French Quarter (29 page)

“Find anything interesting yet?” Ty had asked.

“Nope, but I’ve got a huge backlog of video and audio to scan.” There was no way to monitor both the outdoor camera and the others, inside the house, at the same time, and inspecting the hours of videotape from inside took a long while, but anytime the cameras caught Todd at home, Jack stopped the fast forward and listened to what the little dickhead had to say. He wasn’t even sure what he was waiting to see or hear, but the guy seemed like such a nutcase, Jack figured he might start talking to himself—or even someone else—about any plans he had that included Liz. So far, that, too, had turned up nothing, but as he’d told Ty, he was way behind in viewing the tapes, hence his decision to spend Friday night in the office.

“Well, dude, I’m gonna hit the streets and look for some fun. You want to try to hook up later?”

Fun was the last thing on Jack’s mind these days. “No, I’ll still be workin’.”

“You know what they say about all work and no play.”

Jack couldn’t help a short, wry chuckle. “
Oui
. They make me a dull boy. But that’s too fuckin’ bad right now,
ami
.”

“Have it your way,” Ty said. “And hey, get some rest. You’re testy as hell.”

“I know. Gotta go now.”

Jack had put his phone away just as he walked through the brick archway leading to Pat O’s courtyard, and he’d no sooner made his way to the outdoor bar than he’d seen Liz, dressed to kill. Speak of the devil. She sat with Lynda at a table in the courtyard looking as sweet and edible as cotton candy in a little pink number that hugged her breasts and showed lots of cleavage. She was drinking a tall hurricane and laughing with her friend.

Seeing her hurt worse than he could have imagined. He’d immediately looked away and that’s when someone had arrived to take his order. While he waited for the food, he was sorely tempted to go over and say hi, to see if maybe, by chance, he saw any sort of emotional spark in her eye, anything that meant she gave a damn about him, but he resisted. Her confection-covered breasts beckoned to him, but that dress also told him she was out to party, and seemed to be getting by just fine without him.

After his order came up and he got his change, he took one last look in her direction, whispered, “
Au revoir, chere,
” then headed back out onto St. Peter and down to Royal.

And as he’d eaten his dinner and gotten back to scanning video, he felt like a fucking idiot. Because only a fucking idiot would waste every free second of his time trying to protect a woman who didn’t care about him.

It had almost been enough to make him turn off the tape, lock up the office, head up to Club Venus, and do a little partying himself, after all. But, he’d thought cynically, he was as likely to bump into Liz there as anyplace else on Bourbon, so that was a no-go. The deeper truth was—if trying to protect her made him an idiot, then he would just have to be an idiot. Because he wouldn’t stop monitoring Todd until something happened to make him certain Liz was out of harm’s way. Being hurt, even angry, didn’t kill the love inside him. He might wish it did, but it didn’t—sadly, he understood his father’s undying heartache a little better with each passing day.

Now, he still sat there, hours later, remote in hand, slowing the tape when Todd appeared in the picture, speeding it up when he didn’t. Fast forwarding through the days when Todd was at work took a damn long time, but he kept his eye on the screen anyway, and much to his surprise, he suddenly saw Liz come in the front door of the house. He stopped the fast forward, watching as she crossed the room and began loading books in a box.

It made him stop and check the date on the tape. Curiously, it was the day he’d expected to be moving her in with him. And it was just after noon, so she must not have gone to work. He watched in silence for five minutes, ten, and then…Todd walked into the room behind her. But rather than approach her, he sat down in a chair and watched her pack. His silent observation of her sent a chill creeping up Jack’s spine.

When Liz turned and saw Todd, it was clear, even from the odd angle of the camera, that she was startled. And then it happened…Todd started talking to her—and before Jack knew it, Todd was threatening…
him
.

Jack sat up a little straighter in his chair and watched Liz, the rigid stance she took, the nervousness in her voice, until finally she left—but Jack understood immediately. She hadn’t moved in with him in order to protect him.

