by Ann Major
There was a startled cry from the swamp. They both turned as a blue heron flapped its wide, gray wings and took flight, skimming low just above the brown water.
“You know what I think, Logan,” she said, turning back to him and finding his eyes glued to her face. “I think we’ve both caught the same fever. If you’re so sure you’re immune to me, kiss me again. Prove I’m wrong about you. About us.”
“There is no us.”
“So, prove it, big guy. Kiss me.”
When he took a step backward, probably to seek the safety of his car, she reached out and grabbed his tie. Reeling him close, she stepped into his arms.
Stiffening, he stood up straighter. For a second, she was sure he’d push her away and barricade himself in that tank of a car. But he just stood there on the edge of surrender, his heart pounding so hard she could feel it.
She pulled him even closer. “Kiss me.”
In the next instant his breath was hot and ragged against her forehead.
“I don’t want to hurt you again,” he whispered even as she tightened her hold on his tie. “I’m no good for you.”
And with those words, which were better than an apology somehow, the worst of her anger and hurt that she’d been harboring for so long melted a little.
Gently, she let go of his tie and touched his thick, dark hair, combing her fingers through it, mussing it a little further. Then she reached up and, framing his face with her hands, she placed her lips gently against his throat.
“I’ve always liked your hair,” she said. “It’s one thing about you that’s always a mess.”
He smiled. “You don’t know the half of it.”
In the next instant his hard mouth was on hers, tasting sweeter than honey and burning hotter than a flame, but then it always had, even if that was a cliché. His mouth sent fire dancing through her veins as she melted against him.
The kiss was unlike the last one because he wasn’t fighting it, and neither was she. Their lips joined them. Every part of him belonged to her in that primeval man-woman way that felt wilder and more dangerous than the swamp.
His hungry mouth still locked on hers, he tightened his hold on her, pulling her even closer, his muscular arms binding her to him. Not that she had any desire to run from his kisses or the possession of his powerful embrace. No, like a fool, like before when she’d been a naive kid, she wanted to stay in his arms forever and do all the naughty, forbidden things they’d done before. Was she a fool or what? Yes. Where Logan Claiborne was concerned, the answer was all too obvious.
Unfortunately, Uncle Bos must’ve been spying on them all along. Suspecting her of having less than wise instincts where Logan Claiborne was concerned, Bos banged his door open and hollered down to her.
“If you come by for a visit with me, girl, I’m up here waitin’. The door’s wide open. But it won’t be for long unless you get rid of him, yes. If you miss the chance, the next time you see me I might be laying up in my coffin.”
“Well,” she said, smiling triumphantly up at Logan. “See, he does too want me. And maybe, just maybe I’m right about you wanting me just a little bit, too, yes?”
Logan pulled her against him and held her close so that she was in no doubt about the hardness or size of his erection. “Maybe a little, but just like always, the old cuss’s timing’s lousy.”
With a shaky laugh, she raised her hand and smoothed his sensual lips which were still hot with a gentle fingertip.
“See you,” she promised huskily.
“Cici, I don’t want to hurt you. This isn’t going to work.”
Why not, because I come from this hovel on stilts half sunk in rot and muck and you come from your beautiful, charmed Belle Rose? Will I never, ever be good enough?
Not that she spoke such truths aloud. She wasn’t in the mood for a quarrel or a reality check. No, she had much more appealing ideas about how to spend her time with Logan Claiborne.
“You really do need to go,” he chided. “I never considered your Uncle Bos a patient man.”
She smiled, causing him to grin, too. “You have a beautiful mouth,” she said. “Lots of straight, white teeth.”
“The better to eat you with.”
“Naughty boy.”
His eyes glinted as they moved over her face and then down her T-shirt. Tipping her chin with a fingertip, he gently nicked her nose with his teeth. “Naughty girl.”
“You do have a point.” Fluffing her pompoms, she swished her hips, just to get his mind on her ass where it belonged. Turning, she left him.
Feeling his heated gaze burning into her spine, she put more swing into her hips and really began to strut.
Not once did she look back or say another word, not even a sultry goodbye.
He chuckled out loud.
It was amazing how well they could get along if they stopped talking.
The inside of her uncle’s cabin was as dark and musty as ever, maybe mustier. Imagining all sorts of terrible molds, Cici itched to open all the windows and take a scrub brush soaked in chlorine or lemon juice and scour every surface.
“You knocking on Logan Claiborne’s doors, too? Bringing him gumbo? Trying to win his heart since he be single and the most eligible bachelor in Louisiana again?” Uncle Bos demanded gloomily. “He’s not for you, you know.”
His expression surly, he was sitting at his rusty dinette set playing with a knife he’d carved out of a razor-sharp alligator tooth while she heated his gumbo over a single flame. His sleeves were rolled so high she could see the beginnings of his many tattoos, which were angry swirls of dragons, snakes and spiders.
“No, you might say he’s been knocking on mine.”
He slammed a beer bottle onto the table and violently yanked the top off another. “Well, it would be a mistake to trust him. I hear he’s got a new rich girlfriend.”
She swallowed against the painful thickening in her suddenly dry throat.
