“Later. First, you sleep.”
Her eyes drifted open. She looked up into his, which were green like willows, like springtime. “You’ll be here? While I sleep?” When he hesitated, she reached for his wrist and added, “Please?”
“I’d planned to visit my property management company around noon, but I can wait. It’ll give me time to take a look around this place and see what sort of repairs I’m going to need to do if I’m going to stay a few days.”
That was al
l
she needed to hear. Her stomach settled. Warmth followed, washing over her skin. The last thought to cross her mind before sleep took her was that if he was going to stay here a few days, then she was, too.
Eleven
Lorna Savoy paced the width of her office so many times Bear found himself fighting off nausea. Her office was smal
l
, and she wore the worst god-awful perfume, always had, and if she thought bathing in an extra splash of the stuff today was going to lure Simon Baptiste into her web, she was wrong, because the truth of the matter was, the smell would probably make the man retch.
Even so, Bear couldn’t deny that Lorna was a fine-looking woman. She’d kept herself tight, and she wore clothes that showed off her body. The skirt she had on was straight and gray, her heels tall and black, her blouse a pattern of red and white and black belted snug to her waist.
He watched the twitch of her hips, followed the bounce of her tits, remembered how firm her ass felt clutched tight in his hands as she rode him, her nipples pouting into his face, her pussy dripping all over his pole like she was trying to put out a fire. He waited, shifted…nothing. Not a bit of stirring in his shorts. It was a sad day when a man could admire a woman like Lorna, when he could remember the smell of her twat, the taste of it salty and wet, but needed a pill to get hard enough to put himself up inside her.
She’d stopped in front of the window on the far side of the room, the one facing the parking lot of the strip mal
l
where she rented her office space. Or where, in truth, Bear rented it, since the biggest part of her real estate income came from deals he sent her way.
“Lorna,
chère
. Do you really want him to catch you at the window drooling like some teenage girl in heat?”
“Oh, Baby Bear. What do you know about teenage girls?” A hint of humor in her voice, she cocked her hip and leaned forward, her palms on the window’s ledge. The way she was standing lifted her ass until it tempted him in a way he couldn’t ignore. He’d always liked sticking it to her ass. “I knew you when you were eighteen, didn’t I?”
She fluttered her fingers in his direction but didn’t turn. “I don’t want to talk about that. I just want him to get here so I can explain what we worked out. How it’s hard keeping renters when they find they’re sharing the place with an arsonist, not to mention living in a house where a woman took her own life.
“I mean, once he sees there’s been no reason to keep up the place, I can give him back his money, right? And then pray he doesn’t ask why I didn’t tell him all this before.” She pushed away from the window, circled the room to stand behind her desk chair, swiveling it back and forth.
Her nerves were getting on his nerves. “You never told him before because you have no way to contact him except through his post office box. And you didn’t want to risk mailing a refund check without him knowing it was on the way.”
She continued to rock the chair side to side. “I just don’t know that he’ll buy that. He’s not a stupid man. Won’t he want to know why I didn’t just write him and tell him I needed him to call?”
Bear straightened the collar of the dress shirt he wore with his suit coat but without a tie. “He may have washed his hands of Bayou Allain a long time ago, but he won’t have forgotten how we do things down here. He can want to know al
l
manner of things. That doesn’t mean he’s going to get the answers he wants, or like the ones we give him.”
The only one getting what he wanted here was Bear. And what he wanted was to keep everyone he could off of Le Hasard. He couldn’t do much about King Trahan, but he was a known factor, one Bear had worked around now for years. Another day or two, and he would have no need to work around anyone ever again. Two more days. Why the hell Simon Baptiste couldn’t have waited two more days to descend on Bayou Allain…First that damn Michelina Ferrer and now Harlan Baptiste’s spawn. And with everything Bear had been working for finally within reach. Lorna stepped from behind her chair, came to perch on the loveseat cushion beside him. Her office was decorated much like her home, fussy and floral, with wall-to-wall carpeting in a periwinkle blue that matched the flowers in the vase on her credenza and the oil of an English garden above.
“I just want this day over with,” she said, her voice wistful with a lust that was going to be their undoing if she didn’t keep it in her panties, where it belonged. “I’m not going to be able to breathe or stop shaking until we’re done here and Simon goes home.”
A quick knock sounded on the door and Lorna jumped to her feet, patted at her hair, smoothed down her clothes. Bear was used to her fussing, but this obsession she had with Simon was going to do him in.
“
Come in, Chell
e,”
he call
ed to Lorna’s assistant, earning himself a panicked glare as Lorna shook her head and mouthed, “I’m not ready.”
Paschelle Sonnier pushed open the door, looked from Bear to Lorna, then glanced toward the phone ringing on her desk. She held up a finger, stepped away from the door to take the call. Air went out of Lorna like a punctured tire, bu
t she puffed up again with Chell
e’s return.
“He rescheduled for tomorrow. Simon Baptiste.”
“What?” Lorna gasped, sputtering out the word. “No. Oh, no.” She shook her head, waggled a finger like a scolding teacher. “He can’t do this. He cannot do this to me.”
“I believe he already did,” Bear said, turning to Chelle. “What time tomorrow?”
“He wants to come at ten. The calendar was free, so I penciled him in.”
“Thank you, Chelle. That’s all.” He waited for the door to close before he added, “I’m getting tired of having my days upended. It’s past time to eat.”
“That’s all you can think about? Food? You’re not worried that he’s discovered the truth?” Lorna’s face had paled, her bright lipstick and cheek color looking more like it belonged on a clown.
Times like these he wondered why he still thought her attractive, why he’d chosen her as his ally all those years ago. Except seeing her reaction to Simon and the man not even here…he remembered the way Lorna at twenty had walked and talked, how boys for miles around had panted after her.
