Going All Out (12 page)

With a sigh Gabriel glided onto Breanne’s balcony, making his way into the room she used for work.

Mark—Breanne and Tallis’s brother and Gabriel’s youngest many-generations-removed grandson—lay sprawled over the couch in a deep sleep. The youth was a handsome lad who favored his sisters in coloring and the strapping Dampier men in size. Those broad shoulders and smile surely made the chits swoon.

From what Gabriel had heard from the twins, Mark had also been blessed with the Dampier passions, which translated into embracing what life had to offer with both hands—eating, wenching,
sleeping…
Tonight that blessing seemed more of a curse because the young man looked dead to the world.

Glancing around the room, Gabriel took in the lamps, the machines Breanne worked with—a serger and a computer. He decided on the keyboard device attached to the computer. Small enough that he should be able to move it. On the desk, so it should make a racket when it hit the floor.

Gathering all his concentration, Gabriel focused his energy on the keyboard, reached out to touch it….

“Old fool and your parlor tricks.”

The shrill voice made him jump ignominiously, and his hand passed right through the device. Spinning toward
belle grand-mère,
he growled, “Rather than ridiculing me, why do you not float back to wherever you came from so I can concentrate and get about my business.”

“A fool’s business.”

“Begone.” He had had an eternity to bandy insults with this one. Now he didn’t have the time.

Forcing the thought to clear his head, he tried to set aside his awareness of the scowling woman behind him. He needed focus to accomplish the task at hand. A parlor trick perhaps, but one he had mastered honestly.

His vision dulled around the edges until he could only see the letters swimming before him, and Gabriel touched the keyboard, felt it shift, solid, movable.

“Proud ass.”

“Madame!” He reared on her with a vengeance. “Is it your wish that our youngest granddaughter join us in eternity?”

Gabriel decided his pride must have tempered just a bit after all, otherwise he might have felt proud to finally provoke some response from this bitter old woman besides venom.

For it was not venom he saw in her withered face right now. Surprise maybe. Or concern. He honestly wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t the hatred he had grown so familiar with. And that thought surprised him enough so he stared open-mouthed.

“What are you talking about, pirate?”

Belle grand-mère
was back to her old self again in a flash. Gabriel was slower to recover.

“There is a man outside in the street tampering with
Breanne’s car,” he said slowly, unsure why he was bothering to explain. “He has some sort of device—”

“A bomb?” She swept toward the window with a flourish of billowing shawls and peered out into the night.

Gabriel had heard about bombs on the television, and apparently so had
belle grand-mère.
“I have never seen this device before. I can only make out the letters GPS on the box. I want to awaken this one.” He motioned to the slumbering youth on the couch. “So he might frighten off the mischief maker.”

“That man should not be down there,” she murmured. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Belle grand-mère
knew the man. And here Gabriel had thought she existed only to torture him. “Who is he?”

“Breanne’s old beau. I saw pictures of him in Tallis’s photograph books and overheard her telling Christien about him.”

“An old beau? Surely he wouldn’t bomb her.”

“I’m not so sure. I heard Tallis say there was bad blood between them. Something to do with the police. She believes the best thing Breanne ever did was get away from that one. I mean, open your eyes and look at his soul, pirate.”

“That much I knew. So why is he back?”

She shrugged. “Wake that boy.”

Urgency spurred Gabriel to summon his concentration. Urgency and, yes, his pride. To prove to this old nag that he had been putting his eternity to good use, too.

The keyboard clattered to the floor with a blaring racket, and
belle grand-mère
followed suit by tossing a book off a shelf.

Mark didn’t move.

With another impressive burst of energy, Gabriel sent
a computer sound speaker flying off the desk. This landed on the sofa and hit the boy’s arm before thumping to the floor.

Mark exhaled heavily, and for a hopeful moment Gabriel thought he had accomplished his task. Then the boy just rolled over with a scowl and continued sleeping.

“Is this some sleep sickness from your side of the family?”
belle grand-mère
demanded.

Gabriel thought it more likely young Mark had been enjoying the good life between his college studies. But Gabriel wouldn’t let this woman provoke him. In desperation, he summoned his energy and poked Mark.

“Wake up, boy. Come on.” Bah, no good. “Are these youngsters always so headstrong?”

