by Anne Stuart
She knew what a killer’s face looked like, thanks to her father. She knew this man had been responsible for some, if not all, of the dead men on board. Danger, Will Robinson! flashed in her mind.
“You can go home now,” he said to her.
She couldn’t resist. “Oh, may I?” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “How kind of you to dismiss me.”
“If it were up to me you’d be answering a lot more questions, Ms. Parker,” he said. “But my friends on the police force tell me you’re untouchable. How much do you pay for that privilege?”
She bit back her instinctive reply. In fact, their hands-off approach with her came more from the work she did and the help she gave rather than her father’s generous payoffs, but the guilt that had been pushed to the back of her mind surged forward again, and he looked at her sharply, as if reading her mind.
“Nothing at all, John Doe,” she snapped. “The good I do outweighs any possible infringement on policy.”
He cocked his head to one side. “They might believe it. I don’t. And the name’s Ryder. Matthew Ryder. You’re going to be hearing it again.” It was a clear threat—the farthest thing from flirtation she could imagine—but she simply smiled at him.
“I’m looking forward to it.” And she realized with slightly horrified amazement that she actually was.
Chapter Two
“What the fuck?” Six weeks later Matthew Ryder was sitting in the inner office of the American Committee for the Preservation of Democracy, nursing a glass of scotch that he shouldn’t have been drinking before noon, when the sound of the front doorbell of the old mansion in the Garden District shot through his head like a spike. Of course he had a hangover, so even the wind in the live oak trees surrounding the house would feel like the universe crashing down around him, but he’d been counting on a peaceful day all to himself. Granted, it was just past eleven, but it was a Sunday, and the Crescent City seemed to have two things on its mind on Sundays—football and drinking. He was holding up his end on the drinking part, but he didn’t give a crap about football. In fact, he didn’t give a crap about anything but being left alone, and yet standing outside the broad double doors of the recently refurbished mansion was Ms. Jennifer Gauthier Parker, Esquire, one of the last people he wanted to see on a very long list of people he wanted to avoid.
Ms. Parker was, of course, a member of the ancient Gauthier family, one of the oldest in New Orleans, wielding more power than any other comparable family, and in the Big Easy, power was even more corrupting than in Washington, DC. The Gauthiers were as dirty as they came, except, presumably, for the saintly Ms. Parker, who had left the family business for the virtuous life of a pro bono immigration lawyer.
He stared at the high-definition screen that was a far cry from most surveillance systems, into the impatient, ridiculously pure face of his current nemesis. Parker looked to be in her late twenties, with a head of reddish brown curls, a stubborn mouth, opaque eyes, and the kind of rounded figure he particularly liked. Too bad she was such a major pain in the ass. She had one of her stray waifs beside her, a small, slight female figure with a bowed head of thick black hair. He didn’t give a shit about her either. He just wanted to drink in peace.
Speaking of pain in the ass, Ms. Jennifer Parker was still ringing his doorbell, and he rose, kicking the wastebasket across the room. It was empty, of course—any paper that they used, and they used damned little, was shredded and burned—but the clanging noise expressed his bad temper perfectly. It also rocketed through his head, and he wanted to groan. Too bad he had no reason to sock Parker in the nose—though if he did she’d probably shriek and make his splitting head even worse.
The hair of the dog was supposed to cure his hangover—all it did was make him feel like dog hair. And Ms. Parker, Esq. wasn’t going anywhere no matter how determined he was to ignore her. Might as well face the music and get it over with.
He almost wished he were drunk, but he’d barely had time to settle down with his too-early drink when Ms. Goddamn Parker began ringing the doorbell. He slammed the door behind him, winced, slid the concealing wall across the space, and made his way down the wide, curving staircase at a leisurely pace.
