by Ann Major
“What about your family?”
“They don’t have to know.”
“Hide-and-seek?” His dark eyes blazed.
She put her hand in his. After a long moment his long brown fingers closed over it.
In his truck he used his radio to call in and request a replacement for his job at the Martin party. Then they were speeding down Prytania Street, past Audubon Park.
“Where are we going?” she asked as the truck raced along the freeway toward the lake.
“Sailing. I have a boat. Sometimes when I stay in the city at night, I sleep on it.”
The comment was provocative. It hung in the thick, silent warmth in the truck, causing her to flush with excitement and anticipation.
Chapter Nine
They didn’t sail, at least not that night. They went to his boat and changed clothes, taking turns using the tiny cabin. She never asked who the jeans and blouse he got for her from his locker belonged to. She was too glad to be rid of the confining gown and heavy diamonds.
After they changed, he took her to Mannie’s on the lakeshore. Before they ate, he led her back to the kitchen where Mannie was dashing around inspecting trays of food while she lifted the lid of steaming pots of crabs and crawfish.
Suddenly one of the cook’s skillets began to smoke. Mannie dashed to it. “Anytime you see some smoke coming from your roux, throw it out, or you be sorry. A burned roux looks good, and the bad cook, she’ll try to sneak it by, but it just spoil her crab and her fish.”
“Look who I brought, Mama.”
Mannie put the skillet down and hugged Noelle affectionately. “I missed you, chere. We had some hard times, yes. But the good times, they come back. I’m fatter, yes?”
The roll around her waist was indeed rounder.
“No. You’re more beautiful than ever.”
“You sweet liar, chere.” Mannie turned to her son. “She’s too skinny. You two stay and eat, yes?”
Despite the line waiting for tables, Mannie led Noelle and Garret to a table by a window with a view of the lake. Above them a ceiling fan turned lazily. Garret asked for a beer and gumbo. Noelle had a bowl of bouillabaisse and garlic toast. Somebody kept putting quarters into the jukebox, playing blues music. The meal was wonderful. It reminded Noelle of her childhood when Mannie had been the Martin cook.
While they ate, Noelle and Garret talked. About everything—politics and the state’s corruption, books, sailing, antiques, law enforcement—everything except themselves. There would be time for that later.
At last he said, “You’re everything your family wanted you to be when they broke us up and sent you away to those fancy schools. You’re beautiful, cultured—a social star. You even run your mama’s business.”
“Yes.” At that moment she was wondering if she’d ever really cared about any of it.
“And I’m a cop. A detective. A good one.”
“I’m proud of you.”
“I was proud of me, too.” He smiled ruefully. “At least until Annie died. But even though I’m not the poor boy I was then, your father and grandmother wouldn’t want us to have a relationship any more now than they did back then.”
“No…” But she didn’t want to think about her family.
Sinking back in her chair, she let her new fears be lulled by the husky sound of a saxophone playing the blues.
When her gaze locked on his, his black eyes took her back to that brief, idyllic summer when they’d realized they were in love, when they’d been cruelly separated by her family.
She’d never forgotten him. Not for one second. Her attachment to him had been much more than a mere flimsy, adolescent infatuation. Suddenly she realized that no matter how much she’d accomplished while she’d been away, she’d felt dead at the center. Her life had lacked that special luster he alone had given her. Here, sitting across from him, she felt it again, every time she looked at him, every time he spoke.
It was almost as if they’d never been apart. Her heart pounded harder. Because he was near, the moon seemed more brilliant, the night darker, the air sweeter, the food more succulent and richly spiced. Even the blues sound seemed more melancholy and poignantly passionate. Because of him, time seemed to be rushing past in a kaleidoscope of deeply felt emotions.
“For years after they sent you away and threw me out, I told myself I hated you,” he said. “I imagined you going to that fancy school, as rich and privileged as ever, while I was starving in the street.”
“I wasn’t all that happy.” She glanced impishly at the mountain of crab shells and shrimp tails on his plate. “And you certainly don’t look like you’re starving.”
He laughed. Then he ordered cafe au lait and beignets.
“You’re trying to get me fat,” she whispered.
He just grinned at her.
When they finished eating, he grabbed her hand, turned it over in his. “I still want you, Noelle, more than I should, but the differences between us are greater than ever. If you’re smart, you’ll ask me to take you back to your party. And you’ll forget me.”
His eyes were warm. Every time she looked at him it was as though his eyes touched her soul and set her body aflame.
“I’d rather go sailing,” she managed in a throaty voice that didn’t sound like hers.
He flashed her a searching look. “Tonight? Alone? With me?”
She nodded.
“It’s a cold night,” he said.
“We don’t have to sail. We could just go back to your boat and…”
He gripped her hand, brought it to his lips and then released it fiercely.
Sensing his passionate response, she caught her breath. “We could talk,” she said.
He knew what she really wanted…because he wanted the same thing.
Without another word, he left a tip on the table and led her outside.
When they reached his boat, he grabbed a line, pulled the sloop over and helped her on board. Then he jumped from the dock to the boat. The boat rocked gently, causing Noelle to fall against him.
