Knight Errant Page 16

  They left the bar and headed for the restaurant, a quiet little place in the heart of the Quarter. There were fewer than a dozen tables, several of which were afforded privacy in the dining room’s odd little nooks and crannies. Their table was in the courtyard, once open to the hot Louisiana sun, now glassed in and surrounded by brick walls and lush plants. The only music was the water falling in the central fountain, the only intrusion the waiter who took their order, then served their drinks.

  “I never knew this place was here.”

  “You’ve only been here a few weeks. You can live a lifetime in New Orleans and never know everything.”

  “How did you discover it? Someone special bring you here?”

  He shook his head. Jimmy had introduced him to the place. The old man had planned many a crime here, and Nicholas had prepared many a defense.

  “There must have been someone special at some point,” she persisted, her smile sweet and inviting all sorts of confidences. “Surely you’ve been in love a time or two.”

  “Or two,” he agreed. “As much as I was capable, I loved Jolie.”

  With a shake of her head, she brushed that off. “Doesn’t count. You were a kid having sex for the very first time. Of course you loved her.”

  “Did you love your first?”

  Her expression sobered. “I never had a chance to have a first at home. My father insisted on putting the fear of God into every boy I went out with. They would have died before sullying his precious little girl. After a while, they quit asking me out.”

  “So you waited until you left home.”

  “I moved to Athens because I had friends going to school there who would let me crash on their floor. My first night in town they took me to a party, and...” Her shrug was uneasy, her smile a little sad, more than a little ashamed. “I never even knew his name.”

  It seemed perfectly reasonable to him. With her mother dead and her brother gone, living four long years with only the father she despised who loved her too much, she must have been desperate for some semblance of normalcy in her life. Teenage girls away from home in a college town for the first time got a little wild, and they certainly had sex with teenage or slightly older boys. She’d just wanted to be like other girls—at least, until she’d done it.

  The smile tightened and lost its shame but gained no pleasure. “So now you know two things about me that I’ve never told anyone else. Let’s get back to the original subject—you being in love.”

  How she’d lost her virginity and how her mother had lived and died. To most people they would be nothing but stories, one unremarkable, the other sad. They meant more than that to Lainie, though. Shame and sorrow, significant times in her life and, therefore, very personal. It said something of her feelings for him that she’d shared them with him. It made him a little uncomfortable. It touched him.

  And it aroused him like hell.

  “Jolie does count,” he disagreed. “We were together a long time. It wasn’t just sex.”

  “Okay, but that was when you were a kid. As an adult, as a man, have you ever been in love?”

  He shifted his gaze to the brick wall a dozen feet ahead. It was old, original to the building, the brick soft and red. Some sort of vine had been planted along the base, and it spread up and out in a fan, sinking its roots into the mortar, attaching its tendrils to the face of the bricks. Maybe someday the vine would become too invasive, its roots chinking the mortar the bricks needed to stand, and it would destroy the wall. Or maybe the vine strengthened it, the roots become a part of its support. Did Rena—knowing her, loving her, losing her—strengthen him, or was she going to someday destroy him? He suspected the answer was both. It had been her memory that had gotten him through the last twenty years, and it was the things he’d done in her memory that were going to get him killed.

  Unless he decided to fight Falcone one last time. But this time it wouldn’t be for Rena. It would be for himself. And Lainie.

  “Yes,” he replied at last, meeting her gaze again. “I’ve been in love. Have you?”

  She flashed that uneasy smile again. “I was married, remember?”

  “And you woke up the next morning and realized what a tremendous mistake you’d made. You didn’t love him, did you?”

  “I did.” His steady gaze made her shift and admit, “I thought I did. I tried.” She didn’t pause more than a second. “What about the woman you loved? Where is she now?”

  He didn’t have to answer. In all these years he’d never told anyone anything about Rena. All Jolie knew was that there’d been a woman. Jamey didn’t know that much. Nicholas hadn’t wanted to share her with anyone while she was alive, and once she was dead, she had remained his private sorrow. She had been too special, too important, to entrust her memory to anyone around him. There had been a practical reason for his silence, as well: if anyone who worked for Falcone had made the connection between him and Rena, at best, he never would have been allowed within a mile of Jimmy. At worst, it would have meant his death.

  He was good at not answering. He’d been doing it for years. So it was with some measure of surprise that h heard himself saying, “She’s dead. She died because of me.” He waited a moment for that to sink in, then quietly added, “Now you know something that I’ve never told any one else.”

  He waited for her to respond. Her expression was as still as serious, as it’d been before he’d answered. She hadn’t shown any shock at hearing that Rena was dead or any revulsion on hearing that he was responsible. She had probably already guessed the first and suspected that he blamed himself for it. She probably didn’t believe him, probably thought that he was accepting guilt where there was none. Now she would want proof, explanations, details, answers.

  For a long time she didn’t say anything. Then she laid her hand lightly over his. “Life is tough, isn’t it?”

  He had expected more questions, more demands. Instead she’d offered understanding. Again he was surprised.

  Life is tough. It sure as hell was.

  But a woman like Lainie could make it a little easier.

