A Little Bit Guilty

by Jenna Mills

  Again, he answered vaguely. “Allegedly.”

  She took a long sip of juice, then set the glass back down. “I heard the stories,” she said. “When I was a little girl. My grandmother used to tell me about the pirates and the voodoo queens, the beautiful young woman who could make sick people well.”

  He looked up from his dad’s notes and found the morning light spilling across her face. Her smile was soft, the abrasion beside her mouth no longer quite as pronounced.

  “But it wasn’t just a story, was it?” she asked.

  The tightening came so damn fast he almost winced. Because she’d come into his life only a few months before, it was easy to forget they shared a history. They’d both grown up on the myths and legends, the lore. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”

  “And your dad was one of the men searching for it,” she said.

  Obsessing was a better word.

  “And the Lamberts—” she frowned “—where did they come in?”

  “Funding.” It was as simple as that. His father had been a driven man, but proud. He’d refused to accept funds from his wife’s family. He’d already felt as though he wasn’t quite good enough for the Robichaud princess. He’d wanted to prove his worth, to restore the family legacy—

  “Gabe.”

  Her voice was soft and it ripped right through him.

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  And just like that the illusion of a man and woman sharing a leisurely breakfast after a night of lovemaking crumbled. He pushed back from the table and strode into the kitchen, poured a second cup of coffee. The trap had already been laid. The bait was in place. Soon, he would be able to prove it was Lambert who had turned on his father.

  And she wasn’t going to stop him.

  “I know what I’m doing,” he said as his phone rang. He grabbed it, saw the number blocked, answered it anyway. “Fontenot.”

  “Gabriel,” the mechanical voice greeted. “How nice of you to answer.”

  Something was wrong.

  Evangeline told herself she was only imagining things, letting her mind run in a dangerous direction, but as she stood under the warm spray of the shower, the cold refused to let go.

  The phone had rung. He’d talked for a few minutes. He’d kept his back to her, his voice low. She hadn’t been able to make out many words, just his clipped tone. “You’re lying,” she’d heard. And, “Like hell.”

  Then Gabe had hung up and turned to her and told her there was something he needed to do. He’d suggested she shower. He’d walked her to his bedroom, kissed her before closing the door. Kissed her hard and deep, with an intensity that should have brought back every mind-numbing memory of the way he’d made love to her the night before and the delicious realization that the rumor about Gabe and the dark was most definitely true.

  But there’d been something different about the kiss, a hunger, a…desperation that stayed with her and haunted. She ran his bar of soap over her body and lathered his shampoo into her hair, stepped from his shower and reached for his towel.

  Through the foggy bathroom mirror she saw her face and lifted her hand to the bruise beside her mouth. That was passion. That was intensity. And Gabriel Fontenot was not the kind of man to let go like that, to hold on like that, with someone he didn’t trust.

  But the phone call…

  Telling herself she was being ridiculous, she towel-dried her hair and wrapped the thick white towel around her middle, opened the door.

  The blast of cool air hit her so hard she almost doubled over. Shivering, she looked for the robe she’d left on the bed—but saw Gabe. He lounged in the doorway, fully dressed, a long-sleeved black button-down tucked into his jeans, socks and shoes on his feet…while she stood wet and practically naked.

  “Look at you,” he drawled, and then he was crossing toward her, his long stride destroying the distance between them. “A man could go his whole life and never even imagine…”

  She’d spent the night making love with him. She’d come to him, refused to back down until he let go. And when he had, he’d come to her with an intensity that should have frightened and, instead, she’d thrilled, wanted more. She’d stepped into him, held on tight.

  Now he closed in on her and, for a disjointed second, she almost stepped back. “Gabe—”

  “Got a second?”

  Maybe it was the glitter in his eyes. Or maybe it was the way he kept looking at her, as if he’d never seen her before. But her heart kicked hard. “Sure,” she said, “just let me get dressed.”

