by Nancy Gideon
“I want the two of you to go pack what you’ll need for the next two weeks. Take your schoolbooks, sport. You’re not getting off the hook that easily.”
Tina gripped his big hands. “Where are we going?”
“On a vacation. Someplace nice. Someplace that’s not here. You’re not going to tell anyone where. Do you understand?”
They both nodded.
“Good. Go on now. Hurry.”
As Oscar bolted toward the stairs, Giles detained Tina to say briefly, “Make sure you take those new things you just bought.”
She gave a puzzled frown, then caught his meaning and nodded. “What about Brigit?”
“She’ll be with me.”
“You’ll keep her safe?” she insisted, making Giles struggle against the emotion crowding his throat at her quiet bravery, at her concern for a female who’d shown none for her, and he vowed, “I will.”
He accepted her quick kiss, then prompted gruffly, “Go on with you. Hurry up.”
Once she’d left the room, he approached the two detectives with a no-nonsense directness. “I’ll have Marissa at Max’s office make untraceable flight reservations for three out of Louis Armstrong on the first available to some kind of all-inclusive resort in the Keys. Pack up your swim trunks and your attitude, Babineau, and keep your family safe. Charlotte, see that he’s clocked out on some sort of witness protection duty so no questions are asked.”
Charlotte nodded, but he could see an argument building in Babineau’s face. So Giles got right into it.
“Are you gonna give me shit on this, or are you gonna finally man the fuck up and take care of your responsibilities?”
They did the toe-to-toe thing for a long beat, then Babineau turned to his partner for a brusque “Bring them to the house. I’ll be ready in about twenty.”
“Will do.”
After he’d gone, Charlotte caught Giles about the middle for a tight one-armed squeeze. “Did I ever mention that I’d be in the sack with you in a pair of seconds if I hadn’t met Max first?”
He sucked in a big breath and let it out slowly. “I think if you had, I wouldn’t have been so keen on rescuing him.”
She laughed and leaned in to him. “Where will you be for the next two weeks in case I need you?”
“Someplace over my head.”
They drove through the quieting remnants of the storm in absolute silence.
Brigit thought she’d be able to sleep, but she saw threat in every pair of headlights. Behind the wheel, Giles appeared relaxed, but his gaze did a constant cut between rear- and side-view mirrors to make sure they weren’t being followed. He took a zigzagging path of side roads to be certain.
Finally, there were no lights at all except their own.
She didn’t ask where they were going. It didn’t matter. Asking would mean speaking to Giles, and she’d yet to get past the notion that he would have fed her to the wolves, or at least one wolf, without blinking an eye. Not exactly a quality to inspire faith in one’s protector.
It was his fault, really. She’d gone to his room to discuss the danger they might be in. True, she’d planned to win him over with flirtatious overtures and perhaps, if needed, a few persuasive kisses. Abrupt, aggressive . . . amazing sex hadn’t even been on her radar.
Even if she hadn’t been distracted, there’d been no time to talk.
How did that make her to blame? she wondered as the guilt punished her unmercifully. If they’d been harmed . . . She couldn’t finish that wretched scenario.
She leaned back against the headrest with eyes closed and tried not to think about anything except staying alive.
Around dawn, Giles pulled into a rundown marina, telling her to wait while he trotted down to one of the slips to tear the cover off a sleek powerboat. She stood by the car, shivering in the chill air until he motioned for her, then picked up their two bags and darted out onto the dock.
As she slid into the passenger seat, she gratefully slipped on the hooded sweat jacket Giles stripped off and tossed to her. She burrowed into the generous folds, warm from his body, while waiting for him to undo the mooring lines and hop back aboard. He coaxed a deep throaty growl from the engine and piloted them out onto glossy black water, cutting through a thick rising fog. This time when she closed her eyes, she slept deep and sound, rocked by the vibration of the motor and the lap of water breaking against the bow.
