Hell, he wanted to devour her.
Moving his gaze downward, he let out a laugh. She had on a stylishly simple black dress—nice low neckline, though her breasts were too small to offer up anything resembling cleavage—but she’d draped a pink feather boa around her elegant shoulders. The boa was at once hilariously goofy and shockingly pretty.
Mac found himself besieged by visions of Julie wearing the pink boa and nothing else. He experienced another sharp pang of arousal and stifled a moan. Was every other man in the room fantasizing about her, or was he the only one suffering from hormone overload?
The men in the group surrounding her seemed to be functioning well enough, exchanging banter with her, laughing at something someone said. One couple was a bit older, the man’s bald head so shiny it looked as if someone had waxed and polished it. The woman with him was dressed in an odd beaded dress that resembled something the flappers used to wear in the Roaring Twenties. Julie’s effusive white-haired neighbor stood with her, his bright-red vest lending his face an unexpected ruddiness, and at his side stood a tall, thin, blond man with a wispy goatee and a glittering diamond stud adorning one ear. A younger couple clad in what appeared to be recycled wedding clothes—a prissy tux for him, a long white dress for her—and two unattached women completed the grouping. Julie stood with them like a lily surrounded by dandelions, cool and beautiful.
He should keep his distance—but he couldn’t. Not with the back of her neck beckoning him. He recalled learning in college that the Japanese considered a woman’s nape one of the most sexual parts of her anatomy. They sure had that one right.
Sighing with resignation, longing and despair at his own lack of willpower, he inched his way through the crowd. He spotted Charlotte Marchand at the bar, conferring with one of the bartenders, and Luc Carter circulating as if he were the party’s actual host. He recognized quite a few of the hotel guests from his regular strolls or from the monitor in the security office.
But there was only one face he cared about tonight. As he drew nearer, he realized Julie was standing taller than usual. Nearer yet, he could see why—she had on the sexiest spike-heel sandals he’d ever seen. Had he admired her insteps before? Had he paid attention to how narrow her ankles were? He tortured himself with a revised fantasy vision of her in nothing but the boa and the shoes.
Julie’s neighbor spotted Mac before Julie did, and beamed him a grin. “Oh, Julie, look who’s here,” he said excitedly, waving Mac over. “Looking devilishly handsome, too.”
Compared to the neighbor in his blaring red vest, Mac thought he looked pretty drab. But he joined the group, smiling and nodding as they widened their circle to include him. When his eyes met Julie’s, his smile felt a little forced. He didn’t want to smile at her. He wanted to ravish her.
Her smile looked as artificial as his felt. “Mac,” she said, holding his gaze for a fraction of a second too long before she turned back to the others. “This is Mac Jensen, the hotel’s head of security.” Then she introduced the others—some New Orleans old-timers, her neighbor Creighton and his friend Stanley.
“Head of security?” the woman in the flapper dress drawled, batting her eyes coquettishly. “Are we in danger?”
Mac opted not to tell her the Wyeth painting was at greater risk than she was. “I’m off duty right now,” he said instead. “Just enjoying the party.”
“Then go and enjoy it,” Creighton insisted, motioning with his head toward the other event room, where the band was playing a tune that sounded familiar but had been so elaborately arranged Mac couldn’t quite identify it. “You and Julie are off the clock now. Go take her for a spin around the floor.”
“Creighton,” Julie murmured, a halfhearted protest.
Mac should have protested, too. But the thought of wrapping his arms around her, feeling her body against his, dancing cheek to cheek—something they could actually do since her shoes brought her up to his height—was too tempting. With a polite nod to the others, he touched his hand to the small of her back and guided her through the crowd to the adjacent room.
“Is this a good idea?” she asked as he deftly steered her past the loiterers in the doorway and toward the center of the room.
“Dancing isn’t kissing,” he replied, turning her to face him and gathering her right hand in his left. “You’re not going to break your ankle in those shoes, are you?”
“Not if you don’t fling me around.”
