Knight Errant Read online

  “I understand that.” And, though she wasn’t sure she could explain it to anyone else, she did. “Still, the government needs to know about this. They need to know that Jimmy’s made another threat so they can step up their surveillance of him and his people.”

  The silence that followed lasted so long that she was sure he intended to refuse. “Please,” she added softly.

  Finally he shrugged. “Do what you want with it. There’s something else we need to discuss, Lainie. I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

  Once more she stared at him, positive she couldn’t have heard him correctly, convinced by the sudden emptiness inside her that she had. She wanted to shriek her refusal, to insist that he was wrong, to fling herself into his arms and convince him that, damn it, he needed her. Instead she swallowed hard, forced herself to remain calm and quietly asked, “Why?”

  “I honestly don’t believe Jimmy would hurt you, but as long as there’s even the slightest risk, I think it would be best if you kept your distance.”

  She unfolded her legs and got to her feet, quickly pulled on her jeans, then stripped his shirt off and replaced it with her own. Once everything was zipped and tucked, she walked to the nearest window, faced him and leaned against the sill. “So you won’t let the FBI tell you how to live your life, but you will let Jimmy Falcone.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Or maybe Jimmy’s not the issue here at all. Ten minutes ago you couldn’t get close enough to me. Once you’d gotten what you wanted, suddenly you think I should keep my distance.” She made the suggestion to provoke him. She didn’t believe for an instant that he’d wanted only sex from her—did she? Was there just the tiniest bit of doubt deep in her heart? Was there some insecure little part of her that needed to hear him deny it?

  He didn’t look the least bit provoked as he stood and advanced on her. In fact, he looked mildly amused as he / caught her wrists and pulled her with him, snug between his thighs as he leaned against the wall. “If sex was all I wanted, darlin’, you and I both know I would have gone somewhere else in the beginning, because getting it from you wasn’t the easiest thing I’d ever done. But,” he added in a husky voice heavy with promise, “it was the best.”

  “Then how can you push me away?”

  He touched her face so gently. A month ago she never would have believed that a man with his reputation could be so gentle. “If anything happened to you, it would destroy me. I’ve been through this once before, Lainie. I can’t live through it again.”

  She laid her hand over his. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. You said yourself that this is personal with Jimmy. I don’t mean anything to him. He’s not going to mess with me.”

  “Unless you get in his way.”

  “Is that what happened with her?”

  He became very still, not even breathing for a time. Then finally he sighed deeply and said, “Yeah. She got in his way.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Again he became still before offering a simple, quiet, “No.”

  She wasn’t disappointed. She. hadn’t been holding her breath anticipating that he might confide in her. She wasn’t anxious to hear about the woman he’d loved so much that he’d risked his freedom and his life to avenge her death. She didn’t want to wonder if there was a chance that he might ever care half as much about her. She told herself all those things, but she lied.

  He held her a moment longer, then pressed a kiss to her forehead and pulled her back to the quilt. “Let’s eat before you have to get back to work.”

  The bread was freshly baked, still warm in the center, and the fruit was sweet and juicy. She wondered where he’d gotten it, where he had wandered off to on foot and alone, knowing that Falcone’s people had been watching him. Had he considered the danger and thought he could be careful enough to balance it, or had he been unconcerned? Did he still not give a damn whether Falcone killed him? Was he still so accepting of his own death? Hadn’t everything that had happened between them given him even a small reason to change his mind? Hadn’t their lovemaking meant anything to him?

  She couldn’t ask, not yet. All she could do was pass everything on to Smith Kendricks, try to keep a closer eye on Nicholas and pray.

  When she finished eating, he sent her off to work with a slow, lazy kiss that stole her breath and turned her muscles weak. The next few hours both dragged and rushed. Her professional side was anxious for the meeting with Smith so she could turn over the envelope and its contents. Her personal side dreaded it. She arrived at the Moon Walk ten minutes early, the envelope in a plastic grocery bag to protect it from further fingerprints, and paced uneasily back and forth between the steps leading to the Quarter side of the levee and the longer stairs leading down on the river side. She had just turned at the top of the stairs when she saw Smith approaching.

