by Hailey North
Dedication
For Fidelis
Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
About the Author
Other Avon Contemporary Romances by Hailey North
Copyright
About the Publisher
“Oh, Tony,” she cried out,
“Raoul was never like this.”
“Raoul?” Tony stilled his kisses, lifted his head, and gazed toward her face, a face intensely passionate. “Who’s he?”
“Oh, nobody.”
Tony stroked the side of her thigh. “Your mama never told you not to talk about other guys?” He was too excited to be annoyed . . . yet.
“Oh!” Penelope seemed to snap back to the reality around her. She blinked, then said, “Raoul’s not another man. He’s, um, he’s . . . well, he’s a figment of my imagination.”
“Uh-huh.” Tony didn’t feel too impressed by that explanation.
He wanted Penelope to think only of him.
“It’s true. He’s like a . . . “ She waved one hand in a slow circle, as if trying to whisk an explanation out of thin air. “. . . an imaginary lover to keep me from missing things while I’ve been concentrating on my career.”
Such as?”
She sighed and said, “This.”
“Hailey North has just what the doctor ordered!”
Romantic Times
Chapter 1
Tax attorney Penelope Sue Fields, voted by her senior class most likely to be the first spinster appointed to the Supreme Court, repressed a strong desire to free her plain brown hair from its proper French braid as she stared at the only other occupant of the forty-second-floor express.
She couldn’t force her gaze away from the man’s smoky dark eyes, half-hidden by hooded lids, eyes that promised passion in a mysterious way that inflamed Penelope’s ever-active fantasies. Black slashes of brow added an edge of danger. Smudges beneath the eyes hinted at sleepless nights, nights Penelope just knew must be spent in the most wanton of pleasures.
Wishing the man would turn those eyes in all their glory on her, knowing instead he’d probably continue to stare at the MAXIMUM OCCUPANCY sign, Penelope settled her briefcase, bulging with files, on the floor of the elevator. Men with bedroom eyes never noticed her.
As the elevator sailed downward to the everyday world forty-two floors below, Penelope lost herself in the image of such a man drawing her close, the intense sensuality in those eyes directed solely at her.
“Oh, Raoul,” she’d whisper, resorting to the imaginary man who always played the leading role in her romantic fantasies. She’d struggle a bit at first, wanting desperately to give in to him, yet fighting the desire all the same. His arms, all male muscle, would tighten around her. The wool of his suit rasped at her breasts, clad only in the silky negligee she’d donned in anticipation of his forbidden nocturnal visit.
Upward edged her chin, his warm fingers guiding her lips inexorably to his. Giving in, she reached one hand around his neck, entwining her fingers in the coal black hair that curled rakishly over the collar of his shirt.
“Oh, Raoul.” The only words she could manage were swallowed by his lips, devoured by his tongue. One last time she glanced upward at those remarkable eyes before squeezing her own shut and allowing the wave of passion he’d ignited to crash over her heart.
“Going or staying?”
Penelope ran the tip of her tongue over her lips.
The man with bedroom eyes cleared his throat.
Like an elevator car with a broken cable, Penelope snapped to earth. Her eyes flew open. To her chagrin, the black-haired man looked at her as if she were mildly, if not severely, retarded.
He pointed politely to the open door of the elevator. How long they’d been on the first floor of the office tower Penelope couldn’t guess.
Didn’t want to, either, or her embarrassment would mount. Gathering her dignity, she hurried forward, sparing neither a word nor a backward glance at the sexy stranger.
When would she learn to control her over-active imagination? Flushed and irritated with herself, Penelope strode in her low-heeled pumps across the marble floor of the Oil Building. As usual, she’d worked late, later than she’d intended, and the crush of workers who staffed the building had long since departed.
She’d agreed to meet David Hinson for drinks at eight at the nearby Hotel Intercontinental, along with some Washington clients. Then they were all having dinner at David’s Garden District home.
Her stomach fluttered slightly when she counted the number of times he’d asked her out in the past six weeks, but thoughts of the lawyer caused scarcely a ripple compared to the tumult the complete stranger in the elevator had raised within her.
Therefore, Penelope found it easier to keep her mind within check as she pushed open the glass door that led onto St. Charles Avenue.
The July heat beat at her with the intensity of a wood-burning oven and Penelope shrugged out of her suit jacket. She’d been in New Orleans less than six months, and she could see as clearly as the sky above the Mississippi that she’d have to invest in a new wardrobe. Perhaps, she thought with a whimsical smile, she’d purchase a sensible dark blue linen suit and maybe one of the striped seersucker suits that seemed popular in her firm.
Those suits weren’t terribly attractive, especially on women, but Penelope dressed for business, not, she thought ruefully, to catch the eye of men like the guy in the elevator.
Shrugging off that somewhat dismal thought, Penelope slipped her jacket over her arm, then froze. Afraid to look, afraid of what she’d confirm, Penelope slid her gaze to the sidewalk by her feet, patted her shoulder for the familiar comfort of a heavily weighted shoulder strap.
Nothing.
