“Not in the long run.” He smiled a little at the approaching lights of his house. His home. “At least I’ve gotten off their radar as a suspect, or I think I have.”
“Yeah, definitely. I think the only reason you got held that long is because the sheriff wanted to make a point—to all of us.”
She stopped the truck in front of the house. Midnight had come and gone, and Cole froze in place, trying to figure out the halting words to invite her inside while at the same time letting her know it was okay if she said no. Had interacting with people—with women—always been this hard? Or maybe it was just her; he was desperate to not screw things up with Jena Sinclair, a feeling he couldn’t imagine having even a couple of weeks before.
Before he could pull his words together, she killed the engine. “Cole, is it okay if we go inside and talk?”
He smiled. She had a knack for it—making him smile. He could have sworn he’d forgotten how, unless it was the kind of smile one pulled out in appreciation for a beautiful sunrise or a pure, cloudless autumn afternoon.
With her, he could not only smile; he could tease.
“Sure, c’mon in . . . or is your partner standing guard?” He looked up and down the lane as they approached the front porch. “Your coworkers are really protective of you, in case you haven’t noticed. Especially that guy Broussard. He kept sizing me up tonight. Never said a word. Just stood there and watched me like I was an ugly bug under a microscope and he might have to stomp me flat if I made a wrong move.”
Jena laughed. “Mac and I have only been partners for a week or two, but Gentry’s been my partner since I joined the division. We’ve been through some stuff together, and he . . . yeah, he’s overprotective. They all are since I just came back on active duty, which is nice on the one hand and, on the other, makes me want to throttle them.”
She waited until he unlocked his door and stood aside so she could go in first. “You should see Gentry with his fiancée. She keeps threatening to tie him to a chair just to get some alone time. Whenever she wants to go anywhere, he thinks he needs to go with her.”
Cole found himself smiling again, pleased to know Broussard had a fiancée and not a thing for Jena.
He must be overly tired, or losing his mind altogether. He’d gone from no contact to wants full contact in a matter of days. “You want something to drink? I’ve got some blackberry wine I made that’s pretty good. Tea. Water. Afraid I don’t have Cokes or hard stuff.”
“I’m medication free as of today,” she said. “Not even ibuprofen. So yeah. I’ve never tried blackberry wine, but it sounds good. Did you grow the berries?”
“No, I made it from wild ones I found on one of my rambles through the parish. Hang on.” He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with two mismatched tumblers half filled with dark-purple liquid. “When I came here, I brought one box with a few clothes and a toothbrush,” he said, handing her a glass. “Nothing else. So most of my glasses and stuff—whatever I haven’t been able to make—have been thrift-store treasures.”
“Except for the tablet.” Jena had spotted the computer on his rough-hewn coffee table.
“Yeah, I guess the fact that I had to hold on to one lifeline should’ve told me I wasn’t completely ready to cut myself off. Anyway, I like to wander around the parish by boat a lot, and in spring I’ll stay gone a few weeks at a time. I found tons of wild blackberries last year and brought them back for wine and jam.”
Jena tasted the wine, then took a longer sip. “This is amazing. Rich, with an aftertaste of honey. Kind of like port, but not as heavy.”
“Yeah, and to think I couldn’t boil water before becoming a swamp dweller.”
Jena took a seat on the sofa, and Cole found himself with another dilemma. Should he sit next to her or take the other chair? Such a decision shouldn’t feel momentous, but it did. It felt as momentous as a choice between the past and the future.
It felt like a choice between friendship and maybe more than friendship.
He sat next to her on the sofa.
Jena had come here to finish the story she’d begun this afternoon and now here she was, almost close enough to touch Cole, definitely close enough to feel the chemistry that seemed to spring up between them whenever they got near each other. It was as if he had some kind of heat field around him that she could absorb through her skin.
She sipped a little more wine and took a deep breath. The wine relaxed her, and she needed relaxing for this conversation. “I came back tonight because I realized I had been unfair this afternoon.”
