by Nora Roberts
“Who, then?”
“I expect that’s what that boy’s there to find out. Might be you’re here to help him.”
She gave a sniff of the air. “Bread’s done,” she said an instant before the oven buzzer sounded. “You want to take a loaf over to the Hall?”
Lena set her jaw. “No.”
“All right, then.” Odette walked up the steps, opened the back door. “Maybe I’ll take him one myself.” Her eyes were dancing when she glanced over her shoulder. “And could be I’ll steal him right out from under your nose.”
Declan had every door and window on the first level open. Ry Cooder blasted out of his stereo with his lunging rhythm and blues. Working to the beat, Declan spread the first thin coat of varnish on the newly sanded floor of the parlor.
Everything ached. Every muscle and bone in his body sang with the same ferocity as Ry Cooder. He’d thought the sheer physical strain of the sanding would have worked off his temper. Now he was hoping the necessary focus and strain of the varnishing would do the job.
The rosy dawn hadn’t lived up to its promise.
The woman pushed his buttons, he thought. And she knew it. One night she’d wrapped herself all over him in bed, and the next she won’t give him more than some conversation on the phone.
Snaps out in temper one minute, melts down to sexy teasing the next. Trying to turn the night they’d spent together into the classic one-night stand.
Fuck that.
“Aw, cher, what you wanna get all het up about?” he muttered. “You haven’t seen het up, baby. But you’re going to before this is done.”
“You look to be in the middle of a mad.”
He spun around, slopping varnish. Then nearly went down to his knees when he saw Odette smiling at him from the doorway.
“I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Not surprising.” With the privilege of age, she leaned down and turned down the volume on his portable stereo as Cooder switched pace, lamenting falling teardrops. “Like Cooder myself, but not that loud. Brought you by a loaf of the brown bread I baked this morning. You go on and finish what you’re doing. I’ll put it back in the kitchen for you.”
“Just give me a minute.”
“You don’t have to stop on my account, cher.”
“No. Please. Five minutes. There’s . . . something, I forget what, to drink in the fridge. Why don’t you go on back, help yourself?”
“I believe I will. It’s a bit close out already, and not even March. You take your time.”
When he’d finished up enough to join her, Odette was standing in front of his kitchen display cabinet, studying the contents.
“My mama had an old waffle iron just like this. And I still got a cherry seeder like the one you got in here. What do they call these dishes here? I can’t remember.”
“Fiestaware.”
“That’s it. Always sounds like a party. You pay money for these old Mason jars, cher?”
“I’m afraid so.”
She clucked her tongue at the wonder of it. “There’s no accounting for things. Damn if they don’t look pretty, though. You come look through my shed sometime, see if there’s anything in there you want.” She turned now, nodded at the room. “This is fine, Declan. You did fine.”
“It’ll come together when the counters are in and I finish the panels for the appliances.”
“It’s fine,” she said again. “And the parlor where you’re working, it’s as lovely as it can be.”
“I’ve already bought some of the furniture for it. A little ahead of myself. Would you like to sit down, Miss Odette?”
“For a minute or two. I’ve got something from the house you might like to have, maybe put on the mantel in the parlor or one of the other rooms.”
She took a seat at the table he’d moved in, and pulled an old brown leather frame from a bag. “It’s a photograph, a portrait, of Abigail Rouse.”
Declan took it and gazed down on the woman who haunted his dreams. It might have been Lena, he thought, but there was too much softness, too much yet unformed in this face. Her cheeks were rounder, her long-lidded eyes too gullible, and far too shy.
So young, he mused. And innocent despite the grown-up walking dress with its high, fur-trimmed collar, despite the jaunty angle of the velvet toque with its saucy feathers.
This was a girl, he reflected, where Lena was a woman.
“She was lovely,” Declan said. “Lovely and young. It breaks your heart.”
“My grandmama thought she was ’round about eighteen when this was taken. Couldn’t’ve been more, as she never saw her nineteenth birthday.”
