The Perfect Stranger (10 page)

Everything inside of Saura stopped brutally. She wanted to slip a hand onto Gabe’s forearm and stand with him, take Nathan’s thinly veiled threat and spit it back at him. Even more she wanted to pull Gabe aside and ask him what the hell was going on. What he was doing at the party. Why he was offering himself up to Lambert for target practice. And most importantly of all, why he pretended he did not know her.

Except as soon as they formed, the thoughts fell together, and the answer whispered through her.

“Good try,” Gabe said with a hint of the attorney he’d once been, his smile so razor-sharp Saura’s breath caught. “But you won’t win.” He looked at Saura, let his gaze sear into hers. “The name is Gabriel Fontenot,” he said, sliding a hand into the pocket of his sport coat—not a tuxedo—then pulling it out and pressing a business card into hers. “And if this man so much as looks at you the wrong way, you have only to call me, and I’ll be there so fast you won’t even have a chance to breathe.”

In that moment, she wasn’t sure she’d ever loved her cousin more. Or hurt for him more. There was a jagged ache in his words, a pain in his eyes she wanted to chase away.

But with one last look at Lambert, he strode away, straight toward Evangeline Rousseau. Saura watched her eyes go wide, saw her take a step back as Gabe closed in on her, took her wrist and practically dragged her out the sliding glass door into the darkness of the patio.

“Well,” she said with a breathlessness that wasn’t the least bit forced.

“You’ll have to excuse him.” Nathan’s smile was apologetic. “He’s a lost cause. I’ll go find security, have him removed from the property.”

“No, it’s all right.” Smiling uneasily, she scanned the guests in their tuxedos and cocktail dresses, wondering how she could feel a man she could not see.

You can’t get close to him, and I can…

He was there. Somewhere. Somehow. In the shadows. Watching. He’d sent her cousin to keep a public eye on her, but Saura knew D’Ambrosia would not have been content to hand over the reins of his investigation to another man.

“Excuse me, Mr. Lambert?” A waiter with dark brown hair and killer cheekbones slipped beside two restaurant critics and eased next to Nathan. Balanced on his hand was a tray of cocktails. Tucked inside his tuxedo jacket, Saura saw the telltale bulge, and knew this man was no waiter at all. “Your brother asked if you could join him for a few minutes.”

The change was subtle, an alertness moving into Nathan’s gaze. He glanced across the room, then at Saura. “I’m sorry—”

“Go,” she said with a warm smile. “I’ll be waiting.”

With one last lingering glance he walked away, but the waiter remained a heartbeat longer than he should have. He looked at her, almost looked through her.

And that’s when it clicked. She’d seen him before, at Nathan’s party. He’d been posing as a waiter then, as well.

As soon as the moment broke and he left, she slid her hand into her evening bag and pulled out a small receiver, subtly lifted her hand to her ear and inserted the device.

Courtesy of a matchbook she’d slipped into Nathan’s pocket, the voices came to her immediately. She moved as well, crossed to the foyer and slipped into a burnt-red powder bath. Closing the door, she turned on the water and listened.

Guests mingled everywhere. In the foyer. In the parlor and dining room. Even at the base of the main staircase. Everywhere she went, people were there. They saw her. They would remember. And if asked, they would tell Nathan exactly where she’d gone.

Saura kept her pace ambivalent, her smile warm. When a waiter passed, she snagged a glass of chardonnay. But she did not drink, wasn’t about to let anything soften so much as one edge. All the while her heart raced, fueled by a dark rush that had been silent for too long.

“It’s Dawn, right?”

The soft voice came from the right, and she turned to see a young woman with long dark hair and big soft eyes approaching her. She’d seen her earlier, had noticed her immediately. Despite her copper silk gown and the diamonds dripping from her ears and around her neck, she looked oddly out of place. Like someone who wanted to belong, who was trying to belong—but didn’t.

“Have we met?” she asked.

The younger woman flushed. Much younger, Saura realized upon closer look. She doubted the girl had seen her twenty-first birthday. “No,” she said with a hesitant smile. “I’m Darci.”

Saura forced a smile, so categorically did she not have time for chitchat. “Nice to meet you,” she said glancing beyond the girl, toward a staircase tucked near the kitchen. “Will you be around later? I was just on my way—”

“No, no that’s okay. You’re here with Mr. Lambert, right? I was wondering if you’d seen his brother.”

