Chapter Twenty-Eight

Remy kept checking his rearview mirror to make sure Julia followed and did not veer off toward Alleman. She stuck to his bumper like an experienced tailgater all the way to his doorstep. Once inside, Julia cupped his face and ran her finger over the slight scar on his lip and the small bump on his nose. “I wouldn’t have these fixed. They make you look tougher.”

Probably not shaving for a week added to his image as well, because she caressed his beard before urgently unbuttoning the blue chambray shirt he’d thrown on with jeans the second he noticed Todd in the yard and knew Julia had returned to Chapelle. “I need to see that the rest of you is healed before I take advantage.” Her hands ran over his ribs and across his stomach. “You’ve lost some weight. Nice tan, though.”

“After I shoved Gran out the door, my mother showed up for a week. Mostly, I lived on what they left in the fridge and a huge fruit basket sent by Hartz. Not much else to do but lie around on the deck. If you’re satisfied, I have plans…”

“So do I, and I’m not satisfied yet. It’s been six long weeks for me, Remy.” She backed him against his desk.

“Same for me, but I didn’t have Todd to keep me company all day and all night.”

Julia slapped his newly recovered cheek with a force that showed she owned some muscle, no girly tap this. He rubbed at the sting she left behind and hoped he wouldn’t have to nurse another bruise and concoct a story to explain it. Those blue eyes he’d found so attractive from their first meeting blazed with a fire incendiary enough to leave blisters.

“What is it with you and Todd? Did you honestly believe the rumors your grandmother spread? You should know me well enough to realize I don’t sleep with my interns or my co-workers!” She poked his bare chest with a fingernail he had to be glad she kept short or she might have punctured his unguarded flesh.

“I guess I’m jealous that he’s always with you while I’ve wasted six weeks alone.”

“Days! He’s with me days learning a trade and how to run a business. My uncles showed him Bourbon Street and the bars they like to frequent. I didn’t get a decent day’s work out of him after those sprees. Okay, once we went dancing. Todd sucks at it.”

“I’m fairly good myself. We need to make a date to do that—among other things I’m better at than Todd. He wishes he could do you. Don’t deny it.” Her comments about the intern soothed, but her fingernail prodded him again—and left a crescent-shaped mark on his taut, tanned belly.

“I just said I don’t sleep with co-workers. If we’re ready to start restoring the Queen, you’ve become one of them.”

Remy felt a distinct disappointment below the belt. He tried to counter it. “Technically, I’m hiring you, and we haven’t signed that contract yet.” Wrong move.

“Oh, so Patty did turn you against me.”

“Patty has nothing to do with this. I apologize for letting her push you out of my life, and for that pity call in the middle of the night. Both were unfair.” There, he’d said the words without seeming too wussy.

Now, she stroked his burning cheek. “You were hurt and drugged. No apologies necessary. I doubt you remember the good parts.”

“Jules, the good parts were all that kept me going these last six weeks.”

His plans in paper and ink fled from his mind. His hands went to her rump in those too-tight jeans. He hiked her hard against his crotch, fully encouraged again. Julia laid her lips on his bare chest and licked her way around his nipples leaving smears of red lipstick behind like blood as if he’d been wounded again. Nope, feeling great.

Remy spun her around and hiked her hips onto his desk. He peeled off her jeans and panties, taking her high heels with them to the floor. The small statues that anchored his plans rolled and tumbled. Fly unzipped, he sank himself deep into this amazing woman—and learned one more thing about Julia Rossi. A good argument excited her. He found her ready. Both had six dry weeks to make up.

Julia lay back on the desk and drew his mouth to her lips. His hands, hot with desire, made prints on the cool surface of the glass as he drove into her. Her short nails scored his back beneath the unbuttoned shirt. He felt no pain, only ecstasy. He loved her wild like this. He loved her. Maybe, he should thank his grandmother, but never would.

****

Julia let herself go. After weeks of wondering if she and Remy had any future, she no longer doubted. What form that took, she did not know, but for now it was enough to have him arching over her delivering pleasure with each deep stroke. The heat of his flesh, the roughness of his beard against her neck and across the tops of her breasts drove her to climax. He went on as if he didn’t notice and rebuilt the fire between her thighs to blazing again before he finished.

