“He’s the perfect knight-errant, at least in Janna’s eyes,” she agreed. “But it seems to be a family trait. I’ve heard tales of Benedict exploits.”
“Greatly exaggerated, I expect.”
She gave him an assessing look. “Maybe, though I don’t remember any suggestions of sainthood.”
Benedict sins weren’t something he wanted to get into, Adam thought, but he would like to know how the rest of the family viewed Lara. “Anybody invite you to the family get-together this weekend?”
“I’m not a Benedict,” she said, the words abrupt.
That told him nothing, but perhaps it was what she’d intended. He was still thinking about that when another sound came from the upper regions of the house, like water draining in wall pipes. Deliberately, he got to his feet, resting his fingertips on the tabletop as he stared up at the ceiling. Before he could speak, before he could even begin to form the question in his mind, Lara rose with fluid grace and placed her hand on his arm.
“Wait. Please.”
Her touch exploded along his nerve endings. The sensation rocketed through him, jolting his heart into an unnatural rhythm then centering just south of his belt buckle. He was no playboy, though he’d been through a few relationships, but he’d spent endless minutes on foreplay without that much reaction. Frowning to cover his amazement, he straightened and turned to face her.
“I know…that is, I’m assuming you provide information for money. I mean, the New Orleans police pay you?”
“As a consultant, yes. I’m no bounty hunter.”
She blinked at that. “I didn’t think you were.”
“Just clearing that up for future reference.” As if he’d have any kind of future with this woman after tonight, he thought with derision.
“I’ve no idea how much you get for something like this,” she went on, lowering her gaze to the spot where her fingers burned his forearm, “and my aunt isn’t exactly wealthy, but…”
“Stop right there,” he said, his voice hardening.
“No, really, I’m sure she could afford to make it worth your while to just…”
He reached to close his hand on her wrist, removing that barrier to sanity. She clenched her hand into a fist, and he could feel her inner strength, as well as the quick throb of her pulse. It helped to know that he wasn’t entirely alone in his response to their physical contact. He should release her, he knew, but couldn’t find the will on such short notice. “You couldn’t actually think I’d agree,” he said. “What is this then?”
“Call it a test.” Her wide green eyes searched his, perhaps for some sign of what he meant to do next.
“Of what?”
“Whether you’re knight-errant material, maybe, like your brother and your cousins.”
“Knight-errant is usually an unpaid position. What was I supposed to do, refuse the money and come to your aid—or rather your aunt’s—out of pure and noble compassion?”
Her smile was strained. “You’re very quick. I’d have had to explain that to most men. But the answer to the question is yes.”
“And if that didn’t work?”
“Who knows?”
The words were so soft he almost didn’t hear, still they seemed plain enough. Regret was a suffocating pain inside him. Still, he forced himself to let her go and step back. “Sorry,” he answered. “My allegiance isn’t for sale. Not at any price.”
Four
He meant it, Lara could see that easily enough. She saluted that integrity in him even as she regretted it. It would have been much easier if he could have been seduced by her small attempt at corruption. He didn’t appear susceptible, which meant that she would have to use other means.
Giving up was not an option, of course. She had her own principles that would not permit turning her aunt over to the uncertain mercy of Louisiana’s criminal justice system. Family loyalty was not solely a Benedict trait.
“So,” he said with a lifted brow. “Who’s upstairs? Or would you like me to guess?”
To answer with the truth or stall for time, that was the question. But she was given no chance to answer it. Footsteps approached, then the swinging door between the kitchen and the sitting room flapped open to allow a woman to step through. She paused as she saw them, then moved on toward the sink.
“Sorry to interrupt your little tête-à-tête, Lara love, but I woke up and thought I smelled coffee.”
It was Aunt Kim, with a housecoat of heavy white terry cloth wrapped around her, red hair flowing over her shoulders, and sardonic amusement in her face. Lara stood in frozen consternation for long seconds while possibilities flashed through her mind. Then she gave a resigned sigh.
