Masquerade (32 page)

"But you can," she insisted. "I was wearing the brooch you gave me the night I was hurt. Don't you see? I wouldn't have been wearing it if I was still angry at you, if I didn't want us to be together again."

With a throaty groan, he pulled her to him. As his mouth moved over hers with a pressure that was urgent, his tongue delving, filling, Remy discovered that nothing had changed from the hotel room in Nice—she felt the same immense shock, the same feeling of deep need satisfied.

In the bedroom, Cole undressed her. He wouldn't let her help. This was something he wanted to do himself. He peeled off her clothes, layer by layer, touching, stroking, caressing as he went. She was beautiful, with her high, firm breasts sized perfectly to fit the cup of his hands, and her hips, thighs, and legs with their silky, woman-soft curves, and the warm smoothness of her body beneath his hands. He looked at her —into the gold-flecked glitter of her hazel eyes— and saw the deep, bright glow of love for him.

Reaching out, he pulled down the blue-striped coverlet and the sheet, then lifted her and laid her gently in the middle of the bed. He stepped back and shed his own clothes while she watched with half-closed eyes, resting on her elbows. He had a magnificent body, muscular and flat, but she'd thought that from the first moment she'd seen him. She lay back against the pillows, languid with anticipation as his eyes grew needy and dark and his final nakedness gave away his rising desire— his bold desire.

His knee touched the bed, and the mattress caved in beneath his weight. Leaning over, he pressed a warm kiss against her belly, and she felt the curling sensation of it deep inside. Her arms reached out for him, drawing him to her, his length stretching out alongside hers, as his mouth came down.

He intended to be gentle, to make the kiss sweet and lasting, but he'd been too long without her, he was too hungry, too starved. He tore his mouth from hers and pressed another hard kiss against her jaw, then into her neck, the fragrance of her surrounding him. His mouth found hers again, her lips parting, seeking and eager in accepting the deep strokes of his tongue.

Gripped by the fierce need to touch, to kiss, and to taste, he held her to him with both arms and legs as they tumbled together on the bed, her belly straining against him and the twin peaks of her soft breasts flattened by his chest. The sweet woman smell and the sweet woman taste of her drove him on.

His hands slid into her loose hair. He loved the silken feel of it, the silken length and the scent of flowers that clung to it. He stroked her body, cupped her breasts, and probed the petal-like folds of her until she arched against his clever fingers. He kissed her breasts, his mouth gently suckling, his teeth gently nipping, and she writhed beneath him, her fingers digging into his hair to keep him there. She reached down to touch him, her hand encircling, stroking. He heard his own grunt of raw pleasure. "Love me, Cole," she whispered into his ear.

A cheek muscle flexed as he realized she was killing him slowly, softly. Then he was inside her, thrusting deep, his moans lost in hers. He wanted to make love to her slowly, completely. He wanted her to belong to him again, and this time to make it last. He braced his weight with his hands, the muscles in his arms trembling with the strain of holding back, but she arched her hips against his. It wasn't his restraint she wanted, but all of him.

He plunged into her, then plunged again and again, the tempo rising, the pressure building, the pleasure sharpening until it broke over and through them, disseminating and decimating them in a thousand white-hot shards of sensation.

 

 

 

 

21

 

 

Remy slipped on the paisley patterned jacket of silk charmeuse and fastened its one button, then glanced at Cole sprawled over half of the pale-blue bed sheets, for a moment watching the even rise and fall of his bare chest in light sleep. She smiled faintly, still warm inside with the feeling that she had been well and truly loved. She moved to his side of the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress, then slowly, quietly she leaned forward—with every intention of disturbing his slumber—and nuzzled his ear, lightly breathing into its shell.

"You fell asleep on me again," she accused softly, feeling him stir a second before his hand glided onto her back, the silk of her jacket sliding over the matching blouse at his touch.

His hand stopped. "What is this?" He turned his face into hers, seeking and finding the corner of her mouth. "What are you doing with clothes on? I didn't take them off for you to put them back on, you know."

