“You’re laughing at me.” Damn, even when she made fun of him, her smile made him amused by himself. What was he getting into? Rushing into, even knowing as much as he did about people who were as wounded as he had decided Bleu was.
She nodded. “You’re funny,” she said. “What’s the other name for what Wazoo does? Other than alternative medicine?”
“Mumbo jumbo,” he said, anticipating the laughter to follow. “But I do kind of like her…sometimes. She may even be particularly perceptive…in a way.”
Shaking her head, Bleu obliged him by laughing.
Roche stayed beside the table, watching while she laughed.
How could she make him feel like this—like a man shedding skins, a man finding the person he used to be before the cynicism of the life he’d chosen left him wrapped so tightly?
“Bleu,” he said softly. He thought she might not hear, but she turned teary eyes up to his and caught her bottom lip in her teeth.
What a mouth.
Color rose in her cheeks. She couldn’t quite control her mirth, but she was embarrassed in case she had offended him.
He held out a hand, palm up.
Bleu rested hers on top and he held her fingers, urged her to stand, and bent over her hand. He rested his lips lightly on the back, and ran the tip of his tongue over the delicate bones and tendons. And she shuddered.
Roche wanted her to shudder.
When he looked at her face, her eyes were closed and he allowed his own to shut.
Be careful.
He held their hands to his chest and kissed her eyelids. Giving in to the peace he felt was easy. Yes, he wanted to make love to her and to lie with her anywhere. To shed his clothes and get rid of hers. And then he wanted to stay here for hours, until she knew everything about him, and accepted him and he knew everything there was to know about her. He came close to smiling at his arrogance and hoped that once he knew her demons, he could help snuff them out.
She didn’t make a move, but Roche was happy to have her near, even though the mixture of pleasure and pain on her features dug at him. Cautiously, he put an arm beneath her arm and around her slight body. Slight, but firm and curved, and the way he saw her in his mind was a dream.
He had to kiss her. Just as with the first time, he met resistance as she adjusted to the feel of his mouth. In her marriage, there couldn’t have been long, erotic foreplay or wild, hot nights in secret places. He felt her inexperienced body hold back from him, felt it stiffen each time he bent with her a little. Who had her fool of a husband been? And hadn’t there been boyfriends?
Bleu’s mouth opened and he tugged gently at her bottom lip. Her head fell back and he heard her pant.
If you go too fast, you’ll lose her. Take your time.
Barring some disaster, there would be time.
She pulled the hand he held away and rested her fists on his chest. Rising to her toes, she pressed her lips to his. At first the kiss was small and awkward, but he let her experiment until her mouth softened and she started to play, using the tip of her tongue against the end of his.
The shy lady was learning.
Rubbing her rib cage, he moved her closer, and moved his right leg, almost imperceptibly, so that it pressed between her thighs. He smiled when he realized she was too involved to notice.
Roche looked at her and smiled. Bleu smiled, too, but her gaze quickly shifted away. His thumbs fitted beneath her breasts so naturally. He nuzzled her ear, kissed her neck—and she grew very still. The wrong move and she would stop him completely.
Pounding, in his ears and spreading through his groin, was the price of restraint. Slowly, he rubbed her back and kissed her neck again and again, his mouth closed—small, firm kisses.
It was a weak excuse, but he was only a man. How often had he reminded himself of that recently? Her neckline, with it’s simple ruffle, was too high for his taste. He shifted his face to her shoulder, closed his eyes and breathed her in.
She didn’t attempt to touch him where he needed to be touched.
Try to make a date, then go home.
He said her name and she looked at him again. There was fear in her eyes, or anxiety, or uncertainty. He didn’t know exactly what he saw, but she struggled—he saw that. She struggled against what she was feeling, and silently asked him for help.
Then he read that look. She was bewildered.
Red, swollen and very kissed, her mouth remained moist. Did he have to waste it if he wanted to have a chance with her in the future?
Unbelieving, he figured Bleu didn’t know a lot about sex.
What she needed to learn was a little about what she’d been missing.
