He wanted to wake her up slowly, to make love to her while she was still half asleep. No more of this power banging to rid himself of demons. He wanted to take his time with her, to learn and explore and enjoy.
But it was too late for any of that this morning, because in the next second he saw the light from the kitchen beaming down the hall and heard running water. Della filling the coffeemaker, he figured, easing out of the bed and slipping into his clothes.
He left his shoes for later and padded toward the only aroma guaranteed to get him moving. He found Della standing in the open back doorway, staring out at the rising sun.
He shivered, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he reached up into the cabinet for two mugs and set them next to the pot. Then he crossed his arms and leaned against the edge of the counter, waiting for whatever she’d been saving up to say.
And since he’d expected something of the sort, her words didn’t surprise him. “I never was much of a parent to Perry,” she began. “I’m much too self-involved to take care of anything but myself. So realize that this is as disconcerting for me to ask as it is for you to hear, but what are your intentions toward my niece?”
He wasn’t sure what to say. The question was so traditional, and Della was anything but. Still, with the way she was staring toward the courtyard fountain…
Jack felt his face heat. “Honestly? I don’t know.”
“And it’s absolutely none of my business.” Della sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that Perry is all I have and I don’t want to see her hurt.”
Which made her a pretty good parent in his book. “I don’t want to hurt her. I’m just not sure these circumstances are the best for starting up anything with anyone.”
She turned from the doorway and faced him. “You don’t believe in trial by fire?”
What was he supposed to say to that? “I believe it happens. I don’t believe it’s always a healthy situation.”
“You don’t believe strong relationships can be forged under trying conditions?”
He didn’t want to be having this conversation. Not when the subject of last night’s reading was sure to come up, and Perry would be waking any minute.
And so he said, “Is that how it happened with you and Franklin? The murder and break-in and all?”
She smiled, the emotion more personal than a response to what he’d said. Except then she surprised him by saying, “Yes. And because of our circumstances, my circumstances, I’ve been afraid to believe.”
He shook his head. “I’ll never get that. How you can believe in things that can’t be explained, but not in things staring you in the face.”
“When it comes to looking inside ourselves, blindness seems to be more common than insight.”
She closed the back door and came toward him, pouring the coffee into both cups. He sipped, she sipped, neither of them speaking further of the last several hours, the truth of what had passed between them a strangely solid bond.
Moments later, Della set her cup on the counter. “He’s drowning, Jack. I don’t know if he’s literally in water, or if he’s ill, but he can’t breathe. He’s gasping and struggling.”
Jack’s pulse exploded. “Eckhardt?”
“Yes.”
“You tell this to Franklin?”
She nodded. “I called Book when I got up to my room last night. I saw orange. Rust or mud, I can’t be sure. It could have been dried blood.” She shook her head, let it droop on her shoulders. “Or it could be that drowning was how he died.”
“Then what about the warehouse? What you saw there? The way it hit you? If he was already dead—”
“I don’t know, Jack. I just don’t know.” Della reached over, wrapped her fingers around his wrist and squeezed. “What I do know is that this is where you take what I’ve given you and run.”
And that would mean doing it his way, the feds, the NOPD and Detective Book Franklin be damned.
A BROKEN HEART. She’d never known how the shattered shards could cut like the blade of a knife. Her two men, they were so very different. And she loved each so very very much.
Drake was an artist. A sensitive soul who knew life was best lived in bright colors, that chances not taken were fortunes not made. She talked with him about dreams and desires.
Bruiser was a protector. A man of authority who understood black and white, right and wrong. She talked with him about wanting new curtains for the bedroom.
She slept with them both. Sang to them both. And when she loved one, she never considered she was betraying the other. She was the only one naive enough not to see the truth.
For the truth was that all Drake wanted was his music. He was moody, and he took to drink. He often forgot that she was in the same room, or even that she was in the same bed.