“Seriously? Your support was the only thing that kept me from getting arrested, which I thought was extremely fair—although the sheriff hung back and gave me another lecture that included not leaving the parish and pretty much not breathing without his permission until this was all cleared up.”
“Sheriff Brown is a tough character, but I guess it’s in his job description.” Jena ran a finger around the rim of her glass. “No, you were really honest and open with me today about what happened to you, and I wasn’t as honest with you. About why I tried to kill myself. About why I gave up. You said one time that you’d cut yourself off from everyone but never had a death wish. I can’t say the same.”
Cole set his glass on the end table and moved closer. Close enough that his energy field engulfed her and shared that inner strength she was pretty sure he didn’t realize he had. “Jena, I meant it when I said only when and if you’re ready. You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“Yeah, I do.” She reached out to take his hand, wondering even as she did it whether he would flinch or pull away. Instead, after a momentary stillness, he twined his fingers with hers and held on. “We had some kind of connection from the beginning, and it meant a lot that you were able to open up and talk to me about what happened to you. I know it didn’t come naturally and it wasn’t easy. I considered it an honor that I was the one you could talk to.”
Her gaze probed his face. “I hope the drug case wasn’t the only reason you told me.”
He reached out with his other hand and tugged on the band holding her ponytail, letting her hair fall to her shoulders. His gaze seemed to heat her skin as he leaned closer. “You know damned well it wasn’t the case. I felt something pulling me toward you the first time you came here that afternoon. I sense some sadness inside you, and I wanted to fix it. Something about you resonated with me.”
He looked at their hands, comfortably together. “No, it was even before that, when I saw you standing out there and looking over the water. Before you caught me looking at you. The expression on your face was one I understood.”
Jena nodded. “Me too. Something inside me recognized you.” She took another sip of wine. “After I was shot, I had to go back to New Orleans and stay at my parents’ house while I recuperated. I knew it would be awful. My parents and I have never gotten along well. They love me, but they don’t know how to show it in a way that makes me feel it. My dad throws money at everything and keeps his distance, and my mom hovers too close and tries to micromanage. As the bullet wounds healed and I realized how disfigured I’d be, my mom assured me someone might still want me if I found a good plastic surgeon.”
Jena was aware of Cole shifting on the sofa, pulling her closer, but she kept her eyes on the far side of the room, on a knot in one of the pine panels that covered the walls. If she looked at him, she’d never get it out. “Then, during one of my last assessments with the doctors, they told me . . .” She’d never said the words aloud, but gathered them in her mind. “One of the bullets had damaged . . . They told me I’d never be able to bear a child.”
Cole drew her close, wrapped his long arms around her, and folded her in his warmth. “And a baby is something you’ve always wanted?”
Jena relaxed in his arms; his warmth and the hand that rubbed her back simply wouldn’t allow the tension to linger. “I honestly hadn’t given it that much thought before, which is the stupid part.” She pulled away so she
could look at him, to try explaining something that sounded crazy, even to her.
“I want kids, or I always assumed I would have kids if I found the right person to have them with. I realized that not carrying a child wasn’t the end of the story. I can always adopt a child or find a surrogate. But I didn’t feel like a woman anymore. I had fallen so deeply into a dark hole that I couldn’t think clearly enough to be logical.”
His voice was soft. “I know that hole pretty well myself.”
“All I could think was how I’d always failed my parents, and this was one more failure. I wasn’t the beauty they wanted. I was a tomboy and refused to be a part of the debutante scene; believe me, in New Orleans, that’s a huge deal. When I chose an academic field, it wasn’t to pursue a respectable white-collar occupation like a doctor or lawyer or business tycoon. I wanted to be a cop. Even worse, after a few years with NOPD, I decided to train for wildlife enforcement.”
Jena could feel him watching her, but she still couldn’t look at him without crying, and she didn’t want to cry. She might not be able to stop.
“What happened to push you over the edge?” Cole asked.