He leaned his thigh hard between her legs, spread a hand on her bottom and urged her higher on muscle that felt as if it had been turned to stone.
She made a sound.
What she was starting to feel would help him teach her the rest. Holding her against him, he unzipped the back of her dress, pulled the straps from her shoulders and bent to kiss the top of a pale breast.
She twisted. Pushing at him, she almost fell when she forced herself away from his leg, pulling her dress high onto her shoulders at the same time.
Bleu was too late to stop what he’d started. A convulsive shiver tore into her, he saw it, saw the shock, then the horrified embarrassment on her face. She caught at his arm for support and her knees started to buckle.
Roche knew panic when he saw it. He held her up. “Bleu—”
“It’s okay,” she said, backing away from him. “Really. Everything’s fine. I—I get a bit claustrophobic sometimes.” Her skin shone, and when he took firm hold of her wrist, it was clammy.
“Bleu.”
“Wow, I need to get some sleep.” She paused and her eyes closed. Another shudder slammed her. She made a sound like a deep sob and covered her face.
“Hey,” he said and risked putting an arm around her shoulders. “You could be getting sick.” He was making this up as he went along, but it was the best he could do to help both of them.
Years as a therapist had taught him that a woman like Bleu couldn’t go too far, not so soon, or she would run from him because of some learned reaction to finding pleasure in sex. He hadn’t learned his lessons so well. He’d gone much too far, much too fast, and now she was completely confused—and terrified of her own reactions.
“Let’s forget this—you and me,” she said. “I’ve disappointed you.”
“No, you haven’t. How could you? Tomorrow evening,” he said, “do you think you could make that dance and dinner at Pappy’s? It would be fun.”
“Thank you.” She chafed her crossed arms. “That sounds lovely. Is it all right if I wait until later to let you know for sure?”
He swallowed his disappointment. She wouldn’t go. “Of course,” he said. “Now I should leave and let you get some rest and do some work.”
The look she gave him was long, questioning, then she said, “Thank you, Roche. You’re very kind.”
By the time he reached the front door, she’d turned away, but he didn’t dare go back to her.
Bleu’s climax had mortified her.
He knew she would cry and needed to make someone suffer for damaging her. And he intended to find out who that someone was.
Chapter 8
Early afternoon the same day
At the side entrance to the rectory, a young deputy faced off with Toussaint’s most exotic citizen.
“Let me go through,” she said. “The day when you make Wazoo stay out of any place she wants to go, is the day your teeny weeny gonna fall right off.”
Madge arrived, panting, from the back of the rectory and skidded to a halt at a table where Wazoo had been stopped by one of Spike’s young male officers. Rose, his name tag read, and Madge imagined he’d lived through plenty of grief because of that.
Wazoo, animal psychologist and practitioner of whatever opportunity arose, ruled Toussaint’s information grid and used her contacts s
hamelessly, but once a friend, her loyalty stuck. People avoided turning her into an enemy by making her mad. She was really mad right now.
Deputy Rose and Wazoo dodged back and forth on their respective sides of the table. Rose sweated, trying to stop Wazoo from getting past.
“Him,” Wazoo said when she saw Madge. “He about two days out of diapers and he tells me, me, I can’t go see my good friends in the rectory. Do you believe it, Madge? Where’s God Man? I wanna see him right now. He take care of this.”
“Who’s Godman?” Rose adjusted his creaky new gun belt.
Madge tried to signal for Wazoo to avoid the question.
Too late. “Father Cyrus Payne to you.”
Cyrus detested Wazoo’s pet name for him.
She looked marvelous in black lace with panels of red cotton swirling each time she moved inside her floor-length skirt. Her black hair sprang in long curls from a center part and almost reached her waist. Fine ringlets bobbed about her forehead and the sides of her face. Her eyes, too dark to fathom, glistened within heavy lashes. The makeup she used—clever, accomplished—heightened her mystery.
Years earlier, Wazoo had arrived in Toussaint to mourn an old friend. Then she had stayed. Her age was difficult to pinpoint, but most thought she must be in her thirties.
