Julia Roberts had nothing on her . . .
Harek was cooling his heels in a tavern on the outskirts of New Orleans, wondering what the hell he was doing there, for about the fiftieth time. It was already eight p.m., and the rehearsal dinner had presumably started a half hour ago.
He was wearing a gray Hugo Boss suit with a pale blue dress shirt and silver angel wing cuff links. Black Gucci loafers and a black and gray striped, silk Armani tie completed his outfit. His hair was slicked back off his face in a sophisticated style, not the usual deliberate disarray. He looked good, if he did say so himself, and definitely out of place in this blue-collar neighborhood bar reeking of stale beer and greasy hamburgers.
To his chagrin and embarrassment, Camille had been wearing jeans, a denim jacket, and a baseball cap when they’d boarded the military plane in Coronado. His attire stood out like a wart on a witch’s nose, compared to his date’s. He’d felt like the dork his brothers were always saying he was.
He knew it was only a rehearsal dinner, not the wedding itself, but it was being held in that famous Alcide’s Restaurant, and he’d assumed it would require more than casual attire. When he’d hissed his irritation to the woman, “I thought this was a formal affair,” she’d replied, “It is. You look fine.”
Fine? What kind of half-arsed compliment was that? I look better than fine, he’d thought. “Then why are you wearing that.” He’d given her clothing a scornful glance. “Oh, is this a rebellious statement of some kind to your family? Weddings bring that out in some folks. I sensed discord when—”
“Sit down and shut up.”
Whoa! I hit a sore spot there. Definite family issues. But more important to him, she’d been ordering him around already, and he was not pleased, especially when she’d added, “Do you buy mousse by the gallon?”
“Huh?”
“Hair mousse.”
He’d put a hand to his head. “Gel, not mousse.”
She’d shrugged. “Big difference.”
He’d bristled. If there was one thing Viking men were vain about, it was their hair. Well, there were many things they were vain about, but hair was one of them. And even though Harek did not wear his hair long in the Viking style, he still took special care with it. “What is wrong with my hair?” he’d asked.
“Nothing. Just that you seem to take more time with it than most women I know. What do you do when you are out on an op? Go into mousse withdrawal?”
“Very funny. And it is gel, not mousse. A men’s hair product.”
She’d shaken her head, failing to see the distinction.
He and Camille hadn’t talked much on the short flight or since then in the rental car, which she’d insisted on driving, until she told him she needed to stop at this tavern and suggested he have a beer while she visited the ladies’ facility. Why she needed to take her overnight bag with her defied explanation, but then women were often strange about their bathroom visits. Unlike men, who just said, “I have to piss.” Much simpler.
That had been fifteen minutes ago. And now he sat here, sipping at a bottle of Dixie beer, fuming. Already, he’d had to fend off the overtures of two women and one man: the waitress with the impressive bosom; a harlot who walked the streets of New Orleans selling her wares, although she’d offered him a discount; and a man whose braies were so tight his cock stuck out like the figurehead on the bow of a longship.
He was about to raise his hand for another beer when his attention was caught by a woman emerging from the ladies’ room. She wore a tight red dress held up by two thin straps and ending just above her knees. Her shoulders and arms were deliciously bare, as were her long legs, which led to black, strappy shoes with four-inch heels. Her light brown hair was a mass of curls reminiscent of the bed muss after energetic bedplay. Her pouty lips were scarlet red. From her ears dangled long, filigreed silver chains that swayed as she walked. Her neck bore no adornment, and he felt a lurch of excitement when he imagined he could see the deep vein at its curve, the most enticing temptation to a vampire, even a vampire angel.
Harek shifted uncomfortably on his bar stool, thankful for his jacket, which would hide his hair-trigger arousal.
Now, this was a woman whose overtures he would not turn away. Or, leastways, he would have difficulty turning away, he immediately amended, just in case you-know-who, the Big M, was listening in to his thoughts.
He noticed two things at once. First, the woman was carrying Camille’s carry bag. Oh no! Had this woman accosted Camille in the ladies’ room? Was Camille lying on the floor, the victim of an assault?
He began to rise, and felt for the weapons under his jacket. A vangel always carried at least a knife or pistol, often a retractable sword in secret pockets.