"I know." She let her lips brush over his mouth, eluding his attempt to claim them in a kiss as his hand resumed its caressing foray, now joined by the other. "But I have to go."

"Oh no you don't," he said in a lazy denial, his encircling arms tightening to keep her with him. "You're going to stay right here with me ... in my arms ... in my bed." He punctuated each pause with an evocative nibble on her neck.

"I'd love to." She closed her eyes, strongly tempted to take off her clothes again and crawl back under the covers with him. "But I can't." Sighing her regret, she spread her hands over the hard plane of his chest and used them to level herself partially away from him. "I'm supposed to meet Gabe at four-thirty, and it's going on four o'clock now."

"That's no problem." His hand moved onto her hip, rumpling the navy wool of her skirt. "Call him up and say you can't make it. Tell him something's come up. It would be the truth," he said somewhat wickedly, tipping his head far to one side to pointedly look past her at the very noticeable protrusion of the sheet around his hips.

Remy looked too, and smiled mockingly back at him. "You know what they say—what goes up must come down."

"Ahh, but it's the
come
part of 'come down' I'm interested in," he said.

She pretended to be critical. "Once is never enough for you, is it?"

"Not with you, it seems."

And she understood exactly what he meant. No matter how well their bodies might know each other, it didn't seem that either she or Cole had exhausted the mysteries they discovered each time they made love.

"I really do have to meet Gabe," she said with reluctance.

His gray eyes lost their teasing look and turned needing and dark. "Stay with me, Remy."

"It's my first night back. I need to spend some time with my family."

His hands ceased their wandering and simply held her. "You're running true to form, Remy. Amnesia or not, your family still comes first with you."

"Let's not argue about this." The potential for it was there; she sensed it in the dead quiet of his voice.

"You're right. It would be useless anyway," he said dryly, then forced a smile.

Another kiss and a few more whispered words and she left, retrieving her purse from the living room on her way out.

On the banquette outside his apartment, Remy breathed in the air, scented with the thousands of aromas of the Quarter, everything from the mustiness of the past to the Cajun spices of today. The long slant of the sun's rays cast a mellow light over the old buildings. It was, Remy decided, an absolutely gorgeous day. She started walking.

As she rounded the corner onto Bourbon, a hand hooked her elbow. Reacting instinctively, Remy switched her clutch purse to the other hand and threw her weight into the would-be purse snatcher rather than away from him. Her shoulder connected with something solid, drawing a grunt of surprise and causing him to loosen his hold. She pulled her arm free, and at the same instant caught a glimpse of a heavily grizzled beard in her side vision. The man in the car outside her house—and at the museum!

She swung around to confront him. "Who are you? What do you want? Why are you following me?"

A dozen impressions registered at once: the neatly trimmed beard, heavily streaked with white, that failed to hide the thickness of the man's neck; the top-heavy quality of his build, with massive shoulders and chest tapering to boyishly slim hips; and the keenness of his pale-blue eyes, a keenness that immediately reminded her of Inspector Armand's.

"I'll ask the questions, if you don't mind, Miss Jardin," he said, unsmiling. "You are Remy Jardin, aren't you? I guessed it was you I saw on the balcony this morning."

"I repeat, who are you?"

"Howard Hanks." With two fingers, he produced a business card from his breast pocket and offered it to her. Remy glanced at it, then at the wallet that he flipped open to his identification. He was a licensed investigator—according to the card, working for an insurance company.

Remy looked at the business card again, conscious of the odd churning in the pit of her stomach and of the alarm bells going off in her head, warning her not to tell him anything. It was crazy—she didn't even know what he wanted from her. Whatever it was, why did she feel she needed to conceal information? What information?

She took the card from him, stalling for time until she could decide what to do. "Do you normally accost people on the street, Mr. Hanks?"

"Only those who refuse to accept—or return —my phone calls and claim to be indisposed when I come to their houses." He gestured toward the entrance of a nearby bar, a gold signet ring flashing on his left hand. "May I buy you a drink or a cup of coffee?"

She hesitated. "I have an appointment at four-thirty—"

"This shouldn't take long."

