For a while she thought they would catch up to Milo. The distance between the two boats dwindled by half. Then Milo turned down a channel so thick with cypress growth that their way grew jagged and filled with dark shadows.
“Can you see anything?” Andrei asked.
“A little. Up ahead I thought I saw movement to the right.”
Where the channel split, Andrei followed the right branch. He relied on her for direction several times more, but eventually, the waterway narrowed and the growth multiplied until neither of them could see more than a yard or two beyond the prow. The slough was already drying up. Soon it would be overgrown, impossible to navigate until the winter’s rain replenished it.
Andrei stopped paddling. His “We lost him” triggered Elizabeth’s release valve.
Stress poured out of her in waves, until she could breathe normally again. She hadn’t even realized how tight with dread she’d grown until this moment. Andrei might be the younger and stronger man, but Milo had years of illicit experience—dark paths he had followed to cover his crimes. He’d been desperate, ready to murder them both.
Carefully, Elizabeth turned around in the pirogue to face Andrei. Surprised when it didn’t rock wildly, she realized the growth was so thick that it cradled them.
“Let the authorities pick him up, Andrei. Don’t take any more chances, please. I don’t want him to kill you.”
Moonlight filtered through a break in the overgrowth and slashed across his features, which appeared puzzled to her.
“You sound as if you care what happens to me.”
Elizabeth blinked and frowned at him. “Of course I care. I’ve always cared.”
“Couldn’t prove it by me,” he said, sliding forward and nudging her so that she inched over, leaving him just enough room to squeeze in next to her. “One night you give the Gypsy boy a thrill ride. The next day he doesn’t exist for you.”
Thrill ride…
Yes, sharing the wonder of her own body for the first time had been more of a thrill than Elizabeth had expected. Remembering how she’d worried about her inexperience, she was thrilled to realize now that he’d found such pleasure in their union he still remembered it. But as for the rest…
“You didn’t exist for me?” she said incredulously. “Is that what you thought?” Elizabeth closed her eyes. “Of course it was. How could you think otherwise?”
“Was it otherwise, Lizzie?” Andrei asked softly. He turned on his side and reclined next to her on the floor of the boat, trailed a finger up her arm until gooseflesh followed. “Tell me.”
Her pulse was racing and her mouth went dry as she said, “My mother was murdered that same night, remember.”
“I remember wanting to comfort you as soon as I heard. I came to see you, and you didn’t want to be anywhere near me. So what was that?”
“Guilt. It was guilt, Andrei.” Elizabeth turned and leaned on her elbow so that she could look at him directly when she explained, “I left my debutante ball and found you. If I hadn’t, Mama might be alive today.”
“Guilt. I sensed that,” he admitted, “both then and now. I don’t understand. Why? How does that follow?”
“She’d warned me about getting involved with you, told me nothing good could come of our seeing each other. Now I think she was really judging herself and thinking of her own decision to break it off with Carlo. At my ball, she and Daddy had a fight. It all started over his saying he would have to leave early, to drive to Baton Rouge where he had an early breakfast meeting. I didn’t want to listen to any more but I caught the gist of the rest. Now I’m sure it was over Carlo, but at the time I didn’t want to know. All I could think of was you, how you made me feel good about myself. How you made me smile, no matter what. I was upset and so I left in search of you. I’m sure Mama figured it out. No matter what had been going on between her and Carlo, I think on that particular night, Mama went to the carnival looking for me.”
“All these years…you blamed yourself for her death?”
Elizabeth nodded. “I know differently now of course.”
“Do you?”
He reached out to touch her face and she shivered. He’d always had this effect on her, ever since she could remember. Even when she’d fought him, she’d wanted him.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you when I wouldn’t see you,” she whispered. “I loved you. But I loved Mama, too, and I was guilty and confused.”
“You loved me?” He sounded disbelieving.
How could he have not known? she wondered.