“I overheard my mom talking to one of her friends.” Jena did her best Mom impression, assuming an uptown New Orleans accent. “‘Well, thanks to her poor choices and obvious inability to do her job, Jena Grace will not even be able to present us with a grandchild. Honestly, I sometimes think she was a punishment from God for some wrong I did in the past.’
“That’s what did it: my own mother seeing me as her punishment from God, as if I only mattered because of how I reflected on her. And I bought into it. Stupid thing is that now, I don’t think she even realizes she said it. If she did, I don’t think she’d understand why it would hurt me.”
Cole pulled her back into an embrace. “We’re programmed to believe our parents, but parents are just people who’ve had kids. There’s nothing magical about them. They don’t automatically become warm, nurturing people upon giving birth.” Rachel had been a hard woman. Cole hoped she would’ve never said anything like that to Alex, but he’d never know. “Think of it this way. You were strong enough to escape and do the thing you loved, then you got sent back at a time when you were hurt and vulnerable. Whether she meant it or not, she pushed you into that hole and started shoveling in the dirt.”
Jena’s tears came anyway. “I guess.”
“When I first met you, I saw sadness.” Cole’s voice was slow and calm. “But since then, here’s what I’ve come to know about you. You’re strong. You’re a survivor. You’re smart. You’re beautiful.” He paused. “Of course, you have to take into account that I haven’t met anybody else in five years.”
She shoved him away, and when she met his gaze, they both laughed. It had been the perfect response to stop the tears and let her know it was okay.
Until his smile faded and there seemed to be some kind of war going on behind his eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer at first, but finally said, “I really want to kiss you.”
Her first instinct was a flippant Then why don’t you, already? Because she wanted him to. But she’d bet her last paycheck that the last woman he’d kissed was his wife. He’d probably climbed out of their bed that morning, given her a quick kiss, and headed to work. Never imagining it would be the last time.
The statement that he wanted to kiss her wasn’t an idle flirtation, not coming from him, and she couldn’t treat it that way.
“I want you to kiss me.” She wasn’t sure she was ready to be with a man, not with her scars, but her need to taste him overrode her fear of rejection.
He leaned forward, tentative, and pressed his lips to hers. Pulled away. Kissed her again, this time with more force. Jena opened her mouth to his, and he took the invitation. Even after such a long day, he smelled like fresh air and sunshine and tasted as sweet as the wine he’d made from the blackberries he’d found in the wild.
He scattered kisses along her jawline and down her neck, sending heat way farther south. God, could she do this? Could she stop?
A buzz from her pocket startled them both, and they jumped apart as if they’d been about to fall into some abyss, saved only by Jena’s mobile phone.
Damned phone.
“Sorry.” She pulled it out and read the text from Warren: The sheriff wants you to present your theory to the full task force, noon tomorrow @ TPSO. Bring your A game.
Cole brushed his fingers through her hair. “Don’t tell me. You have to go?”
She couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed. She wasn’t even sure about her own feelings. Maybe a little of both. If she stayed, they would make love, and she wasn’t sure either of them was ready for that step. They’d taken an awful lot of steps today already.
“Yeah, a command performance before the sheriff at noon, and I have to meet Mac in a few hours to talk to a nuisance-gator guy.” They were going to confront Ray Naquin about his claim of selling gators to a business that was not even open but, as ordered, never mention drugs.
Now that, she regretted.
CHAPTER 25
Ray Naquin’s silver pickup was parked in his drive, with a shiny white fiberglass bass boat hitched to the back. Mac wished the guy would make it easy for them and have the back of it filled with Black Diamond, but no such luck.
“Well, the boat’s white,” Jena said. “What is it, about eighteen feet?”
Mac shook his head. “More like sixteen. Good size for alligators too; it can go in narrow channels.”
Too bad there was no way to tell whether Ray had been the guy Cole had seen on the day the gators had been found. It would probably be too much to hope for that he’d open the door wearing a light-colored hoodie and holding a pair of binoculars. Besides, they were risking the wrath of the sheriff by even talking to him since the drug investigation was officially not their business.
