“I’m fine.”
“I can follow you, just to make sure—”
“Really, Mac, I’m fine.” Don’t fuss over me. Don’t try to manage my life.
He stood, stretched and rubbed the back of his neck. “If you get more reservations before the party, let me know, all right?”
“Sure.” Let him fuss over the hotel instead of her.
He watched her as she slid her feet back into her shoes and maneuvered her computer mouse to shut off the machine. “Any more strange e-mails?” he asked casually, as if the subject was of no great interest to him. Given the way he’d reacted to the first one, she suspected he cared more about her answer than she wanted him to.
In fact, she had received three more strange e-mails that day. All three had come from “4Julie” and included musical symbols and brief, menacing messages: “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.” “You sing, you suffer.” “I will never forgive you.”
If she told Mac, he’d do something drastic—hire a bodyguard for her, force her to leave town, refuse to let her check her e-mail. Yet, paradoxically, the more weird the e-mails she received, the less they alarmed her. They struck her as the ravings of a lunatic too impotent to take action. Sending nasty e-mails was cheap and easy. Someone—possibly Glenn himself—was letting off steam, nothing more.
She refused to let the creep get to her. She hadn’t been afraid of Glenn ten years ago, and she wasn’t going to become a slave to fear now.
In reply to his question, she smiled. “No strange e-mails,” she lied smoothly. “You can stop worrying about me.”
“I don’t worry about you,” he murmured, returning her smile. “It’s strange e-mails that I worry about.” He lifted his jacket from the back of his chair, tossed it over his shoulder and pushed the cart to the door. “And it’s my job to worry, so I reckon I’ll just keep worrying. If you see me following you home, don’t panic, chère. It’s just me doing my job.”
She watched him as he wheeled the cart out of her office and down the hall toward the elevator. She could bolt now, race to her car and be halfway home before he’d even gotten his sporty little coupe’s engine started…or she could take her time and give him the chance to follow her. She didn’t like being fussed over, but…
But Mac was as stubborn as she was, and that was something she respected, even admired. He worried; he’d follow her home. Then he’d leave her alone.
She could live with that.
TOO MANY MEMORIES in New York City. Too many memories of money, drugs, parties, sex. No—love, it had been love. Now Glenn didn’t know how to love anymore.
Of course he didn’t know how to love. How could a man who’d spent the past eight years behind bars, sleeping on a cot and watching his back, ever open up to love again? For God’s sake, look at him: he was taking a real estate course. He’d once owned and operated a successful modeling agency, and now, if he was lucky, he might someday man the desk in the rental office of a high-rise building.
The time for payback was drawing near. First, Julie had to be frightened a little more. More e-mails, meaner e-mails, e-mails coming at her from all directions. Easy enough to do with a good friend who was a flight attendant and who landed at several different cities in a single day. Julie might not know where the e-mails were coming from, but just in case she was smart enough to track their origin…
She thought she was pretty damn smart. So let her be smart and scared. Let her suffer a little bit more before the end.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CREIGHTON WAS OUT, which was just as well. By the time Julie was inside the Garden District house, peering through the front door’s side light as Mac flashed his headlights at her and drove away, her watch read nine-fifteen, too late to start gulping down alcoholic drinks.
Besides, the wine Mac had brought to accompany their fruit and cheese had left Julie mellow enough. The wine, the conversation and the knowledge that Mac at least knew she found his protectiveness annoying and he could joke about it. The headlight-flashing had simply been Mac’s way of saying, “I realize you don’t want me to follow you home, but what the hell. Humor me.”
She gathered her mail and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Even though she hadn’t seen Creighton’s bright red car in the lot, she rapped on his door. The lack of a response didn’t surprise her.
In her own apartment, she dropped the mail on her kitchen table, stepped out of her shoes and then padded into the tiny living room to check on her fish. The filter pump droned in a gentle hum and the water looked clear. As usual, her fish swished back and forth in the rectangular tank, ignoring one another. The Tetra hovered near the rock formation at the bottom of the tank, the Angelfish swam on a higher plane—closer to heaven, Julie thought with a smile—the Koi glinted coppery orange and the Shubunkin rippled flamboyantly to and fro, its fins fluttering like decorative fringes.
