
the Rogue
ISBN 1-891020-55-2Rocket eBook ISBN 1-58608-073-3© copyright Kelly Roman 1998cover art by Jenny DixonNew Concepts Publishing4729 Humphreys Rd.Lake Park, GA 31636www.newconceptspublishing.com
To Marguerite, for the inspirationand to Pam, for the feedback.
The man looked to be in his late twenties, like any number of the other men there, but that was the only commonplace thing about him. He was... dramatic. A shock of artlessly tousled dark hair, brushed a pair of unnervingly wide shoulders. One erring lock tumbled across a high forehead. A heavy five-o-clock shadow hugged the blunt line of his jaw. Between the hair and the beard was an elegantly graven face that could - and probably had - graced any number of magazine covers.
He looked like trouble. The kind you could sigh over, and Carolina did just that. Gustily. He's a great dancer, she observed. You wouldn't think a man could be that graceful. I wish.... She cut off the thought quickly. She'd come back home to stay away from trouble, not dance with it. So just put that man out of your mind, Carolina Virginia.
Sweat trickled down the back of her neck. The crush of people - tourists and locals alike - intensified both the heat and her mild sense of claustrophobia. Normally she didn't mind crowds, but tolerating wall-to-wall bodies was difficult when she'd spent most of the last ten months with more silent space around her than people.
Maybe the distraction was why Carolina didn't notice how close the man was until she briefly bumped into him in the crowd. A second later, ignoring her faint, automatic protest, he swept her up into the dance. Secretly thrilled, but a little annoyed - she definitely wasn't used to being grabbed - Carolina tipped her head back to look up at him. Tingling shock stung her, followed by an unaccustomed flood of heat as his sin-black eyes captured hers.
The makeshift band ensconced on the street corner ended the foot-stomping zydeco tune and immediately swung into a lilting waltz. So did the audience, as easily as if they were polished debutantes at a Garden District cotillion rather than a group of strangers drawn together by the desire to dance and have a rip-roaring good time.
Carolina smiled the first genuine smile she'd worn in two days. The music, the atmosphere, the people - yep, she was very definitely home. Only in New Orleans did people waltz to the homely sounds of fiddle, accordion and harmonica as if they were an orchestra. It was also a city where strange, exotic men began waltzing with women they'd never met as easily as if they'd been dancing together for years.
Her partner chose that moment to hitch her a teeny bit closer than was proper for strangers. Carolina's nerves leaped to life, singing with sensible warnings and baffling arousal. Every solid inch of him was pressed into her softer form, making her unnervingly aware of each lean line of muscle beneath the tight black cotton T-shirt. Her startled gaze flew up to collide with his.
He grinned at her, a slash of pure white against his sun-darkened skin. Carolina's eyes were drawn to his mouth. It was well-shaped, provocatively masculine, and she thought somewhat bemusedly that it seemed to promise pleasures that could make a woman's toes curl.
The man smiled slowly, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. "Evenin', chere."
The velvet baritone drawl sent tiny shivers through her, even as she made note of the lilting Cajun accent and the easy endearment which marked him as a native of Louisiana, if not New Orleans.
Carolina realized that she was blushing even as she mentally kicked herself for it. He hadn't meant anything by it; the man could undoubtably make any woman blush. He probably flirted, she told herself as he swung her out in a sweeping turn, as easily as most men breathed.
She dropped her eyes in an attempt to recover her wits and found herself staring at the fly of his well-worn black jeans.
Blushing brightly enough to glow, Carolina tore her eyes away, but the image of well-endowed masculinity seemed indelibly seared into her brain. The part of her that her mother had ruthlessly schooled to gentility was horrified. The part that hadn't was impressed.
"See anything you like?"
Startled, Carolina jerked back. His arms tightened around her as if he were afraid that she'd try to get away. No, she thought, that wasn't right; this man would never be afraid of anything. "Yes." Oh, there was that unflinchingly honest tongue of hers, getting her into trouble again. But if he wasn't afraid of anything, than her improper boldness certainly shouldn't shock the socks off him. Gamely, she forged ahead. "But I'm not going to do anything about it."
The electrifying grin again. "I might."
Carolina thought idly that she should be fainting in the best tradition of Southern womanhood. But the stubborn, gleefully mischievous part of her that had driven her to Africa ten months before was stronger than ingrained manners. She smiled sweetly at him. "In front of everyone?" The nod of her head indicated the hundred or so people vigorously enjoying the impromptu block party. The noise level from the music alone was enough to make the rest of the French Quarter shimmy.
"I could work somethin' out," he murmured, undaunted.
"I'll bet."
He laughed and pulled her closer again. He was strange, she thought, but he was definitely a superb dancer. His movements were graceful, full of restrained power. He wasn't excessively tall - she mentally put him at about six feet - but there was plenty of lean, well-defined muscle filling out his shoulders, chest and those long, long legs.
"What would you do," he asked, loudly enough to be heard over the band, "if I said I wanted t'drag you off to the nearest alley and make love t'you until you scream?"
Carolina started to get nervous. He had to be joking. Didn't he? "I'd tell you that I don't sleep with strangers." Then she saw the fire in his eyes.
"Who said anything about sleepin'?" He leaned down until his lips were brushing the delicate curve of her ear. There was just enough sensual menace in his dark, depthless voice to make her shiver with deliciously primal female fear. "So, how 'bout it, chere?"
Hell's bells, he was serious.
She was saved from answering by the music. The waltz ended and segued into an equally old-fashioned barn dance. Carolina twisted out of the stranger's hold and slipped into the sudden chaos. A couple of well-timed revolutions in the barn dance should get her safely away.
Or so Carolina thought until the last dizzying turn flung her back into the stranger's arms.
So much for Plan A.
"Was it something I said?" the man wanted to know as he propelled her toward the edge of the crowd.
Her chin came up as she searched, out of habit, for a polite response. There wasn't one, so she mentally shrugged and retorted, "I don't appreciate being propositioned."
His grip on her upper arm gentled, but not enough for her to be able to pull away. "That wasn't a proposition, chere." His grin flashed through the darkness at her. "It was a declaration of intent."
She tried to jerk out of his hold. Carolina wasn't a soft sort of female, but the stranger's grip was like iron. "Let me go!"
He had to have seen the fear building in her eyes, because the hard lines of his mouth softened ever so slightly. His grin gentled into a smile. "Don' fret so, petite. I was only jokin'. I'm not gonna hurt you."
Carolina wasn't buying it. She lunged at him. The defensive move was hampered by his seemingly unbreakable hold on her arm and the fact that the stranger was unnervingly fast, more like a great black cat than a man. He locked her struggling body against him before she could get more than a couple of blows in.
Panting, she glared up at him. "I'm not going to make it easy for you."
Incredibly, he freed one hand to brush her disordered hair out of her eyes. "I meant it when I said I wasn't going t'hurt you. I don' believe in rape, cherie."
He said it with such quiet assurance that Carolina almost believed him. Almost. Her instinct for self-preservation was stronger. "How comforting," she snapped.
"You don' believe me, do you." It wasn't a question.
"Why should I? Now let me go before I start screaming."
Something dark and predatory flickered across his eyes like heat lightning on a dark night. "I love a responsive woman. But save it for later," he advised mildly, "when I give you a real reason t'want t'scream."
The man had pulled her into him and retreated deeper into the cloaking shadows before she could even think to fight him. How did he move so darned quickly? The image of the panther flashed across her mind again.
The image was replaced by his face, dark and implacable, as he bent her backward over his arm. Off-balance in more ways than one, she clutched at his shoulders.
He smiled ferally.
And then he kissed her.
She wouldn't have expected his lips to be soft, but they were. She had intuitively known that he was expert at pleasing a woman, but couldn't have anticipated this drowning sensuality - or her own response to it. He nibbled softly at her lips, as if asking permission to enter.
Dazed, Carolina let go of a fraction of her wariness.
It was enough. The moment he sensed the softening in her, the kiss changed. He demanded. He plundered. He ravished her mouth as if he had a perfect right to it. And to the rest of her.
And Carolina, reeling, melting, responded in a rush of urgency that would have infuriated her - if she'd been capable of thinking. She became incredibly aware of the length of his body supporting hers, and was glad of it. She wasn't at all sure that her bones hadn't turned to mush.
As quickly as it had begun, it ended. The stranger hauled her upright and let her go, Carolina found herself suddenly tottering on unsteady legs. She watched, dazed, while the stranger tidied the wisping strands of pale hair that had escaped her braid. He took his time, clearly enjoying the soft textures of her hair. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. Good heavens, what had he done to her?
"Hey, don' look so scared, no. I'm impulsive, chere, but I'm not a monster. At least, not usually." Even in the humid gloom, she caught the flash of sadness in his eyes.
And then it was gone. He touched a finger to her swollen lips, his eyes only holding masculine satisfaction. "You sure do pack a wallop, petite." He flicked his calloused fingertip along the soft, moist surface of her inner lip, then brought the finger to his own lips, tasting. "But you still taste sweet. Like cinnamon honey."
Carolina swallowed, and realized that his own taste, like midnight and storm, still lingered on her tongue. Despite that, the firestorm of sensation was easing off, and Carolina was beginning to think clearly again. And she was angry. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't scream for a cop right now."
The stranger grinned unrepentantly as he raised mock-defensive hands. "You enjoyed it?"
She stared at him, eyes wide, torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to kick something, preferably him. "I don't believe you, you..."
"No need t'thank me." He was already melting further into the shadows, fading like the Cheshire cat.
She sputtered. "Now you just hold on a minute, you - "
"Mebbe later, chere. When we don' have an audience close by, eh?"
"For heaven's sake!" Exasperation and annoyance and a host of other emotions that Carolina didn't want to examine too closely made her throw up her hands. "I'm here a day and look what happens. I should've known better than to come back. I just should've!"
She would have sworn that the stranger had faded away into the night, but Carolina caught the now-familiar white slash of his smile out of the corner of her eye.
"Glad you did. Welcome back to N'Awlins, cherie."
And then, somehow, he was gone, this time for good, and without her having heard so much as a footfall above the sounds of traffic and music.
Carolina snorted, trying valiantly to ignore the fact that her lips were still stinging pleasantly, and turned back to the party. She had a sudden, desperate urge to lose herself in it. "Yeah, welcome all to hell."
The music and pulsing life filling the street beckoned him, but he stayed back, watching everything from the concealing shadows. He frowned a bit, rubbing one hand over his stubbled chin in thought. Maybe joining the revelry had been a bad idea, but it was in the past. Like that kiss.
Ah, that kiss was something he would remember for a long time. He propped his shoulder against a wall, feeling its marginal coolness against his hot skin. Just like he would remember the sweet-tasting, feisty woman, with fondness and a little regret. Mostly regret that something would come of the incredible attraction he'd felt humming between them. Ooo-wee, had there been an attraction! Ever since he'd seen her laughing, clapping along with the others who hadn't joined in the dancing, he'd been hooked. There had been something about her that almost shimmered like a beacon in the darkness beyond her obvious restraint. A pity, he thought again with a small pang of remorse. But that didn't mean he couldn't wish.
Opening Treasured Tales the next morning was made slightly more difficult by the fact that she was forced to resort to wearing her glasses.
Carolina swore as she nearly upended her coffee cup. It was barely nine in the morning - ungodly early, as far as the rest of the French Quarter was concerned - and already her temper was as frayed as some of her bookbindings. Her raw eyes had been, as far as she was concerned, the last straw.
A combination of lack of sleep and an excess of Dixie beer were to blame for both the eyes and at least seventy percent of the headache, but she was more than happy to lay all the blame at the stranger's feet. After all, she would never have drunk so much if it hadn't been for him.
Her lips tingled again maddeningly, just as they had all night. Three beers were her limit, and she'd downed twice that once she'd gotten home in an attempt to erase the memory of that kiss. All her efforts had gotten her were a throbbing hangover and sand-filled eyeballs.
Carolina rolled her head on her neck, trying to dispel some of the tension knotted into the muscles. "So much for the curative powers of drink."
A sweet voice chirped, "That doesn't count for the day after, honey."
Carolina's mouth thinned into a sour, tight line. She wasn't in the mood for cheer. "Thanks for the reminder, Marguerite."
The older woman swept back an errant tendril of her short blond hair with one hand and pushed Carolina's mug toward her with the other. "Café au lait. I made it special, so drink it."
She obediently sipped. And sipped again to hide a grimace. "There's something besides coffee and chicory in here."
"A bit of the hair of the dog..."
Carolina sighed. "Marguerite, you aren't Irish."
"No, but I am practical. Drink."
She drank. "Shouldn't we be opening up or something?"
"We are open. Just no customers yet."
"Oh." Carolina finished her doctored coffee and sighed. Either the alcohol or the steamy warmth of the coffee was working magic with her stiff muscles. Thank heaven for small favors. "Too early for customers?"
"I think I hear a brain slipping into gear," Marguerite murmured, sotto voice.
