“Yes, I’m sorry. You’re right!”
“I’m not finished. For your information, I’ve been taking showers these nine years since I last saw you! And nobody else, not even in a war zone, has ever barged in on me! You’re in the wrong—not me.”
“Okay. So you said…repeatedly. Enough already.”
“No. It’s not enough. You were horrible to me in the past. You’re horrible now. You always act high and mighty because as far as you’re concerned, I’ll be poor white trash till the day I die. I wasn’t good enough for Jake or you…and nothing I ever do will change that.”
He swallowed. The muscle that moved in his jawline when he was upset jumped violently. “All right. I hear you. You made your point.”
She most certainly had, but since he still hadn’t bothered to apologize, she felt consumed by smoldering heat and indignation…and by other awful emotions she didn’t want to name. How could he still affect her like this?”
Despite her discomfiture, his changed appearance registered. Not that she hadn’t seen pictures of him in magazines and newspapers and on the Internet from time to time. He was a rich, important man. His wife’s tragic accident and funeral alone had received a vast amount of coverage last year, all of which Cici had hungrily devoured.
Still, it was different, seeing him this close, knowing his anger was partly due to the fact that he wanted to be done with her, just as she wanted to be done with him.
She assessed him coldly. No longer was he the wiry boy she’d loved or even the gray-faced man in the photograph on her desks whose obvious grief had almost made her feel sorry for him. He’d filled out. And he’d grown, as men often do, even more virile and attractive than ever.
He was close-shaven. He wore an expensive white shirt that was so damp from the heat that it clung to his muscular body in such a way that she couldn’t help admiring that he’d kept himself in shape.
He’d rolled up the sleeves, revealing strong, tanned forearms. His chocolate-brown hair might be shorter, but it still looked as thick and sexily tousled as ever.
To all who didn’t know better, Logan appeared a respectable, wealthy businessman. But she, who wished she didn’t know better, knew the wildness and the dangerous darkness that lurked beneath that suave, too-handsome exterior. Like herself, Logan didn’t mind the edgy thrill of risk.
With an effort she reminded herself that Logan Claiborne was utterly self-serving and ruthless, and a smart woman would avoid him.
Still, he looked good. Too good. And not just because she hadn’t dated anybody for a while.
Uncle Bos had been right about a few things. He’d said rich people could be crueler and colder than anybody, that she’d best stay away from the Claibornes and their like. “You’re swamp trash to them. You’re nothing more than a toy to play with. They throw girls like you to the sharks when they’re through.”
“Get out,” she said quietly and yet forcefully.
He crossed his arms across his broad chest and spread his legs in a masculine, stubborn stance.
“Not till we talk,” he said.
“If you think I’m going to stand here wearing only a towel and converse with you like nothing happened…after…after the way you barged in here, after the way you looked at me and accused me, you’re crazy.”
“Get dressed, then.” He turned his broad shoulders to her. When she didn’t move, he said calmly, “I won’t watch. I promise.”
“As if! As if I’d ever trust the likes of you again!”
He whirled, his blue eyes stormy when he faced her again. “Trust doesn’t even enter into it. You’re not staying at Belle Rose. Not one more night. You’re going to leave my grandfather alone. He’s vulnerable and old, easy prey…”
“Stop right there! For your information, I have a three-month lease and a publishing deadline to meet. And your grandfather, whom you claim to care so much about, was starving for affection. Starving. And I think I know something about how that condition feels—especially where you’re concerned.” She paused. “So, his needing me and befriending me when I came home feeling lonely and vulnerable and a bit alienated from my roots is a big part of why I have no intention of moving.”
“You’re just using him.”
“And you know that, how, you who could write a book on that subject?” She took a deep breath. “Get out of my apartment, or I’m calling the law.”
“This is Louisiana. I own the law. And since I didn’t sign your lease, it isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Now get dressed, so we can settle this once and for all. I’ll wait downstairs.”
“I’m not the same foolish girl I was nine years ago. You can’t stomp in here and intimidate me.”
“I will reimburse you every penny you’ve paid my grandfather and then some.”
“Money. You think you can buy your way out of any problem.”
“That’s unfair, and you know it.”
“Who just said, ‘This is Louisiana. I own the law?’”
His dark face turned a mottled shade of purple that wasn’t nearly so lovely on him as it was on the purple water hyacinths that choked the bayou at the edge of the lush grass behind Belle Rose.
“I’ll wait for you on the gallery of Belle Rose,” he managed, his posture stiff, his deep tone icy.
“I won’t be allowed inside the house then?”
“You’re the one putting yourself down,” he said. “Not me.”
“I own the law,” she mocked.
When he stalked out without bothering to reply, she resisted the very strong impulse to slam the door. After letting it shut softly, she leaned against it for a long moment and tried to catch her breath.
She couldn’t believe she’d been so rude. Even to him.
Did he ask for it, or what? Why did women with a drop of Southern blood always think they were supposed to be nice? Even to total jerks, which he was, even if he was rich and handsome and had a home like Belle Rose that was architectural poetry?
She moved away from the door toward her desk. Slowly she lifted the photograph of him where he looked so lost and sad. She’d taken so many pictures of people in pain, she recognized real suffering when she saw it.
