Scandal in Copper Lake (6 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly. “I didn’t mean…”

After a moment, she smiled, a quiet, resigned sort of gesture. “It’s all right. I should have expected…”

What? Tactless questions from him?

“I read emotions. I do numbers and charts. I read palms. I have visions. But people are always fascinated by communication with the dead, even nonbelievers. Everyone’s hoping that Grandma will pass on the location of a fortune no one knew existed or that Grandpa will tell them where the casket of priceless jewels is hidden.”

“Do they ever?”

She shrugged, unaware that the tiny action made his fingers itch to touch her. To stroke over her skin. To smooth the cotton of her shirt. To brush her neck the way the earrings did.

Or maybe she wasn’t so unaware, he thought as something came into her eyes. Heat. Intimacy. Mystery. Though a person didn’t need to be psychic to see he found her damned attractive.

“If any of Mama Odette’s clients ever struck it rich as a result of her communing with the spirits, I’m not aware of it.”

“For a seer, you seem to be unaware of a lot of things.”

If his comment annoyed her, she didn’t let it show. She was cool, serene. He liked cool and serene.

They ate in silence for a few moments, until voices became audible in the hallway that led to the room. One of them was a waitress; the other belonged to Ellie Chase. She and Tommy had had an on-again, off-again thing that started about five minutes after she’d moved to Copper Lake. They seemed pretty good together, except that Tommy wanted to get married and have kids, and Ellie didn’t. Occasionally, Robbie wondered why. Even he wanted kids someday.

Fair-skinned, blue-eyed kids with blond hair, he thought with a glance at Anamaria. He’d always been partial to blondes—icy, well-bred, blue-blood, who could fit into his life as if they’d been born to it.

Conversation finished, Ellie rounded the corner. “Hey, Calloway, who let you in here?”

He shifted in the chair to face her. “Don’t bitch, Ellie. I’m one of your best customers.”

“I’ve noticed. All that expensive schooling, and you can’t even put a sandwich together.”

“Yeah, but I work miracles in the courtroom.”

She crossed the small room, her hand extended. “Hi, I’m Ellie Chase.”

“Anamaria Duquesne.” Anamaria took her hand, a quick shake, a light touch, but more than she’d offered Robbie so far. “This is your restaurant?”

“Every table, every brick and every mortgage payment.”

“The food is great.”

“Anamaria’s in the restaurant business in Savannah,” Robbie said, pulling a chair from the next table so Ellie could join them.

“Really? Are you in the market to expand? I’m giving serious thought to selling this place and running away.”

“She threatens to do that about once a month,” Robbie said.

Anamaria smiled as if she knew the feeling. “So does Auntie Lueena. I work for her, so the headaches are hers. I just show up ready to do what she tells me.”

“I love my job. Really, I do.” Ellie sounded as if she were trying to convince herself, but Robbie knew it was so much bull. She’d worked damn hard to make the deli a success and had only recently begun the expansion into a full-service restaurant. She
did
love her job. “What kind of place does Auntie Lueena have?”

Anamaria smiled again, soft, affectionate. He wondered if that smile was ever spurred by anyone other than family.
Friends—he was sure she had them. Boyfriends—he was sure she had them, too. Plenty of them. All that she could handle. “It’s a small family diner. Soul food. Comfort food. She’s been in the same location for thirty years and has had the same menu for twenty-five.”

“And you do a little bit of everything?”

“Wait tables, run the register, wash dishes, cook, bake.”

Robbie had trouble envisioning her in a hot, busy kitchen, hands in steaming water, prepping vegetables, stirring pots, skin dusted with fine white flour. She was too exotic, too sensual for such mundane activities. She should spend her time lounging on a beach somewhere, wearing beautiful clothes, shopping in expensive stores for diamonds and rubies and emeralds to show off against her luscious skin.

Ellie didn’t seem to notice either her exoticness or her sensuality. He supposed, her being a woman, too, that was a good thing. “You ever want a place of your own?”

“No. Not at all.” But Anamaria didn’t say what she did want. A full-time career telling fortunes? Or did “seeing” people’s futures full time require more ingenuity than she possessed? He imagined that on a regular basis it would drain the creative well pretty dry.

