No Safe Place

by JoAnn Ross

  "Takes a lot of work to write out a tax-deductible check," Tara muttered. And was a Catholic priest even allowed to say ass?

  "That tax-deductible check helped give you a place to crash when you're obviously running away from something—"

  "I am not running away;"

  "Let me finish."

  The whip crack of authority in his voice surprised Tara. She opened her mouth to challenge him, but the sudden blue heat crackling in those Paul Newman eyes had her shutting it again. No one but Stephen LeBlanc had ever talked to her that way. And his sharp words were usually accompanied by his fists.

  "Chelsea was born rich, true enough. But that's no more reason to hate her than it is to hate others for being born poor. Or black. Or gay. The point is, she could just spend all her time shopping and getting her nails done and jetting off to Saint-Tropez. But instead, she views her wealth as an obligation.

  "Which is why, the first year St. Jude's was open, I've been told she was here every day. All day. Cooking, painting, just listening to women's stories and letting them know she cared.

  "She has also, by working the phones and through her network of equally wealthy friends, single-handedly managed to place more of our residents in livable wage jobs and homes around the city than most of the local charities combined.

  "So, give it some thought. Some real, serious thought, and try not to let your pride and whatever other reason you have for beating up on yourself get in the way. Because it's obvious that if your life were going all that well, you wouldn't be here.

  "Maybe this is your chance to turn things around. Give her a call," he repeated. "Give yourself a chance."

  He left the room, stopping in the doorway. Then glanced back over his shoulder.

  "And if you do decide to go for an interview, dump all that damn fake padding. It looks ridiculous, and if you think it's keeping men from looking at your body, you're Hat out wrong. Because all it does is make a man wonder what the hell you look like under those ugly Salvation Army clothes."

  With that he was gone, leaving a thunderstruck Tara to stare after him.

  30

  "I THOUGHT YOU SAID YOU DIDN'T SLEEP WITH my sister."

  "I didn't."

  "But you had a relationship?"

  "Yeah." He sighed. Could this situation get any stickier? "Not every relationship is about sex. Even those involving sex for sale. She was my CI."

  Silence settled over the SUV, broken only by the swish of the wipers across the windshield and the sound of the rain hitting the metal roof. Nick could practically hear the wheels turning as she processed that information.

  "Being a confidential informant can be dangerous," she said finally.

  "That's why we try to keep them confidential."

  "I'm well aware of that." Her voice had an edge to it, revealing a simmering temper. Her breasts, beneath that gray cashmere sweater, rose and fell as she drew in a deep, calming breath. "You were investigating her boss?"

  "LeBlanc and his kid. The one I told you about who runs the ship operations on a day-to-day basis? The night Desiree—Tara—was killed, Leon had his goons drag me off The Hoo-yah, throw me in a boat, and take file out to this camp he's got hidden in the bayou. That's when he hired me to find her."

  "Why would you need to find her?"

  "Because she'd gone missing. He said she had something of his. He wanted it back."

  "Something he was willing to kill for?"

  "Maybe."

  She shot him a look. "What do you mean maybe? He tells you that he wants you to find my sister because she look—which is undoubtedly a euphemism for stole— something of his. You said yourself that the man's a gangster. A guy used to settling problems with violence. Who sent the Hulk to beat you up."

  "As soon as I found out she was dead, I went to LeBlanc's fancy high-rise office in the CBD. He insisted he had nothing to do with her taking that dive out the window. Which doesn't mean he wouldn't lie, but I got the feeling he was telling the truth.

  "And while I hate to give him credit for anything, I don't think the bruises are his fault. I got the impression the Hulk was doing a little freelancing on his own lime."

  "Why?"

  Nick rubbed his bruised jaw. "I guess, just maybe, it could've been something I said."

  "And that something would be?"

  "Well, some events of that night are a little foggy, given I'd been drinking and they kind of rang my bell, so I've got some residual memory loss, but I seem to recall asking the Hulk what, as an alien outsider, he thought of the human race."

