by JoAnn Ross
“Why not?”
“Because, you see, my daddy had already proven who the better man—or gator—was. So they came to an understandin', my daddy and M'su Cocodrile, that they'd just leave each other to his own business. Later my daddy taught him to bellow.”
“I seem to recall alligators knowing how to do that without any special training,” Dani interjected dryly.
The story was all lies, of course. But it was certainly entertaining her son.
“Sure enough they do,” Jack agreed without missing a beat. “But I'll bet you never heard of one who'd do it on command.”
He turned back to Matt. “All my daddy had to do was whistle.” He pursed his lips and let out an earsplitting sound that had the alligator out on the lawn lifting his wide, corrugated head. “And M'su Cocodrile'd come from wherever he was in the swamp and pull himself up onto our lawn.
“Then he'd arch his back, which was as wide as this table, just like this”—he demonstrated again—“and let out a huge roar people could hear all the way across Blue Bayou, even down to the Gulf, where shrimpers would say that roar was the spookiest thing they ever did hear.”
“He roared? Like a lion?”
“Not exactly. More like if you were to cross a lion with a locomotive. This was a roar that warned folks that they'd better not make the mistake of foolin' around with M'su Cocodrile. That sound shimmied itself right up your backbone and down again, rattlin' all your bones.
“Why, the family who lived down the road a ways swore that gator just roared their house right off its foundation.”
“Wow.” Matt let out a huge breath. “That's amazing.”
“I thought so, too.” Jack winked at Dani. “I sure did like that old reptile. He was an ugly fella, but likable, in his own way. Every day, round noontime, he'd come up to the boat dock, beggin' handouts. Got so my maman would make an extra po'boy just for him.”
“I never heard of an alligator eating sandwiches.”
“Oh, they're not choosy. They'll eat most anything you toss their way.”
“What happened to him?”
Jack rubbed his jaw. “I don't know. One day he just up and went away. When I got a little older and learned about girls, how pretty they are and how good they smell, I sorta figured he met up with a lady gator and decided to set up housekeeping in her bayou.”
“Alligators don't smell good.”
“They do to other gators.” The grin he flashed earned one back in return from Matt. Story finished, he turned to Dani. “You ready?”
“For what?”
“To drive on up to Angola and pick up the judge.”
“I was intending to do that myself.”
“Well, now, I can see why you might want a little privacy the first time you see your daddy after all these years, but the thing is, I sorta promised the judge I'd be the one to come fetch him.”
“I see.” An entirely different type of jealousy than the one caused by the erotica-reading blonde stirred. “I was planning to surprise him.”
“Oh, you'll be doin' that, sure enough. Even with me doing the driving.”
“Won't it be a little crowded in your truck?”
“Would be, if I'd brought it. But I've got the GTO today.”
“Do you really have a GTO?” Matt breathed the name of the car with awe. Dani knew that in her son's personal hierarchy, this outranked even a pirate.
“Sure do. Three deuces, a four-speed, and a three-eighty-nine. That big ol' engine can suck birds from the sky. Have to be careful whenever I drive past mamas taking their newborns for walks, so I won't accidentally suck their little babies right out of their carriages.”
“Mr. Callahan has always been fond of exaggeration,” Dani informed her son.
“Why don't you call me, Jack,” he suggested to Matt. “Since Mr. Callahan sounds awful formal for friends. And to tell the truth, I haven't sucked any babies up, but like I said, that's because I'm real careful whenever I drive by 'em.
“My aunt Marielle found the car out in her barn over in New Iberia after her husband passed on and gave it to me way back when I was in high school. It needed the rust ground off it and a new paint job, but the minute I lifted that old tarp and saw what Uncle Leon had been hidin' under there all those years, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.”
“Wow.” Matt exhaled a long breath, enthralled by the thought of such a wondrous event. “You were really lucky.”
“Yeah. I've had to store it for a lot of years, since I was sorta moving around the world, but the first thing I did when I got back here was get her detailed and lookin' as fine as ever. So you like cars, huh?”
“Yessir!”
“I doubt if there's a Hot Wheels car my son doesn't own,” Dani said.
“Mom doesn't understand it's a guy thing,” Matt explained to Jack.
The remark was so out of character, Dani could only stare at him.
“Your mom's a terrific lady, but what can you expect from someone who drives a station wagon?”
“That car just happens to be the safest vehicle on the road,” Dani informed him. She'd studied all the crash tests before buying it five years ago to ensure Matt's security.
“Probably is. But it's still a chick car. A mom chick car,” he tacked on.
She folded her arms. “Perhaps that's because I am a mother. Who wants to keep my child safe. It also happens to be a grown-up car. Unlike some others.”
“The GTO sure isn't for grown-ups,” Jack agreed easily. “That's what's fun about it.” He grinned at Matt again. “There's a car show in Baton Rouge next month. Wanna go check out the new concept cars?”
“Wow! Can I, Mom?”
“May I. And we'll see.”
“You can come, too,” Jack offered magnanimously. “Maybe find yourself a nice new minivan.”
“Thank you.” Her answering smile was sweetly false. “I'm quite happy with the vehicle I have.”
