In the Dark

by Judith Arnold

  She cleared her throat. “I’ve got the menu, Charlotte,” she called in an oddly hoarse voice, which she directed toward Charlotte’s open office door even though she couldn’t shift her eyes from Mac. “I’ll bring it right in.”

  He caressed her cheek and the trembling curve of her lower lip with his fingertips. Then, abruptly, he turned, stalked toward the door to the hallway and walked out. His hand was in the pocket of his jacket where he’d stashed his memory stick.

  Had he kissed her to distract her from the fact that he’d copied her e-mails without her permission? To make her forget, or at least not mind, that he’d breached her privacy? To obliterate her anger over his bossy, self-important, know-it-all, smothering overprotectiveness?

  Or had he kissed her for the same reason she’d kissed him—because at that moment, kissing him had seemed essential to her survival?

  Whatever the reason, it shouldn’t have happened, and she knew she’d regret it, not only because of the inherent dangers in workplace romances, which she’d been lecturing Luc about just minutes ago, but because this was Mac Jensen, a man who’d just stolen her e-mails. A man who could seize control of her life if she let him. A man she still wasn’t sure she could trust.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “I’VE GOT TO SPLIT,” Mac told Carlos. “I’ve got some business to take care of. I’ll be back in an hour. Do you mind taking a late lunch?”

  “Nah. My girlfriend makes me eat a big breakfast. She says she wants to fatten me up.” He lifted the cup of coffee Mac had brought him from the kitchen. “This’ll keep me going.”

  “My cell will be on, in case you need to reach me.” With that, Mac bolted from the security office and out the service entrance.

  The noontime weather was overcast and cool, half matching his mood. He was overcast but definitely not cool. Just thinking about the kiss he and Julie had shared—although the word kiss hardly seemed adequate to describe it—made him hot. His breath rasped, his scalp sweated and his groin… Damn. Talk about being on fire.

  Julie was gorgeous, no question about that. When a man fantasized about a gorgeous woman, however, the fantasy generally entailed him doing things to her. She was the scenery, he was the actor.

  But Julie wasn’t just some beautiful scenery. She could kiss as if she was channeling the spirit of Venus and every other love goddess in mythology, with a touch of wild woman, a dash of hooker and a load of wide-eyed wonderment mixed in.

  He could tell himself he’d kissed her because he’d had to change the subject from stealing her e-mails, or because those e-mails had genuinely scared the crap out of him, or because the minute he’d planted his hands on her shoulders, he’d known that all the pacing in the world wasn’t going to keep him from pulling her into his arms. But here was the truth: he’d kissed her because he’d had to. And now that he’d done it, he wanted much, much more. One taste of the drug that was Julie Sullivan had addicted him and made him want to do that drug again and again, until his mind was gone.

  He’d have to get a grip. He was a freaking professional, and he couldn’t jeopardize his company or his own integrity by chasing after her.

  Halfway to the parking lot, he had his cell phone out of his pocket. His thumb flicked the buttons to speed-dial the office. Sandy answered on the second ring. “Crescent City Security, can I help you?”

  “I’m beyond help,” he growled.

  “Mac?” Sandy paused. “Are you all right?”

  “I’ll survive.” Maybe, he added silently. To reassure Sandy, he said, “Yeah, sweetheart, I’m all right. Is Louise around?”

  “She hasn’t left for lunch yet, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Don’t let her leave.” He’d reached his car and unlocked it. “Tell her I’ll treat her to lunch at the Commander’s Palace when this job is done, but she’s got to make do with a sandwich at her desk today. I’m bringing her a bunch of e-mails to decode.”

  “Now?”

  “I’m in my car,” he said as he slammed the door shut and jabbed the key into the ignition. “I’ll be there ASAP. Louise is not to leave her desk until she finds out where these e-mails came from.”

  “If I keep her from leaving, will you treat me to lunch at the Commander’s Palace, too?”

  “If you keep her from leaving,” he said, backing out of his space and maneuvering the wheel with one hand, “I’ll treat you to Pizza Hut. Right now, darlin’, Louise’s skills are worth a hell of a lot more than yours.”

