In the Dark

by Judith Arnold

  “Why isn’t it enough that she’ll be my guest? I’m paying for her, after all.”

  “We need the last name for security reasons,” Julie explained. “I’m sure Luc will be able to help you out.” With that, she smiled and moved on, aware that some guests would never be satisfied, no matter how hard the hotel staff tried to accommodate them.

  The art gallery wasn’t on her way to the restaurant, but she decided to detour there simply because strolling around the hotel was such a pleasant break from sitting at her desk. The door was open and she peeked inside. In the prime viewing location, Sylvie had hung an Andrew Wyeth painting from her grandmother’s collection. Celeste had bought three Wyeths decades ago, just before he became famous. Now, of course, the paintings were practically priceless. To see one hanging on the wall of the hotel’s gallery made Julie’s heart beat a little faster.

  The Wyeth painting undoubtedly helped to attract customers to the gallery. Several browsers wandered through the narrow room’s two stories, studying the paintings, sculpture and jewelry by local artists with the same interest and respect they accorded the Wyeth.

  Sylvie knew how to display art, and how to select it. She was an artist herself, having inherited her mother’s eye for esthetics and visual harmony.

  She was seated at a computer, but she glanced up at Julie’s entrance. Her curly red hair was as striking as some of the artwork she displayed.

  “The Wyeth looks magnificent,” Julie called from the open doorway.

  Sylvie grinned. “I can’t believe I was able to borrow one of Grand-mère’s precious paintings for the gallery. My daughter calls it the ‘White painting.’ She can’t quite say ‘Wyeth.’”

  Julie laughed. “Too bad you can’t sell that painting. You’d be set for life if you could.”

  “Grand-mère will never part with her Wyeths,” Sylvie said, eyeing the soft landscape dominating the gallery’s wall, “except for a temporary loan like this.”

  Julie nodded. “Are you planning to have the gallery open during the party?”

  Sylvie shook her head vehemently. “All those people, all that revelry. All that booze,” she added with a laugh. “The gallery would get a lot of traffic, but people wouldn’t be in a shopping frame of mind.” She glanced at the wall display one more time and sighed. “Is my mother around? She said she wanted to discuss the jewelry displays.” She waved at the glass-enclosed showcases. “She claims she has some ideas.”

  Julie interpreted her tone and guessed, “You don’t want her input?”

  “She’s got a great eye,” Sylvie said. “I’d be crazy not to listen to her suggestions. I just wish she’d take it a little easier. She’s knocking herself out on the party preparations. I can’t help worrying.”

  Julie felt a swell of sympathy—for Anne Marchand as well as for her daughter. “I know you can’t help it,” she said, “but people don’t like being worried about.” She certainly didn’t like Mac worrying about her.

  Sylvie nodded. “Sometimes I think Mama wants to be running the hotel again. Charlotte’s doing such a good job, though. Mama should take it easy and enjoy her retirement.”

  “I’m sure she’d appreciate that advice as much as you appreciate all the advice she ever gave you.”

  That got a laugh out of Sylvie. “All right. I’ll let her rearrange the jewelry showcases if she wants. Maybe she doesn’t really want to run the hotel anymore. It could be she’s just stir-crazy. And she’s living with Grand-mère. She probably wants to get out of the house as much as possible.”

  “Your grandmother can’t be that bad,” Julie argued gently. “Anyway, I think your mother just wants to keep her hand in. She doesn’t want all the responsibility of running the hotel full-time. She’d much rather let her daughters deal with the stress.”

  Sylvie tossed back her head and laughed again, causing her coppery curls to vibrate. “And we like dumping all the responsibility and stress on you, Julie.”

  Julie joined her laughter. She eyed the Wyeth one more time, sighed at its misty, moody beauty, and then said goodbye to Sylvie and left the gallery. As she crossed the lobby, she noticed Patrick at the concierge desk and Luc nowhere in sight. At least Alvin Grote wasn’t pacing the floor and grumbling.

