by Hailey North
Unfamiliar titles and subjects assailed her eyes and she was reminded of the way she’d felt her first day in a law library. So many volumes, so many unknowns. Then she’d been intrigued by the intellectual challenge. And now, facing this odd array, she felt faintly superior, assuming the books were written by nuts who wanted to embrace make-believe rather than accept the rational world in which they dwelled.
Rather than taking charge of their own realities, people retreated into witchcraft, magick, reading auras, chakras—whatever those were—anything that gave them hope for a better world.
Which, now that she thought about it, was absolutely the same thing she did by slipping into her fantasy world. Instead of finding the courage to try to date more, to attempt to meet men, even to do something so bold as to venture into the world of online dating, Penelope had withdrawn.
Her imaginary lover Raoul might occupy her mind, but he was cold comfort on lonely nights, and a poor escort, indeed, for law firm social functions.
Penelope closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of chocolate that sprinkled the foam topping of her cappuccino. Yes, she acknowledged, she needed to make some changes in her life.
Just because she’d followed the path her mother had committed her to didn’t mean she couldn’t be a lawyer and enjoy the rest of her life more. A lawyer wasn’t such a bad thing to be.
Her mother had told her, more times than Penelope could count, “Better a lawyer than a waitress.” And even though Penelope sometimes still blamed her now-deceased mother for not letting her carve her own way through life, she had to admit she’d far rather be a partner at LaCour, Richardson, Zeringue, Ray, Wellman and Klees than be pushing coffee across the counter at Barnes & Noble.
Penelope wrinkled her nose, remembering what the ponytailed Mr. Gotho had accused her of. Was it wrong to prefer being a lawyer to being a waitress? Penelope didn’t think of that as having too much ego, especially considering she’d far rather have become a chef than a lawyer anyway.
The oddly young but somehow ageless Mr. Gotho had been about to help her, too, Penelope was sure of that, when something she’d done had set him off. It had been right after she’d thought of him and Mrs. Merlin as undereducated. Well, perhaps she was a bit of a snob about that, but she had loved her mother, despite her nagging ways, and her mother had dropped out of high school her senior year, pregnant with Penelope.
That was a story Penelope had heard more times than she ever cared to remember. Just once, filtered in among those stories, Penelope would have liked to have learned something about the man who had fathered her. But on that topic her mother remained constantly silent.
As far as Penelope knew, her conception might have been immaculate. Living with a single mother who maintained a firm distance from any man, Penelope had often thought it was no surprise she herself had never gotten close to a man.
But she knew it wasn’t any fear of repeating her mother’s path that held her back. She simply didn’t understand how to attract a man.
She stared into her cooling cappuccino, then lifted her eyes to the shelves. She had work to do. Best to concentrate on that.
Spotting a row of books on the art and magick of candle burning, Penelope gathered them in one arm and carried them and her coffee to a deep chair in a reading circle placed near the escalator. Several other customers had settled there, reading everything, Penelope noticed, from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to celebrity biographies to comic books.
Penelope wished she’d picked some other, more sensible choices to serve as cover for her reading material. Anyone who glanced over at her selections would assume she was one of those woo-woo weirdos. Why, all the books she’d selected spelled magic with a “k” on the end, as if the word itself carried its own mystical meaning.
Oh, well, she couldn’t be any more embarrassed today than she had already been. The very idea of asking out loud for frog’s testicles! Coloring slightly, Penelope opened the first book and began to read.
Tony almost lost Penelope leaving the Quarter. She’d surprised him with that sharp swerve onto Canal and her path to the interstate. Old Rolo Polo had clung tight, though, and stopped down the row from her in the parking lot of Barnes & Noble.
Amused by Rolo Polo having to stake out a bookstore, Tony had remained in his car until the fat man had finally turned off his car, and presumably his a/c, then trundled into the store. He’d purchased a cold drink, then retreated to the air-conditioned foyer, where he pulled a throwaway tabloid from the several piles stacked there and propped it in front of his face.