Something inside Saura quickened. She heard the hesitation in the girl’s voice, saw the discomfort in her eyes. “Not in the past few minutes,” she said. “You might check with his wife—”

“No, that’s okay.” Darci turned and hurried away, reminding Saura of the doe that autumn morning, the one that had bolted into the woods the second Saura called out her warning.

The urge to go after the young woman was strong, but not as strong as the urge to slip upstairs. Later, she told herself, with a quick glance to make sure no one was paying attention to her. Later she would find the girl. Later she would give her a smile and make her comfortable, find out what she didn’t want anyone to know.

Now Saura slipped down the hallway bisecting the second story, noting closed doors on both sides. Four to the right. Five to the left. There would be bedrooms. Probably a bathroom. Maybe a closet. Open the wrong door—

She sensed him before she heard him, the way everything inside her stilled and gathered. With a hard kick to her heart she spun, found him closing in like a fast-moving storm. A very dark, very dangerous storm. He was on her before she could step back, taking her not by the wrist but by the hand, and leading her not into the closest room, but to the third door on the right. Leading her. Not dragging.

And the door, he closed it softly, when every tight line of his body screamed that he wanted nothing more than to slam.

But Detective John D’Ambrosia did not slam. Ever. That would signify a loss of control, of concentration. It would mean something had gotten to him. And that, Saura knew, was not something this man could abide. He didn’t want to care. He didn’t want to feel. He just wanted to—

Not to hurt.

The realization brought an ache
she
didn’t want to feel. She watched D’Ambrosia standing with his back to her and his hand curled in a death grip around the glass doorknob, watched his shoulders rise and fall beneath the long-sleeved black T-shirt—didn’t understand why he wouldn’t look at her.

Didn’t understand why she wanted him to, so very, very badly.

“John—” she said. Not
D’Ambrosia.
And wondered if he noticed. Then she beamed a smile. “We’ve
got
to quit meeting like this. People might start to—”

He turned to her slowly, revealing the hard set of his jaw and the dark light in his eyes. His hair was shorter than it had been that morning, cut with the same razor precision that ruled every aspect of his life. The control—God, the raw control he was exerting. She could feel its tight edges from four feet away.

“Do you know what room you were standing outside of?” he asked with a roughness that touched her in ways and places she didn’t want to be touched. “What door you were about to open?”

She chose to ignore that he obviously thought she was incompetent enough to open without checking first for voices. “The one with Lambert inside?” she guessed.

“And his brother,” he said, locking the door. “And two bodyguards.” Now he moved toward her, the tidy room of lavender walls and small white furniture making him look bigger somehow. “Do you need me to go on?”

Maybe she should have backed away, but doing so would have brought her to the frilly canopy bed.

“He knows,” she said, going on offense instead. Logic told her to keep her distance, but she closed in on him and destroyed the distance between them. And touched him. Lifted her hands to his arms and dug her fingers into soft cotton and hard muscle. “He knows you’re here.”

She would never know what made D’Ambrosia’s eyes glitter—the way she touched him, or the revelation she dropped at his feet. “What are you talking about?”

She pulled the small disc from her ear and handed it to him, recounted what she’d heard.
This must stop,
Marcel had said.
The risk is too high!
He’d almost sounded…scared.

John took the receiver and stared at it, then at her. “This is how you knew about the fire? You’ve bugged him?”

In another time, another situation, the incredulity in his voice might have made her laugh. All her life she’d been dismissed, seen first as a nuisance, then a trophy. Men had assumed that just because she had a fondness for fashion she must not have a brain in her head. That she didn’t see things, notice things. Hear things. That she didn’t know how to leverage an advantage—and overcome a weakness.

She’d taken great satisfaction in proving them wrong.

But as she looked at the punishing combination of concern and admiration in D’Ambrosia’s eyes, she could find no laughter—and no pride.

“He wants you gone,” she said over the hard thrumming of her heart. “This time for good.”

Swearing softly, he lifted the disc to his ear. “That’s not going to happen.”

“This place is crawling with security. We’ve got to get out of here before they find you…” And eliminated him.

The silence screamed in from all directions, hard and jagged and brutal, throwing her back to the night she opened her door to find her brother standing grim-faced on her porch. She’d known before he’d spoken a word, had felt the bottom drop from her world. He’d reached for her—

Swallowing hard she destroyed the memory and focused on John, standing so still, staring at the little girl’s bed as he listened to the Lambert brothers’ conversation. She didn’t know how he could do that, stand so still not even his breath moved through him. The green of his eyes almost looked black. “John—”

Something wild flashed in his eyes. Without warning he took her hand and tugged her across the room.

