by Nancy Gideon
“You’re Max Savoie’s flashy whore. I seen you dance at the Sweat Shop.”
Cee Cee grimaced at his description. “That’s right.”
“W-what do you want with me?”
Her gaze cut over him dispassionately. “Obviously not what you’d hoped.”
Silas stepped in, his manner frigidly professional. “We want some information, Mr. Reading. Then we’ll let you go about your business all the richer for it.” He separated Nica’s initial investment from the wad of cash from his pocket, passing it to her with quiet, “Thank you. I’ll pay the interest later.” The rest he tossed into the kid’s lap to be scooped up in shaking hands.
Greed made for quick compliance as Boze fondled the money the way he had the curve of Cee Cee’s backside. “Whatdaya wanna know?”
“How did you get into the fight game?”
“One of the fellers from the group I belong to told me about it.”
“Name.”
“Pomerey. Ain’t seen him for a couple a days.”
Silas drew out his phone and held it up. “This him?”
Reading blanched. Unable to summon words without throwing up, he simply nodded.
“What’s this got to do with Philo Tibideaux?” Cee Cee demanded.
Boze swallowed hard and shook his head. “Nothing that I know of. Pom tole me not to say nothing about it to him, that he’d spoil a sweet deal if he knew.”
Cee Cee was relieved enough by that news to be a little more charitable toward their informant. “We’re not going to tell him about it either. Who set you up for the fight and paid you?”
“Some little squirt of a fella handles the money.”
Silas leaned in again. “Who handles the show?”
“Don’t know.”
“We want you to find out.”
Those pupil-swollen eyes narrowed. “Why should I do that? So you can shut the whole thing down?” He glared at Cee Cee resentfully. “You and Savoie?”
“You’re right about Savoie,” she told him. “If he knew you were showing off clan secrets to a bunch of Uprights he’d kill you in ways you don’t even want to imagine.”
Boze paled, imagining.
Silas patted his shoulder. “But that’s not what we want to happen. We’re like you. We want to make a tidy profit and we want you to help us.”
Reading relaxed a bit. He related to greed a lot better than to Tibideaux and Savoie’s caution. “You’ll cut me in?”
Silas smiled at Cee Cee. “See. I told you. A smart, entrepreneurial boy.”
She laughed and looked upon their pseudo-partner with appreciation. “I think you’re right.”
And they had him hooked.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Max paced his coolly impersonal living room. He hadn’t turned on the lights, letting those of the city stream in to illuminate a path wreathed in darkness.
Not what he seems.
What did that mean? Should he be worrying over those words from a child?
But Pearl Duchamps LaRoche was more than just a little girl. He’d felt that in their brief exchange. What had she seen when she’d reached through their shared gaze to the secrets beyond?
Susanna had responded to the claim with a calm shushing tone. Her mood toward Max hadn’t changed from warm and receptive, so perhaps outrageous remarks from the girl were nothing new. Perhaps he had no reason to be fretting even now.
Perhaps he did.
They turn you into a weapon against those who trust you, against those you love. They make you an extension of their reach. They see through your eyes, act through your hands.
He mulled Nica’s warning over and over in his mind and dismissed it with a shake of his head. That’s not what had happened. He’d fought them. He’d beaten them. He’d been rescued before they had a chance to turn him. He hadn’t let them get inside to take control like cruel puppeteers plucking at strings, manipulating his movements.
But was that fact or what they allowed him to believe?
He massaged his forehead as tension built there.
Could he begin a new life here amongst these caring friends not knowing if he was an unwitting agent of their destruction? Or did the real illusion reach even farther, making him think that those surrounding him were his friends?
What did they want from him?
Wasn’t the real question why had they made it so easy for him to escape?
Max turned with a grateful relief toward the opening of the front door. Facing his complex feelings about Charlotte Caissie became a lot less stressful than the idea of being used as a tool against her. Until the first thing that reached him was the scent of a randy male.