Carolina ignored her teasing in favor of staring out the plate glass front window. A scattering of hardy, early-morning tourists was going by. A cottony fog had rolled up from the river overnight, drifting silently over the streets and eddying around the other shops fronting Jackson Square.
Then she glanced around the shop with its cheerful hodgepodge of hand-carved shelves and handbound books. In ten months, it hadn't appreciably changed. Rich red carpet, as close to the old as they'd been able to find. Soft, indirect lighting. The scent of vanilla, marjoram and cinnamon from her strategically-placed sachets mingling with the smell of aged leather, fresh paint and the ever-present river. The workmen had done a good job of repairing the damage, but...
Carolina winced, feeling a pang of empathy for the place. The fire had been minimal, but the vandals who had set it had done more considerable damage, including shredding quite a few volumes which had had to be replaced. Treasured Tales was operating, but it was deeply in the red.
She sank into the comfortably worn brocade chair positioned by the door. Her fingers lovingly caressed the plump arm. Its textures, at least, were familiar. "You know, I actually missed this place."
Marguerite's brown eyes peered quizzically at her from over the narrow rims of her reading glasses. "Of course you did. I'm surprised you stayed away so long, sweetie. New Orleans was always your lifeline."
"That's why I went," Carolina saluted her with her mug. "Dependency is a terrible thing."
Marguerite made a humming sound, patently unconvinced. "D'you want to check the special orders that came in now, or do you want to wait?"
"Now, I suppose." She managed to push herself out of the pillowy chair with only a token protest from her sore muscles. "That way I know what has to get priority treatment."
The two women dove into the stack of newly-arrived books. Halfway through the stack of new merchandise, Carolina breathed out a reverent sigh. She carefully lifted an encyclopedia-sized volume from its packing box. "Oh, Marguerite, would you look at this? It's finally here!" The worshipful, almost dopey grin was making her face ache, and she didn't care a whit who saw her. "It's a miracle we were able to locate it, much less acquire it."
The older woman made a sound of approval. "Mint condition."
Carolina clasped the book to her breasts. "Mint condition and possibly written by Francis Xavier Dumont." She smoothed a fingertip over the ornate metal lock. "I would give my eyeteeth to be able to authenticate this." She sighed lustily.
"I'm taking a guess that you know about this sort of thing?"
Carolina cocked an eyebrow. "Remember why I just spent ten months in Africa?"
Marguerite rolled her eyes. "You and your folklore."
"That's what my parents said when I got my degree in it. But the fringe benefit is that I can recognize a genuine literary treasure when I see one." One long-fingered hand stroked the lock again. An odd tingle seemed to travel up her arm. "And this little beauty is, as they used to say, a gem of the first water."
Marguerite gently rapped her on the head with her knuckles. "You can't have it."
"I know, I know." Carolina heaved a genuine sigh of regret and carefully laid the volume back on the counter. "Much as I might like to, I won't jeopardize the shop's reputation by filching a client's order." Although she was very tempted, she added silently. Only a scholar and connoisseur of rare books would have the proper appreciation for what was either an excellent forgery or an actual first edition volume of Dumont's Vodou. And if it was genuine, it might just be the last surviving copy; Dumont had supposedly destroyed all of the copies he could get his hands on soon after publication. "Who ordered this?"
Marguerite paused long enough to look at the order slip. "A G. Ribaud. I remember this one. It was odd."
"What?" Carolina didn't look up from the book.
"The order was prepaid, with a sizable tip added to insure timely delivery."
"How sizable?"
"About five hundred dollars."
Carolina's head popped up. "Five hundred dollars? Cash up front? For a tip?"
"Yes, yes, and yes. Stop looking so startled. This is a valuable book, not a pizza."
And they needed the money; Carolina caught what the other woman had left unspoken. But... "But there aren't many people who would be able to recognize the value." She couldn't seem to take her hands off the book. The cover didn't feel like leather, she decided. More like silky suede. And almost alive.
"Well, this G. Ribaud did. And he wants it delivered."
With an effort, Carolina brought her attention back to the conversation. "How do you know it's a he?"
"Handwriting. He sent a letter to place his request. No woman writes in messy, heavy black scrawl." Amused, Marguerite leaned forward on the counter, one hand propping up her gently-rounded chin. "Do you want to deliver it, or should I?"
"I'll do it," Carolina said hastily. She needed a little more time with the precious volume before she'd be able to let it go. "D'you think we'll get a noon rush today? I can always stay to help out."
"Not unless we get a bunch of tourists more interested in antique books than plastic crawfish souvenirs," Marguerite said pertly, long since accustomed to the vagaries of tourists. "Do you think you'll quit mooning over that thing by then?"
Carolina smiled in amused self-depreciation. "I'm not making any promises."
Despite Marguerite's prediction, the shop was busy enough by noontime to warrant keeping Carolina on the job and deny them both a chance for lunch.
"There's a lull," Marguerite announced at quarter to one. "Quick, out the door."
It was too soon! Carolina thought frantically, biting back an uncharacteristic wave of panic. "But..."
"No buts. Get that book delivered. The longer you wait, the harder it'll be for you to give it up."
The heck of it was, Carolina thought dourly as she shouldered her way through the browsers and out of the shop and hopped into her car, that Marguerite was right. She wanted this book like she'd never wanted anything else - it was almost like an obsession.
Dangerous. Very dangerous. After what had happened to her mother, she was very wary of anything smacking of an unhealthy fascination.
She glanced at the paper-wrapped book on the seat next to her. She imagined that she could feel its pull through the packaging and grimaced. Marguerite was right. Best to deliver the thing to Mr. Ribaud now and be done with it.
Traveling up the old road to Navarre, a tiny town snuggled along the edge of a bayou a short distance south of New Orleans, was a little like going back in time to when that city had been a mere gleam in the eyes of the first French settlers. The bayou was a world unto itself. The humidity and greenery were oppressive, giving the day a haunting quality in spite of the sizzling sunlight. She was feeling distinctly claustrophobic by the time she located Ribaud's house, way out in a desolate section of town.
As soon as Carolina parked her white Saturn in a convenient spot in front of the old plantation house and stepped out of the air-conditioned interior, the early September heat slapped around her like a heavy, wet blanket. No one on the Louisiana coast could ever forget that they were living in a sub-tropical climate, she thought wryly, holding the book in one hand and pushing frizzing blond curls out of her eyes with the other. Even her glasses were fogging up.
She eyed the Ribaud house curiously. Her first impression was that it had somehow sprung up out of the bayou itself. Heavy shawls of Spanish moss draped over the branches of the overshadowing cypresses as if the trees were the graceful ladies which must have lived in this house a hundred years ago. The structure itself looked much less graceful. It seemed to scowl at her from out of its many lidded eyes.
Carolina shook her head, half-expecting to hear her brain rattle against the sides of her skull like a bean inside a hollow gourd. She was getting ridiculously fanciful. It was only a building, a typical old plantation house. Granted, it wasn't in what she'd call mint condition, but everybody knew the brutal bayou moisture was hell on houses. The white paint was graying in places and peeling from the columns supporting the upper story. The wide, black shutters were equally in need of a facelift. The weathered wood-slat fence circling the house and yard was completely paint and stain-free, probably bleached by the sun. There was no sign of a mailbox, and most of the windows were curtained off.
There was also something subtly odd about the place. It wasn't just the sense of cloying closeness caused by the tangled vegetation hemming it in from all sides, hiding the place from the prying eyes of nonexistent neighbors. There was something in the shadows cast by the great trees, almost a sense of lifelessness. No... of stillness. As if everything inside the property lines was holding its breath.
Carolina almost felt like doing just that as she stepped onto the cracking clamshell walkway. To distract herself, she began constructing a mental image of Ribaud. He'd be at least sixty, she thought. Perhaps balding. Eccentric and dry witted. He had small, deep set eyes and scholarly frown lines. He probably wore gold wire-rim glasses and tweed blazers with leather patches on the elbows, even in the heat. A true Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's swamp.
Lips twitching at the notion, Carolina leaned on the doorbell.
A muted chime sounded from somewhere deep in the house, as if it echoed from the back of a cave. The place couldn't be that big. Could it?
She waited for long moments, rapidly getting sleepy in the heat. Sweat began trickling down her neck to pool in the hollow of her throat. The sweet, mingled scents from the overrun garden and the earthier smell of the nearby bayou formed a heavy perfume. For some reason, it made her think of a funeral parlor.
When the humming came, it sounded like a giant electronic mosquito zeroing in on her head. Carolina automatically ducked, free hand upraised, before she realized that the sound was coming from a small, not very modern intercom set unobtrusively beside the doorframe.
She pushed the "answer" button, licking her lips before she answered. "Hello?"
The other voice's gender was masked by static, but it was still unmistakably curt. "You have the book?"
Carolina took a deep breath of the wet air and counted to ten, not daring to trust herself with a quick answer. It seemed as if she'd lost her temper along with her manners last night. "Are you Mr. Ribaud?"
The disembodied voice muttered something that was thankfully lost in the static. "I'm Ribaud."
"Then, yes, I have the book." Why on earth did she feel like a gangster's moll making a drop?
"Leave it by the door and go."
"Mr. Ribaud..." Carolina grabbed for her temper with both hands. She wasn't usually so quick off the mark, but there was something about the voice that rubbed her the wrong way. And she wasn't exactly in the best of moods to begin with. She made a mental note never to drink Dixie beer again. "If that's who you are, that is. There is no way that I will leave any old book, let alone a copy of Dumont's Vodou, lying on someone's front porch. Not in this kind of weather, and not unless I am absolutely certain that I'm delivering it as requested to Mr. G. Ribaud."
"Gabriel. My name is Gabriel," the voice snapped.
"That's not proof of identity," she answered, her voice as cool as the afternoon was hot. Yes, her mama would be horrified at her behavior.
Well, her mama would just have to get used to it. Her sweet little Carolina Virginia seemed to be riding a real temperamental streak lately. "Sorry," she said into the little speaker, and tried to sound as if she meant it.
The voice fell silent. Another buzzer sounded, and the front door clicked open.
Interesting, Carolina thought, stepping into the dim interior of the house. And then she regretted her action as the door shut behind her with a distinctly final clink.
Well, shoot. She looked around, half-interested, half-worried, realizing that she was in a small, painfully bleak foyer. The old brick floor, worn smooth and shiny by generations of feet, squeaked beneath the rubber soles of her sandals.
The sense of oppression came back, doubled.
Carolina shook herself, as much to dispel the sudden chill raising goosebumps on her skin as anything else. "Well, I can't very well stand here all day."
The sound of her own voice, echoing oddly through the rooms, startled her. Her hand went to her throat in a nervous gesture, fingers fiddling with the round silver pendant at the hollow of her throat.
Cautiously, she moved forward and into what might have once been a small salon. Was the entire house furnished in these uncomfortable-looking antiques? It must have cost as-yet-unseen Ribaud a fortune to restore the house to its original state. Although, judging by the coating of dust that shaded the paint on the walls to a deeper French blue, she could almost believe that the furnishings had come with the place.
And where was her terse host anyway? She would've been very glad to see anybody, no matter how grumpy they apparently were. She would have thought that a man who owned a house this size would at least have a housekeeper. Although anyone who wouldn't have a gardener, she amended, remembering the overgrown front lawn and untidy bushes, probably wouldn't bother with a butler.
There was a sound. Carolina stopped still and listened. There was someone coming down the staircase. She could hear the squeaking that accompanied the otherwise silent press of feet against old wood.
"It's about time." Squaring her shoulders, Carolina tightened her grip on the paper-wrapped package in her right hand and strode out of the salon. She had half a mind to hurry out of the house with Vodou and go back to the store. Let the arrogant old man have his money back. He obviously wasn't going to appreciate the book like she would.
Ribaud's steps thudded to a halt midway down the mahogany stairs. "Damn it, woman, where'd you go?"
That voice! Carolina faltered in mid-step and almost tripped when the tip of her loose sandal caught on an uneven portion of the brick floor. Then she got a good look at the figure on the staircase and felt all the blood in her body rush to puddle in her toes.
The dark stranger's shocked expression was slowly being replaced by a familiar, predatory smile.
"Well, well." There was a wealth of satisfaction in his deep, drawling voice, and Carolina began to feel the first stirrings of panic. "Hey, cherie, where y'at?"
"You? You're Gabriel Ribaud?" She was proud of herself; her voice had been almost steady.
He sketched her an elegant, mocking bow. Hell, wishes really did come true. He should have tried this years ago. "None other, chere. And you're from Treasured Tales?"
"It's my... store." Her voice threaded out to a whisper again because the stranger - Mr. Ribaud, she absently corrected herself - was descending the stairs with that predatory, pantherish grace she'd noticed last night.
Carolina watched nervously as he stopped a foot away from where she stood. There was approval in his dark eyes; she couldn't decide whether it was because she'd stood her ground with him when she should have been running or because she was wearing a thin, hot pink tank top and gauzy skirt in deference to the sweltering weather.
