Knight Errant Page 15

  There wasn’t much chance of that. Staying was out of the question—her job and her life were in Atlanta—and raising flowers had been her mother’s dream, not hers. It was a nice dream, though—fixing up the cottage, filling its huge yard with every sort of flower, tree and shrub that flourished in New Orleans’ tropical climate, living and working with people she had come to like and respect, contributing to a community that she believed she could enrich. Oh, yes, it was a sweet dream.

  She didn’t deal in dreams, though, but hard realities. If she failed to protect Nicholas, neither Serenity nor New Orleans would be bearable. If she succeeded in her job, he would make staying impossible. He would send her back to Atlanta and would never want to see her again.

  “What about nights?”

  She blinked, then focused on Smith. “Nights? He usually spends them with me.” At his faint smile, she felt a flush heat her cheeks. “I mean the evenings, of course. The last couple of nights, around nine o’clock, he’s taken over the bar so Jamey could spend some time with his family.” Before nine, he’d been in her apartment both evenings. They’d eaten dinner on the slip-covered sofa, then spent the rest of the evening working on her dresser and tables. She was great with the finish sanding between coats, while his talent lay in meticulous, bubble-free applications of polyurethane. In a different world, she could have her gardens and he could build quite a business refinishing fine old furniture. He could help her plant and she could help him sand, and together they could accomplish anything.

  But this was the only world they had, and in this world, she was an FBI agent, and he was an ex-con disbarred lawyer with whom she was prohibited any association at all except in the performance of her duties. That kiss in the rain Saturday had been enough to tarnish her so-far spotless record. Another one or two like it, and she would be out of a job. Who would hire her then when the FBI had fired her for professional misconduct?

  “Have you talked to him about accepting protection?”

  She gave him a dry look. “The subject isn’t open for discussion. He says he doesn’t give a damn. Period.”

  “He hasn’t given a damn about much of anything for a long time except seeing Jimmy punished.”

  “Why did that mean so much to him? He risked his life. He went to prison. Why?”

  “The only reason he ever gave was that Falcone killed someone. We went through all the deaths attributed to Jimmy, and we couldn’t make a connection.”

  She watched a piece of trash float by in the muddy brown water. “Maybe it wasn’t directly attributable to him. Maybe she overdosed on drugs bought from his people. Maybe she was one of his girls. Maybe she gambled away more than she could afford to lose.” There were plenty of ways people like Jimmy Falcone killed, many of them too roundabout or distantly connected for the law to hold him accountable. But Nicholas could.

  “Why do you say she?”

  Her choice of pronouns had been subconscious, but she would have made the same choice if she’d given it any thought. “He sacrificed fifteen years, his career and maybe even his life to this vendetta. Such an extreme need for vengeance must have been fed by tremendous grief or sorrow or guilt. What greater sorrow for a man than to lose the woman he loved?”

  It was the obvious conclusion. Of course Nicholas had loved some woman. He was a grown man. It was only natural. And of course his love had been powerful, strong enough to drive him for ten years or more, intense enough to make him believe that life without her wasn’t worth living. That was why he refused the government’s protection. That was why he didn’t give a damn about where he lived, how he lived or even if he lived. Obvious...but she didn’t like it just the same.

  She hated being jealous of an unknown dead woman, hated the sense of defeat she felt. How could she compete with a ghost? How could anything she had to offer compare with the memory of his one great love?

  She wasn’t competing, she reminded herself sternly. All she had to offer Nicholas was protection, nothing more, nothing less. His past love life was none of her business, and his future love life, if he had one, was sure as hell none of her business.

  “Talk to him when you get a chance. Try to change his mind about accepting our help. I trust you to keep an eye on him, but knowing Jimmy, I’d feel more comfortable if Nick. were in a more secure place.”

  “I’ll try, but he may not listen.” Or he might repeat his suggestion of Saturday afternoon—give me a reason to live—and she might make an effort. If she succumbed, if she was that weak, that foolish, her only hope was that they would both live to regret it. “I’d better get back. I’ve been gone too long.”

  “Are these meetings difficult for you to arrange?”

  “No. Karen sends me on errands pretty often. I’ll just tell her I got lost.” It wouldn’t be entirely a lie. Thanks to Nicholas, she was feeling more than a little lost right now. Offering a grim smile in place of a goodbye, she headed for the parking lot where she’d left Karen’s car. The interior was fragrant with the smell of day-old bread and rolls, another donation to the center.

  She drove through downtown and the Quarter, making all the right turns without thinking. She was becoming accustomed to the city, familiar with its streets and traffic. She was starting to feel at home there—which had very little to do with the city and everything to do with Serenity, with Kathy’s House, with her job. With Nicholas.

  As she slowed for the turn onto Serenity, another car rolled to a stop there. It was common knowledge in the neighborhood that the car was stolen, but it was so battered that the owner had probably failed to report it. It looked and sounded one step away from the junkyard, but it provided adequate transportation for the punks who had stolen it.