  His smile was slow, languorous. “Why?” he asked, and though he’d yet to touch her physically, her body ached. “Something you don’t want me to see?”

  The dare streaked through her, scratching at the lies that stood between them. She found a smile, anyway, and put her hand in his. “Show the way,” she said.

  He did. The warmth of his hand soaked into her palm as he led her across the hall, toward the room that had stood shut the night before. Her heart kicked hard as he opened the door and let her in, stood back while she moved inside. Morning light brought little change to the richly masculine room, except for the electronics. Last night his laptop had sat on his desk, turned off. Now a cursor blinked against a gray screen. And last night she’d barely noticed the television and stereo equipment.

  Now, dark lines streaked across the screen, as though something had been paused.

  “Wow,” she said, turning and trying to smile. The rest of the house had been gutted. He’d stripped it bare, gotten rid of all traces of Val. But this room, with its rich woodwork and scattering of family photographs on the credenza, with the reading glasses sitting near the laptop, looked warm and untouched. “I’ve heard that every man needs his space but this is…gorgeous.”

  The glimmer in his eyes darkened. “We all have our little secrets,” he said quietly. A few steps and he reached a small round table beside the leather sofa. There he picked up a remote control. “I spend a lot of time here,” he said. “It’s where I come to work…to think.”

  And she could see him, too, see Gabe seated at the old rolltop desk late into the night, his hair rumpled from his hands, working on a brief or outlining a closing argument.

  “Go ahead, have a seat,” he said, aiming the remote at the TV. “There’s something I need you to see.”

  The words were innocuous. They should have warmed. She and Gabe had come a long way in twelve hours. He’d shared more than just his bed. He’d fixed her a bowl of cereal and poured her a glass of juice. He’d let her see his father’s journals, had talked about his past. That he would invite her into his private world, that he would share with her…

  But her throat went tight, anyway.

  And then came the image on the screen. It was dark and grainy, but she could make out the outline of his desk, and the bookcases, the file cabinets.

  And then everything just stopped.

  Because she knew. Even before the silhouette crossed the screen, she knew what was coming. Every last shred.

  Much as it had the night before, the room smelled of leather and furniture polish, of man; and much like the night before, cool air swirled against her bare skin. Then, it had been quiet, the large TV blank. Now a damning video played against the screen, her silhouette wrapped in a towel and moving through Gabe’s office, looking and touching, sliding open drawers….

  And Gabe, standing so horribly, brutally rigid.

  He knew.

  The reality of that sliced through her, hard and deep and fast, without mercy or reprieve. Just a few hours before he’d moved languidly over her and inside of her. Now he stood only a few feet away, not looking at her, every line of his body hard and unforgiving. The mouth that had skimmed her body, tasting and giving, condemned. And his eyes…

  They were trained on the television, but even without him looking at her, the derision there had the power to freeze.

  She’d always known this moment would come. But she’d thought it would b
e on her own terms, at a time and place of her choosing. But never like this. Never here, now, with her body flushed from the last time they’d made love and, courtesy of a security camera, she’d never even suspected.

  “Pretty fascinating, huh?” His tone was casual, but she recognized it in a heartbeat, that deceptively, lethal banter that always, always preceded the kill.

  Classic Gabe, he’d kept his cards to his chest, until it was time to annihilate.

  The movement of her hands was automatic, lifting to the ends of the towel and pulling it tighter. “Gabe…” It took effort, but she didn’t let her voice shake. “This isn’t what you think.”

  The irony staggered. Of all the lies she had told, of all the wrongs she had perpetrated, that he would learn the truth through something so purely innocent. Once she would have given almost anything to have access to his office, his files.

  Last night she had. But instead of looking for evidence to condemn, she’d looked for any shred of information that might shed light on who really had gotten to the jury all those years before.

  He lifted the remote and paused the tape, leaving the image of her opening one of his desk drawers frozen between them.

