by JoAnn Ross
“It's all right.” With her heart still pounding like a rabbit's she managed a faint, reassuring smile.
“Shit.” He turned away so he was sitting on the edge of the bed, palms braced on his knees. Turnip, who'd been sleeping in her usual position on the floor at the foot of the bed, whined her worry and licked the back of his hand. “I'm sorry, Danielle.” His voice was roughened with self-disgust. “You must have been scared to death.”
“Just for a second until I realized what was happening.” Her own breathing was beginning to return to normal. “I was having the most wonderful dream.” She skimmed a hand down his wet back. “Yours must not have been nearly as nice.”
“No. It wasn't.” He squeezed his eyes shut. Tight. When he opened them again, Dani shivered at what she saw in the dark tawny depths. “I used to have the nightmares all the time. Even when I was awake. But I haven't had them since I quit drinking heavily. Not since you came out here that first night.”
“I believe that may just be the nicest compliment you've ever paid me.” She shifted so she was sitting beside him and touched her hand to his cheek. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Non. Not really.” He dragged his hand through his hair, which was loose around his moon-shadowed face, giving him the look of a fallen angel. An angel whose weary eyes were giving her a glimpse of his own private hell. “But since it appears I haven't exactly put it completely behind me, and I'm hopin' like hell you'll risk sleeping with me again, I figure you deserve the truth about what I did. What kind of man I am. Even if you may take off runnin' after you hear.”
“I won't.” She couldn't imagine anything he could tell her that would change how she felt about him. “And I know what kind of man you are.”
“You only think you do.”
“Don't insult my intelligence, Jack. I do know you. Besides,” she said, looking at the huge head the dog had thrust under his hand, “Turnip obviously adores you, and you know what they say about dogs being an excellent judge of people.”
Jack's expression managed to be both fond and frighteningly grave at the same time. “One could also argue that this particular dog has lousy taste. After all, she does drink out of the toilet.”
“She also growled at Jimbo Lott when we ran into him outside the market the other day.”
“Well, there is that.” He scratched the dog behind her ear, easing her concern and causing her to turn boneless and sink to the floor in obvious dog bliss. “You know I was a DEA agent.”
“Yes.
“I worked undercover. Which doesn't always involve playing by the book. I had to constantly improvise, and every so often it became a case of doing to others before they could do what they were trying to do to me.”
“You were doing your job. An important job.”
He shook his head at her naïveté. “Maybe you're not getting the drift. I've killed people, chère.”
After what Desiree had told her, Dani wasn't as surprised as she once might have been. “Were they trying to kill you?”
“Hell, yes, but—”
“Well, then, you didn't have any choice.”
“That's what the investigators said when I came out of surgery.”
“You had surgery?”
“Yeah, after getting shot up. But I got off easy. Because of a stupid, brief fling I had in Colombia, both my best—and only—friend in the world and the woman ended up dead.”
Dani vaguely wondered what he meant by brief, then decided it didn't matter. “That must have been terrible for you,” she soothed.
Having been wondering how to tell her, Jack considered that this was turning out to be too easy. And he damn well hadn't trusted anything easy since he'd been thirteen.
“I'd like to hear what happened,” she said quietly.
“It's not pretty.”
“Newsflash, Callahan. I'm not some pampered princess who's breezed through life without pain. Without making my share of mistakes. I mean, if you want to get technical, I suppose you could consider me partly responsible for Lowell's death.”
“How the hell do you figure that?”
“If I hadn't married him, he wouldn't have been elected. If he hadn't been elected, we wouldn't have gone to Washington, and he wouldn't have become so power hungry he'd do anything to further his career. If I'd been a better wife, a better lover—”
“Sugar, if you were any better lover, I would have dropped dead of a heart attack tonight out in the car.”
She smiled at that. Then just as quickly sobered. “My point was, that if my husband hadn't gotten bored with me, he wouldn't have left me for another women, so he wouldn't have been moving into the Watergate that day, and been standing there on the sidewalk when her piano fell on his head.”
