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Bayou Nights

Page 14

by Julie Mulhern


  Now that was interesting. “Go on.”

  “There’s some sort of curse.” The ghost pinched her cheeks as if she could make color appear on her dead skin. “I can’t remember all the details but it’s a good thing you have that Yankee to look out for you.”

  Christine closed her eyes. In the course of a single day she’d gone from worrying about her father to tracking a pirate’s treasure to defending herself from a voodoo witch. Now a curse? A hysterical giggle rose in her throat. Maybe she did need Mattias Drake to look out for her.

  The ghost tapped her on the shoulder and Christine opened her eyes.

  “I reckon he’s the man to save you.”

  “I don’t need saving.” Somehow Christine’s voice lacked conviction. Maybe because Drake had saved her multiple times already. She repeated the words with more force. “I don’t need saving.”

  The ghost lowered her chin, tilted her head, and regarded Christine with frank disbelief. She opened her mouth as if to say more then paused and tilted her head as if listening to a conversation Christine couldn’t hear. “You ought to go back to the table. Now.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  The ghost answered with an impatient shake of her head. “Trust me. The Yankee needs you.” Then she faded from view.

  Christine hurried back to the dining room.

  Usually attentive waiters stood frozen holding trays of cooling food. The maître d’ inched toward the door. And a stranger pointed a gun at Duarte’s head. That didn’t faze her. It was the stranger holding a gun to Mattias Drake’s head that made her blood run cold.

  Chapter Ten

  As a rule, Drake made it through whole days, weeks even, without encountering life-threatening situations. Was it New Orleans, the promise of eternal life, or Christine Lambert that attracted men with guns?

  Metal grazed Drake’s temple.

  He ought to focus on that. Instead, his gaze shifted to the corridor where she’d disappeared moments ago.

  She stood there now, brows drawn, lips parted, and her hand in the pocket where she carried her derringer. Thank God she wasn’t at the table with a gun pointed at her head. If only she’d stay where she was, away from men with Colt pistols, away from danger.

  A hush fell over the nearby tables as diners, who’d been happily slurping oysters only seconds before, spotted the guns. A woman screamed and a mad rush to the front door followed. One lady wearing an elaborate hat (probably purchased from Christine) fainted. Across the table, Hector looked amused. Of course he did. The man couldn’t die. A bullet in his brain meant an inconvenience, not a trip to the grave.

  A bullet in Drake’s brain—or Christine’s—meant the end. Please God, let her stay where she was.

  “Give it to me.” The man holding the gun tapped the muzzle against Drake’s skin. The man had too many teeth. Large. White. Predatory. In a fair fight, Drake could probably knock a few of those teeth out. This wasn’t a fair fight.

  “We don’t have it,” said Hector.

  The man holding a gun to Hector’s head snorted through an enormous mustache. “Liar.”

  Drake dared another glance at Christine. She still stood in the doorway, probably deciding the most reckless, brave course of action she could conceive. A ghost in antebellum skirts appeared behind her shoulder and whispered something.

  Christine stepped into the dining room, shifted left so her back was against a wall, then mouthed thank you to the woman in the hoop skirts. She lifted her cane to her shoulder as if she was a baseball player and the slender length of wood was a bat.

  Seconds later a man with a gun exited the corridor.

  Christine swung the cane, hitting her would-be assailant across the nose.

  He bent, dropping his gun, clutching his face.

  With a second swing of her cane, she hit him across the back of his neck. He crumpled to the floor and didn’t move.

  Christine kicked the gun away from the prone man, pulled the little derringer out of her pocket, and pointed it at the table.

  Mustache shifted his aim from Hector to Christine.

  Drake’s blood turned to ice. His vision had no room for anything or anyone but Christine and the potential killer. He had to keep her safe. His hand reached for his gun.

  The man with too many teeth tsked. “Reach any further and you’re dead.” He cocked his pistol.

  “Who sent you?” Hector’s tone was conversational, polite even.

  “None of your damned business,” said Mustache.

  Hector shook his head as if saddened by the lack of civil discourse.

