Magnolia Moon

by JoAnn Ross

  “Maybe to protect your feelings?”

  “Lies always come out.”

  Sister Augustine had always said the same thing. The nun had warned her often unruly second graders, who’d technically reached what the church considered the age of reason, that lies of omission were no different from those spoken out loud, which meant the transgressor was required to confess to the priest on those long Saturday-afternoon penance sessions Nate had spent on his knees, reciting Our Fathers and Hail Marys when he’d rather be outside playing ball.

  “Maybe she kept putting it off until she thought you were older and could handle the news better.”

  She spun toward him. “I was an adult when she died. How long was she planning to wait?”

  “I guess that’s something you’ll never know.”

  “I wonder what else she didn’t intend me to know.” She shook her head and began walking again, then stopped again and looked out over the bayou. “Damn. I sound so damn pathetic.”

  She didn’t look anything like the woman he’d first seen as an island of calm in the midst of a chaotic police station. Nor that intelligent, capable detective who’d testified so calmly and succinctly at that gangbanger’s murder trial, sticking to the facts no matter how often the defense attorney had tried to draw her off-track by attacking not just the L.A. police force in general, but her own investigation.

  She looked small. Feminine. And strangely vulnerable.

  “You don’t sound pathetic at all, you.” Unable to watch any woman in such distress, he smoothed her too tense shoulders with his palms. “You jus’ sound like a woman who’s had her world turned upside down. Suddenly the sky’s green.” He ran his hands down her arms, linked their fingers together. “The grass is blue. The sun’s spinning in that green sky, and you’re figuring how to handle this new way of seein’ things.” He drew her closer; not to seduce, but to soothe.

  She slapped a hand against the front of his shirt. “I realize this will come as a terrible shock, but not every woman on the planet is panting to fall into bed with you.”

  “Well, now, that suits me just fine, since I’m not interested in falling into bed with every woman on the planet.”

  “Dammit, Callahan, if you don’t quit hitting on me—”

  “Non, chère.” He caught hold of the hand pushing against his chest, lifted it, touched his lips to the soft, warm skin of her palm, then folded her fingers again, holding the kiss in. “This isn’t hitting.”

  “People must use a different dictionary in Louisiana. What would you call it?”

  “Fixing.” He moved a little closer, so they were touching, thigh to thigh, chest to chest, her slender curves to his angles. They fit well. He’d thought they would, back when she’d been on the witness stand and he’d been fantasizing taking her to bed.

  “Fixing?”

  “That’s what I do.” He pressed a kiss against her hair and drew in the scent of herbal shampoo. “I’ll never make as much money as Jack. Or be as driven as Finn. But I’ve always been pretty good at fixin’ things.”

  Having accepted early on that a person couldn’t change nature, Nate had been happy in his role as a handyman of sorts, fixing houses, people, lives. But until now, until Detective Regan Hart, the only time he’d tried to fix a broken heart had been that horrific day that his maman had been widowed.

  “I think you and I just might have that in common, Detective Chère.” He felt the stiffness easing out of her as she slipped her arms around his waist. “So why don’t you let me fix you? Just a little?”

  “I suppose your method of fixing up will involve getting naked?”

  “No. Well, not right this minute,” he amended, wondering if Sister Augustine was looking down from some fluffy cloud and admiring the deft way he’d avoided committing a sin of omission. “Maybe later, when you get to know me a little bit better and are more comfortable with the idea.”

  He was rewarded by something that sounded a bit like a smothered laugh, then felt the moisture when she pressed her face into his neck.

  “I am not crying.”

  “Of course you’re not.” He slid a hand through her hair, sifting the silky strands like sand between his fingers.

  “I never cry.” Her voice was muffled. “Not even when my mother died.”

  He felt her stiffen again as she realized the woman she’d always thought of as her mother probably wasn’t.

  “Don’t think about that right now.” He cupped her face between his hands. Her eyes, underscored by shadows revealing too many sleepless nights, were dark with pain.

  “That’s easy for you to say.”

  “You know what you need?”

