Blue Bayou

by JoAnn Ross

  Still, her library was a place of knowledge and it was her responsibility to see that patrons received the illumination they were seeking.

  “I can suggest a few books.” She pulled out a piece of paper, turned to her computer screen and wrote some titles down. “Not just about Beau Soleil, but other houses and supposed hauntings.” She hoped she could throw him off the track.

  No such luck. “Thanks. But it's Beau Soleil I'm interested in,” he said, taking the paper nonetheless. “That is where Jack Callahan's hanging out these days, isn't it?”

  The distaste of lying warred with Dani's belief that Jack deserved his privacy. Plus, she felt a twinge of something she just couldn't quite put her finger on.

  He chuckled when she hesitated answering. “Don't worry about betraying a confidence. I'm pretty good at digging out information; I'll just start with these books and go from there. It's been a delight chatting with you, Ms. Dupree. Hopefully we'll be able to repeat the experience again soon.” He winked. “Meanwhile, keep your spirits up.

  “I'm sorry,” he said with another of those friendly smiles that she decided must have helped win over his wife to his side of the ghost argument. “I can never resist saying that.”

  Dani watched as he took the books from the shelves over to a study table by the window. Then Mrs. Rullier came in looking for the latest true-crime murder, Sally Olivier needed help with her Internet search for wedding-cake recipes for her niece's upcoming nuptials, and Jean Babin wanted a book on fiberglassing a pirogue. The next time Dani looked up, Dallas Chapman, ghostbuster, was gone.

  She liked it. Although he'd told himself that it shouldn't make such a difference, he'd hoped she would. Which was why Jack found himself holding his breath while Danielle waxed enthusiastic over the progress he'd made on her former bedroom since she'd last seen it, a mere week ago when they'd brought Matt out to Beau Soleil.

  He'd kept two crews working nearly around the clock to complete the work; the walls were now a misty green that echoed the view outside the window, the trim was a creamy white again, the floor had been sanded and stained to a lighter finish than it had been when she'd lived here. He'd hand-sanded the rust from the lacy white bed himself, and had, with Desiree's help, located a crocheted spread at an antique store in Lafourche Crossing, which could have been the same one he remembered being on this same bed so many years ago. And while he definitely hadn't understood Desiree's contention that a woman could never have too many pillows, he'd piled a dizzying array of ruffled pillows in various shapes and sizes atop the spread.

  They'd moved on to the adjoining bathroom, where he was showing off the blatantly hedonistic round whirlpool tub that was nearly large enough to swim laps in when his cell phone rang.

  “I've been thinking about your ultimatum,” the judge said without preamble.

  “Oh?” Jack had been watching Dani run her hand up the swan's neck of the tub's faucet, indulging a hot fantasy of her stroking him with such open pleasure when her father's curt words brought him crashing back to reality.

  “I've decided you're right. She deserves to know the truth.”

  Having admittedly been concerned about what he'd do if the judge challenged his ultimatum, Jack felt a cooling rush of relief. “I see,” he said mildly, waiting to hear when, exactly, Dupree planned to admit what he'd done.

  “The thing is, I'm a dying man; I don't have the strength for confrontation. If you're so hot for her to know why you left town, then you can damn well be the one to tell her.”

  “I understand.” Jack smiled reassuringly at Dani, who'd glanced over at him, obviously curious about his curt responses.

  “Well, then. That's settled.” The judge hung up, ending the call as brusquely as he'd begun it.

  “I suppose so,” Jack murmured to dead air.

  “Jack?” Dani's expression was concerned. “Is something wrong?”

  He rubbed his jaw, reminding himself of the old prohibition about being careful what you wished for. Now that the old man had dumped the problem in his lap, he wasn't quite sure how to broach the subject.

  “No. At least I don't think so.”

  How in the hell did you tell a woman that the father with whom she was struggling so hard to establish a relationship during the brief time he may have left was a common blackmailer who'd played with both their lives as if they were no more than pawns he'd moved around a chess board if for no other reason than to prove he could?