  “The lady is an excellent shot.” Hector held out his hand and studied his cuticles. “One of you will die. Maybe both.” Did Hector know something he didn’t? Was she an excellent shot or was the Spaniard stalling?

  Teeth glanced at Christine then yanked Drake to his feet, using Drake’s body as a shield and adjusting the gun’s muzzle from temple to ribs. A mistake, that.

  “Drop the gun, give us the coin, and we’ll let them go.” Mustache gave up on the target halfway across the room and returned his aim to Hector’s head.

  Christine tilted her chin as if she couldn’t quite believe what she’d heard. “And if I don’t?” She sounded curious.

  “They’re dead.”

  Hector chuckled softly. Did he have a plan? Drake hoped so.

  Christine yawned. “I haven’t known either of them long enough to care.”

  Teeth’s gun dug deeper into Drake’s ribs.

  Across the table, Mustache pressed his gun, a Colt, against Hector’s jaw. “I’ll kill him.”

  “Good luck with that.” Christine aimed the derringer at Mustache’s head.

  Hector actually laughed.

  The two men with guns glanced at each other. They’d expected fear, maybe even panic. But Christine looked as unruffled as the linens covering the tables and Hector was laughing. Teeth shifted. A tiny movement of weight, a second of wandering attention. Drake twisted in his grasp. Swung. Knuckles met bone.

  Crack!

  Drake’s heart relocated to his throat. Was she still standing? He turned and looked.

  Thank God, she still stood, the derringer in her hand. It was Mustache who’d fallen to the floor.

  “Now you die.” Teeth pointed his gun at Drake’s heart.

  Bang!

  Crimson blossomed on the right side of Teeth’s chest. His left hand rose, covered the hole. His right hand pulled the trigger even as he staggered to the floor.

  Bang!

  Drake turned again. Was she all right? Had she been hit? He’d kill the bastard with his bare hands if he’d hurt Christine.

  She hurried toward him, unharmed, lovely, and perfect but for a furrowed brow.

  He took air deep into his lungs, held it there, exhaled slowly, then repeated the exercise. Maybe if he concentrated on each breath, his heart rate would slow or—better yet—he’d calm himself enough not to bellow at her. She ought to be told that eventually the monstrous danger she regularly ignored might one day catch her and eat her whole. Hell. She ought to be told now. “Christine—”

  “Sit,” she ordered.

  “What?”

  “Sit.” She pocketed her gun, spread her fingers, and rested her hands against Drake’s chest. “Sit.” She forced him into a chair then kicked Teeth’s gun hard enough to send it skittering across the floor.

  Hector grinned at her then bent and picked up Mustache’s gun. “You do not shoot to kill.”

  “Life is precious.” She bent and peered at Drake’s arm. “How badly are you hit?”

  “I’m not hit.”

  She raised a brow.

  “It’s the adrenaline,” said Hector. “He doesn’t yet feel the pain.”

  Magic words that unleashed a thousand hot coals burning into Drake’s skin. He glanced at his arm. The sleeve of his jacket was already soaked in blood. “It’s just a scratch.” The words squeezed through clenched teeth.

  Christine rolled her
eyes. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “It is a shame to ruin such a wonderful meal but I must leave you now. The police will come soon. I make a point of avoiding police.” Hector held his hands together as if in prayer. “I would appreciate it if you would omit me from your tale.” He picked up a napkin from the table, daubed at the corner of his mouth, and strolled toward the front door.

  “What about tonight?” Christine called.

  He didn’t pause, didn’t turn. “Perhaps.”

  Christine planted her hands on her hips and scowled after him. “Of all the nerve…”

  Hector’s departure was the least of their problems. “You shot someone. Two people. I didn’t know you’d actually aim at people.”

  “You mean the mob from last night?” She returned her attention to him. “I don’t aim at people who are possessed.”

  She poked gently at his arm and he flinched. Damn.