Observing all this from his car, thankful for the broad plate-glass windows that opened the front of the store to easy view, Tony wondered whether Rolo Polo even knew how to read.
Trapped for the moment, Tony had no choice but to wait it out in his car. Rolo Polo guarded the way in and out of the store. Sooner or later perhaps he’d let down his guard and go in search of the men’s room. Then Tony could slip inside.
He hadn’t intended to do it, of course, but now he felt a strong urge to see Penelope again. He’d grab some fancy-looking book off the shelf, locate her, then pretend to be deep in the book when she bumped into him.
She’d be impressed. Probably even go out with him. Maybe not to bed. Not on the first date, anyway.
Whoa. Tony ran a hand roughly through his hair. “Get a grip, Tony-O,” he said, turning off the ignition and rolling down his windows. It was hot as hell in the parking lot with the sun punishing his car, but he hated to waste the gas to run the a/c.
He reminded himself his only reason for following Penelope to the bookstore was to see where Rolo Polo’s interest in her lay. Rolo Polo was a direct path to Hinson and therefore to Hinson’s boss, a mobster with ties to both New York and Las Vegas, but a man so clever he rarely showed a hand in any of his undertakings.
Hinson served as lawyer and chief functionary. In the old days he would have been called the consigliore, a term made popular in The Godfather. But the Louisiana mob types weren’t so old-fashioned, and the family Hinson worked for consisted of a peculiarly New Orleans blend of suburban businessmen, French Quarter real estate tycoons, and working-class thugs. Thus Hinson spent a great deal of his time poring over contracts and other legal mumbo-jumbo.
Sweltering in the paved parking lot, Tony wiped a band of sweat from his forehead and prayed for Rolo Polo to take a leak. He and the fat man had too much history behind them for Tony to take the risk of Rolo Polo spotting him.
And since Tony expected any day now that Hinson would be offering him a job on behalf of his boss, it was no time to arouse suspicion. Too much stood at risk.
So he sat in the car and sweated. Within a few more minutes, his shirt clung to him. He hoped Penelope, cool and comfortable inside the store, appreciated his sacrifice.
“Don’t kid yourself,” he said, fiddling with his radio. A mournful song of love lost and never regained filled his ears and he snapped the radio off.
He wondered what had inspired Penelope to visit both the Bayou Magick Shoppe and Barnes & Noble. She was a studious type, of course, but she’d seemed intent on some purposeful course of action when she’d entered the Bourbon Street shop.
Remembering the odd statue he’d spotted under her bed when checking for intruders, Tony wondered if the respectable lawyer, in addition to masquerading as a shoplifter, also dabbled in the occult. It made as much sense as any explanation he could think of to answer the question why she would have a wild-looking, winking statuette hidden beneath her bed.
Thank God! Rolo Polo had just made a break, no doubt for the bathroom. He hadn’t taken his earlier path straight to the beverage counter. Tony was out of his car before Rolo Polo’s backside had disappeared into the depths of the store.
Once inside, he frowned, hit by the number of possibilities. The store was huge. Tony wondered how they found enough books to fill it up. His idea of book-buying was picking up the odd western at the corner drugstore, the one that used
to be a K&B before they sold out to that eastern outfit.
New Orleans, Tony thought, squinting his eyes and scanning the first bank of bookshelves for sight of Penelope, was changing.
And so was he, he realized, riding up the escalator to check the second floor. Chasing after a woman who hadn’t thrown herself at him. His friends wouldn’t believe that possible for Tony Olano. They knew him as the guy who collected the Brenda-in-39B’s of the world.
Tony knew himself that way, too, which was one reason it was really strange to be in a bookstore chasing after a lawyer who wore her starched blouse buttoned all the way to her neck.
Chapter 10
Candle magick, so it seemed, could produce some fairly powerful results. There were many fine points to consider when practicing the variety of spells, such as type of candle and whether one chose to melt bits and pieces of hair and body clippings into the wax to create a powerful poppet.
