He just pulled her close and caught her mouth in a kiss.
She melted against him, all warm and wanting. Their tongues collided as if they hadn’t been together in forever, a rush of need so intense he might have lost himself in the taste and feel of her…if he wasn’t so troubled by the morning’s events.
“I’ll try to get this electrical situation resolved today so I won’t have to come back early tomorrow,” he said. “You’re coming back at noon? I’ll come get you.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. We’ll get dinner and I’ll drop you off at work for your shift.”
She eyed him as if she might argue, but something in his expression must have convinced her he’d made up his mind.
“It’s a date.” She slipped inside her car and blew him a kiss. “See you later.”
He shut the door and watched her back out.
Lucas was still standing there as she pulled into the street and disappeared in the traffic.
The only thing he knew for certain was that whatever was going on in her life, Bree didn’t have it under control.
Maybe she didn’t want to involve him because they’d only signed up for a weeklong fling. But things were changing between them. He wasn’t sure what that meant to their relationship yet…he only knew that there’d been someone in that warehouse who’d touched her hard enough to leave marks. And that didn’t really leave him a choice about what he would do next.
Lucas had made his reputation by combining his interests in law enforcement and computer technology. He’d rewritten the software for the National Crime Information Database, which collected and dispatched information on felons and stolen items to the FBI and other agencies around the country. He’d founded his company developing programs used to track sex offenders, missing children and deadbeat parents.
If Bree wouldn’t pony up, Lucas would find out what was going on for himself.
11
WHEN THE SIGHT OF Lucas vanished from her rearview mirror, the events of the morning finally overtook Bree. Exhaustion, stress and anger combined to make her insides vibrate, her hands tremble on the steering wheel.
She sucked in deep gulps of air to fight the dizziness clouding the edges of her vision, to focus on the road as the car in front of her braked unexpectedly in a flash of bright taillights.
Bringing the Jeep to a quick stop, she willed herself to control her physical reaction.
Jude Robicheaux would get nothing else from her.
Nothing, damn it.
She’d cried enough tears when the man had skipped town, leaving her to hold the bag with the police.
Touching the gas pedal, she brought her car up to speed again, forcing herself to concentrate on the early-morning traffic and wishing she was already home.
It wasn’t so much seeing Jude that upset her—although she still didn’t know what he wanted—but that ugly reality had intruded on her perfectly idyllic week with Lucas.
He’d known something was wrong, had wanted to know what, and she’d sidestepped the issue again.
But involving Lucas would only invite him to get his macho-man hackles up. She wanted the man’s passion, his respect. No matter how much she’d enjoyed his whole knight-in-the-skimpy-towel routine, she didn’t want him charging in on his horse to save her for their remaining days together. She wasn’t a damsel in distress. She was perfectly capable of handling Jude.
Should she go to the police, forget about waiting?
Bree considered it, found to her surprise that she was more bothered by letting Jude know he’d rattled her than she was by the thought of Lana and Toujacques finding out about her past.
The bastard had been so smug. She didn’t want him thinking she was the same girl who’d once fallen for his every line. She wasn’t. She was a woman who wasn’t letting any man bully her.
And shutting out a man she cared about in the process.
“Argh!”
Wheeling her Jeep into an open spot on the street, Bree glanced around to ensure there were no surprises waiting before she unlocked her door and stepped out.
Here she was trying to convince herself that she could handle the situation when she didn’t know what to do about Jude—go to the police now or wait two days?
She didn’t know what to do about Lucas either. Should she spill her guts and let the pieces fall where they may? And what did it matter, really? He was leaving in two days anyway.
The bottom line: Bree didn’t have a clue.
The only thing she knew was how much she hated walking down the alley to her home feeling as if someone was watching her. Just the slightest sound had her glancing back over her shoulder to see who might be there.
A week ago she’d felt safe in Court du Chaud.
Now she wanted to rush inside her house and turn on the security system.
Bree didn’t get the chance. When she reached for the doorknob, she found her outer door unlocked.
She and Tally always locked the door. Mark and Christien, too, at their request. Instinct would have sent her backing away, but she caught a glimpse of wild color inside and pushed the door open warily.
A massive arrangement of hothouse flowers sat in front of her door. Had it not been for the unlocked outer door, she might have thought the gorgeous arrangement a surprise from Lucas.
But the adrenaline rush told her differently.
Her fingers trembled as she reached for the card.
The love of your life.
Bree crumbled the card. This day was crashing from bad to worse, and that was saying a lot. She had a hard time imagining anything worse than facing Jude inside a dark den and pretending to Lucas that everything was A-okay.
Now Jude was declaring open war. He must have run straight from the den for the flowers. At the French Market probably, because not too many floral shops opened before nine.
This was his first step out into the open, and she knew he wanted to intimidate her. If Lucas had been with her when she’d arrived home or if Tally, Mark or Christien had chanced across the flowers, she’d have been hard-pressed to explain who’d sent the obviously costly arrangement.
