A Little Bit Guilty

by Jenna Mills

  She’d made him let go….

  The master bedroom was the last door on the right, but he’d turned left, into the spare room. He’d purchased new furniture two months before, but he didn’t want Evangeline to so much as think she was in Val’s shadow. Because she wasn’t. And never would be.

  Evangeline had been the one casting a shadow, from the first day he’d seen her standing in the courthouse cafeteria.

  “Evie.” Moonlight streamed through the blinds and played against her face, making the sweep of her lashes against her cheeks look impossibly long—and the scrape next to her mouth impossibly heinous. Her eyes were closed. “Look at me.”

  He felt her tense, felt her breath feather against his chest and the muscles of her legs tighten. But for a long moment she did nothing, said nothing, and the frenzy of what he’d let happen in the living room twisted through him. He’d never taken a woman that way, never been so desperate to be inside that he hadn’t even bothered to wait until she was undressed, had just pressed up against a wall and pushed inside—

  The light in her eyes blanked the memory. It took a second to register, the soft glow, the absolute lack of any recrimination whatsoever. Of just…contentment.

  Maybe even amusement.

  “You were so wrong,” he muttered. “When you first joined the D.A.’s office and you turned and looked at me with that smile of yours—” with a single finger, he skimmed her bottom lip “—I knew I was in trouble.”

  A sweep of dark hair fell into her face, hiding the abrasion. But not the truth.

  “I knew I should stay away from you, but everywhere I turned, you were there—”

  Because she’d been deliberately infiltrating his life.

  He didn’t say the words, didn’t need to. The shadow fell over her, anyway. “Gabe, don’t—”

  “You couldn’t have done it.” For months he’d condemned her, never connecting the dots to realize that if she was the perpetrator, that made him the victim.

  Gabriel Fontenot was no one’s victim.

  “You couldn’t have done what the D.A. asked you to do,” he said, feathering his fingers out to her cheekbone, “if I hadn’t let you.” He’d fought it, tried to pretend he didn’t walk into the courthouse each morning looking forward to seeing her, but now the truth bled through him. “If I’d been happy with Val, I wouldn’t have even seen you, much less…”

  It shouldn’t have been possible for her to go more still. There in his arms, with her long legs curved around his waist, she barely breathed. “Much less, what?”

  “Wanted you.”

  Her eyes flared, darkened, and his body started to harden all over again. “I tried to deny it,” he said, because she deserved to know. “I’d made a commitment to Val and, even if things weren’t great, I didn’t know how to walk away from her.” He’d tried. After the first year they’d broken up several times. Once, she’d called him to say goodbye.

  He’d found her unconscious in her apartment, an empty bottle of sleeping pills beside her. “I thought she needed me.”

  At last, Evie moved. She brought a hand to his neck, trailing her fingertips along his throat. “But what did you need, Gabe?”

  Maybe it was the softness of her voice. Or maybe it was the way she looked at him, the soul-bearing earnestness in her eyes. Maybe the feel of her wrapped around him—and the memory of being inside.

  But the answer seared clear to the bone. “You,” he said. Her.

  The moonlight kept filtering in through the blinds, casting shadows across her face. “Gabe.”

  It was just his name, that was all she said. But there was an ache there, a pain, that shredded. He’d done this to her. He’d pushed her away, pushed hard.

  Because he flat damn hadn’t known how to do anything else.

  “You’d made me feel things,” he said. “Want things I’d forgotten existed. You’d made me feel alive.” Vital. “You’d made me look forward to coming to the courthouse, to seeing you—”

  Her hand fell away from his shoulder. “And then you found out about the I.A. investigation.”

  The words fell like bombs. “Yes.” He wasn’t sure who let go first. “Then I’d found out.” If she pushed back, or if he released. He only knew her legs no longer curved around his waist, that she was standing there barefoot with her dress wrinkled, her chin at a fierce angle—like a heretic about to be stoned alive.

