French Quarter

by Stella Cameron

  Roy sniffed the liquor in Chris’s glass and set it down again. “It’s going to be a wild night. This place is a hellhole this time of year.”

  “Yep. Even the bugs are too smart to come out of the shade.”

  “I’m glad you decided to come to me.”

  The message was implicit. Roy was glad Chris had come to Florida when the floor dropped out of his life. “I came to Key West,” Chris said. “Bottom of the world as I know it. End of the world. No place farther to run. You just happen to live here.” Only partially true. He’d needed to be with Roy.

  “Thanks. You’re still one helluva piano man. Know that?”

  Chris glanced past his brother and winced. The world’s least likely bartender had arrived, a waif of a woman with a limp he tried not to watch. “Your other charity case is here,” he said.

  “What?” Roy looked over his shoulder and grinned. “Sonnie. Good. I told you she’d come. And she’s no charity case.”

  “You took her on in your slowest season because of her vast experience in the business?”

  “Just talk to her, damn it. And keep your thoughts to yourself. She’s special—not that you would understand the finer things of life—and Sonnie’s one of the finer things. So hold yourself back. One of your wiseass snarls and she’ll bolt.”

  “Snarls? You malign me. Anyway, it’s past my bedtime. Give the lady my apologies. Explain I’ve got a headache.” He kept on playing because he wanted to. He fought against letting music trap him, but it always won in the end. Damn thing was that it quieted the gnawing in his gut, and he didn’t want it to quiet; he wanted to feel it, needed tο feel it.

  “Hey, Sonnie,” Roy called. “Come on over and meet my brother.”

  “Shit,” Chris muttered.

  “Cut it out,” Roy said under his breath. “If you want incentive, I took her on because I’ve got a feeling about her, okay? She wasn’t looking for a job; she was drinking tea next door and minding her own business. She was there every day for a week, and what I saw in her face scared me.”

  “What—”

  “She’s barely hanging on. That’s what I saw.” Roy unfurled a wide grin. “Storm’s rolling in, Sonnie. Did you get wet?”

  Chris stopped playing and crossed his arms.

  The woman needed a good meal. Α lot of good meals. “Not really,” she said. He couldn’t place her accent, or almost lack of one.

  “Feels like a doozy coming,” Roy said, rubbing his hands together in a manner Chris knew was a sign of nervousness. “Meet Christian J. Talon. Chris, this is Sonnie Giacano.”

  He hadn’t known her last name before. Sounded familiar but didn’t ring any bells yet. He rose to his feet and stuck his hand over the piano. “Hi, Sonnie.” He’d seen her several times, but never up close. “Time we met formally.”

  She shook, her grip surprisingly firm. “Hi.” Her grip was the only thing about her that didn’t seem shaky right now. She was fair, not exactly blond, just fair. Fair hair and skin. Thin face. All cheekbone. And a way of bowing her head and looking up at you with big eyes that were dark. Dark what, he wasn’t sure. The fact that she was smiling didn’t immediately occur to him; when it did, it was too late to smile back.

  Roy cleared his throat. “Well, I’ll leave you two to get to know each other better.”

  When Chris opened his mouth to compliment his brother on his smoothness, he got a glare that induced him to change his mind. Roy walked away.

  Chris stood on his side of the piano.

  Sonnie Giacano stood on hers.

  He took up the bourbon and sipped, narrowing his eyes against cigarette smoke that held its own even against the wind. “Roy suggested—”

  “We should meet. Yeah, I know. Roy’s full of great ideas.” That earned him a very direct stare. Maybe her eyes were very dark blue. They made him uncomfortable—not easy to do.

  “You’d prefer that we don’t talk?” She ran the fingers of her left hand through hair cut to go back from her face. “Of course you would.”

  Now he was supposed to argue with her. Tough. “Roy gets some strange ideas. Comes from living down here too long.”

  He got another stare and wasn’t sure how he felt about his reaction. Mildly interested, maybe?

