Bayou Hero (21 page)

But the sexiest thing she found was a nightshirt, way too big, with a crazed-looking rabbit on the front. A wedding-night gift from her mom, it made her laugh out loud before she stuffed it back into the drawer.

The hell with it, she decided, grabbing a pair of lavender-striped boxers and a pale gray tank. Landry wasn’t coming over for her clothes; he’d seen the way she dressed. He wanted to see
her.
Naked.

Some emotion—anticipation? nervousness?—sucked the air right out of her lungs.

Her last night with a man—one night in an anonymous hotel with an anonymous visitor to the city—hadn’t been her proudest moment. Tonight she was aiming for a whole other outcome.

Tonight she was hoping for more. Like long-term, a-future-and-more.

After tugging the tank over her head, then freeing her hair, she sank onto the padded stool in the middle of the room. She’d really done this, hadn’t she? Gone and fallen for Landry, crazy-mad, wanting, God, anything and everything they could have. She had figured she would fall in love with someone after Jimmy; she’d just thought it would take a good long while—a few decades sounded about right—for all the shudder-inducing memories of her marriage to fade.

Mr. Second-Time Right had never had a face in her future-gazing. She could have described him with three words: different from Jimmy. Another NCIS agent, she’d supposed, or maybe a sailor or Marine. Someone with a career of his own that meshed well with hers.

Not a bartender. Not in New Orleans. Not within five years of the divorce.

Not someone she’d give up a case for. Not someone she’d give up the job for. Not someone she would stay in New Orleans for.

A sigh that was both anticipation and nervousness, along with a little bit of fear, rustled through her.

She jogged downstairs, double-checked the locks front and back, clicked on the lamp next to her reading spot on the sofa, a light on the stair landing, a third in the upstairs hallway. Then she slid into bed, sure she wouldn’t sleep well.

Within five minutes, she was out. Never let it be said that Alia Kingsley missed food or sleep for anything other than a dire emergency.

It was hours later when she found herself just as suddenly awake. Drowsy and sleep-befuddled, she rolled onto her back as lightning flashed outside the window, illuminating the entire room. She figured her neighbors deserved curtains on her bedroom windows, even if the only goings-on were sleeping, but she loved nighttime storms, so the curtains were pale and sheer. In the middle of a storm, it was like turning on a couple three-hundred-watt bulbs.

It wasn’t just the storm that had awakened her, though. Down the hall, the third stair from the top creaked; a moment later a solid footfall sounded in the hall. A size-eleven sneaker, she suspected, and a little bubble of pleasure popped inside her.

She slid up until she was leaning against the headboard and brushed her fingers through her hair. A shadow fell across the floor in the hallway, then Landry stepped into the doorway, hands in the air. “Is it safe to come in?”

She raised her own hands. “Pistol’s on this nightstand. Taser’s on the other.” She glanced at his wet hair, at the T-shirt molded by moisture to his chest, then nodded toward the windows. “I take it we’re getting rain.”

He toed off his shoes before looking around.

“Bathroom’s next door down.”

He disappeared again. When he returned, the shoes were missing, no doubt, draining on the bathmat. His shirt was gone, too, probably hanging over the shower curtain rod, an image powerful enough to make her shiver. She’d missed those little telltale signs that said a man lived here—or, at least, got naked here once in a while.

Seconds ticked past as they stared at each other, their views brightly lit by each flash of lightning, then cast into shadows unreached by the light in the hallway. After a particularly loud clap of thunder that vibrated the floor beneath them, her breath caught in her throat, and heat surged through her.

She pushed back the sheet, swung her feet to the floor, then reached into the nightstand drawer, pulling out a handful of condoms. “I forgot to ask...”

With the barest of smiles touching his mouth, he shoved his hand into the pocket of his cargo shorts and drew out another half dozen. “Until I make up my mind whether I want to give fatherhood a shot, I stay prepared.”

A lump formed in her throat. It made her voice hoarse as, with hands folded primly in her lap, she asked, “You have any particular preference right now?”

Slowly he pushed away from the door frame and began walking to her. “It’s still up in the air. But someone I like very, very much told me I already knew what I needed to be a good father. It’s made me think.” He shrugged negligently. “Meeting the right person can make you rethink a lot of things.”

