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Alyssa hesitated, then softened. “Luc. Your concern is really sweet, but—”

“Get in the fucking car.”

She blanched, and he cursed under his breath. He needed to get control of his temper. But the soaring sexual frustration, coupled with his alarm, had him on edge. Who thought they had the right to malign and scare her? Fists curled, Luc craved a chance to pound the asshole.

Alyssa sighed, and Luc readied his next argument, but she strolled toward his SUV. “Fine.”

He opened the door for her and watched her slide inside, the strands of her platinum hair settling over her shoulders. She looked somewhere between placid and reserved, despite the fact that she’d just been threatened. Was she out of her mind?

Shaking his head, he dashed around to the driver’s seat. When he slid inside, she was already on the phone.

“Sorry it’s late, Remy. I thought maybe I should call y’all. Someone messed with my car . . .”

Quickly and unemotionally, she relayed their location and the event. Luc heard murmurs of the other man’s conversation, his tone more good-ol’-boy than concerned, and he frowned. Didn’t anyone take this seriously?

He grabbed the phone from her and spit out an introduction. “Dust for prints. She touched the weapon, but you may find other sets on the handle. Whoever did this
broke
into her car.”

“Doubt it was much more than a prank. Boys down here get a little rowdy from time to time—”

“And stab the word ‘whore’ into her seat? That’s funny how?” Remy cleared his throat. “It’s not. But I don’t think no one meant no harm.”

Luc gritted his teeth together. “Do you usually solve all your cases before you visit the crime scene?”

Finally, Remy got serious. “I’ll investigate.”

“Thoroughly.”

Alyssa grabbed the phone. “Thanks, honey. I appreciate it.”

When he ended the call, Luc could barely unclench his jaw as he sped away from the parking lot. “Honey? The man didn’t even want to investigate, and you call him ‘honey’?”

She shrugged. “It’s a Louisiana thing. You’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”

“Yeah?” he challenged. “Or is it a ‘he’s-my-customer’ thing. Did he watch you strip tonight?”

She swallowed. “I asked all the local enforcement to come, including the sheriff. Keeps down the possibility of rowdies getting out of control and trashing the club.”

Luc gripped the wheel tighter as he peeled out of the parking lot. “So that’s a yes.”

Fighting the urge to hit something in an unusual show of temper, he took a deep breath. The night he’d spent with her, it had been easy to pretend she had no other lover. They’d been alone, her house quiet. No phone ringing, no customers nearby, no psychos leaving menacing “gifts” in her car. Just the two of them, and hours upon hours of pleasure. God, he’d been so damn gullible.

She nodded. “Why does it matter if Remy and the boys were there?”

The short answer was that it shouldn’t.

“If you should be worried about anything,” she went on, “it’s your hotel room. At nearly four in the morning, Homer has likely given your room away to one of those tourists come around for the arts festival that starts tomorrow.”

He frowned. After everything that had happened tonight, she was worried about him? “I guaranteed that room with a credit card.”

A Mona Lisa smile played at the corner of her mouth. That quickly, she made his dick hard again. Damn, how did the woman do it?

“Doesn’t mean a damn thing to him. I’m sure when you didn’t show up after the club closed, he figured your room was fair game. But if you don’t believe me, call him.” She punched a few buttons on the phone and handed it to him.

“You have the motel owner on speed dial?” He could think of only one reason why, and it horrified him. Did she turn tricks?

Hell, he was going to throw up.

“Out-of-town customers often need to sleep off their alcohol. Homer usually helps me out.”

Luc liked her explanation much better. But still, he wondered. Didn’t a lot of strippers earn extra cash on the side?

As the phone rang in his ear, Luc turned to Alyssa. Her face was golden under the streetlights shining through the windows as he raced down the quaint redbrick street, toward a neighborhood of older, still elegant homes. Odd that he remembered exactly how to find her house, despite the fact he’d been here just once. The image of the little craftsman with the Zen interior was burned into his brain.

Homer answered a moment later, muttering his words. Clearly, he’d been asleep and sounded none too happy about being awakened.

“This is Luc Traverson calling to advise that I’ll arrive in a few minutes to check in. You still have my room?”

The man on the other end cleared his throat. “Well, when you didn’t show, I thought . . .”

Luc waited, his temper rising again, for the motel’s owner to finish that thought. “Thought what? You’d give my room away?”

“I waited until two thirty. You said you’d be here before midnight. Some road-weary folks came in with little ones and—”

“Do you have another room?” He closed his eyes and pressed the phone to his ear.

“Booked up. First time in a while, but this festival always brings ’em in. Some great zydeco bands playin’ this year.”

Luc resisted the urge to count to ten. “And tomorrow night?”

“Don’t have a free room until Tuesday. Got a couple of those lousy chain hotels a few miles down the road . . .” Homer said with obvious distaste. “Bet they’re booked up, too. ’Sides, I wouldn’t let my dog sleep there. They don’t clean nothin’. ”

His head was going to explode. Luc was accustomed to traveling to cosmopolitan cities. He stayed at Hotel de Crillon when he traveled to Paris, the Dorchester in London, the Peninsula in Tokyo, the Beverly Wilshire in Los Angeles. The fact he’d been stiffed on a room at Homer’s Cajun Haven at four in the morning crawled on his last nerve.

He hit the end button on the conversation. Instead of giving in to his urge to throw the phone, he stiffly handed it back to Alyssa.

“You were right.”

“Thought I’d save you the drive out there, since I know Homer too well.”

And since he was, no doubt, another man who had seen Alyssa naked, Homer knew her awfully well, too.

Luc sighed. He had to stop caring who’d seen her bare. He’d want to rip the heads off most of the male population of this town for the next week if he didn’t get himself under control. He’d fucked her for one night. What she’d done before—or after—was none of his affair.