"All right—coffee, then." But it wasn't the quiet insistence in his voice warning her that he wouldn't take no for an answer that convinced her to accept—rather, it was the realization that she had to know what this was about, had to discover the reason for this feeling of danger she had.

Her low heels made a hollow sound on the dirty and old hardwood floor as she walked into the bar ahead of the investigator. The place smelled of beer, bourbon, and old cigarette butts; its atmosphere consisted of its lack of any pretension of class—with its dingy smoke-stained walls, round wooden tables with initials and dates carved into their tops, sturdy but cheap wire-backed chairs, and an old bar that was probably mahogany under its layers of grime.

Remy crossed to the table by the corner window. She sat down in the chair facing Bourbon Street, with her back to the view of Cole's apartment building. The bearded Howard Hanks sat down opposite her, on a seat still warm from his last occupation of it.

He held up two fingers to the bartender. "Coffee."

She laid her purse on the table and lightly clasped her hands together on top of it. "For your information, Mr. Hanks, I was out of the country until yesterday, so I wasn't avoiding your calls— as you implied. I simply wasn't here to accept them. I'm sure you were told that."

Remy was careful not to admit that she hadn't been informed of his calls. She could only guess that in all the anxiety and the relief of having her home, her family had simply failed to mention them. As for this morning, it was possible that she'd been in the shower when he came to the door. Nattie would have known that, and her mother might have heard the water running. But that didn't explain why she hadn't been told that he'd been there to see her.

"There was some mention of your being in France, but everyone was very vague about your exact whereabouts."

She could have told him that they hadn't known, but she was reluctant to say anything about her hospital stay or her amnesia. The bartender arrived with their coffee. Remy moved her purse aside as he set two mugs in front of them.

"Cream or sugar?" Hanks asked, holding up a hand to keep the bartender from walking off.

"Neither, thanks," she directed her answer to the bartender, who immediately returned to his station behind the bar. She wrapped both hands around the thick stoneware mug. "You said you wanted to ask me some questions, Mr. Hanks. What about?"

"The sinking of the
Dragon"

The
Dragon.
She'd heard that name before. Marc Jardin had mentioned it this morning in the solarium. What had he said? Something about fearing the insurance company might go through with its threat to make this business about the
Dragon
public. Later, when she'd asked him about it, her uncle had dismissed it as a typical hassle with an insurance company over a claim they were attempting to get out of paying. But ... at the wharf, when she'd remembered the previous time Cole had shown her around the container ship, he'd said that the loss of the
Dragon
had been "a blessing in disguise"—that he'd used the insurance money to buy this ship. Had the insurance company paid the claim, or hadn't it?

"What about the sinking of the
Dragon?"
she asked, and took a sip of the chicory-strong coffee.

"What do you know about it?"

"Why should I know anything about it?"

"You are a stockholder and director of the Crescent Line, aren't you, Miss Jardin?"

"Yes."

"Then tell me what you know." "About what?"

He shot her a look that was both tolerant and wryly amused. "Spare us both the dumb-blonde act, Miss Jardin. I know you graduated cum laude from Newcomb College."

"If you've checked on me to that extent, Mr. Hanks, then you must know that my role as a company director is basically a titular one. I have very little knowledge of the company's operations. I've simply never bothered to involve myself in the family shipping business."

"In other words, you want me to believe you don't know anything about the
Dragon"
The skepticism in his voice was as thick as river fog.

"I'm aware that we lost a ship, and I'm also aware that the insurance company has been causing trouble over the claim."

"Wouldn't you, if you discovered that someone had fraudulently collected on a cargo that didn't exist, after deliberately sinking its container ship in deep water to conceal that fact?"

Stunned by the charge, she blurted, "That's ridiculous. Why would anybody do that?"

"Why, indeed, would anybody try to collect twice for the same cargo?"

"Collect twice?" She frowned, her mind racing at the implication of his words as she feigned confusion. "I'm afraid you've lost me, Mr. Hanks. Exactly what is it that you're saying?"