BIANCA
Though I wanted to turn and bolt, I didn’t. The man had paid me an obscene amount of money for this job, after all. And I was a professional. I wouldn’t embarrass him in front of all his guests by refusing his request.
Also, I was intrigued by this new Jackson, this well-dressed stranger who spoke so eloquently about honor and selflessness and used words like please.
I didn’t think that word was in his vocabulary.
So it was with curiosity—and a healthy dose of embarrassment—that I walked around the perimeter of the tables and climbed the few stairs to the stage.
Then shock took over as Jackson wound his arm around my shoulders, pulled me against his side, and smiled down at me. I was too busy trying not to keel over in surprise to pay much attention to how perfectly I fit under his arm, how snugly I nestled against the solid bulk of his body.
How hard he was, all over.
I’m definitely hallucinating. Or Jackson Boudreaux has a twin no one knows about.
A twin that had three long, thin, mysterious scars on the right side of his face that his beard had been hiding.
“Pretend like you don’t hate me, and smile,” he said, his jaw barely moving, his lips stretched tight over his teeth. “Please.”
There’s that word again. I’m as lost as last year’s Easter egg. Am I on camera?
Expecting to see myself on a prank video sometime in the near future, I smiled.
Satisfied, Jackson turned back to the audience. “I discovered the magic of Bianca Hardwick’s cuisine when I visited her restaurant in the French Quarter. The food was so good I stayed all night and tried everything on the menu—”
“Maybe it wasn’t the food you stayed for!” shouted someone from the audience, then whistled, one of those catcalls boys lean out of car windows to deliver as you walk down the street.
Three hundred people laughed. My face went molten hot.
Jackson chuckled. His arm squeezed tighter around my shoulders. He said, “Well. Maybe for the first hour it was for the food.”
Who is this chuckler? I thought wildly, my heart galloping but the rest of me frozen stiff. This crowd pleaser? This . . . flirt?
At that moment, he tilted his head and sent me a sly wink.
He winked.
From my peripheral vision, I saw several camera flashes. Sweet Georgia Brown, I was being photographed grinning at Jackson Boudreaux like the village idiot.
I looked back out at the faceless crowd. Cold sweat trickled down between my shoulder blades. My smile stayed plastered firmly in place.
Jackson said, “I want y’all to visit Bianca’s in the Quarter before month’s end. Will you do that for me?”
The crowd made more noise. Jackson nodded, and then he said some other things I was too discombobulated to recall. Then a man came onstage and shook Jackson’s hand, and Jackson led me off by the arm, smiling and waving good-bye to the crowd.
The moment we were out of earshot of any guests, he dropped my arm and snapped, “You can stop smiling now, for Christ’s sake!”
“Oh thank heavens,” I said sarcastically. “For a minute there I thought I was living in an alternate universe where you actually had a good side.”
He swung around and stood in front of me. We were outside the tent, off to the side of one of the openings where waiters were still coming and going, glaring at each other in cold semidarkness while the auction began inside.
He snapped, “You’re right. I don’t have a good side. The person I was in there is a fabrication, the Jackson Boudreaux who likes people and enjoys the spotlight and feels right at home in a fucking penguin suit.” He ripped off his bowtie and threw it to the ground. “But that guy knows how to work a crowd and raise money by the fuckload for a charity that helps a lot of soldiers in need.”
He stepped closer and growled, “And that guy is willing to do whatever’s necessary to keep his end of a bargain with you and promote your restaurant and act like we’re on good terms, even when it’s painfully fucking obvious you’d rather be pushed off a building than have my arm around your shoulders!”
Normally this was the part where I’d lose my temper and tell him to kiss my grits or some other silliness. But I realized like a slap across the face that the reason he was so angry was because he was hurt.
He was hurt because he thought I hated him.
That he actually cared what I thought about him left me breathless.
After a moment I said, “Just to be clear, I would rather have your arm around me than be pushed off a building. That is definitely preferable to death.”
He stood there staring at me, breathing heavily, blue eyes glittering, the pulse pounding hard in his neck. The scars on his lower jaw moved as a muscle flexed beneath them.
I said, “Also to be clear, I don’t hate you. You said that earlier, but it’s not true. What I feel when I’m around you is usually irritation, I admit that, but only because you’re always acting like you just escaped from a zoo.”
Aside from his chest, which rose and fell in irregular bursts, he didn’t move. He stayed still as a statue as I continued to speak, his intense gaze never leaving my face.