From down the hall a door opened. Then closed. Footsteps sounded on the hardwood floor. Brisk. Determined. Moving closer. And voices, low and muted and—

Everything went dark. And quiet. She strained against it, but could see nothing. Hear nothing. For all of one frozen heartbeat.

Just as quickly the moment lurched forward, and John was gathering her against his body and dragging her through the darkness. Across the room to a door, which he pulled open as the footsteps intensified, no longer walking. But running.

And from somewhere downstairs, the sound of a woman’s scream. And shouting. Then her name, not the one on her birth certificate, but the one she’d given Lambert.
“Dawn?”

And she knew. She knew who was opening and closing doors in the hallway. Why he was running. What he wanted.

What would happen if he found a locked door, if he kicked it in to find her crouched in a closet with the man he wanted dead.

She had no choice. None at all. Not if she wanted to live—not if she wanted John to live.

On pure blind instinct Saura jerked from the warmth of John’s arms and ran across the room, lunged for the door.

J
ohn ran. Hard and fast, from the closet and across the soft beige carpet. It wasn’t that far, no more than ten feet, but with each stride something inside him shouted. Quietly. Fiercely. Because he could not shout with his voice. He could not call to her, tell her to turn around and come back to him.

To stay the hell away from Nathan Lambert.

Because Nathan Lambert was just outside. Looking for her. If she suddenly appeared, rushing from the room and into his arms, full of some story about being lost—

Nathan would pretend to believe her. Maybe even pretend to soothe her. But he wasn’t stupid. And he couldn’t afford to take chances. No matter how badly he wanted Saura, he couldn’t take her story at face value, not after security had reported someone casing the house. That’s why they’d killed the power…

“Dawn!”

John caught her at the door, his body caging hers, his hands reaching for her arms. She stiffened but did not fight, didn’t protest as he lifted her and carried her back to the closet.

“Sweetheart, it’s okay,” Lambert was saying. “I know you’re probably scared but—”

Silently, John closed the door.

“—you have to trust me.”

He could hear her breathing. Feel her heart slamming against his shoulder. Feel her, all of her, warm and sinuous, draped over his body.

The urge to slide her to her feet and back her against the row of clothes, to lift a hand to her face and—cradle—stunned. The urge to put his mouth to hers and obliterate all the recklessness, all the ill-conceived courage, to make her forget about Lambert and Alec and whatever dark passions drove her, stunned him even more.

“…you can put me down…” she was saying. And something inside him snapped.

“Are you out of your mind?” It took inhuman restraint to keep his voice quiet, because there was nothing quiet inside him. He released her and slid her to her feet, not letting her touch so much as an inch of his body. “What in God’s name did you think you were—”

“Unlocking the door.”

The quiet, emotionless words stopped him.

“If he’d found it locked he would have known—”

The door to the room opened. “Dawn? Sweetheart?”

A beam of light streaked in from the space between the door and the carpet.

John backed her against the hanging clothes, pulling her behind them, next to what felt like a hanging net. And through the stillness she relaxed into him, put her head to his chest and slipped her arms around his waist.

The closet door opened. “Dawn?” The light swept down the center. Then the darkness returned, and the door closed.

But still, neither of them breathed. Until the outer door opened, and closed. And the footsteps, as well as the deceptively cultured voice, moved away.

“John,” she whispered against his chest.
“John.”

It took a moment for her voice to register.

“…can’t breathe.”

It was only then that he realized how tightly he held her, that he had his hand stabbed into her hair and her head pressed against him, holding her—

He released her and felt her stagger back, heard her drag in a rough breath.

He should have left her alone. He knew that. He should have let her back away from him, put distance between them. He should have stood there still and quiet, and waited.

Reaching for her was foolish. And weak. But he could no more not reach for her, not touch her again, than he could stop breathing. He lifted his hands through the soft fabrics hanging from the closet and found her only a few feet away. Then his hands found her shoulders and he slipped them around to her upper back and stepped toward her, tried not to crush.

