Be My Baby (17 page)

“Yes, sure. Come in.” Leaving the door open, she turned and padded back into the salon. By the time Beau sauntered into the room in her wake, she was in the bedroom. He heard her enter the bathroom, then she dashed back out again, her face several shades paler, the freckles across the bridge of her nose standing out like a sprinkling of ginger on skim milk. “She’s gone.”

Beau snarled an obscenity and ran from the room. He skidded to a halt in front of Juliet’s suite a moment later and pounded on the door. Glancing over his shoulder at Roxanne, who had followed him, he demanded, “Do you have a key to this room?”

“No.”

“Shit.” Drawing his gun, he took a step back, prepared to kick the door in.

Then it opened and Juliet stood there, her silk robe plastered damply to her body in several spots, water glistening on her throat and bare feet, a towel wrapped turban-style around her hair. She looked from the gun in his hand to his face. “Beau? Is something wrong?”

“Oh, boy,” he heard Roxanne murmur, and he felt rather than saw her leave, presumably to return to her room.

“Wrong?” he said softly and, holstering his weapon, advanced on Juliet. Something must have shown in his face, for she took a step back for every
one he took forward until they were in the salon. “What could possibly be wrong?”

She stopped in the middle of the room. “You’re angry.”

“You rich girls are an astute lot, aren’t you?”

That put a poker up her backside. Lifting her chin, she gave him one of those you’re-the-shit-on-the-bottom-of-my-shoe looks she was so good at. But she didn’t say a thing—which for some reason was like throwing gasoline on the fire.

Beau reined himself in, holding his temper on a very short leash. “Did I or did I not tell you to stay put?” he demanded through gritted teeth.

She raised a supercilious eyebrow.

She might as well have said,
Bite me, peon
, and Beau saw red. But he was in control here—he was cool. “You think I issue orders just to hear myself speak, Rosebud? We’ve had too many incidents involving your safety already, and when I tell you to stay somewhere, I do it for a damn good reason.”

“I needed a shower.”

“And Roxanne’s was out of order?”

“I wanted my own shower.”

“So you risked your safety because—let me take a wild stab here—Grandma taught you never to use somebody else’s bar of soap, am I right?”

He could tell from her expression he’d hit the nail squarely on the head. She thrust out her elegantly chiseled chin. “For heaven’s sake, Beau, I was careful. I made sure no one was around when I left Roxanne’s room and I locked my door securely behind me.”

His ire cranked another degree higher and he
took a step toward her. “And if someone had gotten in here anyway, you planned to do what, exactly—freeze him with your good manners?”

She stepped back, chin still high. “I’m perfectly capable of handling myself.”

He stepped forward. “Oh, yeah, I can see you’re all kinds of courageous, all right. A regular little tough guy.” Disregarding the voice in his head that whispered his fury was disproportionate to her crime, he stalked her as she backed across the room. The nervousness that sprang into her eyes gave him a grim satisfaction. “Forget the fact that whoever wants you hurt is most likely armed. For argument’s sake we’ll say that this time he isn’t.”

Her back hit a wall, and he slapped his hands on either side of her shoulders, pinning her in place. He leaned in close. “Let’s just suppose for a minute that I’m him. The Boogeyman. It wasn’t exactly strenuous backing you into a corner, sugar.” His finger trailed down the side of her neck, over her collarbone, and along the edge of the robe’s neckline to the place where it overlapped between her breasts. He crooked his finger beneath the fabric and tugged the opening wider. “And once he’s got you in a corner, in a room all alone, he can do any damn thing he wants to you, without a soul to stop him.”

Her breasts rose and fell more quickly beneath the silky material, but she met his eyes squarely. “But no one did do any of that. Only you. And I’m not afraid of you.”

“You should be, angel face,” he insisted softly. He pulled on the robe to completely expose one
breast. “You should be very, very afraid of me.” And his hand slid onto her breast as he lowered his mouth against the erotic fullness of hers.

