01 Untouchable - Untouchable (25 page)

“
No,” he replied quickly,
taking the visa from my hand and dropping it back into my open bag.
“I’m paying for this.” He pulled out his wallet as the cashier told
him the three-hundred and seventy-eight dollar total. Four
one-hundred dollar bills hit the counter.

I started to rebut, until I
saw the look he was giving me that said he’d explain as soon as we
were out of the cashier’s hearing.

We walked out the automatic
doors and he looked at me, “Don’t use your visa. That’s one of the
easiest ways for someone to track you down. People that use those
things might as well rent a billboard and write their address and
phone number on it.”

“
But then that means that I
actually don’t have any money.” I was uncomfortable with that
feeling. Even when I was just little Miss McKinnis, I had money. I
just didn’t go crazy with it.

He noticed the distressed
look on my face. “Don’t worry, I have more than you can
spend.”

“
Don’t be so sure,” I
smiled with a haughty attitude. “Given the proper places, I bet I
could put a serious dent in your finances.”

We were almost to the car,
but he stopped anyway and turned me to face him. “I know you come
from big spenders, but I could put you on a private jet tonight,
fly us to Paris for a shopping trip down
Champs Elysées, then have the jet fly us to Hong Kong to
finish off our day on Causeway Bay. We could return to the States
and stop at the Porsche dealership and pick you out a new 911 and
that day wouldn’t put a dent in my finances.”

There was only one thing that I could
possibly even think of to respond to that, “Good grief, how many
people have you killed?”

His face went dark and he moved forward
and unlocked the trunk of the car. “Did it ever occur to you that I
might make money in legal ways, too?”

I felt like a jerk for my momentary
lapse of humanity and humility. He only agreed to be a gentleman
for my purchased five weeks of life; I never specified that he had
to be kind to me. And, for all intensive purposes, he had been kind
to me.

“
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to
come across like an arrogant, spoiled brat. That’s not me. I guess
I’m…”

He sighed as his hand slipped softly
around the left side of my face, his thumb caressing my cheek,
“Leese, don’t apologize. Under the current circumstances, I’m
surprised you’re even civil to me. I only wish…”

I was so involved in the moment that I
didn’t realize he’d stopped talking. I was looking into that
striking face, feeling the warmth of his hand and the nearness of
his muscled body, and I forgot almost everything else. And then the
words, ‘I only wish,’ came back into focus.

“
What do you wish?” I asked
softly, my hands finding a resting place on his waist.

“
Why couldn’t I have met you
some other way?”

“
God does everything for a
reason, but you have no idea how much I wish the same thing.” He
started to pull away from me, but for once I was the one who didn’t
want to let go. “Micah,” I whispered, surprising him since he knew
I refused to call him by his real name. “If my life could go back
to normal right now, just by having never met you, I wouldn’t do
it.”

His head was shaking side to side
slightly as his arms pulled me into his embrace, “You’re killing
me, Leese. I never thought my job could be this hard.”

I couldn’t stay in his arms;
if I kept wanting to be near him, if I kept telling him how I felt
about him, I
was
going to get him killed.

I pulled back and turned away. “We’d
better get going.”

We continued on I-10 through New
Orleans. He was talking about his favorite restaurants in the
French Quarter. Since I was in my gym clothes and I wasn’t changing
with him in the car, I declined his offer to try one tonight. He
also had a few casinos that he wanted me to try, but I pointedly
reminded him that I wouldn’t be eighteen for another three months;
I wasn’t legal. He gave a light laugh and told me he’d have his
mother make me a Louisiana (or any other state I wanted) driver’s
license and I could be any age I desired.

“
We have a house in the
historic district on St. Charles. If you want, I can pull in, I’m
sure she’s still up.” He wasn’t teasing.

“
No,” I said, feeling
uncomfortable. “Let’s just get where we’re going.”