She didn’t have to think twice about what she was going to do with the flowers. Setting her small box of costume paste on the floor, she collected the arrangement and headed outside, groaning beneath the weight of the ceramic bowl filled with the surplus of tropical blooms and lush greenery.
The overpowering scents of stargazer lilies and hydrangeas mingled sweet and thick beneath her nose, fragrances she normally adored that now only made her head throb.
Maneuvering out her gate, she headed into the court.
“He will not ruin my last few days with Lucas,” she said, needing to hear the sound of her own renewed determination.
“STUBBORN CHIT!” GABRIEL spat out the words from his seat on the piazza’s hedge. “What in God’s name is she doing?”
Unfortunately Breanne did not have to answer the question for Gabriel to piece together a general idea. Instead of running to Lucas for protection against this man from her past, she was stubbornly dealing with it herself.
Damn! Just how was he supposed to convince her otherwise when he couldn’t materialize and talk some sense into her?
Ambition before love.
Oy! What was a ghost to do?
Belle grand-mère expected him to fail at this task, and he found, much to his surprise, that along with the host of other reasons he could not fail, proving to the old crone he was not as inept and corrupt as she believed was one of them.
One would think after two centuries pride wouldn’t matter. Alas, it appeared to be his cross to bear, in life and in death.
Gabriel launched himself from his seat to follow Breanne across the court, racking his brain for some way to warn her that her old beau was up to no good.
Parting ways with Breanne as she circled her yard, Gabriel swept inside her second-story bedroom and stood beside the window, listening to the sounds of he
r entering downstairs.
He mulled his too-limited choices, even considered a few ideas the old crone had tossed his way—how desperate had he become to consider anything that one had to say?—and found himself back to cursing his stupidity for not realizing he could only materialize to two people.
Breanne’s arrival distracted him from his self-pitying thoughts, and Gabriel watched as she withdrew clothes from her dresser and retreated into the bathroom. She looked tired, her aura the bleached gray of old timbers.
On her arrival home yesterday she had looked equally tired but so very content. Her aura had brightened from lifeless gray to a blue-gray color that reminded him of the sea at sunset. He wanted to see her aura gleam as bright as the summer sky—the way her twin’s did.
In life, Gabriel had not understood how much another’s pain could hurt. He’d been unable to see past his pride enough to care how things affected anyone but himself. In death, the dull aura of this strong and beautiful young woman and the melancholy that clung to her like a mist ached inside him.
If nothing else in two hundred years of limbo, he had learned to feel. He supposed he could thank the old crone for that.
When Breanne emerged from the bathroom garbed in a pair of men’s pajamas, Gabriel watched her pull her hair into a tousled nest on the top of her head and secure it with some sort of clip.
The lines of her face and neck were drawn delicately, and her features were both graceful and refined. He found himself amazed that after so many generations he could still see his exquisite Madeleine in their lovely descendent.
Ah, Madeleine.
How much would he give for a chance to hold her once more in his arms, to apologize for being the ass he was?
Gabriel knew, as he watched this sad young girl who was but one in the strong and amazing bloodline they had created together, that he would gladly give another two centuries of eternity.
No, he would give it all.
His ever after for the peace of knowing Madeleine understood he had not left because he had not loved her seemed a small price to pay. He had loved her. More than life itself. But he hadn’t understood love, nor had he known how to show her. He hadn’t truly believed she would give up her life to be with him because he had not believed himself worthy of her love.
Damn his pride!
Had he believed, had he trusted, he might have chosen the same path as Julian Lafever. Alas, it had taken two hundred years and a pair of headstrong twins to help him see the truth.
And one nagging old crone who had loved enough to sacrifice her own eternity to curse/bless their whole family.
But now he understood. He had brought this fate upon himself with his pride and blindness.
Only he could make amends.
But the task before him still seemed impossible as he watched Breanne draw her knees up under the covers and make notations with a writing tool in her book.
She had not bothered drawing the curtains, and he gazed down into the street that was coming to life with daytime activity, stared at her car with the mysterious technological device that worried him and knew that if he accomplished nothing else in his death, he must find a way to reach this girl.
Finally setting the book aside, Breanne slipped under the blankets and snuggled into her pillows with a sigh. Gabriel glanced at the book she had left open on her night table. Some sort of journal. He stared at it and frowned, something niggling at the back of his brain….
Then inspiration struck.
Why had he not thought of this before?
Would that he could prove to belle grand-mère even parlor tricks could serve a noble purpose. What nobler purpose was there than warning their headstrong descendent of danger?
UNDER THE PRETENSE of taking a lunch break, Lucas left the den. Hopping inside Max’s car, he wove through traffic to a nearby riverfront park, where he found a picnic table and unpacked his laptop computer.
He logged on to the Web via satellite uplink and maneuvered his way to the Orleans Parish law-enforcement Web site to run an active search of violators.
