When I'm With You

by JoAnn Ross

  He’d also been damned relieved that she hadn’t seemed to hold a grudge against him for having taken off to California.

  Which reminded him—he still owed her an explanation.

  No time like the present, he decided.

  Conveniently overlooking the fact that it was eleven-thirty at night, he flipped open his cell phone.

  While Regan Callahan didn’t sound all that thrilled to be awakened for the second night in a row, Nate remained his typically unflappable self.

  “No problem,” he said.

  That little matter taken care of, Gabe left the cabin, climbed into the pirogue tied to the dock, and headed across the wine-dark water toward Blue Bayou.

  And Emma.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Gabe admittedly hadn’t formulated much of a plan about what he’d do after he got to Emma’s house. The one contingency he hadn’t even considered was the notion that she’d be pulling out of the driveway just as he’d turned the corner onto her street.

  It was nearly midnight. Where the hell was she going? To meet another man?

  “The hell she is.”

  He wasn’t stalking her, Gabe assured himself as he took off after the Miata. Not really. Even here in Blue Bayou, a woman driving alone in the middle of the night could be asking for trouble. He was merely looking out for her; the same way he’d want to protect anyone.

  “Yeah, right.” And if anyone believed that, he just happened to have a bridge to sell.

  Less than ten minutes later, she came to a stop in front of a pair of tall wrought-iron gates surrounded on three sides by water. Having followed at a discreet distance, just like that detective he’d ridden around with researching his upcoming cop role had taught him to do, Gabe cut the headlights of the borrowed Callahan and Son Construction truck, pulled over to the side of the road and watched as Emma climbed out of her car.

  The cemetery gate, badly in need of oil, squeaked as she opened it, then it slammed shut behind her. Wondering what the hell kind of assignation the woman might have in a graveyard in the middle of the night, Gabe followed, hiding in the shadows.

  The scent of impending rain rode a night air scented with night-blooming jasmine and damp brick. A ring circled a full white moon, casting a ghostly gleam over crumbling stone angels draped in a veil of thick gray fog.

  Bullfrogs croaked; cicadas buzzed; fireflies winked on and off amidst the limbs of oak trees draped in silvery Spanish moss.

  Gabe watched Emma make her way across the uneven, shell-strewn ground to a tomb covered with Xs. He recognized the tomb, which had over the centuries faded to a dusky pink and begun to sink into the marshy ground, as belonging to Marie Dupree, a nineteenth-century voodoo priestess and ancestor of Roxi Dupree. The Xs on the brick signified requests for spiritual intervention; the coins, shells, and beads littering the ground around the moss-covered stone were offerings in appreciation of wishes granted, or in hopes of spells yet to be spun.

  Emma took a small spade from a black backpack she’d taken from the car, and removed a bit of earth from in front of the tomb. Gabe couldn’t make out her softly spoken words, but suspected they must be some sort of incantation. She retrieved something else from the pack, placed it in the shallow hole, then covered it up with the soil she’d removed.

  There were more words. The glint of metal as she scattered some coins and purple, gold, and green Mardi Gras beads onto the ground.

  An owl hooted; a blue heron glided low over the night black water.

  Gabe was tempted to step out from behind the broken-winged stone angel and ask what was going on. At the very least, he wanted to dig up whatever it was Emma had buried.

  Later.

  First he’d make sure she got home safely. Then he’d return to the graveyard and learn what the hell the woman had been up to.

  The idea that she’d probably had her friend cook up a love spell had him smiling all the way back to Emma’s blue and white shotgun house.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was even better than a love spell.

  Three times, Gabe read the piece of paper Emma had buried. The first time her words—written in that tidy hand the nuns at Holy Assumption school had tried to drill into their students—made him hard.

  The second time made him ache.

  The third time had him debating whether or not to yank open his jeans and take care of the throbbing hard-on himself.

  He could do that.

  There’d been a time he probably would’ve. It was a logical, practical solution to the problem.