We left the bright lights of the city
and continued along the interstate for about twenty minutes. He
took an exit onto a two lane highway that wound around back into
the darkness for another ten to fifteen minutes, finally making an
abrupt right down a long and winding drive. I was actually starting
to get scared because it seemed we were driving into the woods.
That was an unsettling thought, but around another bend in the
drive, a beautiful two story plantation style home came into view.
Its front columns illuminated, but even if they hadn’t been, the
house was in a clearing and bathed in moonlight. Sitting in the
circle drive was a silver Mercedes S550.

“
Wow—this is…”

“
Why is Mom here?” he stated
with amazement. He had told me she was back in New Orleans, so this
was evidently a surprise for him, and a very uncomfortable surprise
for me.

He pulled the car around to the back to
a long garage with triple bays, but he didn’t open the doors.
Instead, he parked outside. He grabbed the Wal-Mart bags. We came
in through the back, past the manicured hedges around an enormous
pool, complete with a rock waterfall, and built in Jacuzzi and up
onto a house length back porch and then through the kitchen door.
Immediately I smelled something wonderful. We continued through the
gourmet kitchen and into what appeared to be a family room, only
very masculine in every detail.

“
Mère?” He called out in
French.

A very beautiful woman with
shoulder-length dark haired pulled back into a pony-tail was coming
down the hallway. I couldn’t help but stare at her. She was
probably about fifty, with a long slender nose and prominent cheek
bones and a slightly wide mouth set against flawlessly creamy skin.
It wasn’t until she was close to me that I noticed the same deep
green eyes I’d been staring into for the last seven
days.

“
Micah, I was wondering when
you would get in. I thought you said you’d be in around
eight-thirty?”

“
I’m sorry, Mom, we had to
make a stop,” he said lifting the Wal-Mart bags slightly and
promptly setting them down next to a large leather
recliner.

“
Annalisa Winslett, this is
my mother, Celeste Gavarreen.”

“
Hello,” I said extending my
hand.

She grasped it warmly in both of hers.
“Hello, Annalisa, it’s nice to meet you.”

“
Mom, what are you doing
here? I thought you’d be in New Orleans?”

She released my hand, turned and gave
him a surprised look, “Well, you said you would be bringing company
and I knew it would be fairly late, so I decided to come make you
some dinner and get the house ready.”

“
You didn’t have to do
that,” he said, sounding younger by the minute.

“
I know I didn’t have to,
but I wanted to—and I wanted to meet your guest.”

My face felt as if it instantly flamed
red. She knew what I was to him and I wasn’t exactly a guest. I was
his target.

“
I hope you like chicken
parmigiana, Annalisa.”

“
Oh, yes I do. I smelled it
when we came in the house. Just the aroma alone is wonderful.
Please, call me Leese.”

“
Wonderful, Leese, I’ll show
you where you can wash up.” Then, turning to him with a very large
smile, she said, “Elle est une très belle jeune femme,
Micah.”

My face flushed with color again, and I
could see the embarrassment hit him as well.

“
Ah, Mom, she speaks
French.”

“
Oh—that’s a wonderful
surprise.” But if it embarrassed her that she just told him she
thought I was beautiful, it never made it to her cheeks.

She showed me to the downstairs
bathroom so I could clean up before the meal, and he took my bags
to a bedroom just down the hall on the left.

I thought at first it would be awkward
having her here, but I actually felt relieved that we weren’t alone
in the house. The meal was wonderful. She had cooked everything
from scratch, fresh chicken breasts, mozzarella, with a very thick
and rich tomato sauce. She steamed wild rice and made a wilted
spinach salad with bacon dressing and cut a loaf of French bread. I
hadn’t realized just how hungry I was until I began to
eat.

She joined us for the meal, saying that
she was getting ready to head back to New Orleans as soon as we
were finished.

“
You should stay, Mom. It’s
too late for you to drive back now.”

