The Setup

by Marie Ferrarella

  Applause rose from all sides.

  Sylvie laughed. “That was wonderful,” she exclaimed, hugging him. “You are a man of many surprises, Jefferson Lambert.” Still trying to catch her breath, she rose up on her toes and impulsively kissed him.

  The laugh in her throat faded away as she found herself the recipient of yet another, far greater surprise.

  She’d only meant to brush her lips against his. But one swift pass led to another. And another. Each time, the contact was a little longer, a little deeper. What began as less than a kiss blossomed until she felt it engulfing her.

  Reacting, not thinking, Sylvie threaded her arms around Jefferson’s neck and drew her body closer to his, giving in to whatever it was that was happening here.

  The kiss deepened until it had no beginning, no end.

  And the longer she kissed him, the more she wanted to.

  Finally, she stepped back.

  Her head was spinning, her pulse seemed to have taken over her entire body and she was throbbing from top to bottom. The last time she had felt this way, Daisy Rose had come along nine months later. But unlike Shane Alexander, Jefferson wasn’t trying to overwhelm her with his sexual prowess. He was just kissing her. Nothing more.

  Nothing.

  The word echoed in her head. Everything was more like it.

  “Lots of surprises,” Sylvie heard herself saying again in a breathy tone. She realized suddenly that she was running the tip of her tongue along the outline of her lips, savoring the taste of him.

  Well, he hadn’t been prepared for that, Jefferson thought almost numbly. Soldiers were expected to make their beds so that a quarter could be bounced on top of their blanket. That was how taut everything felt inside of him right now. Stretched so far it was in jeopardy of breaking.

  Yet he couldn’t remember when he’d felt so alive.

  He hadn’t seen the kiss coming. And he certainly hadn’t been prepared for his own reaction to it. He hadn’t kissed any woman but Donna since he was in his first year at Tulane.

  Once Donna came into his life, she was all he needed. And after she was taken from him, he never had the desire to connect with another woman. Never felt any of the urges that his colleagues liked to spend so much time talking about on Monday morning. Sex was a three-letter word that he had agonized over only when he thought of Emily being confronted with it. Until now.

  Her breath sufficiently recovered, Sylvie smiled at him as she threaded her fingers through his. She indicated the tables she’d helped set up yesterday. They were to the far left of the gallery’s central viewing area. Elegant glasses were set beside finely embossed paper plates. Nothing was conventional where Maddy was concerned.

  “Come,” she coaxed, drawing him toward the tables. “I think I just heard Maddy signaling everyone to come eat.”

  Maybe she had, Jefferson thought. All he’d heard was the sound of his own heart, beating loudly in his ears.

  He took a breath and held it, silently telling his pulse to stop scrambling, his heart to settle down and his breathing to return to normal—whatever that was. Doing his level best to appear as if that kiss had not cut him off at the knees, Jefferson allowed her to lead the way to the tables.

  As they approached the designated dining area, he saw that Blake was looking their way. Looking his way, Jefferson realized. And grinning. It was the kind of grin that fairly shouted I told you so. Blake couldn’t have looked prouder of himself if he had single-handedly invented the wheel and discovered fire in the space of an afternoon.

  Just because he’d danced with Sylvie—and kissed her—although technically, she had been the one to kiss him—didn’t mean this was a match made in heaven. Or even in New Orleans. As far as he was concerned, it wasn’t really a match at all, just a case of opposites attracting. Temporarily.

  “Saved two places for you,” Blake told them, rising from his chair.

  He gestured vaguely toward the two empty chairs to his right without taking his eyes off Jefferson. To spare himself, Jefferson deliberately took the second chair, holding the one between himself and Blake out for Sylvie.

  The look on Blake’s face told him that gloating had merely been postponed until the earliest opportunity.

  “So the dancing part is true, if somewhat understated,” Sylvie said to Jefferson as she took her seat. When she saw Jefferson’s eyebrows draw together in a puzzled expression, she elaborated. “On the application, you put down— It said,” she amended, since he’d told her he hadn’t filled it out, “that you could dance.”