A change in the powerful rumble made her stir awake. The sun was cresting the scrubby tree line, haloing Giles’s figure as he stood to direct the slowing boat from wide channel into a narrow canal. Brigit squinted up at the formidable sight he made. Wind-whipped clothing delineated his muscle-sculpted form. He wore sunglasses against the glare. His profile was patrician enough to grace a newly minted coin.
The breeze brought an unmistakable scent to her: a musky reminder of the pleasure they’d taken from each other.
Fiercely passionate, fully consensual sex. The kind she anticipated with one of her own kind but never expected from an Upright male. Anger may have initiated it, but the drugging desire in his kiss was what she’d responded to. So breathtakingly delicious that her lips parted and seemed to swell.
But that was then.
If not for that surprisingly personal recollection and lingering aroma, she’d scarcely believe they’d been intimate in the most primitive sense of the word when this morning they were little more than strangers forced together by circumstance.
She didn’t know what to think of Giles St. Clair. He was strong enough to meet her sensual appetites and honorable enough to put aside his preferences for the sake of a promise. Maybe he could protect her, if out of nothing more than obligation.
“Are we almost wherever it is we’re going?”
He gave a slight start at the sound of her voice, as if he’d forgotten they were in the same boat. He spoke without looking her way. “Almost. We have to make a quick stop to get some supplies.”
She sat back with a sigh. That meant civilization. Someplace she could pick up more of her favorite hair rinse and get some sort of flaky pastry for a breakfast sugar rush. And coffee, strong, hot, and black to wake up her bleary mind so she could think of how to make the best of the situation.
Maybe two weeks in solitude wouldn’t be so intolerable after all.
Or so she believed until she saw where he was docking.
Brigit had expected a town or at least a thriving community, but where Giles cut the engine was little more than a backwater bend in the road consisting of three ramshackle buildings on the verge of collapse. None of them was likely to carry Lancôme products.
“Oh. My. God. Did we just fall off the edge of the civilized world? Is that banjo music I hear in my-father-is-my-uncle country?”
Giles stretched out for a piling to guide them in next to the tippy dock, tying them off before hopping up to set it swaying. He put down his hand to her, smiling tightly. “Welcome to your half-star redneck resort. Plumbing optional, and all you can eat as soon as you catch and skin it.”
Her amusement fled as she clutched at the edge of her seat. “You have got to be kidding me. What is this place?”
“Home.”
eight
“Gilly Robichaux? Dat be you?”
A little mahogany-skinned man of indeterminate age, showing just enough teeth to eat pudding, approached with arms flung wide. His hands and coveralls were smeared with grease and oil, but that didn’t keep Giles from yanking him into an enthusiastic hug.
“Sammy, how you been, you ole pirate?”
That was about all Brigit could understand of their conversation as, amid all the backslapping and grinning, Giles slipped into a muddy pattern of speech she wasn’t certain was English. Finally, Sammy leaned back to holler at the larger of the buildings, “Melva, come sees who da tide brung in!”
The woman sashaying down from Swamp City Central could have been his mother, wife, or daughter . . . or any combination therein. Over dark, cracked leather skin
, shockingly yellow hair was pulled up into an intricate hive of spray, snarls, and jeweled butterflies. Caught up in a loosely knotted gingham checked blouse like cantaloupes in a netting sling, pendulous breasts swayed out of synch as her pace became a run. Garish tricolored sandals slapped the soles of her feet.
With a squeal, she launched herself into Giles’s arms, her gloss-slicked lips fastening onto his as if performing lifesaving mouth-to-mouth. His hands planted firmly on her generous backside, respectfully staying on the tiny scrap of denim that had hiked up to reveal fleshy butt cheeks. Finally, she leaned back, smacking her lips before crowing, “Rob-E, you big ole perty thing, you, how you been keeping yourself?”
“Fine, just fine, Melva.”