He typed in Bree’s name, race and age, then waited.
No match found.
The reply blinked on the screen in bold text, and while he hadn’t expected to find any prior criminal record or outstanding warrants on her, he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t find a restraining order on file against someone else—someone who would leave marks on her face.
That was the name he wanted.
There was nothing in Bree’s character to lead him to believe she would have been involved in some sort of domestic abuse or with some unsavory character.
When he Googled her name, he came up empty again, so, flipping open his cell phone, Lucas speed-dialed his personal assistant, Lorelei, who answered on the second ring.
“Well, hello, stranger,” her cheery voice rang out over the connection. “You ever coming home?”
“Verdict’s still out. You ever think of relocating to New Orleans?”
“Only if there are more good-looking single men than available women.”
Lucas laughed. After going through a nasty divorce last year, Lorelei had recently declared her mourning period over. In her midthirties, she was attractive and incredibly efficient, with a biological clock admittedly ticking louder each day.
“I’ll check while I’m here,” he offered. One thing was for sure, he wouldn’t let Lorelei get away. She was the reason he could work in riverfront parks and on Pacific bluffs and extend vacations long past his return flights. “I need Shawn Danko’s direct line.”
Shawn Danko was Lucas’s contact person with the FBI, an associate deputy director he’d worked with while rewriting the software for the National Crime Information Database.
As with all his contacts, Lucas didn’t travel with private numbers. He preferred the safety of his encrypted software inside his office. Client confidentiality. Wouldn’t do to have his laptop stolen and some overeager hacker break his encrypted algorithms to find the private numbers of seriously top-level names in the nation’s law-enforcement agencies.
Lorelei sent it via encryption directly to Lucas’s laptop, and when his e-mail server flag popped up, he said, “I’ll give you a call if I run across Mr. Right.”
He severed the connection and dialed Shawn Danko.
“Why do I know you must want something from me, Russell?” the associate deputy director asked gruffly.
“Your balls are itching?”
“That and you don’t call to chat out of the blue.”
“I need you to run someone through our baby. Unless you want to provide the protocols so I can do it myself.”
“Oh, you’re a laugh a minute. Let me get there.” During the pause, Lucas could hear the muffled sounds of a busy office. Then everything went quiet, as if Shawn had made it to his office and shut the door behind him. “All right, go.”
“Breanne Addison. Provide a search string for the parishes around New Orleans. I want to know if she comes up anywhere in the system.”
“You know what’s coming next.”
“Yeah, yeah. I have only the most honorable of intentions.”
“How honorable? You’re asking me to lay my job on the line by abusing my security clearance.”
“You’re an associate deputy director, and I wrote the program. That’s got to count for something.”
“Only if you give me a damn good reason.”
Lucas stared out at the river, where a bayou cruise boat pulled away from the dock, and voiced a truth that felt both strange and right. “I’m getting involved with this incredible woman and I think she’s in trouble.”
Shawn snorted. “Involved? Incredible? Shit, Russell. You’re the one in trouble.”
“No argument there.”
There was a beat of silence on the other end. “Well, not even national security can stand in the way of love, and I’d know, having been married…how many times is it now?”
“Four the last I heard.”
“She is.”
“Then hang on and let me see what comes up. You won’t mind if I don’t want to leave an electronic trail?”
“Not a bit.”
The line went silent, and Lucas watched a bayou cruise boat maneuver past a tourist steamer that sat at anchor waiting for the lunch crowd to disembark from the two-hour-long ride. Across the river he could see an industrial barge emerging from under the bridge.
Business as usual on the Mississippi. The whole scene struck a familiar and long-forgotten chord inside him. He’d grown up next to this river, sailing and fishing with his folks and Max, watching the banks change and grow as the years passed.
Lucas had visited home often over the years since he’d left, so how come he hadn’t missed the place until now?
Or did this feeling have more to do with meeting the woman who made him feel as if he’d come home?
Only a few minutes passed before Shawn came back on the line. “You got something. Orleans Parish. Three years ago.”
Lucas stared out into the busy river, the noon sun glinting off the water, sparking flashes on the muddy current, while Shawn relayed a list of priors from a local con man.
“Small-fry organized crime. Racketeering, commercialized vice, illegal gambling. Nothing stuck until three years ago when some gaming scam he was running went south. He skipped town and left behind your girl to take the heat.”
“Was she involved?”
“They didn’t cut her any slack, from what I can see. They wanted her ex in a big way and the investigation went on for months. She came up squeaky-clean. You’ve heard it all before. Young girl gets involved with a high-rolling loser. You wrote the program to track down the losers, remember?”
But they were talking about Bree here. “Who’s the bum?”
“You know what I want to hear.”
“Yeah, yeah. I have only honorable intentions.”
“No thoughts about revenge? Defending the lady’s honor or any other crazy shit like that?”
Going All Out Page 15