Goes down easy: Roped into romance Read online

  He got to his feet before she could “sense” anything else about him, and hunted on the floor for his clothes. The phone rang when he was zipping his pants. Della turned on the bedside lamp and answered.

  The conversation was short, and obviously with her niece. He picked up just enough from Della’s side to figure out Perry wanted them to meet her somewhere. As long as Della was up to it, he’d welcome the distraction.

  He preferred working in the present, focusing on the here and now. The past was long gone; it couldn’t be changed—even though he wished every day that it could.

  THAT KISS to the neck had been a mistake. It was a kiss she had known would never be enough. It was a kiss that should never have happened.

  Drake wanted more. Always more. He couldn’t get his fill of her. And getting what she wanted of him had begun to be a problem more than a joy.

  Big Bruiser Babin didn’t like the idea of his wife making her way home alone. He liked even less her doing so in the company of another man.

  Drake had seen her safely away from the club that first night. He’d walked her through the courtyard and up to her own back door.

  Big Bruiser had been in the kitchen. He’d seen them walk up. He’d met them on the stoop. He’d been polite to Drake. He’d been a sweet potato dumpling to her.

  And then he’d told her he’d be stopping by the Golden Key every night when she sang to take her home himself. He hadn’t listened to her objections—he was too busy to have to play nursemaid to her—he’d simply put his foot down.

  He’d never cottoned to the idea of leaving her there unchaperoned, but he knew what it meant to her to sing. Being the chief of police allowed Big Bruiser Babin the freedom to do just about anything he wanted to do.

  It also meant he never worried about his own coming to harm. He considered himself untouchable, higher than the law he upheld, immune to the misfortune that befell the men whose rehabilitation rested on his broad shoulders.

  That particularly arrogant trait had first brought him to Sugar’s notice. But it had soon caused her admiration to drift, her affections to drift as well.

  After all, when she’d said, “I do,” to Big Bruiser, she hadn’t expected to find herself wed to a man already married to the police department for the city of New Orleans.

  DELLA AGREED TO JACK’S request and arranged to meet him later that morning at the warehouse Eckton Computing had once leased. Perry had come along, leaving Sugar Blues in Kachina’s hands, and now sat with Jack in his SUV, the heater running on high while they waited for Book and Della.

  The cold had settled in to stay, and Jack had left his bomber jacket at her place. Watching him shiver in his sweatshirt tugged at her heart. He’d obviously packed light before leaving Texas, basing his needs on the unseasonable heat wave rather than the cold snap that had blown in as predicted.

  Then again, he’d probably grabbed what was closest and hopefully clean. He didn’t seem concerned with much beyond simplicity. Except when it came to his equipment. Both his laptop and his SUV were tricked out with gadgets she’d never imagined existed.

  To break the drive’s uncomfortable silence, she’d asked him about all she could see. He’d told her about Becca, his assistant, and how his Yukon was his office on wheels. But he hadn’t been particularly chatty. And soon she let him be, deciding he’d retreated into his man cave and was feeling the need to brood.

  Parked in front of the empty warehouse, one of many in a long, unattended row, they soaked up the heat in a silence broken only by the sports radio station he’d tuned into. It was a distraction more than anything, keeping them from having to talk. Keeping him from having to admit she sat less than three feet away.

  Obviously, she’d hit a hot button…or two or three or four…while ferreting out his scars. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the damage inflicted hadn’t all been to his body.

  She hated this new tension that had sprung up between them. Tension was supposed to happen before sex, not afterward, making the air when they were together even harder to breathe. Sharing the front seat of his vehicle shouldn’t be as unsettling as waiting for the results of medical tests.

  And didn’t that serve her right for thinking his invitation to sit in his lap was about more than sitting in his lap? Why she’d thought Jack would be different, that he’d finally be the one to think about sex with the head on his shoulders, still escaped her.

  Men were all the same. They’d take their sports any way they could get them. On the field, the bed, the radio, grrr. She reached over, punched the buttons until she found a song that didn’t make her think about drowning her sorrows in either a bottle of beer or the river.

  She turned her head, stared out the window where the water of the Mississippi was as flat and gray as the sky above. And it wasn’t until the one song had finished and the next began that she realized Jack was singing.

  Straining to listen, she frowned, then closed her eyes to focus. He didn’t miss a beat. Not the lyrics. Not so much as a single note.

  His voice was gruff, deep, a rock star’s voice without the distortion of a mixer or a mike. It was a sexy sound, one that had her squirming in her seat, one that turned up the tension and the heat.

  “You can sing,” she finally said, glancing over.

  “I can also play bass,” he said, never looking her way.

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  He shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”

  “I never had reason to.” She waited, and when he said nothing more, she added, “Until now.”

  His mouth twitched, and he gave her a smile. “Does that mean you’re asking?”

  She couldn’t believe the relief that came with that smile. “Yes. I’m asking.”

  “What exactly do you want to know?”

  Why everything with you is a battle, for one thing. “When did you learn? How did you learn?”

  “The bass I picked up listening to John Paul Jones, then I played it in band in high school.”