But then, almost at the same moment, he realized something else. The closer she got, the stronger the scent of roses that assailed his senses.
The woman winked.
His jaw dropped.
It was Camille. Smiling at him with a “gotcha!” kind of smile.
At just that moment, the sound system in the bar, which had been playing country music, blasted out with that old Roy Orbison song “Pretty Woman,” and Camille walked to the beat of the music. In truth, she strutted her stuff, as modern folks said. And she did it damn well, and knew it, too.
This weekend was going to be a lot more interesting than Harek had thought. That was for damn bloody sure, Harek told himself. Or was it a promise?
When she got closer, she said in a sex-husky voice, “You smell good enough to eat.”
Huh? The only thing he smelled was roses. “I beg your pardon,” he choked out, her words planting a picture in his head that caused his already interested, favorite body part to lurch.
“You’re like a just-baked chocolate cake with dark cocoa butter icing and white chocolate sprinkles. Three layers.”
Oh. The chocolate nonsense again. He’d heard his brothers’ wives claim their spouses exuded a particular life mate scent, but they were manly odors like pine or sandalwood. Not candy. Besides, I am not, not, not in the market for a life mate.
“All that sinfully good sweetness,” she purred, “that melts on the tongue. A person could get a chocolate high just breathing you in. Bet a dime you taste divine.” She licked her lips, causing them to glisten.
Definitely an interesting weekend ahead.
Oh, he was not so vain as to believe her flirting meant she was attracted to him. The wench was goading him.
So, she’s not as plain as I thought. Or she knows how to earn her nickname of Camo . . . camouflage. Either way, she made a fool of me, or more likely, I made a fool of myself, with her help.
“What are you standing there for? You’ll make us late,” she said, tapping him on his still gaping jaw, then handing him her small luggage to carry.
“Me? You’re the one who insisted on—”
But she had already passed him by, and for a moment Harek just watched as her hips swayed in the tight red dress. Everyone else in the bar watched, too. All to the beat of “Pretty Woman.”
And then, just before she reached the exit door, she wiggled her butt. Just a little wiggle. But it was enough for Harek to recognize what it was. A challenge.
He smiled. And followed after her.
If this wench thought she could issue him a challenge like that and escape unscathed, she had another think coming. There was nothing a Viking loved more than a good challenge.
Let the games begin, Harek thought, licking his suddenly extended fangs. The Viking vangel games, that is.
He didn’t ride a horse, but he was a prince . . .
They arrived at the world-famous Alcide’s Restaurant in the French Quarter about nine p.m. Turned out they wouldn’t be very late, after all. Camille had called her mother’s cell a short time ago and learned that the wedding rehearsal at St. Louis Cathedral had been delayed by more than an hour due to a wedding party before them, which had been “rudely unprepared.”
Her mother also considered it rude of Camille not to have come home earlier for her brother’s pre-wedding festivities, like maybe a week ago. When Camille had explained, many times, that the military didn’t make allowance for such things, her mother had declared, “Well, that’s just rude.”
“Tell it to Uncle Sam.”
“Uncle who?”
That about summed up her mother’s understanding of Camille’s work.
Harek had insisted on taking the wheel of her rental car on the last leg of their journey here, and he’d driven like a NASCAR maniac, no doubt due to his annoyance with her over her chameleon routine back at the tavern. She loved people’s reactions when she pulled off one of her transformations, but men didn’t like being fooled by a woman. Then there had been her totally immature and highly satisfying butt wiggle. Some statements were made without words.
Their thirty-minute drive should have been a time when he could have tutored her on aspects of the Deadly Wind mission, but she hadn’t been about to distract him with talk. You’d think he was driving a Ferrari, not a boring Toyota Camry.
She had to give him credit for finding a parking space on one of the side streets off tourist-packed Bourbon and being able to maneuver into the tight slot. And he not only didn’t make a snide remark about the several hookers who gave him the eye, but he barely seemed to notice them.
She also had to give him credit for his appearance. The boy did clean up well. Not that he hadn’t looked good in casual attire, but in a pewter-gray suit (undoubtedly designer quality), a pale blue dress shirt (that complemented his compelling blue eyes), with silver cuff links (face it, there was something incredibly sexy about good old-fashioned cuff links on a man, especially when he took them off, with slow intent).