So why did it bug the hell out of him? And where was he going to sleep tonight?

“I have an extra room at my place,” Alyssa offered quietly. “It’s clean and quiet and—”

“I couldn’t impose.” Because if he did, he’d get inside her again.

Last time he’d spent the night in her body, he’d been insatiable. For six hours. Nothing had been too searing, too depraved, too intimate. She’d wrenched the sort of desire from him that burned him, shamed and elated him at once. He’d taken everything she offered, then more—then come back again. He’d fucked her in every way a man could, repeatedly. Bareback. Something he hadn’t done in more than a decade, except with Kimber.

And the memories of that incredible night with Alyssa were fraying his self-control.

“No imposition. I have the room; you need a bed.”

She laid a soft hand over his as it gripped the gearshift. Her touch seized him clear down to his balls, igniting his blood.

“Besides,” she murmured. “Maybe . . . you’re right. If what happened tonight isn’t a prank, then I’d feel better not to be alone. Do you mind?”

Yes. Very much
. But he’d be every kind of a bastard if he said no.

He sent her a tight smile. “It will be my pleasure.”

HE was lying through his teeth. Then again, so was she. She’d paid Homer very handsomely to give Luc’s room away and she doubted that, despite the prank, anyone would try to hurt her tonight.

As Luc’s SUV whipped down Lafayette’s dark streets, exhaustion should have been weighing on her. Instead, she was filled with anticipation. She was finally going to be alone with the man she most wanted, in her house, where he’d made mad love to her before. Too bad Luc wasn’t happy about it.

He was a puzzle. The lust in his eyes was unmistakable. Hell, every time he looked her way he damn near burned her. But his contempt wasn’t hard to piece together. So his anger that someone else thought she was a whore intrigued her.

“If it’s not a prank, who would stab such a note to the seat of your car?”

Sadly, the list was long. “Luc, let’s wait and see what Remy comes back with.”

“No.” He flashed her an impatient stare. “If whoever did this drops by while you’re sleeping, I’d like to have some idea who I’ll be dealing with.”

“Don’t worry too much. If I thought I was in serious jeopardy, I’d call Tyler. Or Jack Cole. He and your cousin are the best, and he’s an old friend. Because of him, the house has a top-of-the-line security system.”

Luc ground his jaw. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “I said I’d keep you safe tonight and I will. Answer the question.”

He wasn’t letting this go, and that gave Alyssa hope. Maybe he cared, at least a bit. Even if it was against his good sense and his will.

“First, just about any jealous wife or girlfriend who doesn’t like the amount of time her man spends in my club. That’s common.”

“Knives aren’t usually a woman’s style.”

No. She’d had her tires deflated, her house egged, more ugly notes than she could count. Scorned women usually annoyed and rarely disturbed.

“What about past lovers?” He pinned her with a burning stare. “Current ones?”

She closed her eyes. Naturally, he’d assume there were many of both. She’d been down this road; it shouldn’t hurt. But damn, it did. “The night you spent with me, I told you there hadn’t been anyone in two years. There’s been no one since you.”

Luc shook his head, looking as though a hundred different thoughts blazed through it. “Alyssa, you could be in danger. I need you to be completely honest.”

Jerking around in her seat, she faced him, trying to keep a lid on her temper. “I have been honest. Just because you don’t believe me doesn’t make me a liar.”

“C’mon,” he growled. “Not a customer who wanted just a bit more after seeing your gorgeous breasts naked? Not a contractor who did you a favor and wanted something in return?”

Anger seized her, gripping her chest in a steely fist. “I don’t roll that way.”

He hesitated. “So you didn’t agree to fuck me three months ago so you’d have a guest chef this week?”

No, I was willing to say anything because I wanted you so badly . . . and hoped you’d want me back.
And not for anything would she wear her heart on her sleeve now. He’d left her before dawn and pawned her off with flowers. Now he’d all but intimated she was a whore.

But if there was one thing she knew, it was men. He felt
something
for her. Her mission was to make it more.

“You were different.”

“Of course.” He snorted as he stopped at a red light.

Alyssa had had enough of his shit. She grabbed his chin and turned him to face her. “Maybe I was simply stupid enough to believe all your Southern gentleman charm and wanted to know what it was like to have sex with someone who didn’t see me as a prostitute. Silly me. You were definitely more hard-core than anyone I’ve had, way more than your white-bread exterior suggests. You roll out that sort of red carpet for every woman?”

He tore away from her grip and clutched the steering wheel even tighter. He exhaled harshly, clearly trying to restrain his temper. So his behavior that night was a sore spot? Maybe he hadn’t wanted to want her and was mortified that he had. And still did.

“I asked you about lovers. I’ll take you at your word that you hadn’t had one in two years prior to me.”

“But you don’t believe me.”

“What about current lovers? Tyler?”

None of his fucking business. As far as she was concerned, this conversation was in the toilet. Logic told her to retire her stupid happily-ever-fantasies about Luc. He hadn’t made love to her with such fervor because he felt the pull between them. He’d done it because she’d been his first real walk on the wild side and being bad flipped his switch. They probably should just have sex and not bother with emotions.

But her heart didn’t want to give up.

“Tyler would never try to kill me. Whoever did this tonight isn’t someone who’s been in my bed. It’s someone who’s pissed at me.”

He sent her a considering shrug, then took off as the light turned green. “Like who?”

“The kid who barged through the crowd tonight to kiss me. Peter. I don’t even know his last name. He started coming around about six months ago. Real regular. Daddy is rich, and he drops a lot of money at the club. Seems to think that entitles him to special perks.”