“You passed that trait along, pirate. And you claim that I cursed them.”

He wheeled on the grand-mère with a scowl but found her frowning into the street.

“’Tis all for naught. That black heart has done what he came to do and leaves.” She scowled at him accusingly. “We must find out what he has done to Breanne’s car.”

We?

Gabriel blinked.

We.

He opened his mouth to tell the old crone he would rot in this hell of his own making before he helped her. She hadn’t seen fit to do anything but torture him for two centuries.

He closed his mouth again. There was more at stake here than his pride, and he might use the old crone’s help. Just this once, he might do better to exercise some self-control.

No matter how much it hurt.

“S
O WE’RE BACK TO TWENTY
questions?” Bree raked her gaze down the yummy terrain of Lucas’s legs to his feet, which seemed respectably cared for yet not pampered.

“Can’t sew and talk? Not much on multitasking, are you?”

She admired the sight he made, his butt in clingy jersey shorts, as he knelt to plug in his laptop. “I can sew and talk just fine, thank you. Do you mind music while you work?”

“Prefer it.”

“Good.” Heading to the sound system, she glanced at the selections and chose a new release of a popular folk artist she always enjoyed listening to after live-wire nights at the casino.

Then she spread out the rudimentary sewing equipment that Susanna had produced from her own cache of supplies with an apologetic “I don’t do much sewing.”

Bree glanced at the household scissors, spools of black and white thread and bargain portable sewing machine and gave a mental shrug. Enough to get the job done.

Sinking onto the couch, she dragged the gown into her lap. “All right, what do we have here?”

This particular gown, a day dress with a roomy skirt and flowing jacket, wasn’t one she’d originally worked on, but she recognized the pattern. A close inspection of the
seams confirmed her hope to refashion the waistline and cover the alterations with the jacket.

Since Toni would need to come up with a new design for the next pregnant woman to show up at Félicie Allée, she’d brought along a notebook to sketch and make notes.

“Now tell me what it is that brings you out here when you run away from New Orleans,” Lucas asked.

“It’s close.”

When he didn’t reply, she glanced up to find him frowning, clearly not considering her answer much of one.

“All right. I fell in love with the place during those school field trips. I’m partial to pirates, and it’s like a different world down here.
And
it’s close.”

“Susanna and Olaf?”

“Met them through Toni. I recognized Susanna from the photo on the back of one of her books. Turns out I’ve been reading her for years. Now she autographs every book for me.”

“What does she write?”

“Romances. Sexy historical ones.”

Bree thought about Susanna’s latest, a pirate tale that had been set in this very bayou, and made a mental note to thank her for the inspiration. When Bree had read that red-hot romance, she’d never dreamed of bringing her own sexy lover into the bayou. Now here she was.

And Lucas was infinitely sexy, she decided, watching him slide onto the floor to set up shop on the coffee table. It took an effort of will to drag her gaze back to the gown in her lap and slice through seams with Susanna’s painfully dull stitch remover.

“So you’re partial to pirates.” Lucas glanced at her above his laptop display. “Understandable. Does being here remind you of the captain?”

“In a way, I guess. I was never as caught up in the whole ancestor thing as Tally, but I am fascinated by the era. I love the French Quarter and Plantation Alley. So much history.”

“Your sister seems pretty caught up, too.”

“She intends to see the captain get his due. Lafitte wasn’t the only privateer around here.”

“Finding that treasure was a coup.”

“She’ll put it to good use.” Bree laughed softly, still amazed that Tally had done what she’d set out to do. Who knew? Maybe Bree should put a little more stock in her claims about the ghost. “She’s had a lot more faith than I ever did.”

“Why?”

“Color me more practical. I just can’t seem to make the leap from treasures to ghosts.”

And in all fairness, she’d had ample opportunity. Bree had watched her mother spend her life chasing a treasure and trying to capitalize on the family connection to the captain. The chase had crushed her mother’s spirit, and the effects on their family hadn’t been pretty.

Except for Tally finding the captain’s treasure, nothing good had ever come from chasing rainbows, and that was a lesson Bree had learned the hard way.

