by Nancy Gideon
Colin cast a subtle glance around them, noting the interest and not liking it. He lowered his voice a notch. “It’s for their own good. They don’t know what they’re up against.”
“What? Being crushed between two power-hungry clans? I think they’ll figure it out.”
“That’s not what we’re doing!” He struggled to control his volume and his temper, but the fire brightened in his glare. “We’re saving them.”
“From who? The boogeymen up North? But then who’s gonna save them from us when we get to be the biggest bads in town?”
“Keep your voice down,” Colin gritted out. “This is a strategic city. We can’t let it fall.”
"These aren't our people," Rico corrected angrily. "They’re Savoie’s. What right do we have to interfere?"
"Every right when they can't lead themselves into anything but chaos."
“Then teach them to take care of themselves. They don’t need us butting into their business. They’ve got a pretty good system in place and some damn fine fighters.”
“And all of them together couldn’t take me down! What chance are they gonna have against those Trackers Savoie was telling us about.” Just the name spoken out loud brought a hush to the tables around them. “Our family was raised for this, for the fight, for these odds. They’re just disorganized brawlers who don’t understand their enemy. They’ll be torn apart without someone to lead them, and Savoie’s been off his game.”
"And where would you lead them? Any direction Cale and Rueben Guedry tell you? What about what they want, what they need? Did any of you think about that before muscling in with your big ideas?"
"That's not your problem, is it?"
"Maybe I'm making it my problem. Someone should make you listen before you trample all over their way of life with your better plan."
Their raised voices sharpened the attention of those about them as Colin rumbled, "You've never had anything to say that's worth listening to."
"These folks might listen." A pause then Rico lunged for the throat. "Mia listened. And she liked what she heard."
Colin went still, that still that came in the eye of a hurricane before it ripped up everything with unholy devastation. A very quiet, "What have you been saying to Mia?"
"That maybe she picked the wrong brother if she wants to get things done."
A spasm tightened Colin's jaw. "Since when have you been any good for anything except getting in the way? You're not going to get in mine this time. You back the hell off, Red. Don’t you sniff around my mate or my business."
“Maybe that Terriot-to-be would be better off if I was the father.”
* * * * *
"Oh, hell," Jacques groaned as the first fist flew.
Colin's punch sent Rico reeling off the bar stool, but it didn't put him down. He came back with a brutal uppercut that lifted the mighty Terriot prince off his feet and sent him stumbling. The room went silent in one collectively held breath as Colin rubbed his jaw, his eyes flashing red. With startling speed, he barreled into his brother, a runaway street car, driving him to the floor and sending them both skidding as fists and elbows flew.
Amber gripped her boss's beefy arm. "Do something!"
The bar owner snatched his Louisville Slugger from under the counter and strode out onto the floor. He reached over Colin, using the bat across his heaving chest to lever him away from the hamburger he was making of his brother's face.
"Knock it off," LaRoche growled, "or I'll line drive your attitude all the way back to Tahoe!"
Colin quieted, breaths still seething from him as he watched his brother roll around on the floor trying to get his bearings and his knees under him. Rico was down but his hot glare said he wasn’t yet out.
Amber started around the bar but her boss halted her mission of mercy with a stern look.
"I've had about all of you boys I'm going to tolerate," Jacques told Colin as he pushed him away with a forceful emphasis. "Take it out back. Do what you want out there, but don't you bring that crap in here again. I don't care how well you tip or who your brother is. This is my place, and you'll respect it like it was your mama."
"You'd have to know who your mama is for that to matter," Colin flung at his brother with the same brutal impact as his knuckles.
"You shut up!" Rico snarled, scrambling, about to lunge when Jacques caught him by the collar in a near strangling grip.
But Colin wasn’t finished either, striking with words that damaged the way his fists never could.
"It's the truth. You're not one of us. Your mama sold you to our family. You don't deserve to have our name. You belong here with these leftovers, with no pride or pedigree. Live it up, fool. Turn your back on us, 'cuz when you’ve spent what’s in your pocket, that’s all you’re getting from our family. You hear me!”
"Enough!” the bar owner roared when Rico’s short fuse began to sizzle. “Get out of my place before I have your king drag you home muzzled and on a chain!"
Both Terriots went still and sober at his reference. Finally, Colin eased down, a pressure cooker venting steam.
"Sorry for the disruption. No need to bother our king," Colin offered in gruff apology. He clasped Rico’s arm in a no-nonsense grip and dragged his brother out the back door.
* * * * *
Once in the alley, Colin leaned Rico up against the dumpster, holding him up, studying his battered features.
"You okay?" he asked. "Wanted to make it look good."
Rico spat blood and muttered, "If it looked any better I'd be catching the breeze off my funeral pyre tomorrow. Damn, you hit hard."
"We needed to sell it hard." A tight, grim smile. “You kinda pissed me off. And it felt good."
"Next time, I get to beat you up."
Colin snorted. "You clear on what you need to do? For the record, I didn’t agree with Rueben bringing you in."
No surprise there. "I’ll do my part. Don’t worry about me."
