The Perfect Stranger (3 page)

Questions twisted with frustration. And suspicion. The woman had given no indication that she recognized him, but he found that hard to believe. His mask didn’t hide his features anywhere near as well as her hair color and makeup disguised hers. If anyone should have been in the dark, it was him.

Which meant she was playing him. Hoping he didn’t recognize her. Scrambling to preserve her game.

Slipping the phone into an inside pocket, John rounded the verandah and took the steps, strode toward the house. Along the way he plucked another glass of wine.

If the lady wanted to play, he could play.

A Louis XV king-size bed dominated the masculine room. With an intricate crest carved into the curved head and footboards, the bed was what Saura would consider a statement piece. An antique, she figured. Made of walnut. Definitely plantation vintage.

She would expect nothing less of Nathan Lambert.

Closing the door, she leaned back and enjoyed a moment of satisfaction. Men could be so gullible. They saw what they wanted to see. Believed what they chose to believe. As a little girl that fact had broken her heart. As a woman, the reality of it had become her saving grace.

She no more had a headache than she had auburn hair.

Four weeks had passed since she’d rented a row house on the outskirts of the Quarter, and gone after Nathan. At the first party, a fund-raiser for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction sponsored by the historical society, she’d positioned herself so he would bump into her, spill her drink on them both. It had been quite an introduction.

A week later, celebrating New Year’s at Preservation Hall, she’d coyly looked away whenever he caught her watching.

At the third party, days later to kick off Mardi Gras season, he’d asked her to dance. The man she’d hired as her date had done an admirable job of appearing jealous, but in the end, he’d let her go, and contact was made.

There’d been seven dates since then. Nathan had taken her to lunch three times. They always had a private table. Once, he’d treated her to a private dining room. There were always flowers. And a tenderness that had surprised her.

If she’d not known him for the murdering bastard he was, she might have fallen under his spell. As it was, she’d enjoyed herself enormously—at least she had when she’d not been thinking about another man who’d shown her unexpected tenderness.

Saura pushed the unwanted thought aside and got to work, went first for the bed. From her purse she retrieved surgeon’s gloves and snapped them onto her hands. Then she went for the mattresses. It was a rudimentary spot, but it never ceased to amaze her how many smart, resourceful people did dumb things like keep bearer bonds under their pillows or blackmail photographs in a cookie jar.

That all seemed like another lifetime now. She’d been younger then. Naive. She’d not known what it was to love, or to lose. She’d not known what it was to look at the world and see only glaring shades of white. To walk in the sunshine and feel only the cold. To eat chocolate and taste nothing. To spray on so much perfume others gagged, while she smelled nothing.

Nathan’s room smelled of tobacco. Not cigarettes, but sweeter, like that from the pipe on the walnut nightstand, next to a dense hardback about famous generals of the Civil War. Out of habit she flipped through the pages, made sure no secret compartments lurked inside. Once, she’d found a small red address book hidden in such a way, and with its contents, she’d made her client very, very happy.

Femme de la Nuit,
she’d been called then. Lady of the Night. And she’d been the best. Socialite by day, private eye by night, no one ever made the connection, not even her police detective brother.

Now most people thought she was dead.

Enjoying the once familiar rush, Saura finished off the bed and checked out the nightstands. After slipping a few small discs in inconspicuous places, she looked toward the armoire across the room. Just beyond stood a dressing chair and the door to the white bathroom. On the marble counter inside, she saw a folder.

Wasting no time, she hurried in and started to photograph, froze when the sound of a door opening broke the silence.

Slowly, she stepped back from the mirrored vanity and slipped the small camera into her handbag. Nathan expected her to be in bed, but she could come up with any number of reasons to be in the bathroom. She could even position herself on the floor and blame the migraine.

It had worked before.

The door opened with a slight creak, but Nathan’s Bruno Maglis did not sound on the wood floor. Not even softly. And as she stood shielded by the bathroom door, she muttered a silent thanks for the genius of his decor. Typically one would think wood flooring too austere for a bedroom. But the long planks boasted an advantage carpet did not. It would not absorb footsteps. Unless someone was very, very careful.