"What's your name?" He made it sound so sensual. So unthreatening. He even seemed unthreatening, standing there in the dusty daylight. Still, Carolina hesitated on her answer, conscious of a deep, feminine awareness that giving this man anything would be a mistake.
"C'mon, petite, I don' bite." A wry smile twisted his carnal lips. "Well, not unless you ask real nice."
Carolina felt a faint thrill of shock. This was the grouchy voice behind the crackly intercom speaker? "Are you sure you're Mr. Ribaud?"
"Last time I checked."
"I don't suppose you have any ID?" She felt like an absolute idiot for asking, of course, but if this was Ribaud, then she really didn't feel comfortable leaving Vodou with him - even if he had paid for it.
Instead of reaching into the back pocket of his jeans for his wallet, he reached for her.
Last night's kiss hadn't been a fluke. That was Carolina's last coherent thought as his lips sealed over hers. She was bitterly disappointed. It would have been easier for her if Ribaud had turned out to be more like her initial mental image of him. Then she could have hated him.
I really ought to have known better than to think she could do things the easy way.
The little sparks and tingles that she remembered from last night were back in her blood. In force. It was almost as if the kiss connected them in a way that had nothing to do with the mating of lips and tongue. Carolina would swear that she could feel the stranger - Gabriel - pervading every cell in her body like a flood of dark, incredibly exciting electricity.
He pulled away, just a little, with a last, nibbling caress of her lower lip that probably weakened Carolina's knees even more. His own weren't doing too well, either. This woman affected him as he hadn't been affected in a long, long time. His lips brushed hers once more before he drew back to let her breathe. His hands, big and long-fingered, made the expanse of female back beneath them seem small and fragile. Gabriel let his fingers walk down her spine to the flare of her hips, smiling briefly when he realized that she wasn't wearing a bra.
Carolina didn't want to look at him. She didn't. The first time he'd kissed her had been beyond her control - at least she told herself that - but this one? What was happening to her? She'd never been so... wanton. Not with her fiancé, at any rate. And she shouldn't be with this arrogant stranger!
Well, she couldn't stand here all day with her eyes closed, no matter how badly she wanted to. Besides, Gabriel Ribaud barely knew her. Even if his opinion of her mattered, what could he do? Tell her mother?
Feeling a little better after the pep talk, Carolina opened her eyes. Gabriel's face was inches away from her own. Why had she not noticed before how absolutely fascinating he looked? His narrowed eyes were onyx slits in his sun-dark features. They flashed - no, burned - well... oddly. His narrow, almost Roman nose would have been classically perfect if it hadn't had a just-maybe-broken-once set. A souvenir of a fistfight? Carolina considered that, finding that the image of Ribaud in a fight came with disturbing ease to her mind. He probably gets into a lot of them. Especially if he makes a habit of going around dragging women into dark corners.
The memory was as stinging as a slap across the face. Carolina was suddenly aware of a dawning sense of horror. What the hell was she doing, letting him kiss her like that? She didn't know anything about him - well, except that he made her nervous, was a lousy housekeeper, kept to himself and liked old books - and she was in his arms. In his house.
Her fine, wheat-dark brows drew together quite unconsciously. In his very secluded house.
Alone.
And he appeared fascinated by her lack of a bra.
"Oh, shoot." She murmured the totally inadequate phrase when what she really wanted to do was cut loose with a few of the blistering oaths she'd picked up during her stint in Africa. Her mother had never told her that there would be times when the ingrained imperative of ladylike behavior would be a pain in the ass.
Carolina stifled that disloyal thought and pushed discreetly against Gabriel's shoulders.
It was like trying to push a rock.
She cleared her throat and tried her best to look calm and unruffled. "Excuse me, Mr. Ribaud. I'd appreciate it if you'd let me go now."
He regarded her steadily with his inscrutable dark eyes. And then he grinned. "Ooo-wee, chere, you always so polite?"
This was definitely not going according to plan. But then, Carolina reminded herself with a not-inconsiderable amount of fatalism, she had hoped that, this time, Ribaud would behave like a gentleman.
Well, that'll teach me to give him the benefit of the doubt.
"I said, let me go." Carolina was rather pleased with the firmness of her tone. And then she added, "Please."
He was too busy staring at her face to pay attention to the demand. "Your eyes are different colors."
Her hand flew to her face. She hadn't realized until then that he'd taken off her glasses just before he'd kissed her. "My glasses!"
"Right here." He flashed the round gold frames that dangled carelessly from his fingers but didn't let go of them. Or her. "I've never seen a woman with eyes like yours." One fingertip hovered just below the lower lid of her right eye. "Spring green, like new leaves," he murmured, obviously entranced. "And this one..." His fingertip floated across her face, barely brushing her skin. She fought the urge to shiver. "Like an aquamarine." He delicately brushed her long, thick eyelashes. "Framed in Florentine gold."
"Mr. Ribaud..."
"Gabriel."
Carolina set her jaw stubbornly. "Mr. Ribaud."
"Call me Gabriel, chere." His lethal grin slashed white against his bronzed skin, and his breath, warm and redolent of peppermint, puffed gently against the prim set of her lips. His fingertips traced the pale pink imprint the fine chain had made in the fragile skin of her neck. "Or I'll have t'kiss you again."
Carolina took a deep breath and counted to ten. "Gabriel. I suggest that you let loose before you find my knee in a very sensitive portion of your anatomy."
Given the look in her eyes, Gabriel didn't for a minute doubt that she'd carry through on her threat. He stepped back gracefully, regret plain on his face. She was a fierce little thing, even if you had to back her against a wall to get her to show it.
"Thank you." She said it graciously, but her expression was wary.
He didn't blame her. "Think nothin' of it, petite. Although," and he cocked a smile at her designed to melt her resistance, "you'll never know how hard it was for me."
Carolina swallowed the quip that sprang to her tongue. Mentioning his obvious hardness would be a major tactical mistake. "My glasses, please."
"I'll trade you for a kiss."
She bit her lip. "How about my glasses for Vodou instead?"
Something dark and cold flashed across his features and was gone. "Yes. I need Vodou."
Carolina took a wary step back. All the color and vibrancy had leached from his voice at the mention of the book. That didn't make any sense. Only a few minutes ago, he'd been so eager to get it.
The earlier sense of oppression and gloom flowed back, wrapping her in invisible folds of mourning. "Well," she said awkwardly, abruptly thrusting the precious wrapped parcel at him. "Here it is."
Gabriel took it from her, handling it with a curious reverence that, though he didn't know it, reminded Carolina of the way his fingers had brushed her lips last night. "Come and show it to me." It was halfway between an invitation and a command.
"Here?"
"In the library." He cocked his head in the direction of the stairs. "Vodou deserves a little ceremony, eh?"
He was already climbing the daunting staircase before Carolina could gather breath to voice a prudent refusal. And then she realized, between her annoyance at being manipulated and her anger at herself for allowing herself to be manipulated, that she really didn't have a choice.
Growling something rude under her breath, Carolina began to trudge up the stairs. Not that she really had a say in the matter, she assured herself. And not that she gave a darn about Vodou or Gabriel's sure-to-be-magnificent library. No, instead, he had come up with the one thing that would insure her cooperation.
The creep still had her glasses.
Carolina changed her mind about the library the second she settled her newly-reclaimed glasses on her nose.
Gabriel was settled behind the vast expanse of a mahogany desk that had probably been new about the time the Confederates had first donned gray and boasted about being home in a few weeks. He probably imagined that the desk would protect him from her.
She snorted silently. He didn't know her very well if he believed that. She'd already spotted several imminently throwable objets d'art.
But the library! Once her eyes started sweeping the worn leather spines for names, they didn't stop. There were hundreds of them, not one the same as its neighbor, all wonderful in their antiquity. Works of folklore and magic by names only recognizable by those in the field. First editions of classical literature and... Bram Stoker? Grudgingly, Carolina gave him points for taste. Of course, that didn't mean she liked him or trusted him any more than she had before, she assured herself.
Gabriel watched her out of unfathomable black eyes. He was still caught in the moment when he'd seen her downstairs and wondered if he'd finally lost his mind. Or maybe he was still losing it, because instead of telling her to leave, he asked, "Want t'take a look at a few?"
He might as well have asked her whether or not she wanted to win the lottery. She rounded on him, eyes glowing with such a light that Gabriel unconsciously caught his breath.
"Of course I do!" And then she realized how neatly he'd trapped her. "But I can't."
"Why not?"
"Well, because..." OK, York, get yourself out of this one! "Because they're old. Delicate. Not to be read lightly."
"I've never had a problem with that," he murmured in that same strangely gentle tone he used last night.
He came out of the chair and rounded the desk with that eerie physical ease she found so irritatingly compelling. "You just gotta remember one thing, chere. Books are like women. They take careful handling."
"Oh?" She tried for a bored tone.
"Mais yeah." Without looking, he carefully plucked a volume from the shelf behind him.
He opened the book carefully, with a sliding, almost erotic touch. With a sinking feeling, Carolina noticed that it was a particularly fine work of erotica.
His long-fingered hands stroked the flyleaf back with a delicacy that made Carolina's skin quiver in instinctive response. "You gotta follow the rules. You stroke the pages. Gently. You learn their texture. You learn just where to touch to make the pages flow smoothly."
The hair on the back of Carolina's neck was standing on end in primal response. It didn't help that he'd turned to a lovingly-rendered copper plate illustration. The voluptuous woman's back was arched, a look of sublime ecstacy on her taut face as she was pleasured by her lover's tongue.
The lover looked a little like Gabriel.
Heat rushed along her veins and rose to stain her cheeks a brilliant crimson. Somehow, Carolina managed to speak without sounding like a frog. "How do you learn that?"
Her host smiled enigmatically. His eyes were suddenly very, very dark. Hot. "The book tells you, cherie, if you listen. A book is like a beautiful woman. She likes her lovers to have finesse."
She had to ask. "And Vodou? Does she - I mean it - talk to you?"
His eyes went to the book, but his expression chilled. Passionate promise was replaced by veiled menace. "No. She orders." His smile was a thin, cruel twist of the lips. "Vodou is nothing if not a demanding mistress."
He's dangerous. The two words dancing through Carolina's mind almost seemed not her own. Still, she didn't question them. She didn't have to. She'd seen his eyes. There was something of hell in their black depths.
Inadvertently, she remembered what he's said last night, about not being a monster. For some reason, she'd believed him then, perhaps because she'd been surrounded by people who would hear her if she screamed. Carolina wasn't sure about now. Now she was alone in this isolated house with a Byronic man who was still a stranger to her. And who suddenly scared her. She took a hesitant step back.
The woman was nervous; he could feel it. The hunger reached up from its grave deep inside him with a force that was shocking. For a single crazy instant, he could've sworn that it was feeding off the presence of the book. Gabriel closed his eyes, breaking off his contemplation of Vodou's stamped leather cover. He had to get rid of her. Now. "You're afraid, aren't you?"
Carolina licked her lips and fiddled with her pendant. "Yes."
"Then leave, cherie. While you still can." Square, powerful hands curled into fists against the desktop. "While I can let you go."
The genuine darkness in his voice frightened her more than the melodramatic words could. Carolina turned sharply on her heel and strode down the hall.
Her loose sandals sounded obscenely loud in the incredible, tense quiet. She moved faster. She was less than halfway down the stairs when she began to feel as if something was watching her.
No, she realized, not watching her. Following her.
The hell with dignity. Carolina kicked off her sandals, scooped them up in one hand and ran.
The humidity outside the house hit her like a slap in the face, dragging in her laboring lungs. The sunlight was oddly dull, and did nothing to alleviate the cloud of fear around her. Reality seemed to have been warped by her irrational fear. Darn Ribaud for doing this to her! There had been no need to scare her like that. All he'd had to do was tell her to leave.
All the same, Carolina didn't stop moving until she was safely ensconced in her car, air conditioning blasting blessed coolness against her perspiration-damp skin. That was when she began to fell like an utter idiot.
"I can't believe I fell for that!" For that theatrical display, more likely. Her imagination had been running overtime, that was all. Ribaud had clearly made her out as an easy mark.
OK, so the guy wasn't old and bald, and he wasn't remotely like a Yankee professor. He was still eccentric. All right, so he was very eccentric. And one heck of an actor. And it would be a cold day in hell when she forgave him for that stunt.
"It wouldn't have been any harder to just ask me to leave like a normal person," she muttered, and aimed her car out onto the street. She abruptly craved the bustling life and cheerful insanity of the French Quarter.
One thing for certain. Proper upbringing or no, if she ever ran into Gabriel Ribaud again, she wasn't going to waste any time trying to act like a lady. Worse than useless, as far as she was concerned.
She sniffed eloquently. "Some people just don't appreciate manners."
He had to get his mind off the book. And the darkness. He needed to distract himself.