“And even if that was an act in there, I admire that you would do all this”—I made a gesture encompassing the tent, the scurrying servers, the side of the house with all its rented ovens and equipment—“in memory of your friend who passed away. And to raise money to help others like him.”
My gaze fell to his jaw, to those mysterious white lines that almost looked like claw marks. What had it taken for him to shave off his beard and put those on display?
What had made them in the first place?
And why would he have taken my advice?
My voice softer, I said, “And to shave and wear a penguin suit and say such nice things about my restaurant, even if you didn’t mean it.”
He said flatly, “If I didn’t mean it, you wouldn’t be standing here.”
And the other part? I wanted to ask. The part about only staying the first hour for the food, suggesting you’d stayed the rest of the time for me?
But that was too dangerous. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know the answer.
Instead I said, “I’m not comfortable in front of large crowds. That’s why I was stiff. I was surprised that you put your arm around me and that you were acting so differently, so that contributed to my general weirdness, too, but to be honest I was also very moved by what you said about your friend and hadn’t quite recovered when you called me up.”
Hoping the answer was no, I asked, “That part wasn’t an act, was it?”
Jackson swallowed. He shook his head. “I loved Christian like a brother. We went to college together. That’s why I adopted Cody. He’s Christian’s son.”
So I’d been right about Cody not being Jackson’s biological son. What a beautiful thing that he’d adopted his dead friend’s child. I didn’t dare ask where Cody’s mother was, so instead I studied Jackson’s face.
There were so many layers to this man—compassionate, complex layers beneath that thorny exterior. He was quick to snap and snarl, but just as quick to get his feelings hurt.
Maybe he had to grow that thorny skin to protect a tender heart? Maybe whatever happened to his face and whatever made him talk with such bitterness about his family business changed him?
Or maybe I had a vivid imagination.
Either way, his delicious smell was teasing my nose, he was standing a little too close, and he was looking at me in that odd way he did, the way that made my heart pump faster and my palms sweat. I had to go somewhere else, fast, so I could think about what the Fanny Hill was happening to me, because I was pretty sure it wasn’t only the cold that had my nipples hardening.
In a crisp, businesslike tone, I said, “Well if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work before Claudia discovers I’m still gone and has a stroke.”
Then I hurried away over the lawn toward the house, telling myself I really couldn’t feel Jackson’s gaze on me as I went.
Only I could.
And it was fire.
By midnight, the auction was over, the guests had left, and a team from the rental company had arrived to strike the tent and tables. Claudia was so relieved the event had gone well—and only deviated from her schedule by twelve minutes—that she hugged me. All that was left for me to do was find Rayford, who had promised to drive me home.
But I hadn’t seen Rayford in hours.
I didn’t feel comfortable skulking around the house in search of him, so for a while I lingered in the kitchen, assisting the strike team with loading the plates and glasses back into their crates and packing up the rest of the kitchen equipment. When that was done, I decided to give the kitchen counters a good scrubbing because I couldn’t stand leaving a kitchen a mess at the end of the night.
It was while I was in the middle of scraping burned food off the stove that I felt someone watching me. I turned to find Jackson standing in the doorway, a bottle in one hand and two highball glasses in the other.
He said, “Since you like Boudreaux Bourbon so much, I thought you might want to try something special.”
He lifted the bottle, a beautiful piece of cut crystal filled with an amber liquid so dark it was nearly brown. The gold label read, “Heritage 30 Year.”
My eyes widened. “I thought that stuff was an urban legend!”
Jackson moved from the doorway to the large marble island in the middle of the kitchen and set the bottle and glasses down. He’d removed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. I still couldn’t get over how different he looked, though his hair was trying its hardest to return to its former state of disarray. Several unruly dark locks flopped over his forehead in an appealing, boyish way.
He said, “It’s an orphan from one of only a few dozen barrels made with this particular mash bill. An experiment that was ended when my father opened the barrels after ten years and declared it shit. The rest of the barrels were sold to a competitor for blending, but one was misplaced, found in the back of the rickhouse a few years ago. Turns out the mash bill was perfect, but it needed a lot longer to age than the other recipes.”
I heard my mother’s voice telling me, Some caterpillars need more time to turn into butterflies than others when I asked her why, at fifteen, I didn’t have boobs like all my friends. Like the Heritage 30 Year, I was a late bloomer.
It was both strange and strangely comforting to find I had something in common with a rare, expensive liquor.
Jackson uncorked the bottle, poured a precise measure into each glass, and put the corked cap back on. He picked up one glass, swirled the bourbon, sniffed it, and then held it out to me.