There was no reason for Nathan to be careful in his own bedroom. Unless, of course, he sought to take Saura by surprise.

Several seconds of punishing silence passed before she heard the door close. But she did not move, did not for one second think she was alone.

“I know you’re in here,” he said, and her heart almost stopped. “Your perfume gives you away.”

T
he voice whispered through her on a violent caress. She stood so acutely still, not trusting herself to move, to so much as breathe. He could be anywhere. Just inside the door. At the bed. Nearing the bathroom. And if he found her—

Her hand closed into a tight fist. She practiced yoga four times a week and had stayed current with tae kwon do, but it had been two years since she’d had a sparring partner. It would only take one lightning move for him to remove her mask—and expose her lies.

Her perfume. The mistake burned. She’d colored her hair and changed her makeup, but she’d overlooked selecting a new perfume. She was rustier than she realized. Scent, after all, was the sense most strongly correlated with memory.

“You don’t need to hide from me,” he said in a dangerously quiet voice that made her blood sing. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

She stiffened. Curiosity tempted. Very slowly, she shifted so that she could see through the crack between the door and the wall, and saw him. The big bed should have made him look smaller. It didn’t. Standing to the left of it, with his bow tie unfastened and hanging against the stark white of his shirt, the top several buttons unfastened to reveal his throat and a hint of the dark hair covering his chest, he looked very much like a man about to strip down and climb into bed.

In one hand he held a crystal goblet with burgundy liquid. In the other hand—a plume of black and red feathers.

Shock seared her throat. He stood there completely exposed, as if he had absolutely nothing to hide from her.

“I understand why you don’t trust me,” he said. “After the way I came on to you.” He lifted the glass to his mouth and threw back the rest of his drink. “That’s why I’m here. To apologize.”

Her mind raced. He sounded sincere. He sounded remorseful. But she also knew the cat usually did, right before he pounced.

“I came on too strong,” he said. “I know you’re with Nathan.”

The sight of him lingering by the big bed threw her back to another night, another bed. When only a candle had lit the room. But she’d seen him anyway, every inch of him as she’d tugged at his clothes. Almost feverishly she’d run her hands along his body, driven by the warmth of his flesh. For so long there’d been only cold…

He’d been hot tonight, too. When they’d danced. When she’d forced her arms to curve around his body, to endure the feel of him, the strength and the memory.

Swallowing hard, she ignored the sight of his hand lingering against the sheets, and toyed on the pieces. Two years before, her brother’s life had been blown to bits. He’d been hunted and persecuted, condemned and outcast. At the time, she’d been unable to help him. Then, two months ago, he’d been vindicated. But in the process her dear friend Alec had been killed, and Nathan Lambert had vowed he’d not yet played his last card.

Only a few days later the stranger arrived in the out-of-the-way bayou town, his clothes as battered as his eyes. Now here he was, at Nathan Lambert’s party. In his bedroom. Apologizing to
her.

“It’s because of your perfume.” With the quiet words he turned toward the bathroom, and her heart slammed hard.

She’d forgotten. In the five weeks since she’d run her fingers along his face, she’d forced herself to forget how brutally handsome he was, how a man could look so untouchable and lost at the same time. But now she saw, and now she remembered.

And damn him, now she wanted.

She wanted to go to him, touch him again, pretend they were two different people, in one very different situation, to skim her finger along his cheekbone to his mouth, along his lower lip—

“It sounds crazy, but for a minute there I thought you were someone else. There was a woman,” he said, and her throat went dry. “We were only together once, but I can’t get her out of my mind. I made her cry.”

Saura stiffened. Logic, she told herself. Indifference. No matter what the stranger said, the truth could not be changed. He was here. In Nathan’s world. And even though Nathan denied knowing him, she knew better than to accept everything she was told, everything she saw, at face value.

Only a stupid man publicly shared drinks with informants and assassins.

People lied, but facts did not. The man had been in Bayou d’Espere, and now he was here. Which meant he was involved. It wouldn’t be the first time someone infiltrated her family. People she loved had been hurt. One was still missing after over a decade. Another lay dead.