Let me get this straight. She’s been trying to protect
me
while I’ve been trying to protect
her? It boggled his mind.

So was
that
the real reason for her abrupt message about not moving in with him? To Jack, it seemed incomprehensible, but maybe he was forgetting just how afraid of Todd she was.
He
wasn’t afraid of the little shit, and a threat against
him
didn’t bother Jack in the slightest. But maybe to Liz, it was something to be taken seriously. In fact, the more Jack thought about it, the more it slowly dawned on him that Liz must have taken the threat against him more seriously than she’d taken the threat against herself. Just as Jack naturally did—except in reverse, worrying only when the danger affected Liz.

He stopped the tape and pulled up her e-mail, which he’d never deleted, and read it again. If he hadn’t been so consumed with his own emotions, maybe he wouldn’t have jumped to conclusions and imagined things that weren’t there. Maybe he wouldn’t have been such a self-absorbed jerk.

Merde
, this explained everything. It all made sense. She’d thought it would be safer for her to just keep living at Lynda’s—and she’d probably known Jack would give her a hard time about that, so she’d decided to deliver the news by e-mail. He suddenly suspected she’d never intended to dump him, just to put him off for a day while she figured out how to deal with Todd’s threat.

Damn, clearly he’d taken his father’s warning too much to heart, let himself base his worries and insecurities too much on the marriage that had failed and left him without a mother.

And if he hadn’t been so stubborn, just waiting for the ax to fall and jumping to conclusions when he’d thought he’d seen it happening, he might be buried deep inside her right now.

A rush of heat enveloped him at the thought and made his cock perk to life. He missed her so much.

He had half a mind to go find her right now, and pushed up out of his chair with that thought in mind.

But shit, she was likely somewhere on Bourbon partying, and trying to look for her among that many people in that many bars and clubs would be futile.

Besides which, there was something else he needed to do first, before he talked to her. He needed to take this tape to the police. The Big Easy’s finest weren’t always his greatest fans—and Jack’s video of Todd was actually illegal, and therefore, inadmissible as evidence—but plenty of the men in blue were decent guys, and he didn’t think any of them could refute what he’d caught on tape here. If there was one thing cops didn’t like, it was nutballs who talked about making bombs and blowing up places and people. And threats weren’t generally against the law, but once the cops found out a little recent history on this guy, like that he was a stalker who
had
illegally entered a neighbor’s house and likely attempted to rape Liz, Jack suspected they’d either dig up a reason to arrest him, or they’d put the fear of God in him and just dare him to trip up.

* * * * *

Five o’clock on Saturday afternoon and Liz felt like a lifeless blob. Despite a late night that had turned to morning, Lynda had pulled Liz’s old trick of rushing home just long enough to shower and change before heading back to her shop in the Quarter. Liz had stayed indoors all day, never bothering to change out of the silky shorts set she’d slept in, just lying on the couch, watching movies on cable and drifting in and out of a sad sleep.

Last night had been eye-opening for her. Maybe a tiny little part of her had thought a night on the Vieux Carre with Lynda
would
be healing. Maybe she’d
hoped
she could shed her sorrow with some handsome hunk or lovely lady who wanted to play with her. But she’d been dreadfully wrong. Just as she’d known all along, Jack was the only person who made her want to play, who made her want to be a perfect bad girl. And she had a frightening feeling it might stay that way. After all, no one
before
Jack had ever awakened the hot, daring woman inside her. Why should she think anyone would do it
after
him?
He’s the one
, she thought,
the man who releases everything inside me, every doubt, every worry, every inhibition, the man who makes my heart
—
and my body
—
want to run wild.

