“You didn’t stay?” The entry way was huge, with doors leading off it and a magnificent stair made of gleaming wood and polished within an inch of its life.
“They wouldn’t let me.” That obviously didn’t sit well with Nessa.
An elderly woman, tall and straight, dressed in a vintage fifties-style purple silk dress, with a turban wrapped around her head, came bustling out of the dining room. “Of course we couldn’t let you stay, dear girl. You’re young. We’re old. Someone has to carry on the family line.” She eyed Mac, appraising first Nessa’s arm around him, then his face and body, as a suitable candidate.
Clearly annoyed, Nessa said, “Not right now, Aunt Hestia. I’m too busy trying to get Mr. Jeremiah Mac somewhere where I can bandage his gunshot wound.” She pulled his jacket back.
Vaguely, Hestia blinked at the bloodied shirt, then at him. “Young man, are you in danger of dying?”
“No, the bullet only took a bit of skin.” He would be sore, but not unduly so.
“Then, Nessa, don’t let him bleed on the rug,” Hestia scolded. “The guests will start arriving in an hour.”
On one side of the entry, large double doors were flung open. Inside, he could see a small ballroom, and in the corner a band was setting up. On the other side, he saw the dining room where white-coated caterers decorated a long table and the sideboard. Rich odors of sausage, garlic, and peppers permeated the air. His stomach took notice and growled. “You’re having a party,” he said.
“Yes.” Nessa’s jaw set in annoyance. “It’s the Dahl House Mardi Gras party.”
“It is a social event of some magnitude,” he suggested, and watched in amusement for her reaction.
“Of course it is,” Hestia said vigorously. “Guests fight for an invitation. I’m so glad Nessa has a date, and one that seems so…well, Mr. Mac, don’t be insulted, but you seem almost normal.”
“Have I disappointed you?” She certainly acted as if he had.
“No, the band is good—we probably don’t need any more entertainment tonight.” Hestia beamed at him as if she were talking sense.
“Mr. Mac is not my date,” Nessa snapped. “He arrived in New Orleans today.”
“Then of course you had to bring him. Our hospitality is legendary.” Hestia placed her hand on his arm and confided, “It would be a disgrace if she didn’t ask you.”
Nessa’s face turned the color of his brightest red power tie.
Busted! Oh, this could be played to his advantage.
“He’s the insurance investigator for the bank, and he’s looking into the Mardi Gras robberies,” Nessa said.
“Really. How interesting. Mr. Mac, you may call me Miss Hestia—everyone does.” She shooed them toward an open corridor. “Nessa, take him to the utility room and bandage him up, then bring him back—he looks like he knows how to dance.” She bustled into the ballroom.
Nessa had claimed her aunts were some of the renowned eccentrics in New Orleans, but he hadn’t expected…Miss Hestia. “Why does it matter if I dance?”
“The aunts love to dance, and there are never enough men who can.” Nessa led him through a short hallway to the bustling kitchen.
He had found the source of the enticing smells.
A tiny black woman, so old she made Miss Hestia look like a teenager and so short she could walk under his outstretched arm, bellowed directions at an entire team of food preparers and chefs.
There was nothing wrong with her lungs.
The bustling crew arranged hors d’oeuvres, stirred bubbling pots, and placed raw biscuits on baking sheets.
Nessa waved. “Hi, Miss Maddy. This is Jeremiah Mac.”
“Good to meet you, Mr. Mac. What are you doing in here, child, and dressed like that? You’ll be late!” Maddy scowled so heavily Mac stopped in his tracks.
“We got mugged. He’s shot. Aunt Hestia said to bandage him up in the utility room—”
“Do it fast, because we need that sink.”
As casual as these women were, Mac wondered if gunshot victims appeared at the Dahl House every day.
“Yes, ma’am.” Nessa hustled him into the large utility room and shut the door. “On party day, it’s a good idea to stay out of Miss Maddy’s way. She’s been running this show so long, we couldn’t do it without her.”