“Tell me what you smell.”
Unsure if this was a test of some kind, I set down the sponge I was holding, walked over to him, took the glass, held it to my nose, and inhaled. Aromas of caramel, toasted oak, vanilla, maple, dried apricots and lemon zest filled my nostrils. My eyes drifted shut in bliss. I said, “I smell heaven.”
Jackson chuckled. When I opened my eyes he was smiling. “I thought heaven was a library filled with every book ever written.”
Surprised he’d remembered that comment, I smiled back at him. “You have to have something good to drink while you’re reading a good book, Mr. Boudreaux.”
His smile slowly faded. He took up his own glass and lifted it to his mouth. He kept his gaze on me as he took a sip, swallowed, then set the glass back down. He slowly licked his lips and then said huskily, “Jackson.”
Hell’s bells, the man should work as a phone-sex operator! That voice!
I cleared my throat. “Right. Jackson. Sorry.”
“Have I said something to offend you again?” he asked.
I blinked. “No. Why?”
His gaze dropped to my cheeks. “Because your face gets flushed when you’re mad.”
“Or embarrassed,” I corrected. “I get it from my father’s side. You could always tell when he was feeling something strong because his cheeks would go red as Rudolph’s nose.”
Jackson let that bizarre admission hang between us for a moment, watching as the flush spread from my cheeks and down my neck. Then in a low voice, he asked, “Why would you be embarrassed that I told you to call me by my first name?”
Gee, let’s see, it could be that your porn actor’s voice could induce spontaneous orgasms in women who remember what sex was like, or that you have this dominant way of giving orders that I’m starting to find less annoying and more interesting, or that watching you lick your lips has set off a nuclear detonation between my legs.
Instead of saying any of those insane thoughts aloud, I simply threw my head back and chugged the bourbon in my glass. “Whew!” I exclaimed when I was finished. “That possum’s on the stump!”
Jackson slowly raised his brows.
“It means it doesn’t get any better than that,” I said hastily, feeling like a class A idiot.
Jackson said, “I know what it means. I’m just wondering what’s got you so riled up.” Then he stared at me, his eyes burning like blue blazes.
I stammered, “I—I’m uh . . . tired. I get kinda loopy when I’m tired.”
Dear God, if you will please help me out and grant me the power of invisibility or cause my sudden death from something quick and painless, I’d be much obliged.
But God was probably having much too good a time watching me squirm to grant my wish. I stood there looking at Jackson while he looked back at me, neither of us saying anything.
He tipped his head back, exposing the strong column of his throat, and drank his bourbon. I watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed, and imagined God was a teenage girl giggling madly as I felt the heat in my face and neck spread all the way down to my chest.
I reached for the bottle and poured myself another glass. I downed that one, too, coughing at the end because, although the bourbon was hands down the best I’d ever had, it was meant to be sipped slowly, not inhaled. Fumes seared my throat.
“Smooth,” I said, eyes watering, and laughed.
Jackson cocked his head and stared at me. He asked, “Do I make you uncomfortable?”
Maybe I should just fill the sink with water and stick my head in it, I thought, desperate for some way to escape. At the moment, suicide wasn’t out of the question.
I looked over Jackson’s shoulder. “Have you seen Rayford anywhere? He said he’d drive me home.”
“No. And that was the worst segue I’ve ever heard. So I have to assume the answer to the question you avoided is yes. My next question is, why?”
Lord, he was direct!
I blurted, “You’ve made me uncomfortable since the first moment I met you,” and instantly wanted to punch myself in the face.
When his face darkened, I added, “But tonight’s the first time that it’s not a bad kind of uncomfortable.”
Unblinking, he stared at me. Thump, thump, thump went my heart.
His voice thick, he asked, “What kind of uncomfortable is it, Bianca?”
Oh dear.
Have you ever stood at the edge of a high cliff and looked over?
When I was little, my father took us to see the Grand Canyon. Being the curious child I was, I wanted to get as close to the precipice as I could. So when my mother turned her attention away for a split second, I scurried under the wood barricades, ran right up to the rocky lip of the canyon, and stared down.
With wind whipping my hair away from my face and dirt shifting uneasily under my feet, I was terrified. And exhilarated. And strangely certain that if I leapt off and spread my arms, I’d be able to fly. There was something magical about my terror, something that made my heart soar even as it stole my breath and froze my blood to ice.
That’s the exact sensation I had gazing into Jackson’s blue eyes as he waited for me to answer his question.
He must have seen it in my expression, because he carefully set his glass down and stepped toward me.