  She had no idea who John Paul Jones was and didn’t care enough to ask. “What about the singing? Did you sing in school, too?”

  He didn’t say anything for so long that she didn’t think he’d heard her, and she started to ask the question again. His shifting in his seat stopped her.

  “No.” He flexed the fingers he’d draped over the steering wheel. “I sang with a band for a while after getting out of the service.”

  The way he said it, “getting out”, turned the expression into a statement. One that reminded her of Della’s dismay at his suffering.

  “A band I’d know?” she asked, when she didn’t care about that either. What she wanted to know was what had gone on during his years of enlistment. If what Della had seen had happened then, or happened earlier.

  “I doubt it. We played a lot of small clubs across the Southwest. Stayed on the west coast for several months.”

  “Did you record?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Just gave a lot of drunks music to pass out to.”

  Was that really what he thought? “You have a great voice. I’m sure you had fans.”

  “If we did, no one told me.”

  Or maybe you couldn’t see them because that big chip on your shoulder was in the way. “Do you still play together? You never did tell me the name of the band.”

  “No. Our drummer took off on a trip with Mr. Ellis Dee and never came back.” He reached down for the controls to his seat and moved all the way back, stretching his legs. “They called the band Diamond Jack.”

  “I’m sorry. For your friend.”

  He rolled his shoulders; she took it as a shrug of indifference. “We played together, traveled together. We weren’t die-hard friends.” And then he gave a soft chuckle.

  “What?”

  “What what?”

  “You laughed.”

  “It’s nothing. Just thinking about friends I had in high school. The ones I told you about last night. We played together i
n an ensemble. Now that was a band.” He shook his head. “God, I miss those guys.”

  “A rock band? Like Diamond Jack.”

  “No. It wasn’t that kind of band. It was about true blue school pride and winning competitions and trying to keep Heidi from killing Ben.”

  “Did she?” Perry asked, simply because she had no idea what else to say, and his trip down memory lane intrigued her.

  “She did whack him upside the jaw one time with a bicycle chain.”

  “Ouch. What did he do to deserve that?”

  “He offered to help her pay for college.”

  “And these are people you call friends?”

  “They’re the best.” He laughed, laced his hands over his flat belly, closed his eyes and smiled. “They’ve been married now about six years, I guess.”

  She heard a tinge of envy in the affection with which he spoke. “Do you still see them?”

  “When I can, sure. They live outside of Austin. My friend Quentin took all those blue ribbons we earned in competition and parlayed them into a nice career as a record producer. Randy’s the only one of the bunch I haven’t seen for a while.”

  Perry sighed. Hearing Jack talk about his friends made her realize how few she really had. At least, friends she would call close. She did have Claire as well as Chloe, Josie, Tally and Bree—all neighbors, and girlfriends she could count on for anything.

  But she’d spent so much of her time for so many years running Sugar Blues for Della that she hadn’t even developed those relationships as fully as she would have liked.

  Maybe with the year so new, the time was right to change all of that. To step outside the safe little world she’d built for herself with her aunt, and experience more of life.

  “What’re you thinking about over there?”

  She was not going to tell him…at least not right now. “Thinking that you were lucky in your friends.”

  “You didn’t have any?”

  “Not really.” And how pitiful was that? “I think I scared everyone, first with my parents dying, then living with Della. I guess they thought I could read their minds or something. Whatever, they kept their distance.”

  “Well, you’ll have to meet my bunch if you ever get to Austin.”

  She was saved having to digest what his offer meant by Book’s car coming toward them. She pulled on her gloves and opened the door, letting in a whoosh of brisk air.

  10

  USING SUGAR’S gnarled walking stick, which Book retrieved from the attic after Perry’s call, Della made her way from his car to the warehouse. The place had not been occupied since Eckton Computing had moved, yet appeared less unkempt than its neighbors.

  Whether or not the condition of the property held any significance, she couldn’t say. So far, she hadn’t picked up but a flash or two of color. No heat. No sound. Nothing.

  Facing the front of the structure, the cold wind whipping the ends of her scarf, she stared at the windows set high overhead that ran the length of the wall.

  They looked out over the river, and she knew without going inside that a catwalk sat beneath. She also knew that Jack wouldn’t find Dayton Eckhardt today.

  He’d been here, though; she couldn’t tell how recently, and since this building had once housed his firm’s shipping, production and assembly departments, it wasn’t exactly news that she sensed remnants of his energy.

  She would need to get closer, to go inside…

  “Is there any reason we can’t go in?” she heard Jack ask of Book.

  She glanced over, saw Book shrug. “As long as you don’t bust out a window or take down a door, go ahead.”

  Della started toward the entrance on the far right, knowing when Jack reached it he’d find it unlocked. He did, turning the handle and pushing the door open, glancing in her direction with the air of a man holding an ace up his sleeve.

  Della held back, not quite ready to enter, now that a sharp ice pick sensation had begun stabbing behind her right ear. “They’ve been here. They didn’t see any reason to secure the place when they left.”

  “How long ago? Can you tell?” Book asked beside her as she slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow.

