Authors: Nancy Gideon
He put his hand over hers. “I’ll go get your daughter for you and bring her here.”
Her fingers slipped between his, clutching tight. Her poignant gaze never left his. “Thank you, but it’s impossible. I’ll serve my time in that jail if it means her safety.” She tried for a glib smile. “Besides, I didn’t think you liked me.”
“I called you cold and unfeeling once.” Jacques’s words were a low rumble. He brought her hand to him, brushing a kiss across her knuckles. “I was very wrong.” He released her and stood. “Finish your dinner and I’ll get you back to your research.”
Susanna didn’t think she could get a bite past the emotion welling up in her throat but she forced it down, the way she forced down her true emotions. From her prison of circumstance, she couldn’t afford to express her feelings for this rough yet tender male.
Stay here
. The temptation more than teased her. It was a physical pain tearing at her soul. She belonged here with him. That was the truth of it. She belonged to him and him to her. When she’d broken that trust, that vow, she’d made her own cage about her heart. It would never beat for another, yet she’d never be free to know happiness, not really. She’d experienced joy being here with him, sharing a meal, a conversation, a smile . . . a touch. She’d taken a prideful pleasure in righting his household, even though she could never claim it as her own.
He’d offered to go north, into the land of his enemy, against odds he couldn’t possibly overcome, to bring her child to her. There was no bravado in his words, no shallow claim for effect or appeasement. At one nod from her, he was ready to risk everything he had, everything he was. For her.
Truth hit hard, lodging like that last swallow until she could barely breathe around it. She would gladly escape the wealth and privilege of her life up north to live here with him in his lowly trailer subsisting on rice and beans and his rare, dazzling smile. If only she could.
But fate had stolen that future from her just as cruelly as she’d erased his past. Leaving them separate paths to follow toward a loneliness they’d shoulder alone.
That was their future. They couldn’t change it.
But neither could she deny these moments left to them while they were together.
Nine
N
ica had been shooting him sly looks all night and by eleven thirty, Jacques was heartily sick of them. When she stopped at the bar to unburden her tray of empties and glasses, he growled, “There something you want to ask me, Fraser?”
She met his glower with an innocent blink. “There something you want to tell me, LaRoche?”
“Nothing that would be any of your business.”
She leaned in on her elbows. “Sooooo, there
is
something to tell. Spill it, boss. The looks you two give each other have more sizzle than the fryers at Daisy Dukes.”
“It’s just looking,” he told her, “and a little kissing.”
That Cheshire smile spread wide. “Kissing! That’s good news. It must have been good to have you blushing all the way up to your fuzzy dome.”
“I am not,” he snarled, casting a quick glance over his shoulder at the mirror to make sure it wasn’t true.
“It was the new clothes, wasn’t it?” she urged with a conspiratorial wink. “That was my idea. Figured you might need a little nudge to make that first move.”
“I do not need your help where my love life is concerned.”
She snorted. “Love life? If you had any life at all, that would be amusing. The two of you are about the sorriest pair I’ve ever seen. What’s it going to take for you to snatch her up for some gumbo, dodo, and gogo?”
“You think food, dancing, and sex is the answer to everything.”
“Everything worth anything, duh!”
“It would be if we were free to do anything about it,” he admitted at last.
Nica gripped both his big hands hard, her expression caring and concerned. “Jacques, the only thing holding you back is a ghost, a memory. The life you once had is dead and long gone. You can’t bring it back. You can only move on. It’s time to move on.”
“Even if I agreed with you,” he said glumly, “it wouldn’t much matter, considering she got a flesh-and-blood family waiting on her.”
“Flesh and blood,” Nica scoffed with a dismissing wave of her hand. “Have you ever seen a Chosen male? Stone and ice is more like it.”
Jacques pulled his hands free to rub them over the top of his head in frustration, then asked, because he had to know, “What’s he like? Has she said anything about him?”
“She didn’t have to. I’ve met him. He’s like all of them. Pretty, petty, powerful. Having sex with him would be like artificial insemination . . .
if
he even sleeps with her. A lot of their males prefer surrogates or mental fantasies.” She shuddered with distaste. “She’s
not like most of their females. She’s got warmth and feelings and she wants to share them with someone who’ll know how to reciprocate.”