Remembering the deep wrinkles around Maddy’s mouth, he said, “She looks ancient.”
“She is. We just don’t know how ancient. Aunt Hestia and Aunt Calista remember her cooking when they were little, but Miss Maddy won’t hear of retiring. She says sitting around would kill her.” Gently Nessa pushed him down on a low, battered stool. “Personally, I think if the hurricane didn’t do it, nothing will.”
“She was caught in the hurricane?”
“She lost everything. She lost all the mementos of her son, killed in WWII. Thank God the aunts had a couple of snapshots in their photo albums.” Nessa sadly looked into space. “Can you imagine the pain of having no family?”
He snorted.
Nessa blinked at him. “What’s wrong?”
“Sorry.” He hadn’t meant to betray himself like that. “Sometimes family can be a pain in the ass.”
“Yes, but it beats the alternative. Take off your shirt.”
“It’s stuck.” He tugged lightly on the bloody material.
She winced as if his wound were hers. Getting a towel, she wet it in warm water, then folded it into a pad and handed it to him. “Soak your shirt loose.”
Going to the large cupboard in the corner, she opened the doors and rummaged inside. “Who’s a pain in the ass?” she asked.
“In my family? All of them, pretty much.” As he waited, he looked around. The room had once been a porch. Now the walls were pale pink, the floor cracking linoleum.
“Siblings?”
“A stepbrother. Joe. He’s fourteen years younger, though, in the military.” A washer and dryer and a big, old, deep sink occupied one wall. Another wall was floor-to-ceiling drawers and cupboards, and between them, a hanging rod full of kitchen towels.
“He sounds like he’s okay,” Nessa said.
“I barely know him.” If he didn’t give her something, she wouldn’t quit. “My mom is never going to win the prize for Mother of the Year. My grandparents don’t much care for me.” An understatement—when his mother popped up pregnant, her working-class family had been deeply ashamed, and they’d never forgiven him for being born. “My stepfather…he doesn’t like me much.”
“But your mother…wasn’t she on your side?”
“Don’t get the wrong idea. My mom tried. She really did. It was just a difficult situation”—and that was an understatement—“and she didn’t have intestinal fortitude to stick by me. Most people aren’t like Miss Maddy or your great-aunts. Most people, when put to the test, fail. My mom was no different.”
“That is such a terrible attitude. So cynical. I wish that you…well, there’s no use saying that, after what happened today.”
“You wish that I what?” he asked softly.
“I wish that you could have a family like mine. My great-aunts always do what they think is right, no matter what the consequences.”
“It’s great that you have so much faith in them.” Not that he believed what she said, but it was nice she did.
Nessa really wasn’t the kind of woman he’d expected.
Even if he’d never seen her on the video, he would have known she came from money. She wasn’t as tall as he’d expected, only about five-seven, but her legs were long and slender, and somehow, rich women always had delicate bones and striking faces.
Not that she was rich; he knew the amount in her bank account to the last penny, and a pitiful amount it was.
She didn’t seem the type to sell that body for money, not even in marriage. Too bad, because if she weren’t an accomplice in these robberies, he’d be willing to plunk the money and a ring to get her in his bed and keep her there. He knew himself well enough to admit he’d
never tire of having her beneath him in bed, making her abandon all that proper gentility, making her sweat and move and scream while he—
“Is that doing it?” she asked.
He stared. “What?”
She came over and lifted the damp towel away from his side and peeled the material away from his side. “There you go. Now you can take off your shirt.”
“Right.” He’d pay to hear her say that in the bedroom.
He unbuttoned, tossed the shirt on the washer, and waited.
Nessa tucked a stack of clean rags under her arm, then opened a drawer and took out ointment and a roll of gauze. She turned back to him…. And stopped cold, her eyes wide and shocked.
“What’s wrong?” As if he didn’t know.
