CRAVE - BAD BOY ROMANCE (4 page)

It just didn't add up. I shook my
head to clear it, getting more and more hungry with each passing moment. Ordering
a pizza for myself was out of the question tonight, so instead of dwelling on
it something I flicked the lighter in my hand on and moved toward the hallway.
I had a hunch that the bedrooms would be down in that direction.

For an instant, I saw the kitchen
table illuminated in the flame. I thought I was going insane, because there was
an open box of pizza sitting in the center of it.

And one of the slices was missing…

Stunned, I stood there for an instant
with my jaw hanging open. My brain felt like it was being forced to swim
through jello as it fought to comprehend exactly what I was looking at.

Then something rushed at me from the other
end of the hallway. I was grabbed and spun around, the lighter knocked out of
my hand with a force I knew I didn't have a hope in hell of resisting. I tried
to struggle, to make a break for the door as a strong arm came up around my
chest, but when the cold metal of what I presumed to be a gun pressed solidly
against my temple, the fight drained out of me as quickly as the blood rushed
from my face.

I froze, unwilling to provoke whoever
had me. I was no stranger to muggings, and sage advice and personal experience
had both reinforced the same thing.
Don't
piss him off. Give him what he wants, unless he wants too much, at which point
choose your moment and make a quick, decisive attack
.

“You can have my wallet,” I said with
as much calm as I could muster, craning my head to try and see him. “There
isn't very much in there, but whatever I have is yours.”

CHAPTER SIX

“Shut up,” he growled into my ear,
and I felt the controlling rumble of his voice in the barrel chest he'd pulled
me against. “I don't want anything except for you to get the fuck out of here.
This poor woman's only been gone for a couple of days, and you scum are already
breaking in to pick over her things? Have some respect for the dead.”

I felt the world seem to shift violently
to one side as my knees threatened to give out. He held on to me even tighter,
no doubt taking my reaction as the start of some half-baked escape attempt on
my part, when in reality if he weren’t holding me up I’d probably be sprawled
out on the floor right now.

“She’s dead?” I managed to say,
though the words came out as more of a breath then any sound that could be
taken for something meaningful. “She's...” I couldn't bring myself to say it
again.

I didn't know who or what he was, but
his bearing went from aggressive to protective in the blink of an eye. His grip
on my trembling body loosened ever so slightly, and the vice-like strength of
his hold eased up enough for me to suck in a full, shaky breath.

“Sorry,” he said into my ear, giving
the words some meaning by sliding his hand down around my waist and using it to
guide me back down the dark hallway and into the light of the candles I’d set
up a minute before. I had a pretty good idea that he was leading me to the
kitchen table, a suspicion that was quickly confirmed once he sat me down. I found
myself reaching out and touching the lid of the pizza box, just to make sure I
wasn’t somehow still asleep on the plane.

He was still standing behind me. I
wanted to ask who he was, but I was also aware that the answer wouldn't mean
anything to me. He could say just about any name and I wouldn't know it, and in
the half-light I couldn't tell if he was a cop or a well-meaning neighbor or
just some squatter who thought he could get rid of me by being nice instead of
cruel.

I bit my tongue instead of asking,
and waited at the table with my head in my hands while I listened to him scoop
up the lighter and use it to light a few more candles in the kitchen.

A warm glowed sprang into life around
me, and as I wiped at my tearless eyes he turned away from the counter and sat
down across from me.

There was no way this was happening.
I couldn’t help but stare. My hand had been on the lid of the pizza box, but I
watched helplessly as it drifted to his arm now.

It was him! The man I’d painted in
Detroit. The man I’d sketched on the plane. He was flesh and blood. I could
feel the heat of him under my palm, the firm muscles and rough scars. He wasn’t
wearing a shirt, and his body glistened in a thin, clean sheen of sweat that
pretty much all of Louisiana wore for most of the year.

Tattoos crisscrossed his body. When
my gaze finally crawled all the way up to his face, I could clearly see that
his eyes were exactly as I’d drawn them. Piercing. Almost feral.

I fought to get control over my
emotions, gritting my teeth and digging my hands into my thighs hard enough to
bruise. I did my best to keep my face as blank as possible, but a dark flicker
of something in his eyes told me that I wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

It wasn’t my fault. Here was a man
I’d seen in my mind before I’d met him in real life, sitting on the other side
of my apparently dead Grandmother’s kitchen table.