It wasn’t a gentle wooing—he used his teeth, the strength of his mouth—but she didn’t fight him. She kissed him back hard, and just that fast he was out of control. He was aware of those gorgeous lips cushioning his, and her taste, hot and sweet, on his tongue. Then it was all flashing impressions—of him sucking her breast into his mouth, and her back arching to give him more; of her hands first gripping his hair, then moving down to his fly to fight with the zipper while one of her thighs rubbed up his leg to hook over his hip. Next thing he knew, his pants were pushed down far enough to free him and he’d lifted her against the wall and was starting to push into her.

“Wait, wait,” she whispered and stiff-armed him away with her hands on his shoulders. “We’ve got to be smart this time, Beau. We need to use a condom.”

He froze, his chest rising and falling as he struggled for breath. “Oh, God, Juliet. I don’t have one. Please, dawlin’. I’ll pull out….”

“I’ve got one. Roxanne gave me a handful. She said I was probably going to need them more than she.”

“Where?” When she told him, he lifted her off him and set her on her feet. He kicked off his pants. “Don’t budge.”

It was probably the fastest he’d ever moved in his life, and he was back in a moment, appropriately attired for the occasion, to find her still lean
ing against the wall, her hair towel on the floor at her feet, her silky robe hanging open. He picked her up and sheathed himself in one smooth movement, pinning her to the wall. Then, eyes closed to fully appreciate the feel of her surrounding him, he held himself very still. “Ah, Gawd—
there
,” he breathed reverently. “It’s been such a shitty night and you feel so good.”

She made a restless, yearning movement. “Beau?”

He began to move slowly, languorously, wanting to draw this out and make it last. For all the stimulation, there was something almost…spiritual…about being inside her. That was crazy—he knew it was crazy—and most likely just the mood he was in. Yet being with her like this washed away the frustration of the preceding hours, if only for a little while. So he slid into her inch by inch, pulled back until he was nearly out, then slowly plunged deep again.

His reward was the yearning little noises she made. She framed his cheeks in her hands and kissed him deeply. Moments later she pulled back, panting. “Oh, Lord, Beau. Please.” Her thumbs rubbed restlessly back and forth along his cheeks, and her gaze suddenly focused on his face. “Oh. It’s
smooth
. I didn’t know it was possible for your jaw to feel this way.” Then she arched her back, thrusting her breasts against his chest. Her hands lowered to grip his shoulders and she attempted to move against him, but being sandwiched against the wall severely constrained her range of movement. “Please, Beau, a little harder?”

“Tell me what you want, Juliet Rose. Talk dirty to me.”

She blinked. Her gray eyes were heavy-lidded and seemed to have difficulty focusing on him. “What?”

“Talk dirty to me and I’ll give you this”—he thrust deep—“a little harder.”

She looked scandalized. “I can’t do that!”

“As you wish.” His hips ceased to thrust and withdraw. Instead, like stirring molasses, they instigated the slowest, faintest of oscillations. He bent his head to her breast.

Juliet withstood it for several moments. Then she breathed a command in his ear with a blunt Anglo-Saxon term she’d probably never used in her life. His hips picked up a little speed, and she said it again…and then again, and again, and again, as he gave her what she wanted and began to thrust into her. His hips picked up speed and force, and he drove her right off the edge of the world, reveling in her little screech of satisfaction. Beau jerked convulsively as he followed her into oblivion.

They were both limp and covered in sweat, and Beau sank to his knees with her draped astride him. He felt boneless and utterly free of tension.

Juliet raised her head up off his shoulder and stared down at him. Her hair was a wild tangle of half dried, out-of-control waves, and she thrust a hank of it out of her face. “We seem to keep doing this, Beauregard.” Blushing, she searched his face as if looking for something. “I can’t believe you made me say that.”

He couldn’t, either, now that he thought about
it, but he said somewhat defensively, “You liked it.”

She gave a delicate shrug of one silk-covered shoulder. “Maybe. Maybe not. But it certainly points up the differences in our experience. And in regards to that—particularly your propensity for unprotected sex—I really need to know about your health record.”

J
uliet was already feeling mortified by how quickly she’d succumbed to Beau’s demand for sex talk. The last thing she needed was to have him stare at her openmouthed and then throw back his head and roar with laughter. She got her feet under her and slapped her hands to his shoulders to shove herself upright, face flaming anew as she felt him slide out of her.

He hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her back down. One of her heels skidded out from under her and she landed in a sprawl astride his thighs.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He made an obvious attempt to control his mirth. “It’s just—given my history—it really is pretty funny. Listen—”

“I’m so glad you’re amused,” she said icily. “I’m sure—given your history—I’ll laugh all the way to the clinic. That is, if you don’t have something truly nasty to share.”

“No, dawlin’, that’s just it.” He thrust his long
fingers through his hair. “I’m clean as a whistle—I swear it. God, I really hate to admit this, because your view of me as some red-hot sex pistol is the greatest stroke my ego’s ever gotten. Truth is, though, honey chile, I’ve been so busy raisin’ my sisters the past ten years that my sex life has been all but nonexistent. And the little I have gotten, it’s been Rubbers ‘R’ Us all the way.” He stroked his free hand up and down her thigh. “You’re the only one who’s ever gotten me so hot I’ve forgotten to suit up.”

“Do I have ‘Gullible’ stamped on my forehead, Beauregard?” She felt betrayed that he valued her intelligence so little he’d try to fob her off with such a patent cock-and-bull story. She made her voice particularly smarmy when she lowered it to approximate his and said, “
Trust me, baby, you’re the one
.” Her voice returned to normal. “You’re forgetting I’ve seen you in action. Don’t mistake relative inexperience with idiocy.”

“I’m not messin’ with you, Rosebud. It’s the honest-to-God truth. Call my sisters; call Luke.” His face suddenly went expressionless and Juliet looked at him suspiciously.

“What?”

“Maybe Luke’s not the one to call. He’s a little busy right now, screwing my baby sister.”

“Excuse me?” The bitterness in his voice caused Juliet to look more closely into his face. Something there made her decide that perhaps he wasn’t jerking her around after all.

“I stopped home on my way back here this morning to talk to Josie Lee about something that
came up on that case I went out on.” An expression Juliet couldn’t interpret flitted across his face and then was gone. “I found her and Luke in a…compromising position, shall we say?”

Juliet felt the tension in his body. “And this is not a good thing, I take it.”

“She’s my baby sister!”

“But she’s not a baby. I took her to be in her early twenties. Was I mistaken?”

He shrugged sullenly. “She’s twenty-two.” Underlying the surface cool and the flickering glimpses of anger was something that looked suspiciously like…hurt.

Juliet knew she was in big trouble when that fleeting sign of vulnerability got to her. Oh, God, she had a bad, bad feeling she was falling in love with him. “Do you suspect Luke is coercing your sister in some way?”

The muscles in Beau’s thighs sprang into prominent relief beneath her legs and he surged to his feet, a forearm scooped under her bottom to hold her in place. Juliet emitted an undignified sound, like a young girl startled by a mouse. She grabbed at his shoulders and clasped his hips with her legs. He walked a few steps over to the chair and collapsed in it, rearranging her legs to tuck them alongside his. Then he shook his head. “No. I’d give a month’s pay to be able to say otherwise, but when I popped him, Jose attacked me with a hot frying pan.”

“You
hit
him?”

He looked at her as if she’d said something inexpressibly stupid. “Hell, yes, I hit him—haven’t
you been paying attention? I walked in to find him putting the moves to my little sister, and I did what a brother’s supposed to do: I tried to rearrange his face. And no good deed ever goes unpunished, let me tell you.” He yanked up his shirt. “Look what she did to me:
this
is what a guy gets for his efforts.”

There was a dull red patch on his hard stomach, but that wasn’t what Juliet found herself staring at. Except for the condom, Beau was naked from the waist down, and she straddled his lap wearing only her robe, which hung open. Face hot, she tugged it together and tied the belt.

He followed her gaze and removed the condom. Tying it off, he tossed it into a nearby wastebasket, then grasped one corner of her robe’s hem and draped it over his loins. “Better?” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Never let it be said Beau Dupree is too uncivilized to follow Miss Manners’s rules of postcoital etiquette.”

“Good lord, she wrote a book about that, too? That’s one Grandmother never added to my must-read list.”