She’d be getting really pissed off by now, and the thought made him slightly more cheerful. He’d never been big on martyrs and do-gooders, and Parker was just a bit too saintly for his tastes, despite the fact that she was absolutely delicious, with her mop of curly hair, her warm brown eyes, and that very fine body she disguised with too-proper clothing. Which was fine with him—she hated him even more than he disliked her. She wouldn’t be any happier showing up on his doorstep on a Sunday afternoon than he was.
At least he could cherish that thought.
Jenny was standing outside the huge old house in the Garden District of New Orleans, the bright winter sun beating down on her and her companion, and she would have given ten years of her life to be anywhere else. “Don’t worry, Soledad,” she told the slender young woman beside her. “I’m sure Mr. Ryder is here—he just takes his time when it isn’t normal business hours.” The thought was depressing—she couldn’t count on another reprieve, and she had to face him sooner or later.
“But I do not understand,” Soledad said in her softly accented voice, her gorgeous brown eyes downcast. “Why are we coming to see him?”
“Because his organization is responsible for stopping the criminals who kidnapped you and so many others and brought you to this country,” she said firmly, leaning on the doorbell. “It’s their job to clean up the mess, and we need his help. I wish we didn’t—the man is a distrustful pain in the ass, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
“I would have thought . . .” she hesitated, her English momentarily failing her, “just stopping those terrible men was enough. Really, Miss Parker, you do not need to do this. I can find work on my own—I do not need any help.”
“You’d be an illegal alien,” Jenny said. “And the Committee knows how to pull strings to get you your green card.”
“What is this . . . Committee?”
Jenny shrugged, shoving a hand through her unruly hair. “No one really knows, and I’m not about to ask. I just know they were responsible for your release from that container ship, and they’re so secretive they must have a huge amount of power. That was one thing I learned from my family,” she added wryly. “The more mysterious the organization, the more influential it is. Besides, they took care of the paperwork for the other women and children—if you hadn’t been sick, you would already have your papers as well.” Jenny suspected that if Soledad hadn’t gotten sick, she would have taken off before the papers arrived, but that was neither here nor there. She couldn’t blame the girl for being distrustful, especially after all she and her fellow captives had been through at the hands of the traffickers. At the hands, innocent though they’d been, of her brother. Had she been in the same position, she wouldn’t have trusted anyone either. “It was a good thing the police searched the ship thoroughly and found you in the sick bay. Otherwise you might have gotten towed out to impound and no one would have found you.”
Soledad gave her that sweet smile that had captivated everyone at the small, street-corner office that held Jenny’s practice. “Yes, I am very lucky,” she said in a tranquil voice. “We will have to hope that this Mr. . . . Strider will be as wonderfully helpful as everyone else has been.”
“Ryder,” Jenny corrected. “I’ve met him before, and he’s not likely to be wonderfully anything except an asshole. But he’s going to make sure you can either stay here or go back home, whichever you prefer . . .”
“Stay here,” Soledad said quickly. “It is too dangerous for me to go back to Calliveria.”
“Then you’ll stay here, and Ryder will see to it.” Jenny straightened her shoulders as she heard the footsteps beyond the closed door. If she’d had any choice she would have gone to someone else, but the various agencies had run through their allotment for illegal immigrants, and she
had no choice but to see if the secretive Committee could do better. She braced herself for another confrontation, and the last thing she was about to do was show weakness in front of someone so desperately in need of a champion, even if her stomach knotted and her fisted hand trembled slightly as she raised it to pound on the door once more. Because like it or not, Matthew Ryder had a very powerful, very unwelcome effect on her and her previously dormant libido.
It was a good thing she had excellent reflexes or she would have ended up pounding on Matthew Ryder’s face, and he wouldn’t have liked that one bit. She’d been around dangerous men all her life, her father, her uncles, her brothers, and she knew a wolf when she saw one. It was a wolf who opened the door and stood staring at her, an unpromising expression on his face.
“Well, look who’s here,” he said, though she suspected he had known perfectly well what awaited him on the other side of the door. “What brings you out on such a bright Sunday afternoon, Ms. Parker?”
