Target (23 page)

“Put the gun back in your purse,” Nick said. “Now, please.”

She jumped. “I forgot you were with me.” She had, just for an instant. “It doesn't hurt to be in the habit of moving it to my pocket before I go upstairs.”

“No, as long as you don't shoot a member of the family one day, or a friend, or even Hoover, for crying out loud.”

Aurelie left the gun where it was. “Come on, Hoover, boy. Time for your dinner.” She was used to making her own decisions and didn't intend to change, particularly because a man wanted to take charge, much as she cared about this one.

She let them in, locked up tight and went upstairs. Hoover rushed ahead and met them at the top.

The apartment, tiny at best, seemed minuscule with Nick in it. Aurelie took the Glock out of her pocket and put it back in her purse. The purse went on the bottom of the bed with her hat, and when she returned to the other room, Nick was already filling Hoover's dishes. Aurelie walked into the tiny kitchen and pulled the jug of sangria from the refrigerator.

All she could feel was Nick.

They were caught in the sights of a killer yet her mind wouldn't let go of images and sensations of the two of them together one hot night.

He found glasses and took them from the cupboard. Aurelie poured the sangria. They stood with their backs to the counter and touched glasses. The drink tasted Chianti tart with a zip of lemon from the fruit Aurelie had cut in slices and dropped into the jug. Warmth flooded her veins.

There seemed little to say.

“You'll go back to the law, won't you?” Nick said. “You always said it was what you wanted.”

“It was and it may be again if I can get past the bad taste left in my mouth from the post-Katrina mess in New Orleans. If and when I do go back, I'll be on the other side.” She yawned.

“Tired?” Nick asked.

She shook her head. “No. This has been an incredible day, is all. Come and sit on my purple furniture, and tell me about that meeting you had this afternoon.”

Nick's eyes went to the hem of her green dress, swirling around the tops of her calves. Aurelie had great legs. He liked her in high heels—which she rarely wore.

“It was with Finn Duhon and one of his friends,” he said, still watching her legs. He shifted his weight. “You remember, Delia contacted him. I followed up.” He told her the rest of what had happened.

“A bodyguard?” she asked. “Sounds theatrical.”

“Someone trying to kill you sounds theatrical,” Nick said. “On the other hand, there was nothing theatrical about what happened to Baily. She's dead.”

Aurelie half turned toward him and her eyes shone too brightly. “I hate it that she is. But how will you get Sarah and Delia to accept a
bodyguard?
”

He smiled faintly. “I don't think it'll be hard in this case. He won't be creeping around corners. The man's a pro and he's an answer to my prayers. I have to make sure all three of you are safe.”

“You care a lot about us,” Aurelie said. “But we care about you, Nick. We're lucky people.”

“Is that all you feel about me, Aurelie? That you care about me?”

Her skin prickled. “I'm not sure how to read the questions.”

“I think you do. Come back here. Stand beside me.”

She hesitated, then walked back slowly, the polished cotton in her dress swishing.

“Watching you move is a turn-on, lady,” he said.

Aurelie looked at the floor. “Don't embarrass me.”

“Sorry. It's true. Come here. All the way. I won't bite.”

She stood beside him again, her back to the counter. They didn't touch but she could feel him just the same.

“I'm not pussyfooting around anymore,” Nick said.

She turned her face up to his. The light was behind him and his sharply defined face was thrown in to shadows, the deep indentations at the corners of his mouth, the faint dimples that never quite left his cheeks, and his eyes, dark blue shaded by his lashes.

“You don't look at me as if you wish I'd go away,” he told her.

“I'm struggling, Nick. When I went away to law school I thought I'd meet someone else and you'd remain the good friend you've always been. It didn't happen.”

He turned toward her. “You're telling me you've thought about me—not just as a pseudobrother?”

The time for pretending was over. “That's what I'm saying. It's been true for a long time.”

Nick took a sip of his sangria, watching her every second. He looked at her mouth, dipped his finger into her glass and touched the wine to her lips.

Aurelie licked her bottom lip and he quickly jutted his face forward and kissed her. Just as quickly, with a brief meeting of tongues, he stood straight again. “It's not going to work anymore,” he said.

She felt a little sick. “What does that mean?”

“Sooner or later we have to confront the future—usually when it turns into the present. It just did for us. I want you in my life and I have for a very long time.”

Was it possible he thought any problems would dissolve as long as they got what they wanted? “I'm afraid of going forward,” Aurelie said.

“I'm not asking you for casual sex,” he said.

Her lungs emptied then wouldn't fill. She felt shaky and her skin ached.

Nick put down his glass and used the fingertips of both hands to outline her face, to stroke to the point of her chin. His smile was mischievous. “I love that pointy chin of yours. And your pointy nose.”

She laughed. “My puffy, pointy nose. I don't sound very attractive and no, I'm not fishing.”