They didn’t make it to the front door before Ray walked out wearing a purple LSU T-shirt, raggedy jeans, and a smirk. “Why if it isn’t my friends from Wildlife and Fisheries. Y’all still lookin’ for pissed-off reptiles?”
“Actually, we’re trying to account for all the nuisance gators sold this past year, just for monitoring purposes,” Jena lied.
Mac had to respect a woman who could lie so convincingly on short notice. Unless, of course, she was lying to him.
Ray had been loading tape and zip ties and fishing rods into the back of the boat, but stopped short. “What the hell are you talking about, Agent Sinclair? I file paperwork with the state, so if you got questions, call your own department’s nuisance program.”
Mac sensed that Jena would arrest Ray for a bad attitude and send him directly to the Louisiana State Penitentiary if she got the chance. After what Ray had said to her the other night, Mac didn’t blame her.
“Mind if we take a look at your unfiled paperwork?” Mac asked. “See if there are any that aren’t on our list? I noticed you had a big stack of unfinished paperwork in your living room.”
Mac stuck his hands in his pockets, an aw-shucks move. “And you said you’d been selling all your gators to Don Gateau, right?”
Mac watched Ray for any telltale body language, but the man was arrogant. Arrogant people didn’t think they could be caught, and of course there was always the possibility that he had nothing to do with the drug scheme—if there even was a drug scheme. Couldn’t arrest him for arrogance.
Plus, Ray Naquin had a good business; it was hard to imagine him getting pulled into this Black Diamond nightmare and risking everything. But why lie about his gator buyer?
Ray’s kettle was boiling and about to blow. “Look, unless you two got a warrant to search my premises—and nobody’s gonna issue one because you’re on a bigger fishing expedition than the one I’m about to go on—get the hell out of here. You want to see paperwork, go look at your own.”
“C’mon, Mac. Mr. Naquin’s not going to be cooperative.” Jena headed back
to the truck and only paused slightly when Ray yelled, “So long, scarface.”
Talk about boiling kettles. Mac was so angry, it was a miracle that steam wasn’t blowing out his ears in a high-pitched whistle. He ended up inside the truck before Jena had fully climbed in.
Ray didn’t give them the option of hanging around either. He stood beside his open pickup door, making shooing motions with his hands until Mac backed out of the drive and headed on down Shrimpers Row. He pulled into a tucked-away spot in the first parking lot they came to, and waited to see which way Ray went.
“There he goes, heading south.” Mac’s fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly enough to turn his knuckles white. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to hear shit like what he said.”
“Oh, come on, Mac. You’ve got nothing to apologize for. He’s just pissed because I wouldn’t have pity sex with him the other night.”
Mac ground his teeth. “Somebody needs to teach that jerk a lesson.”
“Let’s just drop it.” Jena looked northward toward Ray’s house. “Think we should take a look around his place while he’s gone?”
“No way he’s going to have anything incriminating left outside. He’s an asshole but he isn’t dumb. Well, yeah, he’s dumb but not that dumb. Why don’t we pay another visit to Amelia Patout?”
“Sounds good to me. I want nothing more to do with Raymond Naquin. Unless I run into him out in the field on a call, he doesn’t exist to me.”
Mac wasn’t sure whether she was trying to convince him or herself. “Well, we’re trampling all over the sheriff’s territory anyway, so why not talk to Amelia? We just don’t mention drugs. Good spur-of-the-moment lie back there, by the way.”
Halfway to Houma, Jena’s mobile phone pinged. “Just got an e-mail from Don Gateau.” She punched the button. “Interesting. He says he hasn’t bought a gator from Ray Naquin in a couple of years, but he heard Ray was sending all his business to Patout’s since Amelia got sick, on account of his friendship with her late husband.”
Black Diamond (Wilds of the Bayou Book 2) Page 17