But this wasn’t anything she wanted to share with Lucas. He’d grown up in Court du Chaud, surrounded by the whole ghost myth along with others who’d lived there, yet he hadn’t gotten sucked into any dysfunction. He hadn’t given up his family or career to hunt treasure or prove ghosts existed. Even Josie, who was wrapped up in the krewe and the history of the court, channeled her energies in useful ways, as Tally was doing.

They lapsed into a silence filled with good music and
the rhythm of his fingers on the keyboard, a companionable moment. So many men would have insisted on her undivided attention, but Lucas rolled with the punches, enjoyed their time together. He wasn’t turning out to be at all what Bree had expected, and she couldn’t decide if that was good or not.

One thing she did know was that he wasn’t the only one who could play twenty questions, so when he stopped typing and reached for the bottled water on the table, she asked, “What are you working on?”

“Deadbeat parents.”

“What about them?”

“I’m creating software that will database them nationwide. With this program, a court in Miami can run a name and find out if a parent skipped out on payments in Paducah.”

“Sounds useful.”

“Only if the law-enforcement agency has the technology to run the program.”

“I take it that means a lot of them don’t.”

“Not nearly enough.”

She couldn’t miss the resignation in his voice and wasn’t surprised when he launched an explanation of the work he did on several national committees that pushed for legislation to obtain funding for state law-enforcement agencies.

It was a good cause and one Lucas obviously believed strongly in. And one that unexpectedly brought to mind Josie, who crusaded for so many causes of her own. Bree didn’t have to be Josie’s best friend to know she felt things passionately—her work for the krewe, Court du Chaud’s homeowners association and, based on hearsay among their mutual acquaintances, her career in social work.

Lucas wrote software to help kids and single parents, but he saw loopholes in the system and wasn’t afraid to lend his energy and time to try and effect changes where he saw a need. He obviously had enough faith to think he could change things, and she liked what that said about him.

Faith.

Something about that stopped her, and Bree couldn’t help but think of Tally, who’d had enough faith to pursue the captain’s treasure even though she’d had no reason to think she could succeed. Generation after generation might have talked about the existence of the treasure, but there’d been no proof. Even their own mother had tried and failed. Yet Tally had still believed.

And that belief had led to a buried treasure.

Bree had told Lucas she was practical, but she had to ask herself if she’d ever believed in anything the way he and Josie believed in their causes. The way Tally had believed in the treasure.

Had Bree ever allowed herself to believe in anything?

Glancing down at the gown in her hands, she tied off the last basting stitch on the seam, considering.

What did she believe in?

It took a moment to create a mental list, but there were things. She believed in keeping her family together, believed she deserved the promotion at work.

And when she poked the sewing needle into the pin cushion, Bree also believed in her sewing skill.

Inspecting the gown in her lap, she surveyed her work with a critical eye. She’d removed a flounce from the hem of the gown and refashioned it into a panel to expand the waistband and had managed to match the pattern repeat almost exactly. Now all she needed to do was stitch and press the gown to make sure the jacket would smooth the
lines of the expanded seams, and Susanna and Olaf’s pregnant guest would have a perfectly altered gown.

She’d believed in her ability to accomplish this task, just as she’d believed in her ability enough to talk design with Toni Maxwell during a fateful conversation while Bree had been scouring the sale racks in Toni’s boutique.

That belief had led to a job.

Okay, Bree felt better. While sewing wasn’t as earthmoving as legislation for deadbeat parents or as dramatic as locating pirate treasures, keeping her family together was important.

Setting aside the gown, she grabbed the notebook to document the changes she’d made and must have been engrossed, because she didn’t notice Lucas leaning over the table until they were practically face-to-face.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Sketching out the changes I’ve made for Toni. She’ll need to see what I’ve done so she can figure out the way to tackle a maternity design for this time period.”

“Looks like you did that already.” His gaze darted between the sketch and the gown draped over the sofa. “Where did you learn to sew?”

Bree hesitated. Explaining how she’d learned by necessity, that sometimes she’d been so hard up for clothes she’d bought consignment and altered them to fit felt like too much personal information.

“Just something I’ve always liked to do.”

It was an evasion, Bree knew, but she was suddenly fighting the impulse to flip over the notebook so Lucas would stop inspecting her work.

“The untalented one in the family, hmm?” he asked, but there was no missing the irony in his tone.