  She entered Chez Remy. In the dining room, a few stragglers lingered over a late breakfast, but most of the tables were empty, and a busboy moved silently through the room, setting the polished wood tables with linen napkins and silverware and centering bud vases and ornate candlesticks on each table, preparing for the lunch crowd. The restaurant’s ambiance was an intriguing mixture of formality and familiarity. Small tables were surrounded by mismatched but superbly constructed chairs which Anne and Remy had scavenged years ago at antique shows and estate sales. The tall windows and French doors opened onto the courtyard; the full-length drapes were tied back to afford views of the pool and the potted plants outside.

  No wonder people lingered for hours over their breakfasts. Who would want to leave such a lovely dining room?

  Julie couldn’t stay, though, especially after having spent time in the gallery with Sylvie. She crossed to the kitchen, where she found Robert LeSoeur in a crisp white shirt and black trousers, presiding over rows of stainless-steel counters, an eight-burner industrial stove, an enormous griddle and banks of wall ovens. Young, handsome and endowed with the sort of arrogance a chef required to create exquisite cuisine out of chaos, Robert ruled his frenetic underlings like a not quite benevolent dictator.

  Glimpsing Julie, he darted to his desk, which was tucked into a corner of the room away from the food preparation area, and lifted a folder. He must have known she’d be asking for the final menu and budget today, because he had all the information printed out and ready for her. “Thanks,” she said. “Any potential disasters I need to know about?”

  He smiled enigmatically. “In the kitchen, there are always potential disasters. You probably don’t want to know about them.”

  “Then by all means, spare me,” she said with a grin.

  From the dining room she traveled to the bar, where Leo was counting bottles and marking an inventory list. A slight, silver-haired fellow sat alone at a table, nursing a brandy. Rather early for that particular refreshment, Julie thought, but she trusted Leo to keep the customer both satisfied and safe.

  She headed straight for Leo, who was standing behind the bar. “Are we all set for the party?” she asked.

  “As ready as we’ll ever be,” he assured her. “The champagne will be delivered the morning of the party. Wine deliveries should be arriving any minute. Folks who want the hard stuff will have to leave the function rooms and come here.”

  “Have we got strategies in place if anyone overindulges?”

  “Always.” Leo grinned. “Most folks don’t need the excuse of a party to overindulge. We can handle them. We’ve got the police on our speed dial, just like the security office.”

  Julie realized she wasn’t far from the security office herself. Work awaited her back at her desk, but… Why not pay a quick, friendly visit to Mac? He wandered past her office often enough, usually vanishing before she could see him and leaving nothing in his wake but his distinctive woodsy scent and a frisson of awareness in Julie. But he hadn’t been by her office that morning. She hadn’t seen him, hadn’t smelled him or sensed him.

  She owed him a thank-you for arranging their supper last night, even if it had been supplied by Melanie. Surely that was a reasonable excuse to stop by his office.

  But he wasn’t there. She glanced through the door and saw the young security staffer, Carlos, behind the desk, viewing the images picked up by the hotel’s security cameras with the intensity of someone watching a gripping dramatic film. Mac was probably making his rounds. Right now, he could be hovering outside her office door, wondering where she was.

  That thought made her smile. She moved past the security office, figuring she’d take the back stairs up to the second floor, when she heard a murmur of voice
s, one male and one female. Following the sound, she spotted Luc Carter and a petite dark-haired maid emerging from the supply storage room, their heads bowed together as if they were swapping secrets.

  Julie fell back a step, not wanting to embarrass them. From the corner of her eye, she saw Luc drop a light kiss to the chambermaid’s cheek, then turn and saunter down the hall toward the stairs, right where she was standing. Even if she wanted to avoid him, she couldn’t.

  He saw her, faltered a step, then grinned sheepishly. “Hi.”

  She returned his smile. “I heard you had a sweetheart on the housekeeping staff.”

  He seemed mildly flustered. “We’re just friends.”

  “Not that you’re asking me for any advice,” she said, “but be careful. Workplace romances can get messy.” Which was a valid reason for her to have avoided the security office this morning. Not that she and Mac had a romance going, not that they ever would, but…yes, such relationships could get messy.