“You were different from any other boy of my acquaintance,” she told him. “You were…magical. Only I didn’t know how magical until tonight, until you saved yourself on the Tilt-a-Whirl and then again with Milo. How?”
“Gypsy magic.” He dipped his head and murmured in her hair, “I don’t know how. Some of us are born with gifts.”
A concept that was difficult to accept, she thought, even as she echoed, “Gifts? Plural?”
His low laugh made the hair on her arms stand at attention. “Indeed.”
“What, then?”
“Can’t you guess?” he murmured, the timbre of his voice making her quake inside. “I know what women want. I can read you without even touching you, Lizzie, though touching you is better.”
He gently swept the back of his fingers along the side of her face.
Elizabeth caught her breath, then let it out into a virtual explosion of air. “What do I want?”
“This.” He trailed the fingers lower, down her neck. “And this.” Then drew them forward along her collarbone and into the crevice between her breasts. “And this.”
He kissed her long and deep, and when she thought she would gladly give up breathing if only he would keep kissing her forever, he stopped. A river of emotion shot through Elizabeth and she suddenly felt weepy.
“You’re not going to cry, are you?” he asked, exactly as if he could read her emotions.
“No, of course not,” she murmured, fighting the sting against the back of her eyelids.
“Then why are you suddenly filled with such strong feelings?”
“Daddy,” she said, grabbing the first excuse she could find. “I was just thinking how relieved I am that he’s not the one who killed Mama.” Which of course was true.
“You had doubts?”
“Only ones created by other people. You. Miss Ina.”
“I apologize for that.”
“It isn’t your fault.”
“It is. I made you doubt your own father, partly because I couldn’t see another motive…partly because I was still angry with you.”
“Because I pulled away from you when you tried comforting me,” she said, understanding now what she hadn’t been able to understand then. “But that was ten years ago. And you never tried to see me again. You never came back.”
“How can you be sure?”
“The following summer I waited and waited for the carnival to come. And when it did, I went looking for you only to be told that you wouldn’t be back. That you were going to college and would become gadje, like your mother’s people. I understand the school part, but it was summer. Why didn’t you come back to the carnival for the summer?”
“Because of you,” Andrei said. “I couldn’t do it. I loved you, Lizzie, I’d loved you since you were a little girl. You were the reason I kept coming back. And then you were the reason I stayed away.”
“And now? This time you didn’t come back because of me.”
He shook his head. “I came back despite you, because there were some things…personal problems…I had to work out. And, God help me, Lizzie, because I still love you.”
He loved her still…Elizabeth frowned. “Why God help you?” Was he going to tell her he was committed to some other woman?
“Because there’s nothing I can do about it,” Andrei said, pulling away.
“I don’t understand.”
“More Gypsy magic. A curse, this,” he said grimly. �
�Valonia cursed the sons of those who put her only son in prison. Wyatt Boudreaux, Garner Rousseau and me.”
“What kind of curse?”
“The curse was different for each of us. Justice is blind. Love is death. The law is impotent.”
A shiver ran up Elizabeth’s spine. “Wyatt lost his sight on the job, but now he has it back, right? I don’t really know much about Garner.”
“For years, anyone he cared about died.”
“But doesn’t he love your cousin Sabina? She’s all right, isn’t she?”
Andrei nodded. “Though it was a close call. She almost died healing Garner.”
“But both men have worked through their curses. What about you? How did Valonia curse you?”
Andrei didn’t say anything. A taut connection wired between them, and suddenly Elizabeth understood.
“Oh,” she whispered.
“So you see why my loving you does neither of us any good,” he said bitterly.
“It does me good, Andrei. It does my heart good. As for the rest…I don’t care about some damn Gypsy curse!” Those tears were welling up in her eyes again, but this time she didn’t care. She reached out and touched him, running her fingertips along the beard stubble covering his cheek and jaw. “I’ve been so lonely for you all these years, Andrei. I’ve been unhappy deep down in the darkest reaches of my soul, but all that’s changed in the last few days. With you, I feel alive again. Please don’t deny me—I’ll take whatever you have to give.”