His body had been knit from his grandfather’s muscles and bones, and his grandfather had worked on the docks, then in the mills. Like him, Mac had broad shoulders, a massive chest, big arms, and huge hands. Ashley Wilkes he was not.
More to the point, old, pale white scars from the knife attack covered the left side of his body, and although the gunshot wound was twenty years old, it still formed a pale pink scar on the right shoulder.
“Wow,” she said. “You must work out a lot.”
For once he was grateful for the much-vaunted Southern tact that praised his attributes and ignored his blemishes.
“Karate, of course,” she said, “but you lift weights, too.”
“And run.” Interesting. He was strutting and he wasn’t even on his feet.
She put her supplies down on the floor. She shed her jacket, unbuttoned the top two buttons of her white shirt, and rolled up her sleeves. She was all business, without a hint of coquetry, yet as she knelt beside him, he looked down at her profile: at her smooth cheek, her generous lips, at the hint of cleavage from the previously buttoned-up assistant manager—and he wished she were performing another task for him, one less onerous and more…erotic.
Taking a deep breath, he erased the thought from his mind. He’d managed to inveigle himself into her home; he most definitely did not need an erection now.
With the aim of furthering her guilt, he said, “I’m sorry to get shot and mess things up.”
She smoothed a damp cloth across the wound, rinsed the cloth, then did it again. With her fingertips, she pressed carefully on the edge of the wound, and sighed with relief. “It’s not bad.”
He looked. A lucky shot for him. The bullet had sliced a two-inch gash through his skin. “I told you so.”
Exasperated, she said, “Mr. Mac, has no woman explained that those are the most noxious words ever spoken by a man?”
“I’ve certainly heard enough women say them.”
“But then they’re true.”
Those gloriously shaped lips tilted upward in a quirky smile, and she made him want to smile back. Odd. He’d expected to feel desire, but never to discover such humor in her.
Of course, there was a sort of wicked humor in once a year robbing the bank where she worked of such a small amount the police failed to pursue the matter.
She was intelligent. She’d proved that today in her dealings with the police, her staff, and more important, with him. He had come here to keep an eye on her; two eyes would be better. “So this is the Dahl House,” he said.
“Yes. We’re very proud of it. Of course, it’s old, it’s big, and the upkeep so massive.”
“How do you do it?”
“I make enough to pay the insurance and taxes and pay the bills, and I put a little away every month. The repairs from the hurricane wiped out my savings, but once I work my way into management…”
“Yes? What happens then?”
“The aunts started taking in boarders to pay for my school loans, and once that got going, it just never stopped.”
“Do the boarders bother you?” The sudden sting as she used a pre-moistened pad to sterilize the area made him hiss and then straighten.
He knew better. Never let them see you in pain.
But if she noticed his weakness, she gave no indication. “I think it would be lovely to someday come down to breakfast and have only family at the table.” With the scissors, she cut a series of butterfly bandages out of the tape, and her forehead puckered with concentration as she pulled the edges of the wound together and taped it tightly. “And I don’t like my aunts cooking and cleaning and caring for strangers.”
“How long have you been working for the bank?”
“Seven years.”
“How long does it usually take to become a manager?” Did she know?
She shifted her knees as if she were uncomfortable. “The average is maybe…five years.”
He drove the point home. “So if you’re not a manager yet, you probably never will be. How much longer are you going to wait around to see if someone at the bank gets wise?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have any other experience? What else can you do?” Rob a bank, maybe?
“I can repair gunshot wounds.” She took the roll of gauze and folded a pad to fit over the wound, placed it over the gash, and taped it in place.
Shit. She was giving him the silent treatment. He was going to have to apologize again.
But no, when she had finished, she sat back on her heels and examined her work. “I wish you had gone to the hospital. My Girl Scout first-aid badge is hardly up to this.”
“You did a great job.” Taking her hand, he lifted it to his lips and pressed a kiss on her fingers.
