Chapter Eight
He blinked and for a fraction of a second, she thought he faltered, but an instant later the grin and the gaze were back.
She waited, but he didn’t say anything more. Didn’t explain why he’d decided she was the one who needed his protection. Did he suspect that she was more than a down-and-out waitress who couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble?
“What are you doing there?” she asked. “At Beauregard’s?”
“What?” He blinked. “What do you mean?”
She sat up a little straighter, still making sure the sheet was covering her. “You’re always ragging me for being such a bad waitress, but you’re not a bartender, are you?”
His eyes narrowed, and she knew she needed to be careful of what she said. She wanted to provoke him because she wanted to know what he would do. But she didn’t want to push him to the point that he decided she was a threat to his undercover operation.
“I’m not saying you’re not good at the job. It’s just—there’s something about you. You seem too smart, too—” She searched for a word. “Too capable. And it’s obvious you don’t like it.”
He looked as though he were thinking about her words. “I’m not the stereotypical bartender. I’m sure as hell no shrink,” he said derisively. “But then the people who come to Beauregard’s aren’t the down-on-their-luck type looking to drown their sorrows.”
She laughed. “True.” She paused for a couple of seconds, then said, “Why do you think they go there? Not the foodies. I’m talking about the ones who hang around the bar.”
His brows furrowed. “That’s a good question. Some are hoping for an invitation to the back. The couples—I think they want a place that’s got good food and drinks, and that’s loud enough so they don’t have to talk to each other if they don’t want to.”
“Do you think they’re looking for drugs?” she asked, hoping the question didn’t seem out of the blue.
“Drugs? Why?”
“Some of them look like they need a fix.”
“You think they come to an upscale club looking for drugs?”
She looked at him and smiled. “Yes. I do.”
“Have you heard something?” he asked with a casual tone that didn’t hide his curiosity.
“Why? Have you?” she countered, leaning forward.
“What’s with all the questions?” he asked.
“Just curious.” She chuckled. “Hey, maybe I’m the one who’s the shrink.”
“Listen to me. I don’t know what you want, but if you’re looking to score, there’s some H out there that’s been poisoned. Several…people have died already. So watch yourself.”
From the desk of Jack Adams. “Oh my God, you know one of the victims,” she blurted, then bit her lip.
“What? No.” He swallowed. She’d caught him completely off-guard.
“Yes you do. I’ve seen that look before. I’m sorry.” She watched him. Would he tell her, now that she’d almost guessed it?
“You’re wrong.” He got up and poured more juice into his glass.
“Well, good then. In this case, I’m glad to be wrong,” she said. “So, where did you work before?” She tried to make the question sound casual, normal. He turned around and eyed her narrowly.
“Before?” His fingers tightened around the glass as he leaned against the counter.
Now that she saw. His fingertips whitening around the glass. She’d finally found a question that he didn’t have a ready answer for. “You know, before here. Before you took the bartending job. Forget it. I was just making conversation.” She sighed exaggeratedly and allowed the sheet to slip off her left shoulder as she took a sip of juice.
His gaze followed the sheet as it slipped down, exposing the little tank top that allowed the tops of her breasts to show. He swallowed more juice and Lusinda had the most incredible fantasy of his juice-cooled tongue sliding over her heated skin. Stop it!
“I’m from Chicago.”
She hiked the sheet back up. She knew the cover story and ID he’d been given. Richard Easton had roamed around and ended up in Chicago. He’d come to New Orleans because his parents had lived here before he was born. In reality, Rick Easterling had been born and reared in New Orleans. There was remarkably little in his file about his family. His parents were both dead. There was an older half-brother John, who had left home around the time Rick was eleven.
John…Jack? Jack Adams was Rick’s brother. He had to be. That’s what the note meant.
“What?” he snapped, tensing. She saw the muscles ripple in his belly, saw his biceps bulge and his fingers tighten even more.
“N-nothing,” she stammered. Had she spoken aloud? “I um—I’d have guessed you were a local.” She swallowed.
*
Rick didn’t want to look at Sin but he couldn’t look away. From the instant he’d opened the door to his room to see her crouched on the floor in the skimpy top and panties, brandishing her shoe as a weapon, he’d been fighting a war with himself. The sight of her legs splayed right in front of him had almost caused an extremely urgent and uncomfortable situation for him.
He’d escaped into the bathroom and by the time he’d come out, he’d managed to regain control of himself. Luckily the cause of his discomfort was curled up on the couch asleep. He’d lain down and tried to sleep but her presence in the other room was too intrusive.
So he got up and hoped to grab a few swallows of juice and lie down again, but she’d stirred, and now here he was, tangled up in a midnight conversation that was getting way too personal, with a woman who was way too sexy.
She was staring at him. He pushed his fingers through his hair. What had she said? You sound like a local.