“She said he was good to her, that he protects her.”
“Pfft. Why wouldn’t he? Not out of the goodness of his heart, if he has one, which I doubt. Our little doctor friend is one hot commodity. And I don’t mean under the covers.”
Jacques frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Do you know how we met?” When he shook his head, she settled into her story with eyes flinty and tone cold. “Some crazies from their Purist Movement, those nutjobs who want complete separation of the species, kidnapped her little girl. What kind of cold-blooded monsters do that kind of stuff just to get her to agree to work on some project of theirs?”
Fury pulsed through him with a killing intensity. “And she hired you to bring her
bebe
back?”
“He did. Frost. An appropriate name. I found the fools and, as ordered, made an example of them.” Enough said about that.
“So he does keep them safe,” Jacques mused, both relieved and annoyed.
“Safe in a glass case like some trophy he’s won. Since the kidnapping, he’s gone to extremes to see that no one can get near them or her work. In her place, I’d rather take my chances on my own than be locked in his gilded cage.”
“She’s not you,” was his flat conclusion.
Nica shrugged. “She’s female, she’s been neglected.
She’s ripe for some hot, beefy stud to blow her socks off. What’s your excuse, hot stuff?”
None came readily to mind. He gave her a smirky grin. “So you think I’m a stud?”
“
A
stud, not
my
stud.” She patted his cheek and carried her tray back to her section.
Stud
. He chuckled at that, then cast a contemplative glance toward his office. Was that how Susanna saw him? He knew she did. Her sultry eyes said yes. Her tentative touches said yes. Her soft lips said
hell
yes. The only one putting on the brakes was him.
If it had been any other female, he’d have made his move long ago. What was holding him back? Conscience or fear? He was uncomfortable with the fact that she had family. It wasn’t his way to dally with mated females.
A ghost, Nica called the figure haunting him in dreams. Perhaps she was right. He would never find her, wouldn’t even know where to start looking. If she was alive and had wanted him back, seven years was plenty of time to locate him. Maybe it was time to accept the fact that she was dead or, as Nica suggested, she’d moved on. And so should he. There was no blame to be had, no guilt to be shouldered. It just was what it was. Part of someone else’s life.
From what Nica said, and what he’d heard from others as well, Chosen males and females didn’t bond like those of Shifter kind. They didn’t raise families together. They bred offspring who were packed off to schools and training facilities as soon as they were
weaned, sometimes sooner. Ties weren’t emotional. They were economical. So, bedding Damien Frost’s mate would be more like stealing from his wallet than breaking his moral code. Jacques had pillaged a pocket or two during his first lean months in New Orleans, to survive, not to prosper.
The problem wasn’t moral. It wasn’t guilt. It arose from that gut-deep panic Susanna Duchamps stirred inside him. The intensity of his reactions to her spooked him: protective, possessive, aroused, a minefield of feelings he’d led Savoie through as his naïve friend had lusted ferociously after Charlotte Caissie. That’s what these sensations reminded him of, that helpless, out-of-control state males of their species struggled through until they claimed their mate. It wasn’t the kind of path a wise fellow started down unless he knew he could successfully reach the end.
There would be no happily-ever-after ending for him and the Chosen doctor. They both knew it.
So, would a wise fellow stay away from the flames or jump in to enjoy the fire until it burned him to ash?
No one had ever accused him of being particularly wise unless the word
ass
was tacked on to the end of it.
Jacques was shooting a bit of bull with Philo when he saw Charlotte enter the club. Though she gave him a quick wave, her destination was his office and Susanna. Curiosity chafed at him as long minutes passed. Finally, he couldn’t stand it.
“Tib, you mind taking over for me for a minute?”
His friend shrugged. “Sure, if I can help myself.”
“To anything but the cash drawer and my waitresses.”
