He’d drugged her. That had to be why she was kissing this man—and enjoying it, dammit. She even thought she heard music and could feel every stroke of the piano’s keys. Were the words about fever?
Images sprang into her mind. Not a sensual feast, but an image of a younger, leaner Christopher brandishing a sword, aiming the tip at her, thrusting, parrying. Not his words, but Brian’s taunting, biting voice….Come on, is that all you got? You’re getting pretty good for the loser…but you can never win, Christopher.
She was seeing the scene through Brian’s eyes. He danced in front of Christopher, feinting left and right. Every word stabbed Christopher, stiffening his body, reddening his face, until he lunged forward. Brian lost his footing and instead of swinging to the right, stumbled to the left. Christopher’s sword struck him. Brian screamed. Blood. Rage. The sword hit the ground with a thud.
“What the hell? You’re bleeding.”
Rita jerked out of the scene to discover Christopher had said those last words and was now staring at her with a mixture of concern and horror. She’d missed the tingling. He leaned forward and ran his thumb across her upper lip. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see the blood on his thumb, not wanting to think about what they’d been doing.
She pinched her nose as she ran into the house. How many times had she made this cowardly run?
She reached the bathroom that linked her room and the one at the end of the hall, leaning over the sink and washing away the blood. Catching her breath, she wiped her face with tissues and met her familiar, humiliated reflection. This time that expression was more than humbled; it was shocked.
What had she been doing? Her mind obligingly recalled the kiss, throwing in details such as the way his chest had felt against her breasts, soft against hard, how his hands had felt trailing over her body…
She shook her head. What was she doing? Had she gone mad for a few moments? And that scene with the swords and the blood. She leaned against the counter. That hadn’t been her imagination. It was one of the images Brian had shown her in the gray place.
After a few minutes, she dared to look at her reflection. The bleeding had stopped, as it usually did once she removed herself from the threatening situation. Her lips looked fuller than usual. She ran her fingers through her mussed hair, pinched color into her cheeks, then told herself it didn’t matter what she looked like. The reflection she saw in the mirror wasn’t beautiful even when she tried.
Then why did he kiss you?
He was just trying to intimidate me, she told herself.
Exactly what kind of information do you think he intended to obtain with your mouth otherwise occupied?
With a sigh of exasperation, she flipped off the light and walked out.
Christopher sat at the wrought iron table in the courtyard, his leg moving to the lounge music that drifted through the trees. He hated these situations where he didn’t know what to do. All right, kissing her was unexpected, and he shouldn’t have done it. He hadn’t meant to. After all, she was a woman his brother had feelings for. She’d looked into his eyes as though she was warring with herself, wanting him and hating him at the same time. He wanted to wipe out the hate part. He’d probably only strengthened it. Deservedly so.
The nosebleed thing, that was weird. Just like at her office. Maybe she had some medical condition. He’d followed her into the house, but let her go on. What was he supposed to do? He could remember from his younger days, guys would sometimes hold a girl’s hair out of the way if she’d had too much to drink and started puking. Then she’d get all embarrassed because he’d seen her in that most undignified position. So what did a man do about a woman with a nosebleed?
Let her go, that’s what, even if he had inadvertently caused it to happen. He’d turned on the courtyard lights, grabbed a Dixie Jazz, and settled back into the haze of soft lights and dancing shadows outside.
He liked evenings the best—here, Atlanta, anywhere—when the sun had just faded and trees cast their shadows across the lawn. He always took a few minutes to sit out on the porch of the fixer-upper he was crazy enough to buy in one of the suburban Atlanta neighborhoods. There was something satisfying about working with his hands.
He took a long swallow of beer. He’d forgotten Dixie Jazz. The music and courtyards. He’d forgotten a lot about New Orleans. How quickly it all rushed back to engulf him. So did other memories. In his mind, he saw the bulky stone table and benches his mother had been so fond of. How the bloodstain wouldn’t come out no matter how hard she’d tried to bleach it. The look of hatred when she’d had to sell it, along with several other valuable pieces of furniture. Hatred aimed at him.
