Leslie Lafoy (24 page)

He blinked in one second. His jaw went granite-hard in the next. “You’re staying right here. With Aiden.”

“I am not,” she instantly countered, indignant at his presumption to issue decrees. “It’s my map and my cousin who hid it.”

“I don’t care,” he shot back. “You’re not going with us.”

Oh! How
dare
he play the lord and master! “Then you’d best be about knocking me over the head and tying me up,” she declared, her pulse hammering behind her eyes, her fists clenched at her sides. “Because that’s the only way you’re going to leave me behind. If there’s anyone who has the right—no, the obligation!—to go out and find the missing pieces, it’s me. And need I remind you that you’re the one the constables are looking for? Not me. That you’re the one taking the greatest risk in walking out that door? An absolutely needless and foolish risk, I might add.”

He growled and slammed his coffee mug down on the stove, but she ignored both his display of temper and the hard glint in his eyes. “If anyone’s to be left behind tonight, by all rights it should—”

The rest of the words were lost in her gasp as he took her by the shoulders and pulled her to him. A protest at the rough handling flickered and then was gone, swept away as he bent his head and covered her mouth with his own. The storm of sensation was fiercely instant; the fullness of her breasts skimming over the hard planes of his chest, the spicy scent of soap and heated skin, the silken caress of his tongue over the seam of her lips. And the incredible, undeniable hunger. It gathered low and hot deep inside her and then shot like lightning through every fiber of her being, through every corner of her soul. Instinct flared and the hunger became a need beyond reason. She surrendered to it, parting her lips and melting fully into the power and strength of his body.

His moan rippled through her, turning her core to liquid fire. Her arms slipped up to encircle his neck, to draw him closer, to offer everything she was and all he cared to take. Take he did, tasting her deeply, sliding his arms around her to fit her hard against his chest, against his hips and the hardened proof of his own need.

More,
instinct desperately urged.
Closer
. She strained to obey, twining her fingers in the hair at his nape, stretching up. His breath caught and she felt the jolt of his heart along the full length of her body.

He pulled back, gasping for air, and gazed down at her, the wonder and confusion in his eyes somehow a balm on the rawest edges of her need. But it wasn’t enough; she didn’t want to be soothed.

“Barrett,” she whispered, willing to plead.

He closed his eyes and groaned as he lowered his head and captured her mouth again. But even as he did, she sensed the end in the beginning. She could feel it in the measure of his reserve and she strangled on a whimper of frustration.

For a quicksilver instant his control faltered and her hope blazed. She stretched up again, pressed closer, and then she was without him, choking back a cry of disappointment as he abruptly tore his lips away. One arm around her shoulders, he shifted the other to the back of her head and gently tucked her under his chin.

Beneath her cheek, his heartbeat thundered. She leaned against him, her breathing as uneven and labored as his own. Never. Never in all her life … God, how could she have lived this long without truly knowing how deeply and wildly desire could burn? Or how quickly it could consume all rational thought and reduce good judgment to cinders?

“Why did you do that?” she asked when the sharpest edges of wanting began to mercifully dull.

“Kiss you?” he asked on a ragged breath, gently easing her balance onto her own feet. “Or stop?”

She stepped out of the circle of his arms, now as suddenly desperate to be independent as she’d been needy in the moment before. Dragging a steadying breath into her lungs, she picked up her coffee mug and clung to its warmth with both hands. At the edge of her vision, through the kitchen window, she could see Carden and Aiden pacing around the yard. If they’d happened to have glanced toward the house at just the right moment, they’d have been provided quite the show. Barrett must have, at some level, realized that. Thank goodness his mind had been more aware of the world beyond them than her own had been.

“Why you kissed me,” she answered.

He cleared his throat ever so quietly, then picked up his coffee and took a sip. “The first time because I couldn’t think of any other way to shut down the torrent of words. The second time because I really liked the first.” He stared into his cup for a moment and then looked up to meet her gaze squarely. “And when I kiss you again, it will be because I intend to make love to you.”

Her pulse skittered and a sliver of lightning shot into the center of her soul. She tamped down the spark of hope it ignited and tried to sound amused as she countered, “Right then and there?”