  “Gabe.” This time his name was barely a whisper. “I never expected—”

  “Neither did I.” The stoicism in her eyes ripped through him, the way she kept bracing herself for him to push her away.

  “But I couldn’t get you out of my blood,” he said slowly, reaching for her as he did so. He curved his hands around her shoulders to the back of the dress, where he found the zipper. There, he tugged. “Couldn’t forget the way you made me feel—want.”

  The shock in her eyes rocked him.

  “That day I’d woken up by the lake,” he said as the slinky fabric pooled at her feet, revealing the soft swell of her breasts, lower to the curve of her waist, her hips…“I’d picked up the phone and dialed a number.”

  She lifted her eyes to his.

  “You,” he said, returning his hands to her shoulders. “I’d called you.” Because in the stillness of his empty little house, with his head pounding and his world tilting, he’d forgotten. He’d forgotten the dirty truths. Had forgotten about the night he’d confronted her in her office, when he’d wanted so damn bad for her to deny his accusations.

  He’d forgotten, had only known that he’d craved her more than the whiskey and pain pills.

  “Then I’d remembered,” he said, “and hung up.”

  She kept her eyes on his, stepped closer. It started slow, the smile, a curve of her mouth more wistful than happy. “I would have come.”

  “I know.” And he did. He’d known it then, too.

  That was why he’d hung up. Because the black and the white that had defined his life had merged into something dark and shadowy and dangerous. Evangeline would have come, but Gabe had no idea what he would have done.

  Walking her deeper into the spare room, their feet soft against the hardwood floor, he didn’t stop until the backs of her legs bumped against the bed. There he stepped back and drank in the sight of her, standing there so impossibly beautiful and courageous. He felt his eyes grow heavy, his body harden. “Earlier you asked me to let go.”

  The play of moonlight revealed a quick flare to her eyes, a streak of vulnerability so at odds with the Evangeline Rousseau he’d come to know, to crave, that he winced.

  “Not now,” she whispered, and he stepped closer, curling his hands around the soft, smooth curve of her hips.

  “I want to hold on,” he muttered as she tugged, and then they were on the bed, she on her back and he over her, not urgently like before, but with the gentle intimacy she deserved. With the time and tenderness they’d never had, never taken. He kissed her slow and deep, as he should have done the first time, making love to her with his mouth as his hands slid down to her breasts. With a soft moan she arched into him, her body practically vibrating as he slid his mouth down her neck and found her breasts.

  “So beautiful,” he murmured, first with little teasing kisses, like those she’d given him, then with a lingering drag of his tongue over her nipple.

  This time he took it slow. This time he gave, rather than took. This time he savored, rather than let go. And when he slid his hand between her legs and found her hot and wet and ready, when he took her other hand in his and pushed inside of her, when he felt her close around him and saw her eyes turn languid, everything else fell away, leaving only her. Evangeline.

  He slept.

  Earlier there’d been moonlight. Now darkness spilled in through the window. Maybe an hour had passed. Maybe two or three. There was no clock in the bedroom—not really much of anything, Evangeline realized, glancing around. The bed was big and sturdy, a queen, with a simple striped comforter. Th
e sheets, still stiff, were obviously new. There was a small table beside the bed, a lamp, an armoire across the room.

  She was quite sure if she opened the doors, she would find nothing inside.

  It was that way almost everywhere in Gabe’s house—the one he’d shared with Val—as if every room had been scrubbed clean with the rigor of a crime scene….

  And maybe it had. But not by the police, she knew. There’d been an investigation, yes. And Val’s files had been confiscated. But the police would not have cleaned. The police would not have scrubbed. That had been Gabe.

  The image rocked her, of Gabe alone in this house that had the potential to charm. She could see him, a big man in a small cage, the curtains closed, music pounding, scrubbing as a woman might in the shower after a sexual assault.

  But Val’s treachery had run deeper.

