Laughing, Daniel shielded his eyes. “Shit, man, if you promise not to do that, I’ll tell you all about it.”
Relieved, Mac wiped the smile away.
“But first”—Daniel tugged Mac toward the dining room—“I’m on a diet, and I’m starving. Let’s eat.”
Mac was starving, too. It had been one hell of a long day.
They moved toward the dining room, and Mac had just caught his first glimpse of the completely laden buffet table when he heard someone say “Oh, for the love of God” in such tones of disgust, he turned back toward the foyer, expecting to see some judgmental asshole making a nasty comment about Daniel. And maybe the short, stout, badly dressed female was a judgmental asshole, but she was glaring at him.
Mac searched his mind. Did he know her?
More important, did she know him? Because if she did, his masquerade was finished before it started. “Who’s that? And what did I ever do to her?” he asked aloud and with, he hoped, convincing innocence. Of course, the only trouble with that was he couldn’t act worth a damn.
“That’s Pootie DiStefano. She lives in the attic,” Daniel said.
Pootie DiStephano. Reed had mentioned her as a possible bandit, and when Mac had ordered his resources to get her personal information, they’d run into a stone wall. This Pootie was either psychotic about her privacy—or guilty as hell.
Lowering his voice, Daniel said, “Look at her. I’ve tried to help her, but she ignores me. She always wears the same crummy clothes. She won’t do anything about the mustache. She is the most antisocial person I’ve ever met, and in normal circumstances, we’d never see her at a party.”
Mac scrutinized her.
Pootie looked back, bristling with hostility.
“Wow. Is she ever looking you over!” Daniel sounded thoughtful, and he appraised Mac once more. “She doesn’t like you much, does she?”
“I’m a great guy,” Mac said.
“Pootie!” Calista rushed forward and tried to take Pootie’s luggage. “What happened, dear? I thought you’d be in New York by now.”
Daniel lingered to hear the answer.
Pootie snapped the suitcase back into her control. “Flight got delayed because of technical difficulties, then cancelled because of the goddamned storm.”
“You’ve spent the whole day at the airport?”
“Yeah. They wouldn’t let me smoke.” Pootie coughed from deep down in her lungs.
“Poor dear,” Calista said. “You must be starving! Come in and get something to eat.”
With obvious distaste, Pootie’s gaze swept the gathering, then settled once more on Mac in a way that made the hair stand up on the back of his head. “Good idea. Let me put away my suitcase first.”
As she trudged toward the stairs, Daniel walked on. In an undertone, he said, “That’s…weird. Must have been a really bad day at the airport.”
“None of us are strangers to that.” Mac watched her disappear into the upper reaches of the house, then joined Daniel in the buffet line.
Daniel rubbed his hands in the first masculine gesture Mac had seen from him. “Try the andouille sausage,” he advised. “It’ll teach you a new respect for cayenne.”
“Okay.” Mac picked up a plate. “You were telling me about Nessa.”
“I was?” Daniel loaded up his plate. “Oh yeah. Nessa and her aunts. They’re good people.”
Damn Pootie and her lousy timing. Another fifteen minutes at the airport and Mac would have heard Daniel’s version of his story. And somewhere in the midst of that story, Mac suspected, there was a clue to the robberies and how they were committed.
“So tell me why they’re so good,” Mac said.
“Miss Calista and Miss Hestia…when I had money problems, they managed to arrange a loan from a bank.” Daniel chose his words very carefully, as if he walked through a minefield and a single wrong syllable could make it blow up in his face.
“How?”
“They have connections you can’t imagine.”
Mac glanced around at the guests, coming and going, laughing, talking, eating. He saw Chief Cutter trailing after a gorgeous woman he hoped was his wife. He recognized the mayor, a famous trumpet player, a jazz band leader, and Hollywood’s newest celebrity.
Connections? Yeah. Now, that he could believe.