“Interrupt, by all means,” she said. “You may as well, since this man is here to see you.”
“Is he really?” Her aunt took a water glass from the cabinet and filled it before turning around. The gaze she rested on Adam held apprehension overlaid by pure female speculation. Then her eyes, lavender blue by grace of tinted contacts, widened a fraction and a slow smile curved her lips. “Well,” she said in tones that were abruptly lighter and a shade breathless. “Hello.”
Lara hid a grim smile by turning to fill another coffee cup. Aunt Kim could no more prevent herself from coming on to an attractive man than she could stop breathing. Flirtatious speech and body language were simple reflex actions after years of being dependent on male support, male attraction, male assurances of her worth as a female. They were also natural defenses against male danger.
“You’re Kim Belzoni?” she heard Adam ask from behind her.
“I suppose I should have introduced you,” Lara said, and rectified that lapse as she turned to put the coffee mug on another place mat at the kitchen table. A quick glance at Adam’s face told her nothing. His expression was measuring yet closed-in, as if he deliberately suspended judgment. She picked up his cup to refill it. While her back was turned, she considered adding a little something extra to it along the lines of what they’d been discussing a few minutes ago. She wasn’t sure she could manage it without attracting attention, however, and did not want to think of the repercussions if that happened. Turning again, she put the coffee in front of him.
“To what do I owe this honor?” Aunt Kim asked as she slid onto a chair then drank from her water glass, watching him over the rim in apparent fascination. She should have appeared haggard, but looked rested and relaxed instead. She had creamed her face and applied moisturizer, so her skin appeared fresh and unlined, not at all that of a woman several years older than the man who held her interest—or one who had shot her husband only twenty-four hours ago.
“Your husband’s death,” Adam answered. He resumed his seat only after Lara had returned to the table.
“Oh.” The animation faded from Aunt Kim’s face and she shifted a little in her chair before darting an accusing glance in Lara’s direction.
“If you think I sent for him, you’re wrong,” Lara said at once. “He has police connections.”
Aunt Kim glanced at Adam again. She set down her water glass and picked up her coffee cup before she said, “He doesn’t look like a policeman.”
That was certainly true. “He found you anyway. If he can manage it so quickly, then it’s not safe here for you.”
“Where would it be? Safe, that is?”
“You could come with me,” Adam interjected. “I know a few people who have questions they’d like to ask you.”
“And if I don’t want to answer?” Aunt Kim asked in querulous disdain.
“You’d rather take your chances with your husband’s uncle?”
Her face paled, and she looked suddenly older. “If you really want to know what I’d like, it’s to be far, far away from here. All I have to do is figure out where to go.”
“Cooperating with the authorities would be much better for you. They can protect you and, if you’re telling the truth about what happened, then…”
“If?”
“Then
you have nothing to worry about,” he finished, ignoring the interruption.
“So you say,” Aunt Kim snapped. “But what if Ernesto’s family uses its influence to see that I’m convicted? It’s all politics you know—favors, money, elections, deals. Truth and justice have little to do with it.”
She had a point. Lara looked at Adam to see how he’d respond.
“It’s better than being dead,” he said flatly.
Lara’s aunt grimaced. “I don’t look good in prison orange, and the last I heard, there were no manicures or facials available in Angola’s hair salon. I’m thinking South America. They appreciate women of a certain age in Rio.”
“If you can get there.”
She tipped her head. “You could always take me.”
The invitation was so bald that Lara was embarrassed. She waited to discover if it was any more successful than her own attempt at influencing the man at the table.
“I don’t think so.”
Aunt Kim’s eyes narrowed. “You’re very sure. Why is that, I wonder?” Then her face cleared. “Oh, I see. Your interest is already engaged. How fascinating.”
“Don’t tell me,” Adam drawled, “that you also have the family talent for mind reading?”