“You fine, all right.” Black eyes fixed on Brigit where she sat in the boat, rigid with shock. “Who dat slip of a thang you gots wid you?” She looked back to him, stare going wide. “You bringing home a missus to meet your mama?”
Giles set her down, laughing. “No, nothing like that.” He turned toward Brigit as if to introduce her, his wide smile stiffening as he took in her obvious dismay. After a moment’s pause, he told Melva, “I need to make some groceries.”
Sammy frowned at that news. “You ain’t going to the Point?”
“No. Don’t be saying anything to anyone about seeing us, you hear? No one. Not even family.”
“You knows I ain’t one for flapping my gums.”
A big hoot of laughter. “Since when? You still got my pirogue put up?”
“Shore do. Whatchu needs it for? Looks like you gots yourself a right fancy ride already.”
“Can’t get us where we’re going. ’Preciate it if you could cover it and keep it out of sight.”
“Melva, take the boy up and get him set for whatever he needs whilst I sees to his transportation.”
Giles gave Brigit a quick glance, a stern finger pointing at her and then down, warning her to stay put.
Where could she possibly go?
This was where Giles St. Clair was born and bred? Perhaps, but not where he was educated. Though it sneaked out only once in a while, she’d caught an interesting clip to his tone when his word choice expanded beyond simple syllables. He’d gotten out and away, and now he was back. An interesting circle to contemplate while she was too sticky and tired to think of much else.
At least this was a stopping point and not their destination. That was a relief.
Followed by Melva, who toted several large plastic bags, Giles and Sammy came down from the squat buildings shouldering a battered flat-bottomed boat that they dropped into the water beside the expensive inboard/outboard. Watching Melva place the canned goods between the two crude plank seats, Brigit’s sinking feeling went from bad to worse. Then Giles extended his hand to her. “Goddess, your barge awaits.” His words were pitched too low for the couple to hear, their mockery meant for her ears only.
She took his hand as if he were assisting her out of a limo on Madison Avenue and let him hoist her up onto the dock.
Melva’s jaw slackened at the sight of her designer jumpsuit. “I ain’t never seed coveralls so perty.”
Giles gave her hand a hard squeeze to temper her response to a clipped “Thank you” as he helped her step down into the remarkably steady pirogue.
“Rob-E, y’all come back so’s we can catch up on things, you hear?” Melva’s painted-on eyebrows gestured toward his companion.
“For some of your fatback and greens? Wouldn’t miss the chance.”
He poled away from the dock and, after paddling a short way, steered them into what Brigit thought was a smooth, grassy plain. The boat’s flat bottom skimmed over the surface as the oar broke through the thick carpet of water plants. With nothing else to do, she watched the entertaining play of muscles on Giles’s back and shoulders as he pushed them along. Even that fascination could last only so long.
“How much farther to the Bayou Marriott? I’m starving.”
The rendezvous with his friends must have warmed Giles’s mood, for he chuckled at her cynical tone. But it was the indelicate rumble of her stomach that made him tuck in the long oar to settle on the other wide seat facing her. He rummaged through the bags Melva had put in the boat.
“We’ve still got a ways to go, so we might as well take a breakfast break.”
When he pulled a box from one of the bags, Brigit’s nose twitched eagerly. “That smells good. What is it?”
“Steamed boudin, our version of those gas-station hot dogs you can buy twenty-four/seven. Melva’s always got links ready to go in her rice cooker. Dig in.”
Brigit eyed the thick sausage tubes, caution reining in her hunger. “What’s in them?”
Giles laughed. “Not small children or river snakes, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
She scowled at him.
“Pork, rice, onion, and liver.” He ignored the face she made at the last ingredient.
“Where’s the silverware?”
Giles waggled his fingers at her. He took one of the plump links from the box. After biting off the twisted end and spitting it into the water, he extended the sausage to her. She made no move to take it, her features pinched with objection.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been sucking his tongue into her mouth without a thought to sanitation not so very long ago.
