Big Easy Temptation (3 page)

Sometimes she could still feel the way his tongue had moved against hers, sliding
in a silky dance. She could feel his hands on her body. He’d been subtle, but she’d
felt the possession in his grip. If Admiral Spencer and Constance Hayes hadn’t barged
in, she’d likely have found herself on top of that desk with her legs spread and clinging
to Dax Spencer as he drove into her.

“Why are you here, Captain?”

“Can’t you call me Dax? You have dinner with my mother twice a month. You see my sister
every time she’s in town. Can’t we at least be on a first-name basis?”

Her reticence sounded ridiculous when he put it that way. They actually did run in
the same small circle. She simply avoided him at all costs and had since the moment
she realized she wanted him in a way she’d never wanted any man. “All right. Dax,
welcome back to New Orleans. What are you doing here?”

He cast her a sidelong glance. “Well, Holland. I’m in the Navy and I was recently
stationed at the Joint Reserve Base New Orleans in a training capacity. I’ve been
involved in new training methods on modern ships.”

“Yes, because Captain Awesome really wants to spend a month writing training manuals.”
That was the moniker the sailors had given him after his wartime bravery. He’d been
creative and smart and he’d stood by his men. They loved him. They would lay their
lives on the line for him. He was everything the Navy looked for in a captain.

Dax’s eyes widened in surprise. “Captain Awesome? Are you serious?”

As a heart attack
. “It’s what everyone calls you. After what you did in Operation Iraqi Freedom, can
you doubt it?” In the middle of unexpected enemy fire, he had devised and implemented
a battle plan on the fly. He’d used his ship in a way that had shortened the skirmish
and saved lives.

His gorgeous mouth turned down. “That was supposed to be classified.”

He wasn’t that naive. “Nothing that cool is classified, Captain. Dax.”

“Captain Awesome might be the worst call sign I’ve ever heard.” He shook his head
woefully. “I’m back in New Orleans because I was asked to spend the month providing
insight on the new training procedures. Since I implemented them on my ship, I decided
to help out.”

She didn’t believe that for a second. “And that’s the only reason you’re here?”

He sent her an unreadable smile. “I have some other things to accomplish while I’m
here.”

“You want us to look into your father’s case again.” Nothing else made sense to her.

“I’m here for numerous reasons. One, my mother’s birthday is soon. Two, Gus is taking
a little time off. So I came to be with my family. After everything that happened,
family is my priority.”

She understood. “I’m glad. I think your mom is lonely. I’m pretty sure Gus isn’t.”

Dax shuddered, proving he’d heard about Gus’s proclivities. “I do not need to know
what my sister is doing. Or who. I came back to
make sure my mother is all right . . . and to take care of a few other loose ends.”

Finally they were getting to the point. “Did you come to see Jim or Bill?”

His eyes pinned her. “I came to see you, sweetheart.”

Damn, but she was in trouble. “Why? I can’t help you.”

“Oh, I think you can. Holland, have dinner with me. Give me a chance.”

She shook her head because even if the Spencer name wasn’t as shiny as it had once
been, they still came from different worlds. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Besides, Holland wasn’t entirely sure what he was after. He might be asking for her
to reopen his father’s case. Or he might be asking her for a date. Either would be
a bad freaking idea.

“Holland, listen. Please. You’re the only one who might give me a shot, the only one
who might hear what I have to say.” His jaw hardened to a stubborn line. “Have dinner
with me. Let me plead my case.”

“Or?” There was always an “or” in these types of conversations.

“I spend the rest of my life knowing I didn’t do everything I could to honor my father.”

Shit. What was she supposed to do with that plea? He’d given her the one argument
that guaranteed she wouldn’t turn him away. “All right. My place. Eight o’clock. Don’t
be late.”

He flashed dimples, sending her into a tailspin. “I’ll bring the wine.”