“Do you come from a restaurant background?” Anamaria asked.

“No, I—” Distracted, Ellie looked in the direction of the hall, where, an instant later, Tommy appeared around the corner. Right now, judging by the look he wore, if they weren’t off-again, they would be soon.

“You ought to put the boy out of his misery and marry him,” Robbie murmured.

“Worry about your own love life,” she retorted, rising easily from the chair. “Anamaria, it was nice meeting you. Come back soon. I’d love to talk more.”

She met Tommy in the narrow aisle halfway across the room. She stopped; he stepped aside. Their gazes held for a moment, their expressions equally blank, then she moved on.

Definitely off-again. Great. Robbie preferred his buddies to be happily attached or happily unattached. Anything in between was too big a pain in the butt.

Tommy watched until Ellie turned the corner out of sight, took a deep breath, then covered the last few yards to the table. “I called the dock and they said your boat was still in its slip, so I figured you’d be here.” He tossed a manila envelope on the table. “The papers we talked about.”

The case file on Glory Duquesne’s death, complete with photographs. Aiming for relaxed, Robbie slid the envelope off the table and onto his lap. “Thanks.” He gestured toward the chair Ellie had just vacated, but Tommy shook his head. “Anamaria Duquesne, Detective Tommy Maricci.”

One corner of her mouth quirked at his emphasis on Tommy’s title. “Detective Maricci,” she said with a regal nod.

He cocked his head to one side, studying her a moment before saying, “You look familiar. Have I arrested you before?”

Chapter 3

A
namaria couldn’t stop the laughter that bubbled free. “Not yet. But there’s still time.” Mimicking Robbie, she waved one hand lazily at the empty chair. “Please join us, Detective.”

This time he did so, swinging the chair around to straddle it. “You can call me Tommy.”

He was about Robbie’s age, an inch or two shorter and probably twenty pounds heavier, all muscle. Black hair, dark eyes, olive-skinned, with a stubble of beard on his jaw that gave him a slightly disreputable look. He didn’t need the badge or the pistol on his belt for his air of authority; he came by it naturally.

The sorrow hovering around him, though, wasn’t natural. A new hurt having to do with Ellie Chase, an old one connected to his mother. Anamaria couldn’t tell if Mrs. Maricci was dead; she wasn’t sure Tommy knew himself. But wherever she was, in this life or the next, she wasn’t
here
and hadn’t been for a very long time.

“So you’re in the psychic business,” Tommy said.

“And let me guess—you’re in the skeptic business.”

“Nah. He’s skeptical enough for both of us.” He jerked his head toward Robbie. “Besides, my great-grandma Rosa was from the old country, and she was a big believer in the evil eye and spirits and all that. Are you setting up business here in town?”

“My visit here is nothing more than that. A visit. A break from Savannah.”

“And yet the first thing you do is call Lydia.”

Who’d told her husband, who’d told his lawyer, who’d told the local cop. “If you don’t believe me, Detective, feel free to keep an eye on me.”

He glanced at Robbie. “It might get kind of crowded.”

So Robbie had already made clear his intention of doing just that. She didn’t mind. She’d been viewed with suspicion and distrust before, and would be again. She shifted her gaze to Robbie. “And here I thought it was just coincidence running into you outside River’s Edge this morning,” she said sweetly.

“No, you didn’t,” Robbie replied bluntly. “You knew when I left your house yesterday that you’d be seeing me again.”

That she would see him, and have no regrets about him when she left. Whether that meant sleeping with him—or not—she didn’t yet know.

Whether it meant trusting him—or not—was still a question, as well.

She picked up her purse and reached for the ticket the waitress had brought with their food. Robbie slid it out from under her fingers and switched it to his other hand. She smiled faintly. She could insist on paying for her share of the meal, but there would be other, more important things to argue about than a salad and half a sandwich.

“Thank you.” She stood, and her denim skirt fell into place, the cotton of her shirt shifted, and two appreciative male gazes watched. She offered her hand. “It’s a pleasure meeting you, Detective.”

His hand was warm, his grip strong but restrained. “Let’s do it again without him.”

