A Little Bit Guilty

by Jenna Mills

  “That’s a prosecutor’s job. To prosecute.”

  “You make it sound so black-and-white.”

  “Either someone is guilty, or they’re not.”

  “What if Marcel isn’t?” Evangeline asked as she set the empty glass onto the table.

  It was a logical question, the kind any good prosecutor had to ask. Cover every possible angle. Evaluate every scenario. Turn over every stone the defense might throw. Gabe knew that. But if Lambert was innocent, if someone else killed Darci—

  It would be more than just a case that he lost.

  “Something doesn’t feel right,” Evangeline said. She eased away from the table and crossed the kitchen, leaned against an empty corkboard, all but piercing him with her gaze. “It’s too neat and tidy. Rich, powerful man. Poor, desperate girl. A sordid affair. A tragic ending.”

  She made it sound like one of those Cameron Monroe true-crime books his cousin Saura insisted that he read.

  “I want to know her.” Evangeline’s T-shirt rode high against her thighs in a way her tailored suits had never done. “I want to know the girl she was before she came to New Orleans. I want to know what made her tick and what made her cry. What she wanted…”

  Gabe stood. “And who else might have wanted her dead.”

  “If there is someone else, yes.”

  “Do you really think it’s that easy? You just stroll down to Wild Berry and ask a few questions, find out everything you want to know?” The cops had already conducted their investigation. And unlike all those years ago, this time all roads led in the same direction. “Say you stumble across some big secret, some other reason why Darci called a police detective the night before she was murdered.” She’d been scared. D’Ambrosia had heard it in her voice. “You really think someone’s just going to let you find that information?”

  Evangeline lifted her chin. “What are you saying?”

  She was a professional. She knew how to handle herself, how to take care of herself. She’d prosecuted monsters before. And, yet, the thought of her poking around in Darci’s secrets made something inside Gabe twist. Lambert would not sit back and let Evangeline Rousseau—let anyone—take him down.

  He’d take first.

  “Darci was murdered,” Gabe and his voice was rougher than he’d intended. “What do you think that someone will do to make sure you don’t prove by whom?”

  Evangeline wasn’t a woman to look away or back down. Even when she should. Standing there in the hazy light, she looked at him as if he was warning her about something as mundane as getting out of bed. “It’s my job—and I don’t run scared.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “Gabe.” Her voice was oddly quiet. “Stop.”

  “Stop what?”

  “This.” She gestured toward him with her arm. “Standing here in my kitchen like you care, like you’re concerned.” She swallowed and looked away, stared hard at the little flower wind chimes. “I’m not stupid,” she said in a voice that brought acid to his chest. “I’m not naive. I know none of this is real.”

  He wouldn’t let himself move, sure as hell wouldn’t let himself walk toward her. Because she was right. None of this was real. None. Of. It.

  She turned back to him. “You want something,” she added, softer this time, but with a precision that pierced. “And it’s not me.”

  Chapter 3

  G abe didn’t move.

  “This is me, Gabe,” she said, shoving the hair from her face. “I’m not stupid. I know how you feel about me…which is why I know better than to believe it’s me you’re really concerned about. This is about him, isn’t it? Marcel.”

  The muscle in the hollow of his cheek started to pound.

  “You want to see him fall. You want to be the one to push him. But tell me something, Gabe,” she pressed, and the gray of her eyes went oddly dark. “Just how far are you willing to go to make that happen?”

  In another situation he might have smiled. Hazy morning light played against her face, giving her the girl-next-door glow that made her so lethal in the courtroom.

  “You really think I’m concerned about limits?” he asked mildly.

  He would have sworn it was disappointment that flashed through her gaze. “But what if he’s innocent?” she asked again.

  It almost sounded as if she wanted him to be. “What if he’s not?”

  Her eyes met his. “Then, he’ll be convicted.”

  “You really think it works like that, all nice and tidy? That justice comes with a pretty bow wrapped around it?”

  “No.” It was barely a whisper. “But his record is clean,” she said, and then she was moving again, looking tall and regal and composed despite her bare legs and the flowers on her toenails.