Not wanting to think about that or to feel sorry for him, she slipped his picture inside a drawer.
Suddenly it dawned on her that she hadn’t heard him stomp down the stairs. Was he standing on the other side of the door?
Or was he as upset and confused as she was after seeing her again?
Was he human after all?
When she considered the possibility that she might have hurt him, even just a little, she felt a strange catch in her heart just like she had when she’d first seen that picture of him after Noelle’s death.
Closing her eyes, she saw his dark, pain-ravaged face after he’d told her making love to her had meant nothing…that he’d never loved her, that he’d only done it to save his twin. She’d never known which to believe: his brutal words or his heartbroken eyes.
She took a breath and told herself his jilting her was all that mattered. Like photographs, actions told the deepest truths.
When she removed her towel to dress, she caught sight of her reflection in the tall mirror on the wall.
Turning on the light, she studied the crescent-shaped scar on her stomach for a long moment. And as always, whenever she let herself remember that terrible night when she’d had an emergency C-section, the night she’d lost their baby son, fathered by a man who’d refused to even listen to her when she’d tried to tell him she was pregnant, she froze.
Under no circumstances could she allow herself to soften toward Logan Claiborne.
Grabbing a blouse, she turned away from the mirror. The last thing she needed was any reminder of how deeply involved she’d once been with the angry man who’d just left.
She was through with him forever.
Three
Logan was furious at himself for storming into the garçonnière after becoming impatient wh
en Cici hadn’t opened the door the minute he’d knocked.
Furious at her, too. How could she have just stood in her bathroom naked like that, smelling so sweetly of jasmine, her fine-boned face looking so startled and golden and glorious; her glistening, wet lips and body tempting him as she’d towel-dried her glossy ringlets.
She’d had every right to be there as she’d aptly pointed out.
At the sight of those sparkling droplets of water clinging to the grapelike tips of her dusky nipples, his groin had hardened. His blood had coursed like lava. He’d felt like a beast. Even now he wanted to rush her, to jam her against the wall and take her then and there. He wanted to taste those lips again, to lick those nipples, to lick other secret places until she moaned in ecstasy, to run his hands through her thick, springy curls. Yes, he’d wanted to drown himself in Cici Bellefleur.
How could he still want her with every cell in his being, despite their past? Why did he keep remembering how her golden curls had spread across his pillow like a Southern belle’s fan every night after they’d made love? Or how he’d liked to trace her soft, swollen lips with his fingertip, regretting more with every night that passed that his obsession for her had grown with every kiss, with every touch until he’d wanted her for himself far more than Jake had ever wanted her. Then he’d begun to agonize about how painful it would be to give up something so beautiful and infinitely precious to him.
But Grandpère’s view had been that Cici was just like his mother—a poor girl out to better herself at their expense—that she would lead him around by the nose as his mother had led his father, that she would spend every last cent of their money until they were completely ruined.
Grandpère kept repeating that he’d had to be tough on him because he’d been too soft on his father and Jake. And as a result of his earlier failure to be firm, the family business was on the verge of bankruptcy, and Jake was wild and out of control. Everything, his grandfather warned, depended upon Logan making a prudent marriage and then settling down to save Claiborne Energy.
Grandpère’s opinion about Logan’s parents’ marriage and the decline in the family fortune had been too true. Their once-proud family and company were on the brink of ruin. Sacrifices had to be made, his grandfather had said, and there was no one else to make them except Logan.
“Don’t disappoint me, too, the way your father and brother have always disappointed me,” his grandfather said when Logan had been reluctant to come between Jake and Cici. The next night Logan had seduced her to save his brother, and Jake had caught them in bed together. Jake had quit the family in disgust without ever knowing why Logan had acted as he had or that Logan had been cruelly caught in his own trap.
Maybe initially Logan had obeyed his grandfather and slept with Cici to save his brother and his family from ruin, but no sooner had he started making love to her than other forces had him taken over and he’d realized he’d always wanted her for himself.
Still, he soon knew he had to break up with Cici, too, that she was no better as a mate for him than she’d been for Jake. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her by caring for her and making her care. He’d hoped that in time he’d forget her and that she’d forget him, too.
When he’d married Noelle, he’d told himself the man who’d loved Cici was dead. But today all the longings of that younger self had clamored inside the man he was now. She was more appealing to him than ever.
Why had Cici saved the picture of him that had been taken at one of the lowest moments in his life, the day of Noelle’s funeral, when he’d come to terms with what a bastard he’d been, and not just to Cici?
He’d been devastated at Noelle’s death, but for all the wrong reasons. He’d known then he’d never loved her. That he’d only ever wanted her half as much as he’d always wanted Cici, and he hated himself for that.
Nine years ago he’d believed he’d done the right thing in jilting Cici and marrying Noelle. But his marriage to Noelle was what hadn’t worked. Nothing in his personal life had succeeded since Cici.
Deliberately Logan forced his big hand to loosen its crushing grip on his second tall glass of iced tea with a sprig of mint and a slice of lemon. If only the heat in his blood for Cici would lessen.