  At the time, Evangeline had told herself Gabe had gotten nothing more than he deserved. She’d stayed on the sidelines and watched, listened, trying to convince herself it was better this way. That it was easier to break an already broken man than one standing tall.

  But, God, she’d wanted the whole Gabe back, the man who turned heads wherever he went, whose intensity vibrated through her even when she couldn’t see him….

  She shifted against him, savoring the strength of his body, the feel of the hair on his legs against her calves, his chest beneath her face. His shoulders rose and fell with his breath. His heart strummed at a steady rhythm. Her heart—

  Through the darkness she lifted a hand to his face and let her fingertips feather against the whiskers at his jaw. Gabe letting go had damn near destroyed her. But Gabe holding on…

  Her throat tightened. He’d loved her with a raw intensity that had seared clear to the bone, a devastating gentleness that had fed that walled-off place deep inside. She’d come to him to bring him down. She’d come to him to make him pay, make him hurt.

  He had hurt and he had paid…for crimes that had nothing to do with him. And if Marcel Lambert had his way…

  The thought punished. If Marcel Lambert had his way, Gabe would go right on hurting, because he would never know the satisfaction of avenging his father’s death. But if Marcel Lambert didn’t have his way, if Gabe kept pushing, if he kept baiting the trap, then Gabe would pay another price. A steeper one.

  And so would Jimmy.

  The veil of contentment crumbled, and suddenly she couldn’t continue to lie there in the darkness, in his arms, not when her heart slammed violently against her ribs. He would wake up. He would know.

  And then he would start to strategize.

  Easing from his arms, Evangeline slipped from bed and looked around, but saw nothing with which to cover herself. Unless she wanted to slip back into her dress. Which she didn’t. Instead, she padded quietly from the room and made her way into the narrow hallway. A larger room opened across from her. The master, she realized, but did not go inside.

  The second door she came across belonged to a bathroom, and from it she grabbed a white towel, much like the one that had been draped around Gabe’s shoulders upon her arrival.

  But it was the third door that stopped her. It was closed.

  She should have left it that way, she knew that. She should have kept right on moving, toward the kitchen, for a glass of water or milk. Or to the dining room, where she could study the black-and-white picture of Gabe’s father and Marcel Lambert as young men—and the reproduction of the fabled stained glass.

  She should not have put her hand to the knob. And she should not have turned, pushed inside. But something dark and dangerous drove her. For over ten years she’d been looking for any scrap of evidence to prove Gabe had tampered with the jury that had sent Jimmy away.

  Stepping inside the small, paneled room, she took it all in, the old rolltop desk sitting on one side, the bookcases covering one wall, the two large wooden file cabinets on the other.

  After Gabe had shut her out, she’d had to resort to more covert tactics. She’d gained access to his office downtown and had taken a few files. She’d done other things, tried to smoke him out of complacency. She’d followed him and sent carefully worded notes…she’d tried to break into his house….

  Desperation, she realized. It could twist and contort. It could stain. She’d come to New Orleans to prove Gabriel Fontenot was not a man of the law.

  In the process, she, herself, had abandoned the law she claimed to love.

  Now she ran her hand along one of the bookshelves. It was here, everything she’d come to find….

  Gabe came awake hard, jerking up in bed before he even realized where he was. His breath ripped through him and his heart pounded. The stillness was…wrong.

  He knew before he looked, knew she was gone. She was too warm and the bed was too cold.

  Earlier there’d been moonlight, but now there was only darkness. “Evangeline!”

  With a violence he didn’t understand, he swung to his feet and stood, flicked on the bedside lamp and started for the hallway.

  The slinky black puddle beside the bed stopped him. Her dress, he realized, exactly where he’d left it.

  “Evie?” he called, but then she was there, stepping from the shadows with her hair loose around her face and a thick white towel wrapped around her body, a glass in her hands.

  “Hi, there,” she said, and damn near eviscerated him with a smile. “Miss me?”

  The sight of her standing there more naked than not, in his house, his towel, fired through him. “I thought you were gone.”

