One kiss was on the verge of becoming one steamy, intimate act. Chance’s arm was around her waist, holding her tight against his arousal, and his free hand was sending tantalizing shivers everywhere he touched her—her jaw, her throat, the swell of her breasts—when running footsteps sounded on the deck.
“Chance, we’ve been looking all over— Oh, hell.”
As Chance lifted his mouth from hers, Mary Katherine clung to him—clung, like a weak-willed, emotion-ruled, vulnerable, naive girl. He slid his hands along her bare arms to her wrists, pulled her hands back, gave her a sexy wink and a kiss on each palm, then turned to face the interloper. “What’s up, Dunigan?”
A burly security guard built like a tank stood a half-dozen feet away, looking as if he didn’t know whether to be put out or amused. “Can’t you hear your damn beeper going off? We’ve been looking all over for you. There’s trouble in the Pacific Lounge. Mr. Ianucci wants you there on the double.”
Vaguely Mary Katherine became aware of the incessant beeping coming from inside Chance’s coat. He pulled out the pager and pressed whatever button was necessary to stop the noise. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
The guard returned the way he’d come, grumbling as he went. All she heard clearly was one complaint. “Jeez, next time get a room, will you?”
As Chance turned back to her, he was tucking the beeper inside his coat again, and the dim light glinting off something there caught her attention. Taking hold of the fine black fabric, she pulled his coat open wider…to reveal a pistol tucked in a shoulder holster. She stared at the gun with a mix of revulsion and fascination, but before she could summon even one word, he gently pulled her hand away and closed his coat again.
“Mary Katherine, I…” With a rueful smile, he touched her jaw. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you when the Queen docks.”
Not if she saw him first, she thought as he walked away, his long legs rapidly widening the distance between them. She was going back to work, and she was going to regain her sanity, and she was going to learn how to keep him at arm’s length.
She swore on her heart she was.
Thursday morning was hot and muggy, with heavy dark clouds hanging low over the city and the sweet scent of rain in the air. Chance parked in front of the house Sara had given him directions to, rolled up the Cuda’s windows, then climbed out, pausing for a moment to look.
Mary Katherine’s second choice for lodging was a definite improvement over the cheap motel. The house looked about ninety years old—dusty red brick with arches over the windows and doors, a concrete-floored porch and a neatly kept yard. The neighborhood was a big step up, too. Instead of taverns, tattoo parlors and strip joints, her neighbors here were mostly young families, if the toys in the yards were anything to judge by, and mostly conscientious about maintaining their property.
It still wasn’t too late to turn around and leave, he reminded himself as he started up the sidewalk to the porch. He could go back to his apartment and wait for Jake to check in, or head over to the Queen and spend an hour—or three or four—working off his excess energy in the gym. Hell, he could jump in the Cuda and go cruising down the Great River Road toward Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
Or he could climb those five steps, open the screen door, walk inside and knock at Mary Katherine’s door.
And Lucky Reynard makes the sucker’s choice, he thought cynically as he climbed the steps. The dangerous choice. The one that could leave him in even sorrier condition than he’d been eight years ago.
Or maybe in the best shape he’d ever been.
The screen door creaked when he opened it, and the floor-board protested his third step inside. She was renting 1-A, according to Sara, the only door on the left side of the long hallway. He raised his hand, hesitated, then knocked sharply.
The sound of a television inside was abruptly muted, then he imagined he could hear the faint slap of bare feet on bare wood approaching the door. When Mary Katherine opened the door, he was looking as careless and casual as he knew how, but inside he felt like a spring wound too tightly and about to pop.
The mere sight of her was enough to ease the tension—and create tension of another sort. She wore another of those innocent/sexy dresses, the kind that hugged every curve above her waist and concealed every one below. It reached practically to the floor but couldn’t hide her feet, bare as he’d imagined, with the toenails painted deep pink. Her gorgeous brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and the expression in her gorgeous brown eyes—eyes that could make a man forget himself—was carefully guarded.