  But after being inside Emma, after feeling those silky moist walls tighten around his dick and milk him so hard he was amazed he had any fillings left in his teeth, Gabe didn’t want practical. Or logical.

  What he wanted was Emma. Lying beneath him. Writhing. Screaming his name to high heaven.

  Mais, yeah.

  He’d already discovered, firsthand, how down and dirty the lady could be. To literally unearth proof of her vivid sexual fantasy life was like icing on a very sweet cake.

  He rolled the paper back up. Retied the scarlet ribbon and put the list in his shirt pocket.

  Emma didn’t know it yet, but she was about to get lucky. They both were.

  Although she’d tried to put Gabe out of her mind after burying that list of fantasies in the graveyard last night, he’d billowed in her thoughts, taunting, teasing, and oh, God, yes, tasting.

  “A man with as much sexual energy as Gabriel Broussard isn’t going to be all that easy to get rid of,” Roxi said knowingly, after Emma had complained for the third time that day about the spell not working.

  “So, what do I do?”

  “Keep him?”

  “Sure, that’s a great idea.” Emma glared over at the pink draped altar. “I don’t suppose you have a spell that’ll make him want to give up the high life in Hollywood, come back and live in his father’s old trailer while he changes tires and rebuilds engines at Dix’s Automotive.”

  “I think the bayou reclaimed Claude’s trailer after that tropical storm hit last fall.”

  “Don’t be so literal.” Emma took a vicious bite of the shrimp po’boy sandwich she’d ordered out from Cajun Cal’s. My point, and I do have one, is that there’s nothing here for Gabe.”

  “There’s you.”

  “Right.” Emma held up her left hand, palm up. “Let’s see. Glamorous Hollywood actresses, supermodels, and wild, hedonistic parties at the Playboy mansion.” She lifted her right hand. “A former chubbette living in a dead-end town where the highlight of the entertainment week is Arlan Dupree changing the movie posters down at the Bijou.”

  “Blue Bayou isn’t exactly a dead-end town.”

  “Does or does not the highway end here?”

  Roxi shook the bottle of hot sauce over a red and white cardboard container of popcorn shrimp. If she weren’t her best friend, Emma would’ve envied the way she could eat fried food every day without gaining an ounce. “Now, who’s being too literal? Besides, it was always obvious to anyone who wanted to notice that there was something between you and Gabe.”

  “We were just friends.”

  “Which was why you wrote ‘Mrs. Gabriel Broussard’ all over your seventh grade science notebook. And why you volunteered to paint scenery the year Mrs. Herlihy cast him in Sweeney Todd.”

  “All right. I stand corrected. He just thought of me as a friend. While I had a schoolgirl crush on him. But that was a long time ago. Lives change. People move on. Grow up.”

  Roxi rolled her dark eyes. “You may as well change your name to Cleopatra Quinlan, girlfriend. Because you are definitely living in denial.”

  “It’s not that easy.” Emma wadded up the waxed paper wrapper and tossed it into the wastebasket. It was twelve fifty-five. Dani Callahan, Nate’s sister-in-law and Blue Bayou’s librarian, had a one o’clock appointment and unlike most of the people in town, Dani was unrelentingly prompt.

  “Maybe it shouldn’t be easy,” Roxi suggested.
Sympathy born from years of friendship darkened her whiskey-hued eyes. “Don’t knock first loves,” she said as she slurped down the last of her RC Cola. “Sometimes they’re the strongest mojo of all.”

  It turned out to be a long day. Maybe it was because of the full moon, or some strange alignment of the planets, or perhaps someone had put something in the water supply, because it seemed that everyone in town was suddenly in need of a massage.

  It was nearly eight by the time Emma managed to leave Every Body’s Beautiful and with her mind focused on taking off her shoes and pouring herself a glass of wine, as she unlocked her front door, she failed to see the truck parked across the street from the house.

  She stepped out of the white clogs she wore to work and padded barefoot into the kitchen, where she took out a bottle of wine from the refrigerator.

  “Late day,” a deep, all-too-familiar voice offered from the shadows.