  “Thanks for the warning, Miss Julie.”

  “You should get back to the lobby,” she suggested. “I left a message for you there. A guest wants to change his reservation for the party. Alvin Grote.”

  Luc rolled his eyes. “Alvin Grote wants everything, and he wants it yesterday.”

  Julie couldn’t argue that. “Unfortunately, it’s our job to see that he gets it. And at the moment, it’s your job.”

  “Lucky me.” Luc and Julie exchanged a smile. “I’ll take care of him.”

  “Thanks.” She watched as Luc sauntered down the hall toward the lobby. Then she entered the back stairwell and climbed the stairs, her escape from the confines of her desk drawing to a close. Her long legs carried her efficiently toward her office, the slit in her slim-fitting skirt gapping with each step. A few paces from her open office door, she caught a whiff of his scent.

  Mac had been here.

  And he was still here, she discovered as she swung into her office. He was sitting at her desk, staring at her computer monitor and scowling.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, too startled to take offense.

  He spun around in the chair and aimed his furious gaze at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “You’ve gotten a total of ten threatening e-mails. Five of them today.” He rose to his feet, and she realized that he was struggling to keep his temper in check—and not quite succeeding. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  Her own anger belatedly kicked in. “Who gave you permission to read my e-mails?”

  “Your door was open,” he countered. “Your computer was on. I looked through the doorway and saw an e-mail on the monitor.”

  She was pretty sure she’d closed her e-mail program before she’d left her office, and she’d been gone long enough for her screen saver to have taken over.

  Mac was lying. He’d entered her office while she’d been out, opened her e-mail program and read her mail. “My e-mail is none of your business,” she snapped, marching across the office to confront him up close. “You have no right snooping through my messages.”

  “Of course I have a right. Of course it’s my business. These are threatening e-mails. That’s a matter for security.”

  “It’s my e-mail—”

  “Which you received on your work computer during business hours. Don’t bullshit me, Julie. You promised you’d tell me if you received any more of these messages. You’ve gotten a bunch of them, and you didn’t tell me.”

  “Because they’re stupid,” she retorted. “Because they don’t mean a thing. Because I’m not going to let some jerk scare me for his own amusement. I can take care of myself.”

  Mac grabbed her by her shoulders and tightened his hands, as if he thought she’d run from him. But why would she? She was no more afraid of him than she was of the jerk sending the e-mails.

  “Julie,” he said in a low, intense tone. “You’re not scared. Fine. I’m scared. Someone is targeting you for a reason. At the very least it’s harassment.”

  His solemnity, his barely contained rage and the profound darkness of his eyes alarmed her in a way no e-mail ever could. “And what is it at the not very least?” she asked quietly, hating the anxious edge to her voice.

  “At the not very least, someone wants to hurt you.”

  His hands were still on her shoulders, his face just inches from hers. His distinctive scent filled her nostrils. “Stop trying to frighten me,” she said, her voice more hushed and tremulous than she would have liked.

  “Who might have sent you those e-mails?” he asked. “Who wants to hurt you, Julie?”

  She thought briefly of Glenn Perry, who’d wound up in prison on the strength of her testimony. But that had been so long ago. The world had changed in a million ways since then, and so had she. And so, no doubt, had Glenn.

  And anyway, how could he have found out her e-mail address?

  “No one,” she whispered.

  Clearly exasperated, Mac released her and paced in a circle around her office. Her shoulders felt chilled with his hands gone. The chill spread to her spine and down the length of her, causing her to shiver. She didn’t like lying to Mac any more than he liked being lied to.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and watched him storm from the windows to the file cabinets and back to her desk. He raked a hand through his hair, then faced her squarely. “Julie,” he said. “Maybe you don’t care that someone might have you in his sights. Maybe you don’t care that you could be in danger. I care. So you’re going to have to play this my way. We can trace those e-mails—at least find out where they’re being sent from. I’m going to copy them, and I’m going to have an expert I know work on them, and we’re going to figure out as much as we can about them. Do you understand?”