As soon as they began to move, he acknowledged that this was as bad an idea as kissing her had been—and some bad ideas were wonderful. He was hardly a terrific dancer, but he had a feel for the music. And tonight he had a feel for his partner. She fit so perfectly in his arms. Her legs moved with his. Her eyes met his. She smelled like gardenias.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
It took him a minute to realize she was asking about the hotel’s security, not his current state of mind. Holding Julie was better than all right. Being so close to her he could count her eyelashes, knowing the shadowed hollow between her breasts was barely an inch from his shirt’s front buttons, feeling the delicate ridge of her spine through her dress…“all right” barely scratched the surface.
She was awaiting an answer, though—and that answer couldn’t be about the graceful contours of her back against his palm, or the alluring loops and curls of her hair. “The gallery looks secure, and no one here is sending off troublemaker vibes,” he said. “Tyrell knows what he’s doing, and the staff is on its toes. So, yeah, everything’s all right.”
She eyed him speculatively. Maybe she knew the reply he’d given wasn’t the first one that occurred to him. Maybe she’d been expecting that first one. “How about you?” he asked, testing her. “You okay?”
“I’m not used to wearing heels this high,” she muttered. “I hope I survive.”
“You look spectacular.” The hell with discretion. A feather from her boa was tickling the back of his hand, and he slid it upward, under the boa to the neckline of her dress. To the nape of her neck.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Thank you,” she said in a slightly shaky voice.
“The feathers are a nice touch.” Maybe he shouldn’t have used the word touch. Simply hearing the word emerge from his mouth gave him too many ideas. Bad ideas. Wonderful ideas.
He edged a fraction of an inch closer to her, and she drew in another deep breath. “Mac.” Her voice had gone from shaky to husky.
“Yeah.”
“The way you’re holding me…”
…wasn’t the way he wanted to be holding her, but it would do for now. “My sisters tried to teach me how to dance when I was a kid. They told me I was hopeless, but I’m doing the best I can.”
“You’re a fine dancer,” Julie assured him, amusement mixing with other, less easily defined emotions in her eyes.
He edged the slightest bit closer again, so close barely a whisper of air existed between their bodies. “And the problem is…?”
“The problem is, we sort of agreed…” Her words dissolved into a quiet sigh as he stroked a finger across her nape.
“Sort of,” he conceded. Just standing this near her, moving in a simple rhythm with her, feeling her breath against his cheek and her hand resting on his shoulder caused heat to gather below his belt. He was like a high school kid, getting hard from nothing more than a slow dance with the girl of his dreams.
You’re working for Julie’s sister, he lectured himself. You’re supposed to be keeping Julie safe. He desperately wanted her safe—from everyone but him. But no matter how soft her skin felt, how silky her hair, how sweetly she moved in his arms, she would remain safe even from him. That was how it had to be.
“Oh my God,” she suddenly whispered, staring past him.
He glanced over his shoulder but didn’t see anything remarkable. Just lots of other people swirling around the floor in their flashy apparel. “What?” he asked her.
“The woman with Alvin Gr
ote. You know him?”
“The pain in the ass occupying Room 307.”
She grinned. “He met a woman in town and decided to bring her to the dance. She looks exactly like someone I used to know in New York City.”
Mac’s nervous system jolted to attention. He intently searched the crowd, even though he had no idea what he was looking for. “Someone from New York?”
“Relax, Mac. She was a friend of mine at the agency. A very sweet girl.” She squinted slightly, surveying the crowd. “I don’t know—I’m probably just imagining the resemblance.”
“I want you to find her, Julie,” Mac said. If she’d imagined the resemblance, so be it. But on the slim chance that a very sweet friend of hers from New York City—someone who’d known her during her time as the model for Symphony Perfumes—was here in New Orleans, in this room, Mac wasn’t going to blow off the coincidence. In his business coincidences didn’t exist.
“I can’t even see her now,” Julie said. She must have read his concerned expression, because she laughed. “You’re thinking she sent those e-mails?”