“Not a wuss,” he murmured as his head sank between the breasts he’d managed to free early in their throes.

Julia raked her fingers through that midnight hair of his and stroked his nape. “I think you are going to have to prove that to me over and over again.”

“Any time, any place, anywhere.” Remy raised her off the glass top of his desk and marveled that they hadn’t fractured it.

The Degas ballerina suffered a broken leg, however. Julia set the one-limbed dancer upright on its pedestal. “I think NOMA carries these because of Degas’ connection to New Orleans. I’ll replace it, money well spent.”

She drew up her red cotton bikini pants, dispensed with the hooker bra, and lowered the scarlet shirt over her breasts. Let Remy enjoy what jiggle she possessed. Jules padded toward first floor powder room to do some restoration of her own. Halfway there, she stopped, arrested by the drawings pinned over Remy’s Black Diamonds designs. Her finger moved along the row: the restored lobby, the modern kitchen hidden behind a metal door embossed to fit in with the period style of the place, a suite straight out of the 1920’s, and her vision of the completed ballroom captured on paper. “Oh, Remy, that’s us dancing beneath the four chandeliers. You put in the pilasters. Don’t you look wonderful in your Confederate uniform?”

“I recreated the image you described, but I doubt any Broussard danced there during the Civil War. One officer claimed that the Cajuns would eat anything and fought fiercely, but had to be chained to the trees at night to keep them from going home after being drafted. The French-speakers didn’t consider it their conflict for the most part. They tended to rely on large families to work their small farms, not slaves. If anything, my ancestors hosted house dances—that eventually morphed into Broussard’s Barn. That’s my true heritage.” Remy shook his head ruefully.

Julia moved to him. “My family didn’t get to New Orleans until after the war, so many Italian and Sicilian immigrants at that time people began to hate and fear them. But we thrived, opening groceries and restaurants, carving stone, laying bricks, and spreading plaster. That’s my family story. Still, girls do dream of beautiful, wide-skirted dresses and a waltz with a handsome man no matter what their origin. Thank you for creating that for me.”

If Remy had discovered her wild side, now she revealed her tenderness. Julia Rossi—he’d never figure her out as he had other women and grown bored with them. Her hands went to his bare ribs again, almost tickling them before she buttoned his shirt. “Have you eaten breakfast?”

“I had a cup of coffee. There’s still some left upstairs.”

“That might go well with the twenty-three beignets I have in the car. You need feeding.”

“In every way.”

They despoiled the black satin bedspread with powdered sugar and more sex before Julia’s phone rang. Gloriously naked except for her crucifix necklace, she took the call. “Yeah, yeah, I’m looking over Remy’s plans for the Queen. They are great. Anything you can’t handle without me? Okay, tell Marv I won’t be back for lunch… Is it?” She checked her watch, two p.m. “Sorry, I lost track of time. Oh, that? You know how people in small towns exaggerate. I did tell Patty off publicly, Sal, but I’m sure she’s exaggerating. Remy still wants us for the restoration project. No harm done, right?…That so. Okay, I’ll tell him.”

Remy brushed some powdered sugar off his dark patch of chest hair and raised his brows. “What has my grandmother done now?”

“Only what she promised, withdrawn the watchers from the Queen though she had some trouble removing Miss Lolly and Miss Maxie. The building has been unprotected since noon.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. As far as the old man is concerned, I took my lumps like a man for betraying the family, and we’re done. He made NuNu apologize for starting the fire. All should be well.”

“That’s what I thought, but she made me worry.”

Remy tried to erase the crease in her forehead with his thumb. “If you are that concerned, I’ll hire an off-duty cop to stay out there until we get our own people on the site.”

“I believe that would be a good idea, but let’s make a visit this afternoon just to be sure. We can create a timeline of how we want the renovations to proceed so it won’t be a wasted journey.”

“No time spent with you is wasted, Jules. One more before we go?”

“Beignet or sex?”

“That’s entirely up to you.”