And Bruiser wanted respect. He wielded his power as a knight of old wielded a lance, a Greek god a lightning bolt. She’d felt the sting of both.
She couldn’t live with the one man. She couldn’t give up the other. Her only choice was to start over. To make a new life on her own. If she fell in love again, then she would know this decision was the one she’d had to make.
Bags packed, she looked over her shoulder one last time. She even blew a kiss at the room she’d loved so much. Smiling, she turned to go…tripping over the vase Bruiser had bought her, Drake’s flowers falling with her as she tumbled down the stairs.
13
GROANING, Perry climbed onto the stool behind the counter in Sugar Blues, swearing she would never be able to walk right again. Who knew that thirty daily—if rather lazy—minutes on the treadmill wasn’t enough to keep her thigh muscles in shape?
Her next round of celibacy was definitely going to include a whole lot of leg lifts and cycling. Of course, she would prefer sleeping with Jack to sleeping alone, but she wasn’t just anyone’s fool.
He could stay in New Orleans for her, but why would he? He had a life, a career that took him places, one that didn’t involve inventory and stocking and customer satisfaction, not to mention spreadsheets so accurately detailed, grown accountants wept with joy.
And really, she loved what she did. Her complaints weren’t so much complaints as they were a comparison between his life of following leads left by kidnappers and hers, of filing. His background of shivs and bullets and traveling the world, and hers, of being unable to stick out four years for a degree at Loyola.
Not that she had anyone to blame but herself, if she was going to be dishing it out. She’d chosen the safety of this life, the comfort of the familiar, her own version of hearth and home and live-in ghost.
Yet after the sheltered life she’d lived, how could she have anticipated meeting a man like Jack? A man so utterly unique that she’d found herself falling for him in a matter of hours, falling into bed with him in a matter of days?
She couldn’t have known. She couldn’t have guessed. She was still reeling that it had happened.
When she’d finally woken this morning, he’d been long gone, the sun had long been up and Della had been standing at the foot of the utility room’s bed with a cup of coffee for who knew how long. Not one of Perry’s finer moments, in the face of the woman who’d raised her.
But Della had stayed, and they’d talked, they’d bonded, they’d shared an honest heart-to-heart about Perry’s life. About Della’s life. About choices they’d both made. About Book. About Jack. Mostly about Jack, though nothing about the midnight reading.
By the time Perry had climbed from bed, made her way upstairs for a shower and a change of clothes, all she’d wanted was to see him. Last night had not been an easy one, this morning equally troubled. They needed to talk. But he was gone, and she had work to do.
Della’s first appointment was scheduled for ten. So when the bell on the door chimed fifteen minutes later, Perry glanced up expecting to see Mrs. Nielsen. The woman walking through the door, however—her designer heels clicking on the hardwood floor—was no one Perry knew.
A younger woman wearing baggy black jeans and a tight black turtleneck, her hair an unnatural red, followed. She stopped to browse the bookshelves, while the first woman headed straight to the counter at the rear of the shop, flashing a business card the moment she arrived.
“My name is Dawn Taylor. I’m a reporter with the Times-Picayune. I was wondering if you might be Della Brazille, and if I might ask you a few questions.”
Perry took in the platinum-blond hair, the platinum watchband, the diamond teardrop in a platinum setting resting in the hollow of her improbably smooth throat. This woman was not the grieving widow of whom Perry had drawn a mental picture. This woman was anything but.
Her heart racing, her mouth dry, Perry glanced over her shoulder toward the beaded curtain covering the entrance to the hallway, then quickly looked back. The reporter already had her pencil and notebook in hand.
“No. I’m not Della. But I can schedule you an appointment to see her.” Swallowing hard, Perry reached for the plumed pen.
Dawn Taylor’s gaze flickered in the same direction Perry’s had before returning to her face. She tapped her pencil to her paper. “Would you be her niece then? Perry? Perry Brazille? I understand her niece works for her. I don’t see other employees…”