He was steaming hot.
Instead of its usual spiky disarray, his dark blond hair was slicked off his face tonight, giving him a sophisticated edge. Add his subtle chocolate body odor, and whoo boy! The Big Easy just got a whole lot easier.
The minute they entered the restaurant, she was assailed by the wonderful scents of the French-Creole cuisine. Her stomach growled in response, and she realized that she hadn’t eaten since this morning.
“Have you been to Alcide’s before?” she asked Harek as they waited their turn for the maître d’.
He shook his head. “The fanciest I got last time I was here was a po-boy food truck.”
“Hey, a good po-boy is nothing to scoff at.”
Just then, the maître d’ said to them, “Monsieur? Mademoiselle?”
“We’re with the Breaux party. The rehearsal dinner,” she said.
“Ah.” He motioned for a hostess to lead their way through the busy restaurant to one of the many private dining rooms. “Have a good evening.”
Camille sniffed the air appreciatively again as they walked among the diners, noticing every kind of seafood imaginable, from bayou crawfish to the Gulf’s redfish. She hoped the restaurant’s signature Oysters Rockefeller was on their menu tonight.
Harek put his hand to the small of her back, an ingrained male gesture of protection that she found oddly endearing, and whispered in her ear, “You keep sniffing the air like a bloodhound. If you mention my chocolate body odor one more time, I’m going to pinch your jiggly arse.”
She was about to correct him, that it was the restaurant fare that she was sniffing, but, instead, told him, “I do not jiggle. And what’s with this ‘arse’ business?”
“Arse, ass, butt, booty, whatever. On you it definitely jiggles,” he said with a laugh, “and I do not just mean that exaggerated ploy back in the dive.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. Physical fitness was a requirement for Navy WEALS, and she’d sweated gallons these past few years to get in such shape, or as Southern belles were wont to say, ladies did not perspire, they glistened. “My butt does not jiggle! I might have deliberately wiggled it, once, but it does not jiggle on its own, like freakin’ Jell-O. Furthermore—”
He put a fingertip to her lips to stop her tirade. “Not to worry. I like Jell-O.”
Oooh, he was pushing all her buttons tonight. And she wasn’t thinking straight, to give him such openings. “I thought I told you not to make familiar remarks while we’re here.”
“No. When you were reciting your rules, you told me not to call you sweetheart, darling, sugar, cupcake, honey, lover, or babe. There was naught mentioned of jiggling arses . . . or Jell-O.”
She could tell by the grin twitching at his lips that he found her “rules” amusing, and he had no intention of abiding by them.
But they’d arrived at the open double doors of the dining room where the Breaux dinner was being held, an elaborately decorated space with Audubon prints and framed scenes of old New Orleans adorning the burgundy walls. The cypress wainscoting shone with an aged patina. Several crystal chandeliers hung from the crown medallions in the ceiling. Alcide’s was a family-owned restaurant that had been around since the 1840s, and it did its best to maintain its historic details, despite Katrina and other natural disasters.
In fact, her namesake ancestor, Camille Fontenot, the one who’d been “sold” at a pre–Civil War Quadroon Ball, mentioned in one of her diaries being taken to this very restaurant by her protector. And, damn, but that was a touchy subject for her. Touchy, hell! More like a jab in the heart. A fifteen-year-old mistress! But she couldn’t think about that now.
Inside the large room, two dozen well-dressed guests stood about talking in clusters, drinking cocktails, while the waitstaff was pouring ice water into goblets on the long table for their formal, sit-down dinner. Conversation buzzed, along with occasional laugher, and a soft jazz instrumental provided a pleasant background through an invisible sound system.
“Are you good to go?” Harek asked, using the hand at the small of her back to squeeze her waist in support, a surprising gesture, and words more in line with the military lingo soldiers employed just before a live op. He seemed to understand how difficult this family affair was going to be for her. Definitely a live op. Maybe even a few explosions.
In fact, as if reading her mind, he explained, “I come from a large family. Six brothers. Five sisters-by-marriage, and dozens of extended . . . um, family. Believe you me, I understand the strife of blood kin.”
