In the Dark

by Judith Arnold

  And he had that scent, warm and tangy and obviously loaded with pheromones, considering Julie’s reaction to it.

  Her reaction to it this morning wasn’t as simple as a rush of girlish giddiness, however. The man was head of hotel security, so perhaps he’d had a legitimate reason to have invaded her office in her absence. He possessed a master key which enabled him to enter any room in the hotel. Charlotte had vetted him and she trusted him. Julie ought to trust him, too.

  Even so, as soon as her computer warmed up, she clicked into the hotel’s personnel records. Mac had access to all the employee files. Her access was limited to basic information, but if he could check her out, she could sure as hell check him out, too.

  The portion of his record she was able to open informed her that he was thirty-five years old and single, that he lived in the Carrollton neighborhood, that his previous position had been as an associate with Crescent City Security Services and that he’d declined the hotel’s health insurance plan. That last item tweaked her curiosity. Why would he have chosen not to be covered? Usually, when an employee opted out of the health plan, it was because he or she was covered under a spouse’s insurance. But Mac didn’t have a spouse.

  Well, he certainly seemed healthy, anyway.

  She would have loved to take a peek at his total employment history, his referral letters and any observations Charlotte or the head of personnel might have included in his file, but those pages were off-limits for her. She considered it unfair that Mac could read her entire file if he wanted, and she couldn’t read his. But that, she supposed, was the difference between being the assistant to the hotel’s general manager and being the security boss.

  Sighing, she opened her e-mail software, typed in her password and checked her in-box. Most of the messages were standard fare: daily reports for Charlotte from the business office, the Reservations Department, the restaurant and bar; solicitations from assorted vendors, two more responses from professional party planners and an announcement of a storewide sale at the pet supply shop where Julie bought her fish food. She ignored all those and instead clicked on the one new e-mail that caused her stomach to twist into a pretzel-shaped knot. Like yesterday’s troubling e-mail, this one had as its return address “4Julie.”

  Today’s communication featured the musical symbol for a grace note and the words, “Say goodnight, Julie.”

  That message seemed more menacing than “the song is over.” It didn’t actually threaten anything, but… Someone was definitely trying to scare the spit out of her.

  Whoever had sent her the “4Julie” e-mails knew of her past as the Symphony Perfumes model—but that hardly narrowed down her list of suspects. Models often attracted groupies and weird fans, as Julie had learned during the years she’d been in the business. People used to send her marriage proposals and tawdry propositions through the agency, but Glenn Perry’s secretary would discard the most offensive fan mail so Julie wouldn’t have to see it. Back then, of course, she’d believed that Glenn was truly acting in the best interests of his girls, protecting them from all the creeps who liked to fantasize about fashion models.

  Julie had changed her e-mail address half a dozen times since ending her modeling career, however. She simply couldn’t imagine who, from that period of her life, would have tracked down her current address.

  Maybe the “4Julie” sender wasn’t someone from her past. Maybe he was one of the business people she corresponded with in the course of her work at the Hotel Marchand. Someone might have figured out Julie was the onetime Symphony Perfumes girl and decided to taunt her about it anonymously. Why? Jealousy or fanatic devotion or…who knew? As her father always said, trying to figure out why idiots did idiotic things was a waste of time.

  She slid her mouse to delete the grace note message, then hesitated. Mac had told her not to erase any creepy e-mails she received, and she’d rescued the glissando one from her computer’s trash bin yesterday. She supposed she ought to save today’s e-mail, too, just in case.

  At the sound of voices in the adjacent office, she took several deep breaths to settle her nerves and then went to open the inner door to Charlotte’s office. One of the voices belonged to Charlotte and the other to her mother, Anne Marchand.

  Seeing Anne was enough to put all thoughts of weird e-mails out of Julie’s mind. Ever since her health scare last fall, Anne had kept a low profile at the hotel, partly because her doctor had ordered her to take it easy and partly, Julie suspected, because Anne wanted to give Charlotte a chance to establish her own style as she took over the hotel’s management. These were both good reasons, but Julie missed Anne. She was such a classy woman, poised yet passionate about the Hotel Marchand and loyal to all the people who worked there.