“I couldn’t have done it on my own. They saved my life.” Daniel stood, lifted his glass, and in a toast that effectively stopped all Mac’s questions, shouted, “To the Dahl girls, long may they reign as the leading ladies of New Orleans!”
“To the Dahl girls!” the guests shouted back.
Clearly, Mac wasn’t getting any more information out of Daniel. But that didn’t mean Daniel wasn’t front and center on the list of suspects.
“Come on, Mac,” Daniel said. “Let’s go rescue Nessa from Alan.”
“I thought you said she should take Alan.”
“She doesn’t care what I think.” Daniel grimaced. “I’m pretty sure she only likes you.”
Thirteen
Nessa saw them coming, and with a kiss on Alan’s cheek, she left him standing alone and started toward them. Toward Mac.
His breath hitched when he remembered the kiss they’d exchanged; she’d been cautious at first, and he’d compelled her when he should have wooed her. Next time, he’d keep his lust in check, use a little finesse, show her he wasn’t really a brute with a scarred face and no neck—even if that’s who he really was.
“Shit!” he said as Rav Woodland stepped into her path. The young cop was weaving a little, half-drunk, and trembling as he offered her his embrace.
The kid wanted to dance, and Mac already knew what she would do.
Nessa stepped into the boy’s arms and let him sweep her away, but before she disappeared onto the dance floor, she gave Mac a shrug and a smile.
“Watching you two is like watching two trains on a single track heading for a collision,” Daniel said. “It’s inevitable, it’s going to be colossal, and it’s impossible to pull my gaze away.”
From beside them, a hoarse voice said, “Yeah, and it’s gonna be disaster.”
Mac looked at Pootie DiStephano.
She stood at his side. She smelled like cigarettes, she looked like hell, and she challenged him like a large, aggressive bulldog.
“Why disaster?” he asked coolly.
“Because you don’t get it.”
“Get what?” He sure as hell didn’t get her.
“If you two are going to fight, I’m going to leave,” Daniel warned them.
Mac paid him no heed.
Neither did Pootie. “You don’t understand these people. People in New Orleans. People in the South. Every time they talk slow, you deduct ten points from their IQ.”
“I don’t think they’re stupid.”
“You just think you’re smarter.”
“I’m out of here.” Daniel disappeared into the crowd with a swish and a rustle of feathers.
“I am smarter than almost everyone.” Maybe that made him an arrogant ass, but it was true and Mac didn’t mind saying so, especially to this short, stout, crew-cut and pierced fifty-year-old. Did she know who he was? And if she did, why didn’t she come out and say it?
Was she one of the Beaded Bandits? And if she was…was this her way of meeting the challenge of an investigator? “I don’t understand people in New Orleans, if that’s what you mean. How can I? They don’t say what they mean.”
“Yeah, they do. They just say it a little more gently than we do. You gotta know the code.” She waved fingers stained with nicotine. “Like they’ll tell you that I’m playing for the opposing team.”
“You’re a lesbian.”
“Right. You’re catching on.” She glanced around. “See that good ol’ boy over there? The one with the droopy pants and a belly the size of a stove?”
“The fat one.”
“No.” Pootie held up an admonishing hand. “Never fat. Short for his weight. And of cou
rse, there’s the ever-popular, ‘Bless your heart.’”
He took a long, slow breath. “Bless your heart?” He’d heard that phrase before. He’d heard it from Nessa. And she’d been talking to him.
“Sort of an all-purpose phrase.” Pootie indicated a matron wearing a midriff-bearing shirt and low-cut jeans. “You’ll hear them say it when someone has bad plastic surgery, or someone dyes her hair an off shade, or she wears something inappropriate. ‘Bless her heart, the mirror in her room had a malfunction.’” She smirked as Mr. LeJeune hurried through, trying to corral his inebriated young wife. “They’ll say it about guys who divorce their wives and marry a trophy and think that makes them young. ‘Bless his heart, he’s trying to stuff a wet noodle in a wildcat.’” She looked directly at him. “They say it about Yankees. ‘Yankees can’t help it if they were born north of civilization, bless their hearts.’”