Not one mention of frog’s testicles, though.
Penelope tucked a foot under her and considered her reading material. The list Mrs. Merlin had sent her shopping with made as much sense as what she read now. Did people really believe this stuff?
She picked up the next book, a paperback that claimed to reveal the best way to learn to see auras. Mrs. Merlin nattered a lot about Penelope’s aura. And she’d said something about Tony Olano being too violet to have pressured her the way David had last night.
Only last night.
Penelope touched her hand to the side of her cheek and, skipping the introductory chapters, flipped to the section that discussed violet.
She read of violet as the dominant aura of people who were intense and on the go. Natural leaders. Visionaries. Sensual as all get-out.
Well, now at last she’d found a statement that matched her objective observations.
Tony Olano defined sensual.
Penelope smiled and snuggled more deeply into the comfy chair. She pictured him sitting beside her, both of them deep in a book. He had one arm around her, gently stroking the side of her neck. She leaned into the rocklike shelter of his chest, safe, cozy and infinitely at peace. Rather than the New Age books she had taken off the shelf, in her fantasy she perused a favorite M. F. K. Fisher recently reissued. Visions of menu ideas danced in her head as she turned the pages of the witty and literate work.
And his reading material?
Penelope let her mind drift further into her fantasy. What would the man of her dreams be likely to read?
Hmm. A well-thumbed copy of War and Peace? Somerset Maugham? Dickens, perhaps?
She frowned, unable to fully form that piece of her dream world. An image of Tony flipping through a racing sheet flitted into her mind and she stirred, unhappy with the thought.
The book on auras slipped from her lap and landed with a plop on the floor.
Thrust back into her surroundings, she blinked and bent forward to retrieve the book. Before she could curl her fingers around it, a hand, large and powerful and sprinkled with fine black hairs, closed over the paperback.
Her eyes traveled upward, over the now familiar path of toned forearms and biceps boasting of a man at home in a gym.
The cruder the gym the better, Penelope added to her mental inventory, snatching her book from Tony Olano’s hold.
He grinned and said, “Come here often?”
Penelope casually shifted the volumes on auras and candles until they all lay face down. “Sure,” she said. “You?”
“A regular.” He dropped gracefully into the chair that sat at a right angle to Penelope’s, stretched out his long legs, and opened the book he carried. He said not another word, apparently lost in his reading material.
Penelope glared at him. It was just like him to show up, then pretend to ignore her. She peeked to see what he was reading but couldn’t make out the title.
She picked up her book on auras, holding it so the brightly lettered cover didn’t show. After turning a few pages without seeing a word, let alone an aura, she snapped the book closed. Her field of vision had been captured by Olano’s tanned and muscled calves and the way he swung his left foot idly back and forth as he read.
Below the khaki walking shorts, his legs had the perfect amount of curly black hair, thick enough to be intriguing but not so dense as to be unattractive. Penelope couldn’t help but wonder what his chest looked like. A hint of the same black hair showed above an open button of his short-sleeved shirt.
In another moment she’d be off into one of her fantasies. Trying hard to brake that temptation, Penelope decided to interrupt Tony. If he persisted in following her, he’d have to put up with some idle conversation. Leaning forward slightly and donning what she hoped would pass for an appealing smile, she said, “So, what are you reading?”
He grunted, placed a finger halfway down the left-hand page, then looked up briefly. His eyes seemed darker and more intense than the times she’d seen him before. The circles under his eyes were slightly puffy and more purplish blue today than they’d been yesterday. No doubt he’d found some Brenda-in-39B clone and stayed out all night partying. Penelope sniffed and repeated her question.
He hesitated, glanced around, then answered, “Social Adjustment of Delinquent Youth Housed in Psycho-Socially Challenged Foster Homes.” The long title rolled off his tongue as if he were guest lecturing at a conference.
Penelope raised her brows. “Impressive,” she murmured. And she was impressed. She had half-expected him to be reading some dumb-jock sports book. Or a mindless western.