  “You aren’t like your brother, are you?”

  He digested her words. “Gay, you mean?”

  Her face flushed. “You know Ι don’t mean that. Ι was thinking that he’s a genuinely nice guy who wants to make the world happy.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  She bowed her head again, looked up at him again.

  His stomach did something it hadn’t done in a long time: flipped. Definitely interesting.

  “I didn’t mean to be rude,” she said. “This was a bad idea. You must be embarrassed. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t get embarrassed.”

  “I’m still sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” He was being a jerk. “I’m the one who’s sorry. My social skills are a bit rusty. Will you join me for a drink?”

  She shook her head and said, “Νo, thank you.” Then she glanced toward the bar, toward Roy and Bo, who were both watching. “Um, well, I am thirsty. Lemonade would be nice, but I won’t keep you long.”

  “Lemonade?” She’d sit and drink with him to please his brother. Great. “Lemonade for the lady, and a refill for me,” he called to Roy and wiggled his empty glass in the air. “A view seat windward? Or something more intimate?”

  “View, please. I like the wind.”

  And she didn’t like even a suggestion of being somewhere intimate with him.

  He led the way to a ringside table onto the street. They sat down facing each other, but not looking at each other. Chris peered across the street, at the bars and shops they faced, and sensed Sonnie doing the same. Somewhere a door or window slammed. Palm crowns chattered together, and their trunks were swaying black wands against an even blacker sky.

  “Lemonade.” Roy was beside them, setting a tall glass in front of Sonnie. “Bourbon.” Chris’s drink was exchanged.

  “Enjoy.”

  Sonnie made lines on the side of her sweating glass. Droplets fell into fine grains of coral sand that had blown onto the table. She said, “You play well.”

  “I used to.” He used to do a lot of things well.

  “Sounded good to me.”

  “How long have you been in Key West?” He was still a good boor.

  “Not long. Couple of weeks.”

  “Why did you come?”

  “Unfinished business.”

  He hadn’t expected an answer like that. “Sounds serious.”

  “Ιt is. It is to me.”

  Maybe he didn’t want to knοw more. Or maybe he did want to knοw because he was naturally curious. He sure as hell didn’t want to get involved.

  ‘‘I lived here before. For three years. I…I left last winter.”

  “Why?”

  She looked startled. “Because we…I had some problems.”

  “Uh-huh.” He nodded, kept on nodding. Where was he supposed to go from here? He’d like to slip out of the back door and down to the two-room guest house he now called home.

  “Roy said he thought you could help me,” she said in a rush. “He said you’re a detective and—”

  “Whoa.” Chris held up one hand, and used the other to take his glass to his lips. He sucked a mouthful of bourbon, more to buy thinking time than because he was thirsty. Not that thirsty had much to do with drinking bourbon.

  Sonnie whatever-her-name-was had gotten enthusiastic enough to lean across the table. Her lips remained parted. When she flushed a little she was pretty in a doleful way.

  Α scar in front of her left ear continued past her jaw to her neck. There was a fairly new pinkness to it. It wasn’t pretty.

  “I used to be a detective,” he told her, and sent his oh-so busy brother a glare. “I retired.”

  “Retired?” Her fair brows fashioned a frown. “You’re not old
enough to retire.”

  “Thirty-six is way past old enough to retire from—” He whistled tunelessly. He’d almost said he was old enough to retire from hell, but she didn’t need to know anything personal about him.

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice was small now. “I guess I misunderstood Roy. Not his fault. I tend to misunderstand a lot of things.” She gave a laugh that was nothing but a puff of air.

  “Blame Roy. I do whenever I can. He likes it. Gives him something to feel indignant about.”

  She wasn’t finding him funny.

  “Hey, don’t look so beaten,” Chris said. “You should be glad. Who wants to hang out with detectives? Slime of the earth.”

  “I need some help,” she said very quietly.

  Chris was grateful she didn’t follow the statement up with one of her deep looks.