“Yes.”

There was no laughter in his voice at all. Nor in his eyes. No, the light shimmering in them was a breathtaking mixture of open desire and steely resolve. He was serving her formal notice, giving her fair warning and the chance to stomp away in a maidenly huff. “Are you always so honest?”

A brow slowly cocked and one corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Not with women.”

“Why are you being so honest with me?”

“You’re not like any other woman I’ve ever met. It rather suggests that a different approach is required with you.”

He wasn’t like any other man she’d ever met, either. It wasn’t because he was English, though. Of that much she was certain. New Orleans was a major trading center; before the war Englishmen had passed through it frequently. And it wasn’t because they were partners of a sort either. Only at the start of the war had she worked alone.

“When we come back here later,” he said, quietly intruding on her thoughts, “I’m going to put an end to your illusions of me being a gentleman.”

Another bolt of heavenly fire. Another flare of hope. “Is that a promise?”

He smiled ruefully. “If Carden and Aiden weren’t waiting, I wouldn’t be, either.”

And neither would she. Buoyed, she deliberately focused her thoughts on the hours that lay between now and then. “You will be able to keep your mind on the task at hand, won’t you? You won’t let yourself be distracted?”

“I’ll do my best,” he offered, lifting his cup in salute before taking a sip.

“Just think of me as nothing more than a fellow soldier.”

He swallowed hard. “Belle,” he began, his tone ringing with the certain notes of opposition.

“I’m going,” she declared, unwilling to yield on the point. “I can hold my own and you know it. You admitted as much yesterday.” He considered her, clearly remembering, his decision faltering in the face of it. “Barrett, I’m not a china doll,” she added gently, determined to make him understand. “If I fall, I won’t break. You don’t have to tuck me away on a shelf in the name of chivalry.”

He blinked and looked away, took another sip of his coffee. “Is that what Henri did with you?” he asked after a long moment. “Did he tuck you away?”

His gaze was fixed blindly on the door that led to the front of the house, but she nodded anyway. “Not out of chivalry, but yes. And then, for the most part, forgot where he’d left me.”

He’d heard her; she could tell by the hard line that came to his jaw. Sipping her coffee, she waited, watching him purse his lips, frown. Then he closed his eyes for a second and ever so slightly shook his head. Finally, with a slow sigh, he opened them and brought his gaze back to hers.

“Two things,” he said quietly, firmly. “Just so that you’re aware. The first is that while I have very serious reservations about this, I won’t be accused of being an overprotective and narrow-minded oaf. And the second…” His gaze slipped slowly down the length of her body, caressing every curve. “Her Majesty doesn’t have any soldiers that look that damn delectable in a pair of trousers.”

Heat flooded through her and she knew her cheeks had gone cherry red. Afraid that he might mistake her high color for embarrassment, she grinned and drawled, “Why, thank you for noticing, Mr. Stanbridge. And being appreciative enough to say so.”

Chuckling, shaking his head yet again, he turned and headed toward the back door, coffee mug in hand and saying, “Please stay behind me so that I don’t have to battle temptation the entire time.”

It was a good thing that he didn’t look back or wait for her assent. She knew better than to make promises she didn’t intend to keep. If she’d learned one lesson in her years slipping through the dark of bayou nights, it was that plans seldom went as they’d been so carefully laid down.

Life, she observed, heading to the icebox, seemed to be all about learning. It never stopped. Not if you were paying the least bit of attention to what was happening to you. Barrett had just given her a most stunning lesson; one she hadn’t expected at all.

He maintained that she’d emerged from a war with her naïveté intact. She’d argue differently until her dying day. But there were different kinds of innocence and in looking back …

It was really most amazing to think that she’d passed through a marriage without her presence of mind having ever once been shaken—much less overwhelmed. She’d assumed that was the way it was supposed to be; that it was perfectly commonplace to be able to make love with half your brain while making a list of chores with the other. She’d had no idea desire could so easily and completely obliterate self-control.