“You realize, don't you, that's a load of crap?”
“Most days. But sometimes I wonder how much of our lives is determined by our own actions, and how much is due to fate.”
“We create our own fates.” It's what Jack had always believed. Until Dani had come back home and had him wondering about things like fate and destiny. “That weasel the judge married you off to locked in his fate when he was too blind and too stupid to realize how special his wife was.”
“That's a very nice thing for you to say.”
“It's the truth.” He sighed heavily. Then picked up his sordid story, determined to get through it once and for all, so they could put it behind them and move on with the rest of their life together. “I was in Bogota, with my partner, Dave,” he began slowly. “We were checking out rumors of a submarine supposedly bein' built by the Colombian drug traffickers.”
“Bogota's seven thousand, five hundred feet in the Andes and at least a hundred miles from any port.”
That earned a reluctant smile. “Can't fool a reference librarian. And it's two hundred miles.”
“Why on earth would they build a submarine there?”
He shrugged. “Best we figured, it was easier to conceal the construction. The blueprints we found tended to suggest they'd planned to transport it on tractor-trailers in three sections to the coast.
“Dave and I spent a lot of nights staking the place out, and one night, when we'd run out of sports to talk about, we got started on women. He told me all about Trish, his wife, and I told him about you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Oh, not everything. Just the good times. After a while we took turns—one sleeping, the other standing guard—and that conversation had gotten me feelin' a little mellow, so I remember looking up at that sky filled with whirling stars and thought about them bein' the same ones you might be looking up at, and it made me feel not quite so alone.
“Anyway, we didn't much believe it was gonna turn into anything, because, hell, even by drug-dealing standards this wacky idea was off the charts. But it turned out they'd gotten some engineers from the Russian mafia, and some ex-patriot Americans to work on it, and damned if they weren't actually building a sub capable of carrying two-hundred tons of cocaine across an ocean. The plan was to carry it down in pieces, then assemble it in the port of Cartagena.
“The operation didn't start out that big a deal. We weren't getting any kingpins but we also didn't want to take the chance that they'd actually pull the plan off. Also, we figured if we nabbed some of the middle guys, with enough pressure, we could turn one or more of them, and if we were lucky, they'd give us the names of some dealers higher up the food chain.
“Dave and I were playing L.A. dealers down there lookin' to score. We'd been hanging around the resorts for a few days, being real visible, tossing money around, acting like your typical asshole California drug hotshots.”
“I wouldn't think it would be a good idea to make yourself so noticeable when you were supposedly trying to buy illegal drugs.”
“Hell, sometimes it seemed as if a third of the people went down there to score drugs, another third were there to sell them, and the rest just looked the other way and tried to stay out of the gunfire. Be
lieve me, everyone knows what's goin' on. And Dave and I got a lot better service from the hotel staff and cab drivers when they thought we were dealers than we would have gotten if they'd known we were DEA.”
“Didn't it get hard?” she asked quietly. “Always living a lie?”
“Mais yeah. It got damn hard. But I'd been doin' it so long, I'd forgotten it wasn't the way other people—real people—lived their lives.”
Dani thought guiltily about her own lie and didn't respond.
“So, things were looking pretty good. Problem was, when we showed up at this warehouse at the docks in Cartagena, neither of us had any idea that we'd already been made. Because I fucked up.” It still ripped him to shreds. Even after all this time.
“Anyone can make a mistake.”
“Yeah, and mine was thinkin' with my dick. I'd gotten involved a few months earlier with a woman in Barranquilla. She was a reporter who covered the cartel and worked as a part-time DEA informant.”
“I didn't think reporters worked that way.”