“Name of Alicia Butler. Her daddy owns a bunch of shipyards. Banks, too. I seen her with him on television.”
Instead of meeting her uncle’s eyes that were much too watchful, she stared at his crucifix earring. “I know. He told me about her already.”
He slammed his beer down. “I hear she’s as beautiful and sweet and high class as his first wife, Noelle, who sure was a pretty thing.”
Glancing away, Cici swallowed and then took a quick breath. She felt trapped suddenly and wished she was anywhere but here.
“Not that his wife ever smiled or looked happy the few times I seen her.” He kicked back his chair so that he was now sprawled at a disrespectful angle.
“So, how have you been feeling, Uncle Bos?”
All four feet of his chair slammed the floor again. “I can’t complain. A little tired since the chemo, but the doctors say they got it all. But then they probably always say that, the bastards.”
“Maybe they’re telling you the truth.”
“Maybe,” he agreed gloomily. “Tommy and Noonoon, they showed me all those pictures you took. I tacked a couple up in the front room.”
“Yes, I saw them.”
“I like the one where the vulture’s about to eat those starving little girls in the desert.”
“A lot of people like that one.”
Everybody except her. She’d won an award for the picture, but it haunted her dreams even though she’d been able to save the girls afterwards. Still, the photo always reminded her that there were too many little girls who wouldn’t be saved.
“I’ve quit taking pictures for a while.”
“That’s too bad,” he said. “Why would you stop, when you’re so good at it?”
Because life could get too scary.
She didn’t feel like telling him that her hands shook every time she even looked at her camera case. “I needed a rest from it, that’s all. It’s called burnout.”
“So, what did you come back here for?” he asked, a wealth of suspicion in his gravely tone.
/> Again, his narrow gaze was much too keen and hostile for her liking.
“I’m writing another book about Louisiana.”
“That’s not what I asked you, girl, and you know it. You’d be a fool if you came back because of him.”
When she ignored that, too, he said, his tone caustic now, “How long you be staying?”
“It all depends.”
“Not on Claiborne I hope. Don’t you know that all he’ll ever want from a girl with your background is to do what he did before, to get in your pants and then dump you?”
“People can change…sometimes….”
“Not so much. And not him. I know him and all his kin. And none of ’em have ever been our friend.”
“Okay. We haven’t so much as spoken in nine years. Can’t we please…”
“You two aren’t much different than you were back then. Oh, I know you think you’re a professional and all because you write and took all them pictures that made you famous for a day or two. But you didn’t go to college like he did. And he didn’t just go to an ordinary college. He went back East. Ivy League,” he said sneeringly. “He’s rich and powerful and conservative as hell. You’re not. He lives by a set of rules that you could never cotton to, no.”
“Gumbo’s ready,” she said, ignoring him still.
He studied her and then looked out the window in exasperation. “I don’t blame you for not listenin’. There was too many times in the past, when I ignored you, too.”
“I didn’t come here to fight with you about Logan.”
“Do you still love him?”
She swallowed tightly and didn’t answer. But his eyes bored into her, and she was afraid that he saw the confusion she was determined to hide from him.
“Don’t threaten him or hurt him to protect me from being a fool,” she whispered.
“So that’s how it is,” he muttered. He spit toward a corner in disgust.
“You’re wrong. I don’t love him.”
She bit her lips and was silent, and he made no promises to behave. But at least, he made no threats.
“After we eat some of this here gumbo, you want to take a spin with me in the swamp,” he said at last. “Maybe you could help me with some traps I need to check before it gets dark.”
For Uncle Bos that was as close as he was likely to come to offering to smoke the peace pipe.
“There’s nothing I’d like more.”
“Weird thoughts come to you when you get sick and find yourself stuck in a hospital bed,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Regrets. I—I wasn’t never much of an uncle to you.”
“But you took me in. Where would I be if you hadn’t? I wouldn’t have anybody.”
“Maybe you’d be better off. You wouldn’t have known Claiborne.”
“At least you’ve always been as hard on yourself as you were on me.” She paused. “Just for the record, I’m glad you opened your door today.”
“I resented you back then. I was through with females. I didn’t think I needed any little girl messing around in my bachelor life, such that it was.”
“I know.”
“You’d be better off to leave this place, to leave me and Claiborne forever.”
“Probably. But you and me—we don’t always do what we should, now do we?”
Five
W hen Logan arrived at Belle Rose, and a valet parking attendant in a crisp white shirt jumped up from the steps and rushed to open Alicia’s door, he wasn’t surprised by the hordes. Nor was he surprised by the twinkling lights that turned the grounds into a magical fairy land or the least bit amazed when he entered the mansion with Alicia on his arm and found the house blazing with light and filled to the rafters with lively swamp pop, Cici’s favorite brand of music.
All week Mrs. Dillings had been paying extravagant bills from caterers and florists and making healthy advances to various bands. If he’d raised the slightest objection to the cost of an item, his grandfather had called him, demanding that Cici, who was having the time of her life arranging everything, have her way.