The hair on the back of his neck rose in a hostile bristle as he examined the suspicious rumpling of her dress. Someone else had had his hands on her, and that someone would be lucky to survive the night.
“Detective, how was your evening?” came his deceptively mild drawl.
Her bright wig went flying to perch on the arm of the sofa like some strange exotic bird. She gave a luscious groan of pleasure, scratching her scalp while advancing into the room where he waited, tense and ready to pounce on her answer.
“Undercover work is absolutely the worst. I’d rather torture the truth out of someone than try to seduce it out of them. I need a shower. Maybe an all-over chemical peel.” She shuddered, muttering, “Little creep. Good thing Silas and Nica were there or I’d have killed him for illegal use of hands.”
She was checking the mail on the table and missed Max’s relieved smile.
“The lengths you go through to see justice done are admirable.”
“This isn’t something that’s going on my NOPD time card.” She crossed to the sofa and threw herself down onto the yielding cushions, her long legs stretching out in front of her. Her eyes closed.
“Care to share any details?” He sat down, this time next to her, close but not touching. Close enough to inhale her unique fragrance and appreciate the details of her expression, like the weary creases on her brow, the softness of her lips when she sighed and began a crisp and obviously censored account. And while he admired the cleverness of their deeds, he also admired the perfection of her relaxed form.
The comfortable familiarity of the moment didn’t sink in until Cee Cee realized that Max had lifted one of her feet and was undoing the buckles of her shoe. The story she was telling took an immediate backseat to the feel of his strong hands massaging like heated lotion over tired arches. Without a pause in her recitation, she gave him access to her other foot as well, lying back on the sofa in a near boneless sprawl. With her heels resting on his thigh, he worked a magic that melted away the rigors of the day and the anguish of the past months. And when she ran out of words, she continued to silently absorb the pleasure of his touch.
“You place yourself in a dangerous position, Detective. You can’t call for backup without exposing the core of your intentions.”
How true, both on the job and on this sofa.
Then the low croon of his vow. “You can always call me.”
Distracted by thoughts of that kiss at the club, she didn’t call him on their earlier discussion about privacy issues. On the scale of kisses they’d shared, it wouldn’t make much of a blip. But to a lonely heart almost bereft of hope, like cardiac paddles it had startled an anxious beat of expectation. For more, grander displays.
Cee Cee kept her eyes closed, picturing the intensity of his expression. She didn’t need to look into his gorgeous eyes to feel their heat. And she didn’t need much encouragement to melt beneath of the gradual seduction of his touch. His hands moved from caressing soles to inducing sighs as they kneaded her calves and thumbed over the caps of her knees, inciting an anticipation that shivered down her legs.
Because it was Max, she never sensed movement until his mouth covered hers. Just a brush of warmth followed by a silky slide, and she opened for him, desperate for this long absent communion.
She’d expected a rav
aging hunger like that first kiss he’d stolen after saving her from an attack in an alley, but this was a totally unfamiliar wooing. The textures were the same but the technique unnervingly original. The erotic nips and nibbles, the sleek lapping and lolling of his tongue over and around hers. Hugely exciting, yet unsettlingly different, as if her anticipated lover had become another person.
Someone she didn’t know.
And Cee Cee slammed on the brakes while she still had some degree of control.
Her hands pushed against his shoulders. A slight resistance, but enough to make him stop. He instantly lifted away, letting her scramble up into a semi-defensive pose. He simply stared at her for a long unblinking moment, reading the desire, the confusion, the panic in her wide eyes before saying softly, “Perhaps you should take that shower now.”
“Good idea,” she agreed and with all the dignity of a teenage virgin bolted from the unexpected threat he’d become.
Cee Cee scrubbed her skin fiercely to exfoliate that sense of anxiousness clinging to her. What was wrong with her? She’d been pining for his kiss for months. Wasn’t it exactly what she’d been waiting for?