She put her hand over his, at her waist, and squeezed her thanks. Instead of the electrical zing she’d felt previously when she touched him, this time there was a feeling of warmth. Peace.
A thin, wiry man in a dark suit with an MIT tie was the first to see them. Her brother, Alain. He was only an inch or two taller than her five foot eight, but next to Harek’s six foot four, he seemed short. Everybody did.
Alain smiled and took the hand of his fiancée, Inez Breaux, walking toward them. Inez was a petite woman, even in high heels, wearing a royal-blue, knee-length sheath with short sleeves and a sweetheart neckline. Alain was five years older than Camille, as was his bride-to-be.
“Alain,” Camille said, stepping forward to kiss him on the cheek, “Congrats, big brother. Finally!” He and Inez had been engaged for about ten years.
“Glad you could come, Cam. Mother can concentrate on you now, instead of driving me crazy.” He did look rather dazed, as he often was in a social setting, more at home in his labs. She hadn’t seen her brother in three years, and she noticed that his hair was receding prematurely. That was something new. And he blinked nervously behind his wireless glasses, a longtime habit. Still, he was a nice-looking man, and he looked good in what was probably a new suit from Armand’s men store, where Dumaine men had been clothed for two hundred years. “She gave two honors lectures today, in between delivering a luncheon address to a Newcomb College alumnae group, which left me to fight with the florist over the colors of the roses on my ushers’ boutonnieres. Did you know there are seventeen different colors of white roses?” He blinked at Camille. “I’m not making that up. Mother picked Ivory Cream, but they mistakenly made them up with Ivy Dream. Horrors!”
Inez rolled her eyes at Camille in the age-old “Men!” manner. Then, she stepped closer. “Hello, Camille. I’m glad you made it.”
Camille hugged Inez, who smelled like Joy, a perfume she’d been using as long as Camille could remember. “You look wonderful. Grand-mère Octavie’s earrings are perfect with that dress.”
Inez put her fingertips to the sapphire stones surrounded by tiny diamonds, which were part of a parure, which also included a necklace, a bracelet, and a brooch. “I chose this dress specifically to match.” She held out her hand to show the sparkling jewels at the wrist. “The necklace and pin seemed too much, though. What do you think?”
“Perfect,” she said. “Grand-mère only wore the complete set on formal occasions, like Mardi Gras.”
“You don’t mind my getting the set, do you?” Inez asked. “I could give you the bracelet.”
Camille fisted her hands behind her back, reflexively. Transforming her overall appearance at the last minute had been easy-peasy, but there was nothing she could do for her rough skin and blunt nails, a casualty of special warfare. Besides, her grandmother would roll over in her raised tomb at Lafayette Cemetery at the thought of breaking up the parure. “No, no. I don’t mind. Not at all. And I wouldn’t think of breaking up the set. Besides, it wouldn’t match my camouflage suit.” Since neither Alain nor Inez got the joke, just staring at her blankly, Camille went on, “Besides, I get the pearls, and everyone knows they go better with drab green.” Again, no reaction.
A slight coughing noise at her back rescued her. Harek.
She turned to him and said, “Harek, I’d like you to meet my brother, Alain. Dr. Alain Dumaine. He’s was a rocket scientist at NASA.”
“Tsk, tsk. Camille loves to say that,” he told Harek with a shake of his head. “I’m an aerospace engineer specializing in lunar atmospheric modules. I’m currently a professor at Princeton, on loan from NASA.”
“Jeesh! That’s what I said. And this is my, um, friend, Harek Sigurdsson. He does hush-hush work for Wings International Security.”
Harek shot her a scowl before extending a hand to her brother, “Pleased to meet you. Your sister has a warped sense of humor.”
“You noticed that, did you?” Alain said with a laugh. “You won’t believe what Camille did for a Halloween costume when she was fifteen. About put our mother in cardiac arrest.”
Here we go, already! It was Camille who was shooting scowls now. What she didn’t need was a family member reciting a litany of all her antics over the years. It usually started with “You won’t believe what Camille . . .”
Before Alain could elaborate, Camille continued with the introductions, “And this is Alain’s fiancée, Dr. Inez Breaux, a professor of genetic research at Johns Hopkins.”