The woman, her memory shimmering in his mind like the beacon he'd compared her to. Gabriel seized on the thought. The haphazard lighting at the party hadn't done her justice, he thought. Either that or his memory was going. He honestly hadn't remembered how beautiful she was.
Of course, technically, she wasn't much past attractive. There were too many shades of blond in her hair - pale champagne and sand, wheat and pure amber and red-gold. Her eyes were huge, gem-colored oases in a tanned, even-featured face, and extravagantly fringed with lush, dark gold lashes that couldn't be real but undoubtably were. Her nose was a bit too long, but very straight and slim. Her chin was definitely a shade too firm, and had an intriguing little cleft. A stubborn chin, he thought, only half-amused. Stubborn women were troublesome, but usually worth the aggravation. Usually.
It was that laughing, expressive mouth that had drawn him to her at the party last night, and had since given him the most trouble. It was naturally red, naturally provocative... and looked altogether too ready to smile, frown, or zing a man with smart remarks couched in that lovely, lazy honey drawl that held more Georgia magnolias than New Orleans spice. And he was in a position to know that it was very, very kissable.
Gabriel leaned back in his chair to the accompanying creak of leather, and propped his feet on the desk. The mere memory of the way her unique flavor had melted on his tongue like warm, drizzled chocolate was enough to get him half-hard. The thought of how that lithe, enticingly curved body had felt against him did the rest.
How long had it been since he'd last had a woman? Gabriel made a face. He knew precisely how long it had been; five years, seven months and twenty-six days. It didn't matter. He had the feeling that he could've just rolled out of bed with another woman, walked into a room where she was, and he'd still have wanted her. A belle femme who was equal parts sweetness and spice, passion and shyness. There had been a time when he would have enthusiastically courted a woman like that.
By all right, his mind should have been on the book instead of the woman. He'd been searching years for just the right copy of Vodou. Been sweating blood wondering if he'd ever actually succeed. All, or nearly all copies of the volume had supposedly been destroyed. Gabriel swallowed against the remembered bitter taste of despair and wished vainly for a beer. Alcohol had little effect on him, but right now he was craving the taste.
Not that any amount of alcohol would help. He risked a glance at Vodou's cover. He could feel the book. It was... brooding. But it was worth the risk to learn if this was indeed the book he needed....
Delicately, he flicked the lock open.
It hit him almost immediately, a hammering wave of nausea and blackness and gut-churning pain as the change began to sweep over him in a glittering tide.
Dammit!
Gabriel flicked the lock back into place and pushed himself away from the desk. Sweat plastered his shirt to his back. The breath sawed in and out of his lungs as he stumbled out of the library, down the stairs. He finally collapsed in the hallway, fingers digging furrows in the floor as he fought the change with every ounce of two hundred years of practice.
A long time later, still damp from a shower, Gabriel settled into his favorite chair in the parlor and glared out the window at the thick twilight. Dammit all to hell. He'd have to find another way of discovering whether or not this copy of Vodou contained the information he needed. If the book was the single copy of the first printing that hadn't been destroyed, then it might contain the clue he needed. Might. The way his luck was running...
He swiped a hand over his face, disgusted. "You'd think that after this long, Ribaud, you'd have learned t'give up the self-pity. Or at least tried."
Never, he thought with a tiny, self-deprecating grin, and closed his eyes. The image of Vodou burned against the background of his eyelids.
Perhaps the woman could help?
The more he thought about it, the more Gabriel liked the whole idea. Especially when it would give him a chance to find out what the woman was hiding under that ladylike exterior that seemed to slip with enough encouragement. Now what he really needed, Gabriel decided as he scrubbed a hand across his stinging eyes, was a way to contact her. It had suddenly occurred to him then that the belle femme had never told him her name.
Grudgingly, he gave her points for creativity; she'd neatly wriggled out of answering when he'd asked. But then, he'd been more interested in kissing her than getting answers. He swiped a hand across his mouth and frowned. He must be losing his touch. "Next time, chere, you won' be so lucky."
That still left him with the problem of getting her back here. He toyed with the idea of sending a letter to Treasured Tales, but quickly decided against it. She didn't have to answer a letter. Hell, she didn't even have to admit to getting it! "Which leaves me exactly where?" The taut question echoed in the otherwise-still room. Even the dust seemed to be holding its breath.
When Gabriel adjusted his position in the chair, his bare foot brushed the bookcase. And he smiled.
The mid-morning lull had arrived without incident. Treasured Tales was nearly completely empty of customers, and quiet.
"Do you want to talk about it now?"
Well, it had been quiet. Nothing lasted forever. The tiny silver bells on her skirt hem tinkled with a cheerfulness Carolina definitely didn't share as she shifted position on her stool and buried her head more deeply in the book she was cataloguing. "No."
Almost immediately, she felt like pond scum. Marguerite didn't deserve to get the sharp side of her tongue. But the older woman seemed to know that she hadn't meant to be so curt. She could almost feel Marguerite's tiny shrug and knew exactly when the other woman went back to her own chores.
She wasn't surprised. Her every sense seemed hyperaware since yesterday's encounter with Gabriel Ribaud. Her skin still tingled with the memory of how his long, solid body had felt against hers. She could still smell the tangy, spicy scent of his aftershave.
Darn it! She'd already spent a long, sleepless night trying to get him out of her head, and it looked as if she could look forward to at least one more. Fortunately, the shop had been busy enough when she'd returned that Marguerite hadn't had the time to grill her about Ribaud. Carolina hadn't wanted to talk about him. She hadn't even wanted to think about him.
Not that she had much choice. Yesterday afternoon had been and gone, and he was still comfortably ensconced in her head. Like he belonged there, Carolina thought resentfully. Why must the dratted man have been so handsome? So sexy? Why had those wicked black eyes had to be so mesmerizing? No man should have eyes like that, or eyelashes so long and thick that a woman would have killed for them. Or because of them.
My God, I'm obsessed with the man's eyelashes! It was a horrifying thought for a woman who had never found much about men to be obsessed with. Although, Carolina thought with a trace of amusement, there was something about a well-toned rear end in a pair of tight jeans... She wondered how hard Gabriel had to work out to look as good as he did in those scandalous black Levis of his.
She was doing it again! Daydreaming about him. Remembering how he'd touched her, how he'd...
Carolina groaned softly and carefully closed the book she hadn't been inspecting. The diary of a rake of considerable local renown, she noted almost absently, fingers brushing the faded cloth cover. Heaven save her from old rogues.
"Like Gabriel. Except that he wasn't old." There was a smattering of betrayal in her low murmur.
Marguerite's head popped up. "No?"
With a soulful sigh, Carolina accepted the inevitable. "No, in fact he's young. Late twenties, I think."
Marguerite's plucked blond eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. She couldn't remember when she'd ever heard that particular note of veiled interest in the child's voice. "What else?"
She turned to face the front of the store, where Marguerite perched on a stool at the register, and leaned back, propping her spine against the oak shelves. "He's arrogant."
"Handsome, too, I'll bet."
Carolina's eyes narrowed. "What makes you say that?"
The older woman smiled wisely. "The look in your eyes."
Carolina abruptly remembered Gabriel's comment about her mismatched eyes - "spring green and aquamarine framed in Florentine gold". He'd been so smooth that she hadn't even realized that he'd slipped her glasses off and... She didn't complete the thought, but the searing moment when he'd kissed her was indelibly etched in her memory. Her hand reflexively flitted to her face to adjust her glasses before Carolina remembered that she was wearing her contacts again.
She covered her mistake by fiddling with her hair, but she had the sinking feeling that Marguerite wasn't fooled. "If you see anything in my eyes," she announced firmly, "it's sheer annoyance. The man kept me waiting out on the porch in the heat. He wouldn't let me in to give him the book."
"So what did you do? When you did get inside."
"I told him I wouldn't give him Vodou unless he showed me proof that he was Mr. Ribaud."
"Carolina Virginia York! Your mama would be ashamed of you. Making such a demand of a gentleman." Marguerite made a sound of gentle disgust and crossed her plump arms over her chest.
Carolina refused to be swayed, although she knew that Marguerite was undoubtably right. "Mama never had to deal with Gabriel Ribaud." She turned at the waist and shoved the diary back into place on the shelf. "That man is anything but a gentleman. He doesn't even answer the door when he's expecting visitors. He barks at them through an intercom." She warmed to her subject, feeling the remembered indignation come flooding back. "And he actually wanted me to leave Vodou on the porch and just drive away. As if I could. You don't leave a treasure like that just lying around for anyone to pick up."
Marguerite shook her finger at her. "Your obsession with that book will get you into trouble, young lady. Bet on that." She made a show of sipping coffee, but her bright-gleaming eyes were anything but casual. "So, did he ever show you any kind of identification?"
Carolina felt heat rush to her cheeks. "He kissed me."
"My, my." Marguerite sat back on her stool and grinned like a well-fed cat. "Why are you blushing, sweetie? That can't be the first time you've been kissed? Or is it?"
"No! But... I didn't want him to kiss me." She frowned. "There's something strange about him."
"You mean you can't manage him." Marguerite's grin was even wider. "I've always said that you need a man every bit as strong as you are. Someone you don't intimidate."
Carolina thought about that. She did have a tendency to come on strong. Was that why Jean-Michael had broken off their engagement? Because she intimidated him? Of course, Carolina, even though he politely couched his rejection in more flowery terms.
"There's nothing wrong with being a strong woman," she said quietly, trying to convince herself. When she looked at where her headstrong ways had gotten her, she sometimes wondered.
"Of course not, but some men feel like there is. Especially when their fiancees decide to postpone the wedding to go dashing off to the Congo for ten months."
"I was asked to do fieldwork by one of my old professors," Carolina muttered defensively. Marguerite sometimes had a knack for making her feel like an erring five year-old.
"I understood that. Jean-Michael didn't, and he did want to feel like he was the most important thing in your life. Let's face it; he just wasn't up to handling you, honey."
Old guilt bit at her; Jean-Michael would have been the most important thing in her life. If she'd really loved him. Good old affection was no substitute, unfortunately. Carolina's jaw firmed into a stubborn line. "I'm not a package or a trained dog. I don't need to be handled."
"I hate to tell you this, but Jean-Michael didn't quite understand that."
"It was probably for the better. I'm not cut out for divorce."
"No woman is, really. But you don't think you'll ever get married?" Marguerite asked with perceptible wistfulness.
"Heck, I don't know. The only man I've met lately - besides the customers - is Gabriel Ribaud. And he definitely doesn't strike me as the marrying kind, either." She heaved a huge sigh. "As a matter of fact, I've decided to swear off men with French last names."
"Then certain you'd better leave New Orleans if you ever want to get hitched. Now, come deal with this new arrival." Marguerite patted a wrapped package that had come in the morning's mail.
Carolina meandered over to the register, took one look at the slashing, curiously antique script on the address label - no name specified except the shop's, she noted - and had a sinking feeling take hold of her stomach.
She knew better than to open the package, she really did. But Carolina found herself carefully loosening the protective packaging in spite of her misgivings, delicately tugging loose the thickness of newspaper cushioning whatever was inside.
When she pulled out the book, Carolina knew her instincts been right. Darn Ribaud!
Marguerite looked curiously from the younger woman's set expression to the book that Carolina kept carefully closed. Hmmm.
"For the shop?" she asked carefully.
"No."
"From Ribaud?"
Carolina forcibly relaxed her grip on the book, but she didn't open it. Marguerite might not recognize the title or author, but she'd never mistake the lavish illustrations.
She was definitely going to kill Gabriel Ribaud. No one would ever know. His house was conveniently isolated, and the heavily-wooded expanse of the bayou was conveniently close. They'd never find the body. How dare he send her this! The same book of erotica he'd teased her with in his library yesterday. Of course, that had been before he'd scared her half-witless and sent her scurrying away like a mudbug on a hot rock.
"Sweetie?" Marguerite had obviously drawn her own conclusions from Carolina's silence. She looked appropriately solemn, but Carolina could see laughter-lights in her ice green eyes. "Didn't you tell me that Ribaud wasn't husband material?"
"Yes." She got it out through clenched teeth.
"Maybe you should tell him, too."
Carolina snatched the book up, stuffed it carefully into the small tote that doubled as her purse, and stalked for the shop door. "I think I'll do just that."
The overgrown house on the bayou looked even more eerie than it had yesterday. The shadows clutching at the peeling white walls were somehow deeper, as if daring the watery sunlight to pierce their depths. Carolina privately thought that the sunlight would lose; it was barely filtering through the heavy cloud cover as it was. And there was something almost palpably tenacious about those shadows.
There was a heavy feeling to the air, tanged with an odd, almost electric zap that she could feel in the tips of her fingers. The sounds of the nearby bayou were muted. There would be a storm soon, Carolina thought.
This time, she didn't bother with the doorbell. She leaned on the intercom button, taking a perverse pleasure in knowing that she'd probably startle Ribaud into a few gray hairs. Of course, with her luck, they'd only make him look sexier. "I know you're there, Ribaud. Open the door."