She sprinkled some food flakes across the water’s surface. The fish jerked, stared and then propelled themselves upward to devour the feast. Closing the tin, Julie fought off her wistfulness at the fact that fish weren’t dogs. You couldn’t hug them or talk to them. Julie hadn’t even bothered to name them.
Carrying her shoes, she left the living room for her bedroom to change out of her work clothes. A dog would be a blessing, she thought, keenly aware of the emptiness of her apartment. A dog snuffling around, its tags jangling and its voice emerging in a canine rumble punctuated by an occasional spirited bark would warm the place much more than the subdued hum and gurgle of the fish tank’s pump.
If possible, Julie would choose a dog just like Bella, the sweet, sloppy mutt who’d followed her home from school one afternoon when she was eight years old. Bella had been wearing a tag, and Julie’s parents had insisted on returning Bella to her rightful owner, even though Julie had been certain from the moment she’d seen that dog’s uneven ears, soulful brown eyes and poignant smile that she was the dog’s rightful owner, that fate had delivered Bella to her for some cosmic reason. It turned out that Bella’s previous, not-so-rightful owner had moved out of town. Neighbors told the police the owner had tried for two months to find another home for the dog, because she was moving to an apartment that banned pets. Unable to find anyone, the woman had simply left the dog behind.
Julie had begged her parents to let her keep Bella. She’d promised to take care of the dog, walk her, feed her, clean up after her…and when her parents had acquiesced, Julie had lived up to her promises. Bella had been her companion for nine sweet years, until old age, arthritis and blindness claimed the poor animal. To this day, Julie missed her.
Bella had never called Julie a freakazoid. She’d never asked Julie how the weather was up there. She’d simply loved Julie, played with her, snuggled up to her while they watched TV and listened uncritically to Julie’s heartfelt confessions. When Marcie acted like a bossy big sister, Julie would complain to Bella, and Bella would issue a sympathetic whine. When classmates made fun of Julie, she would report the incidents to Bella, who would growl. Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence that less than six months after Bella’s death, Julie had agreed to meet with Glenn Perry, who ran a modeling agency that specialized in teenage girls. She’d been lonely and sad and feeling insecure. Modeling had seemed like a good way to fill the hours she would otherwise have spent with Bella.
If her beloved dog were here now, she thought as she sank onto her bed and pulled off her nylons, she wouldn’t burden Bella with her stress over the upcoming party or her worry about the hotel’s financial health. No, she’d probably just cuddle Bella to herself and tell her about Mac. “He has the most amazing forearms,” she’d say, remembering the male muscle and sinew beneath the bare skin. By exposing just a small, G-rated bit of his body, an extraordinarily sexy man had made her aware of how drab her nights were, how huge her queen-size bed seemed when the queen was sleeping alone.
Maybe she’d responded to Mac’s forearms because she’d gone a year without sex. But she doubted that. Sh
e’d endured long stretches without male companionship in the past, and she’d never turned into a mooning fool. Until now.
Could she actually bear to let a man in her life who followed her home to make sure she was safe? In theory, the mere idea repelled her.
But Mac wasn’t a theory. He was simply the kind of man who did things like that. And Julie wasn’t sure what to think…except for wishing that while he’d sat with her in her office that evening, she’d been brave enough to reach from her chair to his and run her fingers down his arm, through those wiry black hairs, over the bones of his wrist and across his palm. She wished she’d taken the chance.
MAC HAD THE OFFICES of Crescent City Security to himself tonight. Louise was probably off somewhere, contemplating issues of anatomy with her med-school sweetheart, and Frank and Sandy were no doubt at home, either making a baby or arguing about whether they should. Mac hoped they were making a baby, not only because he liked the idea of becoming a godfather but also because somebody ought to be getting laid tonight, and it sure as hell wasn’t him.