  Then he turned to her, and she saw. For months she’d wanted him back, the Gabe from before, the one who’d vanished when his world blew up around him. He stood there now, but she saw only a stranger, a man no longer broken, but glued back together so tightly there were no cracks.

  “Tell me,” he said, still using that same laissez-faire voice, that could so easily fry a witness before he even knew the fuse had been lit. “How much is Lambert paying you?”

  Nothing prepared her. Not the voice she knew not to trust, not the slow gleam in his eyes. The question collapsed around her, sent her hand groping for the back of the sofa. “What?”

  “Was this his plan all along?” he asked silkily, standing there fully dressed while she wore only a towel. “You as the backup, the cleanup hitter to sweep in when Val—”

  “No!” The word tore out of her. “That’s not—”

  “I’ll pay you more.”

  Her fingers dug deeper into the leather. “Pay me more?”

  “Whatever he’s paying you,” Gabe said, “I’ll double it. Tell him you’ve got me just where you wanted me, but tell me his endgame, what kind of trap he’s laying—”

  Shock made her knees want to buckle. But she didn’t let herself move, except to breathe. Of all the scenarios she’d envisioned, after the way she’d given herself to Gabe last night, she’d never imagined he could actually think she was in cahoots with Marcel Lambert.

  But she should have, she realized. Because that’s how Gabriel Fontenot’s mind worked. Nothing was isolated. There was always a master plan. Everything fit together.

  “You’re wrong,” she whispered, knowing the time had come—but also knowing it was too late. “I’m not working for Marcel Lambert.”

  She’d played poker with him once before, had seen the way he would sit there so benignly, holding his cards, looking almost bored while everyone around him scrambled.

  “Then, who?” he asked with all the interest of a man watching his competitor’s posture, while he held a royal flush.

  “I’m not working for anyone,” she said. “Anyone but myself.”

  The sunlight spilling in through the shutters exposed every hard line of Gabe’s face, his body. But no flicker to his eyes and no twist to his mouth. He didn’t lift a hand to his nose, didn’t swallow, didn’t give her any kind of reaction. Didn’t give her anything.

  “Rousseau is my mother’s name,” she said, as she’d rehearsed so many times before. “Her maiden name.”

  The darkening of his gaze was so slight she couldn’t be sure she’d even seen it.

  “My father was a Montrose.” Hesitating, she let the name hang there between them. Montrose. How many times had Gabe spoken that name? Written that name? Typed arguments and signed documents, reports. “That’s what’s on my birth certificate,” she said.

  But he gave her nothing that indicated any kind of bomb had just gone off.

  “James was his name,” she said, feeling it all start to unravel, twelve years of pain and anger, of injustice and determination, of drive and sacrifice.

  “And my brother’s,” she added, and this time her voice betrayed her, tightening on the words, threatening to break.

  Gabe’s eyes narrowed. “James…”

  “Jimmy.” It hurt to say his name. It hurt to remember. And for some ridiculous reason, it hurt to realize Gabe had no idea who she was talking about, that even if he wasn’t the one who’d tampered with the jury, he could shred and move on, never look back. Never remember, never wonder. Never care. “Jimmy Montrose.”

  Maybe the stillness around him deepened. Or maybe that was the shadows. She didn’t know, only knew that he didn’t say anything, didn’t give her anything, just kept watching her like the prosecutor he was.

  “Damn it,” she snapped. And she couldn’t stand it one second longer, the way he stood there so removed and unaffected. She let go of the sofa and closed the distance between them.

  “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” she asked, lifting her hands to his chest.

  Finally he moved. He caught her wrists and held them, stared down at her not with the icy recrimination from before, but the slow heat of recognition.

  Chapter 14

  H er eyes.

  Gabe didn’t trust himself to move, to think, barely trusted himself to breathe. He was a man who prided himself on the ability to clear away the clutter and focus on truth. Details were everything. The way someone stood, whether they made eye contact. If a woman twirled her hair or a man rubbed his jaw.

  The truth was in the details.