  Emma spun around, one hand gripping the neck of the green bottle, the other splayed across her breast. “You scared me to death.”

  “Sorry.” The man sprawled in the kitchen chair she’d sponge-painted a cheery sunshine yellow one cold gray day last December didn’t look the least bit apologetic. He was inexplicably wearing a white silky shirt that laced up across the chest, black leather pants, and high boots polished to a glossy sheen. His long legs were spread open in a blatantly male way that drew Emma’s attention to his groin, where the leather cupped his sex like a lover’s caress.

  “What are you doing here, Gabe?”

  “What am I doing?” He rubbed his cleft jaw with those long dark fingers that had created such havoc to her body and her mind.

  “I believe that was my question.” Emma had spent enough years being the recipient of her mother’s scornful tone that she was easily able to borrow it now.

  Apparently unwounded by the sharp edge in her voice, he flashed her a wickedly rakish grin. “I’m here to fulfill all your fantasies, chère.”

  A premonition had the fine hairs at the back of her neck standing on end. Surely he didn’t mean…he couldn’t be talking about…he wouldn’t have…couldn’t have…

  Oh, God. Emma’s knees nearly buckled when he tossed the rolled up piece of paper onto her kitchen table.

  “Where did you get that?” Surely Roxi wouldn’t have given it to him?

  “Where you buried it.” He clucked his tongue “You should be more careful with your secrets, ma belle. Think what might happen if it fell into the wrong hands. Now I don’t much care what folks say about me. But you might be a tad bit embarrassed if everyone in town were to find out that you secretly want to be ravished by Jean Lafitte.”

  “It’s only a fantasy.” Still unnerved by the outrageous idea of him following her out to the graveyard, Emma refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing that her fantasy wasn’t of the pirate himself, but of Gabe playing the part. “And you had no business stalking me.”

  “I wasn’t stalking.” He folded his arms and had the effrontery to look annoyed. “I was lookin’ out for your welfare, me.”

  “Of course you were.” Not.

  “It’s the truth. I was on my way here to talk to you, when I saw you leaving the house—”

  “You had a sudden need for a midnight chat?”

  “Well, actually, if you want the unvarnished truth, the more driving need was for a midnight fuck. But I figured we could talk afterward.”

  “Has anyone ever suggested you may possess a few Neanderthal tendencies?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know about that. I am what I am.”

  “No kidding, Popeye.”

  The thing was, Gabe’s claim about being his own man was absolutely true. Emma had never met an individual, male or female, with a stronger sense of self. Or with more self-confidence. How many other men, growing up with Claude Broussard for a father, would’ve taken the easy way out and become the juvenile delinquent the entire town, including her parents, had probably expected him to be? Her parents had certainly forbidden her to date him, which had been a moot point since she’d have been just as likely to be asked out by Brad Pitt.

  “At first I thought maybe you were off to some assignation with another man.”

  “And what business would that have been of yours?”

  “You know, sugar, that was the exact same thing I asked myself. And you know the answer I came up with?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t like to share.” The suddenly hard gleam in his midnight blue eyes echoed that claim.

  “Even if you had any claim on me, which you don’t, that attitude is so chauvinistic.”

  “Guess it’s that pesky Neanderthal in me,” he said agreeably. “The same old-fashioned guy who thinks maybe he ought to watch out for any woman crazy enough to be driving around alone on dark country roads in the middle of the night. Which, like I said, was why I followed you to the cemetery.”

  He rubbed the side of his nose. Shook his dark head. “I gotta tell you, darlin’, you sure as hell threw me a curve when you pulled up outside that old iron gate. At first I wondered if maybe you were one of those females who get off doin’ it in graveyards.”

  “I believe you’re the one of us who’s into kink.”

  “Now, see, before you got off on lickin’ that fluffy white cream off my dick, I might’ve believed that.” He untied the red ribbon, and smoothed the scroll with his palm. “You already had me tied up in sexual knots, chère. But reading this just made things a helluva lot more interesting.”