  She seemed to remember an awful lot of what Emily had written down. “Did you memorize the application?” he asked. That he had never seen it was making him increasingly uncomfortable. What else had Emily said about him that might trip him up later, or make him look like a fool?

  The smile on Sylvie’s lips was impossibly sexy. “Just the parts I found appealing.”

  She leaned back as a server with a steaming tureen of jambalaya stopped by her chair to spoon the fragrant mixture of rice and seafood into her side dish. Directly behind her was a tall, thin young man with no hips who was offering servings of blackened ribeye. Next came an assortment of vegetables, all darkened with a Cajun sauce.

  Sylvie shook her head just as the server began to transfer a portion of the vegetables onto her plate. “Hate vegetables,” she confided to Jefferson. She waited until the small parade had served Jefferson. “But now,” she told him, picking up the thread as if she hadn’t abruptly stopped, “we’re going to have to start from the beginning.”

  He wasn’t sure just where she was going with this. “The beginning?”

  “Yes.” With knife and fork in hand, she studied the ribeye, deciding where to make the first cut. “Since, by your admission, the application I have in my possession is mostly a work of fiction, you’re going to have to tell me all about yourself.”

  Jefferson had never been comfortable talking about himself. He shrugged vaguely, searching for a way to begin a new topic. Blake was no help. He’d turned his attention to Maddy. Their heads were close together and they were whispering—sharing something intimate and amusing, judging from the way Maddy laughed in response.

  “Not much to tell,” Jefferson finally replied.

  Somehow, Sylvie thought, she had her doubts about that. Until he had danced with her, she would have been willing to believe that perhaps he was just a one-dimensional kind of guy. But no one who had moves like his could possibly be one-dimensional. She’d bet her private art collection on that.

  “I don’t believe you,” she informed him, her voice coaxing.

  He had a feeling that she could probably charm bees out of their hive if she set her mind to it.

  “C’mon, Jefferson, give. Your daughter got your height and your weight right and I’m assuming she knows when you were born.”

  He was about to ask her what year Emily had put down, but then he stopped. It occurred to him that Emily might have wanted to fudge that, seeing that Sylvie was more than ten years younger. And their profiles had been matched. But then, he reminded himself, he’d already made up his mind not to lie. This was not the time to go back on his decision.

  “That all depends,” he said.

  “On what?”

  “On what she put down.”

  Sylvie thought for a moment. “It said that you were born in 19—”

  The last two numbers were lost as the gallery suddenly, without warning, went black.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  NERVOUS LAUGHTER ECHOED in the darkened gallery, chasing away the eerie silence that had blanketed the room seconds ago as guests attempted to adjust to what they assumed was yet another part of the entertainment.

  Sylvie shifted in her chair. She didn’t mind the dark as long as she could still make out forms and figures. But this was pitch black and it imprisoned her.

  “Hey, Maddy, I thought the object was to get people talking, not groping.” She aimed her words in the direction where Maddy was
sitting. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Join the club,” someone from the crowd chimed in.

  Sylvie suddenly became aware of a small, steady beam of light coming from her right. When she turned, she saw that Jefferson was holding what appeared to be a tiny flashlight attached to a set of keys. The illumination it provided was disproportionate to its size.

  Her uneasiness began to fade. She felt as if the cavalry had arrived. Leaning into him, she told Jefferson, “You are turning out to be one very handy man to have around.”

  The appreciative note in her voice warmed him more than he would have expected. “Emily’s gift to me two years ago for Father’s Day. In case I got home after dark and the porch light wasn’t on.”

  “Remind me to send her a thank-you note.” He looked a lot more sexy in this light, Sylvie thought. Or was that the champagne talking? She’d had two glasses, and ordinarily, that wouldn’t affect her. But maybe, this once, it had. The man beside her wasn’t her type for so many reasons, and yet…

  Focusing on the immediate problem, Sylvie turned toward her friend. “Tell them to turn the lights back on, Maddy.”