“Hi,” he greeted.
“Hi.”
She’d opened the door only halfway and blocked it partly with her body. Did she think he would force his way in un-invited? he wondered with some scorn before admitting that he just might, if she made it necessary. And did she think she could stop him if he felt force was necessary? Probably not. But like any good Southern belle, at least she would make a show of putting up a fight.
“I missed you last night.” The incident in the Pacific Lounge had kept him occupied briefly after the Queen had docked. By the time he’d gotten off the boat, the parking lot was mostly empty, and Mary Katherine’s car had definitely not been one of the few that remained. In truth, he hadn’t expected her to wait for him, not after that kiss.
But he’d still been disappointed.
She had the courtesy to blush. “I—I was really tired, so I came on home.”
“You couldn’t have waited ten minutes so we could talk?”
“There…there wasn’t anything to talk about.”
“What about that kiss?” He watched her blush deepen, watched her gaze flutter helplessly before settling somewhere around his feet. “Or that look on your face when you saw my gun?”
Behind him, the door to 1-B opened and a man about his age came out. He gave Chance a curious look, smiled at Mary Katherine, then went outside, letting the screen door bang behind him. He took a magazine from one of the mailboxes, pulled a rocker from the corner of the porch and sat to read.
Chance scowled at the back of the guy’s head before turning back to Mary Katherine. Before he could ask to go inside, she stepped back and opened the door wide in silent invitation. Feeling some stupid macho satisfaction, he went inside and closed the door behind him.
The apartment was filled with period furnishings, which translated, in his opinion, to ugly upholstered pieces and good woods. In the rooms in sight—the living room, the dining room, a small part of the kitchen—he couldn’t see anything that he thought might actually belong to Mary Katherine. But that would change now that she was settled, he suspected. After all, Jubilee was only an hour away. Surely over the next ten weeks, she would want to visit her family or check on her house and pick up a few candles or flower vases or whatever sort of thing women tended to decorate with.
“Much better place,” he remarked when he realized she was watching him.
“I like it.” She clasped her hands together, then folded her arms across her chest. “Would you like a glass of tea?”
“Yes, ma’am.” While she went to the kitchen, he wandered through the French doors that opened off the dining room onto a small covered porch. Strips of lattice at either end supported confederate jasmine that filled the air with its scent, and a gate blocked the steps that led into the side yard.
From the porch he had a good view of an angry sky. In the past few minutes the clouds had turned bluish-black, and the rest of the sky had taken on a purple-blue-gray tinge. An occasional flash of lightning etched across the sky, followed by rumbles of thunder so distant and muted that they were practically lost in the hum of the ions in the atmosphere.
“Does business on the Queen suffer in weather like this?” Mary Katherine asked as she came to stand a few safe feet away. She set two tall glasses of tea on the flat rail cap, then backed away a little farther.
“Not at all. People come from all over the world with money to spend on the Queen
, and a little lightning and rain aren’t going to keep them from doing just that. If the weather gets really bad, we don’t leave port, but nobody seems to care.” He picked up the glass nearest him and took a long drink. The tea was flavored with mint and sweetened just right.
As he returned the glass to the rail, the wind picked up, showering a few jasmine blooms across the ground. It sent a strand of Mary Katherine’s hair across her cheek, which she impatiently brushed back. He was glad she did, because if she hadn’t, he would have, and there would have been no impatience. In fact, it probably would have taken him forever, and they might have wound up naked in bed before he was done.
Needing space and air cool enough to squeeze into his tight lungs, he took his tea, moved a few feet away and leaned against the rail. “Is there anything you want to ask?”
A tight, troubled look came across her face. “What’s to ask? You work security in a casino where hundreds of thousands of dollars change hands every night. It’s only reasonable that you would carry a gun.”
“But you don’t like it.”
“No.”
“Because you’re convinced that Mr. Ianucci is a bad guy, and I work closely with him, and so I must be one of the bad guys, too.”