Instead of shaking Inez’s hand, Harek lifted it and kissed the knuckles in the cosmopolitan style. The show-off! But Inez obviously liked the gesture, if her out-of-character giggle was any indication.
“Perhaps you know my brother Sig . . . Dr. Sigurd Sigurdsson. He was a physician at Johns Hopkins until recently,” Harek said to Inez. “But then, it’s such a big place that—”
“Actually, I do know Dr. Sigurdsson. We shared some research a few years back. He’s a brilliant physician. Where is he now?”
“On some island off the Florida Keys, starting a pediatric oncology clinic, or some such thing.”
“Really?” Inez was genuinely interested. “Perhaps you can give me his contact information later?”
“Sure.”
Alain and Inez moved on to mix with their other guests, and a waiter passing with a tray of stemmed glasses offered them a choice of red or white wine. Camille drank her dry Chablis down in one gulp when she saw her mother and father approaching.
“Liquid courage?” Harek asked, sipping at his red Merlot.
“You have no idea.” She plastered a big smile on her face and said, “Mother! Daddy!”
“Darling!” her mother said, giving Camille an air kiss on either side of her head.
Camille wasn’t offended by the lack of a maternal hug. Her mother’s face was impeccably made up with foundation, mascara, lip gloss, and rouge, and her short salt-and-pepper hair was styled perfectly. She wore a rose silk dress with a matching silver braid–trimmed jacket. There were diamond studs in her small shell-like ears and a ruby and diamond butterfly brooch on her jacket lapel. The subtle scent of Chanel No. 5 wafted around her. The epitome of smart middle-aged woman!
Her father, an older version of Alain with pure white hair and blinking eyes, was not so reticent. He hugged her warmly and whispered against her ear, “I missed you, chaton.” Her father had been calling her his kitten as an endearment since she was a child, always clinging to him, like a . . . well, cat.
“I missed you, too,” she said, kissing his cheek. She introduced both parents to Harek then. “Harek, this is my mother, Dr. Jeannette Dumaine, and my father, Dr. Emile Dumaine. Mother, Father, this is Harek Sigurdsson, a friend from Coronado. He’s in the security business.”
Several pleasantries were exchanged then, mostly related to their trip there, but already her mother had dismissed Harek as unimportant, Camille could tell. The lack of a doctorate before his name, no doubt. And, although his assessment was not so blatant, her father’s attention was diverted by a call from some colleagues on the other side of the room, who said, “Come, Emile, come. We need your opinion.” It probably had something to do with General Robert E. Lee, her father’s special interest. There wasn’t anything her father didn’t know about the famous general, right down to his shoe size, no doubt. Her mother, on the other hand, was an expert on the role of Southern women during the Civil War.
Her mother was about to leave, too. Some last-minute detail she needed to discuss with the mother of the bride. Before she left, she told Camille, “Dr. Solic from Tulane is here tonight. Make sure you discuss that new program with him, the one I wrote you about. Your father and I have discussed it, and we both agree that it would be perfect for you. It’s not too late to start over, darling.”
Her mother was referring to that fast track to a doctorate in theoretic behavioral science. So much more appropriate than a grubby military career!
She bristled.
But did her mother notice, or care? No, she was adjusting the straps on Camille’s dress in a futile motherly attempt to raise the bodice.
Camille was tempted to swat her mother’s hands away.
“Be nice, Camille,” her mother said, patting her on the bare shoulder. “You will at least talk to him, won’t you? I’ve already told him you’re interested.”
“I already told you—” Camille started to say, but her mother was giving a little wave to more late arrivals at the door. Before leaving, her mother flashed Camille a pointed look of warning related to the newcomers, Dr. Julian Breaux, brother of the bride, and his very pregnant wife, Justine.
Her parents, and their friends, were academic snobs. They measured success not by wealth, but the number of degrees a person held. By their standards, she was an utter failure. Never mind that she was fighting to give them the freedom to pursue schooling to the nth degree. That was irrelevant.
