by Kari Gray
Lily shook her head. “I just feel her. What she must have experienced at some point—maybe when she lost the hair?”
He frowned and pulled a hair from his own head. Dropping it into her palm, he eyed her expectantly.
“Nothing. That’s weird.”
“Why are you able to channel her?”
Lily shrugged. “Maybe because she willed it? Or she had similar abilities so it’s like some cosmic connection?”
“My mom has abilities too, but you’ve never clued into her like this before. There are probably genetic bits of her all over the family house, you’d have come across something by now.”
Lily squinted at the the voodoo priestess’ hair and felt a surge in the air, much like when she connected with an aura. “That’s it. I was intensely focused on it. When I found it the first time, it I lost it for a minute in the dark and I had to look hard for it.” The sensation was fleeting, lasting for only a few seconds at a time. She frowned. “I can’t hold it for very long, though.” She looked at Bennett with a shrug. “I don’t know how this will help us.”
Bennett reached into his wallet and pulled out a small piece of paper. “Here, I don’t have an envelope or anything, let’s keep the hair in this receipt. I think you should hang on to it.”
Lily carefully placed the hair on the receipt and Bennett folded it up, placing it in his pocket.
“Well,” he said and stood, reaching a hand down to help her up, “at least we know how far your aura reading extends. Do you want to try mine again?”
Lily bit her lip as she stood and dusted off her pants. “I don’t think so. It seems kind of…invasive.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t mind.”
“You really want me to know how you’re feeling? Not just know it in my mind but feel it?”
His mouth quirked in a bit of a smile she could barely see in the dark. “Might not be such a bad thing.”
She tipped her head to the side and studied him, her heart thumping a little too hard. “What do you want from me really, Bennett?”
He was still for a moment. One heartbeat. Two. He moved closer to her, slowly, and her breath caught in her lungs. He paused, as though debating with himself. “I’ve loved you for a very long time, Lily Bordeaux,” he finally murmured, and cupped the back of her neck, tipping her head up slightly as he lowered his mouth to hers.
It was more than she’d ever imagined. Every nerve ending came alive as he kissed her, his movements almost desperate. She responded, touching the tip of her tongue to his lower lip and he groaned, pulling her up against him as her arms encircled his neck. She barely registered the twinge of pain in her ribs, didn’t care. It had never been like this with anyone else. And as much as she’d tried to block him out, replace him with other guys, the substitute had always been a shallow comparison and she’d never been satisfied.
She bunched her fingers in his hair and tightened her arms, sighing into his mouth as he deepened the kiss until she thought she would drown in the sensations that flooded through her. She gasped for breath, her broken ribs sharply protesting as she tried to drag air into her lungs.
Bennett broke the kiss with a muttered curse and rested his forehead against hers, his arms still wound around her and her body hauled up against his as though he would meld them together if he could. “Lil, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t,” she said breathlessly and lightly pulled on his hair with fingers that were still entangled in it. “Don’t apologize. Please. I love you, too. I always have.” Tears burned in her eyes and the emotion was overwhelming, too much. She closed them tightly and tried to stifle the sob that escaped despite her best efforts.
He rubbed his hand up and down her back, shuddering a bit and relaxing his own stance, as though he’d been waiting for something, tense and primed for dismissal or rejection. How much time had they wasted? How long ago should she have confessed her feelings for him? He buried his face in her neck and she felt the breath of his sigh against her skin. She opened her eyes, and although still blurred by tears, focused on him with her hand still clenched in his hair, reading this time not only for his visual aura, but something deeper.
The sensations that slammed into her robbed her of all breath, of all thought. Longing, desire, relief, an overwhelming sense of love combined with an equally overwhelming sense of sexual frustration. She choked back a laugh, again struggling to breathe as she clamped her eyes closed and mentally shoved the emotion out of her head, glad he was holding her up because she was completely and utterly weak.
He stilled. “What did you just do?”
“Nothing,” she managed. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.
He lifted his head and loosened his hold, only to tighten again when she gripped his upper arms.
“Just a minute,” she whispered. “Just give me a minute. Wow. Note to self. Don’t do that again.”
“Did you just read me?”
“Maybe.” She softly blew out a breath and closed her eyes. “You told me to.”
He was quiet and she opened her eyes to see him watching her speculatively in the dark. “And?”
“You want to throw me down right here on the floor, and—”
“That’s all you got? Everything I have going on in my mind and that’s what you came away with?”
She laughed and then slowly sobered, not wanting to cry again but feeling her eyes sting anyway. “You love me. And my emotions are more than enough for me to handle—I can’t be zeroing in on yours, too. For a guy, you have a lot of feelings.”
He shook his head. “All guys have feelings. They just don’t like to talk about them.”
“Neither do you, apparently.” She winced, this time the pain not physical, her brows knitting in a frown. “Why didn’t you ever tell me? How long have you felt this way?”
“Since you told me your name was ‘Bordeaux, like the wine.’”