Bree just shrugged, feeling…exposed. It was stupid,
really. She shouldn’t be comparing herself to anyone, shouldn’t feel as if her crusades didn’t measure up. Then again…when Bree thought about it, no one but Tally and Mark had ever seen her sketches.

And there it was again—that feeling.

Something about Lucas had her looking inside herself, wondering how she held up in his eyes. She shouldn’t care what he thought about her beyond how good she was in bed….

Or in the spa and the kitchen, as it were.

She shouldn’t feel she had to sidestep explanations about her past, about her family, about Jude, but she did.

And as Bree stared up into Lucas’s face, into his expression warm with approval, Bree knew what was happening here—she cared what Lucas thought about her.

Whether she should or not.

L
UCAS WAITED UNTIL
Bree hung the hanger on the doorjamb—the only place high enough to accommodate the voluminous dress—then moved behind her and slipped his arms around her waist. “Looks like you’re saving the day around here.”

When she snuggled back against him, all her curves molding his in exactly the right places, life signs began in a languorous wave that told him while the hour might be late, the night was just beginning.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” she said lightly. “But I haven’t seen you in a costume yet. I’d have thought a man who’s been hanging around Krewe du Chaud long enough to know when Gator Bait was hatched wouldn’t mind wearing one.”

“Have zero problem with costumes. Have a big problem with getting dressed. I want you naked.”

Tipping her head back, she peered full into his face. Her dark eyes flashed.

“Mmm. Ready for bed?”

“Yes.”

The word burst from her lips on the edge of a breath, sending a sizzle through him that inspired him in ways he’d never been inspired before.

With one rush of motion, he hoisted her into his arms.

“Lucas!” she gasped out on another breath and folded her arms around his neck.

Her skin made contact with his and turned that sizzling into an open flame. Cradling her close, he inhaled deeply of her sultry, spicy scent and carried her from the room.

Bree had changed into a dress that barely reached the tops of her thighs. It was made of some clingy fabric that looked comfortable and left no curve to the imagination. He’d been imagining the variety of ways he could strip it off her.

Bringing her to the bed, he let her slide out of his arms slowly, enjoying the moment as she sluiced down his body. His throat constricted around a breath when she knelt before him on the bed, a living fantasy. He caught the clip in her hair and unfastened it, watching in awe as her glossy dark waves tumbled down around her bare shoulders.

The night before them filled with promise, and, without a word, he reached down and caught the hem of her dress. The fabric was just as soft beneath his fingers as he’d imagined it on her curves. Almost reverently he shimmied it up her body.

She was naked underneath.

He finally exhaled that breath as he took in her gol
den beauty, the image of her stretched across the bed in his arms.

She seemed caught up in the promise of the moment, too, because she rested her hands lightly on his shoulders and arched backward, giving him a breathtaking view of her lush breasts and rosy nipples.

He couldn’t resist touching, but the sight of her was almost overwhelming. He didn’t know where to start. A dim part of his brain reasoned that they’d already gotten naked. They’d already made love. He shouldn’t be so awestruck by the idea of touching her again.

But some instinct warned that Bree was unique, the only woman who would ever have this effect on him. Somehow he knew that touching her every time would be as momentous.

He’d honestly never given much thought to Josie’s soul-mates theory before and had laughed when she’d sworn Max was hers, but with Bree kneeling before him, her bold beauty making desire pound inside him like the surf, Lucas found himself reconsidering.

What was it about her that made him tremble when he reached out to touch her? That made a simple touch send a current straight through his body?

She sighed as he cradled the soft fullness of her breasts in his palms, quivered when he thumbed her nipples, and he found himself determined to convince her that what they had could be special. Skimming his hands downward, he traced the V of her ribs, the trim waist, let his fingers caress the curve of her hips. He wanted to learn this woman by heart, wanted to understand why he felt as if he’d waited forever to touch her.

Wanted her to feel the same about him.

When she swayed forward to press a kiss on his
shoulder, Lucas thought he might get his wish. There was a tenderness about the moment, a familiarity that needed no words.

Bree might be a very private woman, might shield her feelings behind bold challenges and charming smiles, but he could sense her intensity. She was caught up in the power of the moment, too. And when she said, “Come to bed, Lucas,” he forced himself to move, to turn off the light and slant the plantation shutters.