“It comes in handy now and then, even when personal involvement prevents it from working as it should.”
“Remind me to find out if there are other quirks some time. For now, you have a decision to make.”
Aunt Kim stared at him a second. “How can you be so hard? Have you never been in trouble?”
“Not recently, and not when it involves murder.”
“It wasn’t murder! It wasn’t, though I should have killed him ages ago.”
Lara cleared her throat as she gave her aunt a warning look.
“I know it isn’t smart to say it, but it’s the truth,” she declared, unrepentant. “He was the kind of man someone was going to kill sooner or later.”
“You might have waited until it happened,” Lara replied, raking a stray wisp of hair back into her braid.
“I would have, if I’d thought I’d be around to see it,” her aunt snapped back.
Lara gave Adam an I-told-you-so look, but he didn’t seem to notice. With his gaze on her aunt, he said, “It’s a little late to worry about that now. Here’s my proposition….”
“Why, Adam, I barely know you,” she began.
A flash of irritation was his only reaction to that comment. “Put on some clothes and let me drive you back to New Orleans to talk to Whitaker at the NOPD. Maybe the two of you can work something out.”
“What happens if I refuse? Are you going to drag me back kicking and screaming?”
It was a good question, Lara thought. She waited for the answer with almost as much interest as her aunt.
“Not my job,” Adam said with a small shake of his head as he reached to unclip his cell phone from his belt. “What I’ll do is call Jack. I expect he can arrange to have the local authorities pick you up and hold you until he can send someone after you.”
“No, wait. Please.” Aunt Kim reached across the corner of the table to touch the firm muscles of his forearm, moving her fingers in a small, distracted caress. “Give me time to think about it a minute? I mean, this is all so…so unbelievable that I can’t get my mind straight.”
“You don’t have long,” he warned.
“What do you mean?” She looked from Adam to Lara.
“The Cosa Nostra has computers, too, or so I’d imagine,” Lara said in terse explanation.
Her aunt stared at her for long seconds, then a stricken look appeared in her eyes. She dropped her head into her hands with a fiercely whispered imprecation. “If Benedict found me with so little trouble,” she said in a muffled whisper, “so can they.”
“Exactly.”
“They could be here any minute. Oh, my God.”
“Never mind,” Lara said with as much assurance as she was able. “They aren’t here yet.”
Aunt Kim raised her face. Her skin seemed suddenly slack and her eyes hot with unshed tears. “I’m sorry, honey, truly. I didn’t mean to…to bring this kind of trouble down on you.”
“It doesn’t matter. We have to decide what to do from this point.”
“While you’re both thinking, maybe you can tell me who else might be on the property,” Adam said. “The police suspect an accomplice in Belzoni’s death because both vehicles registered to him were still at the house.”
“Meaning?” Lara asked.
“They can’t see how you got away, Mrs. Belzoni.”
“Call me Kim. Please. As for my so-called escape, it was easy.” She gave a short laugh. “I just walked out. When my feet started to hurt, I stopped at a pay phone and called a gypsy cab.”
“A gypsy cab,” he repeated, as if to be certain he’d heard her correctly.
Lara was almost as amazed. Calling a freelance cab driver with precious little connection to a cab company and lax record-keeping had been a masterstroke.
“I know this great black woman who owns one. She drove me from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, then dropped me at a bar. The barman at this place is a friend. He arranged a rental car for me.”
“On his card, I suppose, so your name wouldn’t appear in the computer,” Adam suggested.
“You’ve got it.”
“No accomplice then, no new boyfriend?”
Aunt Kim looked away. “No help, if that’s what you mean.”
If there was someone, Lara saw that her aunt wasn’t prepared to admit it. Was she shielding him, whoever he might be, or had he only been the catalyst that had persuaded her to finally break free? She half expected Adam to pursue the question, but he took a different tack.
“This rental, I didn’t see it out front.”