When the phone rang, she didn’t answer it, didn’t even budge. Let the machine get it, she thought. No one would be calling her anyway. Six months after moving to New Orleans, her only real friend was Lynda. A fleeting thought raced through her mind—why on earth had she told her mother she wanted to stay here? She should go home to Maryland and forget the past two weeks had ever happened. Because none of what she’d learned about herself in those two weeks even mattered without Jack. She wasn’t sure what it was about him that had opened up the box of secret desires inside her, but he was the man with the key. Without him, she’d begun to feel the box slowly closing back up. She didn’t want to share such hot, brazen intimacies with anyone else—ever.

“You’ve reached Lynda. Wait for the beep, then tell me what you need.”

“Liz?
Chere
, are you there?”

Liz gasped at the sound of Jack’s voice. Then she bolted off the couch and got her feet tangled in an afghan as she tripped her way across the carpet to the phone. She yanked it up just as he’d started to speak again. “Jack, I’m here.”

“I’m so glad,” he said, his tone familiar, wonderfully warm. “I’ve missed your voice, darlin’.”

“You have?”

“I’ve got so much to explain to you,
chere
. But I don’t wanna do it on the phone—I wanna see your face. That is, if you’ll see me.”

Liz nearly couldn’t answer, too pent-up with emotion. Finally, she managed to say, “Yes. I will, Jack. I will.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Can I make dinner for you, here at my place?”

Liz had missed the cozy privacy of his apartment and couldn’t think of anywhere else she’d rather see him. “That…would be nice,” she struggled to get out.

“Seven?”

She glanced at the clock, then down at herself. She had a lot of grooming to do. “Seven-thirty.”

“I can’t wait,
chere
.”

“I’ll…be there,” she said. Hanging up the phone, she fell back into the nearest easy chair.

What had just happened here? Was she feeling too happy too fast? This didn’t mean he loved her—it didn’t even mean he wanted to get back together. But he’d sounded so sexy, so seductive. And the important thing was that she would see him in only a couple of hours. And that the night, like every night in the French Quarter, was full of possibilities.

* * * * *

She showed up in a long, pretty, flowing dress that bloomed with tiny blue and purple flowers and made her look like some kind of beautiful storybook fairy princess. Well, a
sexy
storybook fairy princess, because the dress clung to her curves and possessed a low v-neck that instantly made Jack want to kiss the shadowy valley between her breasts and run his hands over her lush curves. He checked the urge and hoped he’d have the chance later. “It’s good to see you,” he said, standing back to let her in.

Her smile—the sweet, timid one he’d seen on more than a few occasions—seemed to radiate through him. “You, too.”

He took her hand—
merde
, just to touch her again was so damn good—and led her out onto the balcony. He held out her chair as she sat down at the table he’d set with good dishes and linen napkins, and even a small vase of fresh flowers.

She bit her lip and gazed up at him. “This looks so nice.”

“It’s all for you,
chere
. I hope you like it.”

Her smile said yes, and he couldn’t help smiling back.

After reaching into the ice bucket he’d brought out earlier, then pouring wine in two stemmed glasses, he returned to the kitchen where he’d prepared a Cajun feast. He hoped he’d made a good decision, but deep inside he wasn’t worried—something told him he had.

“I never asked if you like Cajun food, darlin,’ but if this doesn’t suit you, just say so and we’ll order somethin’ in.” With that, he set down a large plate for each of them, both heaping with piles of his homemade jambalaya, red beans and rice, Cajun shrimp, and crawfish cakes.

She cast a tentative smile as she lifted her gaze from the plate to his eyes. “To tell you the truth, in all the time I’ve been here, I’ve never really tried any Cajun food.”

Taking a seat across from her, he raised playful eyebrows. “An adventurous girl like you?”

She laughed lightly. “As you well know, I didn’t used to be so adventurous. And I suppose my taste in food was a lot like me—I’ve always played it safe. When I go to a restaurant, I order something tried and true.”

He tilted his head. “
Mais
, are you willin’ to try this, or should we get somethin’ else? I don’t mind if you’d rather go for a steak and baked potato.”

She reached for her fork. “As you said, I’m much more adventurous now, so I’ll give this a try.”