The Perfect Stranger (2 page)

The one she still touched and kissed during the long hours of the night, when he refused to stay in the shadowy cabin where she’d left him.

“And you still didn’t get the hint?” she asked with the cool detachment that had always been her hallmark. “What does it take? A two-by-four to the head?”

His smile was slow, languorous. Dangerous. “Better,” he drawled. “Much better.”

Questions twisted through her, insane possibilities she had to consider. Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe the man wasn’t a stranger. Maybe he’d been in Bayou d’Espere for a reason. Maybe he’d been sent there. It wouldn’t be the first time. People always wanted something from the Robichauds. Money. Favors. Information. Revenge.

With a cool breeze blowing against them and the sensuous jazz music weaving around them, Saura forced her body to relax, her steps to meld with his. She knew how the game was played. Once, she’d been a professional.

“But not good enough,” he murmured, sliding a hand up her spine. Five weeks before, he’d unfastened her braid with an explicitness that had melted her bones, letting his fingers linger to tangle in her hair. Now he found only the bare skin at the base of her neck, and she shivered. “What are you afraid of?” he asked. “Being seen?” Slowly he extended his thumb and forefinger to circle her nape. “Being caught?”

The urge to jerk out of his arms was strong. The reality that she could not was stronger. “What makes you think I’m afraid?”

“You’re in my arms, aren’t you? I can feel you—see you. If you could, you would melt into the shadows.” He slid his other hand lower against the curve of her back. “It’s him, isn’t it? Lambert. You’re afraid of him.”

They were just words, that was all, but with them the stranger stripped her to the bone. She was out of practice. She’d known that. But until he’d exposed her, she hadn’t realized just how rusty she’d become.

“How would
you
like to see your date in another man’s arms?” she asked with amazing indifference considering the twisting deep inside. Then, because he was right, she glanced toward the French doors. A dark-haired waiter stood there, but Lambert remained absent.

“Is that all you are? His date?”

Angling her chin, she shifted her attention to the man who knew things about her no other man did. For four nights she’d watched him in the honky-tonk. And for four nights he’d nursed his whiskey, not speaking to a soul. For the first two he’d not even spoken to her, not even when they’d danced in slow circles.

She wasn’t sure which was more excruciating—the silence, or the third degree.

“He doesn’t make you feel this, does he?” The question was low, hoarse, and for a dangerous moment she wanted to close her eyes and let go. To let the memories wash through her.

“Like how?” she asked. But as soon as she gave voice to the question, the truth seared through her.
Like more.

His mask hid much of his eyes, but not the way they gleamed. “Like this,” he said, and before she realized his intent, he lifted his hand to her chest, where her heart sang in hot, brutal recognition.

H
er face she could control. Her arms and her hands, her legs, her feet. She could keep her expression blank. She could keep her eyes cool. She could even keep her breathing steady. She knew how to shut things out. How to separate. How to play.

How to survive.

But beneath the skin, her ironclad control ended. Beneath the skin she’d never mastered indifference. She’d never learned to keep her blood from heating, her heart from pounding. She’d never learned to block the tingling or the wanting. The craving.

She’d never learned to stop the bleeding.

And that was where he touched her. Inside. His fingers pressed against the crushed silk of her dress, but his touch penetrated to the frenetic rhythm of her heart.

She wanted to twist out of his arms. She wanted to walk away, walk far, as she’d done before. But running, she knew, was the best way to be chased.

And she could not let this man chase her.

Lifting her eyes, she let a slow smile curve her lips. “There are lots of reasons a woman’s heart races. Not all of them are good.”

“Not all of them,” he conceded as the music changed to a quiet sax solo. “Is it me, then? Are you afraid of this?” he asked, letting his thumb stretch toward her collarbone.

Her throat went dry. “I’m thinking you give yourself far too much credit,
cher.
”

His thumb started to rub, softly, in a delicate rhythm her body instinctively remembered—even if his apparently did not.

She hated him for that, that he could annihilate everything inside her, while he stood there. Unmoved. Untouched.

“Maybe,” he said. “But then, maybe you don’t want to give me enough. Which brings me back to my question. A beautiful woman like you…” his gaze whispered over the body he’d possessed five weeks before “…why are you with a man who leaves you cold?”

The opening was too perfect not to grab.

“Maybe I’m just curious,” she hedged, forcing herself to relax against him, to ignore the immediate blade of yearning. “You lured me out here. Maybe I’m just trying to find out why.”

The dark flare of his eyes felt better than it should have. Body to body he stared down at her, and when she thought for sure he would have frowned, he once again smiled.

There had been no smiles the night they made love.

“You really want to know what I want?” he asked, and the small victory she’d felt for throwing his question back into his face dissipated into a primal stillness.

It had been a long time since she’d stood on such a razor-thin line. Two men. The man from the honky-tonk, and the man who now held her. One of them wasn’t real.

“How else can I decide whether to give it to you?” she asked, playing the game, even as the question twisted through her.

