Bayou Nights (7 page)

His heart constricted.

He’d seen what trouble did to women. He didn’t want to see it again. He needed to find her father then get the hell out of New Orleans.

“Where can we find Youx?” he called. Better to think about solving the riddle of her missing father than how she looked in the tub. Wet and sweet-smelling and all together delectable.

“The Cabildo.” Angry rattlesnakes sounded friendlier than she did.

The ca-what? “Where?”

“It’s in Jackson Square, next to the cathedral.”

“Fine. What is it?”

“Mr. Drake”—there it was again, the patronizing tone she used whenever he revealed his ignorance of New Orleans and its customs—”you need to study history.”

He’d rather study her. He shook his head. No. Such was the way of the hummingbirds. “Why?” His voice sounded harsh.

“The Louisiana Purchase was signed at the Cabildo.”

Fascinating but hardly germane. “Why would a ghost be there?”

“It’s a government building.”

“You said he was a pirate then a soldier.”

“Yes, and then he became an alderman.”

What kind of city was this? They elected pirates to public office?

“I’m going to rinse my hair now.”

“Oh?”

“That means I’ll be under water again. Don’t come in here.”

No chance of that. He’d tortured himself enough for one day.

He heard her. The sound of water sloshing. Her sigh when she rose above its surface. The drips of water when she stood. The soft friction of a towel against her naked skin. Apparently he hadn’t had enough torture for one day.

“Oh…” Her voice was soft, southern seduction.

“What?” he barked.

“I don’t have any clothes.”

His body tensed, tightened. The loveliest woman he’d ever seen stood naked on the other side of a half-closed door. He drew breath deep into his lungs and held it.

“Do you have a shirt I could wear until Molly arrives?”

He exhaled in a rush. She wanted to wear his clothes? The tightening in his groin was almost painful.

He stood and snatched the room key off a side table. “I’ll be right back.”

He escaped to the hallway, pausing only to lock the door behind him. Then he opened the door to his room and grabbed his softest, longest linen shirt from the wardrobe. It would have to do.

Shirt in hand, Drake returned to Christine’s room and called, “Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Because she’d been attacked three times. Four if you counted the waiting
fifolet
.

An elegant hand extended from the bathroom. “Do you have something for me?”

He gave her his shirt.

Tap, tap, tap.
“Room service.”

Drake opened the door and a uniformed waiter pushed a cart into the room. The smells rising from the covered dishes were almost enough to make him forget about the near naked woman in the bathroom. Almost.

He tipped the waiter, locked the door behind him, then lifted one of the covers. Shrimp and celery and tomatoes swam around a mound of white rice. His stomach expressed its glee with a loud rumble and Drake grabbed a spoon. He took a bite and flavors exploded in his mouth. Perhaps this city had a redeeming quality after all—the food.

He lifted another spoonful. Whatever it was, it was ambrosial.

Click. The sound of a door closing.

He turned. Christine stood just outside the bathroom door wearing only his shirt. It didn’t quite reach her knees.

He choked.

She flushed, a delicious pink that began somewhere below the shirt’s collar and rose to her cheeks. Her lips thinned as if she knew he was trying to pinpoint the starting point of that blush. “Did they bring salt?”

He tore his gaze away from her. Two shakers sat on the cart. “There.”

She crossed to the bed, pulled a thin blanket from its foot, and wrapped it around her waist, hiding her legs. It was a bit like closing the barn door after the horse had fled. Covering her legs now couldn’t erase the sight of them from his memory. “Do you still have a handkerchief?” she asked.

Apparently she’d decided not to acknowledge her state of undress.

If she could, he could.

Although, it probably wasn’t affecting her in the same way. She probably wasn’t thinking about how all that naked flesh would feel pressed against him. She probably wasn’t wondering if her lips tasted as sweet as strawberries.

He yanked the piece of linen from his pocket. She plucked it from his fingers, opened the folded square, and poured two shakers of salt onto it. Then she unlatched the chain that hung round her neck and dropped the coin into the salt.

She pushed the bit of silver deep into the mound of white granules then tied the linen into a tight bundle.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“The others can’t sense the coin if it’s surrounded by salt.”

“The others?”

She nodded. “Spirits and what not.”

“How do you know?”

“It came to me when we saw the
fifolet
.”

“So it must be true.”

The skin around her eyes tightened. “Do you have a better idea?”

He didn’t.

“What did they bring?” She jerked her chin toward the cart.

“I’m not sure what it is.”

She lifted more covers. “Crab cakes with remoulade. Etouffée. Bananas Foster.”

“They had all this food sitting in the kitchen?”

“Of course not.” She spooned some of the etouffée into a bowl.