His mental gears shifted when he heard Rita walk out the kitchen door. He faced away from the house, his foot anchored on the edge of the table. He felt awkwardness seize him as he wondered what he was supposed to do. Apologize? He hadn’t meant to kiss her, but she sure as heck wasn’t an unwilling participant.
She took a seat across the table from him, a safe distance away. Hell, he wasn’t going to attack her. He wasn’t even going to kiss her again. She had a hesitant look about her, her arms wrapped around her waist, staring at her feet propped on a lower rung of the table.
“I thought I was imagining the music,” she said.
He nodded toward the corner of the property, the house next to the one behind Brian’s. “Miss Velda Caprice plays it every night ‘bout this time.”
She glanced over at the trees that separated the two properties. “She must be nostalgic for the old days.”
Dean Martin started singing, “Ain’t that a kick in the head.”
He realized she was picturing a sweet old lady. “For sure. Velda was one of the hottest strippers back in the 1960s. She moved in when I was a kid. Caused a bit of a stir with her reputation. She stripped well into her fifties. But she has to be in her eighties now. If that’s even her.” He shot her a sly grin. “Used to spy on her when I was a kid. She threw some outrageous parties.”
Rita’s mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding? Aren’t you?”
He took a swig of beer and chuckled. “Don’t you know that New Orleans is the town of decadence, of sin and debauchery, of every sensual pleasure a man—or woman—can think of?”
He wondered what sensual pleasures she was thinking of when she glanced away. She ran her fingers through her chocolate brown waves and tucked a bit behind her ear. How many men had done the same thing, mussed up her hair and made those light blue eyes go hazy?
“But the decadence only happens during Mardi Gras,” she said.
“No, it just becomes mandatory during Mardi Gras. Amazing that it started out as a religious ceremony, isn’t it?”
At her surprised look, he continued with safe talk. “It was a spring festival to purify the soul. A goat was sacrificed and its skin was cut into strips. Those who wanted remission of their sins ran naked through the streets chased by painted priests who whipped them with the strips. The problem was, there were far more sinners than priests, so sinners were given the strips to whip one another with. You can probably imagine how the ceremony lost its religious aspects from there. The Romans had even more fun with it, dressing up as the opposite sex, hosting orgies.” He was enjoying her appalled fascination. “Makes you long for the good old days, doesn’t it?”
Her skin flushed pink across her wide cheekbones. “Er, no.”
“Ever been to an orgy?”
“I played strip poker at a college party once, but we got busted halfway through.” She fiddled with the edge of the table. “Have you?”
“Been to parties where clothes came off.” He let his gaze drop to the full breasts she kept well hidden. “Dancing naked is one of the finer pleasures in life, for sure.”
Her slender hand went to her throat. “Can we talk about something else?”
“Uncomfortable?”
“A bit.”
He had to admire her honesty. “You pick the subject then.”
; “Okay. Did you ever stab Brian?”
That wasn’t the question he was expecting. How dare he kiss her, what game was he playing, something like that. His tensed muscles probably gave him away, though he kept his face expressionless. “Why would you ask that?”
“It was one of those scenes I saw when Brian touched me, one of the scenes from his life. And it just picked…that moment to come out. When we were…” She could only wave toward the column where that soft body of hers had come alive against his. “You were fencing with him, a long time ago. He was taunting you, saying you could never win. You got mad, lunged forward, and stabbed him. That’s when my nose started bleeding.” After a moment of silence, she asked, “Did it happen?”
He pinched his chin with his fingers, trying to figure out how she could have known. No one else had been at the practice session. Brian must have told her. “Yeah, it happened. I was mad, but it was an accident. Dad made sure no one found out about it. Wouldn’t want to scandalize the family. It wasn’t deep, but it was enough that he had to spend a night in the hospital.” He subconsciously brushed his fingers across his own scar.