  “I’m insulted,” Sandy said, then laughed. “I’ll bar the door so the woman of your dreams can’t escape. See you soon.”

  The woman of my dreams, he thought as he folded his phone shut. With her technical expertise, Louise ought to be that woman. But he knew the woman he’d be dreaming about tonight, and she was a tall Yankee with eyes the color of a bayou sunset and a mouth that could make him swear off sanity forever.

  “THIS IS GREAT,” Charlotte said, lowering the buffet menu Julie had carried upstairs from the restaurant. “I can’t believe Robert came in under budget.”

  “It took some doing,” Julie admitted. She’d had to veto several of his suggestions. No Alaskan king crab. Prawns would do. And no truffle miniquiches. Surely, Julie had insisted, he could prepare something equally interesting with portobello mushrooms.

  “No one’s going to leave the party hungry,” Charlotte predicted. “That’s the important part. Mama said the rooms are almost done. The flowers are arriving tomorrow morning, and she’ll be placing them where they need to go.” She sighed. “Would you mind terribly helping her with that? If she spends all day finishing the decorations, it might be too much for her.”

  Julie appreciated the opportunity to focus on flowers and Anne Marchand’s health. It kept her from thinking about Mac. Thinking about him turned her brain to mud and the rest of her body to lava, molten and glowing.

  “I have a feeling your mother is in better health than you realize,” she said. “If you want me to help her with the flowers tomorrow, of course I will. But you and your sisters need to stop worrying about her. She’s not about to keel over.”

  “How do you know that? Just last autumn—”

  “I know, I know. She had a heart attack. But today she radiates health and energy. She’s never looked better.”

  “You like her hair long?” Charlotte eyed Julie’s long hair and grinned. “I suppose you would. I try not to worry about Mama, but I can’t help it. You know how worried you were about your daddy just a week ago, when he was battling the flu.”

  Julie conceded with a nod. “My father’s perfectly healthy now, and I think your mother is, too.”

  “From your mouth to God’s ears.” Charlotte smiled at Julie, tilting her head slightly as she appraised her. “You’ve got that look again.”

  “What look?” Julie discreetly touched her hand to her lips, as if to hide any evidence of what had occurred just minutes ago in her office.

  “That Mac Jensen look.”

  Julie took a deep breath and reminded herself that he’d entered her office uninvited, breached the privacy of her computer and then kissed her senseless—probably to keep her from becoming angry about his downloading her e-mails. That only made her angrier. Anger was better than abject yearning, she decided.

  “The man pisses me off,” she said.

  “I reckon that’s part of his job,” Charlotte said. “A good security director has to make people uncomfortable sometimes.”

  Not this kind of uncomfortable, Julie thought. “Maybe,” she agreed without much enthusiasm.

  “For the party tomorrow,” Charlotte continued, “Mac and his staff get free rein. Make sure everybody knows this. We want no security problems. Whatever Mac says goes.”

  “I’ll spread the word.” Julie shuddered to think of Mac having free rein and her having to obey his every command. What if he ordered her to kiss him again? Would she have to?

  Would she be able to stop herself?

  “T
he party’s going to be a great success, and we did it all without professional planners,” Charlotte said resolutely. “I bet even that grouch in Room 307 won’t find anything to complain about.”

  Assuming he was able to find out his tootsie’s last name, Julie thought.

  “Why don’t you take a run downstairs and see how the event rooms are coming along?” Charlotte requested. “If my mother looks worn-out, make her take a break.”

  “If she looks like she needs one,” Julie said, knowing full well that Anne would look like a world-class marathoner, barely breaking a sweat as she labored over the decorations.

  Julie left Charlotte’s office and veered toward the back stairway, wondering whether she should have locked her office first. Even if she had, Mac could open it with his master key. She had no way to keep him out.

