by JoAnn Ross
"What a surprise." Her sweet smile couldn't quite conceal her own sarcasm. She exhaled a resigned breath. "All right. They may not exactly be you."
He'd learned not to trust her easy acquiescence.
She began rifling through a rack right next to them and pulled out a pair of tweed pants with suede inserts on the inside of the thighs. "How about these?"
"I categorically refuse to wear the same pants Elizabeth Taylor wore in National Velvet." Those were even worse than the prissy pink shirt.
"It's the Equestrian look. I saw a report about it on Fashion Emergency. It's predicted to be a very popular trend this fall."
He folded his arms. "Do I look like a trendy sort of guy to you?"
"No," she admitted. "You look like a cop."
"I am a cop. And I'm willing to play along, within limits, but from here on in, I'm picking out my own clothes."
"Nothing that requires a tie. And those wing tips have to go."
Did every damn thing have to be up for negotiation? "I can live with that. But I don't do tassels." He'd seen her eyeing the tasseled cordovan loafers when they'd first come in the store.
"No tassels," she agreed.
That settled, Finn went hunting at a mid price department store down the street. "Don't you want to try them on?" Julia asked as he grabbed a pair of jeans from the first rack they came upon.
"No need." He scooped up a pair of black T-shirts, then headed over to the shoe department. Although Julia hadn't put a stopwatch on him, she guessed he'd managed to gather up a new wardrobe, including crew sox, in under five minutes.
"They'll fit."
"Why don't you humor me?"
"What the hell do you think I've been doing since you got this cockamamie idea?"
"Please? You're not exactly average size. What if we get back to Blue Bayou and discover they need alterations?"
He cursed without heat. "I don't want to leave you alone."
"I could come in the dressing room with you."
"Yeah, you and me together in an enclosed place with me taking off my clothes. That's about the worst idea you've had yet."
"Haven't you ever heard of restraint, Callahan?"
"Yeah. But it's not a word I'd use in regard to you. Let's go."
She was beginning to learn to recognize when she'd hit the stone wall of Finn Callahan's resistance.
"I'll pay for them," she said when he pulled out his credit card and put it on the sales counter.
"The hell you will."
"You're only buying them because I wanted you to wear something other than that suit." She picked up the AmEx card and put her own down in its place. "So, it's only fair I should pay."
"I've been buying my own clothes for some time." He snatched the green card from her hand, slapped it onto the counter again, and held her platinum one out to her. His expression could have been hacked from granite.
"Oh, do whatever you want." She snatched her card back with a huff. "Though it's ridiculous, since you won't even be wearing them that long."
The salesman's head jerked up like a puppet's, making Julia realize how he'd misinterpreted her statement.
She couldn't resist.
"It's not as if you haven't earned them, sugar," she drawled in the same voice Fancy had used to lure her sister's longtime fiance into that one-night stand before he headed off to war in his newly woven Confederate gray uniform with the snazzy epaulets. "Why, you've already exceeded the money-back satisfaction guarantee Madame Beauregard promised me when I booked your services. It's just amazing what a girl can find in the Yellow Pages these days."
Her finger trailed up the back of his hand, slipping beneath that starched cuff that was still, after an excruciatingly long day, amazingly white and stiff. Nearly as stiff as he'd just gone. "And just think, the night's still young."
From the way Finn signed the charge slip, in a bold, rough scrawl as black as his expression, Julia suspected that she wasn't exactly going to receive a standing ovation for this performance.
"That was real cute," he ground out from between gritted teeth as they left the store.
"I'm sorry." Julia was already regretting her actions, but if only he hadn't been so damn autocratic! "It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing."
Silence.
"You have to admit that clerk's expression was priceless. Who would have guessed that anyone in a town where strippers dance in club windows, women flash their breasts to get Mardi Gras beads tossed to them from a float, and one of the most popular tourist spots is a voodoo museum, could be shocked by anything?"
Thunderheads of frustration darkened his face. "You let the guy think I was a damn . . . gigolo."