She waited, perhaps for more explanation. “Why was he saying those things to you?”
“That’s how we got riled up, how we got into the tableaux.” But why would Brian tell her about that? Especially if he hadn’t told her he’d had a brother.
“What tableaux?”
“Forget it. It was an accident, that’s all.” He pushed his chair onto its two rear legs and tilted back.
“It wasn’t an accident,” she said.
“Are you saying I did it on purpose?”
She waved away the tension she obviously saw in his face. “It wasn’t your accident. It was Brian’s fault.”
“What?”
“He lost his balance and stumbled, fell into the sword.”
He had to reach for the table to keep from falling backward. No way could she know that. Brian wouldn’t have told anyone that part. He had way too much pride to admit anyone had gotten the best of him. If Brian didn’t tell her…could her crazy story be true? No, he refused to believe it. Brian must have slipped and told her. “It was still my fault. I lost control.”
She thought for a moment, tilting her square chin. Then she focused those eyes on him, light blue eyes full of understanding. “That’s what drove you away, isn’t it? And why Brian couldn’t be king of the krewe, because he was injured.”
“I suppose he told you about the king thing?”
“No, Tammy did. I met her at the hospital. She said no one knew why Brian couldn’t be king, but that you left town afterward.” Her voice went soft as marshmallows on a summer day. “If you want to talk about it…”
“If I need counseling, doc, I’ll give you a call.”
She flinched at the hard tone of his voice. “Fine.” After finding the rounded tips of her nails interesting for a few minutes, she asked, “You lived here, in this house, when you were young?”
“Till I was seventeen.”
She looked at him as though she knew some deep part of him. He didn’t want anyone under his skin, especially not this crackpot who knew way too much.
Heavy gray clouds lumbered across the sky, obliterating the stars. Several minutes went by to the backdrop of Lou Rawls, then Nelson Riddle and his Orchestra. The CD would start over again, just as it did every night he’d been out here. Three times Velda listened to it, doing what he didn’t want to speculate.
Her voice sliced through the night. “Why did you kiss me?”
She didn’t look confrontational, merely curious. While she waited for an answer, Peggy Lee’s “Fever” came on. The one they’d kissed through.
“Why does your nose bleed spontaneously?” he asked.
She narrowed her eyes at him, fully aware of his evasion tactic. He noticed how curly her eyelashes were, how thick her tapered eyebrows were. Great eyes, much too expressive. Then she looked toward the trees. He didn’t know why he’d kissed her. She’d just plain out looked at him, met his eyes and hadn’t backed down. She looked intriguing, washed in the shadows and light of the courtyard, set against the seductive beat of “Fever.” He knew the heat of that particular kind of fever, and it ached in his belly. Just like a computer virus, it ate through his operating system, chewed up his logic processors.
He stood and stretched toward the muddy sky. “I’m going to have another bowl of gumbo.” He rubbed his stomach, enjoying the disconcerted look on her face when he said, “I’m still hungry.”
When Rita woke the next morning, it took her several confused moments to figure out where she was. To balance herself, she immersed into her morning routine and put everything back into its place in her bag. She was pleased to see the sun playing hide and seek through a thin layer of clouds. It amazed her what a little bit of sunshine could do to one’s spirit. She drew it inside and readied herself to go downstairs.
Christopher wore blue jeans and an eggplant-colored polo shirt and was pouring himself a cup of that strong coffee. He merely lifted the pot toward her in offer, and she nodded in acceptance.
“What’s different about this coffee? It’s bitter, like…”
“Poison. People sometimes think they’re being poisoned.” He lifted an eyebrow.
“Paranoid people maybe.” She couldn’t help her contrite smile. “It has a peppery taste.”