“Easy, chere...”
“I don’t know starboard from port.”
“Tonight you won’t need to know.”
Then his lips were on hers, harder, hotter, more urgent than she remembered. When his hands [JO39]moved down her body, she forgot everything except the exquisite pleasure of his palms[JO40] that shaped her against his body and his torrid kisses.
He let her go, but he was breathing as hard as she was as he unlocked the hatch. Behind him, she climbed clumsily down the stairs.
The cabin was dark and close. There was a vague mustiness in the cool, damp air. She thought the interior of his yacht the most divinely cozy place in all the world. Above them the sky was dark velvet twinkling with diamond-bright stars.
When the boat rocked, she fell against something. Taking her in his arms again, he guided her to the bunk. She stared into his eyes, her heart racing.
She drew a quick, shallow breath.
He yanked at something on his left hand and opened a drawer. There was the clink of a metallic object rolling across the bottom of the drawer.
Then there was no more talk. He touched her hair, twining his fingers in the long red flames, brushing it away from her neck so that he could kiss her. She felt the rasp of his tongue against her cool skin, and a burning sensation began to build in the center of her being. Only when she touched his hand, did she realize he’d taken off his wedding ring.
Time stopped as she brought his hand to her lips. Then there was nothing but the two of them. The night belonged only to them.
She closed her eyes and let it begin. And the darkness became passion and the passion, swirling darkness. It was as if all the years in between had never been.
They were together. That was all that mattered.
Afterward he wanted her again immediately. “I thought once would be enough,” he murmured as he pulled her down on top of him.
She only laughed huskily, urgent
ly.
They made love until dawn, until the sun was a flame in a purple sky, and their love was even wilder and more exciting than it had been when they were kids. Years of loneliness and need and heartbreak were all mixed up with their passion. Each time was an explosion of deep, primitive longing.
Noelle felt alive, so alive every cell in her body seemed to tingle. Like a child who’d been lost, she felt that she’d finally come home.
Yes, she knew that Grand-mère and Papa would say her fierce love for this man was wrong, that Garret was all wrong. They would say what they had said before—that she should marry a rich man with impeccable social standing because that was the only kind of man she could trust to marry her for herself alone. She knew what they thought of Garret, of his humble beginnings, of his ruthless ambition.
She had been raised to believe she should lead a different sort of life than he led. She didn’t want to hurt her family again, but she didn’t want to hear anything against Garret, either. They had lied to her about him, hadn’t they?
It seemed to her that for as long as she could remember he had been a part of her, a part she’d been taught to deny. Every flirtation with every other man had been a vain attempt to run away from her need for this one man. It was as if there were some mystical bonding between them, and all the years of separation and misunderstanding had never occurred.
But she didn’t want to make her family unhappy again. And so she decided to keep this precious, private thing a secret, at least for a while. It was an old habit, keeping important parts of herself locked away from her controlling family in order to please them.
She would be the dutiful daughter by day.
And Garret Cagan’s woman by night.
She would have the best of both worlds until the right time to make her decision came along. If she was careful, what could possibly go wrong? Who would be hurt?
Chapter Ten
How could she have forgotten that when two worlds collide because of lies or unspoken truths, both worlds shatter?
The dogwood blossoms that Noelle was holding came back into focus. A single tear splashed from her cheek onto an ivory petal that already seemed to be wilting.
Mon Dieu.
She’d been a fool. Everything had gone wrong. Passion had exploded into tragedy. Everyone had been hurt.
She remembered that last horrible night when she’d nearly died, when she’d lost the baby, when Grand-mère had had her stroke and lain as pale as death, unable even to speak. When she herself had recovered, Noelle had knelt at her grandmother’s bedside and had made a promise that she’d never intended to break again.
Noelle remembered the two long years in Australia—years of guilt and denial, clouded by fresh adventure and a tragedy that had prevented her return to Louisiana.
Looking up from the flowers, she saw that a faint breeze was stirring the moss draperies and causing ripples on the bayou. A pair of ducks paddled by in the lush, glimmering silence.
Noelle took the flowers and walked slowly back to the house, then up to her bedroom where she shut the door, pulled her purse out of a drawer and fumbled for her airline tickets to Europe.
Downstairs she could hear the others laughing and talking. Someone had put on a record of Christmas carols. She scarcely heard the music.
She thought of Louis, growing up like an orphan with his grandmother; Louis, locked in his world of silence. She thought of Garret and his stubborn loneliness, but Garret wouldn’t let her try to help Louis. He didn’t really want her to be a part of his child’s life. Nor was there a place for Garret in her own life.
Slowly she skimmed the pages of her tickets. Then she put them down. She went to the mirror and saw that her hair had come down when she’d run in the garden. Carefully she repinned it into the chignon from which it had fallen, pinning it tightly so that not a single hair escaped.
She shoved a final pin into her hair and winced from the pain of it digging into her scalp. The sophisticated, backswept hairdo gave her the regal look of a great lady.
There was only one decision she could make.