She didn’t waste more than an instant wondering if she would have to rethink the issue. It wasn’t as if she was going to toss the condoms into the trash, wasn’t something to decide right this moment.

Instead, she slowly stood, curled her fingers around the hem of her tank and peeled it off. It fell from her hands, brushing her leg on its way to the floor, then she did the same with her boxers, stepping out of them, shivering as the air-conditioning kicked on.

Or was it the intensity of his gaze that made her skin ripple with goose bumps?

“Damn,” he murmured, his gaze never leaving her even as his fingers undid his zipper, then worked the wet fabric over his hips, freeing his erection, drawing her gaze slowly downward. His skin was a few shades paler than hers, tawny gold, lightly dusted with hair across his chest. His shoulders were broad, his chest muscular, his belly flat and his hips narrow. Long, lean legs and a long, hard—

She swallowed greedily and said—
once more with feeling
—the same thing he had.
“Damn.”

Chapter 12

L
andry hadn’t been teasing when he’d said he liked kissing. It was sweet and tender—something he hadn’t associated with sex until long after he’d moved out on his own. He liked the textures and the tastes and the intimacy. Incredible intimacy, more than the act of sex itself.

He especially liked kissing Alia, his tongue stroking over hers, the soft sounds she made in her throat, the huskier sounds he made. He liked the feel of her lips and the touch of her hands and the heat from her body...but not enough to spend the very next quarter hour kissing and nothing more. That would have to wait for next time, after he’d satisfied this need for her. In a day, a week, a year, another lifetime.

Lightning lit the room, brilliant enough to glow against his eyelids, and a breath later thunder rattled the old house. Immediately both repeated, thunder still rolling while lightning zagged across the sky. They were in the heart of the storm, their breathing ragged, her hands roaming, his body straining.

Blindly he found a condom on the nightstand and ripped open the package as he edged her toward the bed. His arms around her, he tumbled her onto the mattress, and they fell together, a laugh escaping her.

As he began to put on the condom, she slid her hands from his back to his groin, pushing his own hands away. She fumbled, teased, stroked, until he couldn’t breathe or hold himself steady, until every muscle in his body trembled. “You’re not helping,” he choked out, and she laughed again.

“You want me to stop?” She was trying to duplicate the innocence that was in her voice in her expression, but she looked entirely too wicked.

“Oh, hell, no.”

Sweat was beaded on his forehead before she finally slid the condom into place. He eased her onto her back, then shifted over her. His arms still trembled, heat still pumped through him in place of blood, need still clawed inside him, but he held himself motionless and stared down at her, memorizing everything about her.

He wanted her more than air, but that was nothing new. He’d wanted other women the same way. The new thing, the different thing, was that he
needed
her.
Needed
to feel her, touch her, kiss her, hold her, protect her, be protected by her.
Needed
her in a way he’d never needed anyone, in a way he couldn’t imagine ever needing anyone.

Her eyes darkened with passion—not just lust, but more—and gently she touched her fingers to his mouth. Twisting his head, he kissed them, then slowly slid deep inside her, and it was like finding the place where he belonged, the woman he belonged with. It was like finding home.

And he was welcomed.

* * *

Alia lay on her side, facing the windows, Landry’s body curved against her, her back to his front. The storm continued to rage, as if the system had liked what it had seen in the city and settled in for a while. High winds buffeted the windowpanes and rain thundered against the roof, the intensity of both energizing her.

Truth was, great sex did that all on its own. The storm was just icing on the cake.

The thought of cake—or, hell, just icing—made her stomach rumble. Landry’s drowsy chuckle vibrated through her. “Are you really thinking of food at a time like this?”

“I always think of food. Well, almost always.” Sighing with more pleasure than she remembered feeling in ages, she snuggled back even tighter against him. “Though there were a few moments there where food was the last thing on my mind.”

“Next time that’ll be my goal. To make you forget about it completely.”

Next time.
How had she never before noticed the loveliness of those two words side-by-side?

“What time do you usually get to bed?” she asked, in the mood for the smallest of small talk, so her body didn’t have to reassign a single cell from enjoying the pure satisfaction still trembling through her.

“Three-thirty. Maybe four.” He nuzzled her hair. “I take it you’re not getting up at five to run if the storm doesn’t pass.”

“I like to run, but I’m no fool. Getting struck by lightning seems a really bad way to start the day.” A pause filled with a yawn. “What time do you get up?”

