He was soaked through and his T-shirt clung to his upper torso. He stopped at the door and stared at me, immediately sensing something was up.
“Dallas,” I could hear the strain in my voice, “you must come and meet an old friend who just dropped by. Eddie Fallon.”
Dallas moved quickly to the door. “Follow my lead,” he mouthed to me.
I nodded and backed away from the open door. I turned and walked into the living room toward Eddie. I could hear Dallas following behind me.
“Eddie?” I called.
His green eyes instantly turned from the Christmas tree to me. Then Eddie saw the man standing behind me.
Eddie pointed at Dallas. “Who’s that?”
“Eddie, this is Dallas August. A friend from New York in for the holidays.”
For an instant, I thought I saw Eddie relax.
Dallas came out from behind me extending his hand. “Eddie!” Dallas looked down at his sweaty running outfit. “Excuse the attire.”
The two men shook hands, but I could see the shadow of uncertainty wavering in Eddie’s eyes.
“How do you know this guy?” Eddie asked, gazing back at me.
“We met at my publisher’s party. When I was in New York promoting my book.” I moved deeper into the room.
“Yeah, that book you wrote about you and David. I read it, well, almost all of it.” He studied Dallas for a moment. “You a writer too?”
Dallas laughed. I knew him well enough by now to know he was faking it.
“Oh, no. I’m an architect.”
Eddie’s face lit up. “I went to school to be an architect at Tulane.” He shrugged. “But I never finished. My mom wanted me to come and work with her so I had to leave.”
“Eddie, how is Sammy?” I asked.
He scowled. “You know Mom. The usual.”
“So, Eddie,” Dallas said as he moved toward me, “why don’t you and Nicci have a nice chat and I’ll just run upstairs and take a quick shower.” Then Dallas leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. “You should have come running with me, sweet cheeks. It was exhilarating.” He departed and I heard his footsteps clamoring up the stairs and into my room.
I stood there motionless for several seconds as I waited to see how Eddie would react. His green eyes nervously darted about the room, but he never looked over at me.
His voice was very faint, almost like a whisper when he finally did speak. “So you and this guy are…”
“Dating. Yes, Eddie,” I stated.
“Are you in love with him?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. We are just getting to know each other.”
His eyes met mine. “But you brought him home for Christmas to meet your father and your uncle?”
I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. “Yes, I did.”
“I guess I’ve always been trying to get you in between boyfriends, huh, Nicci?” he added and then moved quickly to the doorway.
“Eddie, we talked about this before,” I said as he stopped in front of me. “We are friends and we will never be more than that.”
He turned to me. “I’m not good enough, is that it?” His voice grew angrier. “I’m not some fancy artist or some doctor or an architect, so I’ll never be good enough for you.”
I felt my anger edge forward. “No, Eddie, you’re not good enough for me.” I raised my voice. “You beat the hell out of my cousin, your wife. You made her miscarry your child, and you still can stand there declaring your love for me? Do you think I could just forgive you for all of that?” I paused, shook my head, and tried to calm myself. “I don’t love you, Eddie. Why do you always do this?”
“Because I love you, Nicci!” he shouted, his green eyes pleading, his voice almost hysterical. “I’ve always loved you, but you never gave me a chance.” He reached out his arms to me.
I stepped back from him. “Eddie, please. Don’t do this.”
“I’m no good, huh?” He shoved past me out of the living room. “I’ll show you,” he called out over his shoulder as he ran out the front door.
I watched from the doorway as his blue Mercedes coupe peeled out of the drive, sending small white shells flying everywhere.
“You all right?” a deep voice asked behind me.
I turned to see Dallas standing at the base of the stairs, the Sig Sauer P226 in his hand.
I wrapped my arms about me. “Yeah, did you hear all that?”
He put the gun down on the table by the stairs, walked over, and closed the front door. “I heard. He sounds like a frightened and confused kid,” Dallas said as he came up to me.
“He was drunk. I could smell the whiskey on him when he hugged me.”
Dallas smiled. “Courage.”
“What?”
“Eddie had to find his courage in the bottom of a bottle before he could come here and declare his love for you.” Dallas nodded toward the front door. “How long has he been an alcoholic?”
“Since our early teens,” I answered, remembering those days with Eddie. “He always drank a lot, but I never realized how much until I saw him today. He looks bad.”
He grinned at me. “You were pretty good. You pushed his buttons. That’s what I was hoping my little kiss would do, but your words were much more effective.”
I unwrapped my arms from around me. “It wasn’t anything I planned to do. But how could he ever think I would be able to have any feelings for him, after what he did to Colleen and the baby?”
“Love blinds people. He thinks his love for you is all that matters.” Dallas let his eyes wander over to my portrait hanging above the living room mantle. “He’s a child. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t shoot a good man in the back of the head.”
Chapter 14
The following afternoon I walked into the kitchen and unexpectedly found Dallas up to his elbows in flour. He was rolling out pastry on our granite counter, and the old T-shirt he was wearing was covered with flour. He even had a dab of flour on his chin.
I casually strolled up to the counter. “What are you doing?”