“I wouldn’t discount the idea.”
“I would. Alvin Grote said he met her here in town the night before last. And I got that last batch of e-mails the next morning. How could Alvin Grote’s date have been sending me e-mails from Dallas and who knows where else when she was in New Orleans, reeling Grote in?”
Mac conceded the point. The sweet friend couldn’t have been sending e-mails from around the country while she was in New Orleans. Even so…he wasn’t convinced that her presence at this party was a mere fluke. Flukes were right up there with coincidences in his view of things—worthy of skepticism and investigation.
“I’d still like to meet her,” he said, trying not to sound too suspicious.
“If I ever spot her again, I’ll—”
Abruptly the room went dark. The music clattered to a halt, a woman shrieked, someone bumped into Julie and she stumbled against Mac. He tightened his hold on her—only to keep her from falling, he told himself, even as a jolt of erotic energy surged through him.
That was the only energy in the room—in the entire hotel, he realized as his eyes adjusted to the darkness that engulfed him and Julie and the Hotel Marchand’s Twelfth Night party. His lungs filled with Julie’s delicate perfume, and her hair brushed against his cheek, and her hands clung to his shoulders…and he couldn’t do anything about it. They were caught in a blackout—and both he and Julie had to get to work.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE WORLD WAS BLACK—and it remained black even after Julie slowly, reluctantly leaned back from Mac and opened her eyes. All around her, people chattered anxiously. “Is it a storm?” someone asked, even though the evening weather had been tranquil. “Should we evacuate?” someone else—perhaps a veteran of Katrina—whispered loudly. The band’s drummer must have bumped something, causing his cymbals to rattle and hiss.
“Stay calm, folks,” Mac shouted, yet his voice seemed to be coming from miles away. “We’ve got a power outage. Nothing to panic about. The hotel will get the lights back on in no time.”
“We will?” Julie whispered. Her hands remained on his shoulders, clutching the wool of his jacket. Her feet felt a little wobbly, and she doubted that had anything to do with her high heels—or, for that matter, with the blackout. It had to do with Mac, with the gentle way he clasped her waist and held her steady, with his erotic scent and the warmth of him so close.
His answer was to release her, reach under his jacket and pull out a walkie-talkie. He pressed a button and lifted it to his ear. “Tyrell? Mac. Have you checked? Right. You take the gallery. I’ll take the generator.” He hooked the walkie-talkie to his belt and muttered, “I thought I’d be off the clock tonight. No such luck.”
How could he be so clearheaded? Everyone else on the crowded dance floor seemed confused, bemused, meandering and murmuring and bumping into one another. And they hadn’t been dancing with Mac. Julie had, which only compounded her sense of disorientation.
“Last I saw Charlotte, she was in the other room. You’d better go help her.” He pressed an object into her hand, then strode away, sure-footed despite the darkness.
She lifted her hand and squinted at the plastic cylinder he’d given her: a penlight. Pushing the button on one end sent a narrow beam of light out the other. Somehow, that skinny shaft of white jarred her brain, unscrambling it. “Please, everyone, watch your step and don’t worry!” she shouted. Her voice didn’t carry as well as Mac’s, but what could she do? The band’s microphones wouldn’t work without electricity. Lung power was all she had. “It’s just a power outage! If you’d like to go out into the courtyard, there might be more light there! Please be careful! No shoving!”
People surged toward the doors. She wished she was wearing comfortable shoes. A portly man hurrying past her snagged her boa and nearly yanked it from her neck, but she caught one end of it and managed not to lose it.
Her mind spun with all the possible catastrophes this situation threatened. The hundreds of guests attending the party could get injured in a stampede. They could lose their bearings and their balance. They could bang into walls and bruise themselves on doorjambs. There could be people upstairs, too, or trapped in elevators. Was the entire hotel without power, or just the first-floor rooms?
Mac was on his way to the generator. Armed with his trusty walkie-talkie, he’d round up some maintenance staffers and try to get power back to the public rooms, the hallways and elevators. Meanwhile, as he’d suggested, she should be helping Charlotte.