As she spoke, a door slammed upstairs, as if in temper. Odette merely glanced toward the ceiling. “Sounds like your ghost’s got mad on, too.”
“That just started happening today. Plumber’s kid shot out of here like a bullet a couple hours ago.”
“You don’t look like you’re going anywhere.”
“No.” He sat across from her as another door slammed, and looked back down at Abigail Rouse Manet’s shy, hopeful smile. “I’m not going anywhere.”
11
There was a madness about Mardi Gras. The music, the masks, the mayhem all crashing together into a desperate sort of celebration managed to create a tone that was both gleefully innocent and rawly sexual. He doubted the majority of the tourists who flocked here for the event understood or cared about the purpose of it. That rush to gorge on pleasures before the forty days of fasting.
Wanting a taste of it himself, Declan opted to wander through the crowds, even snagged some beads when they were tossed in a glitter of cheap gold from one of the galleries. His ears rang with the blare of brass, the wild laughter.
He decided the sight of naked breasts, which a couple of coeds flashed as they followed tradition and jerked up their shirts, would be less alarming after a couple of drinks.
As would being grabbed by a total stranger and being treated to a tonsil-diving kiss. The tongue currently invading his mouth transferred the silly sweetness of many hurricanes and happily drunken lust onto his.
“Thanks,” he managed when he freed himself.
“Come on back here,” the masked female shouted. “Laizzez les bon temps rouler!”
He didn’t want to let the good times roll when it involved strange tongues plunged into his mouth, and escaped into the teeming crowds.
Maybe he was getting old, he thought—or maybe it was just the Boston bedrock—but he wanted to get someplace where he could sit back and observe the party rather than being mobbed by it.
The doors to Et Trois were flung open, so the noise from within poured out and tangled with the noise of the streets. He had to weave his way through the revelers on the sidewalk, those packed inside, and squeeze his way to a standing spot at the bar.
The place was full of smoke, music and the slap of feet on wood as dancers shoehorned together on the dance floor. Onstage, a fiddler streamed out such hot licks, Declan wouldn’t have been surprised to see the bow burst into flame.
Lena was pulling a draft with one hand, pouring a shot of bourbon with the other. The two other bartenders were equally busy, and from what he could see, she had four waitresses working the tables.
He spotted his crawfish grinning from their spot on the shelf behind the bar and was ridiculously pleased.
“Beer and a bump,” she said and slid the glasses into waiting hands. When she spotted Declan, she held up a finger, then served three more customers as she worked her way down to him.
“What’s your pleasure, handsome?”
“You are. You’re packed,” he added. “In here and out on the sidewalk.”
“Banquette,” she corrected. “We call them banquettes ’round here.” She’d pulled her hair back, wound purple and gold beads through it. The little silver key dangled against skin dewed with perspiration. “I can give you a drink, cher, but I don’t have time to talk right now.”
“Can I give you a hand
?”
She pushed at her hair. “With what?”
“Whatever.”
Someone elbowed in, shouted out a request for a tequila sunrise and a Dixie draft.
Lena reached back for the bottle, shifted to pull the draft. “You know how to bus tables, college boy?”
“I can figure it out.”
“Redheaded waitress? She’s Marcella.” She nodded in the general direction of mayhem. “Tell her you’re hired. She’ll show you what to do.”
By midnight, he figured he’d carted about a half a ton of empties into the kitchen, and dumped the equivalent of Mount Rainier in cigarette butts.
He’d had his ass pinched, rubbed, ogled. What was it with women and the male behind? Someone ought to do a study on it.
He’d lost track of the propositions, and didn’t care to think about the enormous woman who’d hauled him into her lap.
It had been like being smothered by a three-hundred-pound pillow soaked in whiskey.
By two, he was beyond amazement at the human body’s capacity for vice, and had revised any previous perception of the skill and endurance required in food-service occupations.
He made sixty-three dollars and eighty-five cents in tips, and vowed to burn his clothes at the first opportunity.