No. Not exactly. Not the same at all. She’d wanted the Max she knew, not this stranger, this outsider wearing her lover’s face. Though wrapped in his comforting scent, he enticed with a touch both tempting and terrifying. It felt wrong, like the worst sort of betrayal to take what he’d offered. Because it wasn’t Max.
The water scourged her flesh the way her actions did her conscience. She wanted her Max. The sly, aggravating Mob henchman who’d tangled around her investigations then about her heart, who’d tamed her objections with a maddening patience and persistence, who’d worn down her resistance with his tenderness and loyalty. It was that Max she needed in her life, in her arms, in her bed. The one who’d shared the subtle innuendos, the dramatic dangers, the heart-pumping passions that bound them as friends, companions and mates. Her one and only, her forever love. She yearned for the Max Savoie—with his quirky habits and endearing vulnerabilities—who had defended her, depended upon her, who completed her in every way possible.
This was not him.
He might look the same, smell the same, sound the same but the deep, unique traits that had claimed her guarded heart and battered soul were missing. Stolen, not just from him, but from her as well. To accept this disquieting substitute would be giving up on all they’d created between them. She wasn’t ready to let go of that past they’d planned to build a future upon. Just to have sex with someone who was a stranger to her.
She turned off the shower and stood trembling in the clammy mist. As it dissipated, Cee Cee’s thoughts grew clear.
Max had forgotten one very important thing. She’d already helped him restore a past his broken spirit hadn’t let him recall, and he’d done the same for her. That struggle was the unpleasant glue that cemented their relationship together, reclaiming those shattered pieces to make a stronger whole.
Her lost Max had gotten entirely too comfortable in this new world he was making for himself. The man in her living room was becoming an enemy who locked the one she loved away in a prison of forgotten dreams.
To hell with Susanna’s cautionings. Time to smash down those doors and set the real Max free.
CHAPTER SEVEN
She wore pearls.
Nestled in the vee of her dark blue shirt, the iridescent orbs glowed in two perfect loops against warm skin. Delicate, decidedly feminine. And not at all like the sharp-edged Charlotte Caissie he’d grown to admire.
Max couldn’t take his eyes off them. They fascinated like a mesmerist’s swinging watch, lulling him into a strange disquiet. Cee Cee seemed unaware of his distraction as she grabbed up her coat and keys. They hadn’t spoken since the incident on the couch. She hadn’t come back out of the bedroom, and he’d spent the night on those cushions that still held her heat and scent, not sure how to interrupt her signals.
“Don’t make any plans for this evening,” she told him. And, without further explanation, she was out the door.
Her brusque dismissal annoyed him enough for a frown to settle in and linger. He’d grown used to her solicitous care, to having her fuss and fawn and shelter. Now this. Was it because of his aborted attempt at romance? Max scowled. How had he misread her interest? The signs were practically neon arrows. The way she watched his mouth when he talked, the way she brushed him by calculated accident. The way she responded to his touch, his kiss as if about to spontaneously combust.
Max recognized the symptoms because he’d felt the same way.
That telltale sign of another sniffing around what was his had triggered a deep, instinctive need to re-mark his territory. Basic, fierce, possessive. And undeniable. Even thinking about it now quickened that same growling aggression, pushing him to grab on and hold tight. Though he might not remember Charlotte Caissie, he now knew what they were to each other. Mated. Meant to be. Forever.
Max found great comfort and a terrible kind of terror in that realization.
A huge, cold pit of emptiness opened around him, making that vacant space where his memories had been a pock mark in comparison. Because the tough, tempting human hybrid was an integral part of who he’d been. Who he was. Without her . . . he’d be nothing.
His brooding was interrupted by a jovial Giles St. Clair’s “Morning, boss man.”
Max regarded his friend/jailer with a gleam of speculation. Perhaps he was going about things the wrong way. He’d been busy trying to find out who he was and how those around him fit into the world he’d once made for himself. What he should have considered was the place he’d held in Charlotte’s. And who knew more about his personal life than the affable wise guy? No sense tiptoeing around it.