“Are you sure?” I asked, though I
didn’t know if I was talking to him or myself or the rest of the universe all
at once.

He was as well-built as I'd drawn
him, and I got the feeling that he was worth any three men in a fight on his
worst day.

Whoever he was, he carried himself
like a military man. One of my foster fathers had been a marine of thirty
years, and there was no shaking the bearing of a guy used to that sort of life.
Even as I watched him square his shoulders and pin me to the chair with is
gaze, I couldn’t do anything more than marvel at the way he carried himself.
Not a motion was wasted, not a movement was inefficient or out of control. Even
though I must have startled him by entering the house, he wasn't breathing hard
or trembling from the after effects of adrenaline like I was.

No, he'd heard an intruder and he'd
dealt with it. Once I'd proven, in his eyes, to be no more of a threat than he
knew he could handle, that had been the end of it. He was alert, but he wasn't concerned.
His confidence was at once extremely attractive and horribly patronizing. I'd
seen far less of that sort of attitude before in men and labelled them remorselessly
as arrogant assholes.

This guy knew who he was and he knew
what he could do. He didn't have to smirk to show me that, but I still got the
feeling that he thought my abilities beneath him.

“Is she really dead?” I asked at
last.

He nodded. “I'm sorry. You're the Granddaughter,
right?”

I shrugged, even though there would
probably have been nothing wrong with admitting the truth of it. I wasn't the
one trespassing in my Grandmother's house, after all. At least not really.

Any other man would have shifted his
weight at the awkwardness of the situation, or looked away. Not him, though. He
stared me down and said, “I'm sorry to have to be the one to break the news.” Stoic
though he may be, I could tell by the catch in his voice that his apology was
genuine. “That lawyer of hers was supposed to be the one to let you know, but I
suppose he doesn't have much of a vested interest in it anymore, not now that
Marie's gone.”

The way he said her name, like she’d
meant something to him, kicked up a little spark of fury in me for reasons I
didn't fully understand. Maybe it was the fact that he was acting like he owned
the place. Hell, he was sitting in her kitchen eating pizza after all, and I
doubted very much he had any claims to the property.

Or did he? That got me thinking.
There was every chance that he knew her far better than I ever had, after all.
Practically everyone did.

“And who the hell are you?” I
blurted, annoyed that he hadn't bothered to supply me with the information
before I had to ask. “Strutting around like you own the place, accosting a
blood relative, an invited guest, no less, and still having the nerve to use
her place for your pizza party so soon after she's gone.”

He made a face, as if the last
comment had bruised his pride a little.
Good
,
I thought.
I hope I hit home. I hope it
hurt.

“I'm Cade,” he growled, his eyes
blazing in the reflected light of the candles. He paused for a moment, letting
me have the full force of that fierce gaze of his and adding a scowl along to
the mix.

“Hi?” I ventured, unsure of what he
wanted me to say.

“Your grandmother ran a business out
of here. A sort of shop, I suppose you could say. It was the sort of business
that can get dangerous. She thought it wise to have me around, even went so far
as to offer to let me live in the shed out back rent free.”

I frowned. “Was my Grandmother
running a brothel, or something?” It was the only thing that made sense. Why
else would you want some hired muscle on hand twenty-four seven?

Cade shook his head. “Of course not.
God, she spoke of you like you knew what was going on. How could she have been
so wrong?”

“Hey!”

“She ran a Voodoo consulting
business,” he said, ignoring my interruption. “And a good one at that.”

“Is that so?” I glared back at him,
trying unsuccessfully to make him back down. “And is the fake voodoo industry
so cutthroat that she needed a bodyguard around her day and night in order to
conduct it?”

Cade sat back in his chair, and his
muscles flexed. That was when I realized that my hand was still on his arm. I
snatched it away, mortified. “Sorry…”

Again, he ignored me. “Dangerous? You
don't know the half of it. They'll tell you she slipped and fell on the back
stairs of course, but it happened when wasn't here.”

“Cade,” I said, trying to derail his
train of thought. “It’s not your fault that she-“

“She begged me to take an envelope to
that lawyer of hers. Told me it was more important than keeping an eye on her.
While I was gone, she either hit her head or her head got hit, depending on who
you believe. I found her on the back steps. It looked like she'd been trying to
get to the shed back there, the place I call home. The trail of blood...”