  And Evangeline’s truth glowed in her eyes.

  “You were there,” he murmured with a sick punch to his gut. He saw it now. He didn’t know how the hell he’d been so blind before.

  “In the courtroom,” he said, not letting go, not looking away. “Every day.”

  Her throat worked. Her mouth flattened into that defiant line he’d once taken as a dare. “Watching,” she said, but her voice was so quiet he felt more than heard it. “Listening.” She paused, angled her chin even more fiercely. “Dying.”

  The sister. It had been his first case. He’d been on fire, eager to blaze down the path that would, one day, allow him to make sure his father’s murderer didn’t go unpunished. He could still remember the gangly kid from a nearby bayou town, not much younger than Gabe had been at the time. Under different circumstances, they might have been friends.

  “Your eyes,” he said, and the words were raw. Every day she’d been there, a young girl no more than eighteen or nineteen, sitting in the courtroom with her hair in a ponytail, watching.

  Jimmy Montrose had gone to prison, but his sister had followed Gabe, slipping into his sleep and watching him there. Always, always watching.

  She stood here now in his study, still watching, still condemning. “He was innocent,” she said, but he no longer recognized her voice. It wasn’t the attorney’s voice, or the woman’s voice. But the sister’s voice. “He was innocent, but he went to prison, anyway.”

  And she’d come here, to New Orleans. To him.

  “He wanted to be a doctor,” she whispered with an aching tenderness that brought everything into sharper focus. “Just like our father. He had a life, Gabe. A fiancée and a future.”

  He looked down at his hold on her wrists, let his hands fall away. “Jesus.”

  Evangeline glared up at him, her body rigid and composed, as if she wore one of her designer suits, rather than almost nothing at all. “And I’d thought you took it from him…took everything.”

  He backed away from her, from the truth that kept right on slicing. “That’s why you’re here,” he realized coldly. Here in New Orleans as an assistant district attorney. Here in his house, his towel, as his lover.

  She shoved the tangled hair
from her face.

  “He was innocent, Gabe. Don’t you get that? Don’t you care? Jimmy was innocent! He didn’t kill that woman.”

  “The evidence—”

  “Was tampered with,” she said, cutting him off. “Just like the jury. Didn’t you ever think it was too easy? Too tidy?” she asked. “Well, I did. And so did others. A juror even contacted me, said she needed to tell me something, that something was wrong.”

  Ugly pieces fell closer. That case. He’d been so sure he would lose that case.

  “She said there’d been a payoff…that she had proof.” Eyes glittering, Evangeline stepped closer. “But she died, Gabe. She was killed the day she was supposed to meet with me.”

  “Jesus.”

  “There were other things.” Evangeline rolled on, revealing comments several of her professors had made and theories of a journalist, another juror ready to talk. Gabe heard it all, felt each allegation slash a little deeper, like a thin leather strip biting into flesh, baring a truth that sickened.

  “So you crawled into my bed—” He bit the words out. Just like Val.

  And once again, he’d been as blind as a goddamned newborn.

  “No!” Her voice wavered on the word. She stepped toward him looking at him not with the defiance of before, but a pleading that stung like alcohol to a fresh wound. “It wasn’t like that. Everything I told you last night was true. I came to New Orleans to make you pay. And I tried…but the more time I spent with you, the more I got to know you, the man you are, the more everything blurred and—”

  He stiffened, didn’t trust himself to…do anything. “You never said a word.” That one reality just kept right on twisting.

  “I couldn’t! Not until I knew for sure. I’d spent so long believing you to be a monster, and then I couldn’t stop thinking about you…wanting you. I…was afraid,” she said, and again she moved, taking another step. “And all I could think was that I couldn’t let Jimmy down like that.”

  He looked at her standing there and felt something inside him break.

  “But when I walked by your office last night, when I opened the door and walked inside…I realized it wasn’t to find something to use against you. Someone framed you, Gabe. I thought if I could find—”