“But the manager said—”

“The
owner
said that so I wouldn’t feel bad about him hauling someone out of bed to cook for us.”

“And you let him?”

“We’re both starving. If it’ll make you feel better you can leave an extra-generous tip.” She filled a spoon with etouffée then lifted the spoon to her lips. They parted.

Drake tore his gaze away from those lips. Swallowed. “We’ll go to the Cabildo in the morning?”

She nodded.

He helped himself to a bowl then sat on the chaise.

The fashionable lady he’d met that afternoon had been replaced by a woman wearing his shirt, her fresh-cleaned hair dampening the linen, rendering it almost see-through. She wasn’t silly as he’d first thought. She was something worse. Fascinating. Drake stared into his bowl.

They ate in the type of silence only appreciated by those who’ve missed two meals. The scrapes of their spoons the only sound.

“I believe I’ll have a crab cake.” Christine stood and the lamp next to her exploded into shards of glass and porcelain.

He launched himself from the chaise. Driving her to the floor. Covering her body with his.

“Are you hit?” he asked.

“No.”

Nighttime poured through the open window, the sconces by the door insufficient to the task of lighting the whole room. Thank God for that.

“Don’t move,” he whispered.

He crawled to the light switch, flipped it, and cast the room in darkness. Then he pulled his revolver from its holster and approached the window.

The building across the street stood as tall as their hotel. Someone had shot at them from one of the darkened windows or the roof. He searched the night and found nothing but the lace of the balcony and the sounds of the street. Nothing menacing. Whoever had shot at Christine was gone now.

Drake turned.

Christine’s trip to the floor had loosened the blanket around her waist. She wore only his shirt and lay on the floor in a pool of moonbeams. She’d propped herself on her elbows and her dark hair cascaded around her face. She watched him staring at her then parted her perfect lips.

He sank to the floor. He had to. If he got any closer to her there was no telling what he’d do.

“They’re gone?” Her voice was soft and southern, honeyed and slow.

What was happening to him? She was just a woman. How could she affect him so? “They’re gone.” His tone was clipped. He closed his eyes because looking at her in the moonlight made rational thought impossible. “Is there anyone in this city who isn’t trying to kill you?”

Chapter Six

Drake insisted she spend the night in his bed.

He slept on the floor. Soundly. Christine had tossed and turned in the hotel’s comfortable bed, sleep near impossible. The unaccustomed craving for a man’s lips on hers had kept her staring at the ceiling most of the night.

And not just any man but Mattias Drake.

She’d wanted—
wanted
—him to kiss her.

Caroline Lambert took a break from spinning in her grave to remind her daughter that men were feckless creatures, destined to betray her, Warwick Lambert being a painful case in point.

Christine needed time away from the steady sound of Drake’s breathing and now that the morning light peeked through the curtains it would surely be safe to return to her suite.

She slipped out of bed, ignored the sharp twinges in her ankle and conscience, and tiptoed past him. Asleep, the harsh lines of his face smoothed. What kind of woman could smooth away that harshness when he was awake?

Not her.

She seemed to bring out the granite in him.

Christine eased the door open and slipped into the hallway. Molly would be here any minute. Her assistant wouldn’t find her in a stranger’s bed.

The suite remained as they’d left it—an unconscionable mess.

She crossed to the windows where fog pressed against the panes thick as cotton batting, yanked the drapes closed, then picked up a few shards of the destroyed porcelain lamp. Those she tossed into the wastepaper basket.

She turned on the sconces for light then picked up the remaining pieces of the broken lamp and threw them away. That done, she put the empty etouffée bowls back onto the room service cart and wheeled it to the side of the door.

The bathroom remained in immaculate order. Her hat, mercifully not completely destroyed, perched on a short stand. Her ruined clothes lay in a neat pile. She splashed some water on her face, rinsed her mouth, grabbed the comb left for the convenience of the hotel’s guests, then wandered back to the room and sat.

Starting at the ends, she combed through her tangled hair.

She hardly blinked when a ghost floated through the door.

“Good morning, ma’am.” He doffed his ghostly hat, revealing a bald pate. In life he’d been short, skinny, and oddly precise. He remained so in death. She’d seen his sort before—a non-threatening messenger who carried a threat—usually that her father had better pay or else. Such messengers were the worst. They needed to prove their power. Worse, they seemed to derive some sense of pleasure from instilling fear.

She pulled on her comb as if she didn’t notice his appearance. She was hardly dressed. As such, she wasn’t in the mood to talk with a stranger, especially not one like him. If she ignored him, he might go away. The comb hit a snarl and Christine separated the tangle into smaller strands with her fingers.