The place was still rolling at three, and he decided Lena hadn’t been avoiding him. Or if she had, she’d had a reasonable excuse for it.
“What time do you close?” he asked when he carted another load toward the kitchen.
“When people go away.” She poured bottled beer into the plastic to-go cups, handed them off.
“Do they ever?”
She smiled, but it was quick and distracted as she scanned the crowd. “Not so much during Mardi Gras. Why don’t you go on home, cher? We’re going to be another hour or more in here.”
“I stick.”
He carried the empties into the kitchen and came back in time to see a trio of very drunk men—boys really, he noted—hitting on Lena and hitting hard.
She was handling them, but they weren’t taking the hint.
“If y’all want to last till Fat Tuesday, you gotta pace yourself a bit.” She set to-go cups under the taps. “Y’all aren’t driving now, are you?”
“Hell no.” One, wearing a University of Michigan T-shirt under an avalanche of beads, leaned in. Way in. “We’ve got a place right over on Royal. Why don’t you come back there with me, baby? Get naked, take a spin in the Jacuzzi.”
“Now, that’s real tempting, cher, but I’ve got my hands full.”
“I’ll give you a handful,” he said and, grabbing his own crotch, had his two companions howling and hooting.
Declan stepped forward, ran a proprietary hand over Lena’s shoulder. “You’re hitting on my woman.” He felt her stiffen under his hand, saw the surly challenge in the Michigan boy’s eyes.
Under other circumstances, Declan thought as he sized the kid up—six-one, a toned one-ninety—he might be the type to make his bed every morning, he might visit old ladies in nursing homes. He might rescue small puppies. But right now, the boy was drunk, horny and stupid.
To prove it, Michigan bared his teeth. “Why don’t you just fuck off? Or maybe you want to take it outside, where I can kick your ass.”
Declan’s voice dripped with bonhomie. “Now, why would I want to go outside and fight about it, when all you’re doing here is admiring my taste? Spectacular, isn’t she? You didn’t try to hit on her, I’d have to figure you’re too drunk to see.”
“I see just fine, fuckface.”
“Exactly. Why don’t I buy you and your pals a drink? Honey, put those drafts on my tab.”
Declan leaned conversationally on the bar, nodded toward the T-shirt. “Spring break? What’s your major?”
Baffled and boozy, Michigan blinked at him. “Whatzit to ya?”
“Just curious.” Declan slid a bowl of pretzels closer, took one. “I’ve got a cousin teaching there, English department. Eileen Brennan. Maybe you know her.”
“Professor Brennan’s your cousin?” The surly tone had turned to surprised fellowship. “She damn near flunked me last semester.”
“She’s tough, always scares the hell out of me. If you run into her, tell her Dec said hi. Here’s your beer.”
It was past four when Lena let them into her apartment over the bar. “Pretty smooth with those college jerks, cher. Smooth enough I won’t give you grief for the ‘my woman’ comment.”
“You are my woman, you just haven’t figured it out yet. Besides, they were easy. My cousin Eileen has a rep at the U of M. Odds were pretty good he’d heard of her.”
“Some men would’ve flexed their muscles.” She set her keys aside. “Gone on outside and rolled around in the street to prove who had the biggest dick.” Weary, she reached up to tug the beads loose as she studied him. “I guess it’s the lawyer in you, so you just talk yourself out of a confrontation.”
“Kid was maybe twenty-two.”
“Twenty-one last January. I carded them.”
“I don’t fight with kids. Plus, I really hate having bare knuckles rammed into my face. It seriously hurts.” He tipped her chin up. She looked exhausted. “Had a long one, didn’t you?”
“Going to be a long time till Wednesday. I appreciate the help, sugar. You pulled your weight.”
More than, she thought. The man had slid right into the rhythm of her place and worked. Charmed her customers, tolerated the grab-hands, and avoided a potentially ugly situation by using his wit instead of his ego.
The longer she knew him, she reflected, the more there was to know.
She tugged an envelope out of her back pocket.
“What’s this?”