All of them she intended to avenge. Because no matter who this man really was, who he worked for, he’d made one critical mistake.

Saura Robichaud was no one’s weakness.

“She left me,” he was saying. “Without saying goodbye.”

Saura closed her eyes.

“She thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t.” With the words, he turned toward the bathroom. “I felt her get out of bed, watched her put on her clothes and run for the door.”

Saura bit down hard—she had not
run
for the door. She’d walked. Very slowly. Very deliberately.

“She was scared. I could tell something was wrong. That’s why I didn’t go after her. She wanted away from me.”

The memory scraped clear down to the bone. She hadn’t been afraid. She’d been stunned.

“I tried to let her go,” he said, and like a predator, began to move. With silence. With stealth. “I told myself it was what she wanted. What she deserved. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just lie there and let her walk away, not after the way she’d touched me.”

The walls of the glowing white bathroom closed in on her. Questions wove through her like a razor-fine needle. Shifting slightly, she pulled herself deeper behind the open door. With a few more steps, he would be inside.

“I went after her,” he said. “Tried to find her.”

A game, she reminded herself. Just a game. And while she loved playing, she never allowed herself to be the mouse. The man didn’t mean a word of what he was saying. He was only trying to lull her into a false sense of security.

“But I never found her,” he said, stepping onto the white marble title. “Until tonight.”

She sucked in a sharp, silent breath.

“I walked into Nathan’s house, and despite the candles and cloud of expensive perfume, I smelled roses. And spice. And I knew she was here.”

Saura gritted her teeth. Next time she would choose something softer. Like powder and vanilla.

“Then I saw you.”

Holding herself viciously still, she watched him move deeper into the spacious bathroom, glancing at the glass-block shower, then doing a sweep of the toilet room and linen closet.

“And touched you,” he went on, edging toward the open closet at the back of the bathroom. “But in my mind it wasn’t you. It was her. The woman I’ve been looking for.” He put a hand to the knob, and pushed. “Because of your perfume.”

Once she might have believed him. Even now, part of her wanted to. So badly. To know his words were from the man, for the woman. Not part of the game.

But that was a mistake she could not make. She’d picked him for a reason, she reminded himself. Because he was a stranger. Someone who could not touch her. Could not hurt her.

His words, his lies, did not matter.

Holding her breath, she watched him step into the darkness of Nathan’s closet. Only then did she move. Carefully, she stepped from behind the door and slipped into the bedroom. Lifting the dressing chair, she carried it to the bathroom.

And pulled the door shut.

In total, no more than six seconds passed.

She knew the second the stranger realized her intent. She heard him swear creatively, heard the sound of his expensive dress shoes come down against the marble. But by then she’d wedged the chair under the doorknob.

“Don’t do this!” he roared, jerking at the door.

But Saura only smiled. All that discipline. All that smooth talking and those buttered rum words. Empty. Lies. All of them.

“Maybe this time you’ll get the hint,” she whispered, then turned and for the second time, walked away.

John didn’t do smiles any more than he did parties. But standing there in the obscenely white, mausoleum-like bathroom, he felt his mouth curve.

Some things were just too easy.

Mission accomplished, he strolled toward the window and eased it open, climbed over the ledge and into the night.

His foray into Nathan Lambert’s world had just gotten a hell of a lot more interesting.

I couldn’t just lie there and let her walk away, not after the way she touched me.

The words stayed with Saura long after she made her excuses to Nathan and drove away from his St. Charles Avenue mansion. Far too restless to crawl into bed, she swung by the new little house that didn’t yet feel like a home, shrugged out of her dress and heels and into jeans, an old flannel shirt and sneakers, then locked up and slipped into the night.

She’d always loved New Orleans, had started sneaking up to the Quarter when she was only fourteen. Maybe if her parents had been alive, someone would have noticed. But her uncles had been busy men, without a single clue how to handle a teenage girl. Hormones, makeup, drama, broken hearts and designer jeans had been as foreign to them as complacency was to her.

By the time she was fifteen, she’d become as familiar with the streets of the
Vieux Carre
as her brother was with the swamps surrounding their home. She’d learned where to go and where not to go, whom to trust and whom to avoid. How to slip by unnoticed. And just how valuable invisibility could be.

