Careless Rapture
Authors: Dara Girard
Tags: #romance, #mystery, #family, #secrets, #washington dc
Dara Girard
All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means without the prior written consent of the
Author.
Copyright 2005 Sade Odubiyi
Published by ILORI PRESS BOOKS LLC
Digital copyright Sade Odubiyi 2012
Cover and Layout Copyright 2013 ILORI PRESS
BOOKS LLC
Cover Photo by Taras Yakovyn/123rf
Originally published in 2005 by BET BOOKS as
Carefree
Smashwords Edition
This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are either products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, business establishments, or persons, living
or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The scanning, uploading, and distributing of
this book via the Internet or via any other means without the
permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law.
Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not
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materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Dear Reader,
I had no intention of creating a series.
Really. When I finished my first published book, a mainstream
romance called
Table for Two,
I immediately started on a
sequel about the best friend of the heroine and called
Gaining
Interest
. After that I thought I was done. I'd given a happy
ending to two great friends.
But I was wrong. By the end of
Gaining
Interest
the Hensons had taken over. Drake, Eric and Jackie
soon became the driving force through the books. I hadn't expected
this until I started receiving emails asking me "What about
Jackie?"
Hmm...yes. I had to find out too and an
accidental trilogy fell into place with the publication of
Careless Rapture
(previously published as
Carefree
).
Now you can find out what happened to Eric and Adriana after the
wedding, what Drake and Cassie are up to and whose heart Jackie
threatens to steal.
If this is your first taste of my mainstream
work, find your favorite reading spot and enjoy.
Dara Girard
Althea Williams
hurried through a breakfast of blueberry muffins, scrambled eggs,
and a Pepsi, unaware she’d be dead in ten hours. Had she known
this, she might have put her time to better use. She might have
visited the father she hadn’t seen in years or forgiven the sister
she’d quarreled with last week. Instead she fought with her
ex-husband over car payments, cursed out a clerk at the local
Safeway, and spent two hours in the salon complaining about her
life.
She returned home under a splattering of
stars that seemed frozen in the sky by a late February wind. Her
high heels clicked along the crooked D.C. sidewalk as she made her
way to her second-story apartment. As she turned the key in the
lock, someone called out her name. She swore and turned, then
suddenly smiled.
Her killer returned the expression.
Clay Jarrett knew
two things about women like Jackie Henson. One, they didn’t like to
hear the word “no,” and two, they could make a man regret saying
it. Unfortunately, the moment Jackie walked into his office looking
like a willful sprite in a crisp gray business suit with a red
scarf artistically draped over her shoulders, he knew what his
answer would be: No. And he wouldn’t regret it. He’d been a private
investigator long enough to rarely regret a decision.
She wasn’t a pretty woman, but she didn’t
need to be. She was cute—and knew it—with straight black hair that
reached her chin. She didn’t have much height or much of a figure,
but her big brown eyes made up for it all. They were warm, wicked,
and smart, with a tendency to tilt a little at the ends. At times,
this gave her an elfish appearance. Her looks made him think of a
fairy tale. He could certainly picture her as an imp causing
mischief. It started as soon as she came into his office.
Jackie could hypnotize a man with a gaze. He
would have allowed himself to succumb. However, he considered her
brothers, Drake and Eric, friends, and would do nothing to
jeopardize that relationship. Not even to satisfy a growing
curiosity.
Although he knew his answer would be no, he
still listened to her request. It only reinforced his initial
decision. She wanted him to look for an invisible man. That wasn’t
his job. Cheating spouses, missing loved ones, courier service?
Yes. Chasing a man out of curiosity? No.
He leaned forward, twirling a pen between his
fingers. “I can’t help you,” he said. He tried to sound apologetic,
but failed.
“Why not?” she asked, her words more of an
accusation than a query.
“Because it’s a waste of time.” He continued
before she could protest. “You have nothing for me to work with.
You want me to track down a man with no name, no address, nothing.
And your sole basis for this investigation is that a client of
yours thinks she’s cured.”
Jackie’s hand gripped the strap of her
handbag. “Melanie is an intelligent woman who has been part of HOPE
Services for two years. All of a sudden she calls to cancel
services, saying she doesn’t need us anymore. No ordinary man could
have convinced her of this.”
He shrugged. “These things happen.”
“She’s the fifth client in three weeks to
cancel services. When I went to visit her, she’d changed. She
seemed different. More spiritual somehow, and she kept talking
about a man.”
“With no name.”