“Your pay.”
“Jesus, Lena, I don’t want your money.”
“You work, I pay. I don’t take free rides.” She pushed the envelope into his hands. “Off the books, though. I don’t want to do the paperwork.”
“Okay, fine.” He stuffed it into his own pocket. He’d just buy her something with it.
“Now, I guess I’d better give you a really good tip.” She wound her arms around his neck, slithered her body up his. Eyes open, she nibbled on his lip, inching her way into a kiss.
His hands ran down her sides, hooked under her hips, then hitched them up until her legs wrapped around his waist. “You need to get off your feet.”
“Mmm. God, yes.”
He nuzzled her neck, her ear, worked his way back to her mouth as he carried her into the bedroom. “Know what I’m going to do?”
Lust was a low simmer under the bright glory of being off her aching feet. “I think I have a pretty good notion.”
He laid her on the bed, could almost feel her sigh of relief at being horizontal. He pried off one of her shoes. “I’m going to give you something women long for.” He tossed the shoe aside, then climbing onto the bed, removed the other.
Weary or not, her face went wicked. “A sale at Saks?”
“Better.” He skimmed a finger over her arch. “A foot rub.”
“A what?”
Smiling, he flexed her foot, rubbed her toes, and saw her eyes go blurrier yet with pleasure.
“Mmmm. Declan, you do have a good pair of hands.”
“Relax and enjoy. The Fitzgerald Reflexology Treatment is world famous. We also offer the full-body massage.”
“I bet you do.”
The worst of the aches began to evaporate. When he worked his way up to her calves, overworked muscles quivered with the combination of pain and pleasure.
“Do you take any time off after Mardi Gras?”
She’d been drifting, and struggled to focus at the sound of his voice. “I take Ash Wednesday off.”
“Boy, what a slacker.” He tapped a careless kiss to her knee. “Here, let’s get your clothes off.”
He unbuttoned her jeans. She lifted her hips, gave a lazy stretch. He doubted she realized her voice was husky, her words slurring. “What else y
ou got in mind to rub, cher?”
He indulged himself by cupping her breasts, enjoyed her easy response, the way she combed her fingers through his hair, met his lips. He tugged her shirt up and away, snapped open the front catch of her bra. Kissed his way down to her breasts while she arched back to offer.
Then he flipped her onto her stomach. She jerked, groaned, then all but melted when he kneaded her neck. “Just as I thought,” he announced. “Carry most of your tension here. Me, too.”
“Oh. God.” If she’d had a single wish at that moment, it would’ve been that he keep doing what he was doing for a full week. “You could make a good living out of this.”
“It’s always been my fall-back career. You’ve got yourself some serious knots here. Doctor Dec’s going to fix you up.”
“I just love playing doctor.”
She waited for him to change the tone, for his hands to become demanding. He was a sweetheart, she thought sleepily. But he was a man.
She’d just take herself a little catnap, and let him wake her up.
The next thing she knew, the sun was beating through her windows. A groggy glance at her bedside clock showed her it was twenty after ten. Morning? she thought blearily. How did it get to be morning?
And she was tucked into bed as tidily as if her grandmother had done the job. Tucked in alone.
She rolled over on her back, stretched, yawned. And realized with a kind of mild shock that nothing ached. Not her neck, not her feet, not her back.
Doctor Dec, she mused, had done a very thorough job. And was probably at home sulking because she hadn’t paid his fee. Hard to blame him, when he’d been such a sweetie pie, and she’d done nothing but lie there like a corpse.
Have to make it up to him, she told herself, and crawled out of bed to put coffee on before she hit the shower.
She walked into the kitchen, stared at the full coffeepot on her counter, and the note propped in front of it. Frowning, she picked up the note, switched the pot back to warm as she read.
Had to go. Counter guys coming this morning. Didn’t know when you’d surface, so I was afraid to leave the pot on. But it’s fresh as of seven-ten A.M., that is, if you end up sleeping ’round the clock. By the way, you look pretty when you sleep.