  "Wow. Smart move, Broussard."

  "Hey." Nick shrugged. "Who'd guess that a guy who makes his living as an enforcer would have such thin skin?"

  "And now yours is a Technicolor shade of yellow, purple, and blue, with just a lovely shading of green." She brushed a finger over the bruises. "You're lucky he didn't throw you overboard to the gators."

  "Don't think he didn't threaten. But that's my point. If he didn't kill me earlier this week, why would he want to now?"

  "Maybe because of what you know about the case? Which you still haven't told me?"

  "That's because I honestly don't know what Tara was up to. All she told me was that she had some videotape that was going to make her a fortune. She was going to auction it off to the highest bidder."

  "Expecting LeBlanc to be one of the bidders?"

  "That'd be my guess. Another guess would be that what was pissing him off so bad was that the tape belonged to him in the first place."

  "A tape of her having sex with some big shot, do you suppose?"

  "Works for me."

  Especially after Nick had seen the still shots, which looked to be taken from a video of him and Tara, and realized that he'd been taped, as well. Obviously that Right he'd gone to her apartment in response to a call that she just had to see him. He hadn't been there two minutes when she'd started climbing all over him.

  Nick still hadn't figured out whether Tara had been in on that con. Or whether LeBlanc had gotten that camera into her apartment without her knowledge, just to keep tabs on her.

  "Do you think they were also running a blackmail con?" she asked. "Get some footage of a visiting bank president, Joe Blow from Podunk, Idaho, screwing a hooker, then offer to sell it to him as a vacation souvenir?"

  "So as not to embarrass himself at the bank, or risk Mrs. Blow divorcing him and taking all the community property and IRAs?" he asked. "Yeah, I'd say that was a good possibility. But the thing is, the guy would have to be a pretty big fish, because down in this part of the country, getting caught screwing a beautiful girl, even if she was a pro, wouldn't be any big deal.

  "In fact, if a New Orleans banker proved himself in the video to be a studly swordsman, he might just raise his local profile several points down at the club."

  "Just good old southern boys having fun," she muttered.

  "Hey, I'm not saying I feel that way. I'm just sayin' some people do."

  "I know." She made a derisive sound. "It's not that different back in Chicago."

  Although she was proving herself tough as nails, and earning his admiration as well as his lust, Nick knew all this had to be hard on her. Having been a cop all those years—and a damn good one with some commendations to boot, according to the articles he'd unearthed on the web last night—she'd be accustomed to death, even when it involved murder and mayhem.

  But it was different when it involved family. Even family you had managed to convince yourself you'd made a clean break with. Because, as he'd discovered himself the hard way, no matter how you fought against them, blood ties could be chains that you were forced to drag through life.

  He'd never liked his father. Maybe if he'd met him before the war, things mightVe turned out different. Maybe not. Maybe his maman had just been trying to put a pretty spin on a marriage that should've been declared dead at the altar.

  Or even before, when that rabbit had died, which had resulted in the shotgun marriage in the first
place.

  There were times over the years when Nick had tried to give Big Antoine some credit for having married the sweet and pretty girl he'd gotten pregnant in the backseat of his Dodge Charger that hot summer night they were parked out on Bayou St. John.

  He'd wondered if frustration at the prospect of spending the rest of his life with a girl he'd only been on three dates with might have made his father resentful and angry.

  But that was just another paper tiger of an excuse.

  Same as Vietnam.

  The probability was that Big Antoine had been a son of a bitch before the war and an even bigger one afterward.

  He was a wife batterer, a bully, a drunk, and a crook.

  But none of those things were death-penalty offenses.

  He was also blood.

  And blood stood for blood. If not, who the hell would?

  He reached over and took hold of her tense, cold left hand.

  And wow, wasn't she having herself a dandy visit to Mardi Gras? Maybe after they dragged her through the nnotional stress of meeting with her convicted-felon mother—who may or may not have been involved in the near fatal accident suffered by her much older, very wealthy husband—they could stop by the tourist bureau and give them a quote for the city's new PR blitz about how much fun there was to be had here in the Big Easy.