He pounded the wooden roller against the dough. “Making you lunch. I figured it would give us an excuse to spend a little time together. You’ve been hiding up in your room so much lately I feel like you’re avoiding me.”
“I haven’t been avoiding you,” I lied. “I’ve been working on a new book.”
Dallas folded some of the dough with his hands. “You mean the one you started on the plane?”
I frowned at him. “And I thought you were sleeping throughout the flight.”
“Actually,” he turned to a pile of chopped turkey on the counter in front of him, “I was reading over your shoulder. I especially liked the part about the handsome spy named August Daniels.” He looked back up at me. “Any chance he gets the girl in the end?”
“Not if I can help it.” I smelled a hint of garlic and green peppers in the air. “And what are we having?” I inquired as I walked over to the stove and inspected the contents of the pan.
“Turkey pot pie,” he spoke up behind me. “Otherwise known as leftovers.”
I turned and studied him for a moment trying to figure out why he was suddenly being so unlike his usual chilly self.
“Any particular reason why you felt the sudden need to cook lunch for me?” I finally asked.
“I’m bored. When I’m bored I like to cook.” He placed some of the rolled-out dough into two individual smaller pie plates and looked over at me. “And like I said, I thought it would give us some quality time together.” He walked over to the stove and expertly flipped the sautéing vegetables into the air and back into the pan.
“And you made your own pastry dough?” I inspected the pastry waiting in the pie pans. “I have to say, I’m impressed.” I watched him move back to the counter and gather a handful of chopped turkey. “I bet the women just love you,” I added.
He furrowed his brow at me. “I don’t get it.”
I leaned against the counter next
to the stove. “Many women find men who are skillful in the kitchen to be a real turn-on.”
He added the turkey to the simmering vegetables on the stove. “But I guess you’re not one of those women?”
I shook my head. “I tend to go for guys who know how to handle a stick shift, not a spatula.”
“Just my luck.” He removed the pan from the stove. “I don’t ever remember my cooking being a turn-on for women, but in college I was always very popular with the guys in my fraternity. Because of me, they didn’t have to order out for pizza every night.”
“Fraternity?” I raised my eyebrows. “I don’t see you in a fraternity.”
He spooned some of the sautéed vegetables and turkey into the pie pans. “I was a real all-around guy. Was on the sailing team at Brown, attended all the football games, and did all of the regular college fraternity activities until my parents died.” He shrugged and put the pan back down on the stove. “After that, I couldn’t relate to those people anymore.”
“After my mother died I felt the same way about the people here.” I ran my fingers through some of the flour on the counter beside me. “I only did the whole debutante thing because I thought it would please my mother. But after her death, I wanted to do something completely different with my life.” I looked up at him. “Is that why you joined the FBI?”
He nodded slightly. “I wanted to do something, anything, that didn’t deal with boats. One day a recruiter for the bureau was on campus. I talked to the guy for a while and decided to sign on.” He laughed as he placed some more pastry on the counter. “My Uncle Elliot had a fit when I told him.”
“I know what you mean. My father was more than a little upset when I told him I wanted to go to nursing school. He wanted me to take over the family business.”
“And you wanted a life of your own, right?” He started to roll out the dough on the counter. “I understand. I didn’t want my father’s life. I couldn’t go back to the boatyard and look at all of his things without thinking of him.”
“And then you left the bureau to forget about Carol?” I probed, knowing I was sliding into dangerous territory.
He stopped rolling out the pastry. Then he ran his hand over his forehead, leaving a white flour mark across his skin.
“Yeah, something like that.” He slapped the pastry with his hand. “The spy business didn’t have the same appeal after she died. That’s when I found Simon.”
“And became what you are.” I paused as he struck the wooden roller against the counter to remove the excess flour and dough. “When David left me I ran into the arms of another man, thinking it would make me happy. It didn’t. Instead of giving myself time, I just found what I thought was a replacement for all of my hurt and disappointment. That’s what you did, isn’t it?”
He never looked up from his pastry. “My situation was a hell of a lot different from yours, Nicci.” He then reached for a knife and began to cut the dough into strips.
“Was it?” I waited for his reaction, but he just kept on playing with the dough. “Loss is loss, Dallas, whether someone dies, walks away, or is washed away in a hurricane. Guilt has a funny way of eating at you no matter who was wrong or right.”
He stared at me with his cool gaze. “You deal with your guilt in your way, and I deal with my guilt in my way.” He went back to his piecrust strips. “I don’t need you analyzing me, Nicci. I am fine the way I am.”
He skillfully placed the piecrust strips in a decorative pattern over the pies. Then he put the completed pies in the oven and started to clear away the remnants of flour from the kitchen counter. I waited for him to look up at me but he never did. He just moved about the kitchen cleaning up, making sure he swept away every trace of evidence that he had ever been there. As he moved methodically around our kitchen, I realized something about Dallas: he was a ghost in many ways. Sweeping away all traces of himself from people’s lives, making sure he left nothing behind to be remembered by. He was the kind of man who wanted no links to the past haunting him. But no matter how hard he swept, cleaned, or scrubbed the world around him, I felt he was playing a precarious game with his soul. You can only sweep so much dirt under the rug, my mother had always said, until one day you trip over it and land flat on your face.