“It’s got chicory in it. Comes from the root of the endive plant. There’s no other coffee like it. I have five pounds shipped to my place in Atlanta every month.” He downed his cup and then set it in the sink. “I don’t have much here in terms of breakfast food. We could get some beignets at a coffeehouse around the corner.”
All he had to do was explain that beignets were New Orleans’s version of a donut, and she was sold. She could always go for sugarcoated deep-fried dough with absolutely no nutritional value.
She’d been able to keep her rental car for another night, but the agency wanted her to bring it in that day. Then they would determine if she could keep it longer.
She grabbed a light jacket and followed Christopher out the front door. A slight, older man was kneeling down among the multi-colored flowers that flanked the stairs out front. His yellow cap covered straggly silver hair, which floated in the cool morning breeze as he nodded at her and Christopher.
“Hey, Henri,” Christopher greeted the man, pronouncing it the French way, “awn-ray.”
“Morning, sir. Miss.” Henri seemed overly curious about her, appraising her from behind sunglasses. When she looked his way just before she got into her car, he was still watching her. He didn’t even glance away, only gave her a flat smile while he lopped off a blossom with his shears.
“The gardener, I presume,” she said to Christopher, who had walked her to her car. Not a very good gardener apparently.
“I guess. He comes by for a couple of hours every Sunday, says he’s been working for Brian for a few months. Didn’t even want any money until Brian got out of the hospital.” Christopher shrugged. “And here I thought old-fashioned generosity was dead.”
She looked at him, at the hard lines of his face, and wondered if anyone had ever shown Christopher LaPorte generosity. When he realized she was studying him, he patted the roof of her car. “Follow me.”
He waited until both cars had turned the corner and then chopped off another blossom, thinking of Rita Brooks. It didn’t look like she was leaving anytime soon. It, in fact, looked as though she had allied herself with Christopher LaPorte.
The brother had been snooping around and asking questions from the beginning. He’d even asked Henri if he’d seen any signs of distress where Brian was concerned. Distress. The sound of his laughter curled around his insides. Like Brian’s terror when he fell to the concrete deck? He could only imagine the look on Brian’s face. He wished he’d been there to see it. He hated Brian, hated all that he represented. All that he himself didn’t possess.
Now that Christopher and Rita were alli
ed, things were going to be trickier. He’d already made the mistake of hotwiring a car and trying to run her down in Christopher’s presence. Dumb desperation. He’d sure heard about that.
And Christopher had walked right up to his car last night, making him run like a coward.
I’m not a sissy! I’m the boy!
Christopher had gone to Rita’s hotel room. After he’d left, she’d kept the light on all night. Now she was staying here in Brian’s house. Again, where she didn’t belong.
Anger boiled inside him. Stay calm. He would report all this to her. She would take care of everything. She always did.
CHAPTER 9
Rita and Christopher settled at a tiny wrought iron table at the coffeehouse. Watery morning sunlight washed across the swirly pattern in the Formica surface. The place was small, twelve tables in all.
The waitress brought them each a cup of the strong coffee with the peppery flavor. Rita found she was actually developing a taste for the stuff. Especially with cream and sugar mixed in.
She licked her spoon and caught him watching her. She had the sudden urge to run the tip of her tongue around the edge of the spoon. While giving him a sultry look, if that were possible. She put the spoon down beside her coffee. Get real. She’d probably seen it in a movie.
He picked up an abandoned newspaper and glanced through it. She allowed herself a breath of relief, an imaginary pat on her back. She’d done it, faced the dark Christopher LaPorte halfway across the country with her crazy story …and survived. All right, she hadn’t been brave the whole time, but she’d done a good job overall. Here in this quaint coffeehouse in the company of a handful of strangers, she could feel like the lion at the end of The Wizard of Oz.
Amid the occasional clink of spoon against coffee mug and a comment about a parade spoken between the people around them, she realized how normal she and Christopher must look: a couple having coffee together before starting their day. An odd sensation drifted through her at the thought. She’d never been part of a couple.
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