“Hey, Gerry!” Janie Jo, the manager, grinned at him and cracked her gum. “If you sell this place, I’ll kill you.”
“Nice to see you, too,” Gerry said, meaning it. She was fortyish, lively, and efficient, and she’d started working for Arthur in her college days, when Gerry was just a kid spending summers in Bayou Gavotte.
“Unless you sell it to Mirabel Lane.”
Damn and blast it all to hell. “Does she want to buy it?”
“Not that I know of.” Janie Jo grimaced. “She lives in New Orleans, and she’s going back home before long. But she’d be perfect. She understands this business. Have you met her yet?”
“Briefly,” Gerry said. Janie Jo led him past the cream and custard pits into the office. Down the corridor, workers—his workers now, damn it all—were hosing down the floor and tacking plastic sheeting in the food fight rooms. Jugs of chocolate syrup and molasses—customers got off on pouring them all over one another—lined the shelves. From the kitchen came the aroma of baked beans.
Once, long ago, Gerry had liked baked beans, but not anymore. Grandpa had dragged him here far too often, trying to interest him in the club. Not content with licking and eating food off one another in private, some customers got their jollies by doing it in the public rooms, and Gerry had seen too many beans plastered on too many fronts and backsides to want to eat them ever again. Grandpa Arthur had always had an “it takes all sorts” attitude, but Gerry could do very well without those sorts.
At least Janie Jo ordered the pies from someplace else. Gerry liked pie. He intended to keep it that way.
“Isn’t Mirabel wonderful?”
Damn it, Janie Jo didn’t even have the excuse of being male.
“She’s great with the customers. Something about her makes people lose their inhibitions much more easily, and not only that, she taught the cook to make the most amazing banana cream pies. Fresh custard and real whipped cream. Customers are paying premium prices for quality pies.”
Gerry blew out a breath. “What a waste of good food.”
“It’s not wasted. We don’t use the good stuff in the pits.” Janie Jo blew a bubble and popped it. “You should watch what happens when the customers buy those pies.”
No, I shouldn’t.
“After they have their food fight, they crawl all over one another, gobbling it up until every last crumb is gone.” She rolled her eyes. “Arthur was right. You really do need to loosen up. What happened to the fun-loving kid I once knew?”
“I’m plenty loose and fun-loving.” Gerry followed her into the office. “I just don’t see the point of playing with food.”
Janie Jo wrinkled her nose. “Maybe Mirabel will come tonight. She could convert even you.”
He tried to look neutral or even mildly amused, but judging by Janie Jo’s response, it didn’t work. “You really are going to sell the club, aren’t you?”
“Probably,” he said.
Janie Jo burst into tears. For the next half hour she sobbed out her fears that a new owner would turn the Pie Club into a sex club. “This is one of the few clubs in town that don’t emphasize sex,” she sniffled. “We have clean play. If customers get turned on here and go home and have sex afterward, that’s cool, but it’s not what we’re about. We even have a rule about no sex in the private rooms, although we don’t actually enforce it. That wouldn’t go over well in Bayou Gavotte.”
And you don’t think Mirabel would change the rule? She’s sex personified! And, he told himself, that’s all that crazy attraction was: ordinary garden-variety lust. Nothing to do with love.
Maybe Janie Jo, being female, was oblivious to Mirabel’s incredible sex appeal, although she must have noticed how besotted Arthur was. “Did Arthur meet Mirabel here at the club?”
Janie Jo blew her nose. “No, she was auditing a Mardi Gras history course at the summer session at Hellebore U. Arthur gave a guest lecture on paraphernalia, and they hit it off right away.”
Which seemed a mighty roundabout way to approach the old man if Mirabel was after him just for the club. Or the house, for that matter. Arthur had retired from the university eons ago, and most people didn’t even know about his longtime hobby and valuable collection of Mardi Gras keepsakes.
“She volunteers at a museum in New Orleans. She learned all about Arthur and his collection there.” Janie Jo buried her nose in another Kleenex.
Now it made more sense. Mirabel had found an opportunity to get to know Arthur, wormed her way into his confidence and his house, and maybe pocketed some of the more valuable keepsakes for herself. Gerry struggled to hide his dismay and find something to say. “She was lucky she got to meet him before he died.”