“Bennett.” The tears came again, this time in a rush. “It killed me when you started dating Steph. My heart broke into a million pieces.” She made a small fist with her good hand and thumped it twice lightly on his chest, and shook her head. “Why didn’t you say anything?” She looked up at him, feeling every inch the vulnerable college freshman she’d been, in love with a guy who was only a year and a half away from graduation and supposedly thought of her as nothing more than a buddy.
He cupped her face in his hands. “Lil, you never gave me any indication you were interested in more than we already had.” The ache in his voice was palpable. “And you were dating so much, you were away from home for the first time, I didn’t want to take any of that away, even if you felt the same.”
“Dammit, Bennett, that was my decision to make. So much wasted time,” she whispered. “All I ever did was try to replace you. And nobody ever measured up.”
He placed his hand over the fist she still had resting on his chest. He was warm, and she realized she was shivering. “And I wanted to take every guy you went out with and drag them behind my truck.”
She laughed through her tears. “At least I would have known how you were feeling.”
“Lily, you had to have known.”
She shook her head. “Maybe I was naive. I thought I was just your—”
“Everything. You were my everything. Are my everything.”
A noise outside the dingy little hut caught her attention and she jumped, following Bennett’s gaze to the front door. They were still in danger, someone was still trying to get something from her at all costs, and she might very well lose the one thing she’d wanted for years before she ever really got a chance to enjoy it.
CHAPTER TEN
Lily stepped out of the shrimp boat and onto the dock, and frowned as Bennett paid the captain, who was technically not the captain, and joined her on the dock. The noise outside Lady Chamonix’ hut had proved to be nothing. It had sounded so much like a footstep—Lily could have sworn there had been someone out there. Bennett took her arm as they wal
ked to his parked car and she looked at him as he opened her door and she climbed inside.
“There was someone there, at the hut. Right?”
He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment and grasped the seatbelt, stretching across her to click it into place. Had she not been so worried, she’d have laughed or given him a hard time for treating her like a two-year-old.
“Bennett, did you see someone and you’re just not telling me?”
He shook his head. “No, but I agree. I do think someone was there.”
“Which means we’re being followed. We’re never totally safe.” The thought made her feel sick. What if she were never free from that strange man who seemed to know everything about her?
“We’re safe. I texted Jeremy—he’s sending a protective detail to the house to keep an eye on things.” He paused and took her face in his hands. “I will never let anyone hurt you again.” He placed the softest of kisses on her mouth and pulled back. “Ok?”
She nodded. He couldn’t promise such a thing, but she figured she’d put his mind at ease by making him think he’d done the same for her.
Lily tried to relax as they made their way back into town. They planned to stop at the post office to see if she’d received any mail—she was hoping to see insurance information regarding the shop even though she knew it was way too soon. But she found that if she didn’t stay active, if she didn’t at least act like she knew what she was doing, she’d go crazy.
They rode in relative silence, and Lily’s mind spun. Bennett had just kissed her senseless in a ramshackle voodoo priestess’ hut on the bayou, she was a bruised mess, her aunt lay in a coma, and the only home she’d known for the last four years was completely destroyed. Her well-ordered life had spun so far out of her control she wasn’t sure she’d ever get it back.
Bennett reached for her and laced their fingers together, occasionally lifting them to place a kiss on the back of her hand. At one point she bit her cheeks to keep from smiling, and when he glanced at her with a brow raised, she shook her head.
“What?” he asked.
“Just thinking that my mouth is getting jealous of my hand.”
He shifted in his seat. “Lily, you can’t say things like that. We’ll be to the post office in two minutes and I won’t be in any condition to stand up.”
“Serves you right,” she said, laughing. “That’s what you get for not telling me years ago you were interested.”
“Oh, Miz Lily. It’s not the first time I find myself in this condition because of you.” He glanced at her, one brow raised.
Well. Not a whole lot she could say to that. She felt her face flush and Bennett kissed the back of her hand again.
“Serves you right,” he murmured with a smug grin.
Lily exited the post office, sorting through some letters, most of which were junk mail, and glanced back at Bennett as they walked back to the car. He held a light box that had apparently been waiting for her since earlier in the day—it was addressed to her P.O. box, which was odd because she’d only just started using it as a substitute for the shop. All of the other correspondence was labeled with the Bohemian Boutique address and had been forwarded to the P.O. box.
“I wonder if we ought to take this to the police station before opening it,” Bennett said as they reached his car and he set it on the hood.
“You think someone is going to try blowing me up again? That would fly in the face of my mysterious friend’s objectives. He made it pretty clear he doesn’t want me dead anymore.”
Bennett tapped a finger lightly on the box lid for a moment. “Ok. But let me open it.”
“No way am I letting you open something you think might be booby-trapped.”
He maintained eye contact even as he flicked open a small pocket knife attached to his key chain and sliced the tape along the top of the box.
“Geez,” she muttered and moved to his side, looking over his shoulder as he lifted the flaps. A beautiful demi-mask of deep blues and greens with a tinge of rich purple sat nestled atop shimmering fabric of matching colors. She lifted the mask and examined it—it was adorned with a peacock feather and exquisitely stitched. She prided herself on knowledge of good quality textiles, and the mask she held in her hand was not a cheap one. “What on earth?” she murmured and handed the mask to Bennett.