  He didn’t wait for her to answer, but instead lowered himself back into her chair and inserted a memory stick into a port on her computer. She watched apprehensively as he downloaded material from the machine, and hoped it was only her e-mails. Everything else on her computer was work-related—contracts, letters, spreadsheets and other files—and she had no reason to hide any of it from the head of the hotel’s security department, but still…this felt like a violation. Mac was tapping into her computer and sucking her data out of it.

  “I don’t like this,” she said, a halfhearted protest.

  “I don’t like you being threatened by a cyber-stalker.” Mac clicked on an icon and removed his memory stick. Pocketing it, he stood.

  “I’m not really in any danger,” she said, attempting to convince herself as much as him.

  “You don’t know if you are or not,” he said. “But if something happened to you…” His hands rested on her shoulders again, gently this time, not to hold her immobile but to emphasize the honesty in his words. “It would just about kill me.”

  She peered up at him. Not just his hands but his eyes, the grim line of his mouth, the faint roughness in his voice told her he meant it. He was that worried about her. He cared that much.

  It seemed too easy to move from the emotion passing between them to something more. Too easy, too natural, too necessary. Too inevitable.

  He bowed his head as she tilted hers, and his lips grazed hers. Just one fleeting, tender kiss, but it ignited a heat inside her, as dark and languorous as a summer delta night. If one tiny kiss from Mac could warm her so thoroughly, so deliciously, what could two kisses do?

  She wasn’t sure she could handle the answer to that question. Leaning back, she found him gazing steadily at her. “This is a bad idea,” she said.

  “Yeah.” Then he bowed his head and kissed her again. His lips brushed hers, stroked, nipped. Devoured. One moment he was kissing her and the next he was taking her, conquering, claiming. His hands flexed against her shoulders, his teeth plucked at her lips, his tongue probed until she opened to him and he stole inside, sliding deep, filling her. Her body’s temperature rose a hundred degrees. She felt as if she was melting, her soul
liquefying so Mac could drink it in.

  A faint groan escaped him, and she realized that he was every bit as staggered by this kiss as she was. The surge of desire flowed both ways. If he needed her at that moment, she needed him every bit as much. If he wanted her…she wanted this, his mouth on hers, his hands, his body pressing against her, tall and hard and scorchingly hot.

  No man had ever told her that if something happened to her it would kill him. At that moment she was sure that ending this kiss would kill them both. Maybe it was a bad idea—but stopping, she was sure, was a far, far worse one.

  His hands moved from her shoulders to the sides of her throat and up to her cheeks, holding her head steady. His fingertips seemed to sear her cheeks before they dug into her hair. His tongue teased hers, lured it, and she accepted its invitation, chasing it into his mouth. He tasted like coffee and mint and sex.

  She reached for his waist, slid her hands under his jacket and sensed the heat of his skin through the smooth cotton of his shirt. His breath caught as she skimmed her palms across the taut contours of his chest, feeling ripples of response, the flexing of muscle, the fierce pounding of his heart.

  She wanted to tear his shirt off, and her own. She wanted to taste not just his mouth but his neck, his torso, every part of him. She wanted to shut down her brain so it wouldn’t keep nagging her to stop wanting Mac. This was a bad idea—and never had a bad idea felt so good.

  “Julie?” Charlotte called through the open inner door. “Did you get the party menu from Robert?”

  Julie and Mac sprang apart. Julie glanced toward the door and was relieved not to see Charlotte standing there. Lowering her eyes, she managed a shaky breath. Her mouth burned.

  She felt Mac’s gaze on her. Mustering her courage, she lifted her face and saw that he was staring at her, his eyes smoky, his nostrils narrowed as he struggled to regulate his breathing. He reached up and drew his hand the length of her hair, smoothing it back from her cheek.

  She tried to guess what he was thinking. That her safety was a life-or-death thing to him? That this kiss had been a life-or-death thing? That they should pursue this bad idea or behave as if it had never occurred?