  He wanted to tell her not to be so hard on herself. That she wasn't responsible for the entire fucking world. She wasn't even responsible for her sister or her mother.

  But he knew his words would ring false. Because they always did whenever he tried telling himself the same thing.

  "We're going to get him, chére." He squeezed her hand reassuringly. "Whoever killed your sister. We're going to nail his balls to the jailhouse door."

  Her eyes were tired, a little red-rimmed, and showed the strain she'd been under since long before she showed up on his dock. The earlier adrenaline rush from the ferry and the car bomb was wearing off, and he could recognize the signs of fatigue settling back over her like a wet blanket.

  The lady had been on one helluva roller coaster. Unfortunately, he feared it was going to get worse before it got better.

  She managed a smile. It wasn't as bright or as sassy as some she'd shared. But it still had the effect of making his heart roll over in his chest.

  The fact that he'd been semihard for the past twenty-four hours didn't surprise Nick. He'd been attracted to her since she'd shown up at his dock.

  What he wasn't used to was the effect Kate Delaney was having on his heart.

  She touched something in him. Something he hadn't even known existed.

  And dammit if it wasn't scaring the big bad SEAL more than a nest of al-Qaeda terrorists.

  31

  IT HAD ONLY BEEN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS SINCE her plane had landed at New Orleans's Louis Arm-Mtrong Airport. But it seemed she'd been in the city at least a week. Kate couldn't remember being so exhausted at any other time in her life. Not even during that hot summer six years ago when she and her partner had been parked out night after night, staking out a guy they were convinced was the Miracle Mile Murderer, a serial killer who'd been raping and killing real estate agents who showed pricey apartments.

  They'd eventually caught him. But she'd gone into serious sleep deprivation and it had taken her two weeks to get her body back on track.

  And even then, she hadn't felt as drained as she did right now.

  Yet strangely, at the same time her brain was crashing, other parts of her body were all too vividly alive.

  "What time are we supposed to meet Landreaux?" she asked.

  "He said three."

  "Are we going to the station?"

  "Non. Your maman's holding court at her house. Remy said something about having tea."

  Kate merely rolled her eyes. There was nothing she could say to that. Obviously her mother was currently playing the role of lady of the manor.

  "Did he mention how her husband's doing?"

  "Yeah. He's on the mend. The doc said if all's well, he can probably go home next week."

  Dealing with Antoinette was difficult in the best of circumstances. Dealing with her mother under a possible murder indictment would probably be the straw that'd break the camel's back.

  "Has Landreaux gotten a chance to interview him yet about what happened?"

  "He tried this morning." They'd reached the marina. Nick parked and they began walking toward the dock. "Apparently the guy can't remember a thing."

  "Convenient," Kate muttered.

  "Yeah, that's pretty much what Remy thought. Me, too, though, like I said, I still have some gaps about what happened the other night. Maybe they'll come back. Maybe they won't. Maybe St. Croix's will, too."

  "And maybe he's merely protecting his wife."

  "I've seen crazier things happen," he said as they boarded the boat and went belowdecks. "You hungry?"

  Amazing. Just looking at him looking at her that way, as if he'd been starving all his life and she was a whiskey-sauced bread pudding, was enough to cause a surge of lust to curl low in her abdomen, pool hot and wet between her legs, and make her breasts feel all tingly again, the same way they had felt back in the trunk.

  "You've no idea."

  His laugh was rough, ragged as he pushed some tumbled hair away from her face. "You really are stunning."

  A thought, unbidden, and decidely unwanted, flashed l hrough her mind. "So was Tara."

  "True enough, I suppose." He bent closer. His lips louched hers, plucking enticingly. "But she was more plastic. Literally. Like a life-size Barbie-doll version of a real woman."

  Her lips were tingling beneath his mouth. That now familiar cloud was drifting over her mind even as she tried to focus on what he'd just said.

  "We were identical."

