by Ann Major
She kicked even harder
“Dammit! I swear I will.” He pulled at her foot, and she almost lost her hold. “I’m not going to let go. I’m as stubborn as you, you hellcat brat. Are you coming down the ladder, or do I have to drag you down it?” He yanked hard on her ankle again, and she screamed.
The moment she stopped fighting him, he felt it.
She stilled. There was a tense silence as she clung to the ladder sulkily. He held on to her ankle while they both struggled to catch their breath.
He looked up and then away, but not before he registered the shape of flawless long legs and black lace beneath her flowing gray wool dress.
“Okay, Garret,” she whispered. “You win—like always.”
He backed warily down the ladder, not sure she would come after him. But she did.
“I don’t always win, chere.” His deep voice was as bitterly angry as hers. “I remember one night when I lost everything I ever thought I wanted...you…our baby...everything.”
She went white.
His hands circled her waist possessively and he pulled her down in such a way that her body slid against the length of his. “Chere...”
She jumped back as if his touch was fire. “You promised my father you wouldn’t bother me, ever again.”
“Easy.” Through the wool his hands could feel the subtle voluptuous warmth of her flesh. “I came here to save you, chere.”
When her feet touched the floor, he kept holding her closely, his fingers digging through the soft charcoal wool of her elegant dress.
“Well, you can take your hands off me now,” she commanded haughtily, although she did not lift her eyes to meet his.
Once he had been her servant. Hers to command in such an arrogant way. The yard boy who was dark from the sun, who got sweaty from hard physical work she and the rest of her family were too good to do.
No more.
Vaguely he was aware of her lowered lashes trembling against her flushed cheeks, of the slight tremor in her hands that pushed against him.
So—she wanted him still. Despite everything that had happened. But she was ashamed of those feelings. Just as she’d been ashamed when she’d been a young girl hiding herself behind the lace curtain of her upstairs window, watching him, the cook’s son, as he’d toiled in the broiling Louisiana afternoon heat. Just as she’d been ashamed two years ago that it was his child she was carrying.
Noelle thought he was not good enough to want. She was going to marry Beaumont. Garret knew all about rich people and what they thought valuable—social connections, status.
“You damn little...” Instead of obeying her, he pulled her against his body until every muscular inch was pressed into the softness of hers.
Dammit. He didn’t want her to feel so good.
“I’ll let you go,” he whispered, “but only if you promise not to run from me, chere. It seems like all your life you’ve been running...from me.”
Spirals of flame-red curls spilled down her back and tangled in his fingers like skeins of flowing silk.
“For good reason.”
Because she thought he was trash.
The old anger rippled through him, but he held her so tightly he could not help being aware of her as a woman. As always, just her nearness drove him crazy. Her stylish gray cashmere dress clung to her curves, outlining the shape of her breasts, the slender turn of her hips, leaving very little to his imagination. Vaguely he was aware of a subtle fragrance—her perfume enveloping him. It was sensual, barely tamed—like the woman. Once, when they’d been in bed, she had told him the scent was made of the Moschata, musk rose, a flower that grew wild on the Mediterranean coast. It was a rare, expensive scent—like the woman.
“Look at me, Noelle.”
She twisted her face away from his.
“I said look at me.”
Her long-lashed eyes lifted slowly. They were tawny, dark golden orbs, bright with dread and some other unnamable emotion as she stared searchingly up at his harsh features.
She began to tremble in earnest then.
It was nearly two years since he’d last seen her, two years since he’d last held her. Two years since that terrible night when she’d nearly died. Two years since she’d run away to Australia and stayed there.
Her family had been scandalized and made her go.
Because of him.
He’d told himself it was over, that he wanted her gone.
How wrong he’d been. He stared at her. Her face was even more exquisite than he remembered. She was half Creole. Her skin was pale, translucent; her hair wild red tangles; her mouth, full and parted. Her brows and lashes jet-black.
He felt the full force of her beauty, and then the surge of his old hunger. He still wanted her. As much as he had when he’d been a kid, when he’d been in awe of her money and her daddy’s power.
He wanted to hold her, to taste her, to take her to bed and stay there for days. Even though he despised her. Even though he despised himself for still feeling anything for her.
She was beautiful. Yes, no matter how much trouble she was, she was lovely—a tantalizing masterpiece of female flesh designed especially to drive him crazy. No other woman would ever seem as beautiful, at least not to him. But she would never think he was good enough.
“Damn you, Noelle. You taught me to love.” He bit the side of his mouth till he tasted blood. “And to hate.”
“Damn you, Garret. You taught me things...I wish I could forget, too.” But her voice was a choked whisper as his had been, dying away in the silence of the darkened shop. There was a look in her eyes that made him wonder what she might be feeling.
He moved so that the light from the window fell across his virile features, and she saw his face.
“I hurt you,” she said softly. At the sight of his bruised cheek and cut forehead, her expression became one of tender remorse. “I didn’t mean to.”
She reached up to brush the blood from his brow, but he jumped back, startled by her tenderness, suddenly as afraid of her touch as she was of his.
“Garret, I was just...”