"That’d be a first." Colin pushed him away, warning, "Don’t screw it up. You be careful, Red, or I'll really kick your butt." That warning held a little less bite. His brows knit, betraying concern without meaning to. "You gonna be okay?"
“I'll be fine. I got this."
“Just to be sure.” Colin smiled as he lifted the lid on the dumpster, inciting a yelp.
"Col, don't you toss me in there!"
He let the lid drop, the sound echoing through the alley, then gave the container a few kicks for noisy measure before nodding once. “You’re on your own. Don’t do nothing dumb,” Colin added before disappearing into the darkness.
With a heartfelt groan, Rico eased down to the uneven bricks. Before his sore eyes were all the way closed, he heard the rear door open. He held in his smile, loving it when a good, if painful, plan came together.
“Look at you.”
Rico glanced up through the eye he could open, offering a wry, “It was kinda done to me. Penance from last night. Best to just get it over with.”
Amber knelt beside him on the grimy bricks, cupping his chin to survey the damage, her touch warm and gentle. “And is it? Over with?”
Rico sighed heavily. “Yeah, I think so. I think that last bridge has just been burned.” When her expression clouded in concern, he shrugged. “It’s for the best. Time I started growing out from under his shadow.”
Instead of arguing in an offer of sympathy, she murmured, “I think you’re right. Still, he was wrong to say what he did, even if it was in retaliation. You’re family. You should act like it.”
He shrugged, not believing her but unwilling to get into it further.
“Can you get up?”
Rico levered to get his feet under him but had to rely embarrassingly on her assistance to stand.
“Come back inside until you get your sea legs.”
A rough laugh. “I don’t think I’ll be very welcome by your boss.”
“We’ll go into the office. You can get cleaned up there.” She tugged, and he let her de
termination guide him into the large room just inside the back door. A huge one-way window overlooked the club floor, where business had gone back to usual. Rico sank down onto one of the leather couches where Colin and their cop brother-in-law Alain Babineau had once discussed a debt their family owed Alain. He pressed to his swelling jaw the cold cloth Amber had brought from the small bathroom before letting her take it from him to efficiently mop away the blood as if he were her child. That’s probably how she viewed him through those really lovely dark eyes. Large, expressive eyes fringed with a feathering of thick lashes. Eyes that saw right through him.
“So,” she asked, making him wince as she wiped his torn lip, “what are you going to do now?”
A shrug. “Squander what I have left then crawl home on my belly to beg for Cale’s forgiveness.”
“A noble plan.”
He squinted his good eye at her sarcasm. “It’s not like I have any marketable skills.
“You sell yourself short. Your name alone could open any number of doors here in New Orleans.”
“I’m tired of riding on my name.” He snatched the cloth from her and tossed it aside. “I’m tired of being that unreliable nothing in a family of somebodies.”
“The only one who can change that opinion is you. If you really want to.”
He shook his head and laughed. “You don’t know me. You’re always looking for something in me that’s not there. Why is that?”
“I do know you.” Her fingertips brushed the bold angle of his jaw. “You’re strong and kind and loyal to those you love. If you have a fault, it’s caring too much about them and not enough about yourself.”
Rico held himself still, fighting the desire to push into her palm for more undeserved praise and affection. She’d supply that and anything he asked for. He could tell by the lambent heat in her stare and the longing in her lingering caress. He’d taken advantage of it once out of weakness and vowed not to do so again.
“I’d rather you not stop by for a while.”
As he fit his hand over hers, intending to gently but firmly guide it away from where he didn’t dare let it linger while his mood was so low and his will so needy, a throat cleared. Rico tore his gaze from those trusting pools of plenty to the three figures at the door.
The three who’d chatted him up at the bar.
Game on.
Chapter 4
“Got a minute to make some talk?” the Mohawked spokesman ventured.
“Appears I’ve got nothing but time.” Rico waved them in while looking to Amber. “Your boss mind if we use his room?”
She stepped away from him with a wry smile. “As long as you use it more gently than his bar.” She glanced at the threesome. “Can I get you boys a beer?” At their quick affirmative, she took four from the mini-fridge and gestured for them to take a seat on the pair of couches, delivering the cold ones before saying, “I’ve got to get back to work.”
She left quickly without another glance at the battered Terriot.
The long-necks sighed open, and all drank deeply before T-Ray put it bluntly. “You mean what you said out there?”
Wincing as alcohol met ragged lip, Rico asked, “Which part?”
“All of it.”
“I usually tend to. That’s what gets me in trouble.”
They echoed his rough chuckle. Then T-Ray spoke plain. “You stood for us against your family. Why would you do that?”
“Just because we share the name doesn’t mean we all agree on our intentions.”
“Which are?”
“Have you met us?” Rico laughed. “We tend to think we can use, buy, take or control everything we see to our best advantage. Your location is a transportation advantage. It’s a crossroads to our territory, and a water highway into that of our enemies. My brother may speak a virtuous line about for the good of all, but it comes down to for the good of our people. Same with the Guedrys. If this becomes a battleground, none of us are going to protect you over our interests. That’s all I’m saying. You need to protect your own.”
“Show us how to protect ourselves. How to fight them.”
Rico laughed then clutched at his bruised side. “Me? What can I show you? Didn’t you see what happened out there? My brother wiped the floor with me.”