  “Not a chance,” she said, closing the distance between them and pushing up on her toes. “Just thirsty.”

  He glanced down first at the water, then the towel. Then he lifted his hands and tugged. “Care to share?”

  The towel dropped to the floor. “Not a chance,” she said again, this time stepping into him and backing him toward the bed. “I’m a one-on-one kind of girl,” she said with a playful push.

  He let himself drop to the mattress, went back on his elbows as he watched her lean over him and tilt the glass.

  The cool drizzle of water over his chest shocked—even as it seduced.

  “Uh-oh,” she whispered, and her eyes took on a slow gleam, “looks like I spilled.”

  He glanced at the water trickling down his chest, then up at her. “So you did.”

  “Maybe I’d better take care of that,” she said with exaggerated solemnity. Never looking away, she set the glass on the table and reached for the lamp.

  “No.” The word practically tore out of him. “Leave it on,” he said, stopping her with a hand to her forearm. If she turned out the light, there would be only darkness—and he’d had enough of that. Now he wanted to see.

  “No,” she said, moistening her lips.

  He looked at the mischief curving her mouth and damn near came unglued. “No?”

  “No,” she repeated, twisting her wrist from his grip. “I don’t want to wait, anymore.”

  Normally, he loved the game, the dance. But impatience pulled through him. “Wait for what?”

  Her smile widened as she slid her hand toward the lamp. “To find out if the rumors are true.”

  “What rumors?” he asked with a dark suspicion, but she was still smiling, her eyes still gleaming.

  “About your work ethic,” she answered with a matter-of-factness that defied the fact they were inches apart and naked, that they’d spent the better part of the past three hours doing anything but work. “How good you are in the dark.”

  “Ah,” he said, anyway, because he knew the rumor—and the truth. “Those rumors,” he drawled, pushing up to join his hand to hers, as together they turned out the light and found darkness. “I’ll let you be the judge.”

  Chapter 13

  E vangeline liked being the judge. Thorough adjudicator that she was, she considered every nuance, every angle, every exception. She reviewed the evidence, asked for more.

  It was almost sunrise before she rendered her verdict: G
uilty as charged.

  Gabe watched her at the old pine table with her hair pulled into a ponytail, eating a bowl of sugary cereal. She was close to thirty, but the way his long-sleeved LSU jersey dwarfed her made her look young and fragile in ways he’d never expected. Every time she glanced up at him with a spoon in her hand and a light in her eyes, his chest tightened.

  Her eyes, he knew. It was there in her eyes….

  “So the Robichauds fled France during the Reign of Terror,” she asked, looking up from genealogy notes of his father’s. “And your dad’s family fled Nova Scotia during the Exile?”

  A history buff, his father had been obsessed with distilling legend from legacy, fact from fiction. That’s how he’d met Gabe’s mother, through his obsession with finding the truth about the mystical depiction of the rapture. “Only two children escaped France,” he said. “A boy and a girl.”

  “What happened to the rest of the family?”

  He glanced at the detailed drawing of angels and demons, sin and salvation. “No one knows for sure, but it looks like they were executed within days of smuggling the children out of the country.” Their holdings in Brittany had been ransacked, the private chapel torched, all trace of the family…extinguished. “When I was a kid my dad took us there. He thought actually being there he might be able to find out—”

  “Did he?” she asked, scooping up another bite of cereal.

  “No.” Not about the fate of the Robichauds—or the stained glass. Many claimed there’d never been a mystical stained glass, that all the rumors about healing properties were just stories. But others, mainly the elders, they’d shown Gabe’s dad pictures….

  Again he looked at the drawing, the date on the bottom right corner: 1756.

  “So allegedly the children smuggled out this piece of stained glass with them?” she asked.

  “Allegedly.” But others said the stained glass had been destroyed when the chapel was burned, just like so many other historical and religious treasures.

  “And then it showed up here?” she said, reaching for her orange juice. “Sometime before the Civil War?”