The ghost fidgeted. Christine peeked at him from beneath the cover of her lashes. Never had she seen a less imposing ghost.

Sometimes those who lingered beyond death had too much life in them to fit in the span of fifty or sixty years. Those were ghosts like Major Haywood, Mr. Flournoy, and her father. Sometimes ghosts—pale wraiths trapped by a place—lacked the strength of character to move on. They’d wandered through life and now they wandered through eternity. Those ghosts were far more common. They littered the streets of New Orleans like cheap strings of beads the morning after Mardi Gras.

The ghost in her room was neither. He looked like a bureaucrat who’d died in his sleep then got up, donned his pince-nez, and gone to work in spirit form, hardly noticing the change from living to dead.

She combed through another lock of hair.

The bureaucrat cleared his ghostly throat.

Christine concentrated on a snarl.

The ghost donned a put-upon expression. “Captain Youx sent me.”

She kept her gaze on her hair as if he was hardly worth her notice.

“You have something he wants.” The ghost was louder now but volume wouldn’t earn him respect.

“Oh?” She filled her voice with
ennui
. The ghost could not know that her heart was skittering round her chest like droplets of water on a hot skillet. Thank God she’d left the coin hidden beneath her pillow in Drake’s room.

“This is serious, ma’am. Deadly serious.”

She looked up then. Slowly. The yawn came of its own accord—too few hours of sleep. She lifted a suddenly lazy hand to cover her mouth.

The ghost’s gray face reflected his annoyance with being practically ignored. “He has something you want. I should say someone.”

Somehow she maintained her bored expression, even though her heart bumped around her chest like a carriage on a rutted dirt road. “You may tell Captain Youx I am open to discussing a trade.”

“There’s nothing to discuss. The coin for your father.”

Christine wrapped a tangle-free lock of hair around her finger. Would another yawn be too much? Just thinking about it made one rise from her throat. Again she covered her mouth. “I am open to a discussion with Captain Youx.”

“The captain wants the coin immediately.”

Did the ghost really think she’d just hand over the coin? Could he even carry it? He didn’t look nearly powerful enough. “The captain should have come himself. I suppose I can meet with him. Tonight. Eleven o’clock. Jackson Square.”

“Captain Youx won’t like this.”

Christine shrugged.

“You’d let your father suffer?” he asked in the same dry voice a functionary might use to request that she fill out a form.

Pretending a lack of interest cost her—someplace deep inside. “He’s dead. He can’t feel pain.”

“You’re wrong.”

She closed her eyes—if fear or worry showed in them, the emotion was best hidden—and said a silent prayer.
Please let him be lying. Please
. She lifted the comb to another section of hair. “Eleven. Tell him to bring my father with him.”

“Eleven,” he repeated. “I think you may come to regret not making an agreement with me.” Spoken like a bureaucrat.

Christine tilted her head slightly and gave the ghost her full attention. “I doubt it.”

With a final scowl he faded away.

Youx wanted the coin? Had he sent the zombie? The possessed mob? The
fifolet
? That didn’t make sense. As a friend of her father’s, he could have come to her shop and asked for the coin. She’d have given it to him.

If Youx hadn’t sent the bureaucrat, who had?

A soft knock on the door interrupted her thought. She rose. “Who is it?”

“Me,” said Molly.

Christine opened the door and Molly bustled in, her arms full to bursting with an overnight bag, a hatbox, and Warwick’s ebony cane.

“Miss Lambert, I got your note. What happened?” Molly’s voice reflected all the shock Christine had expected.

“It’s too complicated to explain now. You brought everything?”

The girl nodded.

“Everything was all right at the shop?” Christine took the bag from the girl’s arms.

“Fine. Everything was just fine. Nothing out of place.”

“There’s a mercy.” Christine looped the bag over one arm, claimed the cane, then limped to the bathroom. “Let me just get changed.”

“What’s going on, Miss Lambert?”

“I’m not entirely sure.” It was the truth.

“What happened to your clothes?” the girl asked.

“Ruined.” Christine stepped into the spring green dotted Swiss dress Molly had delivered.

“And your ankle?”

“Twisted.” Christine flattened her foot against the cool tile floor and added more of her weight. The pain was sharp, eye-watering, and not something she wanted to experience again. She leaned against the sink and reached behind her back for the dress’ buttons.

“Is that Mr. Drake’s shirt?” asked Molly. A few seconds ticked by. “He’s very handsome.”

“Handsome is as handsome does.” That was hardly fair. The man had gone out of his way to protect her. If only he weren’t so…male. “I suppose you’re right, Molly. He is handsome. Do you think you might help me with this button?”

She opened the bathroom door.