  “What?”

  “Somethin’ to take your mind of all your problems. Jus’ for a little while.”

  Unlike that earlier kiss, when he’d slowly, tantalizingly led her into the mists, this time he dragged her, head spinning, heart hammering, into a storm. Thunder rumbled inside her, lightning sparked every raw nerve ending, and she could have sworn the ground beneath her feet quaked.

  It shook Regan to the core. She’d never realized she could feel so much. Never imagined she could want so much more.

  Too soon, he drew his head back. “I want you.”

  “Now there’s a surprise.” The surprise was that she could actually speak when she was so close to begging. “Have you ever met a woman you didn’t want?”

  “From time to time.” He smiled a bit at that, but his eyes were thoughtful. “This isn’t one of those times.”

  “Then you’re going to be disappointed. Because I’m not into casual sex.”

  “I’d be disappointed if you were.”

  She arched a brow. “Ah, the double standard lifts its ugly head. Why is it okay for a man to be a player, but if a woman enjoys variety, she’s a slut?”

  “I have no idea, never having subscribed to that belief, myself.” He slipped a hand beneath the hem of her white T-shirt; roughened fingers skimmed over the unreasonably sensitive skin of her abdomen. “I’m going to touch you, Detective Darlin’. All over.” The sound of those callus-tipped fingers rasping against the lace of her bra was one of the sexiest things she’d ever heard. “Then I’m going to taste you.” He dipped his head again and touched his lips to the nape of her neck. “Every last inch of your delectable female body.”

  Who could have suspected there was a direct link from that surprisingly sensitive spot behind her ear to her legs, which were turning to water?

  “And then, just to prove I’m no chauvinist, I’m going to let you do the same thing to me. But not yet.”

  His quiet declaration took the wind right out of her sails.

  “What?”

  “Although I’m surprising the hell out of myself, I’m thinking we should step back a little. Take our time. Slow things down. Get to know one another better. It’ll be all the more satisfying in the end.”

  “You make it sound like a foregone conclusion.”

  “Isn’t it? You say you don’t go in for casual sex, which fits, since from what I’ve seen, you don’t take anything lightly. Including that kiss we just shared.”

  “It was only a kiss. No different from any other.”

  “You just keep tellin’ yourself that, chère. I promise not to rub it in too badly when you realize how wrong you were.”

  She blew out a frustrated breath. “I’m amazed, given your supposed way with the opposite sex, that it’s never sunk in that you can be annoyingly, insufferably arrogant.”

  “You know, if you keep talking like that, you’re going to have me falling head over heart in love with you.” His smile warmed and widened. “I’ve always been a sucker for flattery.”

  They returned to the car, and after a brief drive Nate pulled up in front of a building.

  “What are we doing?”

  “I thought we’d pick up some lunch to eat while we plan our next move,” he said. “You haven’t eaten till you’ve tasted one of Cajun Cal’s po’ b
oys.”

  Two seconds after they walked into the café, conversation dropped off like a stone falling into a well.

  “Small towns,” Nate murmured.

  “Doesn’t it get old?” she asked, pretending not to notice that everyone was staring at her. Since at least half the people in the place were too young to have even known Linda Dale’s name, Regan could only assume that the news of her arrival in town had preceded her. “Not being at all anonymous?”

  He thought about that for a minute. “Not anymore. I guess you get used to it. It was hard when I was in my teens and was trying to get away with anything. One time Jack and I were cruisin’ home from school in his GTO, and by the time we arrived at Beau Soleil, at least a dozen folks had already called maman to tell her we’d been speeding.”

  Regan couldn’t help smiling at that idea.

  He smiled back, then sobered. “I think it was also worse because we were just about the only kids in school whose daddy had died.”

  “The dead dad’s club,” she murmured.

  “Yeah. Guess you and I are both charter members.”

  “I guess we are.”