"And good mornin' t'you, too, chere." There was a faint but unmistakable click as he cut off the transmission.
Darn. He hadn't sounded the least bit startled. In fact, he'd sounded almost cheerful.
Carolina suppressed her disappointment as the front door buzzed open. How could she take pleasurable revenge if he wasn't going to cooperate?
She stepped into the foyer, which was as bleak as she'd remembered it. The door swung shut behind her. Tight hinge, she thought with a trace of unease. "Ribaud?" Her voice echoed through the unused rooms just as she'd remembered. He was trying to scare her again. Well, she wasn't going to let him. Lifting her chin, she stepped into the uncomfortably-furnished salon.
A bare second later, she was being kissed.
Carolina's handbag thunked to the smooth brick floor as she grabbed for something to balance herself. A pair of broad, strong shoulders were conveniently to hand. Her fingers dug into the fabric covering them.
Darn. She knew those shoulders.
She only had a second to make the identification. The lips kissing hers were anything but polite. Jean-Michael had never kissed her like this, she thought fuzzily, and tried to pull away. But then, Jean-Michael had been a gentleman.
Gabriel - there wasn't a doubt in her mind that it was him - wasn't cooperating. His tongue stole between her lips, traced their soft insides in a quick taste before lining the smooth barrier of her teeth. When she gasped, he deepened the kiss. Her tongue tried to hide in the dark recesses of her mouth; his found it. His taste, dark and intoxicating, swept through her. Fire began to trickle through her veins. She was dizzy with lack of air and pleasure.
When his hands slipped lower, palming the soft curves of her bottom, Carolina swallowed a moan. Then he lifted her into him with easy strength, snuggling his pelvis into the cradle of her thighs. The bells embroidered on her gauzy skirt sounded gently.
Carolina automatically wrapped her legs around Gabriel's hips for support. She was only vaguely aware of a sense of disorientation as he began moving - where? She couldn't bring herself to care. And she couldn't bring herself to pull back. He was arrogant, infuriating, and presumed entirely too much... but oh, how he made her feel!
When he finally let her come up for air, they were in the library. Carolina blushed, realizing that they were sharing Gabriel's big leather chair. Even worse, her skirt was rucked up about her thighs and she was comfortably wrapped around him. Her blush grew deeper, and she cursed it. There couldn't be anything comfortable about his state of arousal.
Gabriel was grinning. "You called, chere?"
It was exactly what she needed. Carolina scrambled off his lap and backed up, coming up hard against the edge of the massive desk. Bells chimed merrily and the half-full glass standing on the blotter trembled, threatening to spill its contents.
She ignored it, and suppressed her need to rub her stinging tailbone. "Do you greet all your guests like that?"
"Only the pretty ones." He settled more comfortably into the depths of the big leather chair and leered at her cheerfully. "Who have eyes like mismatched jewels."
Grimly, Carolina decided that she wasn't getting anywhere by being polite. She should've known better. "Why did you send me that book?"
"I wanted t'see you again."
"You couldn't have called?"
His shrug was distinctly Gallic. "No phone."
"A letter would have worked," she informed him sourly.
"Tell me, chere, what would you have done if you got a letter from me."
Carolina's lips quirked in spite of her determination not to show any emotion. "Burned it."
He came out of his chair with that peculiar, coiled grace. Panther, she thought, feeling suddenly trapped between him and the desk.
"That's why I sent the book." His voice was as dark and silky as the Egyptian cotton of his shirt.
Carolina sidestepped, sliding neatly out of the narrow space he was allowing her. Quickly, she retreated around the desk. "You sent it because you knew I'd send it back."
"No, because I knew you'd bring it back." He smiled - a little smugly, she thought. Her palms began to itch.
"You planned all this?"
His grin grew even more smug. "Got it in one, chere."
She grabbed the glass of water and tossed its contents at him.
Utter silence descended on the room, broken only by a slight smacking sound as Carolina clapped one hand over her mouth to stifle an exclamation of horror. The now-empty glass thudded heavily to the desk.
Gabriel just stood there, no expression on his saturnine features. Water dripped from his high forehead, down the narrow bridge of his nose, and off his strong chin. His shirtfront clung wetly to the taut planes of his chest, delineating enticing swells of muscle, and his hair was dripping steadily in his eyes. Something dangerous flared in the ebony depths of his eyes, and Carolina was suddenly reminded of the first time she'd seen him.
A chill quivered through her. Lord, what had she done? And what would he do next?
A grin certainly wasn't what she had expected, but that's what she got. "Ooo-wee, cherie! We gonna get along fine, yeah." The dripping, effortlessly sardonic eyebrows quirked. "I like a belle femme with some spunk."
She ignored that. A rush of relief went through her in a cooling, soothing torrent. "What do you mean, we're going to get along fine?"
He unbuttoned his damp shirt, pulled it off, and mopped at his face. Carolina tried not to stare at his chest. It wasn't easy. Gabriel looked better shirtless than any man had a right to. Lean, cleanly defined muscles rippled and flexed across his belly as he reached up to towel his hair dry. A single clear bead of water caught in the spare scattering of hair on his chest. Carolina watched, dry-mouthed, as it glittered like a tiny diamond set in sable.
Ohmigod! She tore his gaze from his chest just as he lifted his face from the folds of his shirt.
"Somethin' wrong, chere?"
"If you mean, am I having a heart attack from exposure to your manly body, the answer's no." Abruptly, Carolina closed her mouth, narrowly missing biting her tongue in half. Had she lost all sense? How could she have said that?
"I'll have t'work on that," he murmured thoughtfully, slinging the shirt negligently across the back of his chair.
"You didn't answer my question," she reminded him quickly. She didn't think she'd survive him "working" on anything.
"And you didn't ask why I sent Hidden Treasures t'you."
"But I don't have to. You already told me that you wanted me to come back here."
"I did. I need you, chere."
Involuntarily, her gaze dropped to the front of his jeans.
"That wasn't what I had in mind, no, but if you insist..." There was a wealth of amusement in Gabriel's dark velvet drawl.
"Why don't you tell me what you meant?" she suggested somewhat hastily, backing away to sit in the lone visitor's chair.
Gabriel sank into his own seat. Things were going pretty well, he thought, although he didn't allow any of his gratification to show yet. "I need you t'appraise my collection." An expansive sweep of one arm indicated the crowded floor-to-ceiling oak shelves.
Carolina frowned. "I'm not an appraiser. I'm a shopkeeper by trade and a folklorist by training."
He nodded with such satisfaction that she wondered if she hadn't stepped neatly into another one of his carefully-laid traps. "Exactly. My collection is completely composed of folklore. Some of it's very esoteric."
Carolina gave him a jaundiced look. "What happened to the ol' bayou boy accent?"
Gabriel smiled benignly and raised his hands as if to indicate helplessness. "That's what happens when a good ol' boy gets book learnin', yeah."
Carolina tried to tell herself that he didn't fool her, not even for a second. And he didn't. He charmed her instead. "Look, I can't appraise your books."
"The insurance company is insisting on an appraisal. I'm looking for specific information. I think you can do both jobs. Even if you don't."
She picked up on the important part of his speech. "What kind of information?"
"Cures." Gabriel let himself turn unexpectedly grim. "For curses."
"Curses?" She felt a tingle of excitement in spite of herself. Researching them was one of her more intriguing sidelines. "What kind?"
"Any kind. I don't care. I know the information is somewhere in my collection. Possibly in Vodou, which I'm especially interesting in authenticating."
"That's an authentic copy, I can tell you that right now."
"I'm sure," he interrupted smoothly. "But I need to know if it's a first edition or not. I'm looking for some legends that didn't appear in the later editions."
"You're not sure if the information you're looking for is even in one of these books?" She waved her hand in an airy gesture which encompassed the packed shelves.
"No. I want you to be sure. I've gone through every book here at least a half dozen times. I need someone with a fresh perspective." He smiled flatteringly. "Someone who has a degree in folklore."
Carolina wondered why he was so interested in finding some obscure old legends that no one else - except maybe her - could possibly care about, but only for a moment. Well, this was Louisiana, after all. Plenty of people believed in curses, healers, and things that went bump - or snarl - in the night. "Are you researching for a project?"
"It's not your concern."
"I just meant that it's a little odd to hire someone else to do your research on a personal topic."
"Don't worry about it," he said shortly, losing a fraction of his charm. "Just do what I'm hiring you to do."
She was getting a headache. Carolina raked a hand through her hair, and only succeeded in disordering her ponytail. "You haven't hired me yet. I haven't agreed to anything. And I'm not sure I will. I've got my own business to run."
"Flexible hours," he countered, his hostility evaporating. "You can take your time with the appraisal. I'll pay over the going rate for consulting."
Carolina had the dim, sinking feeling that she was fighting a losing battle. Her curiosity was eating her alive now, and her normally rational mind was coming up with reason after reason why she should take the job. She was qualified as an expert in antique literature. She knew that the insurance company would take her appraisal as an independent expert, since she'd done it before. And to be able to spend time with this exquisite collection...
And with Gabriel Ribaud.
Wait a minute! There was absolutely no way she was going to commit herself to working in Ribaud's proximity. The man was dangerous. Even if she could trust him - which she doubted - she couldn't trust herself.
"A hundred dollars an hour."
Startled, Carolina looked up. One look at his eyes told her that he wasn't kidding. "I..."
"One hundred and fifty."
She felt the blood drain from her face, then rush back "You can't be serious."
He leveled her a look absolutely devoid of humor. "I am."
Carolina felt her resolve waver, then begin to crumble. The work did suit her perfectly... or it would, providing she could stay out of Gabriel's way. That was the only way she wouldn't have to worry about being pounced on. Or pouncing herself.
And, bottom line was, she needed the money.
There was an almost audible whine and thud as most of her scruples took a nosedive. "I'll do it on certain conditions."
Prudently, Gabriel allowed little of his satisfaction to show. "Fine."
"No harassment, sexual or otherwise."
A smile tried to quirk his lips, but he managed to pull on an offended expression. "I never harass. Just... cajole."
Carolina frowned delicately. "You know what I mean."
Gabriel cocked his head to the right and studied her thoughtfully. "You really don' trust me, do you, chere?"
"Of course I don't trust you!" It was nearly a wail. "And will you please stop calling me that?" Her frown turned into a glare. "My name is Carolina York."
His smile of victory was getting harder to maintain, but he thought he could manage it for a few more moments. Gabriel mentally gave himself a pat on the back. He was on a roll; first he'd gotten her agreement, then her name. "Anything else... Carolina?"
She ignored the thrill that coursed through her at hearing his deep voice caress her name as if it were her skin. "Yes." She swallowed nervously. "You wear a shirt."
"Aw, chere, don' make me promise that."
Her eyes widened in disbelief. He was pouting! She didn't think she'd ever seen a grown man pout before. Well, there had been Jean-Michael, just before she'd left for Africa...
No, no, there was no comparison. Gabriel Ribaud was as far removed from her former fiancé as it was possible to get. He didn't look at all put off by her insistence. In fact, he looked positively Machiavellian sitting there with a regal dignity marred not a whit by his shirtless state.
Abruptly, Carolina became aware of the uncomfortable feeling of having been neatly maneuvered. Again. She still didn't know how he had managed it, but she definitely wouldn't put it past him. "Promise, or no deal."
"Cautious little thing, aren't you?" He smiled charmingly. Carolina's internal radar started beeping frantically.
"Very cautious." Cautiously.
"I like cautious women," he murmured as if to himself. "All right. Deal."
"Great." She popped to her feet in relief and stuck out her hand. The faster this was concluded, the sooner she could leave.
Or so she thought, until Gabriel caught her hand in his and pressed a gallant kiss on the backs of her fingers.
Carolina snatched her hand back as if she'd been burned. Which she had. "Gabriel! You promised!"
"That wasn't harassment, Carolina dawlin'." He smiled in a way that made her very glad for the intervening expanse of the desk. "That's style."
She groaned softly, beginning to edge toward the doorway. "Gabriel, please! If I can't trust you, I certainly can't work for you. We had a deal, remember?."
She looked so adorably indignant that Gabriel had to smother a smile. "I guess you're not flexible?"
"No."
But she certainly looked nervous. He softened, although he wasn't sure why. After all, he couldn't afford to let up the pressure for a moment. "I'll behave, Caro. I promise."
He heard her mutter something that sounded like "You have no idea how comforting that is", but she left the library as quickly as her obviously pricked dignity would allow, and he didn't have the chance to call her on it. Too bad. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. He hadn't had this much fun teasing anyone in... He shrugged. In ages. And even then, he hadn't remembered that person blushing in just such an enchanting fashion. Or with such frequency.
He got up and paced to the door, leaning against it as he watched Carolina disappear down the stairs. The desire to hurry was written in every rigid line of her body, but she took the steps gracefully. Slowly. Gabriel had the feeling that the lady was bent on proving something to herself.
He smiled slowly, secretly. Oh, yeah. He might have given out a little more leeway than he was comfortable with, but this little venture promised to be more than his salvation. It also promised to be fun.