Logan had done nothing but lose ground as far as Cici was concerned, and he still didn’t know what she was up to. She just seemed to be moving in and taking command of his grandfather and Belle Rose, rewriting their past. In short, she was fast conquering territories that had long been his.
He was hoping tonight, somehow, that she’d do something so outrageous Grandpère would come to his senses and Logan would once again be able to assume control of his own grandfather and family again.
Logan ushered Alicia, who looked beautiful in a long backless, gold gown inside the mansion.
She stopped and glanced up at the swirling staircase and crystal chandeliers that were garlanded with fresh yellow roses. “Why, darling, your old home is even lovelier than I imagined.”
Frowning because he had Cici to thank for Alicia’s compliment, his gaze swept the tall vases on mantels and polished tables that overflowed with the same yellow roses as well.
“Yes. Thanks to Cici,” he said.
“Talented woman.”
No, dangerous.
“It reminds me of the parties my mother used to throw,” Logan said. Ironically, in trying to prove her worth, his mother had destroyed it.
Those parties had stopped abruptly at his parents’ deaths when the Claibornes had found themselves mired in debt and on the brink of financial ruin due to his mother and father. Still, he remembered a younger Cici standing outside on the gallery, peeking through the windows, her round dark eyes awed and made hungry by the splendor of it all.
Grandpère was seated in the parlor holding court next to a big table stacked high with birthday presents. A dozen older women had pulled their chairs around him and were all vying for his attention. The old man appeared fit. He seemed to be having the time of his life when he looked up and saw Logan just beyond his admirers’ blonde heads.
The corners of the old man’s thin lips tilted upward in what appeared to be the beginnings of a smile.
Logan rushed Alicia over to meet his grandfather.
“Who is this beautiful lady?” Pierre demanded, his eyes sparkling at Alicia. When Logan introduced them, Pierre’s smile warmed. A few more moments of conversation had him beaming.
“He’s enjoying your company immensely. Since Grandmère died, I’m afraid the dear old fella’s been lonely. And since his recent stroke, even lonelier,” Logan whispered a little later. “Stay here and keep him happy a few minutes longer, while I get you something to drink, why don’t you?”
“My pleasure,” Alicia replied in a low voice. “I’m having fun, too. You favor him, you know.”
“Chardonnay as usual?”
When she nodded in that agreeable way he found so calming, he released her elbow, nudging her a little closer to his grandfather.
Logan was on his way to the bar that had been set up in the main salon, when an uproar in the ballroom caught his attention and he turned.
At the sound of Cici’s merry laughter coupled with the deeper notes of Jake’s deep baritone, Logan abruptly pivoted, changing course. But when he saw Cici in a shimmering metallic sheath, her voluptuous body wrapped tightly in Jake’s arms, Logan froze just outside the doorway. For a long moment Logan couldn’t take his eyes off his tall, leanly muscular brother and Cici.
As the couple moved to the heavy beat of the music, he couldn’t stop watching them.
Was he over-reacting or was she going after his brother now?
Whatever her motivation, Logan, who’d long regretted his past actions to both her and Jake and wanted reconciliation with his twin, suddenly felt like strangling him.
“That’s some outfit.” A man’s voice from inside the ballroom said.
“Who are you kidding? You and every other man are looking at her legs,” a woman said.
Logan clenched his fists.
“He’s been gone nine years.”
“The prodigal grandson. Wha
t made him come back?”
“Need you ask?” the man said. “She’s hot.”
“You should have seen how happy Pierre was when Jake showed up. The old man wept. So did Jake. It was so touching.”
Hell.
Logan’s angry gaze flicked from Cici to his dark, broad-shouldered brother, who looked too tough and strong to ever cry. Still, their grandfather’s sentimentality must have affected him. Or maybe it was hard for Jake to see how much older and frailer Grandpère was.
Suddenly Logan wondered if Cici might be right in her handling of Grandpère. He was clearly thrilled about his party. Maybe the old man needed more independence and responsibility and activities rather than less. Logan had thought the old man required quiet and rest and more medical attention, but Grandpère acted like he was bored with quiet and rest. Instead of retiring to an assisted living facility, he seemed to want his active life back. He’d said he wanted to return to the office. Was that really what he should do?
“Has she interviewed you for her book?” the man standing in front of Logan asked his companion.
“Next week. We’re having her to lunch. Oh, and she’s bringing Pierre.”
“He came with her when she interviewed me as well. She’s loads of fun.”
“The old man’s crazy about her,” the woman said. “And no wonder. She pays attention. She listens. And, yes, she’s fun. It’s horrible the way old people are so neglected. I don’t think the poor fellow knew what to do with himself when his stroke forced him to retire. He said he got pretty gloomy until she showed up.”
Jake pulled Cici close, and her laughing gaze swung to Logan. When their eyes met, Logan felt like he’d been sucker-punched.
He wasn’t jealous.
Then the music stopped, and luckily he still had enough presence of mind to remember Alicia. He was turning to go after her wine, when a small, smooth hand with garish, red nails closed over his arm from behind him.
“You’re late,” Cici whispered against his ear, her breath as hot and soft as the satiny caresses of those searing fingertips. Her face was young and as open as it had been when she was a child.