The kiss was hot and hard and needy, fueled by denial and restraint and the lingering threat of death. She tasted of wine. And courage. And a fear that touched him somewhere deep inside, a fear that made him want to protect—

“No,” she said, and then she was struggling, turning her face from his and pushing against his arms. “We can’t do this.”

“Saura—”

“You have to let me go,” she said, fumbling for his hands. She found them and dragged them from her body, squeezed. Then again, quieter. Grimmer.
“You have to let me go.”

Everything inside of him went hard and tight. “Go where?”

“Back to him.”

The words were quiet, matter-of-fact, and John wasn’t sure he’d ever wanted to put a fist through the wall more.

“He’ll keep looking for me,” she said with a cold logic that he hated, and now her hands released his, slid along his arm to his shoulder. “If he comes back—if he finds us together—”

All bets were off. John knew that, hated that she was right. No matter how badly he wanted to, he couldn’t keep her there with him, had to let her go. If he didn’t, if Lambert came back and found Saura in John’s arms…

He could pull his gun. He could fast talk. He could claim he’d dragged her in there against her will. Claim she was too stupid for her own good, that she and Lambert deserved each other. Shove her into the other man’s arms.

But in the end, none of that would matter if Lambert’s henchmen surrounded them. In working against her, in trying to stop her, he’d only succeeded in compromising her.

Through the darkness he could see nothing. But he
could
feel. Her body pressed to his, the rise and fall of her breath and the thrumming of her heart, her fingers at his jaw, and something else. Something inside. Something hard and sharp, that just kept splintering—

“John.” She slid her thumb to his bottom lip. “
Please.
You know I’m right.”

A hard sound broke from low in his throat. “Do you have any idea?” He ground the words out. “Any idea at all what it does to me to see the two of you together?” He’d stood just beyond the windows, looking in at the two of them cozied up across the room. And sweet Christ, it had taken every ounce of training, every molecule of control, to stay where he was. “The way he looks at you,” he added, “touches you?”

Against his throat, he felt her breath. “Do you have any idea what it does to
me?
”

The resignation in her voice ripped at him in a way he hadn’t expected. Didn’t want. “Then stop.”

She pushed back, leaving a sweep of little girl’s clothing to fall against his face. “I can’t!” she said. “Not when I’m this close. Don’t you get it, John?” Despite the fact she kept her voice low, determination tightened around every word. “I can do this. I’m what you need—all you have to do is use me—”

“Don’t.” This time it was he who moved, he who shoved from the wall and found her standing in the middle of the closet. “Don’t ask me to use you.”

She stepped into him and again reached for his hand. And again, squeezed. “Then
help
me,” she said. “
Help
me bring Lambert down.
Help
me make Alec’s killer pay.”

His chest tightened. She made it sound so damn easy.

“We can,” she said, softer this time. “Together we can make Lambert fall, make sure he
pays.
He doesn’t suspect me.”

This time it was a growl that broke from his throat. And this time, it was need that won. He pulled her back into his arms and brought his hand to her face, put his mouth to hers, and drowned. For a long, long time. He waited for her to push him away. But she didn’t. She slid her arms around his neck and opened to him, kissed him back. Not with anger or frustration as she’d kissed him earlier. Not with the urgency or desperation from after the fire. But with a gentle acceptance, a quiet sadness that shredded everything he thought he knew about her.

Knew about himself.

“Then go,” he said against her seeking mouth. Then he slid his hands to her shoulders and pushed her away.
“Go.”

She did. Without a word. Without turning back. She opened the closet door and vanished into the darkness, ran for Lambert. Leaving John alone in a closet of frilly little girl clothes and stuffed animals, trying like hell to breathe.

“I don’t want to say good-night.”

“You’re sweet.”

“Trust me. There’s nothing sweet about the way I’m feeling.”

Silence. Thick and dark and punishing. Then a sound, low and raspy and leisurely. Mouth against mouth. Body to body.

Years of training allowed John to remain where he was, refusing to allow a muscle to so much as twitch. But he could do nothing about the violence pounding through him. Whether by design or accident, Saura had not retrieved the receiver she’d pressed into his hand, enabling him to listen to her every word, every breath, for the rest of the evening.

Listen to the soft lies with which Lambert plied her.

And worse, the soft silence, when John’s imagination filled in the blanks. Now they stood just outside the door of her fake apartment, and Lambert very clearly wanted in.