  “It wasn't my father calling, was it?” A little frown drew her eyebrows together.

  Jack was a world-class liar. It was a talent he'd honed to perfection, a skill that had allowed him to continue working deep undercover far longer than was safe or wise. Street junkie to Median cartel leader, it hadn't mattered, and while he'd admittedly had his detractors, everyone he'd ever worked with had proclaimed him to be the best prevaricator in the drug-enforcement business. Hands down.

  But Danielle was an entirely different story. There'd always been something about her, perhaps her own unwavering sense of goodness and honesty, that made it damn near impossible to lie. Which was why he hadn't dared say goodbye to her. There would have been no way he could have looked into those soft hazel eyes and not told her the truth about why he was leaving. So, to his everlasting shame, he'd taken the coward's way out, leaving Blue Bayou, and her, without a word of explanation.

  “What makes you think it was the judge?” he asked.

  Her frown deepened at his slight hesitation. “I don't know. There was just something about the way you were talking. . . .” Her cheeks, which had been touched by the sun during the picnic lunch he'd picked up at Cajun Cal's for them to share in the park on her lunch hour, paled. “It's not Matt, is it? Daddy wasn't calling to say anything had happened to him?”

  “Non. You know I'd never keep any news of your boy from you.”

  “Then he's all right?” Her slender hand was on his sleeve, her short, neatly buffed nails digging into his arm.

  “So far as I know he's still in the kitchen makin' pralines with Orèlia, same as when we left the house.”

  “And my father? Nothing's happened to him?”

  “Hell, Dani, I know the judge thinks he's gonna kick the bucket at any moment and since the doc thinks there's an outside chance of that happening, it makes sense you've bought into the idea, too.” He couldn't quite pull off what he'd wanted to be an encouraging smile, proving yet again how difficult it was to lie to a woman who wore her heart in her eyes. “But the way I figure it, he may just outlast all of us, being how the old bastard's too tough to die.”

  “Everyone dies.”

  “Yeah, you'd think that was the case. Your mother, my maman, my dad, even that prick you made the mistake of marrying are all gone. But you know what the judge tol' me when he caught me vandalizing those mailboxes back when I was fifteen?”

  “No.”

  “I made some smart-ass crack about him being an old man who wasn't always gonna be sitting up on that bench, hinting, in my less than subtle teenage juvenile delinquent wannabe fashion, that I'd outlive him and continue doing whatever I damn well pleased.” Jack smiled faintly at the memory. “He pulled me out of that chair like I weighed no more than Matt and told me I shouldn't count on outlivin' him, since he was damn near invincible, and when the world finally burned itself out, the only things gonna be left were him and a bunch of cockroaches.”

  “Isn't that a lovely thought.” She sighed, making him want to put his arms around her and reassure her that everything was going to be all right. Which was a bit difficult to do since he wasn't so sure of that himself.

  Christ. He'd been working toward this moment since he'd realized that finishing what they'd begun that summer was inevitable. It was time to get things out in the open, to finally put the past behind them. Jack knew he should tell her now. But the part of him that was about to explode was arguing with equal vigor that the potentially difficult subject could be broached more easily when he wasn't so distracted by a
driving need to get naked.

  She went over to the window she used to climb out of to meet him and leaned her forehead against the glass. “Do you remember those balls that used to tell the future?” she asked softly.

  “Sure. Nate had one.” He'd also claimed it had told him he was going to lose his virginity with Misty Montgomery, which turned out to be true enough, but Jack had always put that incident down to Misty's reputation more than any psychic powers found in some dimestore black plastic ball.

  “I did, too. I used to stand here, watching out the window, and ask it if you'd come to make love to me.”

  “That was a pretty easy one since signs definitely pointed to yes,” he said.

  With her back to him, he felt the smile more than saw it. “I used to ask it everything. Would I get an A on my history test, would I get elected to Homecoming Court, would I grow up to be as pretty as people say my mama was—”

  “That's an easy one. You're a lot prettier.”