He caught her wrist and burned a kiss into it until Elizabeth felt faint. When he released it, she slid her hand behind his head and hooked him by the neck so that when she rolled back, he rolled with her.
“Lizzie…”
“No protests. Kiss me, Andrei. Kiss me like you love me.”
HE REALLY DID LOVE Lizzie, Andrei decided, impassioned by the thought, now more than ever. He tried to tell her so in a kiss that seared his soul.
Her generosity—telling him she wanted whatever he had to give—touched him deeply.
Even as he kissed her, as his body responded—just as it always did, only to disappoint him at the crucial moment—Andrei knew he was being selfish. He couldn’t give Lizzie what she needed…and he couldn’t stop himself from trying. But he wouldn’t let her go unsatisfied, and he would have the memory to last him a lifetime. It would have to, for no matter her protests, he couldn’t allow her to share his curse. In his heart he knew that while he would always love her, the fair thing for him to do was let her go.
He touched her breasts through the dress and felt her nipples spring forth to kiss his palms. He groaned into her mouth and explored lower, past her belly and her thighs, scooping up the material of her skirt and finding her flesh.
Lizzie moaned and spread her thighs and Andrei’s erection grew.
He wanted her more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life. Dipping a finger beneath her panties, he found her wet and ready for him. Hand trembling, he tugged them down below her hips. She helped him slide the panties down her legs and kick them aside. Then her hands found him. Her touch through the denim was exquisite, and he held his breath as she unzipped the jeans and slid her hands inside.
“Lizzie,” he breathed, heartsick at knowing that any second now, his erection would fade as it had so many times before he’d given up trying. “Stop.”
Tugging at his waistband and pulling it down over his hips, she didn’t seem to be listening. Andrei closed his eyes and prepared himself for the moment when he would disappoint her. He would make it up to her, though, he vowed, even as he felt light kisses across his stomach. He groaned and arched and suddenly he was surrounded by a wet, warm mouth.
“Lizzie…”
Her mouth worked magic. He grew harder, tauter, closer to release than he’d been in years.
He couldn’t help but take what pleasure he could. His fingers tangled in her hair and he moved against her. She had a clever mouth that kept him hard and aching for her. But he wanted other things, too. Closeness. Warmth. For, in reality, he’d missed that more than anything.
Groaning, he pulled Lizzie up so that he could kiss that clever mouth of hers. While he was doing so, she straddled him and shifted so that he felt her wet entrance against his tip. Unable to help himself, he pushed and the tip parted her silky lips.
Rather than failing as he’d done in the past, he slid right into Lizzie as if he belonged there.
“What have you done to me?” he murmured in her hair.
“Gadji magic,” she whispered, levering her hands against his chest and rocking over him.
Andrei slid a hand between them. He paid homage to her breasts, released them from the dress and bra so that he could kiss them and suckle them. Dipping a hand lower, he explored beneath her skirts until he found her center. She made a low noise deep in the back of her throat and arched. An increase in pressure, and she began to move faster and harder. He followed the beat with his fingers until she began to shudder.
“Now, Lizzie,” he urged, watching her face in the moonlight. “Come for me now!”
She cried out and went still, and his erection began to pulse—the beginning of the little death he hadn’t been able to capture for years. No orgasm had ever been longer in coming, he vowed, or as sweet.
When he pulled her back to him, Lizzie was still shuddering. Andrei wrapped his arms around the woman he loved and held her against his heart.
Somehow the curse had been broken.
Chapter Seven
Heat woke Elizabeth. Not the heat of the morning, because it was still too early. Andrei’s heat. His body was spooned around hers and he’d thrown an arm around her waist.