"You did what?" Marguerite's normally melodious soprano slid an impossible octave higher.
Carolina winced. She didn't need the other woman to tell her that she'd been an idiot. She'd been berating herself from the moment she'd climbed into her car and headed back to town. "I agreed to appraise Ribaud's collection for insurance purposes. He's offering a hundred dollars an hour. We do need the money," she reminded the older woman as gently as she could. Marguerite tended to get upset when she thought about the shop's financial predicament.
"I know, but... I thought you didn't like him!"
"I don't." It was half-truthful, at least. That man would never inspire an emotion as insipid as like. "I do admit to lusting after his books."
Marguerite rolled her eyes at the younger woman's use of such an indecorous term. "You be careful, honey. If he's half as sneaky as you say, he could..."
"Have ungentlemanly designs on my body? I know that. But Ribaud's never once tried to be a gentleman, so I don't expect him to start now."
"Just remember that rogues like strong-willed women. The challenge, you know."
Carolina didn't like that thought. She definitely didn't want to be a challenge to Gabriel. At the moment, she wasn't sure that she wanted to be anything to Gabriel. He made her nervous with his predatory grace, his blatant sexuality, his direct, penetrating stare. There had been moments that morning when she'd felt as if he could see more in her eyes than anyone had a right to.
And the way he kissed her! She'd encountered flirts before. None of them had ever had the depth that she could sense in Gabriel. He wasn't shallow. He was more like... the depthless, creeping shadows clinging to his house. There was more to him than the playboy facade. Something that only appeared when he was close to her. When he was kissing her. It was always then that she felt him struggling not to devour her.
For the fiftieth time, Carolina wondered exactly what had prompted her acceptance of the job. There were bound to be complications. More than she cared to count, in fact.
The only consolations about the deal that she could think of were that she'd have access to those magnificent books and that their owner didn't appear intimidated by strong-minded women.
"Believe me, Marguerite. Ribaud knows exactly what to expect if he tries anything." An image of a sodden Gabriel flashed across her mind, and she had to hide her grin.
Marguerite tactfully let that pass. "When are you going to start your appraisal?"
Carolina plunked herself down on the nearest stool. She suddenly felt as if the rest of her had become as limp from the humidity as her hair. "Saturday, I think. There's apparently no need to rush."
"And exactly what is it that Mr. Ribaud wants you to do?"
"The appraisal report. Value, condition and authenticity of the books. That's all. I don't even have to deal directly with the insurance company. Gabriel is going to handle them." She knew better than to mention the business about curses. Marguerite would have a cat fit if she knew.
"Isn't that unusual?"
Carolina shrugged with what she hoped was the proper amount of nonchalance. "Not particularly. Actually, it's a good thing for me. I hate dealing with any kind of bureaucracy, and Gabriel already knows how to handle the agency and its procedures. He knows exactly what he wants." No need for Marguerite to know that Gabriel's decisiveness was one of the things about him that annoyed her.
A customer discreetly cleared his throat. Pasting on a smile that just missed being genuine, Carolina went to help him.
She didn't see Marguerite's usually perky expression crumple into lines of concern as she murmured, "That's what worries me."
"I have a feeling that this is going to become a habit." Carolina grumbled as she keyed Gabriel's intercom the following Saturday morning.
"That you, Caro?" Gabriel's drawl coming through the small speaker was tinny and laden with static, but it still had the power to curl her toes.
She lifted her chin stubbornly. She was going to go through with this. "It's me."
"C'mon in. The air-conditioning's fine." The door buzzed open.
It wasn't the voice or the man that made her hurry inside, Carolina promised herself. She'd kill for air conditioning.
The house was less hot than the yard, but it was only by virtue of all the blinds being drawn. A muted glow the color of tarnished brass suffused the old walls and furniture. The atmosphere was almost stiflingly close.
Gabriel strode into the salon, apparently coming from the back of the house. He was barefooted and wore his customary jeans with a matching tank top which molded the leanly muscled contours of his chest. "Hot day?"
Carolina glowered at him, firmly folding her tongue inside her mouth. Darn it, she wasn't going to drool over him. Especially since he seemed to expect her to. "It's August."
Gabriel smiled slowly, appreciatively scanning her body. Carolina uneasily wished she hadn't worn the delicate purple gauze dress, but she'd been thinking about the heat at the time. She hadn't thought of how the material would cling to sweat-damp skin. And, darn it, she wasn't wearing a bra again. At least the material was opaque.
"Mmm. Hot." The oblique comment left her wondering whether he meant the weather or her appearance. "Up to the library, Carolina. The books are waitin'."
"I hope you've got some sort of air conditioning system in there." She hadn't seen one in her hurried glance around the room yesterday, but perhaps Gabriel had opted for the more discrete type of technology.
Gabriel turned toward the stairs and silently began climbing them. Obediently, she fell in behind, trying not to watch the way his long, sensitive fingers slid sensuously over the polished wood bannister. "This heat and humidity isn't good for old leather and paper."
His voice floated back to her over his shoulder, echoing oddly in the spiral stairwell. "I've got an arrangement." He pushed open the library door with a flourish, gesturing for her to enter first.
Carolina brushed past him, careful not to let so much as a corner of her skirt flutter against him. God, the man had her paranoid! A swift intake of breath brought her his scent, woodsy and a little wild. Quickly, Carolina put a few steps' worth of distance between them and cast about for something to say.
The antique oscillating fan perched on the desk was the perfect topic. She didn't have to feign her dismay as she stared at it. "Gabriel, that isn't air conditioning. It's an exercise in futility!"
He shrugged diffidently. "Best I got, petite."
"You've got enough money to keep up this marvelous collection, but you don't install air conditioning in your house?" She didn't bother to hide her shock. In Louisiana's late summer heat, that was as close to suicide as anyone could get.
His voice roughened slightly. "I'm old-fashioned." Then he turned on his heel.
Carolina stared after him as he stalked out of the library. What on earth had she said to put that look in his eyes?
Downstairs, second thoughts about the whole situation were setting in with a vengeance. Gabriel paced the cramped confines of the rear salon and swore savagely under his breath. What was he doing? Just what in the hell was he doing?
His need to have Vodou authenticated had led him into this. Hiring Carolina had been a good idea, but it had snowballed somewhere between intention and execution, something he'd only realized now. His brain must've been too occupied with the prospect of feminine companionship - of a sort - after such a long time. God only knew that was the only reason he'd offered her the job of appraising his entire collection.
Gabriel swore again, this time in gutter French. He'd been thinking with his libido again; wasn't that what had gotten him into this mess in the first place? It would take weeks for her to go through them all. He had a week or two at most.
Gabriel flexed his fingers and stared blankly at a wall he didn't see. Instead, he saw all those faces. Those lovely, trusting, sleeping faces. It was hard to forget them. It was even harder to forget the blood.
"Damn you, Mignon," he muttered thickly. "Damn you for what you did to me. And damn me, too." He briefly entertained the notion of ending it all then and there, but knew he couldn't. Above and beyond the fact that he wasn't the quitting type - even now - he didn't dare disappear. There wasn't a doubt in his mind that Carolina would make certain that there was an investigation into his disappearance or death, and he couldn't afford that. The tradition of secrecy was too deeply ingrained in him.
Gabriel swiped a hand over his face. Dammit, he'd boxed himself in as neatly as Mignon ever had.
For a second, Mignon's image hovered in front of his eyes. Full lips smiled slightly; the dark, liquid eyes were full of passion, pride and malice.
He didn't even know he'd slammed his fist into the wall until he felt the wild stinging of his knuckles.
Instantly, he cocked an ear, listening for sounds from the library. He did not need Carolina York and any questions she might have that he might not be able to answer to her satisfaction.
He didn't hear so much as a single soft footfall and decided that she had to be engrossed in a book. Reading it instead of appraising it, no doubt. She'd had a look on her face that first day she'd come to the house; keen intelligence and unflinching curiosity.
Gabriel swiped a hand across his jaw again and groaned quietly. He was definitely going to have to do something to control that curiosity. He couldn't afford to have her get interested in anything more than the moldering volumes upstairs.
The one advantage he had at the moment was that he made her nervous. That was a beginning, at least. He could continue to play on that, on the physical attraction between them. Carolina's own reaction to his passionate advances was inevitably what frightened her away from him; he'd realized that quickly enough. There had to be a way to capitalize on the knowledge. Gabriel smiled humorlessly. It was, after all, just about his only advantage over her.
He could always keep up a not-so-subtle program of sexual pressure, he mused with a little of his customary wickedness. If he worked it just right, he might even be able to goad the woman into hurrying the completion of her appraisal; the thought that he was stuck with her for the duration because of his own stupidity still rankled.
No, that wasn't right. He wanted to keep Carolina skittish, off-balance; spooked women didn't have time to interrogate a man. But he also, Gabriel admitted, wanted to enjoy her. After all, she was bright, pretty, and wholly feminine in ways that made something very basic and male inside him ache.
He scowled in building annoyance and stalked back to the kitchen. It felt odd to have this many goals flipping around in the air like so many juggler's pins. The ambiguity was damned annoying.
The worn brick of the kitchen floor was only marginally cool against the soles of Gabriel's bare feet. He jerked open the refrigerator door with a force that set the beer bottles lining the shelves to dancing and reached for one of them. Carolina was right.
It was definitely too damned hot.
Carolina had meant to go straight for Vodou, which reposed in solitary splendor on a shelf. She'd actually gotten a hand on the cover, but had felt a little like a kid sneaking a handful of pralines before Christmas dinner. No, more like someone who already knew what lay beneath the shiny gift wrapping.
She rocked back on her heels, tucking her hands behind her back. Going right for the crown jewel in a collection of literature was much like scooping out the filling of a cream cake; anything that followed, no matter how delectable, was sure to be slightly anticlimactic. And there were plenty of other treats on these shelves. Just the same, she took time to check Vodou; Gabriel had specifically wanted to know if it were a first edition. It was, and she again marveled that she had been able to find such a prize. All copies from the first printing had been destroyed - some said by Dumont himself - and an edited second edition had been printed almost immediately. Just another one of the colorful stories that cropped up in the antique book business, she thought.
Carolina firmly pushed everything out of her mind except the job, pulled down a volume at random and seated herself at Gabriel's desk. But renegade thoughts kept creeping in, as insidious as a snake. How much time did Gabriel spend in this library? The rest of the house was gloomily magnificent, but this was the only room she'd seen yet that felt at all lived in.
Shaking her head at her apparent weak-mindedness, Carolina sank back into the big chair's leather embrace. Gabriel's now-familiar scent drifted faintly to her, eliciting a clandestine tingle of response.
Her fingers tightened around her pen. "Carolina York, stop daydreaming and get to work."
The sound of her own voice startled her. Pulse jumping, Carolina laughed a little to cover her embarrassment. How silly for her to be embarrassed. There was no one else here to see her making an ass of herself.
Her smile a bit more genuine now, she clicked on the old fan and bent to her work.
Some indefinable time later, Carolina stretched. Her muscles had cramped from being hunched over for so long. Hands going to the small of her back, she arched her spine luxuriously and sighed.
Someone wolf-whistled appreciatively.
Carolina straightened like a shot.
Gabriel was slouched in the doorway, his broad, naked shoulders propping up the open door. He was smiling crookedly. "You take this serious, huh?"
She hastily assumed a less rigid posture. "Of course. Don't you want me to?"
He didn't answer. Lazily straightening from his slouch, he moved to stand beside her chair. Her finger was holding her place in the text; Gabriel lightly traced it with the tip of his finger. Her hand jerked.
"I knew you'd be readin' it," he said in a low, husky drawl.
She was mildly offended, mostly because she'd been caught. "It's the only way to tell if the work is genuine. You check for key phrases."
"Uh huh." Gabriel deftly slid the book out from under her protecting hand and flipped the cover closed to check the title. "Southerton's Legends of the Great Smokies? I was hopin' you'd start with something a little more... stimulatin'."
"Southerton writes extremely well."
"I wasn' talkin' about the technique, chere. Just the subject matter." Fascinated, Gabriel watched as she blushed lightly and stammered. She looked absolutely adorable when she was flustered, but there was a spark of fire in the fine, gem-colored eyes. "Did you authenticate Vodou?"
The question seemed to put her off, but Gabriel noticed that the intriguing anger-light didn't quite leave her eyes. "Yes, I did. It is a first edition."
He felt a weight being lifted off his shoulders - just a little, but still a relief. "Good. Did you learn anything interestin'?"
Briefly, she glowed, her flushed face lighting with a radiance that had nothing to do with either embarrassment or the heat. "Yes! Oh, there's so much to read, to learn. Very little about curses, though." A brief frown stole some of the light from her expression. "I wasn't really looking; I assumed you wanted the collection authenticated first. For the insurance company."
"Don' worry, chere." He was feeling generous. "I'll give you a few more days to finish the authentication before you start on the other little project. You won' need long, will you? You're havin' fun."