“I, ah,” I hesitated, “I have to go into my father’s office this afternoon, to sign some papers and—”
“Great,” he said, interrupting me. Dallas turned to me and smiled, removing all remnants of the cold, detached professional from his face. “I’ll go with you.” He paused and wiped his hands on a towel. “I would love to see the famous Beauvoir Scrap offices for myself. We can head out after we eat,” he said, ignoring my angry stare. “How does that sound, sweet cheeks?”
I shook my head and turned toward the door. “Stop calling me sweet cheeks!” I yelled, storming out of the kitchen.
* * *
We started out for the central business district of the city in my Nissan Pathfinder. On the way through the city, Dallas entertained himself by counting the piles of sheetrock and debris lining the curbs of the streets.
“It’s almost like a ghost town,” he said as he peered down St. Charles Avenue.
“Yes, it is. Hard to believe it was a real city once.” I paused and watched a few workmen cleaning up the street around me. “What Katrina did not destroy the looters took care of. Most of the central business district was in a shambles.” I pointed to the looming skyscrapers ahead of us. “My father’s offices took a month to clean up.”
We rode the elevator all the way up to the thirty-third floor, the home of Beauvoir Scrap for over fifteen years. When the elevator doors opened, an older petite woman with light brown hair and big blue eyes sitting behind a very long cherry wood-stained reception desk greeted us.
“Welcome to Beauvoir Scrap.” She smiled at Dallas. “Can I help you?”
“Hello,” I extended my hand, “we haven’t met. I’m Nicci Beauvoir, Bill’s daughter.”
The woman’s eyes became as big as blue marbles. She jumped up from her chair and hurried over to my side.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, dear. Silly me. I didn’t realize.” She shook my hand. “I’m Betty Webster. Your father hired me after the storm.”
Dallas held out his hand. “Dallas August. Boyfriend.”
I almost hit him in the gut with my elbow.
Betty shook his hand. “Your father is in his office in the back.” She nodded toward the large red leather doors that divided the reception area from the company offices. “Why don’t you go on through.”
“Thank you, Betty.” I smiled at the pretty woman and then turned to scowl at Dallas.
Once inside the red leather doors, I passed an assortment of offices lining a long hallway. I waved at a few of the faces I knew but didn’t bother to introduce any of them to Dallas. When we finally reached the end of the hallway, we were standing at the open entrance to my father’s expansive corner office with its stunning view of the Mississippi River.
The office had a few pieces of furniture, a deep chocolate-colored leather sofa off to the side and two warm brown leather chairs in front of my father’s massive oak desk. My mother had decorated the office in pale yellows and light browns when my father had first moved into the building.
Dad was there, as always, behind his desk, loaded down with papers and talking on the phone. He saw Dallas and me, smiled, and then quickly cut his phone call short. I noticed his red tie already had a mustard stain on it, and what appeared to be leftover French fries were still sitting in a cup on his desk.
“Hey, Nic!” he chirped happily, as he got up from his chair. He came over and kissed my cheek. “She dragged you down here too, eh?” my father added as he reached out and shook Dallas’s hand.
Dallas took in the room. “Wanted to see the offices. Heard so much about your business.”
I pointed at his desk. “Dad, what did I tell you about salads for lunch, not fast food?” I scolded.
My father fr
owned. “Betty and I went down to the chicken place on the corner. You know I don’t like salads.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “You went to lunch with Betty?”
My father waved his hand at me. “Nothing like that. She’s a nice lady and we just like to talk.”
Dallas smiled at my father. “It all starts with conversation, Bill.”
My father cleared his throat and walked over to his window. He gazed down at the Mississippi River below. “Nic told you about what we do here?” he asked over his shoulder.
Dallas shook his head. “No. David told me.”
My father turned from the window. “Well, if it hadn’t been for David, I might not be here today.” He went back over to his desk and picked up a pile of papers. “He got me to dump my worthless brother and bring on my daughter as a partner.” Dad handed me the papers. “The bank needs your signature on some papers, Nicci. Just sign where Theresa has highlighted.”
“Nicci’s your partner,” Dallas calmly stated, turning to me. “I didn’t know that.”
I ignored his reproachful stare and walked over to my father’s desk to hunt for a pen.
“I made Nicci my partner because I had to get Lance’s name off the books.” Dad paused and I could hear him sighing. “Lance was a bit of a liability.”
“A bit?” I chuckled and started signing the papers.
“Well, more than a bit,” my father agreed. “But I couldn’t throw him out completely. He gets a percentage of the profits and still has an office down the hall from mine.”
I frowned up at my father. “Which he hasn’t visited in, what, two years?”
My father just grinned and shook his head.
Dallas stepped behind the oak desk to a short bookcase and surveyed the array of family pictures my father kept there. He picked up a silver-framed picture of a pale woman with fine features and auburn hair holding me against her when I was no more than five or six.
Dallas admired the photograph. “Is this your mother?”
“That was my Ellen,” Dad said, smiling. “That’s one of my favorites.”
The Nicci Beauvoir Collection: The Complete Nicci Beauvoir Series Page 44