As for her ex-fiancé, what did her mother think she was going to do? Dump a glass of wine in Julian’s too-pretty face? She’d already done that. Besides, her wineglass was empty. She set it on the tray of a passing waiter and took another. As for her former best friend, did her mother think she was going to karate chop her baby bump? Justine was history to Camille. Still her BFF, but instead of Best Friend Forever, she was now Bitch of a Former Friend. In Camille’s mind.
Taking a sip of the cool beverage for fortification, Camille sighed, then shrugged.
“What?” Harek asked.
“Huh?” She’d forgotten he was there. That’s how screwed up she was.
“You just muttered something about, ‘It is what it is.’ ”
“I did?”
“You did.” He asked something odd then. Well, odd to her. “Are you wealthy?”
“Me, personally? Hardly.”
“Your family. This little affair has to be costing twenty thousand dollars, and I’ve never seen so many Rolexes or expensive jewelry in one place. I get high just smelling all the gold here.”
It bothered her that Harek would be impressed by such things, but some men were like that. If he was looking to cash in with her, he was in for a rude awakening. She lived on a second lieutenant’s salary. “Wait until you see the wedding reception being planned by the bride’s family. Now, they are probably, as you say, reeking of gold. My parents are wealthy, too, depending on your definition of wealthy. Millionaires are a dime a dozen these days, I’ve been told.”
He nodded. “I recall a time when a handful of gold coins could buy a longship.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” He was still surveying the room, probably mentally tallying the net worth of the whole gathering. Maybe he was really poor and unaccustomed to such excess.
She shouldn’t be so judgmental.
Maybe she was more like her parents than she’d thought.
“Listen, Harek, don’t be offended by my parents or some of the others here.”
“Because I am not wealthy?”
She shook her head. “No, the money is inherited. They’re intellectual snobs.”
He frowned in confusion. “I’m intelligent.”
“Yeah, but you don’t have doctor in front of your name, or a bunch of letters after your name.”
He was still obviously confused. “Why would that matter? Degrees are easy enough to obtain. I have an IQ of 200, but do you see me proclaiming that fact to the world? Why would I? My brothers would clout me aside the head with the flat side of a broadsword if I did.”
“Nobody has an IQ of 200,” she remarked with boozy irrelevance. She was beginning to feel the effect of her one glass of wine on an empty stomach.
He arched his brows at her in disagreement.
Despite herself, Camille kept looking over at Julian and Justine, who had garnered a small crowd, the men shaking his hand in congratulations and the women patting Justine’s big belly.
“Can I assume that is one of your near-husbands?” Harek asked, following the direction of her stares. He was too perceptive, or else she was too transparent. Probably the latter.
“Yes. Dr. Julian Breaux, a heart surgeon, is my third ex-fiancé. And that’s Julian’s wife, Justine. She used to be my best friend, since nursery school.”
“The third, huh? How long ago did you end the engagement?” he asked.
It was nice of him to assume that she was the one who’d broken the engagement, which she had been. With cause. But Camille didn’t want to talk about it. In fact, if it wouldn’t be too obvious, she’d like to slip out of the room and go somewhere to get drunk, or at least mind-numbing buzzed. None of this was Harek’s fault, though, and she didn’t want to be rude to him. “Six months ago,” she replied.
“Six . . . ?” Harek looked at Julian, Justine, and then Camille. “Ah!”
It didn’t take an IQ of 200 or even 100 to figure that one out.
“And they expect you to stand here and pretend naught is wrong?” he asked.
She wasn’t sure who the “they” was that he referred to, but she nodded.
“I do not think so,” he said. He placed his half-empty wineglass on a sideboard and took hers out of her hand, as well. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her soundly, long and openmouthed and wet—there might have been tongues involved—until her knees started to buckle. The silence around them was loud as cymbals clashing. Even the music seemed to have paused. Only then did he wrap an arm around her shoulders and lead her toward the still open doorway.
“Prince Charming to the rescue?” she inquired. When he didn’t respond, she asked, “Are you going to be my Prince Charming, or something?”
“Or something.” She could see that anger simmered just beneath the surface of his stony face. On her behalf? That was nice. Not necessary, but nice.
“Where are we going?” she whispered, trying not to notice the stunned guests they passed. Or Julian, the louse.
“Does it matter?”
She thought only for a second before answering, “Hell, no!”