French Quarter (2 page)

Another thing Jack hadn’t done in a long while was mix business with pleasure—or, in this instance, a hard bout of good old-fashioned lust. It was amateurish and he wasn’t an amateur. He’d opened his business as a wet-behind-the-ears kid of twenty-one, and fifteen years later he made a very respectable living, generally taking—and solving—cases the police couldn’t.
The families or other people involved in the crimes often got fed up with a lack of answers from the authorities, and came to him with cases of theft, blackmail, missing persons; he’d even cracked a few murder cases. In a city like New Orleans, there were plenty of mysteries to be solved and secrets to uncover—just like the Mississippi, it was a river that never ran dry. And it wasn’t that he’d never slept with a woman he’d met through his job, but somewhere along the way he’d grown up; he’d decided fucking the customers was unprofessional, and he hadn’t done it since.

Not that he knew for sure if he’d sleep with Liz Marsh. But he knew if she gave him the chance, he would. Already, it had become a fact, something he wouldn’t bother denying. He’d liked the open, mutual lust flowing between them far too much to pretend he could just turn it off like a leaky faucet—hell, it had kept him half-hard all day.

So watching the stripper tease her stretchy dress up over a very round ass, then skim her hands over it as she danced, turned him as solid as a stone pillar by the time the scantily-clad waitress brought his drink.

Sipping at the vodka, he indulged himself, watching the rest of the number—the sexy brunette finally shimmied free of the dress, leaving her in shoes and a flesh-colored g-string that barely concealed her crotch. She crouched down to allow the guys near her little stage to tuck money into the thin elastic string at her hip before continuing the slow, provocative dance. She caressed her own curves—breasts, hips, inner thighs—and licked her lips, clearly as aroused by her performance as they were.

That’s when he spotted what he’d come here for—Todd Darcy, his new client’s fiancé. Liz had provided him with a recent photo, which he now pulled out of his pocket to do a double-check. Damn, this was too easy.

All he’d done was hang around outside the guy’s office building around five, the hour Liz had informed him was her fiancé’s scheduled quitting time. Around 5:15, Todd had exited onto the downtown street wearing a shirt and tie, suit jacket tossed over his shoulder. His first stop had been a small café on Jackson Square, close enough to walk to from his office. Jack had meandered inside behind him, taken a seat, and watched Todd eat a po’ boy and drink a bottled water. It gave Jack a chance to study him.

The guy was handsome, he guessed, but in an all-too-average way. Light brown hair, cut short to match his yuppie clothes, thin build, nothing spectacular. Certainly not spectacular enough for a woman like Liz Marsh. And his eyes…there was something about them Jack didn’t like. He’d learned a lot about reading people over the years, and Todd Darcy looked like a man possessed…by something.

By six, Todd was striding through the Quarter, making a beeline for Bourbon Street, unaware he was being followed. He’d slipped into Club Venus so quickly that by the time Jack had paid his cover charge and come inside, he’d not been able to spot Todd in the dimly lit room, which sported a reasonable size crowd of mostly middle to upper class men, despite the early hour.

So he’d taken a seat, knowing he’d see Todd sooner or later, and now, here the guy was, pushing a folded bill into the stripper’s g-string, and looking so lost in lust that Jack felt a hard pang of sympathy for Liz Marsh. It was one thing for a guy to spend an occasional night out at a strip bar with his buddies, but one look told Jack this guy had it bad. Now he knew what Todd was so damn possessed by. He was like those guys addicted to Internet porn, only it was strippers that fed Todd’s hunger.

Rising to his feet, Jack reached into his pocket for a tiny camera hidden in a lighter. He made a slow, casual trip around the room, stopping at various spots to discreetly photograph his quarry as Todd gaped lustfully up at the next
fille
to take the stage, this one starting her dance in a clingy pink mini-skirt and matching camisole.

Half an hour later, Jack sat nursing his second vodka, enjoying the female entertainment and keeping an eye on Todd.

What the hell did Liz Marsh see in this guy? Maybe he made a lot of money. Or maybe they were childhood sweethearts or something. Hell, could be anything, he supposed, but without even taking into consideration that the guy lied to his fiancée to come to a strip club every night, Jack wasn’t impressed with him.