  "Not recently." He traced her lower lip with the tip of his tongue.

  She pulled away. "She'd had plastic surgery?"

  "Yeah." He spread his fingers against the back of her head and coaxed her lips back to his. "I thought I'd told you."

  "No," she moaned as his hands moved over her shoulders and down her back, settling on her hips.

  He pulled her closer, pressing her intimately against his chest, his thighs, his stony erection.

  "It's sort of a branding thing the casino has." His deft, clever fingers unfastened the gold clasp at the nape of her neck. Then tangled in the hair he'd released. "All the girls get work done so the high rollers can fantasize doing movie stars. Your sister was pretty much a dead ringer for Nicole Kidman. And do we have to talk about this right now?"

  "No." Even as the heat radiating from his body was making her dizzy, Kate moved against him, spreading the warmth.

  "Good."

  He thrust both his hands into her hair. Instead of the quick, hot ravishment she'd been expecting, he seemed content to merely nibble at her lips forever.

  If he was trying to sexually frustrate her, he was succeeding.

  If he was trying to kiss her senseless, it was working.

  "Nick." Her arms wrapped around him, her hands fretting up and down his back as her lower body moved restlessly, insistently against his. Didn't he realize she was burning from the inside out? "Please."

  She couldn't recognize her own voice, which was so hoarse and ragged with need that it could have belonged to a stranger.

  "You're in the South now, chére."

  Seeming determined to set the pace, he kissed her forehead. Her cheeks. The bridge of her nose. Her chin.

  It was the same thing he'd done when he'd kissed her senseless in the BMW. "I don't know how those Yankees make love to a woman." His lips skimmed a trail of fire along her jaw, tasting, teasing before returning to her lips.

  "But you're in the Big Easy now. We—"

  "Do things differently here." Her whimper of feminine acceptance melded with his deep growl of masculine need as his tongue accepted the invitation of her parted lips.

  "Exactly." His teeth closed over her earlobe, his ha
nds slid beneath the sweater to stroke her body. Exploring. Possessing.

  Her breath grew ragged. So did his as he returned to her mouth to kiss her slowly, deeply, using his lips, his teeth, his tongue, until she was sure she'd melt into a pitiful puddle of hot need.

  "Tell me what you want, sugar."

  He cupped the weight of a breast in his hand. Tugged the lace cup down. When he scraped a work-roughened pad of his thumb against a nipple, her body arched upward, offering more.

  "You." The ragged word was half plea, half demand. "I want you."

  He drew his head back and flashed her a swift, wickedly carnal smile.

  "Sweetheart, I thought you'd never ask."

  Kate felt a sharp sense of loss as he took his hand from beneath her sweater and shaped her shoulders.

  "Problem is, you're wearing too many clothes."

  "So are you."

  Wanting to drive him as crazy as he was driving her, Kate skimmed a fingernail down the front of his jeans and experienced a delicious thrill when she felt his penis grow even thicker, longer beneath her touch.

  "Let's take care of that." He pushed her suit jacket off her shoulders and down her arms, letting it fall to the floor. "I think you ought to give some serious thought to burning that, chère," he suggested as he kicked it aside. "I can't decide whether it reminds me of a prison guard or a nun. Or maybe a guard in a convent."

  "Well, that's flattering."

  "I said the outfit is ugly. You, on the other hand, are sex personified. Hell, darlin'—lift up your arms, okay? so we can get this sweater off you—if it'd been up to me, I would've had you in my bed two seconds after you showed up at The Hoo-yah."

  He caught the bottom of her sweater and pulled it up over her stomach, her breasts, her head.

  "Hot damn," he breathed as his hot and hungry gaze nearly scorched the scrap of lace bra. "As good as you looked in the dark, you are fucking fantabulous in the light of day."

  "You're not so bad yourself, sailor," she said. "But I want to see more."

  He'd taken his jacket off and tossed it onto a chair as they'd entered the salon. Now she tugged his sweatshirt off, allowing flesh to meet flesh.