That naïveté had just been destroyed. Utterly and forever. By mere kisses. Given the power of them, she realized, actually making love with Barrett would be far more dangerous than she’d thought. She’d be vulnerable, wholly at his mercy. Part of her recoiled at the notion of granting anyone that measure of trust, of deliberately and knowingly courting mortal embarrassment.

Another part of her thrilled at the prospect of taking such a risk. If she trusted him enough to willingly put her life in his hands, then surely he could be trusted with her mind and body too. And if the heated, breathless pleasure of kissing Barrett Stanbridge was any indication of the pleasure to be had in tumbling into a bed with him …

Good God Almighty. If she had any hope of fully savoring the magnificence of him, she needed to find a much longer, much, much slower fuse.

Chapter Thirteen

Ten blocks, Isabella silently marveled. Carden’s town-house-turned-hideaway-lair was less than ten blocks from Barrett’s house. She hadn’t known and wouldn’t have guessed the distance between them to be any more than a nice evening’s stroll. Which, with all the markets and hopping between rented hacks she’d done the morning they’d fled, wasn’t all that surprising. And since no one had battered down the door to arrest Barrett or attempt to steal the map, she had to admit that the distance didn’t seem to be a dangerously narrow one.

Tonight it was the perfect distance. Just close enough to make their coming and going a silent footpad affair, just far enough that it would be quite possible to lose a pursuer in the dark warren of alleyways and yards that lay between.

As they’d agreed in the yard of the town house, Barrett and Carden led the way while she and John Aiden brought up the rear some ways back. The goal was to look like day laborers heading home for the night. She and Aiden were doing well with their parts, ambling along with their hands stuffed deep in their pockets and being companionably silent. The other two, though …

It certainly wasn’t the cut of their clothing that betrayed them. All four of them were wearing simple black trousers, shirts, boots, and jackets. No, it was more a matter of manner and attitude. You could apparently take the man out of the military, but he strode purposefully forever. All Barrett and Carden were lacking was a brass band.

“At least he’s not a pompous ass.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She winced, realizing that she’d not only spoken aloud, but used a most unladylike expression. “I was thinking that Barrett and Carden walk like generals,” she supplied, hoping that Aiden really hadn’t heard clearly and that she had a chance to salvage the illusion of femininity. “And I concluded that it wasn’t an entirely negative thing. Barrett’s sense of himself isn’t the least bit inflated.”

He grinned. “The first way you said it was more entertaining.”

It had been a flimsy illusion anyway, she consoled herself. The only thing to be done now was to apologize for it. “But certainly not very genteel.”

“Genteel is boring.” He hesitated, then added, “Barrett hates to be bored.”

The hair on the back of her neck quivered. “Don’t most people?” she asked, trying to focus their conversation on the topic in the most general way.

“Actually, no. Most have no idea of how dreadfully dull their lives are. Or at least that’s my observation. Barrett’s always worked very hard at avoiding the mundane. That’s why he didn’t follow his father into finance.”

The hairs quivered a little faster, a little harder. “Why,” she asked, resolved to deal with the issue and be done with it, “do I sense that you’re trying very hard to tell me something in a roundabout sort of way?”

His gaze slid over to hers as he smiled and replied, “Probably because you’re perceptive.”

“And that something would be…?”

“You’re not at all like the women he tends to find for himself.”

If she looked at his comment from just the right angle—and squinted—it passed for a compliment. “That’s undoubtedly because I found him and for reasons quite apart from those that motivate his hunting.”

“True,” he allowed. “Which is just one of the ways you’ve managed to completely upend the order of his deliberately unconventional world. No small feat.”

There wasn’t the slightest hint of censure in his voice, but she felt under attack just the same. “It hasn’t been intentional.”

“That doesn’t matter. The consequences, however, do.” He cleared his throat and fixed his gaze on the pair ahead of them. “Look, Belle,” he said quietly, “we’re getting close to the house and running out of time so I’m going to say it straight-out. Barrett’s my friend and I don’t want to see him hurt. I can’t tell just what his feelings for you are, but I do recognize an uncommon infatuation when I see one. If you don’t have genuine feelings for him, you need to walk away before any more damage is done.”