  “You didn’t shoot to kill.” She’d shot Teeth on the right side of his chest, high, near his shoulder. The man lay unmoving. Drake looked at Mustache. There was a neat hole near his right shoulder as well. In a gunfight, she should shoot to kill. He ought to tell her. “Christine—”

  She snatched a clean napkin from an adjacent table and held it out to him. “You seem to be bleeding a lot.”

  Blood loss. That explained the lightheaded feeling. It couldn’t be the way she stood too close or the relief and fury that took turns flooding his veins. “Make sure they’re out.”

  Neither man was moving.

  Drake looked up at her. “If you’re in enough danger to shoot, aim for the heart.”

  Her mouth tightened. “I think you need a doctor.”

  With his uninjured arm, he reached out and circled her wrist. “I mean it. I’d hate to see you hurt because you’re too soft-hearted to take a kill shot.”

  “Hopefully we won’t have that problem.” She adjusted the angle of her hat. “What shall we tell the police?”

  He gazed into her eyes. “I mean it. Kill shot. Promise me.”

  Her pupils grew wide, leaving only a tiny sliver of gold. She tugged gently against his hold then dropped her gaze to his fingers. “Let me go.” Her tone was velvet. Velvet that hid steel. Just yesterday he’d thought her frilly and silly and vacuous. Now he knew different. The prattling shopkeeper interested only in hats was a mask for a clever, brave—foolishly brave—woman.

  “Promise me.”

  She shook her head, the slightest of movements. If he hadn’t been watching her so closely he would have missed the way her shoulders stiffened and her jaw tightened. “I can’t.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  Christine yanked her wrist free. Her lips rounded into an “O” and she brought one hand to her cheek, the other to her forehead. She was the very picture of a damsel in distress and Drake didn’t need to turn and look to know the police officer who’d just entered had puffed his chest and donned a reassuring smile.

  “Thank heavens you’re here.” She batted her lashes. “These awful men tried to rob us and they shot Mr. Drake.”

  The police officer walked into view. A man of middling height with a mustache that drooped like the branches of a weeping willow, he eyed Drake with suspicion. “Mattias Drake?”

  “Yes.”

  “By way of Washington?”

  “Yes.”

  The police officer grunted. “Kenton said there would be trouble.”

  He had, had he? Kenton was a prescient young man. “You are?”

  “Peake. I need a statement.”

  Christine fluttered her lashes and shifted one of her hands to just below her throat. The other she rested on Peake’s sleeve. “I’m sure we’d love to give you one but poor Mr. Drake has been shot and needs a doctor. Perhaps we could come to the station later?”

  Poor Mr. Drake?

  Peake stared at the elegant hand on his arm. His mouth opened and closed but no words came out.

  Flutter, flutter paired with a grateful smile. Peake didn’t stand a chance.

  “I could tell you were a kind man the moment I laid eyes on you. Thank you.” She breathed the last words rather than spoke them.

  Peake’s cheeks flushed. His Adam’s apple bobbed. Poor Detective Peake. He’d been assaulted by the full measure of Christine’s wiles. “I’ll have one of the men call you a hack.”

  Somehow she bustled Drake out of the restaurant and into the carriage without answering a single question.

  She leaned against the seat and her face relaxed—less charming, less flirtatious, more captivating, more real. “There’s a doctor’s office a few blocks away.”

  “No.”

  “No?” She tilted her head to the side.

  “No. I’ve been shot before. I know how it feels. The bullet just grazed my arm.”

  “You’re sure?” Was it concern for him that drew her brows together?

  “Positive. Driver, the Hotel Monteleone.” Drake closed his eyes but still saw her. His heart constricted. How had this happened? Damn it. He refused—refused—to entertain feelings for her.

  …

  When that odious man shot Drake, Christine’s heart had stopped. Now, a full twenty minutes later, it still wasn’t working properly.

  She crossed her arms, sat ramrod straight and stared ahead. It was so, so tempting to scold, to inform him how much he’d worried her. Instead, she pressed her lips together and scowled at the back of the driver’s head.

  “I promise, a clean bandage and I’ll be good as new.”

  He might be, but what about her? How was she supposed to handle the emotions winding through her like unspooled ribbon? “Humph.”