  Trevor Morgan was behind the wheel. He didn’t even look in Lainie’s direction, but Vinnie Marino in the passenger seat did. He made a big show of it, leaning forward and glaring at her all the way past. At the last second, just before he passed out of her field of vision, he grinned and made a grand kissing gesture, followed by an obscene one. The second gesture didn’t bother her. The kiss sent shivers of revulsion down her spine.

  Classes were letting out at the school as she parked in the lot behind Kathy’s House. Cassie and Jaye Stephens, who taught the upper grades, were lining their thirty or so students in the grass, preparing to walk them home. In the beginning, the escort had been necessary, the only way some parents would agree to let their children attend. Lately the streets seemed safer, but the practice continued and probably always would.

  Lainie was backing out of the car with an armload of bakery bags when Nicholas joined her. “You’ve been gone quite a while for a simple errand,” he remarked as he took her bags and freed her to reach inside for the remaining half dozen.

  She tried to ignore the little pangs of guilt inside. “Was Karen concerned?”

  “No. She just didn’t think it should take so long.”

  “I got lost.” The lie flushed her face, but she was far enough behind him that he wouldn’t notice. “My sense of direction is okay, but I guess I don’t pay enough attention. Like the day I walked past the furniture store without noticing it.”

  “You were upset that day.” He slowed until she had no choice but to fall in step beside him. “Were you upset today?”

  “No. Just lost.”

  “Next time ask me to go along. I never get lost.”

  “I bet you don’t,” she murmured as she maneuvered the door open, held it for him, then followed him inside.

  Most of the bread went straight into the freezer in the utility room. The remaining loaves and the waxed paper bags holding two dozen cinnamon rolls went onto the counter in the kitchen. After returning Karen’s keys to her and repeating the lie about losing her way, Lainie went outside with Nicholas on her heels. “Is there any particular reason you were looking for me?” she asked as she started toward the storage shed in the back corner.

  “I got bored in the apartment.”

  “And I’m supposed to
do something about that?”

  The look he gave her was teasing and tempting, and she expected a response to match. He controlled the urge, though, and said, “Actually I was looking for the key to your apartment. I thought I’d put the last coat of polyurethane on the tables so you wouldn’t have an excuse not to go to dinner with me tonight.”

  Barely breathing, she looked at him a long time. The key to her apartment. It was a simple enough request. After all, he’d spent plenty of time there. He’d done most of the hard work on the tables. It wasn’t as if he were likely to steal anything—wasn’t as if she had much of anything worth stealing. The Lainie he knew would probably hand over the key without the slightest hesitation.

  But he didn’t know the real Lainie, the one with the badge, credentials and pistol hidden in the bottom of her backpack in the darkest corner of the closet. And while she knew she could trust him not to take anything, she wasn’t sure she could trust him not to do a little snooping. He was a curious man, and she had a lot to be curious about.

  She picked up a pair of gardening gloves, shook them, then tugged each one on. “Funny. I don’t remember being invited to dinner tonight.”

  He shoved his hands into his jean pockets as he leaned against the jamb. “Will you go to dinner with me tonight?”

  “Yes, I will. See how easy that was? You didn’t even. have to bribe me by finishing the tables.”

  “So I’ll do it anyway. Like I said, I’m bored.”

  “So do something important.”

  “I assume you have a suggestion.”

  She smiled coolly. “You could help Karen track down the owner of the apartment building the Williamses live in. The tenants are having some real problems, and the management company doesn’t want to do anything besides collect the rent.”

  “Easy job.”

  “Maybe for an experienced lawyer. I bet you could find out the information and still be ready to go to dinner around six.”

  For a moment he simply looked at her, then, with a grin, shook his head. “All right. You win this time—but only this time.”

  “ooh, don’t count on it,” she said softly. “You’ll get bored again or you’ll want something from me again. Who knows what you might agree to next time?”

  When she started to leave the shed with gardening tools in hand, he blocked most of the doorway so she had to pass indecently close. For just a moment, he stopped her, his hand warm on her arm, his breath warmer on her temple. His mouth brushed her forehead, her cheek and finally her mouth as he softly, hoarsely answered. “And who knows what you might give me in return?”

  He kissed her then—tender, sweet and incredibly possessive, as if he had every right, as if she belonged to him and only him. When he broke off, too soon—or was it too late?—he cupped his palm to her cheek for a brief caress, gave her a gentle smile, then walked away without a look back.

  Lainie stepped back into the shadows inside the shed, the back of one gloved hand pressed to her mouth—to capture the feel of the kiss, to stifle the half laugh, half cry bubbling up inside her, to send a calming message to her unsettled stomach. He was going to be the ruin of her with those kisses, those touches and all those sweet temptations.

  She just prayed that, as a result, she wasn’t the death of him.

  Lainie had been right. Uncovering the name of the errant landlord hadn’t taken more than a single phone call, though, frankly, Nicholas had cheated. His call had been to a private investigator whose business he’d supported during his years with Falcone. In no time at all, thanks to computers and a friend at City Hall, the PI had called back with a name, address and telephone number. Karen had been grateful, even though it had been a nothing job. Now they could go on to their next step, she had said with great satisfaction. He hadn’t asked what that was, afraid he would hear the word lawsuit, along with a few other unwelcome words, like advice and help. He wasn’t in the help-giving business anymore.