  The restaurant seemed to be made up of a connecting series of small rooms, each of which had an inordinate number of tables crowded into it. The tables were covered in newspaper, the chairs were a jumble of different styles and colors, and the front counter was red Formica. Daily specials had been printed in white chalk on a standing blackboard beside the counter. The walls, which she supposed had once been white but had become smoke-darkened over the decades, were covered with huge stuffed fish, photographs that, from the outlandish costumes, she assumed had been taken during many Mardi Gras over the decades, and old metal signs advertising various beers—Jax seemed the most popular—soft drinks, and White Lily flour.

  The smells emanating from the kitchen made Regan’s mouth water.

  Cajun Cal was the oldest man Regan had ever seen who was still alive. Nearly black eyes, as bright as a parrot’s, looked out at her from a face as dark and wrinkled as a raisin.

  “So, you’re Linda Dale’s little girl all grown up.”

  She forced a smile, as much for the audience as for the man behind the counter. It was clearly going to be impossible to keep the purpose of her trip from becoming common knowledge. “That’s what I’m in Blue Bayou to find out.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I heard.” The unlit cigarette in his mouth bobbed up and down as he spooned dark coffee grounds from a bright red bag of Community Coffee into a huge urn. “Your face isn’t exactly the same, and your hair isn’t the same, but lookin’ at your eyes, it’d be my guess you are.” He studied her some more. “I also heard you’re a big-city cop.”

  “I’m a detective, yes.”

  “Detective, cop, G-man, they’re all the same thing. I got my start in this business when I was still a kid and my uncle hired me to deliver jugs of white lightnin’ around the parish during Prohibition. Best customers we had were the cops.” If there was a challenge there, and Regan suspected from his tone that there was, she refused to rise to it.

  “That’s the trouble with passing a law the majority of the people in the country don’t agree with,” she said mildly.

  “Sure as hell is. Nobody down here paid much attention to Prohibition. Hell, my uncle didn’t even bother to hide the stuff. Kept it right behind the counter, servin’ it up by the glass to whoever wanted a snort. He brewed the best hootch in south Louisiana.”

  “Well, good for him.” She smiled. “But if it’s all the same to you, I’ll just have a glass of iced tea. No,” she corrected, having already tasted what appeared to pass for tea down here, “on second thought, water will be fine.”

  “Why don’t you make that two lemonades,” Nate suggested. “Regan got to sample sweet tea out at Jarrett’s place.”

  The old man cackled. “Marybeth’s sweet tea does take some gettin’ used to, even if you’re not a Yankee. You sing, chère?”

  Regan didn’t so much as blink at the question that had come from left field. She could also feel everyone in the restaurant who was over fifty years old waiting for her answer.

  “Not really.” She decided belting out Aretha Franklin in the shower didn’t count.

  “Now, that’s a crying shame. Linda had a real pretty voice. As pure a soprano as you’d ever want to hear. But I guess genes are an iffy thing. Lord knows, I’m the best cook in the South, and my daughter Lilah can’t even boil water without burning the bottom out of the pot. As for my son, well, I’ve been pulling dinner from the Gulf since God was a pup, but he’s a piss-poor fisherman.”

  “Maybe there’s something your wife never got around to tellin’ you, Cal,” offered a man the color of coal, wearing a stained white apron and shelling shrimp. “I hear the mailman y’all had fifty years ago couldn’t fish worth beans, either.”

  “Hardy har har,” the old man scoffed, then turned piercing dark eyes back to Regan. “I also heard tell you’re gonna be our new sheriff.”

  “I’m afraid the grapevine has it wrong.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he said equably. “We sure could use ourselves one.”

  “I’m sure Mayor Callahan’s doing everything in his power to find the perfect candidate.”

  “Seems to me any cop who’ll crawl under hot wires to save a kid is real close to perfect herself.” He lifted a basket of golden fried fish from a deep fryer and dumped it onto a platter.

  “We’ll have two po’ boys,” Nate ordered, saving Regan from having to respond. “You want shrimp, fried fish, or roast beef, sugar?”

  Not only was there something unnerving about eating fish with all those glass eyes looking down at her, the roast beef in the display case was so heavily marbled she could feel her arteries clogging just looking at it.