He turned and strode out, leaving her watching his amazingly hot backside and wondering
what the hell she’d agreed to. She’d known she couldn’t handle him when he’d done
his best to persuade her to give him a shot during Joy and Zack’s reception years
ago. Not much had changed. Besides, she’d wanted a career of her own then. She still
did. Certainly, she didn’t want to be like her mother, following her father from base
to base, always having to make new friends and find a way to fit in. If she’d allowed
herself to date Spencer back then, she would be
his wife now and she would have had his children, watching him as he rose through
the ranks and left her further and further behind.

She wanted more for herself.

Yes, she was stronger now. More mature. She’d had more experience with the opposite
sex. Could she handle him? Ready or not, it seemed she was going to find
out.

D
ax tried not to stare at Holland as she set a steaming plate in front of him. He was
so hungry. Not for the food. Oh, it smelled delicious and he wasn’t surprised that,
despite being a tough NCIS investigator, she could also produce what looked like a
gourmet meal. Holland Kirk was the kind of woman who would master anything she put
her mind to.

Yeah, he wanted the food, but he craved her far more. She was still the most beautiful
woman to him. Her blond hair cascaded around her shoulders in waves. When he’d seen
her earlier, she’d had it tucked up in a tidy bun that matched her neat but utilitarian
clothes. But when she’d opened the door to him not fifteen minutes earlier, she’d
looked so pretty and feminine in jeans and a pink shirt that hugged her slender curves.

Years, miles, war, and death stood between their kiss in the library and now. He’d
never gotten this woman out of his head.

“This looks amazing. Thank you. You have no idea how long it’s been since someone
cooked for me. Well, someone who didn’t learn his skills from the Navy,” Dax admitted.
Captaining his own ship had its privileges, but made-from-scratch Cajun food wasn’t
one of them.

She sat across from him and lifted her wineglass with an elegant hand. “My mother
was a good cook, but after she passed, my dad was still at sea. So I ended up here
in New Orleans with my uncle. Now, that man can cook. This is his gumbo recipe. Sorry
it’s nothing more exciting.”

“This is the most excitement I’ve had in a while, Holland.” He took a spoonful. The
dish was perfectly made with just the right bite of heat. “It’s excellent. And I really
do thank you for hearing me out.”

He was going to do his damnedest to be polite with her. He needed her on his side.
If this investigation wasn’t between them, he would have walked into her office and
finished what they’d started almost seven years before.

The only times he’d seen her since that kiss had all been at funerals. First Zack’s
mother had perished in a car accident about a year after the wedding. He’d glimpsed
Holland there from a distance. She’d certainly been at Joy’s funeral, but that had
been a clusterfuck. So many reporters, so many people mourning the woman who would
have been first lady. Then Holland had attended his father’s services. Even though
Dax had viewed the whole thing through a filter of disbelief and rage, the one sweet
moment had been when he’d scanned the sparsely attended event and seen her sitting
in the back pew, silently honoring his father.

Besides his family and best friends, she’d been the only person he knew to show up.
Everyone else had run from the scandal and abandoned the Spencer family during their
time of tragedy.

Now she was his only hope of seeing any kind of justice done. He’d spent the last
week before his return to New Orleans plotting and planning ways to persuade her to
do what he needed. He couldn’t get emotional no matter how much she moved him.

“You can’t behave the way you did before,” Holland said, her mouth turned down. “My
coworkers gave you a pass because they knew you were hurting. They won’t do it again.”

He’d been a righteous prick and a pain in the ass. He’d battled with
anyone who got in his way. NCIS had definitely seemed like one obstacle after another.
“I understand. I was running on emotion at the time. I’ve cooled off and I’m coming
at the problem logically now.”

Well, with as much logic as he could. It wasn’t easy watching others sling mud and
tarnish his father’s reputation. Hell, they’d ripped a dead man to shreds and fed
what had been left of his good name to the dogs of the press.

“You’ve been conducting your own investigation?” Holland asked, passing him the cornbread.

