by JoAnn Ross
Michael’s smile didn’t meet his eyes, which remained concerned. “It was my pleasure.”
“And you were magnificent.” She crossed the room to Shayne. “Even if you did wreck a lovely suit of armor.”
She’d aimed the kiss at his cheek, as well, but he turned his head and captured her mouth. Conquered it. The kiss didn’t last long. But it still made her blood burn and her mind blur.
“Put it on my bill,” he said when the hot, breath-stealing kiss ended.
“I thought you two had an auction to attend in New Iberia.” Lilah had arrived at the shop and was staring at the couple.
“We do.” Bliss took a huge gulp of air and damned the fire she could feel burning in her cheeks. “In fact, if we don’t get going now, we’ll be late.” She stepped over the metal helmet and was on her way out of the shop when she realized Shayne wasn’t following her. “Are you coming?”
He’d been enjoying watching the sway of her hips in that silk skirt, wondering when he’d become such a masochist. If she’d been any other woman, he would have taken her to bed days ago. Hell, probably that first night in Paris. It wouldn’t have been that hard. A few long deep kisses, some lingering caresses, pretty words whispered in her ear.
The part of him that had always been willing to do whatever it took to break a case kept reminding Shayne that it’d be a lot easier to keep an eye on Bliss if they were sleeping together, spending not just their days, but their nights under the same roof.
Another part of him—some strange, unsettled alien part he’d never known was lurking inside him—kept thinking that she was different. She might indeed be a thief—and her former husband’s appearance in the shop today was certainly damning evidence against her—but she still affected him like no other woman he’d known.
He wanted her for more than just sex. But unaccustomed to introspection when it came to the women in his life, Shayne couldn’t get a handle on what he was feeling.
“I’m right behind you,” he said, putting the vexing problem behind him for now.
Michael and Lilah watched them leave the shop together, both noticing the easy, possessive touch of Shayne’s hands on her hip as they crossed the street to where he’d parked the Jaguar.
“What was that all about?” Lilah asked.
Michael shrugged. “Beats me.” But the concern in his eyes deepened as he watched two of the people he cared most about in the world drive away.
As THEY DROVE away from the city, deep into the bayou, Shayne observed the garish strip centers occupied by the ubiquitous fast-food restaurants that had even cloned themselves all over Europe and thought about how much had changed since he’d left home.
So much around him had changed. But what was deep inside him had changed, as well, he realized. He was not the same young man who’d left Louisiana in search of action, adventure and intrigue. In those days, everything in the world had seemed new and exciting, as glittering and foreign as the Emerald City of Oz.
Over the past decade, he’d drunk coffee and nearly had his neck slit in Ankara, evaded Serb blockades in Bosnia, gotten drunk on ouzo with a sexy blond AP reporter on the Greek isle of Seriphos, watched the sun come up behind the magnificent snow-covered Mount Kilimanjaro that hovered over Tanzania, and made mad, passionate love to a dark-eyed beauty in a Bedouin tent beneath a dazzling white moon in the desert of Abu Dhabi.
He had, Shayne realized now; become jaded, a dispassionate collector of adventures, cities, and, yes, even women, the way tourists collect tacky T-shirts and local crafts as souvenirs of their summer vacations.
And then he’d made the mistake of walking along the Left Bank with a woman who was forcing him to take a long hard look at his life; not only where he’d come from, but who he’d become. And, where he was going.
“This is such amazing country,” Bliss murmured as they drove deeper and deeper into the mysterious wetlands, leaving civilization behind them.
He’d left the top down on the Jag; the air rushing by them carried the scent of sugarcane, moss-draped cypress trees and wet green lichen along with the fragrance of the bright yellow four-o’clocks that were still open in lingering puddles of shade.
“It’s another world, all right,” he agreed as they passed two adolescent boys in a pirogue and experienced a flash of bittersweet memory of youthful crawfish trapping with Roarke and Mike.
“Have you ever been here before?”
“Yes.” He didn‘t—couldn’t—elaborate.
“My grandfather was Cajun,” she revealed. “He inherited his parents’ house on the Bayou Teche. Some of my fondest memories are of the summers I spent there.”
There was already too much to like about this woman. To discover they shared an ancestry made her even more dangerous. And appealing.
“But you lived in the city the rest of the time?”
“Yes. Grandpère Dupree was a career navy man. When he retired, he settled down in New Orleans and opened a restaurant. But that didn’t last long.”
“It’s a tough business.”
“Especially if you give meals away to every homeless person who shows up at your back door.”
“Generosity and good business practices are probably often contradictory.”
“I suppose so.” Bliss brushed some windblown curls out her eyes. “But I’d much rather be proud of my grandfather Dupree’s generous heart than rich. And it’s because of him that I got into the antique business. Zelda furnished our house from weekend flea markets. I learned early on how to find treasures in the midst of a lot of trash.”
Shayne wanted to believe her. But experience had taught him not to trust. “You might not care about being rich, but those diamonds you were wearing in Paris didn’t exactly belong to a pauper.”
“They were my mother’s.”
There was something new in her voice. Something that sounded a lot like pain. And regret.
“So she must have married rich?”