  “He’s a respected member of the community,” she went on, brushing by him and reaching for a small shelf beside the table. “Walk into almost any home in this state and you’ll find one of his cookbooks.” To demonstrate, she pulled one from her own shelf. “You think a jury is going to send him to Angola on circumstantial evidence alone?”

  No. He didn’t need to be an A.D.A to know that. Only a boy. A son. The Lamberts were slippery. They had money and influence and charm. Without concrete evidence, Marcel would get away with murder—again.

  Taking the cookbook from her hands, he flipped open the back cover and stared at the man’s ruddy cheeks and salt-and-pepper hair, the self-satisfied gleam in his eyes. Black was black and white was white. There could be no shades of gray—not with this man and not with this woman.

  No matter how badly Gabe had once wished that there were.

  “There will be more than circumstantial evidence.” He raised his gaze to Evangeline’s. “That’s why I’m going with you.”

  For the second time in less than an hour, he succeeded in surprising her. “Come again?”

  “To Wild Berry,” he said, and though he kept his face expressionless, inside he savored the hand of aces. “The sheriff is a friend of mine, Jack Savoie.” But not even his badge was yielding the answers they needed. Folks didn’t want to talk about Darci Falgoust—or Marcel Lambert. Especially to the law. “He’ll run interference.”

  “We.” She enunciated the word distinctly, as if it were a foreign concept to be studied and dissected.

  “You can tell me no,” he said, tossing the cookbook onto the table. “You can get up tomorrow and drive down there, but when you arrive, I’ll already be there.” Looking for proof that Darci and Marcel had been involved. “I’ll already have the doors open.”

  “And you’ll make sure they close for me,” she said with a quiet that had nothing to do with defeat. “Gabe.” Her voice thickened on his name. “We’re on the same side. We want the same thing.”

  He doubted that. “Then, don’t force my hand.”

  For a long moment she said nothing, just looked at him with the oddest light glowing in her eyes. Gray, damn it. Even standing beneath the fluorescent light of the kitchen, with the light of the sun falling on her, her eyes were still gray.

  And like one of those flowers that his uncle had always warned him not to touch, she still fascinated.

  “There’s more to this than you’re telling me,” she said.

  From the moment he’d turned around to see her emerging from the hall, he’d deliberately kept his distance. There’d been enough touching the night before. But now he allowed himself to move, to feather a single finger against the bandage at her temple. “With us, there always is.”

  The rusted remains of an old sugar mill hulked over Wild Berry like a worn-out landlord. To the left of the town’s only stop sign sat Ardoin’s Tractor and Feed; to the right, Bonaventure’s Landing. The small country grocery and smokehouse looked nondescript and run-down on the outside and not a whole lot better on the inside.

  The smell of grease and pepper permeated the old building, courtesy of years of fried shrimp and catfish, of étouffé and gumbo and jambalaya and boudin.

  “So,
you two are newlyweds?” the owner, Rosemunde, asked as she reached beside a stack of pecan pies for two menus.

  With a lazy grin, Gabe slid an arm around Evangeline and pulled her to his side. “I got me a pretty one, didn’t I?”

  “Almost three months,” Evangeline added. Then, for the shock value of it, she slid a hand to cup her stomach. As much as she hated the feel of his hand on her body, his idea that they pose as a young married couple was inspired. The people of Wild Berry weren’t talking to the law. But a young couple just passing through…Harmless.

  “Mama thought it best if we hitched up before I start showing.”

  Against her hip, Gabe’s hand tensed—the pregnancy bit had not been part of the plan. At least, not his plan. But classic Gabe, his face gave away nothing. He gazed down at her with one of those slow, black-magic smiles, then pressed a kiss to the top of her nose. “I’m hoping for a girl,” he said, not missing a beat. “As pretty as her mama.”

  Rosemunde clasped her hands together. “How wonderful.”

  “’Course, the way she’s eating,” Gabe drawled in rare form, “she might have a whole litter in there.”

