Midnight in Ruby Bayou (28 page)

Walker felt the same about her. He told himself he would stop soon. Real soon. The next breath.

Then he wondered how long he could hold his breath.

She was burning in his hands, in his mouth, against his aroused body, trying to get inside his skin the same way he wanted to be inside hers. Her hungry little sounds went through him like electric shocks. No whiskey could be stronger, no sugar sweeter than her mouth, no fire hotter than the promise of her thighs pressing close and her whole body an arc of desire curving into him.

He forced himself to lift his head and dragged in air. “We shouldn't be doing this.”

She took a broken breath. “Why?”

The huskiness of her voice licked over him. His body clenched with a hunger so raw and deep it caught him by surprise. “I'm not ready for this.”

“You sure feel ready,” she said without thinking. Then she thought of Tony's anger when she had once suggested that he slow down and let her catch up. “Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that you're, um, too fast off the mark.”

“Is that what you were implying?” His voice was deep and amused, because he was undoubtedly ready, willing, and fully able against her belly.

And the Montegeau necklace was damned uncomfortable in a smuggler's pouch that was suddenly too small.

“No, I wasn't implying anything,” she said quickly. “It's just that you're obviously, um, capable and I'm, um, slow.”

For a moment Walker was too astonished to speak. She had damn near set fire to his shoes with a single kiss and she called herself . . .

“Slow,” he said, not sure he had heard right for the blood pounding in his ears.

She bit her lip and nodded. “Slow. But it's okay. I know men and women are different and I—” she took a quick breath “—I'm okay with it. I enjoy anyway.”
Some of the time,
she admitted silently.
Well, not much, not really.
But it sure had been nice before Walker started talking. She had never been kissed like that, as though she was a rare treat to be touched and sampled in tiny little bites and slow tastings.

“Different, huh?” Walker said. He looked into her beautiful, earnest eyes. “Am I getting the ripe smell of ol' road apples here?”

“What? Oh, Tony. Well, he's a man.”

“I'll take your word for it.”

“And I'm a woman—”

“Amen.”

“—so I know that I have to make allowances for different sexual drives, that's all.”

He lowered his forehead until it was resting against hers. Then he breathed softly against her lips, “Bullshit.”

She snickered. “But it's true.”

“Sugar, ain't nothin' true all the time and ain't nothin' always a lie. There are some times you couldn't get a man hot with a blowtorch and vice versa. Trust me, tonight wasn't one of those times.”

“Sugar, huh?”

“Sure enough. If you were any sweeter, I'd just have to slide you out of those clothes and lick you all over.”

The lazy intensity of Walker's voice sent ripples of heat through Faith. The thought of that kind of love play stopped her breath.

The combination of curiosity and desire was clear on her face, so clear that for the space of two slamming heartbeats, Walker thought he was going to do just that—strip her naked and lick her until she melted in his mouth.

“You better hope we don't have adjoining rooms,” he said, his voice almost hoarse.

“Why?”

“Because I'm supposed to be too smart to seduce my boss's baby sister,” he said bluntly.

Her eyes narrowed. “Yeah? What if she seduces you, just sneaks in your bed and starts—” Her voice broke at what she was thinking, Walker naked and herself all over him like a warm rain. The idea had never appealed to her before. With him, it was different. She didn't know why. She just knew it was. Like the heat shimmering hot and sweet beneath her skin. Different.

Walker told himself he wouldn't ask Faith to finish her sentence. It wouldn't be smart. Like standing so close to her that her breasts brushed against him with every breath she took. And she was breathing fast.

“Starts what?” he asked before he could stop himself.

“Licking you all over,” she whispered.

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out but a soft, rough, hungry sound. His arms tightened around her until neither one of them could breathe. “This is the dumbest thing I've ever done.”

But even as he spoke, he was slanting his mouth over hers.

Suddenly a pale blur moved at the corner of his eye, white cloth fluttering where there was no breeze.

Faith saw it at the same instant. “What—”

His hand covered her mouth. He shook his head, silently telling her to be quiet. She nodded. He lowered his hand and they turned their heads toward the bit of motion.

At first they saw only moonlight and darkness, heard only silence. Then something moved at the end of the garden, where roses ran in a tangle toward the bayou. White flickered like cold flame before it was snuffed out by the weight of night.

Breath held, Walker and Faith waited.

Moonlight, darkness, and then the low, keening wail of a girl buried in grief like moonlight smothered by night.

Cold prickled over Faith. She started to speak. She couldn't. Her mouth was too dry, her throat too tight with a sorrow that wasn't her own. Even after she swallowed, all that came out was a whisper.

Walker understood. “Crying Girl,” he explained softly. “She walks Ruby Bayou. She's real early tonight. Usually it's midnight when she roams.”

“That was a
ghost?
”

“You don't believe in haints?”

“Haints?”

“Spirits. Ghosts.”

“Er, no, not really.”

“I usually don't, either. Crying Girl is different. I make allowances for her. I was seven when I saw her for the first time. My first night alone in the bayou, too.”

“You were
seven?
”

He nodded.

“My God,” she said, trying to imagine what it must have been like for a young child alone in the dark with that unearthly wailing rising like black mist through the silence. “What did you do?”

“Wet my pants.” He smiled slightly, remembering. “But I got used to her. Came to think of her almost like company. Hardly ever saw her after Lot started swamp-crawling with me. He was too noisy. Crying Girl likes her solitude.”

Cold still prickled down Faith's arms and spine. Warily she peered out toward the edge of the garden. No pale flash of white. No feeling of someone or some
thing
hovering just at the edge of awareness.