He accepted it gratefully. He hadn’t been joking about his last decent meal. It had
been months ago, right before Joy Hayes had died. He and the other Perfect Gentlemen
had come together for Labor Day in the Hamptons. They’d had a cookout and laughed
and joked around about what perverted things they would all do in the White House
once Zack was elected.

That had been less than a year ago. Why did he feel a decade older now?

“I hired a couple of private investigators and had some friends look into a few things
for me.” It didn’t hurt that his best friend was an analyst with the Central Intelligence
Agency. Though Gabe and Mad thought Connor was in deeper than that. Dax often wondered
if they were right. “They found some information I thought was disturbing.”

“Do you think Jim and Bill didn’t do their jobs?”

She asked the question politely, her voice soft, but Dax knew a landmine when he heard
one.

He shook his head. “I think NCIS did the best they could with the information and
resources available at the time. No one was ready for the way the story exploded in
the press.”

“No, we weren’t. Any media relations training we have is cursory. I think even the
feds would have had trouble with a story of that magnitude,” she admitted. “Normally
it would have lasted one news cycle and been over.”

“My father wasn’t news for what he did but because I’m his son and I have powerful
friends.” Guilt still twisted his gut over that fact.

Holland was correct. The news would definitely have run the story about the admiral’s
disgrace, but the tabloids wouldn’t have covered it. His father hadn’t been a rock
star or a celebrity. He’d been old school money serving in a position of prestige.

Dax was the celebrity. It didn’t matter how hard he tried to stay out of the press,
the media associated him with two of the most self-avowed playboys of the Western
world, along with the White House chief of staff and the president of the United States.
Somehow, Connor managed to duck the news coverage. Probably because he never allowed
anyone to take a full-frontal picture of him. And the CIA kept him out of the public
eye. Being dragged into the news had never bothered Dax much. It had been fine. He
was used to it. But his parents had not been.

“I wish I could have kept them off the story. We tried to keep it quiet.” She reached
out, her hand almost touching his before she abruptly pulled back.

Damn it. He wanted her hand in his, wanted any touch she would give him. It had been
so long since he’d felt any kind of affection for a woman. From a woman. “I know.
They were always going to find the story and they were always going to spin it to
sound as salacious as possible. It’s their job.”

She settled back in her chair. “So you think you have new information?”

She seemed determined to keep things professional. Maybe that was for the best. He’d
come for a mission, not a woman. “I’m approaching the investigation from a new angle.
It wasn’t hard to do. There was really only about a week of actual fieldwork put into
the case. I was surprised at how thin the file was.”

She put a hand up. “I don’t want to know how you got a copy of that file.”

He was resourceful. He was also good at flirting with secretaries.
“I’ll keep that to myself. Anyway, NCIS closed the investigation into my father’s
case after his death was ruled a suicide.”

“There was no one to prosecute. It didn’t seem right to drag his name further through
the mud. I actually had some say in making that call. I asked Bill and Jim to stop
looking into it because they would have had to question your mother. I didn’t want
to put her through that.”

He could understand her decision. “I appreciate that, but I think there’s more going
on here than the report suggests. Did you know the girl my father was accused of sleeping
with had disappeared?”

He used that bland euphemism. What his father had been accused of could be construed
as anything from statutory rape to sexual assault of a minor.

“No. I wasn’t aware of that.” She took a sip of the wine he’d brought. “But she was
a teenage prostitute with a history of running away. It’s not so surprising that she
would go missing.”

“But Amber Taylor went missing before the investigation was closed. No one on your
staff ever spoke to her. There’s no record on file to indicate they even attempted
to contact her.”

She raised an elegant brow in surprise. “Really?”

Dax nodded. “The only evidence against my father is that videotape and the testimony
of two of his aides.” For Dax, those clues made an awfully thin reason to tear a man’s
reputation apart. Even if he’d been proven innocent, the damage would have been done.
His father’s career had ended the minute he’d been called a pedophile in public.