He shrugged. His finger still poised on the page, he said, “What about you?”
Now he had her. She wished she could answer with a title half as impressive. “I’m doing some research,” she finally said. “In a topic you wouldn’t be interested in.”
“No?” He shifted forward, drawing his legs closer to his chair. Dark eyes burned into hers, alight with a fire Penelope longed to have the courage to explore. “Try me.”
She laughed nervously. “I . . . uh, I’m expecting a houseguest who’s into auras and such things, so I’m reading up on them.”
He nodded and said, “I thought Tolstoy would be more your cup of tea.”
“Oh, but he is! Anna Karenina is one of my favorite books ever. But research is necessary.” She pointed to his book. “You obviously agree with that statement.”
“What?” He looked surprised, then said, “Oh, of course. Like my research into the sociology of juvenile delinquents.”
“Are you writing a paper?”
“Right.” Tony drummed his fingers on the open book. “Yeah, right, a paper.”
“For which journal?”
He frowned, the tempo of his fingers increasing. “I really haven’t decided.”
Penelope nodded. “It’s important to pick the best in the field. Then, if they don’t accept it, you can work your way down the list. Don’t you find that to be true?”
It was Tony’s turn to nod. Which he did, looking as brainy as he knew how. Shit! This woman had him twisted into doing, saying, thinking, and feeling things he’d no business muddling with. Writing a paper for publication? Wouldn’t his college professors love that one! Of course, they’d be even more amazed he remembered the name of one of his textbooks, the name that had rolled so easily off his tongue when Penelope had asked him the title of his book.
Penelope must have asked him another question, a question he’d obviously missed. Well, at least she had decided to talk to him. “What was that?” he asked.
A flicker of something akin to annoyance appeared, then dissolved, on her face. The lady wasn’t used to having to repeat herself. “I said, what is it that you do, Mr. Olano? Besides following me around the city, that is?”
Her question brought him sharply back to his purpose. He wasn’t hanging out in this bluenose bookstore to flirt with a woman who normally wouldn’t give him the time of day. He was here on a mission. He quickly checked the floor spread below. Good. Rolo Polo had resumed his post i
n the foyer.
He brought his gaze back to the woman seated beside him. She waited for his answer, an expectant light in her dusky blue eyes. Her lips were parted the teeniest bit, suggesting breathless anticipation of his answer. Yeah, right, Olano, he told himself wryly. He cast another dark glance, the one he used to such good effect with women like Brenda in 39B, and answered, “Research.”
She folded her hands over her book. “Research?”
Tony liked his answer. He grinned. “Yeah, you could call me a professional researcher.”
She’d scooted closer to him in her chair. Clearly she was trying to check out his reading material. He edged the book to the far side of his lap. Then she sat back and smiled at him, a genuine, lively, pleased smile. Tony knew, watching her smile at him that way, he’d do whatever it took to win that smile again.
“I think it’s lovely that after you left the police force you turned to helping children stay out of trouble.”
She spoke softly. “It’s nice to meet a man who cares about helping others.”
Tony shifted in his chair. He’d been present when Hinson told her Tony had been a cop. God only knew what details he’d filled her head with after Tony had left them alone. No wonder she looked at him most of the time as if he were some sort of criminal leper.
“Many people simply would have spiraled downward,” Penelope was saying. “You know, given up under the weight of the disgrace.”
Tony saw concern in those big eyes of hers. He took hope. A lot of women liked to rescue the troubled, the downtrodden. He ran a hand roughly through his hair. “You didn’t see me a couple of months ago. It was tough. What did you call it? A downward spiral?” He threw in a deep sigh and gazed into her eyes. “I’m afraid you wouldn’t have liked me very much at that point in my life.”
Penelope caught her book, which had started to slide from her lap. She licked her bottom lip. Tony itched to lean over and let his tongue travel the same path. Nice and slow. She was coming around. Not that he had any business trying to get anywhere with this woman, but he couldn’t help himself.