is all I found records of.”

“You’ve researched the death?”

Again, she nodded. “You live with a ghost, you get curious.”

In the next second, the song ceased as abruptly as if someone had turned off a CD player. The stairwell went dark in a flash. It was the strangest thing Jack had seen in a while—at least the strangest he wasn’t able to explain.

Except the explanation became clear in the next moment when the sudden loud thump that followed turned out to be Della hobbling down the stairs.

Perry rushed forward. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

“I was. I think it was Sugar who woke me,” Della said, leaning heavily against Perry until Jack moved forward to take her weight. “Jack. You’re still here.”

“He was camping out in the kitchen in lieu of a lock on the door,” Perry said, brushing loose hair back from her aunt’s forehead.

“I’ll finish with the deadbolt tomorrow,” he said, his arm around Della’s waist. “And pick up paint once you tell me what color.”

“Oh, Jack,” Della said, her brow lined with worry. “I’m afraid I have bad news. I believe Dayton Eckhardt may be dead.”

I
T WAS FOUR
in the morning when Perry helped Jack get Della settled in the kitchen. She sat in one chair, propped her bandaged foot in another. Once she was situated, Jack rolled up his sleeping bag and carried it out to his SUV. Perry put on a pot of coffee.

She doubted any of them had plans to go back to sleep, then wondered if Jack had slept at all. He’d been wide awake when she’d come downstairs an hour ago, and he’d certainly shown no signs of being tired since.

She could
not
believe that she’d kissed him, or the way she’d tried so desperately to crawl into his clothes and down his throat. She’d met him at most eighteen hours ago, yet had gone after him like she hadn’t had a man in, well, longer than she cared to admit.

It wasn’t like Sugar Blues was a convent; she waited on plenty of male customers, flirted with more than a few. Then there were her male neighbors at Court du Chaud, with whom she teased and bantered regularly. And, of course, the male friends she’d made while living and working in the French Quarter.

But it had been many years since there’d been a man who lit the spark necessary for her to want to take things further.

Jack did. And in a very big way.

Standing in front of the steaming coffeemaker as the carafe filled, she cursed her renegade thoughts. She didn’t like having to force her mind away from kissing Jack to focus on her aunt’s needs.

Neither did she like the way Della’s revelation had put a huge scowl on Jack’s face before he packed up his gear. The truth was she didn’t like thinking about Jack at all. Except that was a big fat lie.

Pulling three mugs down from the cupboard, Perry glanced to the side and caught her aunt’s gaze. “How’s your foot?”

“It hurts, but I’ll be fine,” Della said, brushing away the concept of pain as nothing.

Perry looked up at the clock on the wall behind the table. “You’re due for another pain pill.”

“And I took it before I came downstairs.” Della repositioned the cushion beneath her heel. “What I want to know is what I interrupted by doing so?”

Perry felt her color rise. “Nothing, what do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean.” Della arched a
wise brow. “What’s going on with you and our new handyman?”

“He’s not new, he’s temporary, and I was trying to get him to open his mind about Sugar.”

“A worthless endeavor, of which you should be well aware,” Della said with a sigh. “Perry, sweetie, you can’t force anyone to see what they don’t want to see.”

“I know.” And she did. It was just hard to believe Jack—or anyone—couldn’t see the same things that were so clear and so real to her. She poured her aunt’s coffee. “He may not have opened his mind completely, but he knew she was there.”

“He told you that?” Della asked, taking the cup from Perry’s hand.

“No. But I could tell. She wasn’t just singing this time. We saw her.” Perry picked up her own cup at the same time Jack walked back through the door.

“I’m not surprised that you did,” Della said.

Perry’s only response was to offer coffee to Jack. He took the mug, asked, “Did what?” then blew across the surface and sipped.

“Saw Sugar,” Perry replied, watching his expression as she brought her own mug to her mouth.

He didn’t respond except to move to the table and pull out a chair opposite Della’s. Once he sat, he still didn’t say a word about having seen Sugar’s ghost.

In fact, he seemed to dismiss both the subject and the incident without another thought, turning to Della to ask, “What makes you think Eckhardt is dead?”

Della cradled her mug and frowned as she stared down. “The intensity of the visions. Perry can tell you
that when they’re at their worst, I can be out of commission for hours.”

When Jack looked over, Perry nodded, causing him to narrow his mouth and prompt Della further. “So what’s different now?”

“I hate to say it, but it’s been the case that the less painful the visions, the larger the threat or the more—” she fluttered one hand, then used it to push strands of hair from her face “—the more violent the outcome.”

