Somebody's Knocking at My Door

by Francis Ray

  “He’d complain about Mother dragging him to another party, about her never being ready on time, but that night or the next day, when I saw him, he’d always be happy.”

  Rafe tried to remember if his father had ever smiled at him and couldn’t. “You’re lucky to have had him in your life.”

  “Yes, I was. We were very close. I didn’t think I’d ever get over his death, but time and my family helped. So did Jonathan.”

  He thought of his grandmother and her death. She had hoped and prayed so hard for them to become a family, for her son’s hatred of his own son to end. It hadn’t, and with her death Rafe no longer cared. He hadn’t heard from his father or sister since he had testified in Lilly’s divorce case seven years ago. “Tell Angelique I’ll take care of the tux. What time should I pick you up?”

  “Eight-fifteen.”

  “I better get you back to work.” He started back toward the gallery and she fell into step beside him. They were both silent until they reached the door and Rafe opened it and stood aside. “By the way, should I expect you to be ready?”

  She smiled. “Probably not.”

  He smiled, then walked away.

  Humming, Kristen entered the gallery. “He said to tell you he’d take care of the tux himself.”

  “Looks like you can add three to the guest list, Jacques.” Angelique grinned, her arm slipping casually though Jacques’s “We’ll certainly try to keep it live for you.”

  “Of that I have no doubt.” He patted her long, slender fingers on the sleeve of his fine, black wool suit jacket.

  Behind them the door opened and in strode a tall, well-dressed man in a tailored gray suit, carrying a briefcase. He had a self-assured air about him. “Art galleries should be added to the list of places to meet good-looking men,” Angelique quipped.

  “Thank you,” Jacques said. “Hello, Damien.”

  “Hello, Dad.”

  Surprised, Angelique glanced between the two men. They shared little in physical appearance except their six-foot height. Damien’s build was athletic, his father’s cuddly. While Damien’s face was classically handsome with close-cropped, wavy hair, his father was simply good-looking, his hairline receding.

  Damien appeared to be studying Angelique as much as she was studying him. While she was used to men looking at her, she hadn’t felt the prickle of awareness from such a look in a long, long time. She didn’t like it one bit.

  Looking at his son, Jacques’s lips twitched. Despite Damien being thirty-seven, Jacques could still read him. Damien obviously didn’t know whether to be interested in Angelique for himself or worried about his father. Since Damien had given Jacques most of the gray hairs in his head while he was a teenager, Jacques decided to let him wonder.

  “Damien, you met Kristen Wakefield when she worked at the Haywood Museum. As I told you, she’s my new manager.” His gaze went to Angelique. “This is Angelique Fleming. My son, Damien Broussard.”

  Hands were shaken, greetings exchanged, but it was obvious Damien was more interested in Angelique. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you in the gallery before, Ms. Fleming.”

  “This is my first time,” she confessed, annoyed that her voice sounded breathless, almost giddy. She cleared her throat. “I’m not much of an art connoisseur. I came to visit Kristen.”

  “But you’ll come again, and I will personally teach you to appreciate art,” Jacques said.

  Angelique gratefully turned to him, away from the disturbing attraction of his son. “You may have your work cut out for you.”

  “Then it will give me more time to spend with you,” he said graciously.

  “You’re a charmer, Jacques.” She glanced at her watch, giving her an excuse not to stare at Damien. She’d seen handsome men before, but this one drew her like a homing beacon. Dangerous. “Time to go to work.”

  “My car is a short distance away—perhaps I can drop you off,” Damien said.

  Angelique looked at the worsening traffic outside. “I can be at The Inferno by the time you get one block.”

  “The Inferno?” Damien repeated, his lean, hard body stiffening. “You work at a men’s club?”

  “She’s just—”

  “You object to a woman making a living?” Angelique snapped, interrupting Kristen.

  “I object to a woman stripping and the other things she does to make money that way, yes.” Damien didn’t back down.

