A Little Bit Guilty

by Jenna Mills

  She didn’t want to think about what he’d been about to say. What he’d been through in the months since his world had imploded.

  “How much more were you willing to lay on the line?” he asked after a long silence. “What would have happened if I hadn’t pulled back?”

  She would have pulled back. She. Would. Have.

  “What do you want me to say?” she asked. “That I would have gone to bed with you? Is that what you—”

  Movement to the right killed her words. She glanced over, wished she hadn’t. Everything shifted.

  Blinking, she’d grabbed Gabe’s thigh before she remembered there was nothing else to grab. Then she saw the dogs. Two of them watching from beside a pile of crates. “R-Rebel?”

  Against her cheek, Gabe’s hand stilled. “Rebel?” he repeated, twisting toward the crates. “What the hell—”

  The emaciated yellow Lab slunk toward the old piano, never taking his eyes off her. “My…dog.” He watched her, his ribs bowing out with each pant. “I—I haven’t seen him in…” Seven years. Since he’d crossed the rainbow bridge after sixteen years of companionship. Alarmed, because Rebel was there and wouldn’t stop staring at her through those haunted chocolate eyes, she closed her own and sucked in a shaky breath.

  “Evangeline.”

  The edge to Gabe’s voice penetrated the fog; quieter, not the antagonistic growl of the vigilante who’d tackled her, but…Gabe’s voice. Gabe. The seemingly laid-back Southern attorney she’d first been introduced to over a pot of burned coffee a few months before. “Open your eyes.”

  She didn’t want to. She didn’t want the voice to go away. She didn’t want to see the hard lines of a mouth that had once been dangerously soft. She wanted to stay in this alternate reality where she could let herself believe that if she did open her eyes, it wouldn’t be contempt blazing back at her.

  And Rebel wouldn’t be watching from a few feet away.

  “Jesus,” Gabe said. “You’re hurt.”

  She opened her eyes and found them kneeling beside her, both of them, Gabe and Rebel. Gabe’s hand, she would have sworn, shook as it reached for her. But because that made no sense, she blinked. And this time Rebel vanished.

  “What day is this?” Gabe’s voice was thicker now, strained, like a witness forced to confront a brutal detail they’d tried to scrub from their memory.

  “Mon—” The flash of white stopped her. “Tuesday.” It had to be. She’d watched her favorite reality show the night before, and it aired on Mondays.

  “What month?”

  This time she thought before speaking. “March.” Darci had been killed in January, Marcel Lambert arrested in late February.

  Gabe took her hand and eased her toward him, holding on until she sat upright. “Who am I?”

  She looked down at their palms pressed together, the trickle of blood seeping from between his fingers to hers. Then she looked up. Around them only the residue of silence remained. The dog was gone. The crickets were quiet.

  The urge to lift her hand to his face was strong. She wanted to feel the roughness against her fingertips. The soft prickle of his whiskers. She wanted to rub her thumb along the mouth that had once slanted so hungrily against hers, to convince herself that the moment was real. That the way he looked at her was real. That the contempt was the illusion.

  “You’re Gabe,” she said, and somewhere deep inside, a window shattered. She knew better than to want…than to reach…but couldn’t make herself stop. “You’re here.”

  Shadows played against him, darkening his eyes. For a moment he said nothing, just looked down at her as though he’d never seen her before. Then, slowly, he pulled his hand from hers and brought it to her temple. There she felt two fingers skim lightly.

  And when he pulled back, she saw blood.

  His, she told herself. Gabe’s. It was his hand that was bleeding. Then he folded down several fingers.

  She blinked. And she swallowed. And everything shifted. Faster, the light and the dark and the shadows, the crates and the dogs—and a piano? But there were four dogs now. Four skinny yellow Labs. And no matter how hard she tried to lock on to Gabe’s fingers, she saw five, even though she knew he held two against his palm.

  And finally she realized what was going on.