“Deputy Rose,” Madge said, giving the slight young man a serious look. “Wazoo is a good friend of ours, and she worries about us. She wouldn’t do anything to interfere with the investigation, would you, Wazoo?” She stared hard at her buddy.
Wazoo pursed her lips, wrinkled her nose and took entirely too long to say, “No.”
“Miz Pollard,” Rose said with a drawl that gave him away as a transplanted Texan. “The sheriff, he said nobody was allowed past the tapes if they weren’t already on the other side. It’s like this. We’re checkin’ for footprints, clues and the like, and if a lot of folks come messin’ things up, we could lose—”
“More insults—you think I’m stupid, me?” Wazoo said, striking a pose. “I’m standin’ here watchin’ an army of people march all over where you don’t want me to go. There’s people everywhere. Outa my way.”
“Stupid, Miz Wazoo?” Rose said, shaking his head. “Now you know I don’t think that about you.”
She straightened up, braced one hand on the table and the other on a hip. “Why?” she asked. “How come I didn’t notice before?”
Rose glanced around. “Notice what?”
“How cute you are, of course. You got a girlfriend?”
He turned pink. “Not at the present.”
“What’s the matter with all the females in this town? You are one sexy, tingle-makin’ hunk of male.”
Rose twitched inside his uniform.
“Not two moments ago I was thinkin’ someone ought to give you a good spankin’ to make you wise up.” She held the tip of her tongue between her teeth for a moment before adding, “Now I do believe I’ll see about that spankin’ myself. Oh, yes, that is one hard, high, spankable rump, and I’m the woman to make the most of it.”
His face scarlet, Rose put more distance between them, but not before Wazoo leaned around to see his derriere. “Very nice,” she murmured.
Madge closed her eyes. Wazoo could embarrass the pants off a bumblebee. No, no. Absolutely no pants were coming off around here.
Wazoo took off toward the back door with her hair flying and her skirts flapping.
“That one is something,” Rose said. “I don’t suppose there’s any reason she can’t go in this way, but I’ve gotta ask y’all to make sure she doesn’t get near that front door. They’re working around there.”
“I’ll do it,” Madge said and hurried after Wazoo. “Hey. Wait for me. You are one bad girl sometimes. You go inside the kitchen and stay there. We’re holed up there anyway. And you don’t go near the front of the house. Got it, Wazoo?”
“Got it. I’m gonna call Nat. He’ll get down here and fix these goons.”
Nat Archer, New Orleans homicide detective and Guy Gautreaux’s former partner, was tight with Wazoo, although no one could figure out what that meant in their case. Whatever it did mean, Nat was a big, impressive man and he didn’t tolerate anyone treating Wazoo with less than respect.
“Have you taken a good look at that church of yours?” she asked. “You got enough uniforms over there to take on the streets of New Orleans. What they doin’? That’s what I want to know. And cars and vans and trucks. Any minute, we gonna see the helicopters—maybe a couple of them things for on the water and on the land, too.”
“Amphibious vehicles,” Madge said automatically and looked at the sky. Why was she getting into this discussion?
“Like you just said,” Wazoo said. “Them, too. We need Nat and Jilly’s Guy on the job. They’ll get things done.”
“Please don’t call Nat or get Guy riled up. Spike’s already got enough on his hands without somebody else treating him like gum on their shoes.”
“What did you just say, you?” Wazoo whirled to face Madge. “Gum on their shoes? I believe you must be keepin’ questionable company and they teachin’ you bad language. You goin’ to the dogs.”
“I didn’t swear,” Madge protested.
Wazoo laughed, showing off beautiful teeth and almost closing her big, black eyes. “You are way too serious, girl. I’m here because I figure I’m needed. We got trouble in this city again.” She turned back and marched onward. “I need to talk to Spike—that boy is showin’ more promise all the time. If I can teach him to accept that some of the things he can’t see are more important than the stuff he can pick up and blow his nose in, he could go places.”
“Yes,” Madge said. She felt breathless. “You have a great sense of what’s going on. We couldn’t manage without you around here.”