He gave her a crooked grin, but it faded almost immediately. “What am I going to do about Josie Lee, Juliet? It’s making me crazy.”

“I can see that, but I’m not certain I understand why, precisely,” she admitted cautiously. “I mean, don’t you think it’s something of a double standard to say it’s all right for you and me to make love, but your adult sister and her partner of choice ought to remain chaste?” Knowing now that Beau wasn’t entirely rational where his youngest sister’s
love life was concerned, she braced herself for his anger.

But he surprised her. “I don’t know—maybe. Hell, on an intellectual level, I’m sure you’re right. But on a gut level, I wanna stomp Luke right into the ground and lock Josie Lee in her room until she’s thirty.” He ground the heels of his hands against the ridge of his brow as if to contain a headache trying to pound its way free. Then, blowing out a deep breath, he dropped his hands to Juliet’s thighs and looked up at her.

“Maybe it’s because Jose was only twelve when Mom and Dad died. Of the four of us, it hit her the hardest—I mean, that’s an age when a girl really needs her mama the most, don’t you think? But all she had for was me, and I was twenty-four when I inherited the job, so who the hell knows how effective I was? I always felt the most inadequate with her, and some things never change. Hell, five, six weeks ago I couldn’t even keep her safe from the damn Panty Snatcher. She refuses to admit that her encounter with that pervert was the least bit traumatic, but I know damn well it had to have been.” His black brows gathered above his nose, making him look thunderous. “And now here’s good ol’ Luke stickin’ it to her.”

“Oh, there’s a lovely way of putting it.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry, but that’s the way it feels, okay?” He glared at her, his hands tense on her legs. “Christ, Juliet, she tossed me out of my own house, just because I got a little physical with her precious Luke—that Judas bastard.”

Ah, now she got it. “It sounds as if you’ve got a case of separation anxiety.”

“Say what?”

“Separation anxiety. Your baby’s growing up, leaving the nest and depending on another man instead of you, and it hurts.” She smiled at him and reached out to run her fingertips over his smoothly shaven jaw. “It’s rather sweet, actually.” Dangerously sweet: it caused a serious meltdown of all the guards she’d erected to hold his cataclysmic effect on her at bay.

“It’s
bullshit
, is what it is.” He looked at her as if she’d somehow insulted his masculinity. “I don’t have any damn separation anxiety—hell, I’ve been counting the days till she moves out.” Giving her a deliberately sexual look, he undid the knot belting her robe closed. He pulled the two overlapping sides wide, exposing her and himself in one swift movement. “Sweet, my ass. Where the hell are those condoms—I’ll show you sweet.”

Beau pushed the bathroom door closed with his foot, shutting out the sight of Juliet’s bed with Juliet in it. He looked at his face in the mirror. Just when a guy thought he was standing on firm ground…

What the hell had happened to his life? One minute everything was running smoothly, and in the next breath he was ass-deep in alligators again.

He’d thought woman trouble was finally a thing of the past, that the only problem he was going to have on the female front from now on was deciding who to call up for a hot date each night. But here he was with un uptight Yankee he couldn’t
keep his hands off of, and a little sister who’d just as soon smack him upside the head with a frying pan as look at him.

Shit.

He slapped on the cold water faucet. He knew from experience there was only one thing to do when too many women and all their attendant problems started taking over a guy’s every waking moment. Lose himself in work.

He splashed water against his face, turned off the tap, and reached for a towel. After a brief examination of his teeth in the mirror, he found Juliet’s toothpaste, squeezed out a dab on his finger, and did what he could with it.

The truth was, he hadn’t been taking care of business for the past week or so—not in any manner he recognized, anyhow. But that was about to change. He was through being a babysitter, no matter how sweet the babe. He was a cop, dammit. It was time to start acting like one again.

He strode into the bedroom. Juliet sat on the far side of the bed with her back to him. She had a long, narrow back, and the delicate knobs of her vertebrae pushed against tawny skin as she bent forward, sweeping the floor with her hand as if in search of something. The bumps retracted into the smooth groove of her spine as she straightened up and twisted around to look at him over her shoulder. Then she rose to her feet, pulling the sheet off the bed and wrapping it around herself as she turned to face him. Gentle color bloomed in her cheeks.