“There's nothing about you that doesn't attract me, unless it's your cheeky mouth when you're being difficult.”

Aurelie prepared a verbal salvo but Nick put a forefinger on her mouth. “I'm sorry. Okay? Things are moving fast. Even if we do nothing, our real relationship, or the lack of it, will come out. It was convenient to pose as a family when we were younger. That's not necessary anymore.”

She really would like to sit down. “But Delia,” she said. “And Sarah.” It wasn't her place to tell him she thought Sarah was in love with him. “Sarah thinks so much of you. She doesn't consider going to anyone but you when she needs something, or just wants to share what she cares about.”

“I know,” Nick said. “We need to tell them before someone else does. And I always intend to watch out for Sarah.”

But how would Sarah react when she discovered Nick and Aurelie's new relationship?

“What do you want, Aurelie?” Nick asked quietly. He kissed her cheek and the corner of her mouth and her jaw. With his hands looped around her neck, he rested his thumbs on her chin. “Tell me. Don't hold back. And if you don't want anything from me, say that, too.”

She smiled at him and arched her neck, turned her cheek into his palm. “You feel pretty safe, don't you? You know you mean so much to me.”

“What do you want?” he asked again.

Aurelie closed her eyes and nuzzled his hand. “That's twice you've asked the same question. Now it's my turn. What do
you
want—apart from sex?”

He took her glass, set it down with his own, and she got the kind of kiss that backed up what she'd said about him wanting sex. He left her breathless and clinging to him. His arms, crossed behind her back, held her on tiptoe, and he rubbed his mouth along the low neck of her sundress where it met the rise of her breasts.

“I want everything,” she said to him. “Then I want it again.”

With his fingers hooked inside her bodice, resting on her nipples, he drew back to see her face. Then he cringed and took his hands away from her bruised skin. He grinned sheepishly. “Last night you asked me to stay.”

“I did,” she told him, straining closer. “This is a new night. If you still feel the same when we finish at Ona's, the offer stands.”

T
he Roll Inn was no boutique hotel but it was clean and convenient. Joan was tired of listening to Vic Gross make snide comments about the place.

“I said I'm bored,” he told her, had been telling her since he'd arrived with a tubful of fried chicken, hush puppies and a six-pack of Jax to wash it all down. That had been an hour ago. “This is taking too long.” The chicken was his dinner.

He sprawled on the bed, his chest and feet bare, his blond hair mussed, and with the kind of slow blink and unfocused eyes that had nothing to do with his being tired. He took three times as many hits a day as he had even a year ago.

“I need some peace, Vic. Hours of peace and quiet. All day I've beaten on doors trying to find out what gives with the Boards. I can't get anyone to talk to me. A doctor was called to the police station last night but I can't even get a hint on the identity of the patient. These small-town people hang tight.”

He yawned. “Yeah?”

“The Boards were there when the doctor was called. At least Nick and Aurelie were. I want to know if the doctor was for one of them. Nick's quit talking to me, too. I tried to get to him today but he wasn't having any.”

“Maybe he doesn't have anything to tell you.”

“Don't say that.” She must not think about failure. “It isn't easy playing this double game. Pretending I want one thing when I want something else. We have to get him talking. He has to let us inside or we're finished. We have to make this project work. Cooper made sure we understood what he'll do if we don't come through.” She hated to speak the boss's name aloud. It made him too real. “I'll go back to Nick. It's too bad the woman chemist died just when we were getting started. He's spending too much time on that. I've got to make him concentrate on me. Trust me. I think I can get him to loosen up.”

Vic snickered. “Maybe he doesn't like you. Tell Cooper to back off. What can he do about it if we don't get what he wants fast enough for him?”

Joan's heart thumped painfully. “He can send one of his contacts to
help
us. We don't want that kind of help.”

“The kind that punishes?” Laughing, Vic turned onto his back. He had a hard-on.

“You're the one who's finished.” Vic's slurred voice had fur on it. “If there has to be a change, it'll be you who finds out about it. I do what I do. I do what I'm told. Man, do I have it made. Have camera, will travel, that's me. Cooper knows I'm the best. He'll always have work for me.”

That's what Vic thought, but he'd be easier to deal with if she didn't burst his bubble. Getting to Nick Board for Cooper was their last chance. Either they came through, or he called in what they owed. He would send in the goons.

She and Vic had been together for eight years. And all that time she'd kept him and his habit, even though few days went by when she didn't rehearse leaving him. Only, he'd find her. She'd tried to get away twice, so she knew what happened when he caught up with her.

He pointed a wavery finger. “There's a letter I'm gonna hold back from Cooper. In the pocket of my jacket. Get it.”

“What letter?” She found his jacket. “Will it help us?”