Wazoo stopped abruptly. She tossed her hair back and looked over her shoulder at Madge. “I was goin’ to mention that. ‘We?’ And, ‘Wazoo is a good friend of ours and she worries about us?’ Has this good friend, Wazoo, been kept in the dark about some big news?”
Madge frowned. The day only grew ever more humid, and she was already too hot. The tone of Wazoo’s question, her sly sideways look, didn’t ease the discomfort.
Wazoo moved in closer and spoke into Madge’s ear. “I know nothin’s changed. You got to teach that man you love to ride. Just one lesson and from then on, he be teachin’ you. You’ll have to hold on tight or be bucked right off. He is one sexy—”
“Stop! Please don’t say any more. He’s a priest.”
“He’s a priest and he loves you.” Wazoo took Madge’s face in her hands. “You are beautiful, you. And he’s pretty darn beautiful, too. Mm—mm, yes, he is. You gonna be beautiful together. I can close my eyes and see the pictures. Moonlight on shiny skin, sweatin’ skin…naked skin.”
Madge swallowed air before she choked out, “That’s not appropriate.”
“I know,” Wazoo said and chuckled. She took a couple of dancing steps and whirled on her toes. “I love not bein’ appropriate. That’s boring. I am never goin’ to be boring. And I love you, Madge Pollard. I even love that scrawny little mutt of yours.” She hugged Madge quickly and kept on laughing low in her throat.
“Thank you. I love you, too. Now get inside before someone else hears the kind of things you’re sayin’.”
Madge didn’t know how much more tension she could take today. She hadn’t needed Wazoo’s outrageous suggestions. Madge had an imagination of her own. She held on to the memory of every touch and special word she got from Cyrus, and this morning, the way he’d held her, had been one of his most spontaneous reactions yet. He’d been a man who wanted to feel a woman in his arms, and she was that woman.
“Yes,” Wazoo said. She frowned. She closed her eyes.
“What is it?” Madge whispered.
Wazoo shook her head. “Nothin’,” she said, looking cross. “And there ought to be somethin’ after what’s gone on around here.”
Cyrus came from the rect
ory without Wazoo noticing him. “Wazoo,” he said quietly. “I’m sure you’ve come to help us all stay calm.”
Holding back a smile, Madge listened to Cyrus’s persuasive voice and watched Wazoo’s reaction.
“Who would have thought you’d ever say you needed my help?” she asked. “In here,” she poked at her chest, “I believe you and me have found a meetin’ place, God Man. But in here,” she poked her head, “I worry in case you’re foolin’ with me. I wouldn’t like that, and I’m not sure what I’d decide to do about it.”
“I don’t lie,” Cyrus said. “It’s painful to me that you think I might.”
“Then put aside your pain, God Man. I think you can still be saved and you’re worth it.” She looked toward the searing sky, then, gradually, lowered her gaze to the bayou. “I can smell the water. The fresh plants startin’ to spread their vines on the surface and their leaves poppin’. See how the cypress trunks shine white…like dead men’s bones.”
“Wazoo?” Cyrus said, a warning in his tone, but she gave no sign of hearing him.
She shrugged. “Me, it’s my job to listen for warnings.” She turned her big, dark eyes fully on Cyrus, raised her nose and sniffed several times. “I think I smell blood.”
“Why don’t we go inside and have some coffee?” Cyrus said.
“I’ve got to be ready is all,” Wazoo said.
“Ready for what?” Madge said.
Wazoo pursed her lips. She tapped a foot and looked even more annoyed. “Sometimes a woman’s got to be patient and wait for instructions. I’m waitin’, and I’m ready.”
“Just don’t talk,” Cyrus told her. “You can frighten people who aren’t used to you.”
Wazoo waved a hand. “I didn’t smell old blood,” she said. “So far it’s still runnin’ in someone’s veins. We better hope it stays there.”
Madge tried not to stare at Cyrus, but failed, and he caught her eye. The sadness that welled into his expression squeezed her heart. The day after tomorrow she was supposed to go out with Sig Smith for the evening, and she didn’t want to. But she would go and she would try to keep Cyrus’s face from her mind.
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