Three
“Can you get me a cab?” she asked when he’d locked up and they were once again on Charles Street, which seemed busier than before. This really was a party town.
“I’ll see you home.”
“But you have your own place. I don’t want to take you out of your way.”
“My mother would kill me if I didn’t escort you home.”
Ah, mothers she understood. “Okay.”
His car was a low, sleek BMW convertible. He left the top down and the air streaming through her hair felt good after an evening of far too much heat. They purred to a stop in front of his mother’s house and he turned to her.
“Thanks for a . . .” What to say? “An interesting evening.”
“I enjoyed it very much. I look forward to getting to know you better, cousine.”
She licked her lips, a nervous gesture that annoyed her. “Good night.”
She pushed her car door open before he could do anything really aggravating like kissing her again or running around and opening the car door for her. She needed some space and quiet in her room in order to think about this. Perhaps he understood, for he didn’t move, merely sent her a smart salute and pulled away.
She stared after the car wondering what she was getting herself into and knowing there was no way out. The car purred smoothly forward, and as she turned to go up the path, the sound of the engine changed. Puzzled, she turned. To her amazement, the BMW slowed and made a sharp right into the driveway of the Italianate mansion next door to his mother’s house.
No. It couldn’t be. Sure enough, he cruised around a circular drive and stopped right in front of a double-doored entrance. He got out, put the roof up, beeped the car lock, and strolled to the front door.
She ran to the wrought iron fence between them. “Hey,” she called in a sharp whisper.
He turned. Gorgeous, piratical, and mysterious. “Yes, Lucy?”
“You live next door?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you lived in the French Quarter.”
“No. I live here. I like to keep an eye on things for Mama.”
“You’re insane, you know that?” She had no idea why she should feel so irked, but somehow she felt like the victim of a practical joke. She’d been so delighted to find he wasn’t living under the same roof, but now she found they were next-door neighbors.
“Good night, Lucy.”
“Claude?”
“Yes?”
“Are you ever going to tell me where your family got all this money?”
She thought he glanced swiftly up to where his mother was no doubt sleeping. He put a quick finger to his lips. And nodded. Then he made a farewell gesture and disappeared into his house.
Slowly, she made her way back to the front door of Beatrice’s home, thinking furiously. Since her hostess had furnished her with a key, she was able to let herself into the house and pad up to her own bedroom.
She washed up, undressed, and changed into a cotton nightgown. She got into bed, turned out the lights, and lay there, staring up at the ceiling. The bed was comfortable and she was tired from the combined stresses of traveling, meeting new relatives, and making out with her distant cousin.
She ought to have been sound asleep the instant her head hit the pillow, but she wasn’t. She turned the clock around so she wouldn’t keep watching the torturous parade as minutes and hours slipped away. She knew from experience that clock watching only made her occasional insomnia worse. She got up for some water. Went back to bed. And finally gave up. She knew herself well enough to know that sleep wasn’t coming anytime soon.
Too much on her mind. Most of it concerning Claude. It was all too complicated to figure out tonight and she resented her many-times-removed cousin for robbing her of sleep.
She got out of bed to sit by the window. At least, if she couldn’t sleep she could enjoy the mansions by moonlight. There was a banana tree, she thought, across the way, and some huge live oaks with waving curtains of green Spanish moss. The padded window seat was made for star gazing. Curling up with the quilt off her bed, she decided to count stars as though they were sheep until she grew sleepy.
What she counted was one man walking across his back garden at—she glanced at the clock on the bedside table that was now facing her—one-forty-five in the morning.
There was no question as to the identity of the man.
Even though he’d changed the white shirt for a black long-sleeved T-shirt and it was dark enough that she didn’t see him clearly, her body recognized him instinctively. Already, after a day’s acquaintance she recognized his walk, the way he held his shoulders, and the shape of his head. He was as familiar to her as a man she’d been intimate with for months.
He didn’t walk with particular stealth, but the fact of him leaving his house by the back door at this time of night was in itself suspicious.
Instinctively, she shrank back from the window, and almost the second she did, she saw him turn as though he felt her gaze and glance up at her window. She knew he couldn’t see her but she felt a shiver run down her spine anyway.
After a moment he turned around and opened an obviously well-oiled gate since it swung open soundlessly. He passed through and was soon lost to her sight. A minute later she heard a car pulling away.
Where was Claude going? And what was he doing?
As an aid to sleep, staring out her window tonight hadn’t been a real winner. She counted thousands of stars, but it didn’t help. She’d never been so wide awake.
A woman, probably, Lucy decided. One of those unsteady ones his mother didn’t need or want to know about.
Lucy wouldn’t care a bit if he hadn’t been kissing her earlier in the evening. Had the secrecy been for her benefit? Maybe he thought, Hey, Lucy’s not into sex tonight. No problem. I’ll call a friend.
Well, he was going to find that Lucy didn’t share. Not even for a holiday fling that would only last a few weeks.
She got back into bed deciding that this promising beginning with Claude was pretty much done for. Well, better she should learn the truth about him now, she thought, punching the pillow and bunching it under her head one more time. Perhaps this was a good lesson to her not to stray from her usual research-heavy getting-to-know-you period. Obviously, Cousin Claude was going to be receiving a failing grade. For all his sexiness and the undeniable wow factor when he touched her, kissing cousins was all they were ever going to be. Too bad, she thought, shifting around trying to get comfortable.
No. Not too bad.
Best to know in advance that this guy was a walking sex god and a man who didn’t worry much which woman was on his arm, so long as there was one.
Okay. Fine. Not for her.
If only she could convince her overstimulated and currently undersexed body of that fact.
As the hours crept by she became more and more irritated with her next-door neighbor for robbing her of sleep. This was all his fault. And a man who robbed her of sleep for all the wrong reasons was going to be forced to pay.
At one point she heard sounds of movement coming from Beatrice’s room and hoped she hadn’t telegraphed her restlessness to her hostess.
Around five she heard something. She couldn’t have said what, but her senses were so attuned to what was going on next door that, sure enough, when she crept to the dormer window to peer down at Claude’s backyard, there he was, sneaking back in to his own house as stealthily as he’d snuck out earlier.
The tom cat was home from his alley prowling.
Meow.