Jack brought his mug to his mouth, held it there but didn’t drink. “I’d think the opposite would be true.”

“That would seem to be the way of things if this gift had any basis in logic. But it’s nothing I can control or anticipate.”

“The sign on the front of the shop. You do readings, right?”

“Yes, but that’s a more focused application of my gift. What comes to me in visions is nothing over which I have any discipline.”

“Does the name Dawn Taylor mean anything to you?” he asked, with a quick change of subject.

She frowned as she thought, then shook her head. “I don’t think so. Should it?”

“She’s the reporter who wrote the story connecting you to Eckhardt,” Perry said, joining them at the table. “Jack plans to ask her a few questions today.”

“I wish I could give you something concrete to work with, Jack. Or that I had better news,” Della said, wincing as she shifted her foot.

But Jack was intent on his coffee and seemed a
thousand miles away. “Perry said I could use the bathroom down here to clean up.”

“Oh, of course,” Della said, returning her cup to the table. “Please, make yourself at home. Especially after all the help you’ve been.”

Jack snorted. “I haven’t been that much. The door still needs to be painted and the deadbolt installed.”

“Which will take too much time out of your day when you have an investigation to conduct. You do that, go about your business. I’ll call my regular repair service.”

“No,” he argued. “I’ll pick up the paint while I’m out and finish with the door this afternoon.”

Perry silently wondered about his insistence. If he was that interested in seeing to the repairs, or if there was something else he wanted from Della. If there was more to his visit than he’d yet to reveal…unless he was actually considering their kiss in his decision to hang around.

She couldn’t gauge anything by his expression, but kept her gaze on his face when she said, “I offered him the bed in the utility room.”

“Where are you staying while you’re in town, Jack?”

“Nowhere yet. I just got here this morning. Uh, yesterday morning.”

“Well, the utility room’s not much, but you’re welcome to it. If Perry wasn’t using her old bedroom upstairs, I’d offer you that.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll find a place—”

“You could stay at mine,” Perry put in before
thinking about what she was saying. Having Jack out of temptation’s reach felt so much safer than having him here.

“That would be the perfect solution. You could keep an eye on Perry’s place while she keeps an eye on me.” Fighting a sly smile, Della reached over, patted then squeezed his forearm.

But before either Perry or Jack could reply, the sly smile disappeared. Della’s hand began to shake. And the look that came over her face couldn’t be described as anything but abject horror.

“Oh, Jack. I’m sorry. So very sorry. No man should ever suffer so.”

J
ACK’S VISIT WITH
Dawn Taylor had been a bust. The woman had fit him in between two phone calls while standing behind her journalistic integrity and insistence on protecting her sources.

He’d left after fifteen minutes of working for nothing, figuring he’d do better online starting with the
Times-Picayune
archives. All he needed was a Wi-Fi connection for his laptop. Then again, he could deal with dial-up if that was all he’d have at Perry’s.

Parking his SUV in the space behind her townhouse, he tried not to think about what Della Brazille had seen in her kitchen when squeezing his arm. Or what she thought she’d seen, because he had a hard time believing she’d seen anything at all. Especially not the truth.

He didn’t talk to anyone about his tour of duty. About being recruited into special ops and assigned to
a detachment based on psyche tests and stamina and weapons proficiency, when in reality he’d been twenty-two years old and still struggling with the rift in his family caused by his decision to join the Corps.

There was nothing about him exceptional enough to have caught anyone’s eye. He should’ve been able to serve his four years and go home, but he’d stayed for twelve. He’d seen things he didn’t want to talk about, done things he didn’t want anyone to know. Lived through things no one ever should.

Yet with no more than the touch of her hand to his arm, Della Brazille had divined everything…unless what she’d seen had been the prelude to his long military stint. The choice his father had given him that hadn’t been a choice, but an ultimatum he’d lacked the maturity to face.

His sister’s battle with Batten disease, a fatal, inherited disorder of the nervous system, had taken her and his mother to Johns Hopkins and Baltimore during his senior year. His father had kept an apartment in Austin, though he’d spent only a night or two there each week. That left Jack, at seventeen, virtually on his own.

The agreement was that he’d rejoin the family after graduation and attend college in the northeast. It didn’t matter that he’d been accepted at UT, or that he’d counted on being a longhorn since the first time he’d seen Bevo, the school’s mascot, as a kid. The family needed to be together, his father said. All of them. For his sister’s sake.

When the time had come for him to move, Jack had balked. His group of friends in Austin—the deck—had
been the only family he’d known for the twelve months prior. They’d been the family he’d counted on while his parents devoted one-hundred-and-ten percent of their time to his sister.