"I know. And that was terrible of me." Her smile encouraged him to see the bright side. "But at least he thinks you're a very good gigolo."
Chapter 18
Undeterred by the anger radiating from him in waves, Julia put her arm through his as they walked toward the parked SUV. A green trolley headed toward the Garden District rumbled past, bell clanging. "It's getting late," she said with studied casualness. "What would you say to having dinner before we go back to Blue Bayou?"
Finn assured himself that the only reason he was willing to go along with this obvious stalling tactic was that he was hungry. Also, as good as the inn's fare was, he was getting sick and tired of room service every night. "I suppose you've already made reservations?"
"Of course not. And I'm disappointed you'd even think me capable of such subterfuge, when we both know you're the one in charge."
"Yeah, right." As he watched her curvy butt climb into the Suburban, Finn knew he was getting closer and closer to a line he'd sworn not to cross. A line which, once he was on the other side, he would never be able to go back across.
The damn thing about it, he thought as he twisted the key in the ignition, was that he was having a harder and harder time remembering why that would be such a bad thing.
"I do have a suggestion where we might eat," she said.
"Now there's a surprise," he said dryly.
As her perfume bloomed around them on the warm, sultry air, Finn ignored the little voice in his mind asking if he really thought he was in charge of anything in his life these days. He didn't want to know the answer.
He'd expected her to choose some fancy place with snowy tablecloths, formally dressed condescending waiters, tasseled menus written in French, and ridiculously inflated prices. Instead, they ended up at a crowded, noisy place above a strip joint. The lack of any outdoor sign suggested it catered to locals, and while he didn't do a head count, one glance told him that the place was undoubtedly violating fire department occupancy limits.
The tables crowded together were covered in white butcher paper, the spices in the best gumbo he'd tasted since his mother's were hot, the jazz cool. If he wasn't still so pissed off about the gigolo thing Finn would have been enjoying himself.
"Are you intending to speak to me anytime soon?" Julia asked as the waiter—an African-American who appeared to be at least in his nineties, who'd greeted her with open affection which suggested this was not her first time here—took away their bowls and delivered their entrees: shrimp remoulade for her, a huge platter of etouffee for him.
"I'm not sure you want me to."
"Don't you ever give in to impulse?"
He put his fork down, leaned back in his chair, and looked straight at her mouth. "More often than I'd like lately."
Before she could question that, a female tourist dressed in shorts, a T-shirt in Mardi Gras colors of purple, green and gold that read LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL and sporting a bright yellow perm that made it look as if she'd put a wet finger in a light socket, pushed her way through the crowd to their table.
"I knew it was you!" she crowed. "Why, the minute you came in, I told my husband, that's Amanda from River Road. Didn't I, Leon? Didn't I say it was Amanda?"
"Sure as heck did," the beanpole thin man agreed in a West Texas twang. "Howdy, Miz Amanda." I
f he'd been wearing a cowboy hat, he would have tipped it. "We don't want to be interrupting your supper—"
"Don't be silly, Leon," his wife waved away his apology with a plump hand laden down with turquoise and silver rings. "Why, everyone knows Amanda doesn't eat. I think she's suffering from anorexia," she confided to Finn. "She's been getting skinnier and skinnier ever since she started taking those energy booster pills Dr. Wilder got her hooked on."
"Dr. Wilder used to be married to Amanda's best friend Hope, whose career as a fashion designer was destroyed when Amanda seduced that professor at River Road College into inventing a formula that made that stuck-up Hope's fashions disintegrate during her big important runway show in Paris, which left her so embarrassed and depressed she drowned herself in the Seine, which opened the way for the doctor to marry Amanda. But then he got murdered, leaving Amanda the chief suspect, since they'd been playing doctor themselves for months."
She beamed at Julia. "That suit you wore for your testimony at the trial was just the prettiest thing, and you were so clever to wear pink because it made you look a lot more soft and vulnerable than you are.