  “Three,” she guessed, not wanting him to know that, when he’d tackled her, her head had bounced against the concrete. That’s why her thoughts kept scattering, why she thought she saw concern glimmering in his eyes.

  That was why she had to get away from him before she said or did something that could not be taken back.

  “Sweet good God,” he muttered, moving so fast her own heart started to race. “Two,” he all but growled as he reached for her and stood. In some faraway corner of her mind she knew she should struggle, find some way to twist away from him. She didn’t want him to touch her. She didn’t want his help. She knew better than to trust or believe or…

  Want. God help her, she knew better than to want.

  But the protests disintegrated before she could grab on to them, and then there was only Gabe, kicking open the door and carrying her into the cool March night.

  Later, she promised herself. Later. After her head quit throbbing, after the world quit spinning, then she would think. Then she would plan, find some way to undo the damage and make sure Gabriel Fontenot paid for the life he’d taken.

  Later…

  After she closed her eyes.

  After she regathered.

  After being in his arms quit feeling so horribly right.

  Chapter 2

  H e watched her sleep.

  Beneath a patchwork quilt, she lay on her side, her knees bent and her arms curved toward her face, dark hair spilling against the pillow. He’d closed the blinds, but moonlight slipped through the slats and fell against her face. Her eyes and mouth were relaxed, the bandage at her temple barely visible.

  By her side, a big Siamese cat tracked Gabe’s every move. Simon, she’d called him when he’d sharpened his already-sharp claws against the side of her sofa.

  Walk away, Gabe told himself. Not because of the commando cat, but because he didn’t want to see her this way, soft and vulnerable and…hurt. He needed to see her as she’d been before, when she’d touched him and kissed him, while the whole time she’d been methodically hanging him out to dry.

  Now…Christ. Now. He didn’t want to be here, in her loft, in her bedroom that smelled of powder and vanilla, with half-burned candles on the dresser and fuzzy slippers on the floor. He wanted to be back at the warehouse, looking for the waitress. The questions just kept mounting—for all he knew she’d never intended to talk…she was on someone’s payroll…the whole thing had been a setup. And Evangeline had walked straight into the cross fire.

  Or maybe she’d been the one firing.

  A concussion, the doctor at the clinic had said. Minor, but serious enough that Evangeline shouldn’t be left alone. She needed to be watched, monitored.

  But, sweet mercy, the doctor hadn’t meant every second of every minute of every hour.

  Four months had passed since Evangeline had strolled into the D.A.’s office with a grace and confidence that had damn near knocked him flat, like the girl-next-door all grown-up and dressed in a killer suit. She’d smiled and offered first her hand, then her friendship. Then so much more.

  He’d never seen the knife coming, not until she’d embedded it in his back.

  The quick stab at his temple made him wince. He braced himself and closed his eyes, knew the onslaught that awaited. For a time, the headaches had been a daily occurrence. Tension, his doctor maintained. Stress. When his life settled back into normalcy, they would go away. It sounded pretty damn simplistic, but the thought of being headache free—of being pill free—had seduced. So he’d tried.

  But then the young French Quarter waitress had been found murdered; her employer, Marcel Lambert, implicated. It seemed he’d been paying her for more than waiting tables,
and with his arrest, Gabe’s headaches had just…stopped. Maybe crime and punishment weren’t normalcy for the average person, but that had changed for Gabe one rainy night almost a quarter of a century before.

  There could be no normalcy for him, not until Marcel Lambert paid for his sins.

  Opening his eyes, Gabe looked at Evangeline lying between the soft floral sheets. Sleeping. She’d changed into an oversized T-shirt and crawled into bed, closed her eyes and gone to sleep. With him right there, in her loft. Him. The man everyone said was spinning out of control. She was a smart woman. She knew better than to lower her guard like that, to close her eyes and let go, to trust…him.

  The fact that she did made his temple throb harder.

  The sight of the pain pills on top of the latest true crime exploitation to climb the charts stopped him cold.

  “Gabe? Is something wrong? Are you okay?”