“Not in the States. But this definitely wasn't the States. So, I figured it was the best of both worlds, I could get laid regular, and every so often she'd give me some useful information about drug-trafficking. What I was too stupid to realize was that she was playing both ends against the middle, collecting money from us for information, while working for the cartel. We later learned she was the mistress of one of the traffickers and was only sleeping with me to try to learn whatever she could about our operations down there.”
“I don't believe that,” Dani said.
“Why not? It's the truth.”
“She may have been after government secrets the first time. But after that, if she was in your bed, she was there for mind-blowing sex.”
He laughed, and although he still didn't buy the idea of any outside force shaping lives, he also couldn't help wondering what he'd done to deserve a second chance with this woman. She was good for him. And he liked to think he was good for her, too.
“Well, whatever her reasons, she set us up, though she didn't get away scot-free.” He figured even if he ever escaped the ghosts, he'd never entirely forget the sight of the woman he'd foolishly trusted lying dead on the bed where he'd spent so many pleasurable hours. “Her lover killed her. I suppose because he was afraid she might be as disloyal to him as she'd been to me.
“When we walked into that warehouse, all hell broke loose, and for a while it was like the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral. Then our backup blew the door, and when it looked like they were actually gonna be on the losin' end, they scattered like roaches. Well, Dave and I had a lot of time and effort invested in this, so we chased a pair of them down the waterfront, onto the beach. One of them grabbed this poor terrified tourist who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and was holding a gun to her head, so we backed off.
“That's when Dave got shot from behind. It didn't take any shooting skill, he just got ripped open with an automatic rifle. He wasn't wearing a bulletproof vest, because, just like when my dad was shot, it was too damn hot. And besides, it's a little hard to hide one of those suckers beneath the skin-tight tropical silk shirt he'd worn to fit the California image.
“I was trying to drag him off the beach when I got hit. Next thing I knew it was twelve hours later and I was waking up in the hospital.”
“How badly were you hurt?”
He shrugged. “Not that bad.”
“Twelve hours is a long time to be unconscious.”
“Well, there was some surgery involved to dig some lead out of my chest and fix a collapsed lung, but I was out of there in time to take Dave's body home to his widow.”
“I'm glad you're not doing such dangerous work anymore.”
He shrugged. “I lost my stomach for it after that.” He gave her a long look, relieved when he didn't find any horror on her face. “So, now you know why I quit. Why I'm back here.”
“As sorry as I am about what happened, I can't be sorry that you came back to Blue Bayou.” She lifted a hand to his cheek, her light touch feeling so much like a brand, Jack was amazed he couldn't hear the sizzle of burning flesh. “So we could find each other again.”
She leaned forward and touched her mouth to his. Her lips softened. Parted. The soft little sound she made in her throat, half sigh, half moan, had desire pooling hot and heavy in his groin. Minds emptied. Tongues tangled. Hearts entwined. His fingers tangled in the silk of her hair. Her lips were warm, heady and unbearably sweet. Jack could have kissed her endlessly.
He dipped his tongue into the slight hollow beneath her bottom lip. When she shuddered in expectation, he pressed her back down onto the mattress and into the mists.
She didn't tell him. Oh, she had lots of excuses, after that horrible story about his lover and partner having been killed, Dani hadn't had the heart to tell Jack that he'd also lost a child he'd never known about. Then there was the fact that after their long night of lovemaking, they'd gotten up late, then made love again in the shower, putting her way off schedule, causing her to open the library late.
Since there weren't any patrons waiting, she took advantage of the peace and quiet and was preparing her monthly budget report for the parish council when Jack walked in, looking much more upbeat than he had last night when he'd shared the story of his final DEA operation.
“Come on, chère,” he said. “I'm taking you to lunch.”
“It's not even eleven o'clock.”
“Brunch, then.”
“I really have to get these done before Tuesday night's council meeting.”
“It's a long way to Tuesday.” He reached over her shoulder, pressed Save, then closed the file. “And only two blocks to the courthouse.”
“We're having lunch at the courthouse?”