“Maybe they didn’t need to talk to Amber Taylor. Those two aides of your father’s
gave very in-depth interviews,” Holland explained. “They were good witnesses from
everything I understand. I know Jim felt like they were solid and so did JAG.”

The Navy’s legal arm had been all for prosecuting his father. They would have a much
harder time if they tried to prosecute him today since all their evidence was rapidly
vanishing. “Did you know that one of those two aides was recently murdered?”

“What?” Holland reared back. “No.”

He’d been fairly certain she was out of the loop. “He was transferred out of NOLA
about a week after my father died. He was killed in Puerto Rico during a mugging.”

“I will admit it’s odd, but it doesn’t prove anything.” Even as she spoke, her brow
furrowed, a sure sign that her thinking cap was on.

Making her think was exactly what he’d hoped for. “I don’t have to prove anything.
I simply have to prod your curiosity enough to look.”

“You think you know me?”

“I do know you, Holland. You’re smart and quick and you like to see justice done.
You also liked my father.” In fact, Dax was counting on it.

That’s why he’d come back to New Orleans in the first place. He’d asked for the training
assignment. Hell, he’d practically begged for it because he needed to be here if he
was going to convince Holland to reopen his father’s case. He didn’t trust anyone
else to look at it with a fresh, fair approach.

“I can’t deny that,” she murmured.

“In fact, you like my whole family and you hate what happened to us. If you could
give us any respite at all, you would work day and night for it.”

“Now you’re playing to my ego.” A hint of an amused smile crossed her lips.

“Is it working?”

“You know it is,” she replied. “I’ll look over what you have tonight, but I can’t
promise you anything.”

“All I want is a shot at convincing you.”

“Like I said, I’ll read your file. I really was sorry about your dad. I’m also sorry
I didn’t reach out to you. I should have. We were friends once.”

“Why didn’t you? You’ve stayed in touch with Gus and Mom.”

She sighed. “I got buried in work. They were here and you weren’t.
It seemed easier to let it go. And you were so angry. I’ll be honest, I was afraid
you would tear me up. Sometimes people lash out when they’re in as much pain as you
were. Your world had crumbled under your feet. I didn’t want to be collateral damage.”

“You were right to stay away. I was so angry I couldn’t think straight. When the allegations
came to light, I learned some things about my father I didn’t want to know.”

“But you don’t believe he raped a fifteen-year-old girl.” It sounded like a statement
of fact rather than a question.

Dax nodded. “I think my father was set up. There are too many coincidences, and I
question how so many people with critical information about the case suddenly disappeared
when they were no longer needed.”

“Be careful, Captain. You’re starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist. Why would
anyone want to ruin your father? No one came after his money from what I can tell.”

No, they’d come after his reputation. “I don’t know why someone would do this.” Dax
sucked in a deep breath. Now he had to drop the hammer. Holland wasn’t going to like
this part, but he couldn’t hold off any longer. Either she would help him . . . or
kick him out. “I also don’t understand why, after all of that, they felt the need
to murder him.”

She closed her eyes briefly but seemed calm when she opened them again. “I was wondering
if we would get there. Your father was found with a single gunshot wound to the head
from a pistol registered to him. His fingerprints were the only set we found on the
weapon.”

“But you know that sometimes evidence lies.”

“Very rarely.”

“But it can, and sometimes you have to rely on instinct, even when the evidence points
to something else. You handled a case a few years back concerning the murder of an
ensign. Your partner wanted to close it because all the evidence suggested his girlfriend
attacked him in a fit of rage. She’d been drunk and blacked out.”

“Again, I probably don’t want to know how you learned about that. And yes, I should
have closed the file. It seemed open and shut, but there was something about the girl.
At the end of the day, I didn’t believe she was truly capable of violence, even when
she was drunk. I dug further and found out the ensign had been brutally hazed by a
superior and he intended to go to command the day after his murder. His CO was brought
up on charges and is serving a life sentence.”