Alicia would be waiting for him tonight in New Orleans. A sane, mature man would stop lusting after Cici’s lush, naked body. But he wasn’t sane. And the memory of how she’d looked wetly aglow and achingly vulnerable in the rosy sunlight wouldn’t quit.
Maybe Cici’s grammar was better—she was a damned good writer, if an annoying one—but was she any more suited to him now than she had been then? She’d always been antiestablishment; a rebel, and an adventuress, while he was conservative to the core. Hell, her uncle was very little short of being an outlaw.
Did those differences really matter in the twenty-first century? Or did the raw, true, primal desire he felt for Cici matter more?
No. He’d been carefully taught that money and breeding and power and the willingness to accept responsibilities that came with position separated people like him from her. He made rules and followed them; she and her uncle stomped over every rule in the book. Nothing was sacred to her. Not even death. Her books and photos proved that.
For money she’d taken a picture of a child being stalked by vultures to horrify her audience of human vultures avid for such shots of lurid misery. At odd moments the picture still haunted him. How could he feel any sympathy for a woman who had lived off the suffering of others?
His feelings for her were driven solely by lust. He’d been obsessed by her in the past. He wasn’t about to let his animal urges take over and ruin his life or hers again.
But, oh, God, why did she have to be as lovely as ever—hell, maybe even lovelier? Why did one glimpse of her make his heart open wide and throb with regret? Make him feel as if crucial years of their lives had been cruelly stolen from them?
He was wondering what the cure for such a severe case of lust was—a speedy marriage to the refined Alicia or taking Cici one more time to get her out of his system?—when the front door opened and his grandfather came out holding onto Noonoon’s arm.
At the sight of his much stronger and more vigorous grandfather, he did a double take. Gone was the frail, ghostly shadow who had lain in his bed in Baton Rouge less than a month ago and had weepily confided in Logan that he wished he was dead. That’s when Logan had left no stone unturned to find the perfect situation in New Orleans for his ailing grandfather.
Logan slugged his iced tea and set his glass down and shot to his feet eagerly. “Grandpère! Where’s your walker?”
“Kept tripping over the damn nuisance,” Pierre said, sounding gruff, almost angry, almost his old authoritative self. “Cici got me this quad cane.” He let go of Noonoon and shook it.
Cici. Glad as Logan was that his grandfather was so much better, he resented that her name alone was enough to make him flush with heat. Would Noonoon and Grandpère see and understand?
The old man lifted his cane in a commanding fashion. “Cici suggested I use a wheelchair when we give our afternoon tour, though. Don’t like to, ’cause it makes me look old.”
Our tour.
“You’re nearly eighty.”
“Cici says age is just an attitude.”
“She should have seen you in the hospital.”
“I’m glad she didn’t!”
“Okay. Look, I don’t want to quarrel or remind you of unhappier times.” Logan went to him, and they embraced fondly. “I’m glad you’re better,” he said. “You feel solid…so much stronger…heavier.”
“He’s had the appetite of a horse ever since Cici started cooking him gumbo and making his favorite spicy boudin with red beans for him. Cici does love to cook. She always did!”
The old man’s blue eyes flashed at her name, and a tinge of brilliant color dotted his plumper cheeks. “Cici’s been great. She’s given me a whole new lease on life. I’m almost glad I had the damn stroke. Don’t think she’d be
fussin’ over me if I hadn’t.”
The sparkle in his eyes and the intensity of his smile made him look ten years younger. “By the way, did you get our invitation?”
“Our invitation?”
“For my eightieth birthday party next Saturday. You didn’t R.S.V.P. Cici thought you’d probably be too busy to come. Well, are you?” His grandfather’s eyes reproached him.
“I didn’t receive any invitation, so I didn’t know anything about it. And I don’t have my calendar,” Logan replied, his voice even.
“Your invitation must have gotten lost in the mail,” Cici said with false gaiety behind him.
Lost, my ass. The sexy witch had no doubt cleverly excluded him.
Logan whirled and felt another rush of unwelcome heat as they locked eyes for the length of several, thudding heartbeats. Unable to resist dragging his gaze lower, he noted a pink T-shirt stretching across her ample breasts that read T-Bos’s Bar under a stenciled biker’s face. Her skintight jeans had holes in the knees.
T-Bos’s was a successful biker bar of unsavory reputation that her uncle Bos defied the Claibornes by running on his property next door to Belle Rose.
There should be a law against shirts like that, at least on bodies like hers. The jersey knit hugged her breasts and waist even more snugly than her jeans cupped her ass. Not that he was surprised at her getup. It was sexy as hell, just like the woman who wore it. Conservative, she wasn’t.
“Jake is coming,” she taunted softly. Or did he only imagine the challenge in her husky voice?
“You invited Jake? And not me?”
“Still competitive?”
“Damn it, no!” His feelings for his alienated twin were more complicated than that single word could possibly describe. “How could I be? Because of you, I haven’t talked to him in nine years.”
“Only…because of me? How easily we forget.”
“I’ve called him, but he refuses my calls,” Logan said.
“Do you really blame him?”
Her question reminded him of all he’d done to come between Jake and her once again.
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