  Before Julie could say hello, Anne swept across the room, her arms open for a hug. “Julie! How are you?”

  Julie bent so Anne could reach her cheek with a kiss. “You’re looking great, Anne. How are you feeling?”

  Anne rolled her eyes. “If you must know, I’m sick—sick of people asking me how I’m feeling. I’m sick of being babied and fussed over. My mother, bless her heart, is going to give me a heart attack with all her nagging.” Anne had moved in with her mother for her recuperation. Julie had never met Celeste Robichaux, but she’d heard the family matriarch was temperamental and domineering, and not particularly enthusiastic about the family’s hotel business.

  However oppressive Celeste’s nursing was, Anne seemed to be flourishing. She twirled about the office radiating energy and confidence. She’d let her hair grow long, and today she wore it pulled back from her face in a ponytail held by a tortoise-shell barrette. She also had on comfortable-looking khaki slacks. Julie couldn’t recall a single instance when Anne had come to work in anything other than an impeccably tasteful dress or suit, back before her heart attack had put her out of commission. Slacks suited her, though. She looked slim and fit and energized.

  “Charlotte told me the menu for the Twelfth Night party still hasn’t been finalized,” she said. “If there’s going to be a discussion about food, you all know I want to be involved.”

  Julie laughed, and Charlotte shook her head. “We won’t be making the final decisions until the last minute, Mama. Robert and Melanie will want to see what’s available, what’s fresh—”

  “I’m so glad Melanie is here to help us with the menus,” Anne said. “All those years she was working as a chef up in Boston when she could have been putting her culinary skills to use here at the hotel. If my little health scare last fall was enough to bring her home, it was worth it. And flowers, Charlotte,” Anne continued. “Have you ordered the flowers for the party? I always ordered them at least a week in advance.”

  “I know, Mama,” Charlotte said, her tone an interesting mix of impatience and indulgence. “The flowers have been ordered.”

  “Of course they have.” Anne smiled wistfully at Charlotte. “You have everything under control. You all don’t need me here, fussing over this and that.”

  Charlotte exchanged a look with Julie, then reached for her mother’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “If you want to oversee the decorations in the event rooms, that would be great.”

  “You’re humoring me, I know,” Anne said, sounding not at all sorry. “But since you offered, I will most certainly oversee the decorations.”

  A light rap on the door to the hallway stole their attention, and they turned to find Mac filling the doorway. He wore a dark blue suit, beautifully tailored. Julie thought back to the equally stylish gray suit he’d had on yesterday, and his black BMW, and his refusal to accept the hotel’s health insurance. Was the man independently wealthy?

  That question disintegrated in her mind as Charlotte greeted him and he entered the room. He’d shaved since Julie last saw him, but even without a shadow of beard, he looked slightly weary, slightly dangerous. His eyes were perhaps a bit too dark, his angular features a bit too harsh. Or maybe the only danger he posed was that Julie found him i
ntolerably attractive.

  “Charlotte, I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said, tapping his fingertips against the folder he was carrying. “There’s something I need to discuss with you.” He smiled at Anne. “Mrs. Marchand. Good to see you.”

  “Mama, you remember Mac Jensen, don’t you?”

  “Gerard Lomax’s replacement in security,” Anne said, returning his smile and extending her hand. “We’ve met.”

  Mac shook her hand, then glanced at Julie. One corner of his mouth skewed up in a tentative half smile. She hoped her own smile was noncommittal. What had happened yesterday was…nothing. They’d eaten dinner together, that was all. And shared an umbrella. And exchanged a few searching looks, although Julie had no idea what Mac had been searching for when he’d gazed at her that way—the way he was gazing at her right now.

  “Well, I’d love to stay and chat,” Anne said, “but I want to visit the event rooms and wait for inspiration to strike.”