There was something to be said for the power a woman held over a man. She could take a deal a lot further, make a client a lot happier than Bear ever could alone. Too bad he’d never had the chance to see Michelina Ferrer at work.
He got to his feet and held out his hand, feeling the aches in his bones from the cushions that were as soft as the rest of Lorna’s décor. “Let’s get lunch. You look too nice not to show off around town.”
She stood with her arms wrapped around her middle but finally gave in and wrapped her fingers around his. “I can’t eat. My stomach feels like it’s weighed down with a boulder the size of the Gulf.”
“I’ve got a bottle with your name on it.” He brought her fingertips to his mouth and kissed them. “It’s just the thing to loosen you up. All you have to do is drink.”
Twelve
N
oon. Finally. Paschelle Sonnier had thought the lunch hour would never arrive. And even better, now that it had, was Lorna going to lunch with Judge Landry and giving
Chelle
permission to close the office until she got back.
Since Lorna’s lunches with the judge usually involved more alcohol than food, it wasn’t unusual for them to be gone two or three hours if they ever came back at al
l
.
Chelle
didn’t have far to drive for her own lunch date, but she wasn’t going to press her luck. She would keep her time away to ninety minutes, max. King, as anxious as the others to find out what Simon wanted, told her he’d meet her at her place today. He didn’t believe for a minute the trip to Louisiana was to check out the old place, like Simon had said.
Chelle
was probably the only one in town who didn’t care why King’s cousin had come back to Bayou Allain. She wanted King happy, that was al
l
. And she was pretty sure he would be anything but when she arrived sans news.
She made a quick stop at the corner of St. James and State, then turned left, and in another half mile right onto Fern. Her cottage sat at the end of the long and winding road, and that’s where King was waiting.
Her heart felt weightless in her chest, floating into her throat and making it hard to draw breath. Her tummy tingled, tightening up to send tiny shivers to tickle between her legs. She clenched her sex, feeling herself grow ready.
It had been like this since the first time she’d seen King that long-ago night at Red’s. She’d tended bar in the French Quarter when she’d lived in New Orleans, wasting her business administration degree slinging drinks the same way she was wasting it now working for Lorna. Then she’d been biding her time, checking the classifieds and Monster.com, though she didn’t know why she bothered.
Working from early evening until two a.m., then partying until dawn was a lot more fun than a corporate nine to five. And then came Hurricane Katrina and the loss of her life as she’d known it.
She’d hit the road, dazed, confused, and run out of gas in Bayou Allain. She’d been here ever since, with no idea why she stayed. At least she hadn’t known until the night she met Kingdom Trahan.
She’d been tired of spending her weekends alone. Lorna kept her busy enough during the week that she didn’t mind heading home to a bowl of popcorn, her bed, and whatever DVD Netflix had sent from her queue. But there was only so much yard work and housework and reading she could do on her days off without going totally insane. She did sew, and using the scads of decorating magazines Lorna let her take home every month, she’d turned her small rental into a funky Project Runway–styled Extreme Home Makeover showcase.
But she had no one to show it off to, no one to enjoy the wild mixture of colors and patterns and textures, and she’d avoided getting a cat because it seemed so desperately single-girl pathetic.
She knew about Red’s, of course. The bar was a Bayou Allain institution. But going out for a night on her own? Again with the desperately single-girl pathetic. She’d served a whole lot of drinks to a whole lot of women who were trolling, and she would not ever be one of them.
Then came the night when the popcorn turned into ice cream—one bowl, then two, then another…. And that was it. She’d had to get out of the house. She’d worn blue jeans, a white T-shirt, Scottish plaid flats, and no makeup save for mascara. She hadn’t thought about the apple-green mesh of her bra shimmering through her top’s cotton fabric, but it had.
Men had noticed. Women, too. Apparently apple green only played in the Big Easy. A beer in her hand, she’d swiveled around on her stool, determined to enjoy the zydeco band and ignore the curious stares.
She hadn’t been in town but a few months and probably remembered only a handful of people she’d met through her connection to Lorna. She knew the deputy and his wife, Lisa, who lived across the street, but that was because Terril helped keep her Mustang running.
If she’d seen King Trahan before her visit to Red’s, she would not have forgotten. He was older than her by ten years at least, and she loved what age had done to his eyes, the way he looked at her, the things he said without speaking, the potency in his gaze that was frightening.
He’d been sitting in the far corner, leaning back in the booth, both arms flung wide on the padded headrest, one long leg stretched out where anyone walking by could easily trip if the person wasn’t paying any mind.
She could see it happening, someone caught by his full-of-bul shit-and-promises gaze and missing the big, bad challenge of his foot. She’d never been sure if it had been the shake of her head or the shimmer of her bra, but he’d slipped out of the seat and crossed the room with a roll of his hips that had left her needy and her mouth bone dry. They’d talked at the bar for hours, their heads close, their breath a single exhalation of air, their laughter tangled up like puzzle rings, their hands touching, fingers and wrists and palms, once a shoulder, then his to her neck.
He’d walked her to her car, hovered over her when she’d stood with her back to the door, his forearms on the metal roof, where his fingers drummed. She’d wanted to pul his body flush to hers. She’d wanted to melt into his skin, to feel his weight, to measure the length and width of the erection she was certain he had; as wet as she was, how could he not be just as ready for her?
It had seemed forever that they’d stood there like that, still and wondering and silent but for the need to breathe deeply and to stay. The moment had been magic, sex waiting, tension living, all in the air.
Finally he’d stepped forward, moved his hands from the roof of the car to the button of her jeans. He’d opened her fly, put his hand in her panties, and she’d let him, just like she’d done in junior high with Robert Benton when they’d cut study hall to make out in the locker room.