Bedroom Eyes

Chapter 1

Tax attorney Penelope Sue Fields, voted by her senior class most likely to be the first spinster appointed to the Supreme Court, repressed a strong desire to free her plain brown hair from its proper French braid as she stared at the only other occupant of the forty-second-floor express.

She couldn’t force her gaze away from the man’s smoky dark eyes, half-hidden by hooded lids, eyes that promised passion in a mysterious way that inflamed Penelope’s ever-active fantasies. Black slashes of brow added an edge of danger. Smudges beneath the eyes hinted at sleepless nights, nights Penelope just knew must be spent in the most wanton of pleasures.

Wishing the man would turn those eyes in all their glory on her, knowing instead he’d probably continue to stare at the
MAXIMUM OCCUPANCY
sign, Penelope settled her briefcase, bulging with files, on the floor of the elevator. Men with bedroom eyes never noticed her.

As the elevator sailed downward to the everyday world forty-two floors below, Penelope lost herself in the image of such a man drawing her close, the intense sensuality in those eyes directed solely at her.

“Oh, Raoul,” she’d whisper, resorting to the imaginary man who always played the leading role in her romantic fantasies. She’d struggle a bit at first, wanting desperately to give in to him, yet fighting the desire all the same. His arms, all male muscle, would tighten around her. The wool of his suit rasped at her breasts, clad only in the silky negligee she’d donned in anticipation of his forbidden nocturnal visit.

Upward edged her chin, his warm fingers guiding her lips inexorably to his. Giving in, she reached one hand around his neck, entwining her fingers in the coal black hair that curled rakishly over the collar of his shirt.

“Oh, Raoul.” The only words she could manage were swallowed by his lips, devoured by his tongue. One last time she glanced upward at those remarkable eyes before squeezing her own shut and allowing the wave of passion he’d ignited to crash over her heart.

“Going or staying?”

Penelope ran the tip of her tongue over her lips.

The man with bedroom eyes cleared his throat.

Like an elevator car with a broken cable, Penelope snapped to earth. Her eyes flew open. To her chagrin, the black-haired man looked at her as if she were mildly, if not severely, retarded.

He pointed politely to the open door of the elevator. How long they’d been on the first floor of the office tower Penelope couldn’t guess.

Didn’t want to, either, or her embarrassment would mount. Gathering her dignity, she hurried forward, sparing neither a word nor a backward glance at the sexy stranger.

When would she learn to control her over-active imagination? Flushed and irritated with herself, Penelope strode in her low-heeled pumps across the marble floor of the Oil Building. As usual, she’d worked late, later than she’d intended, and the crush of workers who staffed the building had long since departed.

She’d agreed to meet David Hinson for drinks at eight at the nearby Hotel Intercontinental, along with some Washington clients. Then they were all having dinner at David’s Garden District home.

Her stomach fluttered slightly when she counted the number of times he’d asked her out in the past six weeks, but thoughts of the lawyer caused scarcely a ripple compared to the tumult the complete stranger in the elevator had raised within her.

Therefore, Penelope found it easier to keep her mind within check as she pushed open the glass door that led onto St. Charles Avenue.

The July heat beat at her with the intensity of a wood-burning oven and Penelope shrugged out of her suit jacket. She’d been in New Orleans less than six months, and she could see as clearly as the sky above the Mississippi that she’d have to invest in a new wardrobe. Perhaps, she thought with a whimsical smile, she’d purchase a sensible dark blue linen suit and maybe one of the striped seersucker suits that seemed popular in her firm.

Those suits weren’t terribly attractive, especially on women, but Penelope dressed for business, not, she thought ruefully, to catch the eye of men like the guy in the elevator.

Shrugging off that somewhat dismal thought, Penelope slipped her jacket over her arm, then froze. Afraid to look, afraid of what she’d confirm, Penelope slid her gaze to the sidewalk by her feet, patted her shoulder for the familiar comfort of a heavily weighted shoulder strap.

Nothing.

What had happened to her briefcase? She would never leave it in the office.

Then she remembered.

The elevator.

“Puppies, kittens, and cats!” Penelope kicked the sidewalk, then executed an about-face. Her briefcase contained her life, her work, her purse, her—

She gasped and pushed back into the building. Penelope Fields would just die if anyone pawed through her case and found
Love Bites,
her secret cookbook project, the discovery of which would, no doubt, make her the laughing-stock of the august firm of LaCour, Richardson, Zeringue, Ray, Wellman and Klees.