“Nathan,” she whispered with a wistfulness that made John want to put his fist through the door. “I’m sorry, but I think maybe I had too much champagne. My head…” She let the words trickle off, followed them with a little laugh. “I’m afraid if I don’t lie down soon…”

“Then you shouldn’t be alone.”

John tensed.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Really.” Then another blast of silence. “Give me tonight,” she whispered. “And I’ll give you tomorrow.”

John’s hands curled into tight fists. In that dark place inside, the tightness was even worse.

“Tomorrow, then,” Nathan said, and when the silence came, John knew that he was kissing her.

The sound of a key sliding into a lock had never been so welcome. The door came open and the alarm he’d bypassed blared. Saura slipped inside and closed the door, slid two chains into place before deactivating the alarm. Through the shadows he saw her close her eyes and lean her forehead against the wall, realized just how much her charade cost her.

“I’m here,” he said, and she twisted toward him. But didn’t move. Not toward him, not away when he closed the distance. She just watched him through the most bruised eyes he’d ever seen, went quietly into his arms. And held him. Tight. As if she never wanted to let go.

Breathing her in, John buried his face in her hair and closed his eyes, wondered how the hell he’d find the strength to do what had to be done.

She didn’t want him to leave. The realization whispered through Saura, even as she inventoried all the reasons she needed him to. She didn’t want to see him there in her house, on her sofa. And she really was tired. Everything had started spinning shortly after she’d left John and found Nathan downstairs, let him pull her into his arms and promise her everything would be okay. The electricity had come back on—he’d claimed a fuse had blown—and the party had swirled on.

But Saura had been unable to shake the sensation that something had shifted—nor could she forget the scream. Someone was overreacting, Nathan said, but Saura had to wonder.

Just as she had to wonder when the spinning had really started. There in the darkness of Marcel Lambert’s house, or days and weeks before, in the darkness of another room…?

Refusing to go there, she carried two cups of hot chocolate into the small living room of the house she’d rented on the outskirts of the Quarter. Built over a hundred years before, all the rooms lined up in a straight row, with a long, narrow hallway running down one side to connect them.

“I’m afraid I don’t have any beer or soda,” she said, stepping onto a braided rug. The words were horrifically trite considering all that remained unsaid between her and John. She had no idea how long they’d held each other, only knew that her throat had gone tight the second she’d seen him, that her heart had slammed and bled, begged. Wept. Because in that one frozen moment, she realized she’d never needed anything more than she’d needed his arms around her.

For so long there’d been only Adrian. During the years since his death, she’d jerked herself awake and pulled her knees to her body, sat in the darkness, hugging herself, but imagining him, feeling—nothing.

It was the nothing that had destroyed. The nothing that had driven her out of her house six weeks before.

The nothing that had driven her into a stranger’s arms.

Adrenaline, she tried to tell herself now. Relief. That’s why she’d wanted him to hold her tonight, because of the letdown that invariably came at the end of a roller-coaster ride, when your feet hit solid ground and you knew you were safe. That’s when you sagged. That’s when you shook. She’d just been so tired of acting and pretending, staying on guard. And then she’d finally gotten rid of Nathan, found John waiting.

Do you have any idea what it does to me to see the two of you together?

She’d expected anger. She’d expected a lecture or reprimand. Instead he’d come to her through the darkness and opened his arms, held her against the warmth of his body and given her tenderness. The combination had destroyed.

It was also yet another reason why she needed him to go.

Standing near the antique secretary, he turned to her. “I’m not that thirsty—” he started, but his expression closed when he saw the mugs in her hands.

She stopped. “Is something wrong?”

The short cut of his hair—a Caesar cut, she’d heard it called—accentuated the severity of his eyes. “No, I just—” Maybe it was supposed to be a smile, but the tightening of his mouth looked like a grimace. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had hot chocolate.”

She tried to give him a smile in return, but his words scraped through her, exposing a truth she didn’t want to see.

It had been a long time since Detective John D’Ambrosia had done a lot of things. Touch. And feel. Relax.

And drink hot chocolate.

“It’s good for the soul,” she told him, as her grandmother had told her. But the second the words left her mouth, the second the cleft in his chin deepened, she realized her mistake.

When she’d first seen him, all those weeks before, sitting alone across the room, her first thought had been of isolation. He’d reminded her of one of the cypress trees her brother loved to photograph—still and stoic amidst an ecosystem that had turned its back on him, that was slowly choking out his brethren, until only one remained.