"Why, by the time you finished telling your story, you had even the district attorney in tears. And I was bawling my head off. Wasn't I, Leon?"
"She was crying so hard she couldn't cook supper that night," the man confirmed. "We had to eat out at The Chat and Chew."
The woman shoved a cardboard disposable camera toward Finn. "Would you take our picture with Amanda? The girls back home at the bunco babes' club in Rattler's Roost will never believe I actually met her, otherwise."
Finn exchanged a quick glance with Julia, who seemed to repress a sigh, then smiled. Unlike the other ones he'd witnessed, this did not quite reach her remarkable eyes. She stood up beside the woman.
"Not here. Between us . . . Leon, move aside so Amanda can squeeze in." She bumped an ample hip against her husband, nearly pushing him into a waiter carrying a tray of Hurricanes. The waiter's deft steps, as he dodged just in time, saved them all from a rum and passion fruit shower.
"Okay, honey." She flung an arm around Julia's shoulder, as if they'd been best friends since childhood. A woman seated alone at a nearby table obligingly leaned out of the picture frame. "On the count of three, everyone say fromage."
Finn shot the picture, then another, "just in case," the woman instructed. She'd taken back the camera and was on her way toward the door—probably to take it to the nearest Fotomat, Finn figured, when she turned back toward the table.
"Are you anyone?" she demanded on afterthought.
"Non," Finn said, borrowing from his mother's bayou French. "I'm jus' Miz Amanda's Cajun gigolo, doin' my best to make sure she passes herself a good time in our Big Easy."
The woman's eyes widened. "Did you hear that, Leon?" she asked as they waded back through the crowd to the door. "Didn't I tell you that girl was nothing but poor white trash? What sort of woman would hire herself a gigolo? And what kind of man would service women for money?"
If Leon had been given an opportunity to respond, his answer was droned out by the band.
Alone again, those damn pouty lips that had been tormenting him since before he'd been stupid enough to kiss her, curved in a brilliant smile. "Why Agent Callahan, I do believe you shocked her."
"I didn't plan to. It just came out."
"Did you see her face?" Julia laughed. "Maybe you should give into impulse more often."
He considered that. "I don't think so."
"How do you know if you don't try?" The legs of her chair scraped on the wooden floor covered in sawdust as she stood up and held out a hand. "Do you have any idea how long it's been since I've gone dancing?"
Those long legs were close enough he could bite her thigh. Since he was sorely tempted to do exactly that, Finn settled for the lesser of the two evils. Besides, the piano man was pounding away on a raucous Jerry Lee Lewis song that wasn't the least bit conducive to romance. Not that the impulses bombarding his body had anything to do with romance.
It was only sex. A man could live indefinitely without sex. Look at the Dalai Lama. And the pope, though he might not really count since how much temptation could there be when a guy spent all his time in a city pretty much devoid of women?
There had to be other males who managed it, though.
Somewhere in the world.
The dance floor made the rest of the place seem downright roomy. Naturally, instead of staying on the perimeter of the crowd, like any sensible person, she headed straight toward the very center, where bodies were packed together like a tangle of the night crawlers he and his dad used to hunt for bait with a flashlight.
She'd no sooner stopped and turned back toward him when "Great Balls of Fire" segued into a slow, plaintive soul sound.
Terrific. If he hadn't been sitting knee to knee with her since they'd arrived, Finn might have suspected she'd bribed the band just to torture him a little more.
Determined to prove that it didn't take a religious calling to control his dick, Finn yanked her against his chest.
She twined her bare arms around his neck and melted against him like she had during that mind-blowing kiss.
"Mmmm. Nice."
Impossibly, more couples crowded onto the dance floor. Hell, if they got any closer together, she'd be inside his suit. Her nipples felt like little berries against his chest and her stomach pressed against his erection. When desire twisted in his gut and caused a painful tightening in his groin, Finn gritted his teeth and fell back on the mental trick to control rampant teenage lust that Father Dupree had taught his varsity baseball team.