“Ten. Eleven. Sometimes noon. Depends on how well I sleep.”

“Do you usually sleep well?”

He was silent for a time. She might have thought he’d drifted off in the middle of her question except his breathing was too unsteady and shallow for sleep. At last, he said, “Pretty much. Before...” His shrug rippled through her.

Before.
When life had been a living hell, and even when it wasn’t, when he’d been learning to deal with it and put it in the past. As much as a past like his could be kept there.

“How about Mary Ellen?” she asked quietly. So much for enjoying pure satisfaction, but the question had popped out on its own, and darkness, relatively speaking, seemed as good a time to ask as any. “Does she have trouble sleeping?”

“I asked her today if she ever thought about what had happened when we were kids, and she—she just gave me a strange look. Like she didn’t know what I was talking about. I added, ‘with Jeremiah,’ and she said nothing happened to think about and changed the subject.”

Alia wasn’t surprised. Mary Ellen was frail; pretending her childhood had been ideal was far preferable than acknowledging the ugly truth. The older Wallace girl was nearly ten years older than Mary Ellen and, according to Jimmy, not the least bit frail, but she lived in denial, too.

“Mary Ellen went to boarding school when you moved out, didn’t she?”

Landry shifted onto his back and pulled her onto her other side so her head rested on his shoulder. “I couldn’t just leave her there.” He waited through another rumble of thunder before continuing. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I knew talking to Camilla wouldn’t accomplish anything, and the old man had already warned me that no one would believe me. He was a Jackson, a distinguished naval officer, a well-loved, respected member of the community, and I was a snot-nosed kid. He couldn’t have cared less if I disappeared. But he never would have let Mary Ellen go with me.”

“What did Miss Viola say?” Had the old lady wanted to call the cops? Maybe for Landry, it would have been a case of he said/Jeremiah said, but Miss Viola had been a better-loved, more-respected member of the community, plus she would have had that sweet-old-lady thing going for her. Her credibility surely would have surpassed Jeremiah’s.

He wrapped a strand of her hair around his fingers, let it uncurl, then did it again. “She wanted to go to the authorities, but I was convinced they wouldn’t believe me. All she knew was what I’d told her; she’d never actually seen anything. And Jeremiah’s parents bought him out of trouble all the time when he was a teenager. He knew how much to offer and who to offer it to. And if the cops didn’t believe me, he’d never let me see Mary Ellen again. He would punish us both.”

“So Miss Viola helped you move out and...?”

“She bluffed Jeremiah, made him think that her visit was just out of courtesy, just a warning. She told him that she knew all about their little group and that the chief of police himself—her husband’s best friend—would know about it come Monday, and God help him and his band of perverts then, because no man in the city would. She said the only thing that would stop her from telling the chief was if Mary Ellen went off to boarding school that very weekend. She’d pulled strings with the school her own daughter had gone to and got Mary Ellen accepted on Saturday, and on Sunday she was on the plane.” He smiled faintly. “Money talks. A lot of money talks a lot.”

Alia wondered just how big a donation a one-day admission policy required. She had a few friends who’d gone to exclusive boarding schools like Mary Ellen’s, and their parents had submitted their applications before the ink on their birth certificates was dry. There were probably Fulsom family wings, endowments and scholarships still feeding off that initial donation.

“It must have been a relief for Mary Ellen to escape the abuse.”

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you?” He gave her a wry look. “She hated it. Hated leaving home and her friends and Mom and Miss Viola and me. Hated the weather, the activities, the classes. She even hated the food. Said her Louisiana-bred stomach couldn’t tolerate it.” His voice turned hollow. “She blamed me. She insisted she could have handled things at home, but I never gave her a chance. She hated it so much that she was sick the first six months she was there.”

Now she insisted there had been nothing at home to handle. Alia could sympathize. Intellectually, she could sort of understand, but realistically she didn’t get it. Landry and Miss Viola had offered her a way out of a nightmare. Sure, she’d been homesick; of course, she’d felt as if she’d lost everything and everyone of importance to her. But to make herself sick, then to put the details of that nightmare out of her mind as if it had never happened...

“Did you see her during that time?”