Molly didn’t stand on the other side.

Drake did. And he looked hopping mad.

She did the only sensible thing. She closed the door.

Crack!
The sound of his fist colliding with the door ricocheted off the walls.

Christine swallowed. Perhaps she should have awakened him before she left his room.

“Stop that,” she snapped. She was already buying a new lamp. She didn’t need a door added to her bill.

Crack!

“Just a minute.” She swept her hair into a loose chignon and secured it with the pins lying next to the sink. Then she took a deep breath and opened the door.

Molly sat, slightly hunched, with her hands in her lap. She looked like a child who’d been caught stealing from the cookie jar.

Drake was positively puffed with outrage. His shoulders were straight, his brows were drawn, and the hewn planes of his face looked cast in steel. “What were you thinking?”

She kept her voice light, cottonwood fluff light. “I was thinking I wanted to wash and change. Molly, would you get the last few buttons?” Christine crossed the room and stood in front of the girl.

With her back blocking Molly’s view, Christine mouthed, “Be quiet.”

Drake’s expression darkened.

She raised a warning finger to her lips. No one need ever learn she’d spent the night in his room if only he’d keep quiet. “Molly, you were telling me about the man in my shop. Did Detective Kenton learn anything about him?”

“Rob— I mean Detective Kenton said he was from Florida.” Molly fastened the last button.

“Thank you.” Christine leaned on the ebony cane, crossed to a gilt-edged mirror, and examined her reflection. “Florida?”

“That’s right, ma’am. Detective Kenton says his name was Frederick Cooke and he was a treasure hunter. Apparently he’s real well known. He even found a Spanish galleon.”

“A treasure hunter?” Drake’s voice was kettle-drum deep.

“That’s what Ro— Detective Kenton said.”

That made two almost-Roberts.

“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me, Molly?” asked Christine.

The girl’s pink cheeks darkened to a deep rose. She bit her lip then smiled. A smile that bubbled from a deep well of happiness. “Detective Kenton – Robert, asked me to marry him.”

Christine had seen it coming. “Best wishes to you.” She gave the girl a brief hug. “You’ll let me give you a new dress and hat as a wedding present?”

Tears welled in Molly’s eyes. “Thank you, Miss Lambert.”

“You’re quite welcome. You’ll make a beautiful bride.” Christine shifted her gaze to Drake. He looked like a pressure cooker about to blow. “Mr. Drake, do you think it’s entirely safe to open the shop today?”

He made a non-committal grunt.

“Are there appointments on the books?” Christine asked.

“No, ma’am. Not today.”

“Then take the day off.”

“Thank you, Miss Lambert!”

“You’re most welcome,” said Christine. “Now, off with you. Go plan your wedding.”

Molly practically skipped into the hallway.

Christine drew a deep breath. Drake was fixing to yell at her.

Except, he didn’t.

He stepped too close.

He breathed the air she exhaled in a rush.

“Do you have any idea how worried I was when I woke up and found you gone?” His breath brushed against her cheek.

“I apologize.” Her voice wasn’t quite steady. Neither were her feet. She tripped on her cane.

He caught her, his hands clasping her arms. The warmth of his bare hands burned through the dotted Swiss of her dress. They burned through her skin. They burned her soul. She
wanted
him to kiss her.

A traitorous sigh escaped her lips.

Then his lips touched hers, firm and demanding.

Her heart stopped for a second then flung itself against the walls of her chest like a wild animal against the bars of a cage.

She ought to push him away or tell him to stop. But his lips moving against hers made her forget the words. And her hands, instead of pushing, well, they rose to his shoulders.

He pulled her closer.

His tongue explored the seam of her lips. Her insides went as melty as chocolate on a hot day.

So this was kissing. No wonder people seemed to like it. It might be addictive.

Her lips parted and his tongue dipped into her mouth, rasping against hers. Sweet Jesus!

She pulled away. The alternative was melding her body into his. “Why did you do that?” Her voice hardly shook. Her foolish body longed to return to his arms.

He brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “So we could both stop thinking about it.”

She lifted her nose. “I haven’t been thinking about that.”

“Liar.” He smiled, a smile that curled his lips and her toes.

He was wrong. She wasn’t a liar. She hadn’t been thinking about
that
because she hadn’t known how
that
felt. Having a ghostly father constantly hanging about had severely limited the likelihood a man’s lips ever touched hers. Flying vases, unexpected shoves in the back, on one occasion a sharp kick in the shin—they’d all kept her lips un-kissed. Until today. Until Mattias Drake. If her father knew, he’d regret chasing off all those southern gentlemen. A Yankee was hardly the kind of man Warwick would approve of for his only daughter.