  After their meal, they moved on to the blues club where they had shared their first dance. They sat out the first few numbers, then she rose from the table, silently extended her hand and, when he took it, led him onto the dance floor.

  It was sweet, erotic, tormenting. The night was cool, the music was hot, and this thing between them—this need, this hunger—was damn near unbearable. Nicholas tried to enjoy the dance for exactly what it was—intimacy of the public variety, their bodies pressed together, her breasts against his chest, his arousal against her belly, every movement stirring a raw ache inside. He tried not to think of what it could but wouldn’t lead to: him and Lainie, alone and naked, exploring, learning, moving together, wicked, wild sex, passion, desire, satisfaction. She wasn’t ready for all that yet.

  He was beyond ready.

  Halfway through the second song, she tilted her head back and, with an effort, focused her hazy gaze on his. “Did you dance with her like this?”

  He shook his head. Only in bed, the very first night they’d met and a thousand times after that. He’d never had such riches in his life, not physically and never emotionally. Rena had loved him from the beginning, and it had never wavered right up until the end.

  He wondered if Lainie could ever love him.

  As he gazed down at her, somewhere off toward the doors a light flashed. Tourists, trying to capture the Quarter’s night life on film, as if memories wouldn’t be enough. He was living proof that memories could last a man a lifetime, but he was ready for some new ones. He was tired of only remembering what it was like to be happy, loved and in love. He wanted to know again. He wanted to feel it, wanted to live it again, and he wanted to do it with Lainie.

  Bending his head, he nuzzled her ear and sent a shiver through her that he felt in his own body. His mouth directly above her ear, he murmured, “Darlin’, unless you’re willing to go to the nearest bed with
me right now, I can’t take any more of this. It’s your choice.”

  For a moment, she continued to move with the music. Then, with a reluctance he could feel, she stopped and took a step back. It put only a few inches’ space between them, but it was enough. It made her answer disappointingly clear.

  He gestured toward the doors, then followed her through them. As the night’s humid chill replaced the smoky warmth of the bar, she pulled her jacket tight and held it with her arms across her chest. He was grateful for his own jacket and for the lower temperatures that provided his body with a little badly needed cooling.

  Lainie didn’t speak until they reached Jackson Square. There she walked to the wrought iron fence, wrapped her fingers around a bar and stared at the statue of Andrew Jackson. When she finally broke her silence, her voice was unsteady. “I’m not playing games with you, Nicholas.”

  He didn’t think she was, but he didn’t say so. A little guilt on her behalf could work in his favor.

  When he didn’t respond, she turned around and leaned against the edge of the masonry wall that supported the fence. “I want to make love with you, but I can’t.”

  “Because of who you are. What you are.”

  She nodded unhappily.

  “Exactly what does that mean, Lainie? Were you the head of the Dixie Mafia? Were you a crook, a drug addict, a prostitute? Are you a nun? Do you have a husband and ten kids back in Atlanta wondering where the hell Mama has gone?”

  She shook her head.

  “Those are the worst things I can think of, and they don’t matter, so the secret you’re hiding doesn’t matter, either. It can’t affect the way I feel about you. Whatever it is, it can’t make me not want you.” A new possibility occurred to him, and he moved to stand only a few feet in front of her. “Were you with some bastard who mistreated you? Are you afraid it’ll happen again? Are you afraid I’ll hurt you?”

  “No,” she whispered, and he believed her. He had never seen fear in her eyes, not even when they’d gotten as close as two people could get without completing the act. There had been only desire, need and, at times like these, regret.

  Frustration propelled him away, then he came back to lean beside her. “Can you tell me one thing? Do I stand a chance? Because I don’t want to reduce what’s between us to just sex, but it’s been a hell of a long time for me, darlin’. I’ll wait if there’s a chance, but if there’s not...” He stared hard at the benches in front of them and the trash collected underneath before gathering the courage to look in her face and finish. “I’ve got to find someone else.”

  She stared at him, her eyes wide, her expression one of hurt and dismay. Abruptly she jumped to her feet and took off. He let her go and for a moment sat there damning himself. Who was he kidding? He didn’t want anyone else but Lainie. No matter how many times she said no, he would wait, because eventually she would have to say yes. Eventually she would learn to trust him, to love him, and with that the last barrier, whatever the hell it was, would have to come down.

  As he got to his feet, he felt every one of his years in his bones and double the number in his soul. He turned the corner she’d rounded and started toward Decatur, expecting to see her somewhere just up ahead, waiting for him, but the sidewalk between Chartres and the next street was practically empty. He picked up his pace until he was running, sliding to a stop at the light, searching the street to his left for her. The ivory jacket she was wearing should stand out, even in the night, but he saw no sign of her.

  His heart rate increasing, his panic level rising, he spun to look behind him and saw her leaning against the fence, her head bowed, her arms tight across her stomach. He bowed his own head for a moment and said a silent prayer of thanks, then took a few steps toward her. “Let’s go home, Lainie.”

  When she looked up, he saw the sign of threatening tears that she hadn’t quite controlled. He quickly looked away. If she cried, he would have to comfort her, and there was only so much torture a man could endure in one evening.