  “Have you ever been a customer or a recipient of those ‘other things’?” Angelique asked silkily.

  Damien’s well-shaped head snapped back in shocked anger. “Of course not!”

  “Then all this is based on hearsay,” she said in a conversational tone, although she was simmering. Another self-righteous prick. Just like the men she planned to expose.

  “I interned at the district attorney’s office before I went into corporate law.” A muscle leaped in his strong jaw. “I’ve helped prepare cases against those women.”

  “How many men in the clubs did you prosecute?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

  “The men weren’t an issue,” he said.

  “Horse apples! You let the men slide because it’s easier to prosecute the women. That way you don’t show the men up for the creeps they are.” She whirled toward Jacques, “You know what? Make that two for your party.”

  “My father invited you?” There was pure horror in Damien’s voice.

  “Damien, I think you’ve said enough,” Jacques said, then turned to Angelique. “The party is at my home, not my son’s. My guests are my own. I expect to see you.”

  Angelique cut a glance at the silently fuming Damien. “I’ll be sure not to wear my G-string.” Still fuming, she turned to Kristen. “Leave it alone. Got it?”

  Kristen nodded reluctantly. You took Angelique as she was. If people didn’t like her association with The Inferno that was their problem, not hers. She wasn’t ashamed of her past nor should she have been. “Got it.”

  The glass on the door rattled as Angelique shut it behind her. All three watched her stalk away.

  “Looks like I was right,” Jacques said into the strained silence. “The party will be far from dull.”

  “I apologize if I upset you, Kristen,” Damien said, still smarting. It wasn’t often that a woman or anyone else got the best of him. They certainly didn’t have the last word.

  “Angelique is the one you owe the apology to, Damien,” Kristen said tightly. “She’s a wonderful person and a very good friend.”

  Damien inclined his dark head slightly. “If I have erred, I will apologize.”

  Kristen’s gaze narrowed. “Did you learn to dance around like that during your tenure with the district attorney or as a corporate lawyer?” she asked. Not waiting for an answer, she turned to speak to Jacques. “Thank you for being so gracious to Angelique. I consider it an honor to be her friend. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get a painting ready to ship.”

  Jacques shook his head as Kristen stalked off as well. “It takes a special talent for a man to be so self-righteous that he needlessly angers two beautiful women in the course of a few minutes. Didn’t know you had it in you.” Jacques started toward his desk at the other end of the gallery.

  His father’s words stung Damien as he knew they were meant to. He’d always admired his father. His grip on his leather attaché case tightened as he followed. “That’s not the kind of woman you or Kristen—at least from what I’ve heard about her background—should associate with.”

  His father abruptly turned. “Exactly what kind of woman is she?”

  Damien blinked. He couldn’t remember the last time his father had used that sharp tone with him. “She means that much to you?”

  Instead of answering, Jacques rapped Damien on the head with his knuckles, the same way he had when he was growing up and his father had thought he’d done or said something particularly stupid. “Is there any gray matter in there?”

  It usually annoyed Damien for his father to do
that, but under the circumstances he couldn’t have been more pleased. “So you’re not serious about her?”

  Jacques lifted his hand to rap him again, but Damien quickly stepped out of harm’s way.

  “Stand still when I’m trying to discipline you,” Jacques instructed.

  Since there was no heat in his father’s voice, Damien said, “I love you and I worry about you. So sue me.”

  “I used to know this fantastic lawyer. Maybe I can get him to take my case,” Jacques answered. “Sharp as they come, if a little stiff these days. Takes after his mother’s side of the family.”

  Damien relaxed. “Is this the same family where the youngest daughter ran off with an earnest but poor shoe salesman and her father came after them with a preacher and a shotgun?”

  “Your mother loved telling that story. We were married in a church with both our families there.” Jacques took his seat behind his desk. “And not a gun in sight.”

  Damien placed his attaché case on an uncluttered corner of the desk. “Only because you were already married when Grandpapa caught up with you in Baton Rouge.”