  Charlotte nodded. “Sylvie had some thoughts about the party decor, so you might want to talk to her.”

  “Sylvie has a marvelous eye,” Anne conceded, her smile growing mischievous as she headed toward the door. “But I’m her mother, so I get more votes than she does.” With that, she waltzed out of the room.

  “She’s looking well,” Julie said as she backed toward the door to her office, where a full day’s work—and that damned e-mail—awaited her. “If you don’t need me, Charlotte—”

  “Stay,” Charlotte requested. “Something tells me Mac’s got bad news. You might as well hear it, too.”

  “Not bad news,” he corrected her, then grinned. “Well, yeah, it’s bad. Maybe we ought to sit down.”

  They each found a chair, Charlotte behind her desk, Julie and Mac in deep, upholstered armchairs facing her. Mac placed the folder he’d been holding on Charlotte’s desk and said, “Last night, I found chips of glass embedded in some of the towels in the housekeeping supply room. These were clean, folded towels in a stack, ready to be left in guest rooms.”

  “Glass?” Charlotte’s cheeks paled.

  “I notified Nadine LeClaire immediately, and she sent the entire batch back to the laundry service. She blamed the glass on the service and demanded that they launder the batch for free. They agreed. So it’s not all bad news. We incurred no extra laundry expense.”

  Julie listened not merely to his words but to his tone. She heard more in it than just what he’d said. “You don’t agree with Nadine, do you,” she guessed. “You think the laundry service wasn’t to blame for the glass, right?”

  “I’m not sure what I think. Yet,” he added. “Just before I found the glass in the towels, I saw Luc Carter leaving the supply room.”

  “Luc?” Julie and Charlotte exclaimed in unison. “What on earth would he be doing there?” Charlotte added.

  “He said he was helping a friend on the housekeeping staff.”

  Charlotte appeared bemused. “A friend?”

  “A friend, Charlotte,” Julie clarified, once again able to interpret the nuances in Mac’s tone. She turned to Mac. “Is Luc getting biblical with one of the maids?”

  Mac laughed at Julie’s euphemism. “He didn’t go into detail about the extent of their relationship, and I didn’t ask.”

  “So it’s possible Luc was in the supply room fraternizing with one of the maids,” Charlotte said tactfully, “and that has nothing to do with the glass in the towels.”

  “Yeah.”

  Again Julie heard more in Mac’s voice than just the single word. “You can’t very well confront Luc with accusations if you have no evidence he’s done anything wrong,” she said.

  “I know.” Mac turned to Charlotte. “With your permission, I’d like to investigate Luc a little, see what I can dig up. He’d never have to know—unless I found something incriminating.”

  Charlotte tapped her manicured fingers together as she considered his suggestion. “I hate the idea of spying on hotel employees.”

  I hate it, too, Julie thought, sending Mac a scowl that he didn’t notice, since he was focused on Charlotte.

  “Chances are, what I find will exonerate him. And again, he’d never even know. I’m good at doing that kind of thing.”

  I bet you are, Julie thought churlishly.

  “Well…all right,” Charlotte conceded. “But please be careful. Luc has done a good job behind the concierge desk. I’d hate to lose him. And if he finds out he’s being investigated—”

  “He won’t find out,” Mac promised, then pushed himself to his feet. “I can be very discreet.”

  Can you really? Julie recalled the way he stared at her, the way he grinned at her, the way he’d stood so close to her under her umbrella last night. Then she remembered the way he moved around the hotel, so silently he could come and go without being detected. She supposed that proved he could be discreet, even if his stares and grins and closeness were anything but.

  Charlotte nodded, flipped open the folder, shut it unread and sighed. “Thank you for noticing that broken glass before it wound up in a guest’s bathroom. Imagine what a disaster that would have been.”

  Mac nodded at Charlotte, then shot Julie a pointed look. She might have been able to interpret the undertone in his voice, but she couldn’t begin to guess what this particular look meant. Lacking a better response, she turned away.