  “I’m so pleased I can provide you some entertainment while you’re stuck here.”

  “You know, that uppity princess-to-peasant tone might work real well when we get down to playing voodoo queen and her obedient love slave.”

  He tapped the second item on her fantasy list. The damn list Roxi had instructed Emma to write out, claiming that by burying it in the cemetery at midnight, she’d be rid of the hot scenes that had been plaguing her mind. Scenes starring, of course, Gabriel Broussard. “But it just doesn’t fit with the number one fantasy on your personal sexual hit parade.”

  “You had no right reading a private document.” She lunged for the list.

  He raised it just out of reach. “‘Less things have changed in the last ten years, the cemetery’s a public place. Shouldn’t have left your private document there if you weren’t willin’ to risk someone coming along and reading it.”

  “Excuse me for not anticipating stalkers with shovels.”

  “Dieu, you sure got a sassy mouth on you.” He leaned closer. Skimmed a hand over her shoulder. “I must be getting perverted in my old age, because for some reason, you abusing me this way is startin’ to turn me on.”

  “So, what else is new?” She batted away his hand. “From what I can tell, everything turns you on.”

  “Everything ’bout you,” he agreed. “Could’ve been worse if Harlan Breaux got hold of it.”

  Harlan Breaux was what Gabe, having grown up with Claude Broussard, might have become. A stereotypical Southern bully, Harlan had a beer belly and a bad attitude right out of Deliverance. He’d spent time in Angola for rape, returned with his arms covered with prison tattoos, and there wasn’t a woman in town who’d want to come across him in a dark alley. Or even, for that matter, in the middle of the town square at noon.

  “You’re right.” Emma blew out a breath. “Going out alone at midnight probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Lucky thing I just happened to be there when you buried your love spell.”

  “Shows how much you know.” Emma folded her arms across her breasts. Breasts that had begun to ache for his touch. “It wasn’t a love spell.” Her smile was sweetly false. “It was a go-away love spell.”

  He laughed at that. “Like that’s gonna happen.” He bent down and retrieved a shopping bag bearing the name of a popular New Orleans costume shop from behind the chair. “I brought you a little present. To help you get in the mood.”

 
Expecting some sort of barely there froth of Victoria’s Secret satin and lace, she was surprised to pull out a wide leather belt and heavy brown muslin skirt.

  “Well, this is certainly sexy.”

  “You don’t need frou-frou stuff to be sexy. Besides, you’re a pirate’s captive.” He reminded her of not only her fantasy, but the scene from The Last Pirate. “It wasn’t as if you had time to pack before I stole you away from that Spanish captain’s ship.”

  “That was a movie.”

  He shrugged. “A movie’s just another way of lookin’ at fantasies. How about it, chère? Tonight you’ll be my captive.” He tunneled his hand beneath her hair, cupped the nape of her neck and kissed her, a hard, predatory kiss that caused needs to well up inside her. “I’ll do things to you. Wild, wicked things.”

  His arm curved around her, anchoring her against him; he was hard, urgent, but in no way did Emma feel truly threatened. “Impossible things.” His hand bunched up the flowing, calf-length broomstick skirt she’d worn to work, caressing the back of her leg, her thigh, the curve of her hip. “I’m going to spend this entire weekend taking you places, Emma. Wonderful places beyond your most daring fantasies.”

  His fingers slipped beneath the waistband of her panties, reminding her that, having given up on being with him again in this way, she was—oh, damn!—wearing plain white cotton.

  She sucked in a sharp breath as his teeth nipped at the tender cord in her neck at the same time his fingers tightened on her bottom.

  “And then, since, despite what you consider my Neanderthal tendencies, I’m all for equality; when we get around to playing Voodoo Queen, you can call the shots.”

  Common sense told her that all he wanted was to fuck her.

  And your problem with that is?

  Good point. The truth, as much as she might like to deny it, was that Gabe had reawakened something inside Emma. Something that had remained dormant all during her marriage. Something that she’d only experienced once before.