Lily reached into the box again and lifted the matching fabric that shimmered in varying spots as the light hit it just right. Shaking it out and lifting it high, she realized what it was as some of the folds cascaded downward. It was a ball gown, beautifully tailored and, if she wasn’t mistaken, her size. Her mouth went dry as she glanced at Bennett. “What is this?”
Bennett took the dress from her, the delicate bodice looking tiny in his hands. Lily lifted the rest of rippling fabric out of the box and away from the hood of the car. The dress was absolutely beautiful. She spied a small white envelope at the bottom of the box and her hand shook as she reached for it and opened the seal, withdrawing a two stiff, white cards. She told herself to pull it together, even as she scrambled to keep her heart from pounding its way out of her chest. The handwriting scrawling across the card was elegant, old-world even.
I do trust the ensemble will fit you to perfection, Miss Bordeaux. I took great care to examine you at some length during my nocturnal visit to you and your aunt, and I’m also confident that the colors will suit your complexion beautifully. You will wear this to the Charington’s Masquerade Ball tomorrow night, and you will use the accompanying card to gain entrance. You will bring with you the item we discussed on the phone, and you will tuck it safely in the right skirt pocket of your beautiful new ball gown.
Do not concern yourself with locating me; I will find you. We shall dance, and you will give me what I need. Do not bother bringing your handsome escort or other well-meaning protection. It is an invitation-only event, and they will be turned away at the door. And besides, you need no protection from me. I have no reason to harm you now, and regardless, my insurance that you will follow my instructions now lies in your email inbox.
Your humble servant,
Othello.
Lily’s hand shook and Bennett held up a finger. “Don’t move or set the card down for a second.”
He set the dress back in the box and placed the mask atop it again before circling around the car and rummaging in the back seat for something. She watched him through the windshield, feeling weak with fear and leaning slightly onto the car to keep from sinking to the ground and curling up into a little ball.
Bennett withdrew from the car and approached her, holding a latex glove. He carefully used it to take the card from her, and the accompanying invitation to the masquerade ball. “We’ll take this to Jeremy right now,” he said. “Really should have opened the whole box there.” He set the cards inside the box along with the glove and scooped up the whole of it as he ushered her to the passenger side door.
She climbed into the car, feeling numb. What had the card said at the end? Her email? She pulled her phone from her pocket and scrolled through to her email app. Nestled among the pieces of spam was a name that jumped out at her— “Othello,” and the email subject read Miss Bordeaux’ motivation.
Bennett settled into the driver’s seat, the lines tight around his mouth. He placed his hand on the back of her neck and moved close as she opened the email, which showed nothing in the body but bore an attachment. Clicking on it, she sucked in her breath at the image of Mimi, Dahlia, and Poppy at the airport in Boston.
Her nostrils flared slightly as fear and anger settled into the pit of her stomach like a hard knot. The image was time stamped from that morning—of course it would be. Mimi and Lily’s sisters were on their way to New Orleans, and Mr. Othello apparently had his spies in place everywhere.
“You’re not going to this masquerade ball,’ Bennett said flatly and took the phone from her, clicking back into the email and looking at the picture as he traced his finger up and down the screen.
/> “I most definitely am,” she said, her entire body tensed and ready to erupt. “I am going to that damn ball and I am going to end this.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lily left the package from Othello with Jeremy Ambrose at the police station for processing. She made him promise, however, to be sure the dress and mask were kept intact. She hadn’t exaggerated her claim to Bennett—she was going to the masquerade ball to confront her new nemesis once and for all. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, live like this, and as soon as they picked up Mimi and the girls from the airport, Lily determined to figure out the talisman’s hiding place and finish the thing.
“She told me she was going to make the girls stay home,” Lily muttered to Bennett as they waited curbside for her grandmother and sisters to exit the airport. “According to the email from Othello,” she spat the name, “that didn’t happen.”
“Are your sisters a lot like you?” Bennett said, keeping his eye on the rear view mirror for the airport security, who were likely going to tell them they had to circle around again.
“I guess so. Why?”
“That would explain it. She probably did tell them to stay home.”
Lily scowled at him. “They’re not safe here.”
“That picture was taken this morning in Boston, Lil. I don’t think they’re any safer there.”
Her heart sank. He was right. They were all in danger and she was helpless to fix it. If nothing else, at least Bennett’s family home seemed secure. The police detective had been true to his word and stationed two uniformed police at the house. They would take shifts with other officers and make regular rounds outside the home and property perimeter. She supposed it was as good as it was going to get.
“I’m going to have to drive around again,” Bennett said as security approached the car. “You go in and meet them, bring them out as soon as you can. Ok?”
Lily nodded and opened the door, just as the uniformed airport attendant lifted his hand to knock on her window. She made her way into the airport and stood at baggage claim while Bennett circled around again in the car. When she finally caught sight of Mimi, Dahlia and Poppy, her heart thumped in her chest and she surprised herself by tearing up. The three sisters were more like triplets, really; their mother had suffered from severe endometriosis, and her doctor had told her if she was going to have children, she’d better do it soon and in rapid succession. Three little girls each a year apart had been the result.