Her aunt gave him a scathing look. “Even I know better than that. It’s hidden, of course.”
“Because you knew someone would be coming after you.” His voice was hard.
“Because I didn’t want Lara’s quilting customers to know I was on the place. News gets around, and this little community isn’t so very far from New Orleans.”
It made sense, Lara felt, and was pleased to see Adam’s nod of acceptance before he asked, “So where did you hide it?”
Aunt Kim folded her lips and drew her housecoat more tightly around her. Adam stared at her a second. Then he turned his gaze toward Lara with one brow lifted in inquiry.
“The place was a self-sufficient farm until the late nineteen-fifties, with chickens, cows, the works,” she said. “Trees have grown up around the old barn out back so it’s now in the woods, but it’s solid enough to use as a storehouse and garage.”
“A bit obvious, don’t you think?” he commented with irony in his voice.
“Only if you know it’s there.”
“And can follow tire tracks?”
“I mowed over them.”
He made no reply, but only turned his attention to his coffee.
They seemed to have reached an impasse. Lara tried to think of some way out of it, a way that would allow her aunt to go free while still satisfying Adam Benedict’s ethical notions. Nothing came to her.
Aunt Kim seemed to be thinking along the same lines, though with more success. She gave Lara a fixed stare when she glanced in her direction. Immediately Lara’s mind was filled with an image of Adam lying in her old brass bed upstairs.
His hands were clasped behind his head on the pillow and smoldering appreciation lay in his eyes. He was watching her undress, following her movements intently as she stepped from her jeans and pulled her T-shirt off over her head. She wore no bra, and her breasts were pale and round in the moonlight that filled the room. She slid her thumbs under the top band of the triangle of white lace that still covered her, then stopped. Smiling, she left that covering in place since she understood that he wanted to strip away that last bit with his own hands. Removing the clasp from her hair, she shook her braid loose, freeing the long, streamin
g strands. She flung them behind her shoulders, lifted her chin, and then moved toward the bed. Gliding with easy grace, never taking her gaze from the rich, sea-blue eyes of the man who waited for her, she came nearer, nearer. Then he raised to one elbow and circled her waist with a hard arm, drawing her down beside him….
“No,” she gasped, her voice choked.
Adam turned a startled glance in her direction. “What?”
“Really, Lara, would it be such a sacrifice?” her aunt asked.
“It isn’t going to happen,” she returned, ignoring the man across the table. “For one thing, he isn’t interested….”
“Are you sure?” The words had a musing sound.
“For another, I can’t. And even if I could, and managed to sway him, he would resent it later.”
Her aunt pursed her lips. “That would bother you, his resentment?”
“Of course it would.”
“I fail to see why, unless you care about the future.”
“Do you mind telling me what’s going on?” Adam asked in biting tones. “Especially since I seem to be a part of it?”
“No, no,” Aunt Kim said with the briefest of glances. “At least you aren’t yet.”
“Now look,” he began.
Lara refused to even turn her head in his direction for fear of being influenced. “He won’t be, either,” she insisted. “The future has nothing to do with it. It’s an impossible idea.”
“Listen,” Adam said.
“I don’t see that at all,” her aunt objected. “A diversion similar to the one you were practicing before I came in just now is all that’s required, not a lifetime commitment. You needn’t pretend to be repulsed by the idea, because I know better.”
“It isn’t repulsive at all, just morally corrupt. And though I realize that’s not a huge problem for you, it is for me.”
Adam frowned as he cocked his head to one side, staring at the windows. He said again, “Listen…”
Her aunt sighed. “Well, if you’re going to be that way about it. Heaven knows, I wouldn’t want you doing anything that—”
“Listen!” Adam ordered.
The sudden realization that he had been trying to hear what was happening outside silenced them. As quiet fell, they caught it too, the powerful hum of a car engine as it slowed in front of the house. Then it stopped.
With a Southern Touch: AdamA Night in ParadiseGarden Cop Page 4