Now she walked those same streets, a stranger in a once-familiar world. To the untrained eye, much looked the same. The fabulous old buildings with their balconies and ironwork, the bushy hanging baskets of ferns and petunias even in the dead of winter. A few hours before the balconies had been crammed with Mardi Gras revelers. Now, with the hour pushing close to 3:00 a.m., there was only a wistful stillness and the smell of stale beer.

The names of several bars were new. Old man Pitre had passed away, and his heirs had sold The Easy Note to investors from New England. They hadn’t changed a thing physically, but the second she’d walked inside, she’d felt the difference. Around the corner Madam Picou’s bakery still served beignets every morning, but the woman who’d once greeted Saura with big-bosomed hugs now stared blankly at her. Alzheimer’s, a clerk explained. The lovely old Creole woman didn’t know her own daughter from a random tourist, but she still insisted on coming to work every day.

Passing the bakery, Saura lifted a hand to the darkened window and smiled against the tightening in her throat. Life moved on. People came and went. Memories were the only thing that remained the same. Or so she’d once believed.

Now, even memories played tricks and games.

Every night since her return, she’d walked these streets, as if in doing so she could somehow go back. Fit in again. Erase all that had happened and find a way to move forward.

But there was no erasing. The only way to get what she wanted was one methodical step at a time. Starting with Nathan Lambert.

And the stranger.

His presence in Nathan Lambert’s world changed everything. She could not move as freely as she’d been doing for the past several weeks. She’d have to be more careful. Rely more on private time with Nathan than that in the company of others.

In all likelihood, the man who’d tracked her into Nathan’s bedroom was, in some way, affiliated with him. He’d arrived in Bayou d’Espere for a reason—a reason he may have thought he’d accomplished by taking Saura to bed.

A reason she’d thwarted by walking away.

Two years had passed since she’d worked to connect dots, but her instincts remained sharp. And they screamed that while she and the stranger had held each other on the dance floor, he’d recognized her—
it’s because of your perfume—
but didn’t want her to know.

It was that thought which nagged at her as she took the three steps to her porch and slid the key into the door. She stepped inside and flipped on the light, saw the woman sprawled beneath the gold afghan on her sofa. Once, the sight would not have surprised her. She and her brother’s fiancée had shared everything.

But the woman sliding tangled blond hair behind her ears and squinting up at Saura had been called Savannah then. And her brother Adrian had been alive.

Now she was called Renee, and Adrian was dead.

“What time is it?” Renee asked in a raspy voice Saura hadn’t gotten used to yet.

She closed the door and turned the lock, ignored the way her throat tightened. When she looked at Renee she still saw the face of a stranger, but her heart recognized the friend who’d survived a brutal attack and made her way back to those who loved her.

“It’s late,” she said, tossing her purse and keys into a chair. Because the words came out harsher than she’d intended, she softened them with a smile. “I’m thirsty,” she said, walking to the kitchen. “Want anything?”

“No, I’m fine.”

Saura grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and unscrewed the cap, took several sips as she returned to the front room. “Where’s Cain?”

Renee rolled her eyes. “The official story or the truth?”

Saura glanced at a clock tucked beside a potted ivy on a shelf near the window. Her brother had been off the force for two years, but that didn’t mean he stood on the sidelines. “It’s a little late for poker or pool,” she commented.

Which meant he was playing another game.

“Bingo,” Renee said. Her skillfully reconstructed face was different, but the exasperation in those catlike eyes was the same. “He dropped me off a little while ago, said he’d rather me crash here than alone in a hotel.”

“Don’t you mean babysit?” Saura wanted to feel anger over that. But couldn’t.

Renee’s smile tightened. “He worries about you. We all do.”

Saura shrugged that off. “How long have you been here?” It had been a little before midnight when Saura had stopped by to change clothes. “Isn’t it a little late for surprise visits?”

Renee had the grace to flush.

“I know, that’s what I told him. We were at Beauregard’s and he got a call, said he needed to go. I’m betting it was Gabe. He’s been worried about him.”