  It shouldn’t have been possible. Only four months had passed since she’d last been this close to Gabe. And in those four months she’d never been far away. But somehow she had forgotten. She’d forgotten what it was like to have him touch her—and how easily he could manipulate a situation to get what he wanted.

  “Now, Russell Rae, you stop that,” she said, playing along. “You know I’ve only gained two little pounds.”

  “So you keep telling me,” he said, sliding his hand from her hip to her stomach. “But I can already feel—”

  She swatted him, didn’t want him to touch any more intimately than he already had. “How many times do I have to tell you, there will be no feeling in public?”

  A dark light glowed in Gabe’s eyes as he retrieved his hand.

  Laughing, Rosemunde led them toward a booth against the window opening to the parking lot. “Mornin’ rush is over,” she said. “The lunch folks will be in soon. But, until then, you kids have the place mostly to yourselves.” She placed the laminated menus on the table then gestured for Evangeline to slide in. “Get you some juice or coffee, hon?”

  “Coffee’d be great,” Evangeline said out of habit, but then Gabe slid in beside her and stretched an arm behind her shoulders.

  “Make that a decaf,” he instructed. “Save the real stuff for me. And orange juice,” he added. “For both of us. Mama says our little lima bean needs plenty of folic acid.”

  Rosemunde nodded. “I’ll be back for your order in a sec.” Smiling like a proud aunt, she turned and strolled toward the counter, where two older men sat on barstools.

  “Lima bean?” Evangeline lifted a brow. “Folic acid?”

  Gabe just gave her a lazy grin, as if the two of them sat hip to hip in a backwater diner every morning—and he’d never caught her putting a knife into his back. “Inspired, wasn’t it?”

  His voice was low, relaxed, the Gabe from before, not the man who manipulated juries and card games, but the man who would kick off his shoes and prop his socked feet on his desk, flip on the stereo behind him and sing the blues.

  She’d forgotten what that voice could do to her.

  But she hadn’t forgotten what Gabe could do. What he had done.

  It was as though a switch had been flipped—on or off, she didn’t know. He wore a pair of faded jeans like the ones she’d found him in the morning before. He’d chosen an ivory button-down, wrinkled with the sleeves rolled up, the tail untucked. His hair was combed, but whiskers shadowed his jaw. On his feet he wore scuffed cowboy boots. On his wrist, a cheap, digital watch.

  Looking at him, Rosemunde would never guess that this man possessed one of Louisiana’s brightest legal minds. That there were those who’d wanted him to run for lieutenant governor.

  He just looked like…like Russell Rae, an easygoing Southern man out for breakfast with his pregnant, ponytailed wife.

  But Evangeline knew. She knew who he was and what he’d done, what she’d done to him. She knew about the pills, and as she slid a glance his way, she saw the shadows in his eyes that he would never allow Rosemunde to see. That he didn’t want Evangeline to see.

  “What strikes your fancy, sugar?” he asked, relaxing the hand pressed to her shoulder. “I hear their andouille is legendary.”

  Who was this man? she wondered in some faraway corner of her mind. Who was this man who could prowl through her apartment one morning, making the small space feel more like a holding cell than the sanctuary it had been, only to sprawl in a booth beside her the next morning and shoot the breeze as if there was nowhere else in the world he wanted to be.

  The answer tightened through her.

  He was a player. He could be anyone, hide anything. It’s what made him so good and so dangerous.

  “Bacon,” she said with her own smitten smile. “Crispy-fried.” Then she nudged against his thigh. “Scooch over, darlin’. I need to powder my nose.”

  With a long, measured look, he did as she asked and let her slide across the torn red vinyl. She’d taken four steps before he spoke. “Grits or hash browns?”

  That was easy. “Surprise me,” she said, twisting around and meeting his eyes. “It’s what you do best.”

  Gabe watched her go. The gypsy-style top took at least ten years off her. With the short ponytail and minimal makeup, the hip-hugging jeans, she could easily pass for some man’s young, innocent bride. She’d no sooner cleared the door to the ladies’ room than Rosa-munde was at his side taking their orders.

