At Risk (4 page)

“I thought you’d left.”

“I figured you could use a ride home.”

Cumberland must have grilled him too, but he seemed none the worse for wear. Just for a moment, she leaned into his strength, and his arm slipped lower, holding her against his side.

“You look worn out.”

“I am.”

“I’m sure the bastard gave you a hard time.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve met him before.”

“He started off by quizzing me about the food I served. Then he basically told me I was crazy for having the voodoo ceremony in the first place.”

“Too bad you can’t get Calista to put a hex on him.”

Despite everything, she laughed. “You’re kidding, right?

“Yeah.
Well, only partly. It would be convenient if she could work some magic and get him off our backs.”

“Do you think Cumberland made everybody else wish they hadn’t come to Voodoo Night?”

“Probably not. But he sees you as a tasty target.”

She made a tsking sound. “What did he do to you?”

He shrugged. “Probably similar. He wanted to know where I was in relationship to Villars when he went down.”

“Nice.”

He cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, Villars and I have a history.”

“What?”

He told her about his problem with the antique shop owner and the brooch.

And ended with, “Cumberland was the cop who showed up to scare the shit out of me.”

She gasped. “Oh, Lord.”

“I didn’t take the jewelry, of course.
It showed up in a drawer of an antique piece, but it got me and Cumberland off on the wrong foot.” He sighed. “Too bad he decided to hustle over to your restaurant when he heard Villars had died.”

“Right.”

“And too bad Pete Grady didn’t draw the case. He would have been more objective.”

“Who’s he?”

“A guy who went to high school with me. He’s in the NOPD now.”

“How do you know?”

“I did some checking around when Frank Decorah assigned me to this case.”

She nodded, then realized suddenly that he was giving her the once-over.

“What?” she asked as she pushed her hair back from her face.

“You’ve had a hell of a day.
And this is no place to be standing around having a discussion.”

She looked back at the building. “You think they have microphones out here?”

“I wouldn’t have been saying half of that stuff if I thought they were listening. But they do have surveillance cameras. Let me give you a ride home.”

“I’m fine.” She pulled herself up straighter, determined not to start being dependent on him—because he’d just be leaving again soon.
Briskly, she headed away from his car. “I can get a cab.”

He caught up with her.
“No way.”

The tone of his voice told her he wasn’t going to let her go off on her own.
Not now.

When they’d been teenagers, he’d never stepped over any boundary she’d set, although looking back, she knew he’d tempted her to do things she wouldn’t have done with anyone else. Now their roles were reversed.
He wasn’t asking permission. He was telling her how things were, and she was having trouble rearranging her thinking.

There was a charged moment when she felt the tension crackling between them, and she knew for certain that the attraction they’d shared all those years ago hadn’t gone away. It gave her some satisfaction knowing she could still affect him.

But she’d been thrown by the events of the past few hours. And although Rafe might look controlled, he had to be shaken by Cumberland’s confrontational interrogation techniques. Maybe it was worse for him in a strange sort of way. She’d brought the situation on herself by having a questionable activity at her restaurant to earn a few extra bucks. Rafe had come here to try and catch the mugger ruining her business and gotten caught in a mess. A mess that had opened old animosities with the detective in charge of the case.

She reached to touch his arm.
“I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“Sucking you into this. You signed up for one job, and it got out of hand real quick.”

“I’m glad I was there.”

The conviction in his voice warmed her.

“So was I,” she admitted.

“Let’s get in the car.”

As she let him lead her across the street, she could feel her heart pounding.

When he opened the passenger door, she got in and leaned back against the seat, closing her eyes for a moment.

Her head snapped toward him as he got in beside her. She felt like she had lost her moorings—not just since Villars had keeled over, but since she’d looked up and seen Rafe Gascon standing in her restaurant.

And maybe it would help if he could answer a question that had haunted her for years.

She heard words escape her mouth before she had time to think about the consequences.

“Rafe, why did you walk away from me eight years ago?”

At first she was greeted with heavy silence. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and controlled.
“I wasn’t the one who walked away.”

“That’s not how I remember it.
You left town.”

“Because I had no future here.
We both knew that.”

“But . . .”

He cut her off before she could finish. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“Why not?”

“What really matters is that it was never going to work out for us.”

“Why not?” she asked again.

“We were from two different worlds, and nothing’s changed, chérie.”

He’d never called her that before, and she didn’t think he meant it as an endearment now.
The assumption was reinforced by his blunt assessment, even though it was clear, from the moment they’d set eyes on each other, that there was still something between them. In her present state, that was too much to take, and she didn’t want him to see the film of tears that suddenly clouded her vision.

Lowering her head, she reached for the door handle.
He caught her hand and stopped her. When she tried to wrench away, he held her in place.

“I’m sorry.
Neither one of us is in good enough shape for anything besides going home and going to bed.”

oOo

Rafe stopped short, the words hanging in the air between them as he realized how that must sound. Was that what you called a Freudian slip? When you accidentally said what you were really thinking?

He chose to refocus the conversation.
“Both of us have to stay cool. I think Cumberland enjoyed having us in his power, so to speak. For different reasons, of course. You can deny it, but you
are
New Orleans gentry, and he likes it that you’re in trouble. With me, it’s the old animosity surfacing. My guess is that he would have loved it if I’d assaulted him, but I didn’t take the bait.”