He also found it hard to believe Liz couldn’t keep the jerk happy in bed. Her sexy outfit had revealed enough to tell him she had a killer body, and her mannerisms had told him she wasn’t afraid to use it. What kind of pleasure did Todd get from strippers that he couldn’t get from Liz and her delectable curves, her sweet, pouty mouth?

Damn, a split second before Ty had walked into his office, Jack had been tempted to kiss her. Inappropriate as hell, especially given the reason she was there and that she was engaged to be married, for God’s sake, but she’d been leaning so close, a musky, feminine scent emanating from her. Those pretty berry lips had been telling him she needed somebody good, while her lush breasts strained against the filmy fabric buttoned over them and—
merde
, how much could a man be expected to resist? What he wouldn’t have given to take those soft mounds in his hands, to kiss their taut nipples, to suck them until she begged for more. Hell—clearly, his fantasy after she’d left hadn’t given him nearly as much of her as he needed, since it was growing now, expanding in his head. He wanted to spread her thighs, sink his fingertips into her warm wet cunt, feel her fucking his fingers, getting wetter and wetter for him, until she came on his hand.

He let out a heated breath, pulling himself back to reality, remembering why he was here. Work. He had a job to do for Liz Marsh, and a fiancé whose angle he needed to figure out. Taking a deep breath, he refocused his attention on the little weasel across the room.

Maybe Todd had a thing for strippers because it was forbidden. Maybe the lure of doing something “naughty” was what drew him. At the moment, Jack thoroughly understood that lure, if in a different way. Still, if you were into the forbidden, Jack supposed, there was
no
woman—not even Liz Marsh—who would be able to keep you happy.

Pulling his mind back to the present, Jack saw Todd speaking with one of the girls who’d just finished dancing—a blonde co-ed-looking type with small, high breasts and nice legs. Still seated in one of the plush chairs surrounding each stage area, he mooned up at her as she stood next to him, flirting for money. Jack pulled out his camera and took a shot from his seat.

He watched a folded bill exchange hands just before the co-ed lifted one knee over Todd, straddling his hips. As the next song began to pump a hot slow rhythm through the sexually-charged room, the co-ed began a sensuous dance as she hovered over Liz’s fiancé. Jack decided this was well worth grabbing on film for Liz and made another trip around the room to be sure he got enough angles to capture Todd’s face and to make it very clear what he was doing.

An hour later, Todd had paid three hot women for lap dances before disappearing with two more into a back room. Although Jack couldn’t follow, he snapped a few shots of the nearly-naked women leading Todd through the door labeled “private dances.”

Even as badly as he felt now for Liz Marsh and as much as he was not looking forward to telling her what he’d learned, he hoped like hell she’d want to let him take her mind off her troubles. Admittedly, sitting in the club watching comely strippers dance down to tiny g-strings had gotten him hot, but it was his fantasy about Liz that truly had desire burning from his chest down to his rock-hard erection.

* * * * *

Just hearing Jack Wade’s deep voice on the phone the next day had made Liz wet, even as she sat in her cubicle at the downtown ad agency where she worked, surrounded by other co-workers.

“I need to meet with you,” he’d said.

She’d attempted to still the heat flowing through her veins and tried to sound halfway professional. “At your office? I could come at lunch.”

“See you then.”

Now she stepped out of the taxi she’d hailed a few blocks away, in too much of a hurry to walk. Anxious to see what Jack had learned about Todd’s whereabouts last night, she nearly burst through the door of his office, but stopped short, remembering how sexy she knew Jack had thought her yesterday afternoon, and wanting to be that way for him again.

She was wearing a business suit, but fortunately the white blouse beneath was rather sheer, enough that she kept her black jacket buttoned all day whenever she wore this particular piece of apparel. Now, standing on Royal Street, she slipped the jacket from her shoulders and looked down to glimpse the white lace of her bra showing through, the fabric clinging nicely to her curves. Her skirt had ridden up her thighs a bit in the cab, but she didn’t tug it down. Finally, taking a glance at herself in the shop window next to Jack’s door, she pulled the clip from her chignon and let her hair fall wild and wavy about her shoulders.