“Actually, she never married.” Bliss turned toward him and although he couldn’t see her eyes through the tinted lenses of her sunglasses, Shayne could feel the challenge in her gaze. “Which, as the kids in school always loved to point out, technically makes me a bastard.”
Shayne shrugged. “I’ve never been fond of labels.”
Yet another lie. In his business everyone got put into neat, tidy pigeonholes. It was the only way a guy stayed alive. And even then he had the scars to prove that sometimes mistakes were made.
“It must have been tough for you, growing up.”
“Sometimes.” It was Bliss’s turn to shrug. “Mama was sick a lot, so I spent most of my time with my grandmother Zelda.” She sighed and shook her head. “That’s not true. Mama wasn’t sick. She was an alcoholic.”
“I’m sorry,” Shayne said, meaning it.
He wondered if her painful childhood was the reason for her adult criminal behavior, then reminded himself that lots of kids—including his brothers and himself—grew up in untraditional homes and didn’t turn out to be international jewel thieves.
“It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. She wasn’t one of those dramatic, technicolor drunks. She was quiet and wispy, almost like a ghost living in the house.”
“You said was.”
“She died when I was fourteen.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“So was I.” Again, Bliss thought about how fortunate she’d been to have Zelda. And Dupree, who may have failed at every business he’d attempted, but had ensured that she’d grown up in a home filled with unconditional love.
“I’m surprised you haven’t sold the diamonds.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Other than the fact that you apparently could use the money, I’d think they’d come with unpleasant memories.”
“Oh, no. It’s just the opposite. Whenever I wear them, they remind me that there’d been a time before I was born—no matter how brief—when my mother had been in love. When she’d been happy. And
that makes me feel close to her.”
Once again, Shayne thought that Bliss appeared to be a woman totally without guile. Again, he thought of his brother’s assertion that she couldn’t possibly be guilty of the crimes she was accused of. Then he glanced down at her smooth tan thighs and thought about how, thief or not, if he didn’t make love to her soon, he’d go nuts. Or explode.
“I think I’d like to meet your grandmother,” he said.
She laughed at that. “I don’t think you’re going to have any choice. Zelda told me today that if I didn’t invite you for Sunday dinner, she was going to track you down herself.”
“That sounds great.”
Since Michael had refused to help with that part of the plan, opting instead to do background checks on everyone Alan Fortune had been hanging out with lately, Shayne had been looking for a way to get into Bliss’s house.
Since the old lady seemed to spend most of her days puttering around the garden, breaking into it during the day had been out of the question. And since too many things could go wrong in the dark—witness his almost shooting his own brother—he’d never been overly fond of nighttime break-ins.
“I suppose I should warn you that Zelda’s an unrelenting matchmaker,” Bliss said with forced casualness.
“Terrific.” When she glanced over at him in obvious surprise, Shayne shot her a rakish grin. “Just because I promised not to try to seduce you, doesn’t mean that I don’t still want you, Bliss. I could use someone on my side.”
“Wanting is easy,” she murmured, watching the tupelo trees flash by. “Too easy, sometimes.”
“Agreed. But there’s one thing you need to remember, Bliss.”
She turned, responding to the steel in his voice. “What?”
“I’m not Alan Fortune.”
“I know that.” As if needing some physical connection, she placed a hand on his leg.
Shayne, who could feel the imprint of each individual finger burning through the denim of his jeans into the flesh of his thigh, wondered if she knew the impact of such a touch and decided that the gesture, like so much else about Bliss, was impulsive.
“Whatever’s happening between us, Shayne, I know that you’d never lie to me the way Alan did.”
Shayne reminded himself that he wasn’t at all like that slug of an ex-husband. That he was only doing his job. That she’d created the damn situation in the first place by somehow getting herself mixed up with smugglers and thieves.
But as the sun rose higher in the sky, casting a pearly glow over the dark water on either side of the highway, he felt something he had experienced too often lately—a nagging twinge of guilt.
9
THE AUCTION WAS being held in an old plantation house that predated the Civil War and had definitely seen better days. It reminded Shayne of the crumbling, vine-covered ones he’d explored as a kid with Roarke, when each of them had tried to scare the other with tall tales of invisible weeping women and ghosts dressed in Confederate gray and Union blue.
“Isn’t this lovely?” Bliss asked as they made their way gingerly up the teetering brick path to the front gallery.
He glanced down at the sawdust running along the crumbling foundation. “It’s about to collapse into the bayou.”
“It just needs a little care. And someone to love it.”
“What it needs is a wrecking ball. The place is a smorgasbord for termites, Bliss.”
“I’m certain an exterminator could take care of that little problem.” She glanced at the abandoned rice fields behind the house. “I wonder how much land comes with it.”
“Surely you’re not thinking of buying it?” Since he knew her bank account down to the last dollar, it crossed his mind that she’d have to steal a helluva lot of diamond earrings to even shore up the dangerously unstable foundation.
“Not really.” She ran a hand up one of the fluted front columns. “But it’s a lovely fantasy.”
Watching her stroking touch was all it took to make him hard. Soon, Shayne vowed. “So, have you always had this tendency to look at the world through rose-colored glasses?”