“Well, I'm happy to give Crying Girl all the solitude she wants,” Faith said briskly.

Walker took her cool fingers and lifted them to his lips. After a brushing kiss, he put her palms against his neck, warming them. Then he thought of some other things that would warm both of them to flash point. Slowly he pulled her soft hands away from his skin, kissed her knuckles, and released her.

“Come on,” he said. “Folks in the house will be wondering where we are.”

“I don't think they saw us drive up.”

He didn't think so either, but he knew if he didn't get her out of the garden real quick, they would find out if those overgrown weeds had stickers that poked through clothes.

The wind shifted in a long sigh, as though the marsh itself was breathing slow and deep. A moment later a deep, belling cry came from the house. It was the call of a hound that has just caught a scent.

“Boomer,” Faith said. “Mel's dog.”

“He sure is.”

“No, that's his name.”

“Good nose on that boy,” Walker said, judging their distance from the house. The dog must have caught their scent the instant the wind shifted. “Helluva doorbell. I'll get the luggage.”

“I'll help.”

By the time they had unloaded their bags, someone in the house had called off the hound. As Walker and Faith climbed the front steps, a light came on in the hallway. Then the porch light came on. Or rather, the porch lights. There were strings of Christmas lights wound on the tall Doric columns. The columns supported porches that wrapped around both stories of the house. The once colorful lights had been all but bleached out by the relentless southern sun. Most of the bulbs had burned out. None had been replaced.

Walker had already noted the weeds growing between the bricks of the driveway. The walkway to the house couldn't decide if it was stone, gravel, or more weeds. The stately columns loomed pale and straight in the moonlight. Paint peeled from them. The porch wasn't dangerously rotten, but it needed work real soon. Privately he thought that the Montegeaus would do better to sell the rubies in Mel's wedding necklace and put some money into the old mansion before it crumbled under the weight of neglect and time.

“It's as sad as Crying Girl,” Faith murmured.

“It won't be the first old house to rot back into the land.” But Walker's voice was a lot softer than his words. Setting down his luggage, he picked a brittle flake of paint off a column and remembered twenty-five years ago, when the Montegeau house was a magical white palace shimmering with light and music and wealth.

“You feel it, too,” she said.

It wasn't a question, so he didn't answer. He opened his fingers and let the bit of old paint drift down to the porch where other flakes lay like dandruff circling the pillar.

The ten-foot doors with their intricately designed leaded glass panels seemed to shudder. Finally one door came open with a reluctant squeal of hinges. Light shifted and changed over the glass before spilling out onto the porch. Faith's hair burned bright gold and her eyes shone gray.

The woman who had opened the door took one look at Faith, said a choked word, and fainted.

W
alker kicked aside the luggage and caught the woman before she hit the floor. Like a bayou heron, she was long-limbed and weighed very little. Though she was wearing a midcalf dress of shiny, pale cotton, she smelled oddly of marsh and crab pots as well as baby powder and some innocent floral fragrance. Her hair was a mixture of gray and blond. It looked as though she cut it blindfolded, with a dull pocket knife.

“Is she all right?” Faith asked anxiously.

“She's breathing. Her pulse is okay.” Walker shifted her into carrying position in his arms. “Looks like just an old-fashioned genteel fainting spell.”

Ignoring the luggage, Faith held the door open so that Walker could carry the woman inside. He moved so easily that Faith wondered how he managed it with his hurt leg. Then she wondered if he was being stoic for her benefit. “Should you be carrying her?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Your leg.”

“It's just stiff, not really hurt.”

“Did you understand what she said before she fainted?” Faith asked.

“Ruby.”

“Ruby?” She followed Walker in and shut the door behind. The hinges squealed again, making her wince. Surely someone in the house had oil or silicone spray. Even soap would work. “Do you suppose she knows about the necklace?”

Walker shrugged despite his burden. With a twist of his body, he shouldered open the massive door that led to the parlor just off the entry hall. Here, in lemon-scented splendor, properly dressed visitors once had been entertained. Now the smell of must, dust, and curtains brittle from too much sun filled the room.

“See if you can find a light switch,” he said.

Faith fumbled around for a few moments before she found a set of switches. When she hit the right one, an extraordinary crystal chandelier scattered rainbows through years of dust. Another switch set off a Tiffany lamp, which sent spears of colored light out from a dark corner of the room. Tarnished silver bowls of potpourri sat in the middle of each end table on either side of the elaborate, faded velvet couch that was styled after the court of Louis XIV.

Walker laid the woman on the uneven cushions and propped her feet on the high arm.

Mel's voice came from the back of the house. “Tiga? What was Boomer carrying on about? Boomer, quit shoving. Stay! Was that Faith?”

“We're here,” Faith called out. “Tiga—”

“Hang on,” Mel interrupted. “Let me untangle myself from the hound.”

Mel grabbed a double handful of Boomer's warm, loose scruff and hauled back. The hound's nose had been wedged in the barely open door leading from the kitchen into the dining room. He looked up at Mel as though asking what all the tugging was about.

“Jeff, Daddy, are you in there?” she yelled in the direction of the library, which was opposite the parlor but toward the kitchen end of the house. “Tiga answered the door!”

Boomer wagged his yard-long whip of a tail against Mel's legs and gave her a big wet swipe across the mouth with his tongue.

“Bleh! Dog kisses,” she said, but she was laughing. “Jeff,” she yelled, “we've got company, Boomer wants to make friends with them, and I don't know if they're dog people.”