Fighting the tide of bodies heading in the direction of the courtyard, she struggled to reach the doorway into the other event room. The penlight Mac had stuffed into her hand offered too little illumination to guide her across the room, so she turned it off and clutched it tightly, not wanting to drop it. The other room was as chaotic as the one she’d left, although the candles bobbing in their crystal bowls of water indicated where tables were located. The tiny flickers of light reflected off the shiny surfaces of the Mardi Gras beads. Under other circumstances, Julie would be entranced by the effect.
Right now, though, she had to find Charlotte.
Through the drone of voices—some laughing, some edgy, some just this side of hysteria—she heard Charlotte doing her best to speak above the tumult. “No need for alarm,” she was saying. “We’ll get some more candles lit.”
“Charlotte.” Julie staggered to her side, as relieved as if she’d just reached the summit of Mt. Everest.
“Oh, Julie, thank God you’re here. We’ve got to keep order.”
“Mac’s gone to get the generator running,” Julie informed her. “Do we have more candles?”
Julie was able to make out Charlotte’s nod. “I’ve sent word to Nadine that we need not just candles but flashlights and oil lamps. I can’t believe that tonight of all nights the hotel should lose power. It’s a disaster.” Charlotte might have only soothing words to her guests, but tension vibrated in her tone as she whispered to Julie.
“It’s not a disaster,” Julie assured her. “The food won’t spoil, and some of the band’s instruments don’t need amps. If we can get both rooms a little brighter, we can restart the party.”
“Heaven help us if someone gets hurt. I can’t imagine why this has happened. We pay our utilities bills faithfully—and those bills are staggering.”
Julie chuckled and patted Charlotte’s arm. “The electricity wasn’t cut off because we haven’t paid our bills. It’s a technical glitch. Maybe a car struck a light pole down the block. Look.” She tucked her hand through Charlotte’s arm and steered her toward a window. Across the street, the buildings were all dark. So were the streetlamps. “It isn’t just us. The whole neighborhood is out.”
“If a driver was stupid enough to drive into a pole and knock out the power on Twelfth Night, he ought to spend time in jail,” Charlotte grumbled, then managed a feeble laugh. “Help me keep these people in line, Julie
. We don’t want a riot on our hands.”
Julie hardly thought people dressed in their finest and eager to party would resort to rioting. She handed Charlotte Mac’s penlight and said, “You need this more than I do. I’ll go out to the courtyard and organize things there.”
The silver light from the nearly full moon wasn’t enough to turn night into day, but compared to the darkness indoors, the courtyard was remarkably bright. Many of the revelers carried drinks in their hands, and some held small plates of food. A few waiters circulated, passing out fresh drinks, and the band had gathered near the pool. The guitarist and keyboardist wouldn’t be able to play without their amps, but the trumpeter gamely burst into a solo of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” which brought a burst of applause from the audience. The drummer tapped a rhythm with his sticks against the bars of the fence surrounding the pool, and the sax player threaded a harmony into the mix.
Julie smiled and made a mental note to add a fat gratuity to the band’s fee.
She wandered about the perimeter of the courtyard, where the building cast shadows, to make sure no one was fretting or sulking or, God forbid, hurt. A few frisky guests started to dance, and more joined in. Julie checked her watch. How long would it take Mac and the maintenance crew to get the generator up and running? How long until Nadine and her assistants rounded up some candles and gas lamps?
However long, this party would survive. And people would be talking about it for years.
She spotted Creighton and Stanley—Creighton’s white hair glowed vividly in the moonlight—and made her way over to them. Seeing her, Creighton slung an arm around her shoulders, careful not to crush the boa he’d lent her.
“I, for one, am devastated,” he said cheerfully. “Without electricity, that talented mixologist over in the bar won’t be able to prepare any drinks that require a blender.” He lifted a tall, frothy glass of something watermelon colored and took a drink. “I guess I’ll have to sip slowly and make this last.”
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