  She cut a sideways glance his direction. His eyes were closed and the harsh planes of his cheeks looked more unforgiving than ever. His mouth—no, she wouldn’t look at his mouth. It was too easy to remember it on hers.

  Thank heavens he hadn’t been seriously hurt. If he’d been seriously injured…well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  The whole world had stopped spinning when she saw blood welling from Drake’s arm. The world. Her heart. Her heart…that foolish muscle with its sugar-frosted dreams of happiness had become too active of late—jumping, and leaping, and pitter-patting. The women in her family had been cursed. There could be no other explanation for how, generation after generation, they fell in love with men destined to betray them.

  She’d rather be alone than alone and betrayed.

  Christine shifted her gaze from the driver to the banquette. Couples strolled, a newsboy hawked, and a pralinière sold her wares.

  The woman’s call, Pralines, followed them down the street.

  Her favorite candy since she was old enough to toddle, pralines meant temptation.

  But sugar and butter, cream and pecans had nothing on Mattias Drake. He tempted her to forget everything she knew of betrayal. He tempted her to trade independence for the safety of strong arms. He tempted her to feel. Damn him.

  The carriage rolled to a stop. They descended and entered the hotel.

  “Let me just ask for a few things at the front desk.” Christine nodded toward the elevator.

  Drake, his hand covering the rip in his coat sleeve, didn’t argue.

  “We’ll need carbolic salve and gauze sent to Mr. Drake’s room.” She offered a brittle smile to the young man behind the counter.

  “Yes, Miss Lambert. Anything else?”

  “Pralines.” Perhaps giving in to one temptation would help her resist the other.

  If the concierge thought her requests odd, he was too well-trained to show it. “Of course.”

  She followed Drake to the elevator, rode with him to the third floor, and waited while he dug his room key from his pocket.

  The hallway was warm, even stuffy, but leaving the close air for his room seemed like folly. Some essential part of her soul swung between a near overwhelming desire to race as far from Drake as was humanly possible and an equally strong need to run into his arms.r />
  She needed him to help her find her father. She couldn’t need him for more. She crossed her arms over her chest, squared her shoulders, and followed him into his room.

  Her nose, accustomed to perfume and flowers, wrinkled. Drake’s room smelled of leather and wool and Williams’ soap. Manly smells. Who knew they could swirl through a woman like warm honey? She parted her lips and breathed through her mouth.

  Drake slid his good arm free of his ruined coat then slowly peeled the blood-soaked sleeve off his injured limb. His white shirt revealed crimson far more clearly than the dark fabric of his suit.

  So very red. Darker where the blood had dried.

  Christine gripped the back of a chair. A few inches to the right and the bullet might have found Drake’s heart.

  He pulled his tie loose from his collar.

  “I’ll take that.” She held out her hands.

  He gave her the length of silk. Somehow, the simple action felt intimate, the beginning of a ritual.

  Christine turned and hung it on the valet stand, her tongue as knotted as the tie had been.

  “I may need some help with the shirt.”

  Her faulty heart skipped a beat. “Fine.” Her tongue managed the one word but was incapable of more.

  Tap, tap.

  Drake reached for his gun. When combined with his bloodied shirt and the harsh planes of his face, the weapon made him look like a highwayman of old. Someone who wrote their own rules. Someone who disappeared at dawn’s first light.

  Christine found her voice. “Put the gun away. I asked them to send up a few things.”

  She cracked open the door.

  A boy stood on the other side. “I have the salve and gauze, Miss Lambert. We sent out for fresh pralines. We’ll bring them up as soon as Jep gets back with them.”

  She gave the lad two bits and closed the door.

  “Fresh pralines?”

  She wasn’t about to explain temptation. “I didn’t finish my lunch.”

  For an instant Drake looked as if he might laugh then his gaze landed on the tin of salve. “That’s going to sting.”

  “Not as much as getting shot.” Christine went to the bathroom, filled a pitcher with cool water, and grabbed a handful of towels.

  She came back to find Drake seated on the edge of his bed gingerly pulling the linen of his shirt away from where it had dried to his skin.

 

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