She thought of Ellie Chase, doing one of the thousand daily jobs vital to the running of the restaurant, and the way he’d looked at her when she’d walked away from him. He would be a safe choice for a spring affair—handsome, sexy, totally in love with another woman. Her heart might break for him, because she suspected if she got to know him, she would like him very much, but it wouldn’t be broken
by
him.

Still holding his hand, she bent close, her mouth almost brushing his ear. “As if you aren’t already taken,” she murmured. “But if you need a friendly ear or a soothing tonic, you know where to find me.”

When she straightened, Robbie’s gaze was narrowed, not quite forming a scowl but definitely hinting of something territorial, something…primal. As safe as Tommy was, Robbie was twice that dangerous.

He followed her to the cash register near the front door, paid the tab, then they walked outside. He held the envelope under one arm while putting on a pair of dark glasses. She had sunglasses in her purse, big ones that Mama Odette called her movie-star glasses, but she didn’t bother with them. Perhaps it was the Cuban in her, or the Haitian or the African, but she loved the sun, bright and hot. Loved the air heavy with moisture and the lazy, languid way it made her feel.

“Do the contents of that envelope concern me?” she asked when they’d walked half a block in silence.

“Why would you think that?”

“Oh, gee, I don’t know. Your client asks you on Tuesday
to look into my background, and on Wednesday your detective friend shows up with an unmarked envelope of ‘papers’ you talked about. Call it…”

“A premonition?” he supplied drily.

“Intuition.”

He didn’t respond but followed when she turned in midblock and jaywalked to the square. The paths there were shaded by giant oaks and were sweetly scented by the plantings along the edges. She was wondering what he would do if she simply slipped the envelope away from him. Would he take it back or let her look inside? Could there be anything inside worth seeing? Her financial history? Her arrest report? The legendary permanent record that had followed her from kindergarten to twelfth grade?

She knew all those details of her life. Seeing them in official report format didn’t interest her.

“Tommy’s not available,” Robbie said abruptly.

“I saw that.”

“You mean—”

“Even a blind man could see the emotion coming off the two of them. What’s the problem?”

He shrugged, obviously unwilling to share. “What did you say to him?”

She shrugged, too, equally unwilling to share.

In only a moment, they were approaching her car. She would have walked longer with him. If he offered a tour of downtown, or even the whole town, she would accept. It was a beautiful day, the air fresh with promise, and there was something about walking with him—being with him—that filled her with promise.

But he wasn’t making any offers.

She unlocked her car, then opened the door to disperse the heat collected inside. “Thank you for lunch.”

“You’re welcome.” He held out his hand, and for a time she simply stared at it.

His voice was taut when he spoke. “You shook hands with Ellie and Tommy. You can damn well shake hands with me.”

She continued to stare. His fingers were long and lean, hinting at power. The nails were short, the skin tanned, with a few old scars and a callus here and there. They were hands that could arouse and soothe and protect, that could hurt but wouldn’t. Hands that could shake her world so thoroughly that nothing would ever be the same again.
She
would never be the same again.

Her own hands stayed at her sides. “Touching can be a very casual thing,” she said softly. “It can also be very powerful. Very hurtful. Very healing.” She paused, moistened her lips, debated the wisdom of her next words and said them anyway. “Come home with me. I’ll touch you there. Not here.”

For an instant, time stopped. Then anger turned to passion, heat suffused his face, and for an instant his hand trembled, brought to a stop immediately when he clenched his fingers into a fist. He took a step back, opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything.

What was he thinking? That his demand for a handshake was certainly no invitation to seduction? That she was too bold for his tastes? That she was arrogant to think he wanted her in bed?

Or that Calloway men didn’t sleep with women of questionable reputation?

For generations, Duquesne women had been lovers of such men, had carried on their affairs in secret and birthed their daughters with no help, no money or even acknowledgment from them. Mama Odette speculated that Anamaria’s own father was just such a man.

Anamaria had never thought she would be drawn to a man
who found her unsuitable because of the color of her skin or the life she’d been born into—because of who she
was
—but here she stood.

Robbie took another step back, then dragged his fingers through his hair. “Jeez. I haven’t been speechless since I found out that my brother the cop was marrying a stripper.” And here he was, the successful lawyer, fielding a brazen seduction offer from a con artist.