Eyeing her warily, he let her go, almost pushing her away. The gentleness in her gaze pierced all the way to his soul. The thing he trusted least from her was kindness. “I’ll do it myself.”
He wiped the blood out of his eyes with the back of his wrist. Then he glanced out the window. In the street the police were massing to storm the shop. He was running out of time.
Garret turned back to Noelle. “So tell me what you were doing up here all alone shooting down at me and my friends.”
“I—I—”
“Tell me,” he ordered.
When she was silent, he wiped an arm across a table stacked with priceless ruby-red Venetian crystal, and swept two dozen glasses to the floor.
“No!”
“Tell me!”
She stared at the glimmering scarlet bits of glass. “Garret, those glasses cost thousands of dollars.”
“Do you think I give a damn?”
He picked up his shotgun and swept another table free of glasses.
“Garret! I—I...I wasn’t shooting at anybody!”
He headed for a tall bird.
“Not the majolica crane jardinière,” she screamed, lunging at him before he could smash it.
“The what?” He cocked a quizzical dark brow. Then he grabbed her, seizing her wrists in a grip that hurt, crushing her breasts into the metal zipper of his leather jacket.
“That’s all you care about, isn’t it? Glass birds! Things! Money! You’re just like the rest of your family.”
“Garret, don’t break it. I’ll tell you everything.”
He could hear the cops in the building downstairs.
“You better make it quick.” His voice was low, but dangerous nevertheless.
“It all happened so fast. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“You never do.”
“In the bank I saw he was just a kid. A poor, des
perate boy. H-he seemed so alone. Like Louis somehow.”
“Leave Louis out of this!”
That wild, lost look that had always gotten to him was in her eyes as she struggled to continue. “He was bungling everything. When he was going out of the door, I grabbed the money and ran. I thought if I took it and returned it to the bank, he wouldn’t be in so much trouble. I thought he’d run away, but he followed me here. The bank foreclosed on his mother’s house. His mother’s very sick. She needs an operation—”
“And you believed him?”
“I told him if he’d leave the money and go, I’d stay here alone for a while and give him time to get away. I said he could come back in a few days. I promised to help him.”
“You what?”
She swallowed convulsively. “I—”
“Never mind! Listen to me. Those were cops you were shooting at.”
“I wasn’t shooting at them! I shot way over their heads.”
“They don’t know that! What matters is that you helped a bank robber escape. You must do exactly as I say. When the other cops get here, let me do the talking. I’ll tell them there was a struggle. The robber got away. You were so scared you were afraid to come out—”
“But...”
He gave her a derisive look. “For once in your life, keep your mouth shut.”
A tense silence enveloped them. He picked up the gun and wiped it free of fingerprints. They both listened to the galloping footsteps ascending the stairs.
He realized the enormity of what he was doing.
“Garret... Why are you doing this for me?”
He turned toward her. His eyes slid downward from her beautiful face, over her body as if he couldn’t help himself. Unwanted memories of all that she’d been to him assailed him.
He said nothing for a long moment. He just studied the beauty of lush breasts pushing sexily against gray wool, her narrow waist, and the curve of her slender hips. Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did he reveal that the mere sight of her body made him ache like a raw boy with a feverish hunger.
“We go way back, you and me, don’t we?”
Words alone couldn’t convey his reason.
He looked at her. Something in his eyes must have betrayed him because she glanced wildly away.
He swaggered toward her like a menacing giant in the darkness, cornering her against a table. She gave a little cry of fright and tried to spring past him. He slid his arms around her, crushing her with his masculine power until she screamed.
“Shut up, chere,” he whispered, pressing his body into hers so hard that the table ground into her hips.
“Garret, I don’t want you. Not anymore.”
“No?” He laughed softly. One brown hand fingered the silky tendrils that fell against her cheek. “So, you’re going to marry Beau...and not Raoul.”
“I never wanted Raoul. He was...” She stopped herself.
“Well, Beau’s a better choice for a woman like you. He’s a man who can assure your position in the world. A man who’ll sire babies you’ll want...instead of babies you don’t want....”
Tears welled in her golden eyes.
“Congratulations, chere. Maybe since I’m not on the social register and won’t be invited to the wedding, you won’t mind if I take my kiss from the bride now.”
She began to struggle as if she did mind, but Garret’s mouth fastened on hers quickly, savagely, devouring her full soft lips with a greedy passion.
She opened her mouth. The tips of their tongues touched. Hotly. Wetly.
Her response was as swift and as fierce as his. He felt her trembling. Her skin was velvet fire. Her fingertips buried themselves in his thick black hair. She was arching her body into his. He felt her nails digging into his scalp. He forgot his hate and was engulfed by passion. The world was spinning.
The touch of her, the taste of her sweet, hot flesh made him whole.
It didn’t matter what she had done to him. Or to Louis. Even the baby that had died no longer mattered.
Garret could have kissed her endlessly.
Instead he shoved her away, jarring the table so that a porcelain vase fell and smashed.
He caught a quick shallow breath.
“You don’t mean anything to me anymore,” he began in a grim cynical tone. “Like I said, I’m doing this for old time’s sake.”
He noted the quick flash of pain in her eyes.