  Jack hadn’t called. His friend was downplaying it, but Gabe knew Jack had heard the rumors, too, about someone asking a whole lot of questions that no one wanted to answer. They’d been friends since they claimed the same fishing hole as six-year-olds. Gabe had been there when Jack’s mama was diagnosed with breast cancer just as Jack had when Gabe’s mother’s scream had jolted the boys from a late-night game of cards. War, Gabe remembered. He’d been winning.

  “Gabe?”

  He twisted toward the quiet voice and saw her standing there, not the woman he’d first met in the courthouse cafeteria all those months ago, the woman whose ability to bluff he’d never even suspected. He saw Lilah Mae, the casually dressed woman with shiny lip gloss and a fake tattoo inside her wrist, looking at him with the dread of a wife whose husband had just hung up the phone from bad news.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  He hadn’t said a word. He wasn’t even looking at her. He was looking out the window, at the sign advertising the lunch special. But somehow she saw. And somehow she knew.

  The way she had before.

  Once her ability to read him had fascinated. Only a select handful had been able to—his cousins Cain and Saura, his friend Jack. His sister. All of them were people he trusted. And loved. Who loved him back.

  And then there was Evangeline.

  “Well, now, Lilah, darlin’,” he drawled, finding the unaffected grin of Russell Rae. He slid from the booth and gestured for her to return to her spot by the window, where a child’s handprint remained. “’Course everything’s okay. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  Toward the front, the bell on the door jingled, but he didn’t look away from Evangeline—or the flash of longing he thought he saw in her eyes.

  “I just thought…you looked upset,” she said, easing around him and reclaiming her seat. “I thought maybe Jack had called, that there was news.”

  He lowered himself back into the booth. “No news.”

  She glanced toward the kitchen, then back at him. “A couple of young women just got here,” she said. “Probably a few years older than Darci. One of them is pregnant.”

  With a nod, Gabe reached for his coffee and took a long bitter sip.

  “Ga—Russell,” she corrected, quieter this time, and then her hand was on his, soft and intimate. Familiar. “If it’s your head, I’ve g
ot some aspirin—”

  “I don’t need pills.” Didn’t want them. He pulled his hand from hers and put the mug back on the table, trying damn hard not to slam it.

  “Maybe a massage then,” she said, angling toward him and lifting her hands. Her fingers found his temple, and caressed.

  Don’t. The word flashed, even as the pressure of her fingertips sent little waves of pleasure eddying through him. “My head is fine,” he said, but before he could pull away, he saw Rosemunde strolling toward them with a tray balanced on her hand. “But you sure do know what you’re doing, sugarplum,” he drawled. “I am a lucky man to get for free what a lot of people charge for.”

  The innuendo flew right by Rosemunde, who sidled up beside them and began unloading plates, but Evangeline’s mouth tightened.

  “Got you some grits here,” Rosemunde said, placing the large ceramic bowl in front of her. “Your husband had me add some cheese as a surprise.”

  “That was right nice of you,” Evangeline said, but her voice was different now, strained. Almost…hurt. “Russell’s always had a way of surprising me.”

  “Something tells me he’s good at it, too,” Rosemunde said, laughing.

  Gabe lifted his eyes to Evangeline’s. “Just want my girl to get what she deserves.”

  Rosemunde placed a plate of powdered-sugar-covered French toast between them. “You sure did get yourself a good one, hon—he got any brothers?” Laughing, she winked. “Or maybe an uncle…”

  The words hit a little too close. Bayou de Foi wasn’t that far from Wild Berry—he had no doubt Rosemunde not only knew of his family, but of his uncles, the senator and the sheriff. Both had reputations. Both had broken more than one heart.

  “None good enough for you,” he drawled.

  “Everything looks just wonderful.” Evangeline diverted their waitress. With her hand to his thigh she gave a little squeeze, signaling that she was about to go fishing. “I have to say, you are every bit as sweet as Darci said you were.”