  “I don’t think but a few hours.” She shook her head, narrowed her eyes. “I should be able to get a better sense once I’m inside.”

  “Do you think you should go in?” Perry asked, coming close to brush strands of hair, that had escaped the scarf, from Della’s face. “You’re so pale. Is it your foot?”

  “No, my foot’s fine. It’s just…” Her shoes scraped over loose gravel as she hobbled closer to the door. “I haven’t picked up spikes of anything for over forty-eight hours. I don’t know what’s different now unless—”

  Black, everywhere black. A bolt of red, another of white. Lightning without thunder. Ripping through the sky. Water rushing madly.

  A flood. Yellow rain. Drowning. Gasps of breath in bright orange. Rust and mud. The earth bubbling and swirling. Nowhere to hold on.

  She groaned, stumbled back. Book caught her, and then Perry was there. “Della, sweetie? Can you hear me?”

  It hurt to move her head. She tucked her forehead into Book’s chest to hide from the knifelike pain. “Please. I need to go home. Take me home.”

  Cursing harshly beneath his breath, Book scooped her up in his arms and headed for the car. She kept her eyes closed, her head buried in the folds of his jacket.

  His warmth soothed her, as did his scent, but she couldn’t process any of what she’d seen. Not without the darkness of her room, her medication, and hours to sleep.

  “I’ll ride with you,” Perry said, as Book settled Della into the front seat.

  No. Her niece had to stay. That much she knew. Of that she was certain.

  She reached out, grabbed Perry’s wrist and squeezed. “No, Perry. You stay with Jack. He needs you.”

  “I’M SORRY. Really. That’s the last thing I wanted to happen,” Jack said, wondering if he could possibly feel worse.

  Whatever he believed or didn’t believe about Della Brazille’s gift, he sure as hell would never have asked her to come here if he’d thought it would make her sick.

  “I don’t think she expected it.” Perry rubbed at her wrist, a frown on her face as she watched Book drive away. The detective hadn’t looked too happy with Jack—or with Perry, either.

  After getting Della situated, Book had given his business card to Jack and taken him aside, ordering him to call if he found anything, and not to touch whatever he did.

  Jack wasn’t stupid. He was, in fact, as much a professional as the other man. But he’d let the detective have his say and had kept his resentment to a simmer.

  Figuring out the reason for Book’s barely veiled threat hadn’t required a PhD. Had Jack been in the other man’s shoes, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t have punctuated his directive with a fist.

  Then again, that was something he’d never know, seeing how his woman wasn’t the one hurting. He turned to Perry. She looked strange. Strained.

  And he had to remind himself that she wasn’t his woman. “You could have gone with them. You didn’t have to stay.”

  “Yes, I did,” was all she said before facing him, her cheeks apple red from the wind. “So? What are you waiting for?”

  Nothing, he supposed. Except something about Della’s reaction had him wondering if he shouldn’t do this solo while Perry waited outside. If anything happened to her…

  Cursing under his breath, he pulled a flashlight from his pocket and switched it on, making sure the one he’d given Perry worked as well. “You can wait in the truck if you want to. You don’t have to come with me.”

  “Actually, I do.” She swiped at her hair with gloved hands. “I’m under strict orders.”

  To do what? Babysit? “Orders from who?”

  “Della.”

  He let that sink in, and decided he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. Still, whatever she’d seen, she obviously wouldn’t
have told Perry to stay if doing so would put her in danger.

  “Okay, then. Let’s do it,” he said, and pushed through the door.

  Perry followed. “I’m surprised Book didn’t want you to wait until he could get back.”

  With Della ordering Perry to stay, Jack doubted Book would be budging from Della’s side until this crisis had passed. “I’m pretty sure he thinks this is a wild-goose chase.”

  “Even with what Della has seen?”

  “She hasn’t pinpointed a location. Hell, she hasn’t even seen any chickens. Her visions could be of Timbuktu, for all we know.”

  They certainly weren’t of this place—not if they were flashes of colors and light like Perry had described. The warehouse was nothing but a cold, bleak cavern. Concrete floors and cinderblock walls in matching shades of gray.

  Dust motes danced in the trace of dead light drifting down from the dirty windows. A staircase on the right rose to a catwalk built against all four walls, and a row of upstairs offices at the rear of the structure.

  “I can see why Book didn’t stick around,” Perry said from Jack’s side.

  But Jack hadn’t been interested in the detective. His own research had told him the warehouse was empty. What he’d wanted to find out was whether or not there was anything here that couldn’t be seen.

  Since he was already tottering on a very shaky limb, he was going to take Della’s reaction to mean that there was. His only hope was that a search of the place might turn up a clue he could follow, or a hint of where to go from here.

  “Is this where Taylor’s husband worked?” Perry asked, walking toward the center of the room.

  Jack nodded, listening to the echo of her steps and her voice. “I don’t know how many shifts they worked here then, but he was lead boss for one of the production crews.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You got me.”

  She crossed her arms, rubbed them from her elbows to her shoulders. When she exhaled, her breath frosted. And Jack grew even colder.