“I get that sometimes,” he said. “My parents lived here. I left here and went to Chicago years ago. Just got back here.”
She sat up and pulled her legs up under her, unaware that her sheet had slipped up her thighs far enough that he could see the lace trim on the outside edge of her sexy black panties. Her hair swirled in waves around the nape of her neck and fell in wispy tendrils around her heart-shaped face. Her eyes were big and ridiculously green, and they were fixed on him.
She tugged the sheet down. Too bad, or maybe not. Those thighs were almost within arm’s reach and the steely determination that he’d honed over the years was fast turning to papier-mâché. His fingers itched to touch her creamy smooth skin and explore just how much those panties actually covered, but he’d promised her that she could stay on his couch for the night, and he’d promised himself he’d be a gentleman. She’d been attacked twice in one night. She deserved a protector, not a predator.
That wasn’t the problem. Feeling protective toward people was probably a legacy from their mother that he and his brother shared. His problem was that this woman, like no other, filled up his thoughts and made him yearn to be more than just her protector. He wanted to be her everything. “Sonofabitch,” he muttered.
“What?” Sin looked up, blinking.
“What?” he parroted, frowning.
“You said son of a bitch.”
“Oh,” he continued, trying to recover. He faked a yawn. “I just realized it’s really late and I’ve got to be up really early.”
She fished around for a second then pulled out her cell phone. “You almost are.”
He grimaced. He did have to get up early. He was supposed to call Lieutenant Larsen at nine a.m. “Why? What time is it?”
She sent him a quick grin that made her green eyes sparkle. “Quarter til four.”
He muttered another curse. “I’ve got to get a couple more hours or I won’t be worth shooting. G’night.” But as he opened the door to the bedroom, he realized he couldn’t just leave and let her stay here. Or hell, maybe he could, but he didn’t want to. Or maybe he did want to, but he had enough sense to know what a very bad idea it would be. He turned back. “You’ll have to leave.”
She’d lain down again, but she sat up at his words, clutching the sheet to her neck. “Now?” she said, weariness and dread coloring her voice. “I mean, sure,” she corrected, her voice lowering almost a full octave, the dread gone, if not the weariness. “No prob—”
“Not now. I mean later.” He did a quick calculation in his head. “Say eight-fifteen.”
She let out a pained groan and collapsed back down on the couch.
He opened the door and went into the bedroom, closing it behind him. As he lay down, he wondered what he’d gotten himself into and how he’d managed to find the most stubborn and nosiest broad in the French Quarter. And considering how his body was reacting to hers, his promise to her that he was definitely no saint was absolutely true.
*
Lusinda woke with the sun shining in her eyes and the taste of old fear in her mouth. She clutched at the covers and sat up, casting about the room, trying to find something familiar. Where was she? When she shifted, she felt the skin of her butt and thighs peeling away from the vinyl. Vinyl? She looked. She was on an old vinyl couch. A place on her thigh stung where she’d slept on a crack in the stiff fake leather. Her bedcovers consisted of a single white sheet and she was dressed in a black tank top and—she peeked under the sheet—a pair of bikini panties.
She rubbed her stinging thigh as she wondered why her sleep had been disturbed by nightmares she’d thought she’d left behind years ago. She sat up and looked around. Her shoes sat on the side table and her skirt and long-sleeved top draped across the back of the couch.
Rick Easterling’s apartment. The thought triggered others and faster than a streak of lightning it all came back to her, in a weird reverse order from talking to Rick in the dark to the man attacking her on the street to being man-handled in the bar and saved by Rick to falling down the stairs and landing on top of him.
Now that she was awake, the nightmares made perfect sense. The dingy apartment where she and her mother had lived, the silverfish and spiders and, of course, roaches—all the fears she’d banned from her conscious mind and her dreams—had returned. She’d been battling dream-roaches for a week, but tonight she’d also dreamed about her stepfather.
It had been a very long time since she’d had a nightmare about him. Years. Probably since she’d run away from home at age seventeen, leaving her mom and her little brother to their fate.
This dream was about the last time Abe the Asshole had threatened her. One of the bad times. The morning after her senior prom. She had bought her dress with her own money that she’d made working at a fast-food store, and her boyfriend had brought her a real orchid corsage.
When they’d gotten back to her house at dawn, after they’d stayed up all night with several other couples, drinking coffee at Denny’s and talking about real, important stuff, Abe was waiting for her. It hadn’t mattered to him that her mom had said she could stay out.