“Please may I go, Mom?” Matt asked again on something perilously close to a whine.
“I said, we'll see.”
“Give your mom some space, Matt,” Jack suggested. Then he winked, guy to guy. “I'll work on her on the way to the prison.”
Dani folded her arms, preparing to stand her ground. “I still don't need you to drive me—”
“I think it's a grand idea,” Orèlia entered the argument. “You wouldn't want to risk making a wrong turn along the way, gettin' lost in the storm, and keeping your papa waiting.”
Dani refrained from pointing out that since her father had, by his own choice, by ignoring all her letters and phone calls and refusing to let her visit the prison, waited seven long years to see her and his only grandson, a few minutes one way or the other wasn't going to make that much difference.
But it would. The idea of her father being in prison was horrible enough. The mental image of him walking out with no one there to meet him was unthinkable.
Jack was standing there, leaning against the refrigerator-door, legs crossed, hands in his pockets, appearing deceptively easygoing. But the steely look in his eyes assured Dani that she didn't stand a chance to win this one.
Knowing when she was licked, she relented on a huff of breath. “All right. It appears I don't have any choice.”
“Oh, you always have a choice, chère,” he responded easily. “And this is a good one you're makin'.”
She kissed Matt, said goodbye to Orèlia, who'd watched the little drama being played out in her kitchen with undisguised interest, then made a dash through the rain to the car, which he'd painted the same candy apple red it had been that summer.
“You really didn't have any right to do this,” she muttered when they were both in the car.
“Far be it from me to start a day out by arguing with a pretty woman, but you're wrong. I told you, sugar, I made a promise.”
“I don't know why that should bother you. Since you've certainly broken promises before.”
“Be careful what buttons you pus
h, Danielle.” He twisted the key in the ignition. “Because sometimes a person can get into trouble when they don't know what they're talking about.”
The engine came alive with a mighty roar that vibrated through her bones, reminding Dani of those reckless drag races that could have gotten him killed, even though he'd always won. “I know what happened,” she countered. As soon as she'd shared the innermost secret of her heart—that she loved him—he'd taken off.
He shot her a look. “You're dead wrong.”
The easygoing man who'd offered to teach her son how to play baseball, who'd invited him to a car show, and concocted that ridiculous tall tale about Sheriff Callahan taming an alligator was gone. In his place was a rough, dangerous man who looked every bit the devil people had once claimed him to be.
Not having any idea what to say to this intimidating stranger, Dani held her tongue on the drive out of town.
Perhaps it was because the rain streaming down the window and the dark, lowered sky heightened the intimacy of their situation, perhaps it was because he'd been thinking of her continually these days as his heroine took on more and more of Dani's traits.
Perhaps it was because whenever he did finally fall into bed after a long day of working on the house and an equally long night of writing, his dreams were filled with her.
Or it could be, Jack considered, because she was back in the same car where they'd passed so many hot summer nights. More than likely it was all of the above, but the woman was driving him crazy.
The scent blooming from her skin was like green meadows after a summer rain, reminding him all too vividly of the day they'd gotten drenched going out to his camp in the pirogue. They hadn't bothered to dry off. He'd dragged her to his bed as soon as they'd gotten in the cabin door, and they'd rolled around on the moss stuffed mattress, ripping at each other's clothes, her soft white hands as desperate as his, her mouth as hungry, her slender body as fluid as water, as soft as silk, as hot as hellfire.
He wondered if she'd taste the same.
Wondered if she'd still make those sexy little noises when he took her breasts into his mouth and sucked so hard he could feel her tightening around him.
Wondered if she'd still scream when she came?
“I don't understand why you're doing this,” Dani said, breaking the silence.
“I told you, I promised the judge.”
“I wasn't talking about driving to the prison. I'm referring to the way you've been treating me. It was obvious you didn't want to see me when I first came home. You wouldn't return my calls, you made me come all the way out into the swamp at night to track you down at Beau Soleil, and when I did, you said the same thing you told me that summer, that I should stay away from you.”
“You probably should.”
“Then why did you show up at the library and talk about carrying my books? Why did you go out of your way to be nice to Matt? Was all that talk about baseball and cars just a way to sleep with me?”
“Bon Dieu, I'd never use a boy to get sex from his maman.” Since it grated that she'd actually believe he was capable of something that low, he decided if she was going to think the worst, he might as well help her out. He twisted his mouth into a mocking leer of a smile. Then winked. “I can handle that all on my own.”
“You're doing it again.” Jack liked the heat in her voice. Liked that he could still get beneath her skin and tap the passion he knew flowed there.
“Doin' what?” he asked, knowing exactly what she was talking about.
“Swinging back and forth between treating me like you'd just as soon I pack Matt in the car and drive back to Virginia, then acting as if you want me in your bed—”
“Oh, there's no acting goin' on there. I definitely want you in my bed. Or your bed. Or the backseat, like in the good old days, and on top of your tidy little library desk.
“The truth of the matter is that I want you just about every place and every way there is to do it, sugar. And a few that haven't been invented yet.”
“That's just sex.”
“Hell yes, it's sex. And it'd be damn good. The best you've ever had.”