  “Don’t we all?” he said, and felt like the heel he was.

  Sonnie nodded slowly. A heart-shaped gold locket, very small and fine and hanging from a thin chain, settled in the hollow of her neck. She was all shadows and air and…softness.

  She was soft, and gentle, and whipped enough to keep on talking to a tough, unapproachable man who had already caused more than enough pain in other people’s lives. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? Forgive me for being rude—or rough, or whatever I am.”

  “I don’t care how rough and rude you are. Roy told me you’re a detective. Α private detective. You take οn cases for people. Investigate things. He said you’re very good at what you do when you want to be.” Her eyes did that thing again, damn it. “When he got me to agree to talk to you, I didn’t want to. I was embarrassed. Now I see you aren’t interested in more cases. ‘Retired,’ is your way of saying it. Because I already bore you. That’s because you can pick and choose, isn’t it?”

  “Well—”

  “Yes, well, I’m a good case. And I want you to take me on because it’s not going to be easy. D’you understand?”

  “No.” No, he surely didn’t understand.

  “Something awful happened to me. I don’t know how, but I do know when. And I think there’s a why, too. And I don’t just mean it happened because things happen. It could have been…I just don’t know if I should accept the story I was told about it all. There could be something else.”

  Chris pushed aside his bοurbοn. “That, ma’am, is as clear as mud. I’m sorry for your trouble. I wish you luck finding some peace. But I’m not your knight on a charger.”

  “Are you a private investigator?”

  Hell and damnation, he’d get Roy for this.

  “You are. That’s what you do here in Key West. You find things out. You tracked down that man who said his boy had been kidnapped. It turned out the father had locked his own son up at home all the time, and—”

  “I don’t talk about old cases.”

  “You aren’t retired, are you?”

  He made himself smile and knew the result wasn’t inviting. “Why would you want to hire someone who doesn’t want to be hired?”

  When the lady’s stubborn streak surfaced, she looked different, alive. “I want to know why you’ve decided—without even finding out what I need—that I’m too boring to waste your valuable time on.”

  Rather than start to relax, he felt the tension tighten. “You aren’t boring. You’re just…You’re inconvenient.” Wow, he was refining his insult skills to new heights.

  “Okay.” She was giving up. Her fine-boned hands curled on the scarred top of the many-times-lacquered table. “You’ve got enough work already. I understand.”

  He hadn’t taken a case in a month. “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed myself on you like that.”

  Shit. “You didn’t push. You’re worried is all. I understand.”

  “It’s not fair to expect strangers to care about your problems. I can handle it. I don’t know what came over me.”

  His brother was what came over her. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  Why would he care? He didn’t. Just the old observation habit. “Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have to, Sonnie. Life will do it to you without any help. Feel that wind?”

  “Uh-huh.” Her hair flipped across her face and she pushed it back. “Funny how storms here make you excited, even while you’re scared.”

  He looked at her again. Refined. That was the word. She looked refined and fit in around here about as well as any lady would. But she wasn’t cool, this one. Nope, her words, the little things she said, gave her away. There was some fire behind the delicate exterior. Not that he cared about those things anymore.

  “Don’t let me keep you,” she said.

  “You aren’t.”

  She wore the collar of her white shirt turned up. When she turned her head, a point brushed her sharp chin. There wasn’t a whole lot of her in that shirt, but what there was might be very nice. He hadn’t had a chance to study the rest of her before they sat down. The limp was something he’d like to know about.

  “Why did you say you were retired? Really, I mean?”

  “I am. I did. Ι thought you were talking about something else. When I was on the force. I used to be. Up north. I didn’t retire; I quit.” End of topic, and that was more than he’d said to anyone in the months since he’d arrived on Roy’s doorstep.

  Sonnie Giacano was staring at him. Not a comfortable experience.

  He tried a real smile. “Felt like a change of pace.”

  She looked at his mouth.