  “How would you know? Our families didn't even know each other when my mother was alive.”

  “Maybe not. But I saw a picture of her once.” He didn't say that it'd actually been a porn flick he and Nate had rented on a clandestine trip to an adult book store across the parish line. He'd been fourteen, Nate a year younger. For the next two weeks he'd had such hot dreams that every time he'd look at Danielle, he'd see her mother in her face, and his dick, which had already begun to torture him at the slightest provocation, would get as stiff as his old hunting dog Evangeline's tail when she'd point out quail.

  “She was pretty enough in a flashy sort of way,” he said. Flash and trash, he realized now, deciding there was nothing to be gained by admitting that she'd also been damn hot, especially for someone's mom, for Chrissakes, in her role as the nympho nurse who'd brought a whole new meaning to bedside manner. Hell, Nate had been so impressed, he'd given up that week's idea of becoming a pro baseball player and decided to go to medical school instead.

  “But yours is a deep-down beauty. The kind that lasts.”

  She glanced back over her shoulder, her faint smile not quite reaching her eyes. “That's nice of you to say.”

  “It's the truth.”

  “I know it sounds silly now,” she murmured. “But I really believed that silly ball.”

  Jack shrugged, wondering where, exactly they were going with this. “Don't feel like the Lone Ranger. So did Nate.”

  She laughed, just a little at that. Then sobered. “Wouldn't it be nice if there really was some way to tell the future?”

  “I don't know. I suppose it depends on whether it'd be possible to change the outcome of events.”

  If he'd known his dad was going to die the next day, he sure as hell would have gotten to the court house earlier, before that wigged-out yahoo with the gun, so he could have at least tried to prevent his father's murder. But would he have wanted to know ahead of time if he'd also known that his father's fate was inescapable? Jack didn't think so.

  He came up behind her. “I won't claim to be able to read the future, chère, but I do know what's going to happen here for the next little while.” His lips brushed her neck.

  “What?” Her breath shuddered out as his teeth nipped her earlobe.

  “I'm going to do things to you, Danielle.” He glided his fingers over her collarbone. “With you. Wicked, impossible, exquisite things.” Watching their reflections in the night-darkened glass, he skimmed a fingertip down her throat. “I'm going to take you places you've only ever dreamed of. . . .

  “Then I'm going to take you.” He slipped his hands beneath the hem of her blouse and cupped her breasts in his palms, embracing the warm weight of them. “And you, mon coeur, are going to love it.”

  My heart. Dani might not have spoken nearly as much French as Jack had growing up, but she definitely recognized that endearment. It had been such a very long time since a man had wanted her. Longer still since she'd wanted a man the way she wanted this man.

  “I've been wanting to do this since that night you first came to Beau Soleil.” He began to unbutton her blouse, folding back the silk with extreme care, as if he were unwrapping the most exquisite of gifts. Just the sight of his dark hands on her body created a hormonal jolt. “Pretending you were looking for carpenters.”

  “I was looking for carpenters.”

  “Perhaps.” He bit down gently on the sensitive place where neck and shoulder joined, sending a rippling thrill of anticipation racing through her. “But your sweet little body, and your lonely heart, they wanted me to do this.”

  He turned her in his arms, his hand fisted in her hair, pulling her head back to allow his mouth full access to her throat while his fingers tightened on her breast. When the wanting had her trembling, Jack smiled a slow, satisfied rogue's smile.

  He didn't take his eyes from her face as he slowly unfastened her bra. Then, still watching, drew the straps with infinite slowness down her arms. There was a tenderness in his gaze Dani couldn't remember ever witnessing that longago summer. Of course then, with the exception of their last night together, the sex had been fast and hot, like an August whirlwind. How could she have reached adulthood without ever having known this slow, glorious torment?

  “Lovely,” he murmured. His fingers brushed over her like whispers on silk. He lowered his head, his tongue dampening her warming flesh as it sketched concentric circles outward to her nipple.