Patiently, as if dealing with an unreasonably fussy child, he took out another link, sliced off the tip with his pocketknife, and handed to her. Still she hesitated. So he gave her blunt instructions. “Just grab on to it like you would a male appendage.”
Her eyes narrowing, she snatched it from him and attempted a fierce bite. Her teeth couldn’t pierce the tough casing, causing the juice to spurt from the corners of her mouth and splatter on the front of her beige jumpsuit.
Giles fished a napkin from the bag. “A naughty girl like you should have seen that coming.” He grinned. “So to speak.”
She grabbed the napkin to dab ineffectually at the grease stains, then threw it to the bottom of the boat. “Dammit! Ruined. Do you know how much this cost?”
“Yeah, I do. Seeing as how I paid for it.” He reached over to place his hand over hers. She went immediately still. “Here. Let me show you. Five-year-olds snack on these in the car without making a mess. You don’t eat the skin. You squeeze the meat up from the bottom.”
Feeling foolish and flustered by the sudden jump in her heart rate, she muttered, “Kind of need to know, don’t you think?”
“You didn’t ask. Now you know. Be gentle. Like it’s your lover.”
He released her hand and sat back, grinning with that annoying smugness, throwing the intimacy they’d shared in her face as if it were part of the joke he was making of her. And she was being ridiculous. Because the brief touch of his hand had calmed her fears so easily. And because he viewed this time alone with her as more burden than blessing.
Being a figure of sport, especially in a moment of rare vulnerability, wasn’t something Brigit tolerated without retribution.
Slowly, she ran her tongue up the length of the casing, making a soft sound as she savored the juices and leisurely licked her lips. Taking the sausage in her mouth, she began to rhythmically squeeze and noisily swallow, her gaze never leaving his. Watching with great satisfaction as all the amusement seeped from his expression until it was stoic and intense.
After sucking out the last bite, she tossed the empty skin over the side with a dismissingly cool “Just like a lover.”
It was close to midday by the time they reached their destination. Definitely not the Marriott. Seeming to grow out of the tangle of vines and brackish water, the low structure crouched at the edge of an indistinct shoreline, its windows boarded over and eerily uninviting in its solitude.
“What is this place?” Brigit asked quietly, as if stronger volume would disturb the sense of nature hunkering down to protect its own.
“My family’s vacation home.”
Giles guided the pirogue up on
to the mossy bank beside a questionable dock. He jumped out, sinking to his ankles in the marshy ground as he dragged boat and cargo farther up onto solid soil. Then he gathered their bags and baggage and strode up to the cabin without a glance in her direction.
He’d unlocked the door and gone inside by the time Brigit picked her way up from the boat, shaking the muck from her fancy high-heeled half-boots. She lingered on the narrow front porch that faced the front of the building, peering into the dark interior with a sense of uneasiness.
Ignoring her, Giles came out to apply a long screwdriver as a pry bar to the plywood covering the windows. Once it was torn down, light streamed in through the smeary glass, coaxing Brigit to check out the rustic accommodations.
The air was stagnant with dust and an underlying stink of mold, but the single room was a surprise. Primitive, definitely, but nothing about it was shabby. Plaster-chinked walls sealed out the elements, creating a cozy environment for the woodburning stove and sturdy handmade furnishings. A thick rug was rolled up against a wall decorated with kerosene lamps and a few colorful woven tapestries. A table with four chairs, a cushionless couch, and bunk beds looked rough-hewn and masculine next to a delicate bentwood rocker situated by the stove. Giles had left the groceries on a plank counter. There was no sign of any amenities, no refrigerator, stove, sink, or . . . bathroom.
She leaned out the front door and cleared her throat to get Giles’s attention. At his questioning look, she asked, “Ladies’ room?”
“Out back. You’d better let me check it first so you won’t get any surprises.”
Out. Back. What could be a more unpleasant surprise than discovering Chez St. Clair had an outhouse? Then she thought of one. “Shower?”