  In the shadows of Evangeline’s living area, Gabe cradled the phone against his shoulder and tapped his finger against Evangeline’s appointment calendar. One date was circled…the following Monday. And in the small box, she’d jotted an odd notation: J8.

  “Everything’s fine,” he told his cousin Saura. “I just need to talk to John.”

  “Is it your mother—”

  “No.” She was on an Alaskan cruise. Then she would travel to France. She would be there until—

  She’d be there until Gabe was certain the break-in at her house had nothing to do with Gabe’s crusade against Marcel Lambert. “She’s safe.”

  “Thank God.” The rustle of sheets, then the hush of whispers—Gabe didn’t want to think about what he’d interrupted. It still blew his mind that his rough-around-the-edges police detective friend was about to marry his cousin.

  When D’Ambrosia came onto the line, his voice was thick—concerned. “What did you find?”

  Turning from the desk, Gabe slid the amber bottle into his pocket and did a quick survey of the room. He hadn’t said a word to D’Ambrosia about looking into Marcel Lambert’s role in Darci’s life—or her death. But D’Ambrosia had his own way of finding things out.

  “I need you to check something.” Three steps brought Gabe to a curio cabinet, where he looked beyond artistically placed butterflies and photographs to the mirrored backing. There he saw what Evangeline must have seen in the warehouse, what the waitress had seen in the restaurant. What everyone had seen, John and Saura, the D.A. and the cop who’d pulled Gabe over for driving five miles under the speed limit at two in the morning.

  It was all there, every perverted lie and sobering truth; every touch and every kiss, every footstep he’d thought he heard. Every file he thought was missing. Every pill.

  Every mistake.

  It was all there, blazing like a neon sign from eyes that had once been unreadable, carved into the lines of a face that had once been like granite. Like an open book, all those destructive shades of gray were there for anyone to read.

  “About Evangeline,” he said, and on a rough breath, closed the book. “Evangeline Rousseau.”

  The smell of coffee woke her. Once, the rich aroma would have made Evangeline smile and stretch, lazily wander toward the kitchen.

  Now her heart slammed as it all rushed back, every damning detail—following Gabe into the warehouse, running through the shadows, the feel of his body plowing into hers. The feel of his legs straddling her and his hands against her arms, the dark expression when he’d recognized whom he’d pinned to the floor.

  The wash of horror when he’d realized she was hurt.

  She’d tried to get him to leave her alone. She’d told him she was fine. But he’d taken her to the free clinic anyway, stayed with her while the lady doctor examined her, taken her home once she was cleared.

  And stayed.

  Here.

  On a cruel rush she swung to her feet, grabbed for the nightstand when the room tilted. Somehow she made her way to the door. And somehow she closed it, quietly. And turned the lock.

  Then she was on the floor beside the bed and pulling out a fireproof box, fumbling with the combination lock and pulling it open as Simon crouched beside her.

  Relief whispered in from all directions. She kneeled there in the hazy light, staring at…everything. They were all there, exactly as she’d left them. Every article. Every photograph. Every interview and theory and transcription.

  With a deep breath, she lifted a hand and touched a finger to the picture of a young hotshot attorney, strolling from the courthouse after an improbable victory; his first. His suit had been dark gray, she remembered.

  In the picture, it looked black.

  With the old tom her brother had rescued rubbing against her legs, Evangeline locked the box, slid it under the bed and stood, knew what she had to do.

  She was turning toward the mirror when the small amber vial on top of the paperback stopped her. Pain pills, she remembered, as another memory shifted against the shadows of the night—Gabe standing beside her bed with the bottle in his hand, gazing at it the way a new father gazes at the tiny life entrusted to him, with a combination of awe…and terror.

  No. The word ripped through her, but she reached for the bottle, anyway, and thumbed off the lid, stared at the small blue tablets. The label indicated twelve had been prescribed. Eight remained.

  Briefly she closed her eyes, opened them a heartbeat later: she had no idea how many she’d taken.