"Oh, I am. You have a real treasure here, Gabriel."
His lean, elegant fingers traced the line of her jaw. "I know."
The heat in his gaze melted her already weak resolve. Carolina looked hastily out the window. "Oh, look, it's getting dark! I've really got to be getting home."
"Sure you won't stay later?" Gabriel's grin seemed to make promises that Carolina might have found interesting if she hadn't already found them so unnerving. "I'd give you a back rub."
"It's Saturday, Gabriel. And I'm tired." She was slinging her things into her straw purse as she spoke. "I told you before I started that I couldn't devote all my time to this."
He stood back just enough to allow her space to squeeze by him. "What's your rush?"
Carolina slowed her pace enough to be decorous, but not enough to let him catch her as she flew down the stairs. No matter how quickly she moved, she couldn't seem to escape the dark velvet caress of his voice. "Nothing. It's just that there's air conditioning in my car," she tossed over her shoulder. "I'll be back tomorrow. Bye!"
Gabriel didn't even bother to cover his grin when the door squealed shut behind her.
The next morning, Carolina blessed the fact that she hadn't overindulged in the beer she'd had with dinner the night before - although she'd certainly been tempted; Gabriel seemed to have a knack for driving her to drink. The heat made it absolutely impossible to wear glasses. She didn't have the patience to keep pushing her glasses back up her nose all day long.
Although she mentally chided herself for the cowardice, Carolina put off going to Gabriel's for as long as she could. Treasured Tales was closed on Sundays, but she did have a variety of household chores to do. Or so she told herself as she struggled in the door of her apartment just off Jackson Square with string bags full of groceries. She had to clean and do her laundry. She was running out of clean towels. Her bookshelves, almost as massive as Gabriel's own and three times as cluttered, were in desperate need of being straightened and dusted. And she really should fix that leaky faucet in the kitchen.
By the time she transferred the load of towels from the washer to the dryer, Carolina stopped lying to herself. "I'm being a coward." The mutter was lost in the clanging of the lid she slammed in disgust. "I hate it when I act like a coward."
Carolina was in the sweltering cocoon of her car before she could talk herself out of it. Grousing under her breath, she switched on the air conditioning, despite knowing that it would only blow more hot air on her until after she got moving. Cranking the unit to its coldest setting, Carolina pointed her little white Saturn toward Navarre.
She wasn't looking forward to this, she told herself. And it certainly wasn't Gabriel himself that bothered her. It was that miserable excuse for a fan in the library.
Gabriel didn't answer the intercom page. Carolina waited exactly thirty seconds before trying again. Her patience was melting faster than spun sugar in hot water. The air temperature was well past being blood-warm and was damn near as thick. A mosquito the approximate size and temperament of Marguerite's cat tried to investigate her ear. She swatted irritably at it and leaned on the button again.
She should've known it would be useless. Why was she even bothering? Gabriel was hide-clad about some things; if he hadn't already answered the buzzer's summons, he obviously wasn't going to.
Was he asleep? she wondered. Or maybe he wasn't home. For the life of her, Carolina couldn't see him strolling about the Quarters with the tourists. Perhaps he was out walking on the bayou.
No, not that. Not in this heat. No one in their right mind would be outside in this heat. Which would explain her behavior, she thought sourly. She'd finally gone crazy.
Doubly crazy, because she knew she wasn't going to be able to leave with a clear conscience until she'd at least tried to find Gabriel. And that meant that she'd have to go around to the back of the house.
There was only one path, really; through the overgrown side yard. She peeked around the corner of the house and assessed her chances of getting through. The vegetation had long since moved from manicured to wild, and the shadows lay thickly on the ground.
Uneasily, Carolina weighed her chances of encountering snakes or something even worse. "For heaven's sake, I tramped across the veldt with less fuss, and that had scorpions and big, hungry cats with attitudes. This stuff is as familiar to me as my own back yard."
She squashed the little voice in her head that reminded her that she'd been born in Atlanta and grown up in the Garden District, which wasn't quite the same as being out here on the bayou. If Gabriel wasn't home, she finally decided, she'd leave with a clear conscience. If he was playing with her again, she'd kill him.
"Lordy, I'm certainly getting violent." It was undoubtably due to too much exposure to Gabriel and the bayou's primitive atmosphere.
All traces of levity fled the moment Carolina eased herself off the wide veranda and into the stifling shadows which made a gloomy tunnel of the narrow side yard. There was no coolness to be found, only a sense of creeping unease and smothering closeness.
Odd, Carolina mused in an effort to batter down the odd jitteriness she felt, she'd have thought that being out of the glaring, semi-tropical sun would make some difference in the temperature.
Instead, the heat seemed to be more intense for the darkness, which seemed to whisper. Whispering darkness? Perspiration broke on her skin even as goosebumps roughened it. Walking through the shadows was exactly, exactly like walking through the clinging tatters of massive spider webs.
Carolina shuddered again, both at the image and at the feeling. And the faint, giggling whispers went on.
Ahead she could see the semi-sunlit expanse of the garden. It suddenly seemed as if she were walking through a long, dark tunnel, with the light, bright promise of the garden at the far end.
Carolina quickened her pace, trying to ignore the sense of being watched. There was something about this house. About the property in general. Something... dark. Almost macabre.
"I'm being an idiot. An absolute idiot. Next thing you know, I'll be checking under my bed at night for monsters." Carolina had always talked to herself, but now she realized that she was beginning to babble. Because of a house that lay in shadows that seemed to speak to her? Oh, now she really was losing it.
At that moment, she broke out of the shadows and stepped into the relative brightness of the garden.
The moment she did, Carolina felt an almost overwhelming sense of relief, of the world righting itself. She'd definitely been spending too much time on her folklore projects, she told herself sternly, if she'd started hearing things in shadows.
Suddenly, she couldn't wait to get her hands on Gabriel. She'd definitely take pleasure in making him sorry she had to walk all the way around the house in this heat.
Squaring her shoulders resolutely and taking a firmer grip on her straw purse, Carolina marched for the double doors facing out into the overgrown garden. They were propped open, which seemed the height of lunacy to her. Surely the heat outside was worse than the temperature inside the house.
The second she eased around the first of the opened doors, she changed her mind. The heat inside the semi-dark room was withering, and scented with at least a dozen different spices. She closed her eyes and sniffed, aware of a shock of surprise. So, Gabriel did have a cook. At least on a temporary basis.
Carolina opened her eyes, caught the sharp glitter of hot gold and cold silver out of the corner of her eye. Her startled gaze cut to the right. Gold on silver; a stray shaft of sunlight from the garden scintillated on an upraised knife blade. And Gabriel was holding the knife.
Carolina's throat felt tight, and she went cold in spite of the thick heat in the air.
He was standing behind a huge, scarred old oak table. Its surface was strewn with all sorts of meats, vegetables, and dishes. From the angle at which she stood, Carolina could see him working at something, the long blade of the knife flashing with lethal deftness as he wielded it.
Even from where she stood, the heat of the kitchen was unbelievably intense. Sweat oiled his skin, making it gleam slickly over the sleek flex of muscles in his arms and chest. As she watched, mesmerized, a perfect bead of sweat slid from the hollow of his strong, corded throat and lost itself in the masculine tangle of chest hair.
The chill left her in a flush of raw heat. He looked pagan, primitively male. Carolina had the nearly overpowering desire to rake her fingers through that dark, enticing pelt and purr like a satisfied cat. To see if the muscle beneath it felt like iron or steel. Iron, she decided, dazed. Hot iron covered with a scattering of dark, silky curls that ran in a gradually narrowing triangle down to the waistband of his jeans.
Carolina felt another quick, hot flush that was more intense than the last. Not that she could see a waistband from where she was standing. She did see long, masculine legs, thick with muscle and covered with a light dusting of hair. They were blatantly bare and perfectly visible below the obstacle of the table. That was, once she got her eyes off his chest.
Oh... my... Lord... is he naked? Carolina's little, involuntary gasp fell like a stone in the sudden, thick silence buzzing in her ears.
Gabriel abruptly paused in his chopping, his head jerking up, his eyes narrowing to onyx slits in a suddenly taut face. His fingers clenched white around the knife handle.
Carolina's breath clogged into a thick ball in her throat. At that precise moment, he looked capable of killing.
And then the vicious expression vanished, so quickly that she would've though that she imagined it in the first place if her heart hadn't still been beating doubletime. But it was, and not from the slow, melting smile he sent her way.
"There you are, petite. I was beginnin' t'think you weren't comin'."
"Housework." Her voice was a croak; she cleared her throat. "I had to do housework."
He nodded and turned his attention back to his work. The knife began slicing into a green pepper with swift, silver strokes. "I know it's hot in here, Caro, but you don't have t'stand around in the garden all afternoon, ya know."
"I know." Belatedly, she stepped over the threshold and stood there, uncertainly. Gabriel looked at her from under lowered lashes and smiled.
Panther, she thought.
"I don't bite, petite. Unless you ask me real nice."
Yep, he was his usual sexy, teasing self. Carolina banished the image of the cat and took a more confident stance on the old brick floor. "You didn't answer the door."
"Sorry." He didn't sound it. "I was busy makin' a roux. Can't walk away from the stove when you're doin' a roux."
Carolina made a small sound which could have been interpreted any number of ways. She hoped agreement was one of them. "I'll just go up to the library."
"I'll show you the way." He laid down the knife and wiped his hands on the towel that hung on one corner of the scarred table.
She took a casual step back. "That's okay. I can find my own way."
"What if I don't want you wanderin' around my house by yourself?" He moved toward her; she noted with some relief that he wasn't naked. That point was debatable, actually; the cutoffs were worn, thin, and just this side of scandalously brief. And his body was perfect. Well, almost perfect. There seemed to be a small mark on his shoulder... A scar? She had the sudden, scandalous desire to run her fingers over it.
Snap out of it. "That's your right, of course," she said a little primly, not quite sure of either what she'd said or why.
He was very close, neatly invading what Carolina normally considered her personal space. The heavy scents of earth, water and the thick perfumes from the flowering vines around the kitchen door mingled with his own scent. Gabriel smelled of astringent sweat, man, pepper and spices. She was tempted to nibble, but she couldn't quite forget the menace on his face when she'd startled him before. Menace didn't seem a strong enough word, but she didn't want to think along those lines any more than she had to.
She stepped back.
The corners of his eyes crinkled, familiar laugh lines radiating outward. Carolina bristled inwardly. He was laughing at her! Her lips thinned into a stern line. Sexy or not, she had the overwhelming urge to smack him.
"What's the problem, Carolina? You don' want me t'get close to you?"
"Not this close. Now, the library?"
He didn't stop smiling, but his eyes darkened precipitously, until she felt like she was looking into the heart of the night. The dull light burnished his sweat-sheened skin a deep bronze; he seemed to glow. His expression was curiously intense, and sensuality radiated from him, hitting her like a sudden, unexpected punch.
She couldn't help but think that this was what he must look like in passion.
"The library, Gabriel," she repeated in a firm tone, taking a hold of her rampant thoughts.
"All work and no play, petite." His tone was gently chiding. "You gonna get old before your time."
"You're not paying me to play, Gabriel." Carolina could have kicked herself for that remark, but it was out and there was nothing she could - or would - do to take it back.
"And I've never had t'pay a woman to play with me." There was a touch of malice behind the words. Abruptly, exquisitely cold, Gabriel bowed, one powerful arm outstretched to indicate the doorway leading to the hall. He should have looked flamboyant or ridiculous. He didn't.
"Follow the hallway to the front of the house. You should be able to find your way from there." There was a subtle insult in the way he looked at her. "After all, it's familiar to you. You know, safe."
Carolina felt her face go hot and cursed her fair skin. "Thank you," she murmured in as neutral a tone as she could manage. She left the stifling heat of the kitchen with as much dignity as she could muster.
She could almost feel him smirking as he watched her go.
If the front of the house was a smidgen cooler than the back had been, Carolina was positive that it was due to her imagination. It was too hot to sprint up the stairs to the library, but she did take the steps as quickly as possible. She wanted to put Gabriel Ribaud as far behind her as the confines of the house would allow.
"Why do I let him bait me?" Carolina slung her oversized purse to the floor and slumped into the big chair behind the desk. The old leather stuck to her sweaty skin. Making a moue of distaste, she peeled herself loose and settled on the very edge of the chair. The antique fan was whirring as lustily as age would allow; the moving air was marginally cooling against her skin. The library was pleasantly dim except for the bright, hard shards of sunlight spearing through the rents in the old, cracking fabric blinds.
Carolina felt the heat beginning to permeate every fiber in her body. It would be so nice to stretch out somewhere and take a short nap. Actually, she'd prefer to take a long nap. She hadn't gotten much sleep last night.
"Forget it. Gabriel's not paying you to nap any more than he's paying you to play." Carolina firmly stuffed the memory of Gabriel's veiled sneer down into a deep, dark corner of her mind and got up to select a book off one of the shelves by the window. Time to get to work.