Studying her coldly beautiful reflection in the mirror, she sank to the bed, her posture as still and correct as a marble statue’s. Her skin had never looked whiter, nor her hair redder, or her golden eyes more luminously desolate.
It was a dear battle that she fought with her heart. It would cost her much. No one would ever know how much. Not even Garret.
Only geographical distance could safeguard her from the temptation of Garret’s embrace, from the temptation of going to Louis despite Garret’s wishes.
She had to go away and stay away until time erased all memory of Garret and his little boy, until her wild and impetuous nature was safely contained. Because she couldn’t safely marry Beau or anyone else until she did.
Tomorrow she would fly to Europe with Eva and concentrate on antiques. That would mean that she would miss Carnival, and she had already received invitations to more than a dozen balls. Beau would be upset when she did not come back.
She let herself imagine Garret one last time—storming into her antique shop, sacrificing his own job to keep her safe. Again she saw him loping toward her at the airport, a lonely tense figure. She remembered her own leap of excitement when she’d seen him; the way passion had flamed in his eyes when he’d begged her to come back to him. How deferentially he’d treated her grandmother.
Long ago one shimmery spring afternoon when Noelle had hardly been more than a child she’d first lain with Garret on a bed of violets and given herself—body and soul—to him forever.
No....
Eva placed the receiver gently into Noelle’s numb fingers. “It’s Detective Cagan. For you.”
“Tell him...please...that I can’t talk to him,” Noelle begged.
“But he swore it was an emergency. He’s not the sort of man to take no for an answer.”
Noelle shuddered delicately. “H-hello.”
“Merry Christmas, chere.” Garret’s voice was a husky caress, but it jarred through Noelle’s nervous system. “Did you get my present?”
“Y-yes. It’s...beautiful.”
“Are you wearing it?”
“No,” she whispered in a quiet but emphatic voice.
“That’s too bad, chere. You have the most beautiful throat...and shoulders...and—”
“Stop!”
He laughed raspily.
Slipping gracefully out of the door, Eva closed it softly behind her.
The plastic receiver was as cold as ice in Noelle’s shaking fingers. She felt compelled to tell him—immediately.
“I—I decided that I’m not coming back to New Orleans. I’m flying directly to Europe from Baton Rouge,” she blurted on a breathless note.
“That’s bad news, chere” he murmured. “Very bad. I was looking forward to seeing you—and soon. The reason I called was that I’ve got good news, yes.”
Something in his smooth, deeply melodious, very-French tone gave her a doomed feeling. “I don’t understand,” she whispered faintly.
“I’ve caught your bank robber, chere.”
“What?”
“You were right about him. Marc Fontaineau’s really just a poor kid who made a stupid mistake because he was so desperate he couldn’t think straight. He didn’t actually attack Eva. She got scared and fell down. That bank did foreclose on him. I talked to the president of the bank, and he’s determined to take the kid’s mother’s house and send the kid to the pen. The house is sitting on a valuable corner near a freeway. But in thirty days mother and son will both be out in the street—homeless—if someone doesn’t do something fast. His mother’s sick. That’s why she can’t work and pay the note. If Marc’s in the pen, which he will be because the bank president wants to throw the book at him...”
In the hushed stillness of the bedroom Noelle clung to the phone as if to a lifeline.
“Garret, you can’t do that! He’s just a boy. You know better than anyone what it’
s like to be poor and struggling like that. You have to do something. You can’t just leave him there.”
“Me? You were the one so all-fire determined to help this kid. Not me. I nearly lost my job because of him.”
“Garret!”
“Ouch! My ear! Don’t shout, chere.”
“Damn your ear, you low-down Cajun snake!”
“Careful, chere. You’re talking to an officer of the law.” This was said in a holier-than-thou purr.
“What do you want? Why did you call?”
“I told you before you left. I want you to come back to me. The kid needs you. He could go to prison for a lot of years. Where he’s going, up river, they never even heard of the concept of rehabilitation.”
Any man who could live apart from his own lonely son could certainly send another boy to the pen without a second thought.
“I could help you, chere. And him. Or I could hurt you—both.”
“This is blackmail!”
“Don’t call it that, chere, no.” Garret almost sounded genuinely hurt. “I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and to let you know what’s been going on. To see if you liked my present. I’ve been lonelier than hell.”
She slammed the phone down and hoped fervently that the sound deafened him.
She wasn’t going back to New Orleans.
She wasn’t!
Her hand went to her pocket and she pulled the velvet box out. A hot fire was burning inside her, consuming her, until her rage blotted out the tenderness his gift had originally inspired. The room was still and silent. Downstairs she heard Beau laughing. Already he conducted himself as a future in-law.
She had to do something or go crazy. So she threw the box with all her might across the room. Her aim was off, and it barely cleared her bed. It didn’t clear her nightstand. Instead it smashed into her little porcelain clock with gold cherubs, a favorite piece she’d treasured since childhood.
She lunged to save it, but the clock fell, shattering into a thousand pieces. She sank beside it, more furious than before, blaming Garret for everything, most especially for her clock.