  It didn’t matter, she told herself. Gabe didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if he was popping pills or drinking too much. And it didn’t matter if he blamed her for what had gone down at the D.A.’s office. She’d done what she’d been asked to do. She had nothing to feel guilty for, not even a little bit. That was like being a little bit pregnant or a little bit dead. Either you were, or you weren’t.

  And she wasn’t.

  Whatever Gabe had gotten himself involved with was his doing, not hers.

  In the mirror she found the edges of a bruise leaking from behind her bandage. Wincing, she turned and made her way toward Gabe and the opportunity she’d never thought to find again—but slammed straight into another memory.

  Because of the coffee.

  With each step she took she could see Jimmy, her brother, as he’d been that last morning, when she’d found him in the kitchen with his back to her, wearing only a pair of faded jeans as he’d looked out at the willow beyond the window. There’d been wind chimes hanging from the low branch. Ceramic flowers. She’d made them; he’d hung them. And he’d said when the wind whispered through them, it was the sound of angels.

  He’d always been poetic like that.

  He’d turned to her and smiled, held out an arm and drew her to his side. He’d promised everything would be okay.

  A week later he’d been in prison for murder.

  Sometimes it felt as if only a few days had passed since that muggy summer morning. In the twelve years since then, she’d seen him only a handful of times, and she’d never again awakened to the scent of fresh-brewed coffee. There’d been no more standing in that window.

  And they’d never listened to the angels.

  Throat tightening, she savored the anticipation. Jimmy wasn’t waiting in the kitchen, but the man who’d taught her what it took to win—and what happened when you lost—was.

  The sound of a morning news show drew her. It was Wednesday. With one very big exception over the weekend—a charity event involving none other than Marcel Lambert—her calendar was clear until Monday. She did need to make an appearance at the office—but even more, she needed to confirm her suspicions about just how far Gabriel Fontenot would go to make sure he always, always came out on top.

  She found him standing in front of her old curio cabinet, with a pink pottery mug in one hand and a well-worn baseball in the other. And, for a moment, everything inside of her stopped. The punch came next, the distorted irony of seeing what had once been her brother’s future in Gabriel Fontenot’s deceptively well-manicured hands.

&n
bsp; “You’re still here,” she said. And if her voice sounded too thick, she at least had the defense of sleep to fall back on.

  He turned toward her, all rumpled six foot two of him, and frowned. “I told you I wasn’t leaving you.”

  They were just words. She knew that. Throw aways. Meaningless. Chosen with care and delivered with skill, just like everything Gabriel Fontenot did.

  Everything.

  Before she could stop it, she remembered Gabe in his office and the look in his eyes, the feel of his mouth and the taste of his kiss, the desperation and the need and the—

  Blocking the image, she destroyed it completely, but his words kept winding through her, sliding dangerously close to the place she could not allow him to touch—and, in doing so, reminded her why she had to be brutally careful with this man.

  On more than one occasion she’d imagined a moment like this, Gabriel Fontenot in her loft, casual and comfortable and relaxed. This was what she’d wanted when she’d come to New Orleans, one-on-one time with him. Time to learn about each other. Time to build trust. To confide.

  But she had no road map for this, no contingency plan for facing a man the morning after he’d caught her following him through a darkened warehouse. No guidelines for greeting the man who’d given her a concussion one moment then cradled her in his arms the next, who’d stayed by her side and watched over her.

  Who watched her now.

  And for the first time since he’d discovered her role in the D.A.’s sting, she would have sworn she didn’t see contempt glittering in his eyes.

  Maybe she was still groggy from the fall. Maybe she had some sort of hangover from the concussion. But the sight of him, his coffee-brown hair damp from a shower and curling at his nape, the grungy clothes from the night before gone, replaced by the faded jeans that fit a little too well and the white T-shirt he’d picked up from his house after leaving the clinic, came dangerously close to making her forget why she’d followed him to the warehouse in the first place—and what still had to be done.