Janie Jo nodded sadly and dabbed at her eyes.
What if Arthur had noticed something missing? What if he’d confronted her with it? Gerry tried to make his voice flat and even. “I hear he had his heart attack in the alley.”
Janie Jo’s lip trembled.
Damn it, Gerry was doing his level best not to sound pissed off. “Right after they left the club.”
Her eyes overflowed again. “You’re mad at me, aren’t you? That’s why you’re selling the club, right? I’m sorry, Gerry, I’m really sorry, but it was my night off. The assistant manager doesn’t know CPR, but Mirabel does, I swear. She did her best, but he was already gone by the time the paramedics got there.”
“Janie Jo, nobody’s blaming you,” Gerry said, wondering how long Mirabel and Arthur were alone in the deserted alley before help arrived. One minute? Two? Five or more?
Regardless, it wasn’t Janie Jo’s fault. “He was ninety years old. His time had come.” He reassured her as best he could without promising to keep the damned club forever, gave her a hug, and left.
Five minutes later, he walked into the Bayou Gavotte police station. “Officer Turlow took that call,” said the pretty little dispatcher. She got on the phone to call the officer out front. “He got there ahead of the ambulance, but your grandpa was already dead, and Mirabel Lane was crying her heart out over him.” She scowled. “You’re not going to give me that gold digger spiel, are you? I heard enough of that from his daughter, April. She called over and over, saying poor Mirabel had killed him and trying to get us to arrest her. Even her sister June called once, but she just told us to be careful because Mirabel might be dangerous.” Judging by her expression, the dispatcher took these insults personally.
Mirabel Lane wasn’t the only person in the world with a charming smile. He offered the dispatcher his rueful version. “Aunt April thought all Grandpa’s girlfriends were gold diggers, and Auntie June has an overactive imagination. I was out of the country when he died, and I hoped you could give me a clear picture of what happened.” That sounded weak even to his ears, but he plowed on. “As you can imagine, my aunts weren’t much use.”
That mollified the dispatcher, but Turlow, a nervous young rookie, was no help either. Judging by his bashful recollection of the scene, he must have gone down under the onslaught of Mirabel’s appeal like . . .
Damn it all, way too much like Gerry himself had done.
* * *
What got into me? Mirabel stripped off her wet clothes and got into a hot shower. A cold one would have been more appropriate.
Sure, Arthur would have insisted that Gerry stay, but Arthur didn’t know about Sergio. It was one thing for her to rent a room from a ninety-year-old man. Even Sergio wouldn’t go into a jealous rage over that. It was another entirely for her to invite a hunk to spend the night.
Oh, well. Sergio hadn’t found her. Maybe he had another girlfriend by now. Maybe Gerry would find a hotel room. She hoped so.
Sort of.
After more than two months without, she was getting desperate for a taste of good, rich, male blood, not to mention some lusty sex along with it. With a regular guy, who didn’t carry a gun and a couple of knives or beat people up at the slightest provocation. Wouldn’t that be a welcome change? She’d long ago given up hope
of marriage, because she didn’t intend to bring up children in a crime-ridden environment, and most ordinary guys were either scared of fangs or unable to stand up to toughs.
“How do you do it?” she asked Ophelia, who showed up after it stopped raining to attack the running bamboo in the backyard. Ophelia had sworn off men forever.
“Rare steak, vibrators, and hard work,” she panted, hacking away with a machete at the tangled mass. “I’ll have to dig all this stuff up or it’ll take over again in no time.”
“Don’t your fangs ache for some real blood?”
Ophelia tossed a mangled stalk of bamboo onto a pile of debris on the lawn. “So much that I wish I could pull the damn things out.”
Ouch.
“But I’d still be horny as hell, so what would be the use?” She slashed and ripped, and dumped more bamboo on the pile.
Mirabel sighed her agreement. Sometimes men seemed like a necessary evil. Sergio had been fun for a while, but he’d gradually become so possessive and jealous over nothing—she didn’t bed-hop, whatever he imagined—that she’d had no choice but to dump him.