  Not that he ever had been—at least, not legitimate help to people who truly needed it. To his knowledge, he had never defended an innocent man. Early in his career, there had been those who had claimed innocence, though he’d never believed them. Once he’d started working for Jimmy, none of his clients had bothered with the lie of innocence, except in court.

  All those years in school, all that hard work and money, all that effort to become one of the best lawyers in the damn state, and all he had done was manipulate the system to set guilty people free so they could go out and rob, steal and kill again. It was a depressing thought.

  Rolling onto his side, he deliberately avoided Rena’s picture and checked the clock. For the five years he was in prison, time had never really mattered. He’d gotten up when he was told to, had eaten not when the clock or his stomach had said it was time but when the guards said it was, and he’d gone to bed when they decreed. For the first few weeks out, he hadn’t cared about time, but lately he was starting. He wanted to know when it was time for Lainie to go to work, when it was time for her to come home. This evening he certainly wanted to know when it was time to meet her for dinner, and so he had finally set the clock to the proper hour.

  She was expecting him in ten minutes. He had heard her come up the stairs forty minutes ago, had heard her get into the shower soon after. That had been both pleasure and pain—lying in bed still naked from his own shower, listening to the water run on the opposite side of the wall and knowing that she was naked, too.

  Rising from the bed, he got dressed, ran his fingers through his hair, locked up the apartment and crossed the few feet to her door. “It’s open,” she called, and he hung the jacket he carried over the stair rail, then turned the knob, letting the door swing in on its own weight.

  She was standing in front of the dresser in the living room, fastening earrings in place, sliding a half-dozen silver and gold bangles onto her right wrist, fixing a substantial looking gold cuff around her left wrist. She was wearing jeans that fitted more snugly than her favorite pair and one of the two white shirts that still gave him restless nights and heated dreams. Unfortunately it was the wrong one—or, if they really did want to go anywhere but straight to bed, the right one.

  Finished with the jewelry, she smiled at him. “You look nice.”

  He gave his clothes—khaki trousers with his own white cotton shirt—a glance, then shrugged off her compliment. In the years he’d worked for Jimmy, he’d worn suits of silk or linen every day. His former boss had believed in dressing the part you were playing, and Nicholas’s role had been that of successful attorney. He’d never faced a prosecutor whose clothes were better chosen, had never faced a single juror who ever might have guessed that he’d come from the poorest part of the city. He had looked the part, and he had become what he’d pretended to be.

  He had no pretenses left. He was an ex-con with more money than he ought to have and nothing else. This was as nice as it got.

  “Before we go, could you help me move the dresser? I tried to scoot it, but the legs wouldn’t scoot and kept bowing .”

  “Grab that end.” He took hold of the marble top, lifted and followed her into the bedroom. The waist pack she carried instead of a purse was on his end, sliding with each step they took. Just as they set it down, it reached the edge. He reached for it, but she pulled it away a little too hastily, he thought, and quickly secured it around her waist “What do you carry in there?”

  “The usual. Makeup, tissues, breath mints, money, keys.” She grinned. “You know. Women’s stuff.” She adjusted the dresser an inch or two this way, another inch that way, then bent to make sure the legs were straight

  While she was busy, his attention drifted to the only other piece of furniture in the room—the only piece he had any interest at all in: the bed. It was a double, like his, in better shape than his and unmade. There was nothing frilly or fussy about it. The sheets were white, as was the loosely woven blanket, and the comforter was yellow and white stripes. It was inexpensive, quilted in a puffy diamond
pat tern that was slightly off-kilter with nylon thread that tended to give up its stitches easily. It was the sort of comforter that, after a year’s use and a year’s washings, got relegated to picnics in the yard and pallets on the floor.

  “That looks great, doesn’t it?”

  He moved to study the dresser. The marble was in fair shape, and she’d done a good job on the wood. It bore little resemblance to the twenty-five-dollar eyesore the furniture store had delivered a week and a half ago. The mirror could use a little resilvering or, better, complete replacement. The image it reflected—him, her, the bed—was slightly distorted, wavy, softening around the edges before disappearing. “You do good work.”

  “We,” she said, correcting him. “You did a lot of it yourself. Ready?”

  He led the way out, picking up his jacket, waiting for her to lock the door, then slide the key into her pocket. When he had approached her this afternoon about working on the tables, he had expected her to hand the key over without hesitation. Instead she had simply looked at him for a long time before none too subtly steering him away from the idea. Had she been thinking of all the things in her apartment he could snoop through, all the secrets she had hidden? Did she think he would stoop to that?

  He wasn’t offended. The final coats of finish for the tables wouldn’t have taken long, and she must have brought a few personal things with her—mementos, souvenirs, the sort of things sentimental women didn’t leave behind when they moved on. Maybe when he was done, he would have looked for them and through them. There were things he wanted to know about her, and he’d learned from Jimmy to take advantage of whatever opportunity presented itself. When else would he be alone in her apartment, free to intrude on her privacy? When else would he be given the chance to find out something, anything, about her life before New Orleans?