“Depends on how things turn out. If Cooper gets too pissy, it'll give us some proof of what we've done so we can show him we've been working. Keep it in a safe place.”

She found what he was talking about and put it at the bottom of her crowded purse.

Vic snickered again. “I'd be afraid to put a hand in that thing. Something ugly might bite me.”

She didn't respond but took her cell phone from her purse and checked in case she'd missed a call.

“Give it up, babe,” Vic said. “Cooper won't be calling tonight. He's probably getting laid, same as he does every night.”

“If you can call that getting laid,” Joan said. “I've got a headache. Be quiet, please.”

“Please,” he mimicked in a high voice. “So polite. Your momma must have taught you all the right things. One or two, anyway. I bet she didn't teach you how to—”

“That's enough, Vic. Sleep it off.”

“Could be your momma taught you everything you know. You wouldn't be the first female to learn the game at her mother's knee.”

Violence simmered in him all the time, just waiting for an excuse to break out. When he was high he could get even more physical, but Joan liked her chances better in a motel room where Vic wouldn't want to make enough noise to draw the wrong kind of attention. The sounds of pain tended to do that. “You never knew my mother,” she said. “She was a good woman. Leave her out of this.”

“Hoo-hoo, snooty, aren't we?” He sniffed and felt in a back pocket for the nasal spray that was his constant companion.

“Good night, Vic.”

He rolled onto his belly again and propped his chin on his hands. “It isn't a good night yet, but it will be. Quit worrying. We're going to clean the slate. Cooper owes us, and since he's the one who's had Nick and the women followed pretty much since they've been here, he's responsible for making sure we know what we need to know to get the job done. I don't think he's given us enough details yet, but you do know this project is a hundred percent in the bag once you get all the material you need.”

“We both need it,” she told him. “And we both need money—for the day-to-day expenses, not just the big stuff. They asked me to pay for the room again today. I was promised another payment as soon as I sent in an expanded file. It's been there two days. My God, Vic. Think, if you can. Think how much we're into Cooper for and we can't even pay for this room. He's not satisfied. I can feel it.”

Vic grinned. Wobbling on one elbow, his eyelids half closed, he reached down into the front pocket of his khaki shorts and pulled out a fat roll of bills. “Why didn't you remind me before? I was in the office when the delivery came. Kid in reception doesn't know her ass from her tits. But I'm giving her lessons she'll find real useful.”

Joan turned her back on him.

“You don't want to miss a word of this, Joanie,” he said. “Make sure you're hearing me. I followed that chickie into the back room and her panties came off like a wrapper from hot butter. She gave me your envelope. Yep, she did that. And then she found out cashing the cashier's check was no problem. Reckon I'll be stopping back in to see her later.”

“That envelope was addressed to me and the check is mine.” Heat throbbed in Joan's face, and elsewhere. “You are just bad. Naughty. I don't know where you got such bad habits.”

“Naughty,” he repeated, falsetto. “Cut the crap, Joanie, we know who the schoolgirl act appeals to and it isn't me. Used to work pretty good in front of the camera, too. But then time rolls on and even the pigtails won't fool anyone. Too bad.”

She hated him, but she needed him. “I'm going right to the front desk and we'll see who comes out on top in this one.”

He vaulted from the bed, grabbed her by the waist and threw her on the mattress hard enough to make her bounce. Before she could try to move, he was on her, pushing her fringed skirt up around her hips. “Who did you say was going to be on top?” he asked, grinning down at her. “You won't go to the desk or say a word to anyone. You will never go against me because I know too much about you. All I'm going to do is look after the money for both of us. We know I'm more careful than you are.”

“Give it to me.” She couldn't risk what he'd do if she accused him of planning to blow the money on drugs.

“Ah, ah, ah.” He caught her hand on its way into his pocket, unzipped his pants and folded her fingers around him. “I've paid for the room,” he said. “And I'll pay for whatever else you need.
Need,
baby.”

He slipped past her thong and buried himself deep. He pumped on and on, the coke made sure of that. For her it was all over fifteen minutes before he finished. She wasn't satisfied. “I need money now,” she told him, her heart not even working a beat faster. She tried to get him to move in her again, but he slid out and lay on his back, laughing.

“Vic?” she wheedled.

“For you, anything,” he said, holding up the wad of bills again and peeling off several hundreds. He flicked the edges across her mouth. “For the fastest fuck in the…where are we? The South. Later, baby.” He climbed off the bed and stood looking down at her in the lamplighted room while he zipped his shorts.

“What a pity you're such a beautiful man,” she said. “Beautiful on the outside and rotten on the inside. Cut you open and you'd stink—and foul things would crawl out.”

The grin left his face. In his slitted green eyes, the ice she'd learned to fear had formed. Without a word, he slapped her face, hard, screwed up the money and dropped it on the bed beside her, and left—closing the door very quietly.