“I don’t know how you survive,” Mirabel said, thinking about Gerry and how delicious he looked and smelled, and how it was going to take all her strength to resist seducing him for even a day or two, much less another week or month or however long it took before Sergio transferred his lust to another woman.
“One day at a time,” Ophelia said. “Any word about Sergio?”
“No,” Mirabel grumbled, and went back to not thinking about Gerry Kingsley, one minute, one second at a time.
When he finally did show up—she’d known he would—she had already showered and dressed in a tank top and skirt for the club and was whipping the cream for tonight’s banana pies. “Make yourself at home,” she told him, waving him toward the cupboard that held the mugs. “I just brewed a pot of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Best coffee in the world.”
She sampled the cream, shook in a tad more powdered sugar, whipped it a bit longer, and scooped some onto her finger for a final taste. “Perfect. The cook’s daughter has a recital today, so I’m baking pies for the club.”
He poured himself a coffee and sat at the kitchen table. “That’s not necessary.” Gerry looked as grumpy as Mirabel felt and sounded awfully stiff. Totally the wrong kind of stiff, but for his own safety, it was for the best. She would keep her allure under wraps, and he’d stay one night and then go.
Sadness washed over her at the thought of him leaving. Even when he was grouchy, she liked him way too much. She wanted to keep him, here and now and forever. If she let him go, he would find some other girl, and irresistible vampire though she was, she never stole someone else’s man.
He would be better off—safer―with another girl. She had to let him go.
“They can make do with the kind of pies Janie Jo orders in,” he said.
“Not anymore,” Mirabel said. “Word’s gotten around about the real thing. Once customers taste my pie, they won’t accept second best.” Yet another reason she shouldn’t even think of coming on to him, but she couldn’t entirely suppress a giggle. She herded her thoughts back to where they belonged. “You don’t approve, do you? Arthur did.”
There was a grim set to Gerry’s mouth, but he put his feet on a chair and leaned back, one strong, tanned hand resting lightly on the table and the other curled around his mug. “Oh, I’m sure he did.” A calculating glint in his eye disconcerted her. Not that she wasn’t used to glints, but he looked almost angry.
Like this morning. What was eating him?
Not her, unfortunately. “Bad day?” she asked.
“I spent the last three hours with the accountant,” he said—and laughed.
Oh, God, he was cute when he laughed.
He sipped his coffee, but his eyes never left hers. “Bored out of my mind, but the club’s doing well. Janie Jo’s a great manager. Why would I object to anything she says works?”
No reason at all, but Mirabel had the feeling he did object.
To something.
Oh, crap. Surely he didn’t think she was a gold digger, like his aunts April and June did! She’d been shocked when they didn’t attend the funeral, even though Stan, that sweet lawyer, had warned her. So had Arthur, in his own way, a week after they’d met; he must have already been planning to change his will. She’d found it hard to accept the old guy’s vicious indictment of his two surviving daughters. Gerry’s mother was the only good one, Arthur had said. Those bitches April and June did their best to ruin Gerry. He gave in to them too often, but he’s a great kid.
Maybe, maybe not. She suppressed her rising annoyance. Sure, she had a vampire’s temper, but she never let it get the better of her. She focused her attention on the pies, slathering whipped cream across them in swirling strokes.
“I’d bet I’d like the taste of your cream.”
She flicked a glance at him, recognized the heat in his eyes, and dismay assailed her. That explained it. Even uptight, suspicious guys wanted her, and the control freak in this one resented the pull of her allure. Well, she resented some things about him, too. Not the blatant come-on, although it was a bit of a surprise, but she couldn’t stomach being taken for a gold digger. It wasn’t her fault that men got so besotted they willed her their worldly goods, and she couldn’t help it if some of them died violently.
If only Gerry didn’t smell so enticing. If only he didn’t have such a weary, kindhearted smile.
If only Arthur hadn’t loved him so much.
Not that she wanted to risk the safety of any man just to fulfill her inconvenient desires, but she couldn’t possibly take chances with Gerry Kingsley’s life.