  Jacques lifted a framed photograph from his desk, his face softening. “I’d never met anyone like her. She was the sun and the moon and the stars all wrapped up in one. I didn’t think I’d be able to live without her.”

  Damien didn’t have to look at the photograph. In his mind’s eye, he saw the picture of his parents, young and so in love, on their first anniversary. What the picture didn’t show was his mother’s bulging stomach. With Damien.

  Damien’s hand gripped his father’s shoulder. His mother’s death from pneumonia ten years ago had been hard on them both. “You made her happy.”

  Jacques set the picture aside. “We made each other happy. Any chance you’re ready to settle down? At thirty-seven, you’re not getting any younger.”

  It was an old topic of conversation. Damien loosened his silk tie and sprawled in the burgundy leather chair across from his father. “Women have changed since the day you met Mother. They’re more interested in your bank account than in you.”

  “Not all of them.”

  “Enough. Frankly, I don’t have time for it. Thibodeaux International didn’t slacken when Claude passed.” He laced his fingers across his hard, flat abdomen. “Business is booming. Claudette is as shrewd as her father, at least in some things.”

  Jacques’s mouth twisted with distaste. “Is that husband of hers giving her a hard time?”

  “He’s not around the office enough to do that,” Damien answered simply. His father and Claudette had been friends for as long as Damien could remember. His father was rightly worried about her. Claudette had made the worst mistake of her life by marrying Maurice.

  “I’ve invited her to the party,” Jacques said, drumming his fingers on a stack of order forms.

  “You’re going to have quite an eclectic group there,” Damien said, switching his thoughts back to Angelique.

  Yes, I will.” Jacques leaned back in his executive chair. “Too bad you had other plans. Should be a night to remember. I’m rather looking forward to it.”

  Damien gazed at his father, trying to read his expression. Nothing. His poker face was firmly in place. Was he thinking about Angelique or merely making a statement?

  The woman could mean nothing to his father, but even as the thought ran through Damien’s mind, he dismissed the idea. He had wanted her the second he’d laid eyes on her. Sleek, trim, and exotic. At the club, she probably drew men like bees to honey.

  He recalled her last taunting words about not wearing a G-string and his body hardened. His father would be no match for her. Obviously she used Kristen for entry into a world of money and power to meet wealthy men, then fleece them for all they were worth. She was probably as greedy and as grasping as they came.

  Just like Maurice Laurent.

  He’d walk through hell before he’d let that woman hurt his father.

  “If the invitation is still open, Dad, I think I’ll come after all.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  I won’t let the same thing happen to you that happened to Claudette. “As you said, it will be fun.”

  eight

  Rafe Crawford was shaking in his new shoes. On each arm was a beautiful, poised and elegantly dressed woman, Kristen in siren red and Angelique in chic black, and he had absolutely no idea what to do with them now that they were in the high-ceilinged drawing room inside Jacques Broussard’s house in the Garden District.

  He swallowed the knot of fear in his throat that had been growing since he’d arrived at Kristen’s place. She’d answered the door with a cheerful greeting, and for a moment, he’d been speechless.

  In the past he’d always tried to keep his distance from her. Since she’d called him he hadn’t been able to do that. Until that moment he hadn’t realized why. Her quiet beauty and shy smiles appealed to the dark, lonely part of him. The realization increased his nervousness. Learning that Angelique was riding with them hadn’t helped. Escorting them to the Lincoln Continental, all he could think of was being grateful that he had had the foresight to rent a car.

  Despite the animated conversation of the two women that he was sure was meant to put him at ease, he hadn’t said five words during the fifteen-minute drive. He felt strangled by his black bow tie, ill at ease in the confines of the tuxedo and pleated shirt.

  He’d never worn either before tonight. At least his shoes didn’t pinch. He just wished he weren’t shaking in them. He glanced around the elegant room and swallowed.