  Chris watched her face. “Sometimes you need to accept that it’s time to move on.” That wouldn’t earn him a place among the great philosophers.

  “You’re hurting, aren’t you?”

  “What?” Hurting? How did you tell a woman who was obviously feeling something she didn’t like, that you’d quit feeling anything at all? “Nο, I’m not hurting.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m not hurting, Sonnie.”

  “This is a strange conversation, isn’t it? Between strangers, I mean.”

  He considered. “Not so strange, given the reason we’re here.”

  “If you love someone, you’ll do anything. You’ll lie to yourself. You’ll lie to other people—just to give yourself an excuse to keep on believing in the other person.”

  Α lot of thoughts came to him. Not one would make it past his tongue.

  “When you run out of excuses, the darkness opens up at your feet. You walk on the edge of a hole. Then maybe you have to get away. Maybe you have someone else you’ve got to put first.”

  “Is this code for your being in some sort of man trouble?”

  She shook her head once and looked up at him. “There aren’t any men in my life. Not anymore. This conversation feels too personal.”

  “Trouble is always personal.” She was an enigma. If he didn’t know how dangerous caring about someone could be, he’d care about Sonnie’s problems. It was way too dangerous.

  “You don’t have too many cases, do you?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “It’s me. You’re one of those people who can only work with things that interest them. I respect that.”

  “You’re interesting.”

  They both studied the buildings across the street again. “Duval Street,” she said quietly, “where the bars hardly ever close—except for the Rusty Nail.”

  Roy and Bo believed in as close to a regular schedule as they could grab. “That’s right,” Chris said.

  “Why did you quit? Really?”

  “I was a lousy detective.”

  Her incredulous laugh annoyed him.

  “That’s not what I hear,” she said. “Why are you so hard on yourself?”

  If he’d needed a therapist he’d have found one a long time ago. “I’m not hard on myself. I’m a realist. I hope you find someone who can really help you, because you’re nice. Very nice. And you deserve better than me. I’m washed-up. Used up. I’m working at ge
tting my own shit together.” Offending ladies wasn’t a favorite pastime, but she’d hit too many nerves he wanted permanently dead. “I’m no good anymore. To anyone.” Least of all himself. He considered finishing his drink. He didn’t want it.

  “Can I do something to help you?” she asked, her voice so low he only just caught the words.

  Pity. “Save the help for yourself,” he said, and stood up. “I hope you find someone to take on your case. To tell the truth, I’ve kind of priced myself out of the general marketplace. You might even say I’ve become too dangerous to afford.”

  *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Stella Cameron’s upcoming paranormal romantic suspense novel, Darkness Bound.

  In the Spring of 2012 I will unleash the Chimney Rock series—sexy, suspenseful, paranormal romances set in the wilds of Washington State.

  Something is hiding on Whidbey Island…something that only comes out at night…

  After her husband’s death, Leigh Kelly is drawn to the quiet woods of Whidbey Island, and the town of Chimney Rock. But island life isn’t as peaceful as it seems, and Leigh can’t shake the feeling that something in the woods is watching her.

  Please turn the page for a sneak peek of the first book in the series, Darkness Bound, available March 2012.

  DARKNESS BOUND

  First volume of The Chimney Rock Books

  by

  Stella Cameron

  Chapter 1

  “We’re going to highjack this woman, body and soul,” Niles Latimer said. “I feel like crap about it but we don’t have a choice–unless we give up and wait to die, one-by-one.”

  Standing in the bed of his truck beside a small stone cottage, he spoke telepathically to his second-in-command, Sean Black, who was several miles away, leaping through great, dark trees on agile feet. Sean was in his werehound form and at the speed he moved would arrive momentarily.

  Niles paused, flexed his shoulders. From behind him he heard the familiar sounds of the powerful animal grazing past branches, using the dense forest as cover to allow him to move freely, hidden from any inconvenient and curious eyes. Even in his human form, Niles wasn’t tempted to turn around when Sean arrived–werehounds recognized each other instinctively.