He could almost hear Nessa laughing in his head.
Pootie continued, “If they say it right to you—Bless your heart—it means you’ve mortally offended and been told to go to hell.”
His gaze settled on Nessa. “Really.”
Nessa caught him watching her, disentangled herself from Rav’s too-tight grasp, excused herself, and started toward him.
He watched her stroll forward, willing her to come into his arms without a care for anyone else. “Anyway, Miss DiStephano, why do you care what I think about people in New Orleans?”
“Listen, I’ve lived here fifteen years. It’s different from N’York, from Chicago, from Philly. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong, it’s simply different. Kinder.” A smile softened Pootie’s tough features. “A place where it’s more important to be happy than right. I like it. I like the heat, I like the humidity, I like manners. If you don’t like it—if you don’t like Nessa—then get the hell out. I don’t need a damn Yankee shitting in my nest.” She stomped off, clear proof that living among the mannered folks of New Orleans hadn’t rubbed off on her.
Nessa arrived in time to see her go. “What’d you do to Miss Pootie?”
“Nothing.” He saw heads turning, saw people start their way. People who wanted to talk to Nessa, to dance with Nessa, to be with Nessa. So Mac tucked his hand around her waist, pulled her close, and turned her toward the dining room. “Sometimes people from New York are easier to anger than most people.”
“Really? You think that?”
“Don’t you?”
“Yes, but it seems to be true of most people from the North. Must be breathing all that cold air when you’re young that makes you irascible.” As she spoke, she rested her hand on his sleeve, looked up at him, and smiled.
Keeping Pootie’s lecture in mind, he asked, “Irascible? Is that a polite way of saying I’m mean?”
She chuckled, a deep, joyous sound of enjoyment. “You catch on fast.”
“I’ve always been a fast learner.” He guided her through the dining room, dodging one guy wearing a high school football uniform and an infatuated grin. Mac got Nessa through the kitchen without incident, and out the back door onto the porch.
The backyard was empty of people, dark except for the light from the windows, silent except for the sound of the music wafting out the door of the ballroom. The freshly washed half-moon slid its light across the hard, shiny leaves of the magnolia tree. A series of arbors lifted their arms, laden with clematis and rose, over the flagstone walk, and a wall enclosed the flowers, the benches, the herb garden.
“Much better.” He had Nessa to himself. He walked her down the steps and under the arbor. “There’s only one woman at this party I want to dance with now.”
“You’ve danced with my aunts, and you’ve made them very happy. Thank you.”
Was she evading him? Did she really think that was going to work? “Your aunts are a pleasure. But now, I want to dance with you.”
“Really. You don’t have to dance with me. It’s all right.” She massaged his arm. “You must be tired.”
“Listen to the band. They’re playing a slow dance. That won’t tire either one of us.” With a whimsical smile, he offered his hand, palm up, and waited.
She was out of excuses to stay out of his arms. She placed her hand in his, and slowly he reeled her in.
Fourteen
Jeremiah’s gaze locked with hers. And he smiled invitingly, telling Nessa without words that he was harmless.
He lied.
“You dance very well for a…” She hesitated too long.
“For a thug?”
“Not at all,” she said, and wondered at his choice of words. “I was going to say…for a man.”
“Men don’t dance?”
“Seldom, and unwillingly. At least in my experience.” And most certainly never this movement of thighs against thighs, of hips against hips, this slow, smoky seduction that tangled their bodies and created a heat unlike any she’d ever experienced…except during sex.
Dancing with Jeremiah was better than sex, and the motion, the friction, the sharing, pressed her to wonder what sex with him would be like.
She laughed at herself. Like she wasn’t already wondering that.
“You’ve been hanging around with the wrong kind of men,” he said.