  He came to stand beside her, gazing out over the river. “It’s a pretty day, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.” She’d been outside the better part of the day, but she hadn’t noticed the weather. This morning she’d been preoccupied with coming clean about last night. This afternoon she’d been disturbed by the contents of the envelope and the method of its delivery. Always she was disturbed by Nicholas.

  “You said you needed to talk.”

  She glanced around, saw an empty bench flanked by other empty benches and gestured toward it. She sat on the edge, dangling the bag by its handles between her knees. Smith chose to lean against the big, boxy planter at its end.

  All the way over here, she’d sought the right words to say what she had to say, but they had eluded her. Now, with his dark gaze steady on her, she grabbed the first words that came to mind. “I was told that I was picked for this job for two reasons—because I’m from Atlanta, so no one here would recognize me, and because...” She faltered, the same way Sam had when he’d made the comment to her. “Because I’m a woman, and a woman would stand a better chance of getting close to Nicholas than a man would. Of course, I’m not supposed to get too close, because that would be unprofessional.”

  His gaze never wavered, not through her jerky little speech or the silence that followed it, until finally he looked away to the river and went straight to the heart of her comment. “How close are we talking?” He sounded embarrassed by the question.

  No more than she was by the answer. Not because she was ashamed. She wasn’t. But she was an adult. Her private life should be just that. But falling in love with Nicholas made that impossible. Before the day was over, everyone in Smith’s office and the FBI who had a need to know would know that she had succumbed to temptation. Without understanding the situation, without caring about the facts, they would judge and condemn her for it. “I spent the night with him.”

  Only yesterday she had told Smith that Nicholas usually spent the nights with her, then had hastened to clarify that, of course, she meant only the evenings. This time no clarification was needed. His grim expression indicated that he understood exactly what she was saying.

  For a long time he was silent, probably considering the consequences of her actions. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, nonjudgmental. “We choose you because we think you’ll appeal to Nick. We tell you to move in right across the hall, to spend as much time with him as possible, to get as close to him as possible, but now that you’ve done it, we’ll have to censure you for it.” He shook his head. “It’s not exactly fair, is it?”

  He was being generous. There had been limitations on how close to Nicholas she was allowed to get, very strict guidelines that she had been well aware of and had disregarded. Going shopping with him had been fine. Encouraging him to kiss her and fondle her breast hadn’t. Taking a walk through the neighborhood with him had been okay. Making out beside the fountain at the church hadn’t Going to dinner with him last night had been perfectly acceptable. Going to bed with him had been way out of line.

  Grimly she focused on one word he’d mentioned. Censure . That was one of their options.
They could keep it on a local level and give her a letter of admonition. They could refer it to the director of the bureau and give her a letter of censure, or they could fire her.

  A month ago losing her job would have been the worst scenario she could imagine. It was all she had. It was her life. This afternoon it didn’t sound so bad. If they fired her, she would close her savings account, add the money from her retirement account, buy a house and work hard at growing beautiful things. Flowers, shrubs, trees. Maybe, if she was very lucky, if Nicholas was very forgiving, a marriage, kids and a future.

  He walked to the top of the stairs, his coat pushed back, his hands shoved in his pockets. “However understandable it is, Lainie, what you’ve done represents a serious error in judgment. You should have come to me as soon as you recognized the problem. You shouldn’t have let it go this far. The bureau will have to take disciplinary action. You’ll be lucky if they don’t fire you. In the meantime, they’ll want you off this case.”

  “But you can keep me on. If you ask Sinclair as a personal favor...” She stood up and joined him. Down below, water lapped over the bottom two steps. Bits of pale brown foam drifted close to the river’s edge, and a rat snacked on litter some visitor had thoughtfully. thrown onto the rocks instead of in the trash can nearby. “Nicholas needs protection, and he trusts me. You’ll never get anyone closer to him than I am. You’ll never get anyone with more of an interest in keeping him alive than I have.”