Pushing away the painful memories, Lusinda checked the time. It was seven forty-seven. She held her breath, listening for Rick. When she didn’t hear anything, she jumped up, grabbed her skirt and top and ran for the bathroom. She was counting on a scalding-hot shower to wash away the haze of pain and terror that had sneaked into her dreams. She lifted her face to the hot spray, letting the pulsing water beat against her forehead, but the memories were stronger than the stinging spray. Abe, grabbing her by the arm and jerking her across the room. “You disobey me, you pay for it. Don’t talk back to me, you lying—”
Terrified and beleaguered with guilt, Lusinda had packed what she could and left, and never looked back. She hadn’t talked to her mother since, although she did keep up with her younger brother through his Facebook posts, tweets and Instagram photos. He was so cute and so grown-up, in the photos he posted of his high school peeps, his latest girlfriend and the pride and joy of his life: his fourteen-year-old Ford Taurus. She missed him, but he was better off without her around. It looked like he—who was Abe’s kid—and her mom and Abe were happy.
The hot water finally did its job and cleared her brain of those memories, at least for now, and replaced them with a much prettier picture—of Rick Easterling in nothing but green plaid pajama bottoms.
As she scrubbed herself dry with a rough, worn towel, she looked at the four oval bruises on the top of her arm and the one thumbprint on the other side from T-Gros’s punishing grip. When she fitted her fingers over the large multicolored bruises, they eclipsed her smaller fingertips.
That memory unleashed more, of Rick casually and with no change of expression squeezing the man’s wrist until he let go of her arm. Then later, the sadness and regret on his face when he saw her rub her arm and wince at the pain.
Then another dream flashed before her inner vision, a very different kind of dream. She’d dreamed of a rock-hard bare chest dusted with hair, a strong column of neck leading up to a square, lean jaw and a sculpted face and head. And that fine, beautiful face was leaning closer, closer, the mouth slightly open, the eyes heavy-lidded and soft, like dark, enveloping velvet.
Lusinda pushed her fingers through her damp hair and licked her lips. Whew, Johnston, she thought. Better stop having fantasies about the subject. Fast!
Speaking of the subject, he would be getting up soon. She’d better get her butt in gear and get dressed. He’d said he had something to do this morning. Well, so did she. Two somethings. First, she had to retrace her steps from Beauregard’s and see if she could find her keys. They had to be there where the guy had jumped her. Then she had to call Carlos and make an appointment to talk to him. She wasn’t sure how she’d explain why she needed what she needed, but she figured she’d have a couple of hours to work on that.
She hated to put on the same clothes she’d worn last night, which smelled of cigarette smoke from the bar, but they were all she had. She dressed quickly. When she walked out of the bathroom, she ran into Rick.
“Crap!” she cried at the same time as he said, “Shit!”
She held up her hands to ward him off, but he was already backing away. In contrast to her stale, wrinkled clothes, he was dressed in jeans and a bright white T-shirt and smelled of coffee and sunshine.
“What the hell?” she cried.
“Watch out!” Rick said at the same time.
*
Or at least that’s what he thought he said. He wasn’t completely sure, because his brain and body were both quite confused by the sight before his eyes. A droplet of water rolled over Sin’s delicate collarbone to disappear into the neck of her top. His imagination took over and followed the droplets to where they ran like tiny rivers between the mountains formed by the creamy curve of her breasts. Her skin, warm and stimulated from the shower, looked so much like pink cotton candy that his mouth watered. His gaze slid down to where the bottom of the shirt didn’t quite meet the top of the skirt. That skin was smooth and creamy and, God help him, damp there, too.
“Hey,” she snapped. “Keep the eyes up here.” She pointed with her first and middle fingers at his eyes, then hers—his, then hers.
He obeyed, blinking. Her gaze was narrowed and her brows were lowered. Regaining a bit of control over his mind and body, he grinned at her and held up the keys he’d found. “Lose something?” he asked, dangling a piece of macramé in front of her face.
“Oh my God, my keys. Where’d you find ’em?” she asked as she tried to grab them from him, but he held them over his head and she, barefoot, couldn’t reach high enough to even touch them. She placed a hand on his chest to steady herself, and he felt the heat from her skin penetrating all the way through him.
“Where you dropped them,” he said irritatingly reasonably.
She moved her hand to his shoulder and stretched more, and her breasts pressed against his chest as she strained upward. Almost immediately, she realized what she’d done and bounced backward, steadying herself against the wall. She held out her hand. “Give ’em to me,” she demanded.
With a slight flourish he laid them on her palm. Her fist closed around them. “What time did you get up anyway?”
He shrugged. “Seven maybe?”
“I can’t believe I didn’t wake up. I’m a very light sleeper.”
He laughed. “You? Hardly. You were snoring when I went out the door.”
“I don’t snore!”
He just looked at her.
“I don’t…” She stopped. “Oh bite me.”
“Just say where.”
Ignoring him, she stalked over to the side table, grabbed her shoes and headed out the door. He heard her muttering, “Damn it, damn it, damn it,” as she started up the stairs to her room on the third floor.