“You owe me nothing. Do you understand me? Nothing. No matter what happens, stay away from me, chere. Stay away from Louis. And I’ll stay away from you.”
There was a frantic banging at the door before it crashed open.
Then the herd of police was upon them.
Chapter Two
In the darkening afternoon the Mercedes raced along the forest road. Inside the car the red-haired woman with the haunted, brandy-colored eyes wore cream-white silk and gold jewelry. Her nails were long and polished, her skin as soft as satin, and her makeup lush and perfect.
Noelle felt hurried, upset. Usually the drive to Garret’s home and Martin House took less than an hour from New Orleans. Today there had been a wreck on the causeway, so she’d been in the car for over two hours.
The New Orleans newspaper lay open on top of Garret’s leather jacket on the passenger seat. There was a picture of Noelle wrapped in Garret’s jacket. Another picture of Garret. The headline read, Detective Garret Cagan Suspended Pending Investigation into Bank Robbery.
Garret had disobeyed orders to save her. He had lied to protect her, jeopardized everything he had worked so hard to attain. Now he was blamed because the bank robber had escaped. Beaumont and her own father were doing everything they could to have Garret thrown off the force for incompetency.
Two years ago she’d lost her baby and lain in a New Orleans hospital dying. She’d wanted to die. Her family had blamed Garret, and when she had finally recovered they had made her see how terrible he was. She had promised herself, promised her family, that never again would she have anything to do with Garret Cagan. But he was in trouble, and it was all her fault. On top of that, her own family was making things worse for him. She felt a sharp prickle of guilt. So many times—too many times—Garret had suffered that fate.
Inside her luxury car, Noelle was physically insulated from the rich odor of the bayou, from the poverty of the rickety clapboard houses and dilapidated docks she passed. But not emotionally insulated. The bewildering mosaic of winding waterways, the blind lakes, even the houses brought old memories vividly back to life. For this was where she and Garret had grown up—she in beautiful Martin House and Garret in a humble three-room shack on a few scrap acres behind her father’s plantation. This was the land she loved more than any other—with its twisting bayous and semitropical swamps. When she was six her grandmother had become alarmed that Noelle was growing up too wild in the country. Grand-mère had insisted on moving into New Orleans so that Noelle could be tamed by city life and the right connections. From then on the family had only used Martin House on holidays, weekends and the summers.
Noelle had not been to Martin House since her return to Louisiana. She dreaded the thought of seeing Garret, and she knew she was the last person he would want to see. But she had no choice. She tried to tell herself that he could no longer be a danger to her. Not now. Not since she was at last leading the conventional life her family had always wished her to lead.
She’d had two years to forget him. Two years of adventure and hardship in a hostile land. Two years of homesickness in Australia. Two years to deal with the feelings of emptiness, pain, guilt and bitter regret.
At last because of Grand-mère’s declining health, Noelle had returned to Louisiana. She had decided to live the life Grand-mère had dreamed of her living. Noelle had become a buyer for Mama’s antique shop. She wore silk dresses to work, attended the right parties, had dated the right men; men with impeccable social pedigrees to satisfy Grand-mère, men with vast wealth and power to please Papa. There w
ere stories about her social successes in the society columns and stories that fed the rumors that she would marry Beau, her “childhood sweetheart.”
Her family thought she was happy and settled at last. When Grand-mère took her hand and held it in her frail shaking fingers, Noelle comforted herself with the knowledge that at least Grand-mère was now proud of her. But sometimes at night, when Noelle couldn’t sleep, she would stare out her window at the sultry moon nestled low in the pines. She would feel wild with the old gnawing restlessness as she remembered the man who was forbidden to her.
Only scandalous Mama had noticed. “Something wrong, chere. You feel better if you tell your mama,” Bibi had said.
Beautiful, wild Mama. Mama with hair even brighter than her own. Mama, who’d been born in a tar-paper shack in the Deep Delta lowlands of Louisiana and scratched her way to the top. Mama who’d had three husbands, each of them richer than the one before. Mama, the Hollywood actress who’d had an affair with Papa when he was a senator and destroyed his political career. Mama, who’d had to get pregnant before Papa dared go against his family and make her his second wife. Mama who was still as incorrigible as ever.
When Noelle would turn away, Mama would pet her hair. “It’s that Detective Cagan, isn’t it, chere? You can’t forget him. They don’t understand, Grand-mère and Papa. You’re like me. You have my passion. Maybe you have to follow your own path, chere.”
“You’re the only one who does not despise me for my weak character.”
“Weak character!” Mama had laughed lightly at that. “Chere, I do not consider it weak, no. If anything, the experience of love only strengthens a woman’s character.”
Noelle tried not to listen to her mother. She had never wanted to be like Mama. But this afternoon, Noelle had run away and was secretly defying Grand-mère and Papa.
It felt strange driving down this road again. Strange and terrifying to think of seeing Cagan.
He’d been so fierce in the shop. But passionate, too. He hated her for what she’d done to him. Just as she sometimes hated him. But she’d seen the hunger in his eyes when he’d looked at her. And then he’d betrayed himself when he’d kissed her.