“Brunch,” he reminded her, as he took her purse and keys from her desk drawer. “And no, we're not eating at the courthouse. I figured we'd go out for a bite afterward.”
“After what?” He had his arm around her waist and was walking her to the front door.
“That's a surprise.” He closed the door behind them and locked it.
“The parish council isn't paying me to sleep in late, then have lunch with you twenty minutes after I finally get to work,” she argued.
“Don't worry about that. Nate knows all about me stealing you for a bit. He thinks it's a great idea.”
“Are all the Callahan brothers crazy? Or is it just you?”
“I don't know about Nate and Finn,” he drawled as they turned the corner. “But I'll confess I'm crazy.” He tangled his hand in her hair, which she'd worn loose today, and kissed her, right out on the sidewalk in front of Espresso Express, to the obvious delight of customers sitting at the little tables outside. “Crazy about you.”
“I was wrong,” she muttered, even as her lips clung a moment too long for a public kiss.
“ 'Bout what?” He smoothed her hair and gave her a bold grin.
“You haven't reformed. You're still Bad Jack, the devil of Blue Bayou.”
“Probably,” he allowed cheerfully. “Which, since you're still ma 'tite ange, balances things out just fine.”
“Arrogant,” she muttered without heat.
He skimmed a finger down her nose. “And right.”
Was there any woman in the world who could resist that slow, sexy smile? Dani wondered as they cut across the park to the courthouse. And why, she wondered as she enjoyed the faintly possessive weight of his broad hand on her hip, would any woman want to?
When, without giving it any thought, she touched Captain Callahan's horse's nose, Jack caught her hand and lifted her fingers to his lips. “We already have all the luck we need, us.”
His voice was low, and thick with the Cajun patois she'd discovered it always took on when his libido was heating up. It wasn't the only thing getting warm; the light touch of his mouth was setting off sparks against her fingertips. It was so easy for him, she thought. One touch, one look, and she was
melting.
“You're not the only one,” he murmured, proving yet again his ability to read, if not her mind, at least her expression. “You do the same thing to me.” Even as she knew it was asking for trouble, Dani glanced down and viewed the proof of his statement. “Which is probably why,” he said, with that wicked humor she'd come to love gleaming in his tawny eyes, “we'd better get inside before I'm tempted to take you right here on this sweet-smellin' freshly mowed lawn.”
“Jimbo Lott'd love that,” she muttered, her desire temporarily dampened by the thought of Blue Bayou's sheriff. “He could arrest us for indecent exposure and any other number of charges.”
“He'd probably like to. But Jimbo's not gonna be in a position to be arresting anyone for a long time.”
She looked up at him, surprised and puzzled.
As he held the heavy door open, Jack's broad grin was both boyish and utterly self-satisfied, reminding her of how Matt had looked when he'd caught that fly ball during baseball tryouts.
Dani was surprised to see Jack's two brothers standing in the rotunda with the sheriff and another man she didn't recognize. Nate wasn't smiling, but his expression revealed the same satisfaction she could see on Jack's face; if looks could kill, Jimbo Lott would have put all of them six feet under, while Finn's expression gave absolutely nothing away.
Dani remembered Finn Callahan as having been big for his age. That hadn't changed. He'd grown up to be a big man. But unlike the way so many former high school athletes would go to fat, he was as strong, solid, and muscular as when he'd played football for the Blue Bayou Buccaneers. His black hair was cut almost military short, he was wearing a blue suit, white shirt, and red tie, all of which were amazingly unrumpled for a steamy Louisiana summer day. His eyes were a riveting Arctic blue she suspected could chill to ice, but they warmed as she approached with Jack.
“Hey, Dani,” he greeted her. “It's been a long time.”
“Too long.” She hadn't known Finn as well as Jack or Nate, but remembered how things around the house had always calmed down whenever he'd come home from college. Even in his teens he'd possessed a quiet strength that invited confidence. He still did.