He slid his hand along her collarbone to her neck, where he found a few strands of hair. Auburn, not black. She knew to separate her work from her life, but when she’d dyed it before walking into Lambert’s world, she’d had no idea how dangerously close the two worlds would soon brush.

“I want to know what he gives you,” he said, twirling her hair around his finger. “What he does for you.” Pausing, he let his eyes meet hers. “I want a chance.”

He wanted more than that. The truth hovered there between them. He wanted
her,
the woman he thought was Nathan Lambert’s mistress. Which meant he had no idea who she really was.
How well he already knew her.

The realization stung. His presence in Lambert’s world shattered any belief that his appearance in Bayou d’Espere had been strictly innocent. Those dark explosive hours in his cabin—

She’d thought she’d been in control. She’d thought she’d been making choices she’d never make again. All the while he, in turn, had been playing her. Using her. Nothing else made sense.

The possibilities tripped through her—he could be a reporter, looking for crumbs about the arrests that had rocked her family a few months before, the violent death of a good friend, the reappearance of a woman thought dead, the fall of someone they’d trusted. He could want to milk that, use her for an exclusive.

That was almost a comforting thought.

He could be on someone’s payroll. Her family was powerful. They had enemies. He could work for someone who’d taken a hit when the Robichauds came out on top. He could have been sent to watch her family. Watch her. To gather information. To infiltrate.

He could work for Lambert.

“Excitement?” he asked, as if she’d never turned him down. Tugging her close, he spun her in a quick circle and pulled her hips to his, and dared her to lean back against his arm.

Never one to turn down a challenge, Saura met his eyes and let herself go. He held her that way, draped over his arm like silk, for a long, long moment.

Naked.
It was an odd word, but exposed to him that way, with her throat and spine arched, her chest lifted, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt more naked—not even the night in the cabin, when she had been. It had been dark then, only one candle glowing from across the room. Now an army of votives and tiki torches glimmered around them, exposing the length of her neck and the fall of her hair. Too easily he could lift a hand and—

Too easily he could see the freckles behind her ears, the ones he’d kissed and—

“That I can give you,” he murmured as her heart crashed against her ribs. Abruptly he lifted her from the dip and urged her body back to his. The rush was immediate. So was the relief. And the danger.

The excitement he’d promised.

“Prestige?” There was a dark glitter to his eyes. “Not so much. But money…money I can handle.” Faces a heartbeat apart, he reached for her hand and lifted it between them, studied the diamond-crested fleur-de-lis solitaire her grandfather had given her grandmother on their fiftieth wedding anniversary. “Jewelry.”

Something low and hot streamed through her. “You want to go ahead and just call me a whore?”

“Everyone has a price.”

“Even you?”

He stopped moving. For a second, she would have sworn he stopped breathing. “Even me.”

It was not the answer she’d expected. “Tell me then. What is it you want? Why did you trick me into coming out here?” She wanted to wrench her hand from his, but refused to give him the satisfaction. “Didn’t think I’d let you touch me any other way?”

His eyes met hers. “You haven’t figured that out by now?”

“If you think I’m naive enough to think this conversation has anything to do with me—”

“Protection.”

The word stopped her cold. “What?”

“That’s why you’re with Lambert, isn’t it?” He released her hand and lifted his to her face. “Because you’re scared, and a rich man like him makes you feel safe.”

She stilled. “I’m not scared.”

“Tell me something,
belle amie.
” His voice was dead quiet. “Who’s going to protect you from him?”

The question hit a nerve. “Is that what this is about?” she asked, stepping from his touch. “You want to play hero and protect the poor little damsel in distress from the big bad wolf?”

He stood very still, his eyes dark and focused one hundred percent on her. “I know Nathan Lambert. I know what he’s capable of, what he’s done before.”

“And yet here you are, at his party, drinking his wine.” With a cutting smile, she moved in for the kill. “So tell me, just what is it you call yourself? Friend? Colleague?” She hesitated, let the sensuous strains of jazz settle between them. “Enemy?”

He didn’t flinch. The breeze kept right on whispering, though, cooler than before. January rarely brought bone-chilling cold to the deep south, but it took all of Saura’s willpower not to shiver.

“It’s nice when relationships fit into tidy little compartments, isn’t it?” he asked in that same quiet voice. “Friend or enemy.” He put a hand to her neck, skimmed his fingers beneath her jawbone. “Stranger or lover.”

Now she did shiver.

The change came over him so fast she almost missed it, an infinitesimal tensing of his big body, as if she’d rammed a rod into his gut. His jaw went tight and through the gold slits of his mask, she saw his eyes darken. “But it doesn’t always work that way, does it?”

The question stabbed deep. The answer stabbed deeper.

“Vilify me if you want,” he said, stepping away from her. “I don’t want to see you get hurt. It’s as simple as that.”

The sense of loss surprised her. “Maybe I won’t be the one who gets hurt,” she shot back, ignoring the hollowness moving through her. “What would Nathan do if he knew we were having this conversation? That a friend, maybe an employee, lured me into a dance so he could warn me about him? Do you really think—”

“You won’t tell him.”