There was no reason to, she told herself firmly. She hadn’t really fallen in love with him. That was just some weird anomaly caused by being ultra-horny.
She stalked to the cupboard, biting hard to keep her quivering, aching fangs in place, and took out a small bowl. She slopped some cream into it and set it in front of him. “Enjoy.”
* * *
Judging by the way she dumped the bowl on the table, Mirabel was pissed off. Based on the rage in her glare, she wanted to kill him.
Which was a good sign. Killing the idiot male before she seduced him into bequeathing her all his worldly goods made no sense for a gold digger.
She grabbed a spoon and chucked it across the table at him. This was a good sign, too. She’d rejected his lewd suggestion in no uncertain terms.
Damn. After such a stupid day, he’d been looking forward to succumbing to her wiles. Nothing he’d heard had proven anything one way or the other, but there was definitely cause for suspicion. He had to check Mirabel out himself.
He’d had it all planned: dangle his prosperous construction business and New Orleans properties before her and wait for her to rise to the bait. Or, rather, to invite him to rise to hers.
Maybe she was rejecting him now to make sure he didn’t find out too much about her, in which case he shouldn’t feel so disappointed. More likely, she just didn’t want him. He should drink the deliciously mellow coffee she’d served him, thank her, and go home.
He didn’t want to go home. He watched her through narrowed eyes. Her abundance of chestnut hair was pulled up in a rough knot; smallish breasts, sweetly lush, lurked coyly behind a lacy tank top; and her skirt curved gently over her ass, hinting at the delights beneath.
He shouldn’t nurture the tiny remnant of hope that she would change her mind about him. He dropped a spoonful of whipped cream into his coffee and slowly stirred. Silence hung in the air as she finished the pies and packed them in a plastic carrier.
“I’m off to the club.” She looked down her nose at him and added, “So, since your business is done, I guess you’ll be driving back to New Orleans tonight?”
He cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact, I was going to offer to stay awhile and work on the house.”
She frowned—not the hostile frown he expected, but an uneasy on
e. After a long moment, she swallowed and said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Watching the supple movement of her throat, he almost died of desire. He took a breath. “I’m sure my grandfather didn’t mean to leave you with the burden of fixing up this tumbledown old place.”
“Maybe not, but it has nothing to do with you.” She sounded tired. She might be strong for a girl, but she wasn’t up to doing the repairs on her own.
“Arthur would want me to help out,” Gerry said. “In fact, he would insist.”
Mirabel was silent. She poured herself a coffee and walked over to the window.
“No charge,” Gerry said, “if that’s what’s bothering you.”
Still she didn’t answer, her face partly averted, her gaze fixed on the backyard. Ophelia had taken out the mess of bamboo by the back fence, and for the first time in Gerry’s memory, the last rays of afternoon sun bathed the lawn. Not that he much wanted to see across the alley to Mrs. Dodge’s house. She’d chased him out of her strawberry patch more than once during the spring vacations he’d spent here with Grandpa Arthur. She’d complained to April and June, who had given him hell about it when he’d returned to New Orleans, ranting incessantly about Arthur’s bad influence.
He’d become good at shutting his ears, but he’d never had the heart to tell them to stuff it. They’d meant well, more or less.
Gradually, Mirabel’s stance and expression changed from anxious indecision to reluctant acceptance.
“Okay.” She faced him. “If you’d help me reshingle the upstairs roof, I’d appreciate it. You can have Arthur’s room. It doesn’t leak.”
He let out a long breath of relief, and hope surged inside him. Dumb, but he couldn’t help it.
“But you have to park your truck someplace else. I don’t want anyone to know you’re staying here.”
Huh? This wasn’t the Victorian era, like when the house was built, and nothing could convince him Mirabel was a prude. “Why not?”
“I’d rather not say,” she said.
* * *
His expression said he thought she was nuts.
“Sorry, but it’s none of your business,” Mirabel continued. She didn’t want to be rude, but if she played this right, she’d have the help she needed and Gerry wouldn’t get hurt. She could keep her distance while they got the roof taken care of, and then he would go home. Besides, if she explained the situation, he might change his mind—or freak out once he knew what she was.
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