“That’s probably true. But the only men I know who enjoy dancing are gay, and while I dearly love their company, I find I like that tiny fillip that happens between a man who’s interested and a woman who’s tantalized.”
“I am very interested, and I assure you, it’s not tiny.”
“What isn’t tiny?” She realized what he meant one beat too late.
“My fillip.”
She struggled to answer with some wit and no discomfort. “I…never thought it was. Why do you dance so well?”
“I worked my way through college as an escort to wealthy old women.”
“No, really.”
“No. Really.”
He sounded serious, but she couldn’t believe that. “What? You couldn’t get a scholarship?”
“I had an…accident when I was thirteen, fell behind in my grades, dropped out of school.”
She winced, wanted to ask about his accident.
But he whirled her in a circle, moved her under the second arbor and onto the flagstone patio, where the fountain splashed water against old, slick stone.
He continued, “I got a GED, which knocks you right out of the running for most college scholarships. But I always knew that somehow I was going to get through college, and one very wealthy, single woman offered to show me how to make a good wad of money while attending classes and making good grades.”
She didn’t believe him. She couldn’t believe him. She knew stuff like that went on, of course. But not to Jeremiah. Not to this man who defined self-confidence. “So you learned to dance.”
“To dance…and other things. I learned how to dress. I learned how to kiss.” He slid his hand under her chin and lifted her face to his. “And I learned how to make love to a woman to bring her the ultimate pleasure.”
He took her breath away. “You were a gigolo?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“If you learned so much, how come you need me to be tactful for you?” She was trying to ground this conversation in reality, in the events of a long, hot, New Orleans day. But the shadows caressed his features, the play of dark and light emphasizing the heaviness of his lids, the glints in his eyes, his crooked nose and strong jaw.
“Those women never required conversation.”
Nessa didn’t know whether to laugh in amusement or snort in disbelief.
“I was taught certain pat phrases. ‘Your eyes are ravishing tonight.’”
She started to thank him, then comprehended that he was reeling off a series of compliments.
“‘That dress accentuates your fine figure,’” he said in one tone deeper than normal. “‘Your voice reminds me of a nightingale.’”
“Have you ever even heard a nightingale?”
“No, but apparent
ly it didn’t matter. I finished college clear of debt, and with a recommendation from my original patroness, I landed a job at…at my company. I’ve never looked back.”
“Do you own your company?” she asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you seem the kind of man who would not take orders from anyone.”
“You’re right.” He spanned her waist between his two hands and swung her so that her back rested against the wall. “You’re so right.” He kissed her.
No pressing of lips was this kiss, but a slow penetration of her mouth, a sweet meeting of tongues, of flavors, of heat. He kissed like a man with all the time in the world, like a man who pleasured women for a living. Nessa’s breath caught again and again as his tongue slid in and out, tasting her, luring her.
The music sounded faintly through the air. The fountain played its own tune. The scent of lilies rose like heady perfume from the warm, damp earth. The seconds slid smoothly, one to another, becoming minutes marked by blissful sensuality.
If only she weren’t already too relaxed, blindly trusting him to lead her where he wished, trusting him to care for her. Dimly, she knew she was a fool to feel this way about a man she’d only met this morning. But that man had protected her from the storm, saved her from a mugger, kissed her like a lover. In twelve hours, they’d been through more than most couples lived in a month.
He nipped her, his teeth closing on her lower lip, teasing, just on the edge of pain, and she forgot to breathe. Her body jolted, each muscle tightened as if he’d shot an electric current right to her clit. God. God, she teetered on the edge of orgasm, fighting against a surrender too precipitous and too soon.
Rescue came when something—something big—fell off the wall and landed a few feet away in the flower bed.
Nessa jumped and shrank back against the wall.
Jeremiah put her behind him and faced the intruder.
It was a guy. He blundered around and cursed.
“What were you doing up there?” Jeremiah asked sharply.
“Whoa, you guys were really going at it.” Ryan Wright’s drunken voice blared, and he brayed with laughter.
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