“When you get around to using that library card, Jack, you might want to check out a dictionary.”
“Why?”
“So you can look up your picture under arrogance.”
“It's not braggin' if it's true,” he repeated what he'd said when she'd complimented him on his gumbo.
Jack gave her points for trying, but he wasn't buying that cool act. Her hair was already escaping the neat French roll, little tendrils of it trailing down her cheek. She could pull her lips into as tight a line as she wanted, but any man still alive below the waist could see that full, luscious mouth had been created to satisfy male fantasies.
In her little black dress and pearls she could have been on her way to some uptown lady's tea. But Jack could see beneath the almost prim exterior to the woman who, ever since she'd landed back in town, had him thinking too damn much about dark rooms, hot nights, and tangled sheets.
He reached across the space between them and caressed her leg.
“We didn't have all that much in common back then.” He slipped a finger beneath the short hem of her skirt, traced a slow, figure eight on the silky skin at the back of her knee, and was rewarded by her sharp intake of breath.
“Jack—”
“The princess and the jailbird,” he murmured, ignoring her intended protest. Not quite sure which of them he was tormenting more, he kept his eyes on the rain-slick road while moving his hand higher. “But we were sure damn good at driving each other crazy.”
She didn't even attempt to answer that. Her breath turned choppy as his fingers skimmed up the inside of her thigh to play with the elastic band at the leg of her French-cut panties. He had the hard-on of his life and heaven was just a few inches away.
“Dammit, Jack, would you just knock it off?”
It was like turning off a lightbulb. One minute she'd been lifting her hips, like a fluffy marmalade 'tite chatte begging to be petted. The next she was jerking away as if he'd replaced his finger with a red-hot poker.
Which, Jack thought with grim amusement as he returned his hand to the steering wheel, was damn close to what he wanted to do.
She massaged her temples. “I don't know what gets into me whenever I'm with you.”
“Same thing gets into me, sugar. Lust, pure and simple.”
“It's not simple.” She leaned her head against the back of her seat and pressed her fingers against her eyelids. “Nothing about you has ever been simple.”
“Me?” He lifted a hand to his chest. “I've always been an open book.”
It was, admittedly, a lie. But Jack had gotten so used to lying, it sure wasn't going to keep him up at night worrying about it.
“The kind of book that comes in a brown paper wrapper.”
She shot him a bleak, confused look that if his groin wasn't throbbing so damn hard would have probably strummed any lingering chords of conscience he might have buried somewhere deep inside himself.
“How do you do it? Five minutes with you and I'm seventeen years old again.”
He shrugged. “You're not a teenager anymore, Danielle. You're a woman. A beautiful, desirable woman with a strong sex drive. You should be celebrating, you. Instead of fretting that pretty head over somethin' that's as natural as breathing.”
“For you, perhaps.”
“Mais yeah.” Just as he'd refused to deny it the other night, he would not now.
“I'm not made that way.”
“Coulda fooled me.” As often happened in this lowland country, the rain ceased as quickly as it had begun. When the sun broke blindingly through a break in the clouds, he pulled a pair of sunglasses from his shirt pocket and shoved them onto his face. “Another couple minutes with my hand up your skirt, and you would have been jumping right into my lap.”
“That was a mistake.” She pretended a sudden interest in the stands of cypress out
side the GTO's passenger window. “One that won't be happening again.”
“You go ahead and tell yourself that if it makes you feel better. But I remember having to wear a shirt all that long hot summer because your fingernails kept stripping skin off my back. And don't think I've forgotten how you went off like a Mardi Gras firecracker the first time I put my mouth between your legs. And—”
“I get the point,” she cut him off. “But for your information, I was only that way with—”
She slammed her mouth shut, but it was too late.
“With me.” Hell, perverse as he was, Jack was even enjoying the way she was glaring at him.
“Arrogant,” she muttered.
“And good,” he reminded her. “The best you've ever had, I believe you were going to say.”
She arched a blond brow. “Now you're a mind reader?”
“Non. I don't have to. Not when your pretty face and curvy little body is saying, ‘I want to fuck Jack Callahan.’ ”
“I've never used that word in my life.”
“Don't have to say it to do it, angel.”
She cursed. It wasn't the F word. But it was damn close. Jack grinned.
“Good as I was, I've gotten a whole lot better. Jus' you wait and see.”
“Why don't I take your word for it, and we'll leave it at that,” she suggested on a huff that did appealing things to her breasts.
Of course, everything about Danielle Dupree was proving appealing. Which, if he had any sense, would scare the shit out of him. But oddly enough, as successful as he'd become these past years, for the first time in a very long while Jack was enjoying himself immensely. Enjoying her.
If it weren't for the seriousness of her mission, if they were only out for a Sunday drive, Dani would have appreciated the stunning scenery. Towering oak trees draped in silver Spanish moss lined the road, pecan trees stood in straight rows in rolling fields and towered over houses in small yards. The azaleas were in bloom, dazzling the eye with riots of color.
“You know,” she murmured as the scenery flashed by the passenger window, “you won't be able to keep your promise to meet my father at the prison if you end up getting us both killed.”