Her wide, startled gaze flew to his.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“You don’t seem like the Continental-kiss-on-the-hand sort of guy.”
“You’re right.” Turning her hand palm up, he pressed his lips to her wrist. A mixture of scents—her perfume and her skin—filled his nose with the suggestions of vanilla, orange blossom, and warm, willing female. His smile sent her heart thundering in her veins. “I’m not.” Leaning over, he wrapped an arm around her waist, pulled her up on her knees, and leaned down to meet her lips.
Ten
He kissed her.
Mac kissed her, and in that first touch of mouth to mouth, all the lies fell away.
Nessa did want him.
And she hadn’t been wrong in that alley while the thunder rumbled and the hail fell.
He wanted her. She tasted the desire in him.
But he despised himself for it.
Because it was her? Or because passion was an emotion beyond his control?
For a man with a build like a WWE wrestler and scars like a New Orleans gang member, his touch was delicate. So delicate. He held her lightly, his arm loose around her waist, his hand clasping her wrist. He felt her caution, respected it, for his lips caressed hers lightly, making no move to deepen the kiss, satisfied to explore the contours of her mouth.
After a first minute of indecision, she relaxed.
After all, it was only a kiss. And he was only an insurance investigator, one who would be leaving town in a week or so. In a way, he would be perfect for her.
He lingered over her mouth, taking advantage of his strength and her mindless acquiescence to learn her desires. One large hand stroked her hip, her waist, her spine. The other rubbed her neck, smoothing tension until she moaned and curled closer.
He smelled…so good. He felt…so strong. His heat warmed the cold places of her body, and her heart expanded with the pleasure of having a man she could lean on.
A man she could lean on.
Where had that thought come from?
This was just a kiss—one she should end now.
He must have felt her stiffen, for abruptly, the kiss became more. More heated, more intimate, just…more. He no longer tasted her. He absorbed her, enjoyed her, used his lips and tongue to savor her. He placed her hand on his bare shoulder. He lifted her up and into his arms.
Her bottom rested in his lap. Her breasts flattened against his chest. He slid his fingers under her hair at the base of her nec
k. Muscle upon muscle rippled across his chest, and with each breath he pressed her closer.
And she felt suddenly surrounded. Threatened. He was big, his shoulder heavily corded and so massive her hand couldn’t encompass it. This man was the size of a caveman and kissed like the most skilled lover—a frightening combination.
He lifted his head, waited until she focused on him. “Stop thinking,” he whispered. “Let me show you how to feel.”
Her head rested in the crook of his arm. She was close enough to see the dark stubble on his chin, the thin white scars against his tanned forehead and cheek, and, most important, his beautiful, enigmatic green eyes. He had taken control of her, and she should struggle. But she was in her own home. Maddy and the caterers were in the next room. Today, he’d been shot fighting their mugger. And really, he’d done nothing shocking. It was just a kiss. Just a kiss.
He pressed his lips over her eyelids, shutting them. His lips caressed her cheek, her ear, her jaw…and found her mouth. He teased her lips open, slid his tongue inside…. And precipitously, she fell out of prudence and into passion. Without a sound or a struggle, the dark surface of madness closed over her, taking her breath, stealing her will, leaving her with only one lifeline—Jeremiah Mac.
This was no longer just a kiss. It was sex. Slow, hot, wet sex.
With each push inside her, he stole her will, made her move restlessly, try to get closer, press her aching breasts against him. She wanted to take the lead, wrap her legs around him, make him want, make him hurry.
She’d experienced passion before, but all her memories were driven onto the rocks of now and smashed beyond recognition.
Just as she reached the greatest depths, ready to take the plunge into submission, he murmured against her lips, “Someone’s knocking on the door.”
“What?” Nessa opened her eyes. She stared at him in confusion.
Gently he sat her up on his lap. “Someone’s knocking on the door.”
“Oh.” His eyes were very intent, his lids heavy. His lips looked swollen.
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