He ground to a halt and looked away
for a moment, as if he suddenly realized who he was talking to. “Sorry,” he
said eventually. “The trail led back in here. She obviously needed me. Marie
came looking for help and I wasn't around, so I'd appreciate it if you didn’t
try and feed me any of your bullshit for a little while. Granted, I may not be
the beloved Granddaughter that opted to spend her life alone without giving
Marie so much as the time of day, but that woman was my friend. I don't have
much in this world, but sharing a pizza at this table on a Thursday night was
one of our rituals. I guess I'm going soft, but I wanted to share one last meal
with her before I had to say goodbye.”

I swallowed hard, wanting to lash out
at him for the 'opting out' comment and knowing that the only reason it had
hurt me so badly was because it was dead right. I'd absolutely had
opportunities to reconnect, and I'd let my anger and my hurt get in the way of
each and every one.

And now she was gone, and she wouldn't
even know that in the end I'd come back.

Sure, you came back,
that voice piped up from out of
nowhere in my skull,
but only to give her
a tongue lashing and be on your way.

My vision went wavy for a moment and
I blinked away what I was afraid would be tears.

“You...” I said, swallowing hard to
get the lump in my throat to go away before trying again. “You were her friend?”

He nodded slowly.

“Then let me say thank you,” I said.
I should have been there for her so many times over the years and I wasn't. “I'm
glad she had someone like you around.”

Cade shrugged. “Yeah, well, it didn't
do her a whole hell of a lot of good in the end, now did it?”

I didn't know what to say to that,
but at least he was gracious enough to not let the silence sit for too long.

“Now that you're here, I'll be moving
on. Gone by morning and out of your way, Rachel.”

“Huh?”

He looked at me as if there were
every chance in the world that I was slow, maybe even flat out stupid. “You'll
be selling up, I imagine. That's not going to be an easy thing to do, what with
practically everyone in town knowing the poor bird died on the property. I
doubt having the joys of a guy like me living in a shack in the backyard is
going to do very much to up the resale value for you when offers do start to
trickle in.”

I looked around blankly, my gaze
taking in the clutter and debris that only a lifetime of collecting voodoo
props and running a magic shop out of one's home could ever hope to accumulate.
“Huh?”

“The place is yours, now,” Cade told
me, speaking slowly, as if to a child. “She showed me the will. She'd even
updated it, done her best to make it ironclad. This house and everything in it
belongs to you, the last of her blood, or so she kept telling me.”

“I’m not stupid,” I told him. “It’s
just a lot to take in, you know? Are you saying that you physically saw her
will?”

He nodded. “That's why she wanted me
to get to her lawyer in such a hurry. I watched her put it in the envelope
myself so that I could deliver it. Marie was worried that something would
happen to you and the State of Louisiana would get the place instead of you, so
she spent the last few months reading up online about trusts and safe deposit
boxes and all that sort of nonsense. In the end, she seemed happy that she'd
locked it all up tight on your behalf. Now that she's gone, I imagine if you
show up at the lawyer’s office he'll know what to do to make things right. I'll
give you the address of the guy before I go.”

I nodded, though I wasn't really
agreeing with him. It was all happening so fast. Not twenty minutes ago I'd
pulled up to a house I barely remembered, and now I'd learned that I'd lost my
Grandmother and gained the strange, ungainly residence all in one fell swoop.

In one act of
murder
, if Cade was to be believed.

“I need some time to sort this out in
my head,” I said. “If I do sell the place, I'd want a chance to go through her
things first. By the looks of the amount of junk in here, that could take
weeks. You can stay in the back until I’m finished, if you like. There's no
hurry leaving, Cade.”

He opened his mouth to protest. I
could almost see the words on his full lips, but something held him back. I
felt his gaze rake up my body, and heard my heart bang away in my chest in
response.

I wanted him. God help me, I
needed
him. I was afraid if I closed my
eyes for any longer than it took for me to blink that I’d be tormented with
visions of his powerful, naked body. I wanted to be underneath him, to be held
down and had.

“As you wish,” Cade said, after a
moment or two, “I'll start looking for somewhere else, though. Just in case it
turns out you need more space.”