  He acknowledged that with a nod.

  “Let me stay,” she said, quietly pleading, “and the day the case ends, I’ll turn in my resignation.”

  He gave it a long moment’s thought. In the end, he didn’t give her an answer one way or the other. “I’ll have to discuss it with Remy. We’ll let you know.” He gestured toward the bag she was still clutching. “Is that for me?”

  She handed it over and told him what was inside and how Nicholas got it.

  “It was delivered last night while you were with him?”

  She nodded.

  “Any idea what time?”

  “He closed up the bar for Jamey at midnight. He found the envelope around seven forty-five this morning.”

  “If you had been alone...” He didn’t add as you should have been, but she heard the words anyway. “What are the chances you would have heard something?”

  “Slim. My apartment is over the storeroom and the kitchen. Nicholas’s is directly above the bar and the kitchen.” If there’d been any telltale sounds to hear, chances of hearing them from his place were better than from hers.

  “What was Nick’s reaction to the package?”

  “He was troubled.” Troubled enough to hide it from her this morning. Troubled enough—and worried enough about her safety—to give it to her this afternoon.

  “Because this time the threat included you. Have you talked to him about accepting protection?”

  “He says he can’t.”

  “He doesn’t trust us, and I don’t know that I blame him. He knows from experience how easy it is to buy someone’s loyalty. He saw firsthand a few years ago how easy it was for Jimmy to pay off Remy’s partner. I wish he would change his mind, though.” After a moment, he curiously asked, “If you quit, are you planning to stay here?”

  “That depends on Nicholas. I’ll have to tell him the truth at some point.”

  “Finding out that you’re one of the enemy may be more than he can forgive.”

  She wished his outlook was a little more optimistic. After all, he’d known Nicholas a long time and had worked closely with him on Jimmy’s conviction. It would have cheered her immensely if he’d said that Nicholas was a forgiving man, that everything would be all right.

  What if her deception was more than Nicholas could forgive ? What would she do? Where would she go? Could she stay on Serenity if he hated her? Could she leave it if he remained there?

  She didn’t have any answers, couldn’t make any guesses. The only thing she knew for sure was that she didn’t regret making love with Nicholas, and she surely didn’t regret falling in love with him.

  Saturday morning, like the Saturday before, was dreary, the sun blotted out in the eastern sky, the clouds heavy with the promise of rain. Nicholas wished they would drench Serenity in another long-lasting downpour, and he wished it would happen right now, before he and Lainie made it more than five feet from O’Shea’s. Then he could pull her back inside the bar, secure the shutters and the doors, take her straight upstairs to the bed they’d left not long ago and keep her there for the rest of the day. They wouldn’t have to make love, although of course they would. They could just hold each other. Talk. Sleep. Be lazy and enjoy.

  But the rain didn’t start to fall. It only continued to threaten, and Lainie was dragging him across the street to claim Karen’s car, for which she’d already borrowed the keys. She’d used the weather as an excuse, but he suspected that Wednesday’s late-night visit from Jimmy’s thug was the real reason. A car offered protection that strolling along the sidewalk didn’t. If he was honest, he had to admit that the idea made him feel more secure, too.

  “Tell me again why we’re going back to the junk store.”

  She scowled at him as she unlocked the driver’s door and slid inside to open the passenger’s. “A name like Vieux Carré Antiques does not belong to a junk store.”

  “No, it doesn’t. It belongs to an elegant antique shop over on Royal. In fact, there used to be an elegant old shop over on Royal by that name. I’d forgotten about the place—they went out of business years ago—but a lot of the pieces in my house...” He trailed off. The house had been Jimmy’s, never his, and a lot of its furnishings had come from the shop, until it had suffered a reversal of fortune—a reversal by the name of Jimmy Falcone. A reversal helped along by Nicholas. “So what is it you’re looking for this time?”