What had happened to her briefcase? She would never leave it in the office.
Then she remembered.
The elevator.
“Puppies, kittens, and cats!” Penelope kicked the sidewalk, then executed an about-face. Her briefcase contained her life, her work, her purse, her—
She gasped and pushed back into the building. Penelope Fields would just die if anyone pawed through her case and found Love Bites, her secret cookbook project, the discovery of which would, no doubt, make her the laughing-stock of the august firm of LaCour, Richardson, Zeringue, Ray, Wellman and Klees.
Penelope headed straight for the elevator. “Please let it be there,” she whispered. She’d give up chocolate for a month if the fates had left it sitting undisturbed. Who’d want a lawyer’s briefcase anyway, stuffed with page upon page of paper that paid testimony to the turmoil of people’s lives?
The doors to the express elevator stood open. Holding her breath, she peeked inside, picturing exactly the spot where she’d placed it as she’d escaped into her fantasy of the man with bedroom eyes.
Nothing.
All that met her gaze was a coffee stain on the carpet.
If only that man hadn’t distracted her. Unreasonably irritated with a man she didn’t even know, irritated even more by the knowledge she had herself solely to blame, Penelope whirled around. Someone might have turne
d it in to Building Security.
Head down, berating herself, Penelope stepped forward.
She sensed someone in her path, too late to keep from barreling into a broad and sturdy chest that didn’t even flinch as she hit it in full stride.
Penelope, however, caught off guard, wobbled and might have fallen backward if not for the hand that shot out to steady her, a hand that remained cupped against her lower back.
“Going or staying?” This time the question definitely carried a hint of amusement.
Penelope lifted her head from the wall of chest, clothed respectably in a gray wool suit, blue and white striped shirt, and a tie that—
She squinted, trying to make out what the clearly naked figures on the man’s tie were doing, then hastily raised her gaze to meet the stranger’s eyes head on. This time she was forewarned. No matter how sensuous an expression she saw on his face, she’d keep her attention planted firmly on planet Earth.
Eyes like dark, loamy earth, a brown so rich it might be black, watched her, a glint in them Penelope interpreted as mirroring the amusement in his voice. Amusement at her expense.
“I am searching for my briefcase,” she said, in a voice designed to remind opposing counsel just who they were up against.
A sweep of warmth, a pressure gentle yet hinting at something much stronger heated her lower back. A matching surge warmed her face. Penelope inched away from him. “Do you mind?”
He grinned, and his eyes glowed even darker.
She turned away. She needed to find Security.
“Don’t you want to ask me something before you go?”
What would she ask a man like this? Penelope hesitated. Rough me up? Rip my clothes off and warm my skin with kisses? Tease me. Tickle me. Make me believe reality can be half as good as my fantasies?
She shook her head. Without another glance at him, she moved away.
Footsteps sounded behind her. In a quiet voice, the man said, “Here.”
She heard the clunk.
She looked down at the floor, knowing this time she’d find more than a coffee stain.
Her case sat there, but the man had disappeared.
Anthony Olano, better known as Tony-O in his neighborhood, a pocket of New Orleans tucked between Carrollton Avenue and a bend in the Mississippi, eased lower in the seat of his car.
His body moved. His pants did not, snagging the car’s ragged vinyl upholstery. “Shit. My one good suit,” he muttered, releasing the threads of the fabric from the rip in the seat. Not that his suit wasn’t ruined already, what with the past four hours he’d spent parked outside Hinson’s Garden District home, fighting heat, mosquitoes, and a growing desire to abandon his quarry for the sake of taking a leak and grabbing a beer.
Two blocks lakeside of where he’d parked, the streetcar rumbled by. Tony checked his watch. Like the city, the service never stopped. Except of course, for Mardi Gras parades and for the occasional driver foolish enough to turn too sharply into the path of the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the country.
Anyone who got in the way of that kind of tradition deserved to get his car mangled, Tony figured.
The passing car, the tenth since Tony had begun his vigil, reminded him of the fleeting evening. Much longer and he’d have to pee.
At that moment a figure stepped into the frame of the tall window that opened onto the balcony across the street. Through a sheer curtain, the silhouette of a narrow shouldered man was visible.
And beside the man, a woman.
“Gotcha.” ’Bout time, too. His eyes never once straying from the target, Tony hefted his camera fitted with the nighttime telephoto lens.
The window, a typical old New Orleans feature that raised to serve as a passage out to the balcony, scraped upward. The heavy night air didn’t even stir the sheer curtain.
Tony took a long look at the man, an even longer look at the woman.
The man he knew well and despised thoroughly. David Hinson was one of those lawyers who gave the whole breed a bad name. Not that Tony wasted much sympathy on lawyers, but ever since his little sister had taken it in her head to go to LSU law school, he’d softened his stance a bit.
But he’d never change his mind about Hinson—despite the fact that if all went according to plan, Hinson would soon be his new employer.
Ironic as it was, Hinson’s steady girlfriend, a redheaded court reporter with cleavage that made her a favorite of local judges, had hired the very recently established Olano Investigations to check just why her guy wasn’t spending as much time with her as she liked.