“
It’s only a quarter to
eleven and…”

“
Mom, it’s too late. Sleep
here and head back tomorrow. Besides, I might talk you into cooking
breakfast.”

She and I both gave a small
laugh.

“
That sounds more like my
son.” Her wide mouth pulling back into a sweet smile. “I’m already
ahead of you. If you’d looked in the fridge, you’d see I brought
you some croissants from the bakery, honey butter and a big bowl of
cut fruit.”

He leaned over and kissed her cheek.
“Thank you.”

“
Now,” she stated, “If I’m
staying the night, we can break out a bottle of good red wine.
Leese, would you like a glass?”

“
Oh—no—no thank you, I don’t
drink. I was actually kind of tired. I was going to take a bath and
get some sleep.” That wasn’t exactly the truth. I’d had a pretty
good nap earlier in the car, but I felt it was time to excuse
myself from their ‘family’ time.

“
You don’t want a swim?” He
asked with a surprised expression.

“
No, not tonight, but if you
hear something splashing around out there in the morning, that’ll
be me.”

“
Good night, Leese,” Celeste
said softly, “We’ll see you in the morning.”

Whew! That meant that she had
definitely decided to stay the night.

I walked down the long hallway that led
to the bedroom where he had placed my bags. I closed the door and
began removing the items, tearing off tags and stickers as I did. I
folded everything with the exception of the night clothes and
placed them inside the ornate large dresser. All the toiletries, I
gathered and placed in the bathroom, glad that the room was a suite
and I didn’t have to go out of the room to take a bath.

I really liked the bathroom; it
reminded me of home. I had planned to sink into the garden tub and
let the jets pound against my bucket-seat-for-four-hours body, but
I changed my mind and decided to go with the faster route and take
a shower. It didn’t matter anyway because the shower was just as
luxurious as the bath. It was a rain shower and water poured from
the walls and ceiling, washing away my horrific day.

I wrapped my hair and dried off, then
slipped on the cotton top and shorts I picked out for nightwear. I
was certain, after all the time I had spent in the shower, they
would have gone to bed. I slipped out of my room and went quietly
down the hall. I just wanted to sneak into the kitchen and find
something to drink before going to sleep, but as I got closer I
heard low voices. He and his mother were still in the family room
and they were talking very quietly. Now, I know all the remarks
that are made about eavesdropping and it wasn’t something I wanted
to do, but I couldn’t move, I had to listen because the
conversation was all about me.

I could see them sitting by the
fireplace, each of them with a glass of wine and they were very
close.

“…
Son, this isn’t going to
turn out well. I saw the way you were looking at her, and I’m
afraid you aren’t going to be able to do what you
have
to do.”

“
I know my job, Mom. You
don’t have to tell me. It’s just that I was given a total of six
weeks and I didn’t expect her to hire me to find out what was going
on.”

“
I know you want to help
her, but you’re getting too close to this one. No one is going to
come after you if you don’t finish what she asked you to do—but,
Micah, D’Angelo won’t hesitate for one second to send someone after
you if he thinks you’ve quit.”

It was quiet for a moment and then he
spoke even lower than before, “But what if it’s wrong this
time?”

“
You knew when you took this
job that it was a civilian, and even worse, you knew it was a young
woman.”

“
I just never
expected…”

I couldn’t hear what he said as his
voice trailed off.

“
I think you should at least
talk to David.”

“
No!” His voice rang out
clear on that note, and then lowered again. “You’ve got to trust me
that I can kill her when the time comes, but I’m going to solve
this first.”

As soon as he said that I felt the
tears begin to flow. He wasn’t going to forget what I asked him to
do. He would figure out a way for me to prove what Robert was doing
and stop him from taking everything away from my mother. I knew he
would also try to find out about the mystery woman who decided I
needed to die immediately. A jolt of fear surged through me; what
if the person was Celeste? What if she knew he was struggling and
decided to take matters into her own hands?