She straightened her already-stiff spine and gave him an equally stiff smile. “Good afternoon, Mr. Ryder. I see you’ve been enjoying your weekend.”
If she’d managed to annoy him, and she’d been trying to, he didn’t show it. He was clearly hungover—she knew that much about men as well. He was scruffier than usual—he was one of those men who had to know he looked sexier when he didn’t shave, and he was wearing faded jeans and a wrinkled linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His feet were bare, and he had a glass of whiskey in his hand. She looked at it disapprovingly.
He saw where her eyes went. “You have a problem with my drinking, Ms. Parker?”
“Not if you don’t,” she replied in a determinedly pleasant tone of voice.
“None at all, as long as no one interrupts me. So what do you expect me to do for this girl that your own damned family can’t accomplish?”
Bastard, Jenny thought, ignoring the frisson of nerves that attacked her stomach. She’d only seen him once since their first encounter on the container ship, and by that time he seemed to know everything there was to know about her, including her background, her family, and probably the profit and loss statements, mainly loss, for her small law office. He’d been about as unhelpful as he could be, but she was getting used to this man and his suspicions, though she had no idea exactly what he suspected. Since then she’d done her best to avoid any other chance encounters as they both dealt with the refugees.
“I haven’t had anything to with any member of my family in years,” she lied easily enough. “I don’t involve my family in my business. I prefer to keep them as separate as possible, given their quasi-legal proclivities.”
His cynical laugh didn’t improve her mood. “Their quasi-legal proclivities have them working with the wealthiest law partnership in the city, while it does appear that your career path hasn’t been quite as successful.”
She swallowed her instinctive retort. She needed a favor from him, and it wouldn’t help matters if she went out of her way to annoy him. She already seemed to have irritated him enough, and she didn’t want him looking at her too closely.
“So what is it you want me to do with your current waif?” he said, when she didn’t come up with a response.
At that Soledad lifted her head slightly to give him the full benefit of her huge brown eyes, and Jenny waited for him to melt just as every other male had. He barely blinked, turning his attention back to Jenny without the slightest show of interest.
She tried not to show her surprise. “Papers,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “A job, and a place to stay. And counseling,” she added as an afterthought. “She’s been through a lot.”
Ryder’s cynical smile wasn’t meant to put her at ease, and she could feel her palms begin to sweat. Nerves, she reminded herself. What was it about this man who sparked such odd reactions from her?
“What about a rich husband as well?” he drawled, taking another sip of his whiskey.
“If you can dig one up that would be a nice bonus,” she said in a smooth voice. “Now why don’t you invite us in out of the midday sun instead of letting all that lovely air-conditioning out? Because I’m not going away and I expect you know it.”
He muttered something beneath his breath so shocking she would have slapped him if she’d been absolutely certain what he’d said. She couldn’t be, and she wasn’t about to wait. She took the slender hand of the young woman beside her. “Come with me, Soledad,” she said. “I think Mr. Ryder’s bark is worse than his bite.”
“Don’t count on it,” he said softly as she took a deep breath and started forward. For a moment she was afraid he wasn’t going to move out of the way. She really, really didn’t want to touch him, not when she had this inexplicable reaction to him. He stood in the doorway watching her, and at the last minute stepped back just enough so that she nearly brushed against him when she thought she’d been clear. It was only the lightest of touches, barely more than the sleeve of her silk suit brushing against his rumpled linen shirt, but heat shot through her body. Damn the man.
As she and Soledad entered the darkened hallway, she thought she could hear his soft laugh and her irritation rose even higher. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to drive away the feelings that filled her when she saw him, and nothing—not common sense, not experience, not Matthew Ryder’s own annoying behavior—could obliterate this strange thread of attraction. At least, thank God, he had no idea that she seemed to have developed a crush the size of Texas on him. He closed the door behind them, plunging the already-shadowy area into darkness, and Jenny blinked, trying to get accustomed to the gloom. She turned back to him, a bland smile on her face to meet his equally bland expression.