He slumped in his chair, turned on his computer and rubbed the fatigue out of his eyes. And cursed. He was crossing lines all over the place. Never should have taken food to his meeting with Julie tonight. Never should have taken wine. Never should have sat with her after they’d completed their task and talked to her and joked with her and polished off that Cabernet Sauvignon with her. And wanted her.
Even though he hadn’t consumed enough wine to get a buzz, his blood was hot and thrumming. Lines of text zipped across his monitor as his computer warmed up and ran through its virus checks, but all he saw was Julie, dressed in a soft, body-hugging blue sweater and a gently flared skirt. He saw her legs, propped up on the chair next to his, and the oval outlines of her knees—some women had the most alluring knees, and Julie was definitely one of them. Symphony Perfumes should have used her knees in their ads. A dab of perfume behind each knee, and Mac would be rendered incoherent with lust.
Julie’s feet weren’t so bad, either. Large, but then they’d have to be large to balance her tall frame. And they were slender. Her toenails, visible through her sheer nylons, had been painted a rosy shade.
He cursed again. Just thinking about her made his breath catch and his groin ache. And that was wrong, really wrong. Her sister was paying him to protect Julie, not to fantasize about “getting biblical” with her, he thought with a grin.
He and Frank had a stone-cold rule: never become involved with a client. Not that Julie was a client, but close enough. Mac couldn’t touch her.
He’d already touched her once, though, yesterday morning in her office. He’d touched her face, and tonight he’d wanted to touch her toes. Hell, he’d wanted to touch every part of her from face to toes, not missing a single square inch.
“Stop it,” he said aloud—as if he could order his libido to rein itself in.
Forcing himself to focus on the computer monitor in front of him, he found a message from Frank:
Nothing definitive on the money that disappeared from the Hotel Marchand. Did find some interesting background on the Marchands, though. Anne Marchand’s mother is Celeste Robichaux. Old family with old money. Celeste’s brother was implicated in a real estate scam years ago—tarnished the family’s name a bit, but they recovered. Can’t say if this has anything to do with the missing money, but I’m looking.
Also—interesting, possibly meaningless detail—Anne Marchand was traveling in Italy with her daughter Melanie around the time the money disappeared. Haven’t been able to trace the money to Italy—it wasn’t wired to Anne or her daughter there.
That’s all I’ve got so far.
“Great. A mystery,” Mac murmured, then clamped his mouth shut. He might be going nutty over Julie, but he wasn’t so demented that he was going to keep talking out loud to himself.
The fact was, he and Frank were under no obligation to solve the mystery of the missing Marchand money. No one had hired them to find the million dollars that had inexplicably vanished. And even if they did find it, there was no guarantee it would restore the hotel to financial stability.
But if that missing money was the cause of the hotel’s fragile health, and Mac and Frank could locate it…well, that would make a lot of folks happy. Julie might throw herself at him in gratitude.
Yeah, sure. And the moon might fall out of the sky, too.
Julie would be grateful if he solved the money mystery, but she probably wouldn’t forgive him for lying about who he was and what he was doing. She wouldn’t forgive him for being her bodyguard. She wouldn’t forgive him for knowing far more about her than she thought he knew.
But he’d tell Frank to keep investigating, because Julie or no Julie, he wanted to know where that money had gone.
FIVE E-MAILS from “4Julie.” Julie laughed.
Whoever was trying to spook her was failing miserably. The first e-mail had shaken her profoundly, the second less so. The more she got, the more immune to them she felt. When five appeared in a single download the next morning, they almost seemed like a joke to her.
They’d lost their subtlety and their ability to shock. They no longer played delicately on the theme of Symphony Perfumes, with musical allusions. They were just stupid. “It’s all your fault,” one said. Another accused, “You think you’re so hot?” The one that made Julie laugh out loud said, “Perfume girl, you stink.”