  Her legs felt a little wobbly as she descended the stairs, and she paused on the landing to collect herself. When she’d taken her last stroll around the hotel, she’d felt free and invigorated, as if circulating through the first floor was an exciting adventure. Now that she knew the devastating excitement of kissing Mac, she didn’t want to run into him. She hoped he was as far from the event rooms as possible.

  Her view from the doorway of the first room told her that a great deal had been done, and a great deal more needed to be done. Several men from the maintenance staff were perched on stepladders, hanging colorful panels of diaphanous cloth from the ceiling at Anne’s direction. At least she wasn’t climbing the ladders herself. But standing at the center of the room, shouting orders— “six inches to the left, please” and “could we try the sapphire blue cloth there instead?”—to the men scurrying around and repositioning the ladders, Anne made it very clear that she was the boss.

  “It looks great,” Julie said, sidling up to her.

  “It looks terrible,” Anne argued. “But by the time we’re done, it’ll look splendid. We’ve got about fifty miles of silver and gold beads to hang, along with the drapery panels. I’m hoping the effect will be an elegant variation on a carnival tent, fun but classy. Then we’ll have candles floating in bowls of water on the tables—beautiful and also practical. If someone knocks over a candle, the water will douse it. And the flowers, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “The band will be in the other room. Dancing there, food and drink here. This is going to be our best party yet.”

  Julie appreciated Anne’s optimism. “Do you need my help with anything?”

  “Charlotte asked you to babysit me again, didn’t she.” Anne’s smile was tinged with irritation. “I’m perfectly fine. No, the green,” she shouted to a man who’d been about to pin a yellow panel of cloth to the ceiling. “And fasten it about a foot closer to the window.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he responded.

  “Anyway,” Anne continued to Julie, “I’m happy to have your company, but I don’t need you doting on me as if I were an invalid.”

  “I know. I’ve told Charlotte the same thing.”

  Anne shared a smile with her. “My daughters act as if I’m in danger of collapsing. I do hate being fussed over.”

  “So do I,” Julie said, thinking of Mac’s irritation over her failure to inform him about the e-mails. “At least in this case you know your daughters are fussing over you because they love you, not because they’re playing power games.”

  “That’s true. They love me—and I love them. It’s amazing how people can love each other so much and still get on each other’s nerves.” She laughed. “If you really want to help, you can check with Nadine to see if the party linens have arrived. I ordered tablecloths to pick up the rainbow colors of these drapes. And multicolored cocktail napkins. They should be here by now.”

  “I’ll do that,” Julie said, sending out a silent prayer that Mac wouldn’t be in the security office next door to the house-keeping department. Even if he was as busy doing his job as she was doing hers, even if there was not the sliver of a chance that he’d touch her again, she wasn’t yet ready to face him.

  MAC MIGHT BE OBSESSED with Julie Sullivan, but at four-fifteen that afternoon he was madly in love with the very short genius who performed feats of technological magic in the back room at Crescent City Security Services.

  He sat at a table in a corner of the courtyard, ignoring the couple sipping colorful drinks by the edge of the pool as if they were vacationing on some tropical isle rather than in the French Quarter of New Orleans in January. The air wasn’t quite tropics warm, and there was no sand or swaying palms or salty air, but they were making the most of the teardrop-shaped pool and the open sky above them.

  As soon as Mac had gotten the message to call Louise he’d come out to the courtyard. Whatever she intended to tell him, he wanted to be alone to hear it, undistracted by the hotel surveillance cameras flashing their images on the monitor in the tiny security office. He’d sent Carlos off to have a cigarette, and once he’d satisfied his nicotine craving, Mac left him in charge of the desk and went to the courtyard to return Louise’s call.

  “This is weird, Mac,” she told him. “I gather Sullivan received the last five e-mails all in the same download, but they weren’t sent at the same time.”

  “They came from New York, though?”

  “No. I was saving the bad news for last,” Louise answered. “They came from airports. Most airports have WiFi now—wireless Internet service for anyone who has a laptop and an Internet card. The first was sent from LaGuardia, the second and third from Detroit, the fourth and fifth from Dallas. Judging by the times they were sent, I was able to narrow down the flights the sender might have taken. I’ve got schedules from Delta, American and United Air Lines, and, depending which airline our guy booked on, I can tell you what flights he was on. I couldn’t get any of the airlines to release passenger manifests for those flights, though.”