  Maddy was already on her feet. The exasperated look on her face told Sylvie this hadn’t been planned.

  “Damn straight I will,” she declared.

  Here and there tiny flames of light began appearing as several people at the tables took out their lighters or struck matches to see. An uneasiness was telegraphing itself through the crowd.

  Any second, Sylvie thought, panic might set in. She was having trouble banking down her own growing anxiety and she wasn’t given to that kind of thing.

  When Jefferson rose to his feet, Sylvie thought that he was going make his way to the exit before the situation in the gallery turned uncomfortable or tempers flared. The sudden power failure was a damn good reason to call an end to an evening that he probably found less than thrilling anyway. But to her surprise, Jefferson raised the flashlight he was holding just above his head and addressed the other guests.

  “Everyone?” He raised his voice when only a few people looked his way. “Everyone, can I have your attention? There seems to be some kind of technical difficulty at the moment—”

  “I’ll say,” a voice from the darkness cracked with less than gracious humor. Other people were heard to mumble far more caustic comments.

  Jefferson ignored the grumblings. Instead, he went on speaking in a soothing, authoritative voice. “Security is being dispatched to see what the problem is. It’s probably something minor. It usually is. There’s no reason to panic.”

  “Can we panic after they find out what the problem is?” that same person asked. Snickers echoed in the wake of his question.

  Jefferson never missed a beat, addressing the query as if it had been seriously asked. “That all depends on what they find out.”

  The voice in the darkness had no response. The faces of those closest to Jefferson looked satisfied and placated by his assurance.

  Sitting down again, Jefferson turned to look at Sylvie and his hostess. There was sheer gratitude on Maddy O’Neill’s face, as if he’d just saved her from pitching over a steep cliff.

  What he saw on Sylvie’s face was a great deal more complex. All he knew for sure was that when she looked at him, he felt as if he was standing on quicksand and sinking fast.

  Well, there was just no going with first impressions, was there, Sylvie thought, studying Jefferson with re-kindled interest. She made no attempt to disguise the fact that he had impressed her a great deal. She would have expected him to hang back or leave, not take charge. But that was exactly what he’d done. There was no way for him to know about security—he’d just said it for the crowd’s sake. He could think on his feet, she thought, another admirable quality.

  Slow down, Syl. No need to give him a ticker tape parade yet.

  Aloud, she said, “I guess you’re the type who rises to the occasion.”

  On her other side, Blake laughed. “The guy comes through every time,” he told her. “Usually when you least expect it.”

  Jefferson shrugged. He had little use for compliments. “I just didn’t want to see mass panic take over,” he told Sylvie. “Crowds can get ugly without meaning to.”

  Maddy leaned over and put her hand on his, pressing it. “I owe you one,” she told him. “Would you mind doing me one more favor?”

  The gentlemanly thing would have been to give an unqualified “yes,” but he’d learned never to jump into something feet first without knowing if it was cement or Jell-O. “And that would be?”

  “Could you light the way for me so I can get to the back room?” Maddy asked, then lowered her voice. “So I can get that security guy to do what you just told the crowd he was doing.”

  “It’d be my pleasure,” Jefferson said as he rose again.

  He was aware that Sylvie had popped up beside him like a jack-in-the-box. He couldn’t decide if it was because she liked his company or because she really didn’t like being in the dark alone. Either way, she was coming with him. He could live with that, he thought, suppressing a smile.

  IT WAS A BLACKOUT. A massive power failure that not only affected the Warehouse District and the French Quarter, but sent long, thick, probing fingers into the surrounding areas.

  The media got wind of it almost immediately and played it up as a colossal disaster in the making. Conflicting reports began coming in as rival stations raced to be the first to present new information for a news-junkie public. The truth was that no one knew at this point just how much of the French Quarter was actually without power.