Landry shrugged. “A few times. We didn’t talk like we used to. Things were getting better by her senior year, but she got upset all over again that I wouldn’t go to her graduation. Miss Viola offered to pay my way, but our parents were going. It would have been the first time I’d seen Jeremiah since I moved out. I couldn’t do it.” He sucked in a loud breath. “I was a coward. I was praying I’d never see him again as long as I lived.”

A coward? For not wanting to face his brutal father? It saddened her that he’d ever thought such a thing.

“You were a brave kid, Landry, and stronger than most people ever become. And now you won’t have to face the bastard ever again. The Jackson/Davison family can be normal again, one big happy family. One set of birthday parties, one set of holidays.” Mention of holidays reminded her of something Jimmy had brought up earlier.
Where have these bastards been getting their thrills since their own kids grew up?

The thought sent a shiver of dread through her, despite the heat radiating from Landry’s body. In the thirty hours or so between him telling her about the abuse and Jimmy asking that question, her entire focus had been on the victims in the distant past. She’d never given a second’s thought to later, probably even current, victims.

Rising to lean on her right arm, she gave him a troubled look. “Those birthdays and holidays Mary Ellen spent with your parents...” Oh, God, she didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to put even the whisper of a possibility into his mind, but it was a valid question. An urgent question. “Were they limited to Mary Ellen’s family and your parents? How did the admiral interact with the kids? How much time did he get...alone...with...”

Rage darkened Landry’s face, his body frozen with it, his breathing stilled by it. “No,” he said, but it wasn’t even a whisper, no voice, no substance, just denial. “No. She might pretend it never happened, but surely somewhere inside she knows better than to leave him alone with her babies. She would never, ever let anyone hurt the girls. Never.”

He stopped abruptly, his face taking on a sickly tinge. “They’ve been doing it all this time, haven’t they? It wasn’t some sort of game they played while it was convenient, then gave up when it wasn’t. They’ve been finding other kids...”

He lunged out of bed and for the door. A moment later, Alia heard the retching as he emptied his stomach in the bathroom. She sat up, sheet tucked under her arms, her eyes closed. There was a reason she’d never made a go of child sex crimes investigations. Her days would have been filled with heartbreaking interviews with victims, kicking the living crap out of suspects, losing her job for use of excessive force and puking out her guts every night. There were people, thank God, who did it, who had that strength, but she wasn’t one of them.

After a moment, he came back into the room, walked to the windows, pushed aside the curtains and stared out. He seemed unaware that he was naked, lightning giving tempting views of his lean muscled body before shadow enveloped him again. He was gorgeous. Glorious.

And he was breaking her heart.

“The first time...” Between the wind, rain and thunder, his voice was barely audible.

“I wanted to die.”

Alia drew her knees to her chest and hugged them tightly. Every breath of the woman inside her wanted to go to him, wrap her arms around him, tell him he didn’t have to go on, tell him everything would be all right and bring him back to bed.

The cop in her held back. Talking was one of the hardest things any victim ever had to do. If he was able to share these ugly, painful memories with her, the least she could do was listen.

“Finally I learned to just take it.” His voice was heavy with derision.

“One Saturday evening, just before my fifteenth birthday, he told me and Mary Ellen to be ready by eight. Mom was already so drunk she couldn’t stand up by herself. She got that way a lot when he was home for weekends. Mary Ellen whispered that she didn’t feel good and asked Mom if she could stay home. Camilla just looked away from her, as if she didn’t even hear, but her face turned bright red, as if she was ashamed of herself.”

Alia let herself imagine the conversation: the exclusive neighborhood, the beautiful house, the lovely room filled with priceless antiques, the three tormented people and Jeremiah, Satan in disguise. She could smell the gin and the anger and the fear, could see the tension vibrating the air.

“Mary Ellen started to cry. That always set Jeremiah off in a rage, so I stepped up and said, ‘I’m not going.’”

What a shock that must have been to the admiral, so accustomed to giving commands and seeing them followed. That his own son would dare say no, would make a stand, must have touched off every spore of his rich-white-male-officer sense of entitlement.

“I thought he was going to kill me. I grabbed Mary Ellen and dragged her upstairs and locked us in my room. He would have caught us before we made it to the door, but Mom jumped from her chair and stumbled against him. He had to get her out of the way before he could follow us, and by then we’d barricaded the bedroom door with the dresser. It was the only time she ever intervened.” A note of surprise, even wonder, softened his voice as he turned to look at her. “I’d forgotten that.”