  Charlotte flipped open the folder, skimmed Mac’s report and muttered, “Dear God.” Julie glanced toward the door to see him vanishing down the hall, his footsteps as silent as ever. “I shudder to think what could have happened if he hadn’t discovered that glass. You don’t really think Luc could have planted it there, do you?”

  “Why would he?” Julie asked. “He’s got a good job here. He seems satisfied with it. The guests adore him.”

  Charlotte sighed again. “Let’s assume Nadine was right and the laundry service screwed up and sent us a batch of dirty towels. Though heaven knows how towels would end up with glass in them.”

  “Someone might have used them to wipe the floor after breaking a mirror,” Julie suggested.

  Charlotte eyed the folder and grimaced. “If so, someone’s got seven years of bad luck heading their way. Fortunately, Mac spared us a similar fate. Do me a favor, Julie, and in a half hour or so, go downstairs and see what my mother is up to.”

  “You don’t want her overseeing the decorations?”

  “I’d love to have her working on the decorations. She has such a flair for that sort of thing. I just don’t want her tiring herself out. And if she catches me checking up on her, she’ll hand me my head on a silver platter. Better you than me. You’re not her daughter.”

  “Thanks,” Julie grumbled, although she was smiling. “I think I can handle her.” She stood and walked across the room to the door leading into her office.

  Two steps across the threshold, she halted. There, leaning casually against the file cabinet nearest the hall door, stood Mac, his hands in his pockets and his head slightly cocked, as if nothing could be more natural than for him to be in her office, waiting for her.

  She tried not to notice his lopsided smile, which produced a dimple in one corner of his mouth. She tried not to notice the smooth drape of his shirt across his chest or the length of his legs or his thick, dark hair. She couldn’t help but notice his scent, though. It stirred something deep inside her, making her feel vulnerable.

  She crossed the room to him so she could speak softly. If she closed the door between her office and Charlotte’s, Charlotte would become suspicious, so she left it open. But she’d rather Charlotte didn’t overhear anything she and Mac might say to each other.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Did you get any more badass e-mails?”

  She hoped he didn’t detect her slight hesitation before she answered. “No. And what were you doing in my office last night?”

  “I wasn’t in your office,” he drawled.

  “You’re a liar.”

  H
is smile grew. “Takes one to know one, chère.”

  Was that his way of admitting he had been in her office? Or his way of demanding she tell him about the second e-mail? Or both?

  “If there’s something you want from me, Mac,” she said, “ask me. Don’t go sneaking around in my office behind my back.”

  He surprised her by sliding his index finger under her chin and tipping her face up until their gazes locked. He used his thumb to trace the edge of her chin. “If there’s something I want from you, Julie, I will surely ask,” he murmured, his voice so thick with meaning she didn’t dare try to make sense of it. She was relieved when he let his hand drop, pushed away from the file cabinet and glided out the door.

  Relieved and also inexplicably disappointed.

  HE’D CROSSED A LINE.

  He knew it the moment he’d touched her, the moment he’d felt her cool, smooth skin, as silky as he’d imagined it, as tantalizingly soft. It had taken all his willpower not to slide his hand down to her throat, around to the nape of her neck, and pull her to him for a kiss.

  Sure, he could justify getting close to her. He could tell himself he was just doing his job: watching out for her, serving as her secret bodyguard. He couldn’t very well protect her long-distance, could he?

  Still…touching her that way, even if only for a few seconds, made him far too aware of her. To do his job properly, he had to remain detached and objective. One look into Julie Sullivan’s shimmering eyes and his objectivity jumped into the river and swam away.

  Meanwhile… She’d lied to him. She’d gotten another bad e-mail. Her no was irrelevant. He’d seen the truth flash across her face, as bright as lightning.

  He’d lied to her, too, of course—but he’d had a good reason for sneaking into her office last night. Her sister was paying him to keep her safe, and if he had to hack into her e-mail software to do that, he would do it and never apologize.