  “So he’s on the move.” Mac frowned. Dallas was a hell of a lot closer to New Orleans than New York City was. “I thought that according to the terms of his parole he wasn’t allowed to leave New York.”

  “You’re assuming the person sending the e-mails is Glenn Perry,” she pointed out.

  One thing he liked about Louise—she didn’t worry about trying to make her boss feel smart or superior. She just blurted out the flaws in his reasoning. “Who else would be harassing Julie?” he shot back, partly to soothe his ego and partly because Louise was so freaking smart she probably had an answer.

  “An old boyfriend?”

  “Her sister insists there’s no one else. Julie didn’t date much, and the few men she did date were sane. Marcie says Perry is the only person who’s got a grudge against Julie.”

  “Then maybe he hired someone to send these messages for him.”

  That possibility had crossed Mac’s mind, as well. It had troubled him, so he’d preferred to relegate it to deep storage. But now Louise had dredged it back up.

  That Perry could have an ally roaming around the country, sending threatening e-mails on his behalf, definitely qualified as bad news. Those last five e-mails had differed from the earlier ones in tone. Why shouldn’t Mac assume they were sent by someone else?

  “So—we’ve got to get hold of those flight manifests and see if there’s anyone on them who might have some connection to Perry.”

  “The airlines wouldn’t release their passenger lists,” Louise reminded him.

  “They wouldn’t release the lists to you, darlin’. That doesn’t mean they won’t release them to me.” He pondered for a minute. Whoever had sent the e-mails could be using a false name. Or Perry could have asked more than one person to run his nasty errands for him. Maybe no one had flown anywhere. Maybe there were separate bastards in Detroit and Dallas sending the e-mails from the comfort of their own homes. “You’re sure these were sent via airport WiFi?”

  “As sure as I can be,” Louise responded. “Which is never a hundred percent, Mac. You know that.”

  Mac ruminated some more. “We need to c
ontact Perry’s parole officer to make sure he’s still in New York. If he’s flying around the country, he could get pulled in for a parole violation.”

  “I’ll ask Sandy to call his parole officer,” Louise promised.

  “Do you think Perry’s got the money to buy folks tickets to fly around the country for him? What do they give ex-cons when they leave the joint? Twenty bucks?”

  “I think it’s a little more than that.” Louise paused. “But Perry could have rich friends from his former life.”

  “Jet-setting friends. Buddies in the SkyMiles club, or whatever it’s called.”

  “Or someone who works for the airline,” she suggested. “Don’t they get free tickets?”

  Mac developed a cramp in the bridge of his nose from frowning so hard. He leaned back in his chair, stretched his legs and pinched the spot between his eyebrows where the ache had sprung. “As the head of a modeling agency, Perry must have traveled a bit. He could have accrued lots of miles…or he could have gotten friendly with a few flight attendants.” Could be he’d gotten biblical with one or two, Mac thought with a reluctant smile.

  “Maybe there’s a way to find out what airline he used back in his jet-setting days,” Louise suggested. “If he was loyal to one, we could assume that’s where his frequent-flyer miles would be.”

  “Or his flight attendant girlfriend,” Mac agreed. “Sweetheart, you’re brilliant.” Mac sighed. “Marry me. Throw over that doctor fellow and run away with me.”

  “Thanks. I think I’ll stick with the doctor fellow,” she said dryly. “I’ll see if Frank has any ideas about how to get this information out of the airlines.”

  “Frank will have lots of ideas. Maybe I ought to marry him, instead.”

  “I don’t know if Sandy would like that,” Louise said.

  If she and Frank hadn’t negotiated a peace over their child-bearing decisions, Sandy might like it a lot. “Take this fool off my hands,” she’d say. “I’m going down to the sperm bank to get myself knocked up.”