  “I guess the shrimp.”

  “Good choice,” Nate said. “I’ll have the same as the lady, dress ’em both, and throw in a couple cartons of slaw and some hush puppies.”

  “Why is it called a po’ boy?” Regan asked.

  “’Cause it used to only cost a nickel, so poor boys could afford it.”

  She watched the sandwich being made and decided that a family of six could probably eat quite well on it for a week. She also wondered if she should just call ahead and make an appointment at the hospital for bypass surgery rather than wait for the heart attack.

  “Do you eat here often?” she asked Nate quietly.

  “Jus’ about every day. Why?”

  “I was wondering why you don’t weigh a thousand pounds.”

  “I work it off.” He paused a wicked beat. “Want to know how?”

  “No.” Her smile was as sweet as Marybeth Boyce’s tea. “I don’t.”

  Nate had been teasing, mostly. Enjoying a little flirtation. Then he made the mistake of looking at her mouth and remembered, with vivid clarity, the taste of those full, inviting lips. The blood suddenly rushed from his head to other, more vital regions, making him feel as dizzy as he had that day Jack had swiped a case of Dixie out of a beer truck delivering out back, and the two of them had taken the pirogue out to their daddy’s old camp and gotten drunk by the light of a summer bayou moon.

  Easy, boy, he warned himself as he felt an almost overwhelming urge to kiss her, right here in Cajun Cal’s Country Café, in front of just about everyone in town. He wanted to taste that delectable mouth again, wanted to feel it roaming all over his hot, naked body.

  His hunger must have shown in his expression, because her eyes suddenly widened, and he was caught in that gleaming amber, frozen in it, which didn’t make much sense, since the air between them had turned about as sizzling hot as a steamy dog-day August afternoon. Yet he couldn’t have moved if someone shouted out a hurricane was blowing in from the Gulf and they were standing right atop the levee.

  17

  Leave this be, the angel perched on Nate’s shoulder warned. She isn’t like Charlene, or Suzanne. Or any other of the women he’d tumbled happ
ily, easily into bed with over the years since that memorable day when he’d lost his virginity in the backseat of Jack’s borrowed GTO with Misty Montgomery.

  Don’t listen to him, the devil on the other shoulder said. She’s a grown woman. Nate had already determined that for himself, but what he hadn’t noticed, until now, was how tight those low-slung jeans were. He wondered if she’d had to lie on the bed at the inn to zip them.

  That idea led to another, of knocking all those salt and pepper shakers, metal napkin holders, and bottles of hot sauce off the chipped red counter, lifting her up onto it, unzipping those jeans, and dragging them down those smooth thighs he’d wanted to bite when she’d been up on that witness stand back in L.A.

  He imagined her wearing a pair of skimpy red panties that barely covered the essentials, and although she’d beg him, “Please, Nate, rip them off, please, please, darling,” he’d torture them both by taking his time, enjoying the way her eyes glazed with lust when he slipped his fingers beneath the silk, jangling her senses, causing every nerve ending in her body to sizzle.

  And when he’d tormented them both to the point of no return, when he had her exactly where he wanted her, hot, needy, ravenous, he’d peel those panties down her long legs, inch by erotic inch, and as she cried out his name, he’d—

  “Hey, Nate.” The voice was deep, way too deep to be hers.

  Nate slowly, painfully, dragged his mind back from the sensual fantasy, crashing headfirst into reality when he viewed the fifty-something man standing beside her.

  “Hey, Charles,” he answered on a voice roughened with lingering lust. “How’s it goin’?” Like he cared.

  “Fine, just fine.” Charles Melancon turned his smile from Nate to Regan, who also appeared to be shell-shocked as she returned from wherever the hell they’d both been. “Hello. You must be the new sheriff I’ve been hearing all about.”

  “She ain’t the sheriff,” Cal said around his unlit cigarette as he wrapped the enormous sandwiches in waxed white paper. “Was just filling in during the accident out at the crossing ’tween that freight and the eighteen-wheeler.”