  She backed out of the space, circled the house and turned onto the street. “A nightstand for the bedroom and something else for the living room—a bookcase or desk or something.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want them. Besides, someday I’m going to have an old house, and these old pieces will fit perfectly in it.”

  It was the first time he’d heard her make a solid reference to the future, the first time she’d mentioned any desire at all for a house to make a home. Oh, she had talked one afternoon about fixing up the cottage at the end of the street, but the idea of starting a nursery on the grounds had interested her far more, he’d thought, than the house itself. “Where will this house be?”

  “On Serenity, of course.”

  He didn’t ask how she thought she might buy a house, even on Serenity, on the salary Karen paid her. He doubted she’d thought that far ahead, but he had. He’d thought he might buy it for her—for them. She could have her flowers, and he could have her, and they would both be happy.

  He smiled faintly. He hadn’t been happy in so long that he’d thought he had forgotten how it felt. It felt good.

  There weren’t any parking spaces available in front of the furniture store, but Lainie found one half a block away and around the corner. She eased in between a delivery truck and a Dumpster, then they walked back to the entrance of the store. They hadn’t gone more than ten feet inside when the blonde Nicholas remembered from last time moved to block their way.

  “Excuse me,” Lainie said politely, but the woman didn’t move.

  “You’re not welcome here.” Though the woman was looking straight at Nicholas, it was Lainie who answered, repeating her last words with a puzzled inflection.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re Nick Carlucci, aren’t you? I heard you’d gotten out of prison. I was hoping if you came back here that one of your old partners would kill you. No such luck, huh?”

  The face wasn’t familiar, and neither was the name—Lin—on the tag on her left shoulder, but Nicholas had a hunch who the woman was and why she hated him. If memory served, the owner of that elegant old shop had had a d
aughter—no, judging by this woman’s age, probably a granddaughter—whom he was training to take over the family business. Unfortunately for her and for the old man, Jimmy had taken it first. “Don’t give up hope yet.” His voice was as quiet as hers was strident. “It still might happen.”

  The blonde’s smile was cold and glittered. “If it does, it’ll be one of the happiest days of my life.”

  Lainie was staring openmouthed at the woman. “Look, lady, if this is your idea of friendly customer service—”

  “He’s no customer, and if you’re with him, you’re not welcome, either.”

  “But—”

  He caught Lainie’s arm. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “But this is ridiculous. She certainly didn’t mind taking my money the last time.”

  “Only because I didn’t realize who he was. I never would have let you in the store if I’d known. Now I’m telling you for the last time—leave before I call the police.”

  Though Lainie was still sputtering protests, Nicholas pulled her outside and down the street. They returned to the car in silence, where she finally asked, “Who is she?”

  He took the keys from her limp grasp, helped her into the passenger seat, then circled the car. As he pulled away from the curb, he started his answer. It was a long one. “Remember I said there used to be a store on Royal with the same name? I didn’t make the connection before because it’s so different now. It used to be one of the best antique stores in the city. It belonged to an old man named Landry. It had been in his family over a hundred years, and he intended to keep it there. He was teaching his granddaughter the business.”

  After a few moments of silence, he pulled to the side of the street, then gestured to the nearest storefront. “It was right there.”

  Lainie looked, her gaze sweeping over what was now an ipscale restaurant, catering to the tourist trade, then turned back to him.

  “Jimmy collects antiques. He doesn’t care much about hem. He just likes owning beautiful, expensive pieces with a history of belonging to people with better breeding and nore class than he’ll ever have. He bought at Vieux Carré Antiques because they offered the best quality and set the nighest prices.” He fell silent for a moment, remembering he countless times he had accompanied Jimmy through hose doors and the tables, beds, armoires, rugs and even dishes that had passed through the shop before arriving in his own house. The desk in his office, the bench at the foot of his bed, the crystal that had graced his dining table and he table itself... All had been old, sought after by people Who valued them for their history, their workmanship, their uniqueness, and owned by a man who valued them only for their prestige.