She gazed out across the yard. “I don’t believe you’re a criminal.” But she didn’t sound too sure of it. “I just don’t understand… I assume he pays his security people even better than his waitstaff. Is that it? The money? Is that why you’re willing to take a job that requires you to carry a gun?”
“It’s a job, angel. Nothing more, nothing less. A lot of people carry guns. Cops. Security guards. Couriers. Even some lawyers and cabdrivers. Hell, these days even some teachers are packing, Miz Monroe.”
“But they don’t work for people the government is trying to put in jail.”
“It has nothing to do with that,” he said with exaggerated patience. “I’m not armed at work because the feds believe Mr. Ianucci is a criminal. We don’t shoot people, Mary Katherine. We don’t rub out the competition, or shake down the local businessmen, or intimidate innocent townspeople into looking the other way while we conduct our nefarious business. It’s security, sweetheart. The Queen’s never had a serious incident—no attempted robbery, no assaults, no nothing. How long do you think that record would stand if word got out that no one on board was armed?”
Grudgingly she shrugged.
“You’re right. We do have hundreds of thousands of dollars on board—sometimes millions. If the real bad guys out there knew the most dangerous weapon we had was a steak knife, why in hell would they stay away?”
She smiled ruefully. “I understand the logic of what you’re saying. It just doesn’t balance the surprise of seeing you with a gun. In my world, people don’t carry guns.”
“In my world, they do,” he said flatly. After an awkward moment he went on. “So you’re convinced Mr. Ianucci’s a crook. Does it bother you enough to make you quit the job?” Say yes, the reasonable part of him silently wished while the realistic part just as fervently wished the opposite. He had enough to occupy his time without adding hour-long drives to Jubilee, and he had enough obstacles between him and Mary Katherine without adding her family. Surely they wouldn’t want him around her, and surely they exerted the influence to keep them apart. Hadn’t she planned her entire life according to their wishes?
And hadn’t she upset that plan eight years ago to be with him?
Again came the rueful smile. “Here comes the hypocrisy,” she warned. “No, I’m not going to quit.”
“Why not? If Mr. Ianucci’s dirty, then the money he’s paying you is dirty.”
“But I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m a waitress. I wear a skimpy costume and three-inch heels for nine hours a night, and I’m on my feet eight of them. I earn the money he’s paying me.”
“And the tips are so damn good. You’re right, sugar. You are a hypocrite.” He smelled the first drops of rain and turned to watch them. They were big, fat, and landed with plops in the dirt, the grass. They brought a sweetness to the air that made him inhale deeply and think for the first time in years about playing in the rain with his brothers.
He wouldn’t mind doing it now with Mary Katherine.
After a moment he put the image of her, with soaking-wet clothes plastered to her skin, out of his mind and looked at her again. “So that pretty much exhausts the subject of the gun. That only leaves the kiss.”
A gust of wind came out of the north and slammed into the side of the house, bringing raindrops with it. They cooled his arms, splashed across her shoulders, left interesting shapes across the red cotton of her dress. He didn’t think to move away from the rail where he might stay dry. Neither did she.
“It was just a kiss,” she murmured, her voice soft and sweet and curling around him like a need he couldn’t escape.
“Uh-huh. Just a kiss to make your blood run hot. To make your knees weak and your lungs tight and your skin quiver. To make you remember how good we were together, to make you want it like that again, to need me like that again.”
Dazedly, without breaking from his gaze, she shook her head side to side. “It was just a kiss. I’ve had dozens of them. You’ve probably had hundreds.”
Lightning struck nearby, followed by a crash of thunder that seemed to rumble through Chance’s body as he pushed away from the railing. “No one’s ever kissed you like that but me,” he insisted as he took one step, then another, toward her.
She took a step back, but the railing was there, blocking her retreat. Instead of trying to sidestep him, she wrapped one arm around the slender column there and hugged it tight. “You are so arrogant.”
He rested his right hand alongside her head on the column and placed his left on the railing, effectively trapping her without touching her. “It’s not arrogance, darlin’. It’s fact.”