Penelope headed straight for the elevator. “Please let it be there,” she whispered. She’d give up chocolate for a month if the fates had left it sitting undisturbed. Who’d want a lawyer’s briefcase anyway, stuffed with page upon page of paper that paid testimony to the turmoil of people’s lives?

The doors to the express elevator stood open. Holding her breath, she peeked inside, picturing exactly the spot where she’d placed it as she’d escaped into her fantasy of the man with bedroom eyes.

Nothing.

All that met her gaze was a coffee stain on the carpet.

If only that man hadn’t distracted her. Unreasonably irritated with a man she didn’t even know, irritated even more by the knowledge she had herself solely to blame, Penelope whirled around. Someone might have turned it in to Building Security.

Head down, berating herself, Penelope stepped forward.

She sensed someone in her path, too late to keep from barreling into a broad and sturdy chest that didn’t even flinch as she hit it in full stride.

Penelope, however, caught off guard, wobbled and might have fallen backward if not for the hand that shot out to steady her, a hand that remained cupped against her lower back.

“Going or staying?” This time the question definitely carried a hint of amusement.

Penelope lifted her head from the wall of chest, clothed respectably in a gray wool suit, blue and white striped shirt, and a tie that—

She squinted, trying to make out what the clearly naked figures on the man’s tie were doing, then hastily raised her gaze to meet the stranger’s eyes head on. This time she was forewarned. No matter how sensuous an expression she saw on his face, she’d keep her attention planted firmly on planet Earth.

Eyes like dark, loamy earth, a brown so rich it might be black, watched her, a glint in them Penelope interpreted as mirroring the amusement in his voice. Amusement at her expense.

“I am searching for my briefcase,” she said, in a voice designed to remind opposing counsel just who they were up against.

A sweep of warmth, a pressure gentle yet hinting at something much stronger heated her lower back. A matching surge warmed her face. Penelope inched away from him. “Do you mind?”

He grinned, and his eyes glowed even darker.

She turned away. She needed to find Security.

“Don’t you want to ask me something before you go?”

What would she ask a man like this? Penelope hesitated. Rough me up? Rip my clothes off and warm my skin with kisses? Tease me. Tickle me. Make me believe reality can be half as good as my fantasies?

She shook her head. Without another glance at him, she moved away.

Footsteps sounded behind her. In a quiet voice, the man said, “Here.”

She heard the clunk.

She looked down at the floor, knowing this time she’d find more than a coffee stain.

Her case sat there, but the man had disappeared.

Anthony Olano, better known as Tony-O in his neighborhood, a pocket of New Orleans tucked between Carrollton Avenue and a bend in the Mississippi, eased lower in the seat of his car.

His body moved. His pants did not, snagging the car’s ragged vinyl upholstery. “Shit. My one good suit,” he muttered, releasing the threads of the fabric from the rip in the seat. Not that his suit wasn’t ruined already, what with the past four hours he’d spent parked outside Hinson’s Garden District home, fighting heat, mosquitoes, and a growing desire to abandon his quarry for the sake of taking a leak and grabbing a beer.

Two blocks lakeside of where he’d parked, the streetcar rumbled by. Tony checked his watch. Like the city, the service never stopped. Except of course, for Mardi Gras parades and for the occasional driver foolish enough to turn too sharply into the path of the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the country.

Anyone who got in the way of that kind of tradition deserved to get his car mangled, Tony figured.

The passing car, the tenth since Tony had begun his vigil, reminded him of the fleeting evening. Much longer and he’d have to pee.

At that moment a figure stepped into the frame of the tall window that opened onto the balcony across the street. Through a sheer curtain, the silhouette of a narrow shouldered man was visible.

And beside the man, a woman.

“Gotcha.” ’Bout time, too. His eyes never once straying from the target, Tony hefted his camera fitted with the nighttime telephoto lens.

The window, a typical old New Orleans feature that raised to serve as a passage out to the balcony, scraped upward. The heavy night air didn’t even stir the sheer curtain.

Tony took a long look at the man, an even longer look at the woman.

The man he knew well and despised thoroughly. David Hinson was one of those lawyers who gave the whole breed a bad name. Not that Tony wasted much sympathy on lawyers, but ever since his little sister had taken it in her head to go to LSU law school, he’d softened his stance a bit.

But he’d never change his mind about Hinson—despite the fact that if all went according to plan, Hinson would soon be his new employer.