“Hey, Sin,” he called after her.
“What?” She hesitated.
“Will I see you tonight?” he asked, watching her closely.
She frowned at him, her face turning pink. “Tonight?”
“At Beauregard’s,” he said, grinning. “Are you working tonight?”
*
“Oh I—” She tried to think what day it was but there was nothing—nothing—in her head but the scent and sight of Rick Easterling. She lifted her chin. “I don’t know. I’ll have to check my schedule.”
“See ya,” Rick called as she headed straight upstairs to her apartment.
When Lusinda turned the key and stepped inside her apartment, she breathed a sigh of relief. The tiny space in the old hotel wasn’t much, but it was hers, at least for the time being. She stripped the bed of its sheets and spread and inspected it for vermin. After all, she’d been gone overnight. Who knew what could have crawled in there.
Finding it clean, she made it up again. Then she changed into pajamas and climbed under the covers to sleep. As soon as she’d shut her eyes, she remembered Carlos. With a sigh, she picked up her phone and dialed the number she’d copied off the piece of paper from the leather jacket’s pocket.
Carlos answered with a gruff sound that might have been a greeting.
She looked at the time. “Carlos, I’m sorry. It must be early for you.”
“Who is this?” Carlos asked, sounding a little more awake.
“Sin Stone. I work at Beauregard’s. I fell down the stairs about the time you and Rick—Richard Easton walked in.”
“Oh, I remember you. Kind of goth, but trying too hard? Hair too black?”
Lusinda grimaced. “That’s me,” she said brightly.
“What is it you need?” She heard bottles clinking and water running. “I’m making a cup of coffee.”
“Should I wait?”
“Please don’t.”
“Is there anything you can tell me that would help me at—Beauregard’s?”
“Help you with what?”
“Oh, get in good with Darla or Earl—or Beau?” She held her breath. “Anything I could use to get a better job or, you know, make more money.”
“I’m not sure what you’re asking, but Beau frowns on the front room wait staff getting busy with the customers.” He laughed. “He has a few standards.”
“No, that wasn’t—wait. Are you saying he doesn’t have standards about most things? Like what?”
“Oh, honey, it would take me a month to list all of Beau’s shady dealings. It would be quicker to tell you the few things he does believe in.”
“I just want something I can use—maybe so people think I might have an in with Beau? So maybe I could get a full-time job or at least more hours?”
“Did you try doing a better job?”
“Ouch…?” she said wryly.
“Sorry. You’re serious? Because you don’t look like the type.”
Lusinda started to ask him what type, but maybe she’d be better off pretending to understand.
“Beau’s not the only one with secrets—or a short list of standards,” she said coyly. She heard Carlos blowing on his coffee then taking a drink.
“Girl, you surprise me. Mmm, good coffee.” He sighed. “I can tell you one thing, but don’t let it come back on me, or you’ll regret it. Understand?”
She swallowed. Carlos sounded kind of tough. A little surprising. “Yes! Of course! I swear.”
“I may have hinted to Earl that Richard might be working for a man called T-Gros.”
“Wha—?!” Lusinda’s throat closed in shock. She coughed. “You what?”
“You know T-Gros?”
Lusinda had to come up with something to say. “I um, I’ve heard that name,” she said, trying not to let her panic affect her voice. She held the phone away from her mouth and took a deep breath. She needed to calm down.
“Yeah? Where?”
“I think he was at Beauregard’s last night, or the night before. White, clammy face? Huge? I remember because the name was weird. So who is he?”
“He showed up out of nowhere and set himself up in Metairie, but he’d like to establish himself in the French Quarter.”
Lusinda’s mouth went dry. She had to sound like she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Establish himself? You mean drugs?”
“Girl? Naïve much? Of course, drugs. He thinks because he’s been in Metairie a couple of years, now he can move into the Quarter.”
“So what I’ve heard about Beau is true? And you set up Rick as working for a rival drug lord? Why would you do that? Beau will kill him.”
“Please. Beau doesn’t work like that. He’s having him watched. Beau believes that there’s no one on earth smarter than he is, so he’ll play with him until he gets bored.”
“And then what? What will happen to Rick?”
“I thought you wanted some juicy tidbit to impress your bosses. Hint to Earl that you think Richard is acting oddly. That he’s asking questions. Earl tells Beau everything.”
“But I don’t want to get Rick in trouble with Beau.”
“Don’t worry about that. He can take care of himself. Anyhow, that’s what I’ve got.” He hung up.
Lusinda sunk down into the bed. It surprised her that Carlos would do that to Rick. But he was right. Rick could take care of himself, and she could certainly use the information Carlos had given her to convince Rick that she knew things about Beau. As she got comfortable and prepared to go to sleep, she couldn’t ignore the idea that manipulating Rick could be dangerous.