“And how do you figure that?”
“Because if any other man had ever kissed you like that, you would be with him right now, not me. If Mr. Right had ever kissed you like that, you never would have risked it all with me.”
Though she clung to the column as if it might somehow protect her, she raised her free hand to touch his cheek gently, sadly. “There’s a flaw in your reasoning, Chance. You kissed me like that…but where have you been the last eight years?”
He wanted to tell her everything—why he’d left, why he hadn’t contacted her, how much he’d missed her. But telling her why meant telling her the truth, and telling the truth at this point could put his life, as well as this case he’d devoted the past fourteen months to, in danger. Telling the truth could put her in danger, because if there was one thing Mary Katherine Monroe wasn’t, it was a liar. If she knew the truth about him, he wasn’t sure he could trust her to hide it.
Grimly he moved away, turning to grip the rail with both hands. The windblown rain continued to slant under the porch roof, spotting his T-shirt, dampening his jeans, wetting her dress. There was a part of him that wanted to open the gate and go out to stand in the middle of the yard, eyes closed, face tilted up to the rain, arms open wide to embrace it. There was another part that wanted to stomp through the puddles, throw his head back and curse the unfairness of life.
Of course, he ignored both impulses and, instead, moved back to lean against the house, where only the hardest-blown raindrops reached.
After a time she moved, too, taking up a position on the opposite side of the door and facing him. “What was the problem in the Pacific Lounge last night?” Her voice sounded almost normal, and helped him to make his almost normal, too.
“One of the customers who’d had a bit too much to drink blamed his hundred-and-seventy-five-thousand-dollar loss on the dealer rather than bad luck. It took us a while to calm him down. Mr. Ianucci wound up giving him back his money.” At the surprised look she gave him, Chance shrugged. “He’ll be back tonight or tomorrow to drop that much and more.”
“Was the dealer cheating?”
&n
bsp; “I doubt it. We tape all our games—it keeps everyone honest. We’ll check the tapes from his particular table and find out, but…truth is, a lot of customers just don’t want to accept responsibility for their bad decisions.”
She remained silent for a moment, thoughtful, before asking, “Why did your Mr. Ianucci choose to set up business in Natchez? It seems if he’s looking for high rollers, he’d have better luck finding them in someplace like New Orleans or Las Vegas.”
He grinned, grateful to have a subject that was easy to talk about. “He’s not my Mr. Ianucci, darlin’, and he doesn’t go out looking for high rollers. They come looking for him. You may not have noticed, but the Queen’s clientele isn’t exactly your average tourist. These people don’t come to Natchez for the history or the sightseeing. They come for the Queen. If she were berthed at Vicksburg, they’d go there. If she pulled in to Timbuktu, so would they, and if she found a way to dock in downtown Jubilee, darlin’, they’d find a way there, too.”
“So why Natchez?”
“It’s a nice town. It’s not difficult to get to, and it’s not too big, but it has everything a business like the Queen needs. There’s decent shopping, some good restaurants and hotels and a population sufficient to staff the boat, without all the hassles of a big city.” Of course, there were a few other reasons. Being small, Natchez lacked the federal law enforcement presence of a bigger city. There wasn’t much of a crime problem, meaning there wasn’t much of a scrutiny-of-cops problem. Its size also allowed Ianucci’s security to more or less keep an eye on new people in town.
“What were you doing in New Orleans when you saved Mr. Ianucci from getting arrested?”
“Working. Tending bar at a little place down on Decatur.”
“What happened to your plans to open your own garage?”
They’d been part of his cover eight years ago, nothing more. He’d been playing a role that wasn’t much play—brash, bold, a hotshot mechanic with ambitions of the sort a mechanic would have. Much as he enjoyed tinkering with engines, and as good as he was, he’d never had any desire to make a living at it. The only engine he wanted to tinker with these days was the Cuda’s, and even that as little as possible.
Who Do You Love? Page 15