  Lowell had always preferred silence during their lovemaking, and while her former husband was the last person she wanted to be thinking about right now, old habits died hard, and Dani bit her lip to keep from whimpering.

  “Don't do that.” He returned his mouth to hers. “I don't want you to hold anything back. I want to know what you like.” His hands tempted, his mouth seduced, his tongue as it slipped between her parted lips, promised. “I want to know what gives you pleasure.”

  “You do,” she whispered on a ragged thread of sound.

  Dani felt his smile.

  He continued undressing her with agonizing slowness, treating each new bit of flesh to the same prolonged exploration.

  He watched her face again as the desire rose in her, watched her innermost feelings, witnessed firsthand how weak and needy he could make her feel.

  She'd been surprised to discover since returning home that she and her father actually shared something in common: They both felt a need for control. The judge had found it by wielding power while she'd chosen instead a life of tidy, predictable order.

  But now, with Jack, she was discovering that there was something alluring about surrendering control, of letting a man you trusted push you to the outer limits of your sexuality.

  Imagined fantasies of what he might be planning flashed in her mind—erotic, vivid, demanding. Every nerve ending reached for his touch; every pore sought relief from a passion too long denied. It was frightening. And it was wonderful.

  “Bon Dieu, you're the most responsive woman I've ever known.”

  Dani refused to think about the other women he'd known. They belonged in his past; she was the woman with him now.

  “Only with you,” she admitted on a ragged moan as he pulled her down onto the bed. Her melting, liquid thighs fell open.

  “I know.”

  His lips tugged on her other nipple while he responded to the silent, unconscious invitation of her body by pressing the heel of his hand against her mound.

  “Arrogant beast,” she muttered even as desire sang its clear high notes in her blood.

  “It's not arrogance.”

  “Because it's true?” The way he was looking at her, like a man about to feast on forbidden fruit after a long fast, warmed Dani from the inside out. No man had ever looked at her like Jack did. With such vivid, focused intensity.

  “No point in lyin', sugar, when we both know it's true.” He continued to caress her body from her shoulders to her knees. “Because you've always had the same effect on me. Do you have any idea how many women I had to sleep with
before I got over you?”

  “No.” Her head was spinning, making it difficult to think. To speak. Heat spread beneath her skin, across her breasts, her stomach. Moisture pooled between her lax thighs.

  “I don' know, either. 'Cause I never did.” His tongue made a wet hot swathe down her stomach. “We're damn good together, chère. You and me.”

  “Jack . . .” As the pressure built inside her, Dani's hips moved restlessly, wanting, needing more. “Please.”

  “Not yet.” He lifted her hands above her head, holding them with one hand as he lowered his body onto hers, pressing her deep into the mattress.

  There was something unbearably erotic about being physically restrained while his fully dressed, fully aroused body moved against her naked one. Dani felt the prick of buttons against her breasts, the sharpness of a belt buckle at her belly, the rasp of the zipper, the roughness of denim. The stony hardness of his erection.

  Once again, he reminded her of a pirate. One with ravishment on his mind.

  “What did you say?” he asked against her mouth. She hadn't realized she'd spoken out loud. But imprisoned by a hunger a great deal stronger than the strong fingers which continued to hold her hands above her head, Dani could deny him nothing. So she told him the truth.

  “Ever since I first saw you on the gallerie that night, you've reminded me of Jean Laffite.”

  “Was that a good thing?” He kissed her again. Deeper, this time. “Or bad?” He continued to move against her, forward, then back.

  “Bad. In a good way.” The friction of their bodies sparked every nerve ending in Dani's body.

  “Good.” His tongue slid between her lips at the same time he brought her hand down and pressed it against her mound of golden hair.

  “Jack . . . no . . . I can't.” This was something done in private. With the bedroom door locked and the shades pulled.

  “Sure you can. I'll help you.” Ignoring her halfhearted protest, he began to move their joined hands, slowly at first, increasing the pressure, escalating the tempo, until breathless, Dani came in a long, slow, rolling wave that rose, crested, then settled.