“You hiding something I haven’t already seen, angel face?”

Her chin angled up regally. “Not all of us have the great good fortune to be as comfortable in our nudity as you are, Beauregard.”

He glanced down and saw that things were, indeed, dangling out there at half mast for all the world to admire, and he looked back at her and grinned. “My clothes are out in the other room. You want me to put them on?”

“Only if you have an urge to accomplish anything today.”

She had a point there, and he strolled into the other room and scouted around until he found his slacks. Sliding them on, he gingerly zipped up and looked over to see that Juliet had trailed him as far as the doorway. “What were you looking for on the floor just now?”

“My panties.”

He smiled reminiscently. “You weren’t wearing any when I showed up, sugar.”

“Yes, so I recalled.”

Oh, man, she was at her primmest best, and he wanted like crazy to snag that sheet out of her hands and muss her up until all the starch left her backbone.

But he was going to have to backburner the impulse. He straightened. “Get dressed, Juliet Rose. I’ve got a proposition to put to you.”

She arched one well-groomed brow at him as if she could just imagine what sort of lurid offer would come out of his mouth. But she didn’t argue.
Turning on her heel, she disappeared back into the bedroom.

She was back out in under ten minutes, looking once again like the very proper Ms. Astor Lowell, with her hair ruthlessly controlled in a sophisticated French twist, and those voluptuous touches on her spare body once more hidden behind a floaty, floral dress. Only her long, bare feet with their siren polish on the toenails, the come-on-and-kiss-me lipstick on her generous lips, and the still-healing scrape on her chin belied the prim image. Beau directed her to a chair before he could give in to his baser instincts to go mining for the sensuous woman he knew lurked beneath all that spit and polish. He squatted down in front of her.

“Okay, listen. It’s occurred to me that I’ve been reactive rather than proactive when it comes to your case. And it’s time for that to change.”

“Beau, you’ve dragged me all over the French Quarter from day one. That’s hardly what I’d call reactive.”

“That was in regards to the Panty Snatcher case, not yours,” he disagreed. “Although, now that an antique gun has surfaced in yours, too, I suppose a case could be made for your theory.” He shook his head. “But that’s neither here nor there, dawlin’. The fact is, it’s time for me to do what I do best.”

She glanced toward the bedroom and he laughed. “No, not that. Detective work.”

“Oh.” Her color deepened. Then she laughed—a laugh so surprisingly bawdy it left him blinking. “Then you must be very good indeed.”

He gripped the arms of her chair. “You make it damn hard not to take you back in there and give you another taste of my second best talent.” He pushed himself to his feet. “But I’m a man on a mission. How would you like to play cop for a while?”

“Me?”

“Well, not actually do cop work, but hang with me while I do the job I was trained for.”

“Beau, I’ve got a hotel that’s only days away from the pre-opening cocktail party—”

“I know you do, Rosebud. That’s where my proposition comes in. I don’t like the way things have been shaking down around you lately, and the idea of leaving you unprotected while I track down the source of these attacks strikes me as counterproductive. So how about we compromise? How ’bout we give the mornings over to your work, the afternoons to running down computer files or paperwork on old cases that involve antique guns, and the evenings to tracking down Lydet, who can conceivably help us kill two birds with one stone?”

“Sounds busy.”

“But productive. You game?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl.” He leaned forward and gave her a brief, hard kiss. He was disinclined to pull back, which gave him a flicker of unease. But hell, Juliet’s time in New Orleans was finite—there was no reason he couldn’t enjoy this relationship as long as she was around. There’d be time enough to fall back on his long-anticipated Plan A once she re
turned to the cold North. And if the thought of her back up in Boston with her stuffy family gave him a pang, well, it was probably just hunger pains.

It was way past breakfast time, after all.

“You been avoiding me, Baby Girl?”

Josie Lee looked up from her computer to see Luke standing in the doorway. She glanced over at the administrative assistant whom she assisted and then back at Luke. “Sergeant Gardner, this really isn’t an appropriate—”