Keeping her gaze unaffected, she glanced toward the French doors, felt the impact clear down to her toes. Nathan stood next to the waiter with the killer cheekbones, watching them. There was a stillness to him, a readiness that jolted through like a high-octane shot. The look in his eyes—

“You sure about that?” she asked, enjoying the moment more than she should have. “Because he’s standing by the doors. If you’d like to test your theory, I can—”

“Don’t.”

Awareness jammed in her throat. She looked up into the stranger’s hard, glittering eyes, and forgot to breathe.

“No matter how much you enjoy playing, this isn’t a game.” Between their bodies, his hand found hers and pressed a small card into her palm. “When you need me, call.”

Then he turned and disappeared among the dancing couples.

Saura glanced down and stared at the phone number on the card; tried to breathe, couldn’t. Tried to think, didn’t have much luck with that, either. All the pieces jangled around within her, but she couldn’t make them fit.

Because of his eyes. In those final moments, she’d seen an awareness in them she’d not seen earlier—an awareness she’d not seen since he’d hovered over her in the narrow bed, and put the pad of his index finger to the moisture beneath her eyes.

He knew. Or at the very least, he suspected. Somehow, something she’d said or done had given her away.

“Dawn?”

She closed her eyes at the sound of the cultured voice, swallowed against the tightness in her throat, and pasted on a smile as she tucked the other man’s business card into her purse. Then she turned. “Nathan.”

He took her hand and drew her wrist to his mouth for a soft kiss. “Miss me?”

“Of course,” she said with the demureness countless etiquette coaches had drilled into her.

His eyes warmed briefly, before darting toward the side of the verandah. “Who was that man?”

The question gave her one of the answers she’d been seeking. Whoever he was, Nathan did not know him. Unless that, too, was part of the act. “I’m not sure.” She snagged a bacon-wrapped shrimp from a passing waiter and popped it into her mouth. “We didn’t get to names.”

Nathan took her free hand and frowned. “You okay? You look a little pale.”

She didn’t hesitate. She’d missed her opportunity earlier, when Nathan had vanished from the party. “Just a headache,” she said, and for effect lifted a hand to her temple. “I shouldn’t have had the red wine—”

He reached for her elbow. “Let me get you some aspirin.”

“Thank you.” She let her eyes warm with gratitude. “But I’ve got some in my purse. What I could really use is a quiet room…”

From behind a boxwood hedge at the far side of the verandah, John watched her. He held his cell phone toward the makeshift dance floor, moving it slightly to keep her in his screen. She laughed. She smiled. She let Lambert touch her.

Much as she’d let John touch her five weeks before.

His blood boiled. Deception stung. Both reactions surprised.

From the moment he’d walked into Lambert’s Garden District mansion, he’d sensed her. Because of the perfume, he’d told himself. Because of the scent of roses and spice that had assaulted him as he’d moved through the old house.

But now he knew. His imagination wasn’t playing tricks on him. He wasn’t getting soft. The woman was real, and she was here, and she was involved with Lambert clear up to her pretty lying eyes. In the small bayou town, those same brown eyes had slayed him. She’d looked at him from across the shadowy honky-tonk, and damn near eviscerated him. A stranger.

The reaction had almost sent him for the door. Instead, he’d watched her walk toward him, watched her reach out a hand. And like a fool, he’d stood and taken her into his arms. For three nights. Then he’d taken her into his bed.

All because of those aching, damaged eyes. They’d spoken to him of a pain he wanted to forget, a pain he should have left alone.

Pushing the small button, he captured her image. Again, and again, and again. It’s what he should have done all along. Take her picture, check her out. Find out why she’d been in Bayou d’Espere. If he’d been her target all along, sloppy seconds—or some other means to an end.

“I’ve got something for you,” he said, when Gabe Fontenot’s voice slurred through the crackle of the cell phone. Drinking, John figured, and felt the quick whip of guilt. He’d been so obsessed with his own crusade, he hadn’t called Gabe in weeks.

Of course, Gabe didn’t answer the phone much these days, either.

“I need you to check something,” he added.

“If I can,” his friend said. “But you know I’m not back at the courthouse yet.”

John frowned. Two months had passed since the celebrated assistant district attorney had torn through the woods south of town, only to find a gun pointed at his heart. When the smoke cleared, the assailant was not the only one whose life had been blown to bits.

“Nothing official,” John explained. Gabe was a Robichaud by birth. He had the connections to ask around, see if anyone recognized the woman. Who else she might have targeted. What information she might have seduced her way into. “Her hair is auburn in the picture, but I’ve seen it black.” Like midnight rain.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Gabe said as John stabbed at the buttons to upload the images.

“Let me know,” he said, then disconnected the call. Flipping his phone shut, he watched Lambert put a hand to his lover’s back, then lead her through a trail of tiki torches toward the house.