She slipped out from under the constriction and scooted away the few inches available to her. The boat was cramped, but she hadn’t minded. They hadn’t needed much room to make love in the dark of night.
But it was daylight, or would be soon.
Morning crept over the horizon like a forbidden lover. Elizabeth would have liked to creep away with it. Uncertainty filled her, and a glance at Andrei made her stomach knot. A miracle had happened between them—his curse had been broken. She remembered every word spoken in passion. She remembered every touch.
But she also remembered that night ten years before.
What if the morning brought her the same results, if in a different manner? She knew the carnival would be packed up today and gone tomorrow.
The last time, she had been the one to turn Andrei away. But no matter what he’d said about loving her, he hadn’t fought for her, hadn’t tried to chase away her doubts. After learning about her mother’s death, she’d been in shock. And, in her mind, she could only believe that he’d been glad for the excuse to go.
What if she’d been right?
And so, as if it was her very last chance, she drank in the sight of the man she loved. A sight that might have to last her a lifetime.
The lashes brushing his cheeks fluttered open and his dark gaze found hers. His lips curled into a smile.
“Morning,” he murmured.
“Morning,” she returned, her smile feeling brittle. He reached for her, but she backed off, saying, “We should get on our way and make that call to Leon Thibault.”
Andrei’s smile faded, but he didn’t argue, simply sat up and slid back to where he’d set the paddle. Elizabeth was both relieved and disappointed. She could have used some reassurances, rather than renewed strain between them.
Andrei used the paddle like a pole and shoved them back from the growth in which the pirogue had become tangled. She reached over and pushed against a cypress knee, then whipped her hand away when something slithered into the swamp nearby. A fat brown cottonmouth.
The journey back seemed fraught with danger. What looked to be logs in the dark became, in the morning light, sluggish alligators that opened their mouths and gulped air as they passed. At the shoreline, No Tresspassing! signs warned intruders to stay in their boats.
She kept her att
ention on the swamp so she wouldn’t have to think too deeply about what came next with Andrei. They churned through floating hyacinths, with mullet and shad leaping before the boat. And a festive line of red ribbons trailed into the bush, a track for inexperienced bullfrog hunters to follow.
When they arrived back at the dock, the other large pirogue was gone—fishermen started work early—and she wondered if an alert had already gone up about this one being stolen.
Andrei got out first and tied up the boat, then held out his hand to her.
Gazing up at his face, she couldn’t read him. Still, she took his hand and let him help her onto the dock. They stood there a moment, a breath apart—she with her eyes averted, waiting for him to say something that would dispel the chill that had more to do with her own uncertainty than the weather.
“Let’s stay together,” he said. “I don’t want anything happening to you.”
Not exactly romantic, but reassuring nevertheless.
Elizabeth figured they were halfway back to the live oak before she asked, “Do you think they’ll have trouble finding Milo? He could be far from here by now.”
“He would never leave Florica on her own,” Andrei said. “He would come back for her, may have already. And the carnival is his. Who knows what he might be planning?” he mused. “Don’t let down your guard.”
Elizabeth took the warning seriously, but nothing untoward happened. As they approached the grounds, however, mechanical noises got her attention.
“What is that?”
“The men are breaking down the rides. We were to be on the move tomorrow at daylight.”
Elizabeth swallowed hard. Andrei would be on the move, too. Then what? He still didn’t offer any reassurances.
As they cut across the carnival grounds, the noise suddenly stopped, only to be replaced by a cacophony of voices. And in the distance, a crowd gathered.
“Something is going on,” Andrei murmured, hurrying off.
Elizabeth kept up, and in a moment they were at the edge of a crowd gathered around the Tilt-a-Whirl. It wasn’t until they broke through the crush of bodies that Elizabeth recognized the two detectives. One was bending over something. Someone. A body. She pushed in closer and saw Milo Vasilli lying sprawled across the floor of the Tilt-a-Whirl, his eyes staring, his mouth open as if in a scream.
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