Her fingers absently stroked his neck as she hummed along to the bluesy ballad about love gone wrong. Trying to concentrate on the batting order of the 1975 World Champion Cincinnati Reds wasn't working a damn bit better than it had when he'd was sixteen.
"Favorite Bond line," he said, seeking something, anything to keep his mind off how perfect she felt against him.
"That's hard. There are so many . . . Perhaps when Dimitri Mishkin asks 007 how he wants to be executed, and he complains about there being no chitchat or small talk and says that's the trouble with the world. 'No one takes the time to do a really sinister interrogation anymore. It's a lost art.' I love his dry wit under pressure." She twined her arms more closely around his neck. "How about yours?"
Finn decided this had been a bad idea, as he envisioned the command center getting audiovisual with Bond and Holly Goodhead in the nose cone of the spaceshuttle in Moonraker. The final scene, where Q, when asked what Bond was doing, responded, "I think he's attempting reentry, sir."
"You're right, there's too many to choose."
She continued to sway, humming along with the music and driving him crazy.
"Finn?"
It was the first time she'd called him by his name, and the way it sounded, all soft and breathy, affected him more powerfully than raunchy sexual words cried out in the heat of passion ever had.
“What?”
"I really am sorry I embarrassed you back at that store."
"Forget it." He slid his hands down her back, allowing them to settle against the warm, bare skin at her waist. "It's no big deal. Besides, I got even."
"It's not the same thing. I'm used to people confusing me with Amanda and thinking the worst. But you were upset. You probably won't believe me, but I'm usually much more circumspect. Especially in public, among strangers.
"When I'm with friends, that's different. But even then I can't remember another time when I purposefully set out to make anyone uncomfortable. I mean, one of the things that drives me crazy about Shane's penchant for practical jokes is that they're at the deliberate expense of others, which is one of the few good things about my possible stalker, since it's made him give them up for the time being, but—"
"Would you do something for me?" Finn broke in.
She looked up at him. "What?"
"Shut up."
Assuring himself tha
t he couldn't get into that much trouble on a public dance floor, even in the Big Easy where hedonistic pleasures had been turned into a profitable tourist industry, Finn lowered his mouth to hers.
Unlike his first kiss, which had swept through her like a tropical storm, this was like sliding into a warm lagoon. He took his time, the tip of his tongue skimming along the seam of her lips, encouraging hers to part. Which they did. Willingly. Eagerly.
His clever mouth was devastatingly controlled. And tormentingty slow.
Hurry, she wanted to beg him as he tilted his head, changing the angle of the kiss. Before I remember all the reasons why this would be a mistake.
There'd been so many times over the past days Julia had gotten the feeling Finn could read her mind. But now, if he sensed her need, intuited her impatience, he didn't reveal it. Instead, with slow, sure hands he stroked her back, sending her floating on rising tides of sweet desire.
The smoky room seemed to dissolve, like sea foam beneath a warm sun. She was lost to him. Absolutely, utterly lost. Time stopped; they could have been the only people on the dance floor, on the planet as they swayed together, breaths mingling in a slow, undemanding meeting.
When he began to hum along with the sultry, sad sound of the tenor sax, vibrations thrummed from his mouth deep into her moist, needy core. The heat of his body warmed her from breast to thigh; his mouth continued to seduce her until they seemed of one shared breath as he took her deeper, then deeper still. Then, just when she was on the verge of drowning, he retreated.
She pressed her fingertips against her tingling lips. "Does this mean you forgive me?" she asked when the power of speech returned.
"I've never been one to hold a grudge." He took hold of her hand and kissed her fingertips. "Life's too short. And you taste too damn good."
She shouldn't have had that glass of wine after such a long day. The way he was looking at her made her head reel, her throat go dry, and her knees turn all wobbly.
They'd stopped any pretense at dancing.
He wanted her. Julia didn't need Amanda's extensive experience to know when a man's mind was on sex. And Finn Callahan wasn't just any man.