Their eyes met, but only for a brief moment before he turned his attention to getting himself another cigarette. “It’s 2303 Sea Breeze Way in the Garden District.”

“How come you know the exact address after so long?” she asked.

He lit up again. “I have a great memory.”

“It wasn’t even your case.”

“I go over there occasionally,” he admitted. “His brother and I are friends.”

Huff had mentioned Moreau’s brother. In fact, Huff thought the brother might’ve bribed Black to help Moreau out of trouble. “His brother lives there now?”

“Yep. So does his mother. They sold their house to pay Francis’s attorney fees and then moved into his place after he was arrested because it was cheaper.”

Jasmine blinked raindrops from her eyelashes. “Where’s his father?”

“Died years before the move. Heart disease.”

“Thanks.” Figuring that was all he had to say, she turned toward her car, but he spoke again.

“Be careful.”

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Pivoting, she raised a hand to once again shield her face. “Of what?”

He flipped his hair out of his eyes, and his teeth—including that fang—glowed white against the heavy beard growth on his jaw. “In this case, if the bad guys don’t get you the good guys will.”

Jasmine couldn’t unwind enough to sleep. Every time she began to drift off, she’d see Pearson Black leaning against his car, smoking—and, seconds later, that smoke would roll over her like a suffocating blanket, burning her nose and throat, making it impossible to breathe. She’d startle into wakefulness, tell herself it was just a dream, then stare at the storm raging outside the window until her eyelids began to close and the whole cycle repeated itself.

After experiencing the same nightmare for the third time, she began to worry that it was some sort of premonition. Was there more to Black than the morbid, drama-loving braggart he seemed to be? She sensed that he’d been selective in what he’d chosen to share with her, but why hold anything back? And was there any truth to what he’d said about that evidence being planted?

Hoping to ease her tension enough to finally get some rest, she was about to get up and take a hot shower, when her cell phone rang. A quick glance at the alarm clock on the bedside table told her it was after midnight, but midnight in New Orleans was only ten at home. She figured it was Skye or Sheridan checking in with her.

“What’s going on at the ranch?” she said, smothering a yawn as she answered.

“The ranch?”

Jasmine blinked and sat up. It was a man’s voice. With the thunder making such a racket, and her disquieting dreams about Black, she didn’t immediately recognize it. “Who is this?”

“Romain Fornier.”

It sort of sounded like him. But she thought he didn’t have a phone. He’d moved out into the middle of a swamp because he didn’t want to deal with other people. “Where are you?” she asked.

“At the Flying Squirrel.”

The ramshackle tavern with the stuffed alligator beneath the overhang at its entrance. She remembered seeing the building, which was basically a lean-to adjacent to the little grocery store on the outskirts of Portsville.

“Tell me something only you’d know.” She was half teasing, but after her encounter with Black there was still that trace of doubt in her mind, that uneasiness that came from being in a foreign place.

“I have a cut on my right thigh.”

“Yeah, it’s you.”

“How’d you know?” he asked at length.

His tone indicated that he didn’t like accepting what he was apparently beginning to accept. And she could understand why. She didn’t always like accepting what she could do. “I touched it,” she said.

“When?”

Jasmine reacted to his subtle, sexy change of inflection by lowering her voice.

“When I was touching the rest of you.”

“Damn. Where was I when you were doing that?”

She smiled. “Asleep, I guess.”

“Next time you want to explore, would you mind waking me? I think it’d be a lot more fun.”

“From my perspective, it wasn’t bad the way it was,” she said.

“Oh, yeah?”

Her smile broadened. “Yeah.”

“Tell me about it.”

The gruffness in his voice made Jasmine’s heart pound. She was drawing too close to the flame of their attraction, but it seemed harmless enough, since he was two hours away and she was barricaded in her hotel room. His voice on the phone gave her something to hold on to in the dark. “I was on top,” she murmured.

“I like it so far.” His voice went even deeper. “Was I inside you?”

Jasmine knew she shouldn’t let this continue, but the excitement flooding her senses goaded her on. “Yes. A perfect fit.”

He groaned. “It’s getting better.”

Scooting lower in the bed, she covered her head with the blankets. “You were speaking to me in French. I don’t know what you were saying, but—”

“What’d it sound like?”

She had no trouble recalling his words. She’d repeated them to herself at various times throughout the day, relishing the wonder she’d sensed in him at that moment. “Tu es belle.”

“You’re beautiful,” he translated.

A surge of warmth seemed to lift her up and carry her over a large swell, as if she were riding an ocean wave. “Too bad you couldn’t have meant it,” she said wryly, trying to reach solid ground again.

“Why not?”

“You haven’t seen what you were looking at when you said it.”

“I’ve seen the rest of you. What else did I say?”

“I’m probably going to slaughter it, but it was something like ‘Il est été trop long.’”

“Wait a second…. This is beginning to sound familiar.”

“Really?” she said with a laugh. “I thought you were asleep.”

He hesitated, seemed to wrestle with disbelief, then succumbed to the irrefutable proof in her description. “And I thought my fantasies were my own.”

“I didn’t ask to be invited to your party.”

“You weren’t invited. You crashed it. How?”

All she knew was that they’d both wanted this strongly enough to make it happen. “I have no idea.”




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