He took his time winding through the crowded tables, stopping to chat, patting a back here, pumping a hand there, as his books on good business practices advised him. He even lingered to hear an oft-repeated joke, while his attention drifted to the blank glaze of his office window. After laughing at the anticipated punch line, he made his excuses and a beeline for the stairs.
He didn’t knock. It was his office, after all.
The two women looked up at him, expressions defensive and unwelcoming. If his ego hadn’t been bolstered by the title of Hot Beefy Stud, he might have taken offense.
“Sorry. Am I interrupting something?”
Charlotte offered a tense smile. She looked as weary as he felt. “Hey, Jacques. No. I was just on my way out.” To Susanna she said, “I’ll see you at eight.” As she walked past him, she gave his arm a fond squeeze. “I’ll tell Max you said hey.”
“Do that,” he muttered noncommittally. When they were alone, he noticed that Susanna was shutting down her computer. “Finished already?”
“Charlotte’s taking me to see Mary Kate in the morning. I need to get some sleep. I was going to stretch out on the couch until you close.”
“I’ll take you home so you can get some real rest.”
“You don’t have to—”
But he was already walking out the door.
Home
. Susanna mulled the word over for a bittersweet moment. She’d told him her home was in the North, but in truth, those cold, white walls had never seemed like one. She had no attachment to the place or the people there. She had associates but had made no friends. Not like here. Nothing like here, where she could be herself, express herself without fear of reprisal. Even Damien, whom she respected and depended upon, never let her drop her careful guard without a disapproving frown. Even in private, there were no tender touches, no honest expressions from the heart. Those were things she could only share with Pearl.
She watched Jacques stride back to the bar, her gaze unashamedly caressing his massive shoulders, narrow hips, and long, denim-clad legs. Big, bold, earthy, he wouldn’t fit into her sterile world. This was his place and these were his kind. He belonged. He’d made these rough, basic beings his family and they accepted him for who he was. She envied him that and wouldn’t dream of taking him from it, even for her own personal benefit.
Being in the soundproof room was like living in her world, cut off from the things that celebrated life. No music to tempt the toes to tap, no laughter to coax a smile, no mélange of smells like yeasty hops, honest sweat, and warm body heat. Hers was a cold-blooded existence and as such, the heat in New Orleans drew her with a fatalistic charm.
How was she going to surrender herself back up to that ice-encased existence where she’d never be warm again?
Jacques leaned over the bar to exchange words with his friend Philo, who nodded and shrugged in an accommodating manner. But as soon as the brawny bartender started back her way, she saw something change in Philo Tibideaux’s expression as his gaze lifted to where she stood. She knew he couldn’t see her there but she felt the hostile chill of that stare nonetheless. Philo knew she didn’t belong here in their world, where she presented a threat to their safety and his friend’s well-being. He didn’t trust her intentions or appreciate her interference. Again, there was that honesty she admired: raw, faintly menacing, but deadly honest. And he was right to fear her.
“Ready to go?”
She gave Jacques a tight smile and picked up her bag.
He hesitated in the doorway for a moment, studying his computer, then asked, “Is any of your work saved to my hard drive?”
“No,” she answered carefully. “All my data is on my flash. I remote into the programs on my lab computer. Why do you ask?”
“Just being cautious.” He turned off the lights behind her and, for the first time, locked his door.
His palm settled at the small of her back to steer her down the hall. It wasn’t a big deal. She’d noticed that with his female staff and friends he was a hands-on
male. But she wasn’t used to being touched with that easy kind of familiarity and was startled.
“Forget something?” he asked, responding to her jerk of movement. His hand remained where it was, spread wide just above the curve of her bottom.
“No.” She forced a nervous smile. “Just distracted.” And she walked quickly toward the outer door, away from that innocent contact that had her senses jumping.
The interior of the mammoth Cadillac had suddenly compressed into that of a subcompact. Or so it seemed during their ride to the docks. A clammy drizzle fogged the windows and had Susanna shivering slightly in her seat. Or was that trembling due to the man beside her? A soft, bluesy Robert Cray tune was accompanied by the slap of wiper blades and the hurried rhythm of her heartbeats. “I was warned about her love,” the song lamented all too insightfully.