Restless, Jackie shifted, frustrated by the
bored look on his face. She didn’t blame him for not seeing the
urgency of her case. Her supervisor, Faye, hadn’t paid much
attention either. Faye was certain the man was just a boyfriend.
That theory was a possibility, since many of their female clients
had unreliable boyfriends or husbands that led them astray. But
this was different. Jackie was certain and the proof was what she
had seen.
The Melanie who answered the door yesterday
was not the Melanie she knew. She had Melanie’s same angular face,
dyed brown hair to cover her gray, and tight mouth that rarely
offered a smile because of missing teeth. But her eyes were too
bright—not from a spark of health or even the use of drugs, but
something completely unfamiliar.
When she had stepped into the apartment, a
sickening sense of dread had crawled over Jackie’s skin. The room
lay bare. All Melanie’s furniture was gone, with only a few
cushions in its place. All her photographs, trinkets, and valuables
were gone. It looked as though her life had been erased. Then she
spoke of her spiritual quest and her adviser.
Melanie wouldn’t give his name, which had
worried Jackie most. She knew going to a private investigator was a
drastic measure but she didn’t know what else to do. Clay had been
her first choice. She’d known him since his sister Cassie married
her brother Drake four years ago. They saw each other at family
dinners and holidays and were like family. Except looking at him
now as he sat across the desk from her, he seemed like a stranger.
Probably because in a sense he was.
She still didn’t know much about him. His
full name, Clarence, didn’t suit him properly. It implied a big
bespectacled man with an awkward grin and an unhealthy attachment
to his mother. Yet the name Clay didn’t completely suit him either.
Though his skin was the exact shade his name described, he seemed
far more unreachable than the common earth beneath one’s feet.
There was a distance to him. His dark eyes, while always friendly,
were never warm. His face, though handsome, was not classically so.
It held an ageless, rugged strength as though all his distant
ancestors had contributed to its creation—an aristocratic jaw was
balanced by a blunt-cut nose. His eyes were his most intriguing
feature. Instead of revealing emotions, they seemed to mask them,
as though shadows drifted through, altering any true feeling.
The shadows were there now as he watched her
with the intense patience of a hawk.
Jackie shifted again, awkward under his
penetrating stare. “I can’t give you a name because she wouldn’t
tell me. She just calls him her adviser. She said he was a
messenger of a higher power. I said he had to have a last name like
a pastor or rabbi. She said he didn’t want to be known because his
message is revolutionary and if he is known he will be persecuted.
So obviously he’s not just some boyfriend she’s in love with.”
He shrugged.
She found his complacency maddening and
pounded his desk. “Look, this guy is convincing my clients that
they’re cured. I need to know who he is and I need to know
why.”
Clay set the pen down in a quick, controlled
manner. His voice remained soft. “I can tell you who he is. He’s
probably some self-appointed messiah who targets underprivileged
individuals with the message that they’re not alone, that the
universe is fair if they follow his instructions and change their
lifestyle. If they do all that he says, then they’ll be
saved---changed--or whatever the current term of the day is. It’s a
system that is hard to penetrate once people enter. It’s difficult
to convince them to leave.”
“But why does he tell them this?”
“Because he believes it himself. Is he
delusional? Possibly. A con artist? Maybe.” He thought for a
moment, then shook his head. “But that’s unlikely, considering who
he targets. He will do this for as long as it suits him.”
She folded her arms, then let them fall.
“Have you worked on a case like this before?”
“No. ”
“Then all this is just a clever guess.”
“It’s more than a clever guess.”
“Why? Because it sounds plausible?”
“Because I know.”
“And how do you know so much about a man like
this?” she challenged.
He didn’t respond right away. Jackie wasn’t
surprised. Clay was a man as careful with his words as he was with
his company, always cautious about what he revealed. He leaned
back, appearing casual, though his gaze sharpened. She could not
interpret the expression, but it made her skin bristle.
“My sister married one,” he said simply, in a
gritty voice softened only slightly by the hint of his British
background. “An African prophet by way of Brooklyn who’d christened
himself Prince. He was well educated in the ways of manipulation
and wife-beating and convinced her to be his fourth wife. He later
punished her for her sins, then sent her straight to heaven. He was
not charged for this...service...because he explained it was part
of a ritual and she had fallen and tripped. An autopsy cited this
as a cause of death and he was freed. I don’t know where he is now.
My hopes are his body is floating somewhere being eaten by
maggots.” The corners of his mouth kicked up in not quite a smile,
but far from a grimace. “Unfortunately, we all can’t get our
wish.”