“Oh Lord.”

“So let’s get the hell out of here.”

Without waiting for an answer, he started the car and drove a few yards down the block, then saw that she wasn’t wearing her seat belt.
He could have told her to buckle up. Instead, after checking the rearview mirror, he stopped and reached across her to buckle the belt. The brush of his arm across her middle sent a small jolt of fire through him, and he drew his hand back quickly. It had been a test, and he’d failed it. Or maybe he’d passed it. He was too tired to puzzle it out. All he knew was that despite what he’d said about their being wrong for each other, there was no denying the sexual pull that still bound them.

Again he searched for a distraction and asked, “How come you live above the restaurant?”

“First, it shortens the commute. Second, it saves money.”

He ignored the first part and asked “What about the Beaumont fortune?
Or your mom’s mansion?”

“There is no fortune.
Neither of my parents understood frugality. And since my dad died five years ago, my mother has lived on her investment income, which has gone down because she dipped into too much of her principal to support her lifestyle. I did inherit some money from my grandfather, but it all went to equip the restaurant. Until those muggings, I was doing pretty well. Now I don’t know what’s going to happen. And for your information, I have no interest in living with my mother. She and I never got along real well. It was a relief to escape her constant criticism.”

“I can relate to that.”

“Your dad was hard on you.”

“He didn’t have a very happy life.
His wife died young, and he was left with a kid to raise on his own—without a steady source of income.”

“But he was good at his job.”

“Damn good, but he couldn’t always get work.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I didn’t broadcast it. I wasn’t proud of our lifestyle.”

oOo

Eugenia slid him a glance, but he said nothing more, which gave her time to think about what his life must have been like. He hadn’t talked a lot about it when they’d been teenagers, probably because the two of them had joined together in a kind of fantasy world that had to shatter eventually.

She cast him a sidelong glance and said, “You know a lot about me. Like where I live.”

“I make it my business to know a lot about anybody when I’m assigned to work with them. And in this case, it was relevant, since you live in the area where your patrons were attacked.”

“I guess.”

“You don’t have to guess; it’s my job,” he snapped.

She was sorry she’d challenged him.
Since she’d come out of the police station, everything they said to each other seemed to lead to a confrontation or a subject one or the other of them didn’t want to pursue. Too bad she wasn’t in any kind of shape to keep her reactions normal. If she knew what normal was anymore.

He drove slowly after turning onto Dunlop Street, and she knew he was looking for muggers—which was what she’d hired him to do in the first place.

“The apartment door is in the courtyard.”

“I’ll go with you.”

No use protesting that she didn’t need him to walk her to her door. Instead she waited while he pulled up in the alley parking space from which she could walk to her patio and the back door of the restaurant.

When she saw the yellow crime-scene tape across the door, she sucked in a sharp breath.

“I didn’t think of that,” she murmured. “I guess nobody can go inside.”

“At least for a few days.”

They trooped past her secondhand wicker patio furniture, potted tropical plants and the angel statue she’d picked up at a garden center. She’d given the outdoor space an air of charm that usually made her smile. On Sunday mornings and warm nights when she wasn’t working, she liked to sit out here, decompressing and dreaming up recipes she wanted to try. If this had been an ordinary evening, that’s where she might have ended up. But nothing had turned out to be ordinary—starting with Rafe’s walking in the door. The Villars death, Cumberland arriving and the ordeal at the police station.

And now there was the awkward moment of saying good night to Rafe.

“Are you going to be all right?” he asked.

“Yes.”
She tried to sound convincing, but probably they both knew she was lying.

“I’ll talk to you after I meet with Pete,” he said.

“In the morning?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going with you.”

She waited with her heart pounding.
He could say “No.”

Instead he answered with a brusque nod.
“Okay. I’ll pick you up at six.”

oOo

As soon as Rafe turned and left, Eugenia unlocked her door and walked slowly up the steps. So far, she’d managed to hold herself together. Now that she was alone, she didn’t have to pretend to anyone else that she was doing okay. As she stood before her door, she started to shake so hard that she could hardly get the key into the lock.

She finally did it, then walked inside on wobbly legs.
She got no farther than the sofa, where she sat down heavily and managed to kick off her shoes.

Raising her head, she looked around at her mismatched furnishings, a combination of family heirlooms and bargain finds.
She’d enjoyed decorating the apartment, putting her own touch to the living space. This place had been a haven for her. Now she felt like her world had been turned upside down.

She’d been a fool to get involved with Calista.
And she’d been a fool to think that she was over Rafe Gascon. The moment she’d set eyes on him, she’d known that the old feelings hadn’t gone away.

But she had no idea where that left them.

She threw her head back, trying to relax without much success. Finally she forced herself to get up, walk down the hall to the bathroom and start getting ready for bed. She took off the dress she’d been wearing and hung it up, thinking that after the day’s activities, it needed a trip to the cleaner. Once she’d taken off her bra, she pulled out one of the extra-long tee shirts that she liked to sleep in. After washing her face and brushing her teeth, she finally crawled into bed and closed her eyes. But every nerve in her body was still humming, and as she lay in the darkened bedroom, she thought she heard a noise outside.