“Only because you let him,” Lamar Poe, the mournful-looking one, said quietly. “You held back. We need someone who knows the difference between charging in and holding back. Fools rush in, and whatever you might pretend to be, Mr. Terriot, you are no fool.”
First time he’d ever heard that. “You don’t know me well enough to trust me.”
“We don’t have to,” T-Ray assured him. “She does.”
Rico twisted, hugging his ribs, to look where he pointed, at Amber James behind the bar, his confusion obvious.
“She trusts you enough to leave with you and that, my friend, is a mighty, mighty rare occasion. That’s good enough for us.”
That information startled . . . and pleased him. He was the exception? Suddenly, that carried more weight than his brother’s plan. “What do you think I could possibly do for you?”
“Show us how to fight, how to stand.”
“Don’t you already have a group of fellas that guard the gates?”
“And they’d be enough if they’d work together.”
“And you want me to whip them into shape overnight? Why would they listen to anything I said?”
“You’re a Terriot. You may keep to yourselves but the rumors about your discipline and brutality are legend. Nobody in their right mind would mess with one of you, especially after what your brother done the other night. Twenty to one odds? Only an idiot would take one of you on and expect to win. And they won’t forget how you stepped in before anyone got dead, and took control of the situation. I wouldn’ta thought anyone could curb that crazy one, but you did, and did it without more bloodshed. Whether you know it or not, you’re a hero to some around here.”
“A hero.”
He snorted, but something deep down caught fire and started to burn bright and warm. Acceptance. Respect. Something no one had ever showered on Frederick Terriot, middle prince, the Prince of Fools in the House of Terriot.
Very soberly, so there’d be no mistake, Rico told them, “I won’t teach you how to kill my family.”
“We’re not warriors, Mr. Terriot,” Donny Bastian, the youngest of the three spoke quietly. “We’re not going after you and yours. We just want to keep our families safe in their homes. Can you help us do that? Please. I got a mama, a kid brother and sisters. I want to keep them safe and alive. That’s all. Show me how to do that.”
Suddenly, Rico was seeing his own brothers, both younger and older, who were gone, felt the weight of that emptiness and loss as never before. He thought of Colin’s sisters, of Kip’s close-knit family, of Amber James and her daughter, and of what he would do to protect them. Anything. Absolutely anything.
“What is it that you want me to do?”
“Teach us,” T-Ray said. “Train us. We know how to fight. We just don’t know how to follow. We don’t know how to work together.”
A flood of excuses rose like water against their protective levee, but not a single reason surfaced for him to say no to what T-Ray Roux asked, what Guedry and Colin asked.
“How many are in this Patrol of yours?”
“Sixty, seventy. More coming every day.”
“It needs to be hundreds who move as one if you’re going to hold this city. Hundreds who listen to one voice.”
“Will that voice be yours, Mr. Terriot?” T-Ray asked.
The three held collective breaths, looking to him. To him!
“Yes.”
* * * * *
As he piloted his motorcycle down the crowded streets of the Quarter, the sense of isolation stole over Rico like clouds over the fingernail moon above. Though he’d always felt on the outer edge of his band of brothers, never had he been beyond the protection of their ranks.
&nb
sp; Things were in motion. He was in. Now, all he had to do, with help from Cale’s friend T-Ray, was find the mole planted by the North within their ranks and provide that information to Rueben and his brother without getting himself killed by that informant . . . or by those he was supposed to train who had every reason to want him dead.
What could possibly go wrong?
* * * * *
Though the three locals returned to their table, Rico hadn’t reappeared to finish his drink or wish her good night. Amber buffed the bar top to a mirror-like shine, motions brisk, leaning into the job with a fierce concentration. A thankless job because no matter how glossy she made it, the underlying scars and countless rings would soon reappear to spoil the perfect look she tried to maintain. Rico was like that surface. Though dazzled by the shine, she knew what lay beneath. She knew, no matter how hard she worked to cover up that fact, the damage had already been done, the flaws she tried to overlook forever marred what she longed to embrace.
Frederick Terriot was a prince to her Cinderella barmaid. Behind that careless grin and sad eyes lay what his clan made him. Royalty. Rich, hard, proud, thoughtless as well as vulnerable, and as far above her and her dreams as his soaring mountaintop to their bayou. Men like Frederick Terriot didn’t truly see females like her, not as equals, not as feeling, wanting, sharing partners. He’d use them for the moment to fill a need, not a permanent void, not because he was cruel or insensitive, but because of who he’d been raised to be.
And that would never, ever change, no matter what she hoped or Mia Geudry vowed, no matter what those soft, seducing lips might promise.
Her heart carried more wounds than her body, her mind not quite as many as her soul. Still, foolishly, she might have taken a chance on this once in a lifetime prince if she were the only one at risk. But she had more to protect than just herself.
Amber reminded herself of that as she guided her sleepy daughter from the care of her neighbor to her child’s already made-up bed on the couch and watched the joy of her life snuggle safely into those covers. No hero had provided her with that child. No prince was going to protect and provide for her. That precious job was hers alone. She’d trust it to no other.