  People were everywhere. On the parquet dance floor, surrounding the three white-linen-draped buffet tables, on the terrace, or simply milling about the beautifully decorated room with food or a flute in their hand. He didn’t belong here.

  Then he felt Kristen stiffen. Seeing her staring straight ahead, he followed the direction of her gaze. Rage built within him as he located the cause of her sudden discomfort.

  Across the room, Maurice was talking to a young woman, their heads close together. It could have been innocent, but the voluptuous brunette’s over-bright laughter and the flirtatious way she occasionally flipped her straight hair said otherwise.

  “You don’t have to be afraid of him, Kristen,” Rafe said, unconsciously stepping closer.

  Kristen shook her head. “His arrogance is simply beyond belief. Claudette might be blindly in love, but the rest of us see him for what he is.”

  Angelique quickly caught on and watched the tableau being acted out in an alcove near the terrace. “Unfortunately, the only one that counts in this scenario is his wife. For whatever reason, love or keeping face, some women choose to look the other way.”

  “Perhaps not any longer.” Kristen directed their attention to a tall, elegant woman in a long, white gown working her way through the crowd toward Maurice. “Claudette Laurent. Maurice’s wife.”

  “Looks likes there might be trouble in paradise and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving prick,” Angelique said.

  * * *

  Claudette joined her husband and the young woman he’d been chatting with for the past ten minutes with the social smile she’d cultivated for thirty-eight years. No matter what, appearances must be maintained. “Hello, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Claudette Laurent.”

  Maurice’s dark head jerked up. His eyes widened as his gaze bounced between his wife and the other woman.

  Still wearing a seductive smile, the brunette glanced from Maurice to Claudette. “Are you related?”

  Claudette looked at Maurice and waited for him to make the announcement. Saying she was Maurice’s wife would have been too obvious. But had his smile become more of a grimace? Seconds later, Claudette was sure it was her imagination when Maurice slipped his arm around her waist.

  “I thought everyone at the party knew that Claudette is my beautiful wife,” he said, admiration ringing in his voice. He kissed her cheek.

  Claudette couldn’t prevent the little shi
ver that raced over her body as Maurice’s lips brushed across her skin, just as she couldn’t keep her gaze from the woman he’d been so cozily ensconced with.

  Shock, then anger, radiated across the younger woman’s face. She walked off without a word.

  “How rude,” he said, his tone sounding genuinely baffled: then he turned the full wattage of his adoring smile on Claudette. “Thanks for rescuing me. Trying to be cordial to that woman was a strain—all she wanted to talk about was herself. Another starving artist wanting a handout. Shall I get you another glass of wine or some canapés from the buffet?”

  The apprehension Claudette had experienced on seeing Maurice and the other woman so close together receded. She’d obviously been trying to influence Maurice into helping her career. Just as Kristen had. He loved her.

  It wouldn’t be the first time some self-serving person had tried to use her for his or her own gain in the art community. She mustn’t let Kristen’s unfounded accusations and her own insecurities about her age destroy her marriage. She’d caused enough gossip by marrying Maurice: she wouldn’t cause any more by giving even a hint that all wasn’t well between them.

  Claudette lifted the nearly full flute of white wine. “I’m fine.”

  “When you’re near me all I can see is you.” Maurice kissed the fine-boned fingers holding the delicate stem, then lifted hooded eyes. “How soon do you think we can get out of here and go home?”

  “Not much longer,” she said, her voice breathless. Another unfounded worry laid to rest. She did satisfy her husband sexually. She shouldn’t have worried because he hadn’t approached her in several days. Perhaps she should have approached him, as one of the women’s magazines suggested, but that wasn’t in her character.

  “Since there are people here you’ll want to see before we leave, why don’t we circulate?” he asked. “I promise not to leave your side until we do,” he said.

  Pleasure swept through her. He was so considerate. She’d never doubt him again. Caught up in basking in her husband’s love, she didn’t notice the three stern-faced people approaching until it was too late.