When she’d been a kid, wounded by her schoolmates’ taunts, her parents had always advised her to ignore the teasing and it would stop. This, Julie learned from experience, was an adult myth that lacked any relation to reality. Ignored teasing didn’t stop. It just grew louder and more persistent.
But Julie wasn’t a gawky, gangly, too-tall girl anymore. She was a confident woman and teasing couldn’t get to her. Especially anonymous teasing via e-mail.
She left her office, feeling free and almost a little naughty about being away from her desk during business hours, even if she was taking care of business in other parts of the hotel. No wonder Mac liked to prowl around the place. Going downstairs to check on the final menu and beverage orders for the Twelfth Night party wasn’t going to fill her with Vitamin D, as a stroll down to Jackson Square might, but getting out of her chair and enjoying the scenery beyond her computer monitor was refreshing.
She took the grand stairway down to the lobby, even though that wasn’t the most direct route to the dining room kitchen. She’d worked at the Hotel Marchand for nearly five years, yet the charm and elegance of the hotel’s lobby impressed her almost as much as it had the first time she’d walked into the building, clutching her résumé and Charlotte’s name, which had been provided to her by the employment agency she’d contacted when she’d traded the crisp cold of Montreal for the sultry heat of New Orleans. She’d been awed by the staircase that first day, and in truth she still felt like a bride when she descended those stairs.
The lobby was kept spotless by a silent battalion of housekeepers, and the honey-hued credenza waxed to a high gloss. Every last speck of lint was vacuumed from the rugs, the tables were free of dust, and decorative pillows nestled at just the right angle to the sofas and settees.
Some people might consider modeling a glamorous profession. Julie would take her current job over modeling any day. This—her gaze swept the lobby as she descended the last few steps—was glamour.
A few people stood at the counter checking in. She heard the voices of the two clerks on duty, soothing and competent as they processed the guests. A bellhop stood nearby, a matching set of suitcases stacked on his brass cart. The concierge desk was empty. No sign of Luc; maybe he was making the rounds of the hotel, just like Julie. She glimpsed the assistant concierge, Patrick, ushering a guest out into the courtyard.
She strode through the lobby, nodding a greeting to the check-in clerks. Near the exit to the hall, she felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to find herself face-to-face with Alvin Grote. As usual, his hair was pulled back into a ponytail,
and the overhead lights glinted off the circular bald spot crowning his skull. He wore a black turtleneck and black slacks which gave him an almost sinister look from chin down. The ponytail was too cute to look sinister, however. And his expression conveyed middle-class, middle-aged pique rather than evil intent.
“Mr. Grote,” Julie said pleasantly. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better,” he grumbled. “I want to add another person to my reservation for the Twelfth Night party, and those inept fools at the front desk refused to help me.”
Julie knew the clerks were neither inept nor foolish. She could just imagine how Grote had demanded their assistance. “I think our concierge, Luc Carter, can help you with this,” she said in her most soothing voice. “Have you spoken to him?”
Grote glanced toward Luc’s empty desk. “How can I talk to him? He isn’t here.”
“I’m sure he’ll be back shortly. Or we can leave him a message and have him get back to you to confirm that your guest has been added to the list.” She remembered Mac’s obsession with identifying everyone slated to attend the party and added, “You’ll have to provide your guest’s name, of course.”
Grote’s expression softened slightly. “I met her yesterday. Maggie. She’s a pistol. I want her hanging off my arm at that party.”
Julie suppressed a grin as she imagined how this woman Maggie might react to an invitation from someone who described her that way. A pistol? Hanging off his arm? Maybe he ought to buy a gun and holster, if that was what he wanted.
“Why don’t we leave a note for Luc?” she suggested, ushering Grote over to the concierge desk. She found a pad and penned the message for Luc, including Grote’s room number. “What’s Maggie’s last name?” she asked him.
He hesitated, then muttered, “I’m not sure.”
“Please find out,” she said, once again imagining what Mac would say if some semi-anonymous arm candy named “Maggie” appeared on the guest list.
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