  Luc Carter knew that fate was on his side. This was the break he’d been waiting for. He’d been planning a power failure, and one had been delivered with perfect timing. The sugar he’d poured into the generator’s fuel line would put a major crimp in the Hotel Marchand’s Twelfth Night celebrations. Richard and Daniel Corbin, the people he really worked for, would be pleased.

  He’d taken a major chance, though. Charlotte had sent him off to get flashlights and he’d detoured by the furnace room where the generator was kept. He should never have risked it. One of the maintenance men was already on the scene to investigate, and Luc had hurried past, grumbling about the shortage of flashlights. Returning to the scene of the crime was something an amateur would do, but that pretty much described Luc.

  The Corbin brothers believed he was working for them for the part ownership they’d promised him once he managed to bring financial ruin to the Hotel Marchand, forcing Anne to sell to them. What they didn’t know was that Luc was in this for personal revenge. But in fact, his enthusiasm for his plan was starting to wane.

  No, if he was accurate, his desire to wreak havoc on Anne Marchand and her family had begun to weaken awhile ago—the moment he’d begun to get to know the four Marchand sisters, who, unbeknownst to them, were his cousins, and the genteel, kind-hearted woman who was his late father’s older sister.

  He couldn’t help but wonder what Anne Marchand would say if she knew he was Pierre’s son. Would she be surprised? Would she welcome him? Or would she turn him away? It was something he wasn’t going to find out. Not if he stuck to his plan, which had dovetailed perfectly with Richard and Dan’s.

  Luc had idolized his father. Not that Pierre had been around much when Luc was a kid. After giving him his name and his charm, Pierre Robichaux had abruptly left Luc and his mother one day after Luc had just turned six. Left him with memories of a charismatic man who could light up a room with his smile. Who could fire Luc’s imagination with stories of his youth in New Orleans.

  It was only later that he’d learned that the man he adored had feet of clay. That Pierre was fatally addicted to gambling and to alcohol. And to women. Even so, Luc refused to allow that knowledge to diminish the way he felt about his father.

  When Pierre had finally returned to his wife and son, a broken, dying man, a heartsick Luc had searched for a target to fix his anger on. Pierre’s stories of how his own
mother, Celeste Robichaux, had turned her back on him had provided one.

  Just before his father died, he’d extracted a promise from Luc to reclaim his rightful share of the family fortune. Pierre had also wanted him to tell Anne that he had always loved her. But Luc had silently vowed to make his grandmother, his aunt and any other Robichaux pay for what had happened to his father. Intuitively, Carla Carter desperately tried to talk her only son out of harboring such bitter feelings. She tried to make Luc see that his father had been a liar and a cheat who had not done an honest day’s work in his life.

  Luc refused to listen to his mother, refused to hear a single word spoken against the father he’d worshiped and adored. Troubled, confused, he’d left the country shortly after the funeral. After traveling for a while, he’d ended up in Thailand, working for a hotel chain run by Dan and Richard. It turned out the men, half brothers, were seasoned grifters. When they learned that he wanted to go to New Orleans, they transferred him to their hotel in nearby Lafayette.

  The brothers were intent on buying out a prime hotel, but not at a prime price. Through contacts in the industry, the Corbins had sniffed out the Hotel Marchand’s precarious financial situation and set their sights on acquiring it. To drive down its value, the reputation of the hotel had to be compromised. A plan was devised to undermine the hotel’s good name and make things so difficult for Anne that she wouldn’t be able to make payments on the hefty mortgages that existed on the property. Eventually, as the hotel became a liability, she would have to sell.

  Because of his background working in hotels, Luc easily secured a position as the concierge. Weaving himself into the tapestry of everyday life at the Hotel Marchand, he made himself indispensable. And so began a game of cat and mouse. He’d already engineered some minor things to upset guests. Things like embedding slivers of glass in the hotel towels and deleting reservations from the computer. The towels had been discovered by the head of security before any harm could be done, but the vanishing reservations were a black mark on the hotel’s record.