His mouth was pure sex. It was that mouth, she decided. If she could just avoid looking at it maybe she could avoid the sexual upheaval she was going through. Her brothers would tell her she needed to get laid. That was probably true, but Matthew Ryder was the last man she was going anywhere near.
“On the left,” he said, and Jenny turned into the large room, half dragging Soledad with her.
Whoever had been in charge of the restoration of the house on Magazine Street had done an amazing job. The room, with its floor-to-ceiling windows, was the right blend of business and social, and the comfortable furniture still felt in keeping with the original style of the place. Pulling her reluctant client along with her, Jenny sank down on one of the plush sofas, leaned back, and crossed her legs.
Which was in fact a major mistake. Ryder sat down opposite her and her movement immediately brought his gaze to those legs, and she felt oddly exposed. She was depressingly average and she figured she was probably ten pounds past her goal weight, but her legs were definitely her best feature, long and shapely, and for some reason she didn’t want him looking at them. Not that he seemed the slightest bit interested—he was simply, dispassionately taking her inventory. She sat forward and needlessly tugged her skirt down to cover more, which caught his attention, and a faint smile appeared on his usually expressionless face.
“So exactly what is it you want from me?” he said. “I can write you a check . . .”
“Money doesn’t solve everything, Mr. Ryder,” Jenny said, and then could have kicked herself—she sounded like a prim old lady. He was giving her an easy out—she ought to take it. “For now Soledad can stay with me, though my house is a little small and I’m in the midst of renovating it. I need a green card for her, I need a job for her, and in fact, I need someone to oversee her well-being.”
“That’s all well and good, Ms. Parker, but what does she want?”
Jenny could feel herself flush again, and she glanced at Soledad. “It’s what she wants too.”
Ryder turned those cool blue eyes on Soledad. “Why aren’t you letting her speak for herself?”
“Of course it is what I want,” said Soledad. “It is the American dream, is it not?”
Ryder shrugged. “If you say so.” He turned back to Jenny. “What’s wrong with you oversee
ing her welfare?”
Jenny found she was nervously picking at the hem of her skirt and she quickly released it. She hated the way he made her feel—all edgy and itchy inside. She couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that he could see right through her. “I have other clients, Mr. Ryder,” she said with admirable calm. She’d also run out of favors, but she wouldn’t admit that to this man. If she’d had a viable choice other than coming here she would have used it, but for some reason she’d hit a brick wall every time she tried to make arrangements for Soledad.
“And you think I’m just sitting around with my thumb up my ass?”
“I think you have a larger staff and a much larger financial war chest than I do. You have connections all over the world. It would take a phone call from you to see her safely settled.”
“Ms. Parker, you must have a very high opinion of me. I don’t work miracles and I’m not omnipotent. Arranging for your little waif’s future requires more than a simple phone call.”
Jenny looked at him, her expression impassive. She had learned early on that silence was the best way to get what she wanted. Pleading was a waste of time, logic got her nowhere, but men hated a vacuum, even dangerous, inhumanly controlled men, and if she just sat there long enough, quietly enough, he’d come up with an answer.
It took longer than she expected, but then Ryder was no ordinary man. She was about to give in and say something when he finally spoke.
“So what is it you expect me to do?” He was sounding more irascible, and he hadn’t touched his drink. If he really was a drunk, he’d be wanting to get rid of her so he could get back to his bottle, and she was in the catbird seat. She had less to fear from a drunk, no matter how well he covered it up.
But she didn’t think he was. There was a bright-burning intensity about him that unsettled her, and it wasn’t simply a matter of her guilty conscience. There was no way he could know what she’d done—Billy was long gone, out of harm’s way, and even if Ryder suspected something he’d have no way to prove it. Then again, he struck her as a man who didn’t need hard-and-fast proof before he acted, and he wouldn’t be the forgiving type.