Performing his duty to that client, he positioned the camera and began to focus the lens.
The woman on the balcony with Hinson didn’t seem his usual fare. Tony had thought that when he’d first studied her in the elevator at the Oil Building, almost believing the girlfriend had her facts confused. No one that pristine should be dating David Hinson, king of the heavy fist.
Even at fifty minutes past midnight, she looked as fresh and perfectly put together as if she’d showered only an hour earlier.
But then, maybe she had, tête-à-tête with Hinson. The other guests had left by cab thirty minutes ago. This woman had been seen now more than a dozen times with Hinson, according to Tony’s sniffling client. And Hinson wasn’t the kind of guy to keep company merely for stimulating conversation. Any woman hanging around with Hinson had to be putting out. Tony frowned and put his finger on the shutter.
She didn’t look the type. Not in that prissy skirt. With her blouse buttoned all the way to the neck. No way to dress for summertime in New Orleans. New in town, or just plain dumb?
Hinson reached for her hand and Tony snapped his first shot. Dumb or not, she was definitely beautiful, he confirmed as he studied her through his lens. The blouse might be fastened as tight as Fort Knox, but the way it clung to her body, rising above a waist he could easily close within his hands, outlining breasts whose fullness was anything but prissy, stirred his interest, exactly the way she’d managed to do earlier when she’d stepped into the Oil Building elevator.
She’d looked just as frosty as she did at this moment, but during that brief contact there’d been moments when her armor had slipped. He’d noticed, all right; but then, he got paid to pay attention.
And he wouldn’t have minded paying more attention to the curve of her cheeks. Tony replayed the feel of her under his hand when she’d stumbled into him. Despite her protest, he’d caught a flicker of interest, a hint of passion under that touch-me-not exterior.
Tony shifted in his seat. “You’ve been alone way too long,” he said to himself. To be reacting to a woman who no doubt was as approachable as a mummy in a business suit indicated a serious void in his life.
He needed a woman, a woman as eager to embrace life as he’d once been. But his current situation didn’t give him much taste for looking for love.
Sticking to business, Tony took a few more shots. In the few months he’d been running Olano Investigations as a front for his undercover activities, he’d yet to meet one client who didn’t claim to want to know the truth.
The adultery business was fairly profitable in Louisiana, where a spouse caught in adultery could be denied alimony. That law accounted for the two wealthy businessmen who’d generously paid him to discover what their wives did to occupy themselves between charity luncheons and visits to beauty salons.
So he gave them what they paid for, but usually he had a feeling they already knew in their guts the truth his pictures would reflect. And it never ceased to amaze him that once faced with that reality, most of them shunted straight into denial.
All in all, not a savory business, and one he’d be glad to be free of.
Hinson, still holding the woman’s hand, led her to the edge of the balcony, aiding Tony’s view by delivering her into the pool of light cast by a street lamp.
For a woman enjoying a midnight tryst, she looked damn nervous. She smiled, but her eyes remained wary. She
laughed softly, but Tony couldn’t hear any humor in the sound. He frowned and his frown grew as Hinson pulled her to him, a little roughly for Tony’s taste.
Hinson tipped her head back, covered her mouth with his. That ought to rumple her just-pressed look, quiet the phony laughter. For a moment there, he’d felt a link, an instant of empathy and concern, a feeling he’d do well to suppress.
With a shake of his head, Tony lowered his camera and lifted his microphone. This was no time to discover a sentimental streak. He ran a thumb over the cool metal of the supersensitive listening device cradled in his hand. The equipment could pick up moans of passion at well over the distance he’d parked from Hinson’s balcony. He held it out his window and hit the record button.
Not the noisy type, Tony decided, watching the woman pull free of the grope. Probably not a screamer. Though you never could tell with those prim and proper females. Her hair, captured in some sort of schoolteacher bun on the back of her head, tumbled free and Tony debated the camera over the microphone. But his client wanted audio. Pictures, she’d said, sniffing and blotting her eyes, wouldn’t be enough to convince her.
Even in the darkness, across the distance that separated them, Tony could sense the silky weight of her hair as it slipped over her shoulders. Something about the way it flowed free, shifting all at once, floating down over her shoulders and softening her serious face, told Tony she wore it up because she was afraid of the way the change would affect her image.
He didn’t know why he knew that, but he did.
Hinson took her face in his hands, then plunged his fingers into her hair. “Bastard,” Tony whispered. A man like Hinson didn’t deserve a woman that pure.
Then Tony laughed.
At himself, for thinking such thoughts. What did he know about this chick? His client had hired him for the same reason most of his clients did—to find out whether her man was cheating on her.
Yep. That was the way of the private eye business. Another few weeks hiding in the dark and soon there’d be no way he’d trust a woman. Any woman.
Tony ran one hand through his hair, thinking of his own marriage. Neither one of them had been unfaithful, but he and Kathy hadn’t lasted. They’d simply married before either one knew what the hell they wanted out of life.