  While he waited for her to join him, he stepped to the curb and flagged down a cab, opening the back door for her, sliding in beside her. He gave the cabbie O’Shea’s address, and the shriveled little man twisted in the seat to face him. “I don’t go to Serenity.”

  Of course not. No one with good sense or other choices went to Serenity. He was there because he lacked good sense, and Lainie thought she had no other choices. “The corner of Serenity and Decatur will do.”

  With a nod, the driver faced forward again, waited for a slight break in traffic, then swung the cab in a wide arc. It wasn’t wide enough, of course. He had to back up, pull forward and back up again, all the while ignoring the impatient honks from the traffic he’d stopped in four lanes. Less than five minutes later, he deposited them at the end of Serenity and was on his way back for a more lucrative fare.

  As they approached O‘Shea’s, Nicholas finally broke the silence. “I never got around to telling you that I’ve taken a job. I’m now officially the evening bartender at O’Shea’s. Tonight was my last free night for a while.” He had hoped to spend it doing something special, and he had. Any time with Lainie was special. But he surely had hoped for a more satisfying ending to it.

  “That’s nice,” she murmured. “Jamey can use the time with his family, and you need—”

  He quietly interrupted. “I need you, Lainie.”

  “Time with other people.” She stopped just before the bar and faced him. “Thank you for the dinner. Enjoy the job, and...” She looked away, then back, smiling the unsteady sort of smile that begged to be kissed away. “Good luck finding someone else.” With that she made another quick escape, into the bar and no doubt straight upstairs to the safety of her apartment. He could follow her, could bang on the locked door, apologize, beg and plead, but it wouldn’t do any good. He had screwed up really good this time. It would take some effort to make up for it.

  Tonight he just didn’t have the energy.

  It was past time for a decision.

  Lainie had tried to busy herself with normal tasks when she’d come in. She had removed her makeup and brushed her teeth, put the tennis shoes she’d kicked off in the living room in the bedroom closet, gathered up the newspapers that had served as drip cloths underneath the dresser and put away her clothes in the freshly lined dresser drawers. Her gun, slipped from its holster to prevent rusting, her badge and her credentials were in the top right-hand drawer, under a pile of socks, superficially hidden but easily accessible in an emergency.

  All that had taken less than twenty minutes, though, and she’d been left with nothing to do but think, and nothing to think about but Nicholas. Her job. Her future, or lack of one.

  She had already crossed the line with regards to her job. She suspected she had started across it the afternoon she’d moved in here when Nicholas had invited her to join him for a drink. But so far she hadn’t done anything she couldn’t turn back from. She had come close—too close tonight, last Saturday, the Monday before—but she could still save her job and herself.

  But she was no longer sure that saving her job and saving herself were the same thing. Saving her job meant keeping her distance from Nicholas, emotionally as well as physically. Saving herself just might mean getting as close to him as humanly possible.

  It was a risk, no denying that. Making love with him would almost surely mean losing her job. And for what? A short-term affair? A long-term one with no promises for the future? Or maybe so much more. Maybe making love would lead to just that—creating love where there had been none, building the desire, need, caring and concern into something that would last a lifetime. Maybe this next step could lead to the future she had long dreamed of and long ago given up on.

  And maybe it could lead to heartache.

  But not pursuing it would definitely lead there. She couldn’t stand back and watch him turn to another woman. It would destroy her.

  She didn’t have many options. She could end this relationship ri
ght now and break her heart but keep her job. She could have an affair with him for as long as the assignment lasted, keep it her most intimate secret and try to hold on to the job when it was done. She could become lovers with him and tell him the truth; he might love her anyway, and she could trade the job for happily-ever-after with him. Or they could become lovers, he might hate her for the truth, and she would lose both him and her career.

  Four possibilities, and only one happily-ever-after. Not very good odds.

  With a morose sigh, she walked to the window and stared out at Serenity. Maybe she wasn’t being fair to him. He’d said he didn’t care if she’d been a crook, a drug addict or a prostitute. He’d insisted that whatever she was hiding didn’t matter to him. He’d argued that nothing she’d done in the past could affect the way he felt about her now. Maybe the fact that she was an FBI agent wouldn’t matter to him. Maybe the lies she’d told and the deceptions she’d practiced wouldn’t change the way he looked at her, thought of her, wanted her.

  Maybe. But she was pretty sure that, in his eyes, being an FBI agent was a much graver sin than being a crook, drug addict or prostitute. She’d heard the derision in his voice, had seen it in his eyes. She didn’t think the knowledge that she was one of the damned was going to change his opinion of them. It would just change his opinion of her.

  But he was an intelligent man and a brilliant lawyer. He was capable of seeing both sides of every case, of using rationale and logic, of seeing that, like him in his vendetta against Falcone, she’d done something less than honorable but for the most honorable of reasons. Yes, she had deceived him, but she’d done it to protect his life. He would have to forgive her.

  She hoped. She prayed. She was risking her future on it.

  Down on the street Jamey came into the light, crossing to the other side, going through the gate at Kathy’s House. A glance at her watch showed that it was ten minutes before midnight. Either he’d closed early or Nicholas, who had never come upstairs, was doing it for him.