“I’m afraid so.” The house was shaded by an ancient oak, allowing her to take off her sunglasses. Her eyes, as she looked up at him, were earnest. “You make it sound like a flaw.”
“It’s just a good way to get into trouble.”
“I know.” She sighed as she thought about Alan. “But I’d still rather go through life expecting the best from people and sometimes being disappointed, than constantly thinking the worst.”
Always expecting the worst was exactly how he’d lived the past ten years, Shayne realized. He’d had the adventures he’d wished for when he’d left Louisiana, but at what price?
“That’s not such a bad philosophy, in theory.” He hooked his arm around her waist and drew her a little closer. “So, when you think of me—” he ran the back of his free hand down her face, trailing his fingers around her jaw “—do you expect the best?”
Never one to lie—especially to herself—Bliss had long ago accepted that like her grandmother and mother before her, she was destined to go through life leading with her heart. Even her disastrous marriage hadn’t changed her romantic nature, which is why, as she watched the warmth deepen Shayne’s disconcerting blue eyes, she had no choice but to answer honestly.
“Yes.”
A wealth of passion shimmered in that single word, letting Shayne know that the waiting had finally come to an end. “Can I take that to mean that I’m not the only one waking up in a sweat these days?” He toyed with a silky curl.
His touch, casual but intimate, his seductive gaze, the enticing curve of his lips all conspired to make her go weak at the knees. Despite the humidity hanging over the bayou like Spanish moss, her mouth had gone horribly dry.
“No. You’re not.”
As she looked up at him, her open, honest heart in her eyes, Shayne knew that Michael had been right all along. This woman was no more a jewel thief than he was. Which meant, he realized, that Alan Fortune may have actually been trying to tell the truth about Bliss’s life being in danger.
He was going to have to tell her the truth, he decided. It was the best way to debrief her, to discover what the hell was going on. And, possibly, to save her life.
“We need to talk.”
She smiled at that. “Funny, I didn’t get the impression that talking was at the top of the list of things you wanted to do with me.”
“Bliss.” Talk about bad timing. She’d finally succumbed, was willing to let him take her off to the nearest bed, and suddenly he was the one changing gears. “Nothing’s changed about that. In fact, I want you more than ever. But there are things—”
Shayne broke off his planned explanation as he felt someone coming up behind him.
“Well, well,” a smoothly modulated voice said, “imagine seeing you here, Bliss, dear. I would have thought our little contest in Lafayette would have put you off auctions altogether.”
Shayne felt Bliss stiffen. “I’ve no idea what you mean, Nigel,” she said, her smooth tone edged with an acid he’d never heard in her voice before. Not even when talking about her ex-husband.
“We’ve had this discussion before, dear. There’s no way you’re going to be able to compete in an increasingly competitive marketplace. You’re too underfinanced.”
“Sorry, pal,” Shayne said, breaking into the conversation, “but you’ve got it backward.”
The rival antique dealer arched an aristocratic brow. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Nigel Churchill. And you are...?”
“Shayne Broussard.”
“Ah.” He nodded thoughtfully. “The mystery man everyone’s buzzing about. I’d heard that Bliss had landed you as a client, but since rumors run rampant in this business, I’d dismissed them.”
“In this case, they happen to be true. Bliss is furnishing my new home.”
“Well, when you’re finished playing with amateurs, you may want to give me
a call.” He reached into a leather case and took out a gray pasteboard card. “I’m sure a man in your position is accustomed to dealing with the best.”
“You called that one right. Which is why I came to Bliss. Who is, by the way, far from an amateur. And you may as well head on back to whatever slimy rock you crawled out from under, Churchill old man. Because you’re looking at the man who’s going to outbid you for every damn piece you came here to buy today.”
Having watched Shayne threaten Alan with that sword, Bliss came to the conclusion that he was the type who felt the need to rescue damsels in distress. And, as much as she appreciated having a champion, she couldn’t allow him to bankrupt himself just to defend her honor.
“Shayne...”
“Don’t worry, darling,” he said. “I know what I’m doing.”
Although she found the idea of treating her nemesis to some of his own medicine appealing, Bliss couldn’t forget the seemingly unlimited funds Nigel had displayed the last time they’d bid against each other.
. “I sure hope so,” she murmured as she allowed Shayne to lead her into the house where the auction was being held.
A HOT, STEAMY four hours later, Bliss was staring at Shayne in disbelief. “I don’t believe it! We got everything we wanted!”
“I told you I knew what I was doing.”
Shayne didn’t know which he’d enjoyed more—imagining Cunningham’s expression when he got the bill for today, or watching the excitement blaze in Bliss’s remarkable eyes as the bidding war between he and Nigel Churchill had escalated to a take-no-prisoners intensity.
“But it cost you a fortune.” She’d known he was rich; she’d just never guessed how rich.
“I needed furniture. And that jerk needed to be taught a lesson about ethical business practices.”
He glanced over at the no longer so smug antique dealer who’d left the plantation house and was standing beside his Rolls-Royce Corniche, engaged in what appeared to be an intense conversation with a thirty-something brunette who looked vaguely familiar.