Feeling adequately sexy and nearly as anxious to see Jack Wade as she was to find out about Todd, she went inside.

He sat with his feet propped on the corner of his desk eating a sandwich. As the door closed behind her, he lowered his feet to the floor, set the sandwich on a paper plate, and sat up straighter.

“Hello, Mr. Wade.”

His look bordered strangely between lustful and gentle. “Call me Jack.”

“All right, Jack.” She sat down in the chair across from him. “What have you found?”

He let out a long sigh. “I know where Todd goes every night and what he does. I took pictures for you.” He handed a stack across the desk to her. “Unfortunately, they’re not very good quality. The room was dark, but the camera I used should’ve worked anyway. I can only guess I got a bad roll of film.”

Liz thumbed through the photos. At first she wasn’t quite sure what she was seeing, but through the shadowy lighting, she soon made out bare breasts, nipples pointing, and realized she was seeing a naked girl in a man’s lap.

“I know it’s hard to tell,” Jack said, “but the guy in the picture is Todd. I followed him to Club Venus on Bourbon last night. He got lap dances from several strippers before takin’ two of ‘em to a back room for a private dance.”

Liz blinked and looked at the picture again, trying to absorb what Jack was telling her. The guy in the picture didn’t look like Todd to her. Of course, she could barely see his face, hidden in shadow—it could have been any man. But Todd wasn’t the type to patronize a strip club. If anything, he was Mr. Straight Arrow, as clean cut and straitlaced as a guy comes. The very idea that he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to had been a hard conclusion to reach, but now that she had, she’d expected to discover he was seeing some urbane executive like himself—some thin-faced, thin-lipped, glasses-wearing, briefcase-toting, hair-in-a-severe-bun, high-powered woman who’d turned Todd on by climbing the corporate ladder at a record-setting pace. Or maybe seeing someone like her—the
regular
her, not the lusty, sexy, see-through-blouse her that Jack Wade knew, but someone with even more of the prim and proper qualities Todd valued. In fact, she’d even convinced herself that was why he’d strayed—because she wasn’t sophisticated enough, or prim and mannered enough.

“Are you sure it was him? Because this isn’t Todd’s style.”

Jack appeared to be pained on her behalf. “I’m sorry,
chere
…but yeah, I’m sure. I followed him every step of the way from his building.”

“Did you see him come directly out of his office
inside
the building?”

He blinked. “
Mais
, I saw him come out of the building, not his exact office, but I recognized him right away from the picture you gave me.”

She drew in a deep breath. “Because a lot of men look like Todd. He’s not exactly unusual—your basic suit and tie guy. And in a building that big, a lot of men could look like him at a glance.”

Jack slowly tilted his head. “Darlin’,” he said gently, “I really am sorry. I know this must hurt, but I’m sure that’s your fiancé.”

Liz pursed her lips. It wasn’t that she was hurt, exactly—it was simply that she didn’t believe him. Lynda had promised her he was good at his job, but what if he’d slipped? If Todd was spending every night with strippers grinding in his lap, well, that was more than enough reason to call off the wedding, but the photos were so dark and this behavior seemed so uncharacteristic…

“I’m sorry, too, but I’m afraid it’s going to take more than a set of dark pictures to make me believe this is him.”

Across from her, Jack sighed. “When I saw how the pictures came out, I was afraid you’d feel this way.”

“I don’t mean to doubt you,” she said quickly, “but…”

“
Oui
?”

“Given how unlike him this seems, I’m just not sure I’d believe it unless I saw it with my own eyes.”

“
Mais,
then,” Jack said slowly, appearing to be thinking through the situation. “I’m busy tonight, but presuming Todd ‘works late’ tomorrow night, why don’t you meet me at, say, nine o’clock, outside the Blue Moon Café, and we’ll go to Club Venus together.”

Something in Liz withered. “Me, in a strip club?”

He raised his eyebrows. “If you wanna see for yourself.”