“Tell me about Charlotte.”
The ever-obliging Giles didn’t hesitate. “Whatduya wanna know?”
“Everything.”
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The faint glitter of dust motes rising in the heat toward the soaring peak of St. Bartholomew’s sanctuary made Cee Cee smile. Angel dust, Mary Kate Malone had confided when they were children. Perhaps. But Cee Cee knew St. Bart’s true guardian angel had fangs and claws instead of a halo and went by the name of Max Savoie.
His money had rebuilt the majority of the structure after it was ravaged by fire. Beneath the gleam of newly polished surfaces, that acrid taint lingered. His generosity had kept a severely injured Mary Kate alive until their shared DNA could begin to repair her under Susanna Duchamps’ supervision. Yet, for all her progress, Charlotte’s best friend still bore the scars from that night, and from those that had defaced their innocence as teens.
Nothing damaged could ever be perfect again. Cee Cee understood that, accepted that. But it could be made stronger. She was proof. So was Mary Kate. And Max. That truth bound them together with ties more resilient than friendship, than debt, than guilt. With the help of Susanna’s miraculous therapies, Mary Kate was rediscovering just how strong. She’d not only awakened from her hospital bed before Last Rites had been spoken, she’d returned to a purposeful existence helping others. Healing, but not yet whole. And Cee Cee meant to do everything in her power to make sure Max thrived as well. Even if it meant extending a hand in faith where trust had been broken.
“Are you looking for Sister Catherine?” The gentle voice took on a majestic timbre within the cavernous space. “She’s at the Institute this morning. I believe she’s already left.”
Cee Cee couldn’t smile at the priest who she’d once thought walked on sainted water. Just as Nica had warned, the affection she’d felt had been fashioned upon lies. That painful fracture could not be repaired.
“Actually I was looking for you. Do you have time to talk?”
“I always have time for you, Lottie.” However, Michael Furness’s words didn’t warm the way they had naïve years ago.
She followed him back into his remodeled office where she’d learned the truth about who she was just a few months a
go. About what she was. His tastes were simple, befitting a man of the cloth. Comfortable seating, welcoming wood tones, and pinned upon the wall, endless photos of the women and children who’d found refuge under his care. Faces she remembered from her childhood smiled back at her. Mary Kate. Monica Fraser. Her own somber stare. Delores Gautreaux with her baby. And Benjamin Spratt. How much of the good done in the name of God was tainted by the priest’s otherworldly pursuits?
Father Michael Furness was an Ancient. An original of their species, like her mother and Max’s. Like Nica. A gatekeeper of its future. And after a lifetime of deception, he expected her to believe in him now. That wasn’t a miracle she could manage.
He waved her to a cushioned chair and took another opposite her. Then he waited patiently for her to begin.
“Genevieve Savorie.”
He smiled slightly at her blunt approach. “I wondered when you would come for those answers. I’d expected Max first.”
“He’s a bit distracted, so I’m doing the leg work for him. Part of my job.”
“For the city?”
“For my mate.”
Again a small smile at her brusque clarification. “Ask your questions.”
“She’s Marie’s sister.”
“Yes.”
“What else is she?”
“A brilliant mind. An amazing woman of insight and determination.”
She watched his expression, listened to the nuance of his words then deduced, “You were in love with her.”
He didn’t deny it. “You are a woman of insight and determination, as well. It was difficult not to get caught up in her drive and enthusiasm. She had a way that was compelling.”
“And what was she compelling you to do? And for whose benefit? Those in the North?”
A chuckle. “No. Genevieve isn’t a follower. She’s an innovator. She reminds me of your Ms. Fraser, only with a more pleasing manner.” When Cee Cee had no comment, he continued. “We met at a facility in Chicago, much like the one where you rescued Max. She was an eager student, consumed by the betterment of our race.”