Carolina lost track of the time and of how many books she'd gone through. The stack of appraisal notes carefully placed to the right of the desk blotter grew steadily. She was aware of a sense of awe at the extent and quality of Gabriel's collection, but she squashed it. Some of the volumes she was appraising were extremely old first editions and probably priceless to the right collector. He didn't take very good care of them, though, which brought down the value.
"This should be in a vault," she muttered in disgust, carefully turning over leaves of a seventeenth century treatise on lycanthropy. Mildew was beginning to spot the cover and the corners of some of the pages. "They should all be in a vault."
"Talkin' to yourself?"
Carolina buried her head more deeply in the book. The acrid scent of the paper almost made her sneeze. "I'm working."
"You gotta eat, you know."
He was snickering at her again. "Later." The Lycanthrope may be sayved from eternal damnation by the three-tymes calling of his Christian nayme by a devout and holy Person of pure heart.
She thought she heard him mutter something about stubborn women under his breath. There was a small thump by her elbow. A spicy scent suddenly overwhelmed the musty aroma of old paper.
"Eat it before it gets cold." The library door didn't slam behind him, but the stairs creaked under his weight as he went down. Even Gabriel, it seemed, had a problem effectively stomping in his bare feet.
Somehow, that small fact made him seem more human. "Like he wasn't human before?" She rolled her eyes. "Carolina, honey, this heat's getting to you. Go back to work."
The irresistible scent of jambalaya tempted her from the edge of the desk, and reminded her of Gabriel's injunction to "eat before it gets cold". Like anything was going to cool off in this heat, she thought, steeling herself against the tantalizing aroma. She'd wait a few moments. She wanted to finish her appraisal of this book before she did anything else.
As soon as she'd replaced the book on its shelf, another one tempted her. A frisson of excitement zipped up her arm when she carefully removed it from its place. The leather cover was more worn than usual, frayed and splitting in many places. She was surprised the thing didn't fall apart in her hands.
When she'd gotten it back to the desk and had it carefully spread open, Carolina could see that it was a diary. A small, puzzled frown worked its way across her face. A diary? That was another oddity; Gabriel's collection seemed to consist of published works, not personal effects.
With exquisite care, she turned to the flyleaf, where a blurred name was written in a spidery hand. A woman's hand, she realized.
Carolina traced the fading ink with the tip of her fingernail, careful not to score the paper. Annalise Montard, Her Diary. She sat back in her chair, now heedless of the leather gluing itself to her perspiration-dewed skin. What was Gabriel doing with a woman's diary?
The aroma of the jambalaya was becoming impossible to ignore. Carolina's stomach rumbled noisily; she could hear it over the clunking whir of the fan. Absently, she reached for the bowl, felt the metal protrusion of a spoon from its side, and drew it toward her. Her stomach might object to the lack of attention, but the rest of Carolina was concentrating on the mystery in front of her. She stared at the flyleaf with its water spots and mildew stains as if she could intimidate answers from it.
"Heavens, Caro, Ribaud's really gotten to you if you aren't enjoying this little mystery." She spooned up a bit of jambalaya and sent up a brief prayer that Gabriel cooked as well as he wielded a knife.
He did. But he also dumped enough cayenne pepper in his food to permanently scar both her tongue and the lining of her throat.
Carolina gulped and smiled through her tears. "Now that's jambalaya!"
Carefully, she went back to turning pages with one hand and eating with the other. The presence of a diary in a rare book collection still bothered her. Unless this Annalise Montard had been a Voodoo or involved with someone who was? She could understand that.
It became clear, as Carolina read more of the diary, that Annalise had been anything but a Voodoo. Her diary entries were all on parties, balls, gowns, and local gossip. Carolina learned that the lady had been an acclaimed beauty of her day, was the possessor of enviable measurements, liked coral pink in her tea dresses, and knew several ingenious ways to lighten her already flaxen blond hair. That was it.
"The mystery deepens," she murmured through her last mouthful of food. She couldn't taste it - her taste buds had been short-circuited by that first taste - but the rumbling of her stomach had abated. That was what mattered.
With that thought in mind, she dumped the bowl by the fan and turned her full attention to the diary.
In the middle of an account of yet another in a seemingly endless string of balls, Carolina realized that the room was perceptibly warmer, the air thicker. Her head was suddenly pounding. It was probably just another tension headache. She'd been getting a lot of them since that trouble with the shop.
She shot an idle glance at the covered window and started in surprise. No sun shafting through the cracks in the blinds and into the room?
It had to be well into evening by now. Why hadn't Gabriel come up to tell her to go home?
Probably because he wanted to be sure he was getting his money's worth out of her, she told herself wryly. Not that she blamed him, not after that crack about him not paying her to play.
Reluctantly, Carolina closed the diary. She really had to leave now. She needed to sleep to get rid of this pernicious headache.
The room whirled somewhat drunkenly when Carolina rose to replace the diary. She managed to make it halfway across the large room before she reeled back into the edge of the desk, gasping. Her hip throbbed painfully and she knew she'd have a bruise there by morning, but she grasped at the support. What was going on?
Gabriel. The thought flashed through her mind like heat lightning at midnight. Had he poisoned her?
No, that was ridiculous. What did Gabriel have to gain by poisoning her? And then, what did she really know about Gabriel Ribaud, a little voice whispered into her inner ear, other than he always seemed to get what he wanted.
But he hadn't gotten her.
The waistband of her skirt suddenly seemed too tight. She raised her hand to pluck at it, and stared in horror at her hand. In the space of a moment, it had swollen to twice its normal size. But that only happened when...
"Oh..." Carolina couldn't draw enough breath to finish the sentence. The jambalaya! It had to have been the jambalaya. Gabriel must've put some kind of shellfish in it.
Her frantic gaze slewed toward her purse. It lay not more than ten feet away. It might as well have been ten miles.
Carolina did the only thing she could think of. She shoved the clattering fan as hard as she could and crossed her fingers as it thumped loudly to the floor.
Gabriel looked up at the ceiling in annoyance. He couldn't get the damn woman off his mind long enough to enjoy his dinner.
Why the hell wasn't she gone yet? It was after seven. Surely that counted as a full day's work.
"Probably too caught up in one of the books." He swallowed another bite of jambalaya, appreciating the salty tang of the shrimp he'd added. A quick swallow of cold Dixie followed. Damn, there was nothing in the world like a good bowl of jambalaya and a beer. Well, almost nothing. He propped his elbows on the table and grinned to himself. There were women.
Carolina's face flashed across the surface of his mind. Gabriel's grin wilted into a scowl. Dammit, couldn't he get her out of his mind for more than two minutes at a time?
Not, he decided abruptly, as long as she was still under his roof. "Time's up, chere. You've got to go."
Determined, he strode for the stairs at the front of the house. He was halfway up the staircase when he heard the crash.
A silence as thick as the day's heat descended on the house. Gabriel paused in mid-step, listening. There was no answering sound.
"Great." He took the rest of the stairs in twos. "What's she done now?"
The library door was open, which thwarted his desire to slam it back on its hinges. "All right, Caro. Time you went home. Too much work'll - what the hell?"
She was crumpled on the carpet halfway across the room. He could hear the leaky wheeze of her breathing from where he stood.
Somehow, he was beside her, with absolutely no memory of moving. He muttered something both shocked and shocking in French when he saw her face. She was almost unrecognizable, her entire face swollen until her eyes were tiny, gem-colored slits in a puffy face.
One of her hands was weakly scrabbling at her throat. He stopped her from clawing the skin any more raw than she already had. "It's okay, cherie. You're gonna be fine. Don't worry. I'll help."
He made the promise rashly and he knew it, but there was no way he could stop the tumbling words. For God's sake, you don't even know what's wrong with her! he shouted at himself.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the book lying on the floor. His blood iced with a sudden chill of fear. Annalise's diary! He'd forgotten he kept it with the other books. How far had she read? And had she read anything that would give him away?
Later. He'd worry about it later. Right now, he had Carolina to deal with.
"Carolina. You've got to tell me what's wrong." He sat her up, as much to help her breathe as to enable him to look at her. She was still fumbling with the chain at her throat. He'd noticed the silver pendant before, mostly because it dangled just above a pair of pertly-molded breasts.
"You want me to see this?"
"Allergy." She could barely manage the word. "Shellfish."
Gabriel sat back on his heels. Shellfish? Oh, hell. The shrimp in the jambalaya.
She tugged on his hand. "Purse. Medication."
He left her for a split second and returned with the straw bag. "Now what?"
She scrabbled weakly through the interior, her slender body bent double with her efforts to suck enough air into her lungs.
"Move." Impatient, Gabriel grabbed the bag and upended it. A small case inside bore the same crimson caduceus stamp as the silver tag around her neck. That had to be it. "Is this what you want?"
At her little nod, he pried it open. A box, a bottle, and an odd, slim object wrapped in plastic. A needle.
"In... injection. Adrenaline."
Gabriel looked from the syringe to her and back again. Injection? Was she joking? He hadn't the first notion of how to give an injection. "I can't."
She reached for the case with shaking hands.
"Dammit!" Growling other imprecations, he knocked her hand away. "I'll do it. I'll do it. How?"
The directions printed on the back of the box didn't say a damn thing about how to calm his racing heart, his shaking hands. He hated this. Hated it. He managed to get the needle into a vein in Carolina's arm and inject the stuff - adrenaline? He didn't even know what it was.
He hated himself more when he withdrew the needle and watched a tiny drop of blood bead up where the puncture had been made. The hunger whirled up so quickly that he didn't have time to guard against it.
"Not now," he growled very softly, and made her swallow two of the tiny pills she had in a vial. "Not now."
"What?" She stared at him in dizzy confusion.
"Nothing." He could see the medicine taking effect. Her breathing was easing, the wheeze fading. But she was still blown up like a hot air balloon, and she was trembling like a leaf in a hurricane. She definitely needed to rest. Gabriel knew that.
He just didn't like it.
Lips tightened into a grim slash, he scooped Carolina up and made for the hall. He knew next to nothing about medicine, and what he did know was largely outdated, so he had no idea of how long it would take her to recover from the allergy attack. But he was definitely going to put her to bed while he figured out what to do with her.
"I should... go to the hospital."
"I don't know how to drive," he told her brusquely, biting off the words as if their taste was unbearably foul on his tongue. "And you're not in any condition to drive yourself."
"Call... cab?"
He only hesitated a moment before he carried her into his bedroom . "No telephone."
He felt sure that her eyes widened, despite the fact that she was probably physically incapable of such a feat right now. Hell. He didn't need this. Not any of it. "Don't ask," he growled.
Carolina didn't, not even when he shouldered aside the mosquito netting draping the bed and set her down on the mattress. There was light in the room, a wan glow from the dim hallway light. It backlit Gabriel's body, turning him into a broad, shadowy figure that loomed over her. With a very small feat of imagination, Carolina could see him covered in a hairy pelt, claws and fangs glittering with silent menace.
She swallowed, her tight, raw throat making the sound audible.
"Will you be all right now?" The dark, somehow harsh voice fit right into her fancy. It wasn't a comforting thought.
Carolina nodded. She was unbearably tired, could barely see out of her swollen eyes, and it was suddenly an effort to so much as breathe evenly. The heck with Gabriel. She couldn't stay awake.
She thought she felt the slightest caress of his fingers against her swollen cheek, and chalked it up to exhaustion. "Then sleep."
Carolina didn't need to open her eyes to know that he had left. She could feel it. Within moments, she fell into a deep, mindless sleep that was filled with soft, murmuring voices and high, dark laughter.
Why the hell had he thrown out the jambalaya?
Gabriel drew back from the uncurtained window and the unchanging view of his jungle of a garden. The night had finally simmered down to a cooler temperature, enough so that he'd thrown on a shirt. No, that wasn't true. He'd gone to his room and put on a shirt because there was something phenomenally erotic about dressing when Carolina was in his bed. About the only thing that could possibly be more erotic was undressing when she was in his bed. And waiting for him.
"Ribaud, you are sick." Disgusted, he swiped a hand over his face, felt the steel-wool rasp of stubble against his fingers. He needed a shave. Hell, what he really needed was a long dunk in ice water. A woman was sick, sleeping off medicine, and he was seriously thinking about crawling beneath that light sheet with her. If he thought it would do a bit of good, he'd slit his throat while he was scraping off the beginnings of his beard.
He still couldn't believe he'd thrown out the jambalaya. He'd sweated in that hellhole of a kitchen for hours to make it, and he'd only eaten one bowl. Unbelievable.
Swearing quietly, Gabriel moved with incredible silence to the side of the bed. A flick of his fingers parted the ghostly, almost infinitesimal barrier of the mosquito netting.
Carolina slept quietly. There was still a slight fullness to her face that reminded him a little too forcibly of how she'd looked a bare hour ago.
Gabriel's fingers tightened, crushing the netting he still held. Oh, yeah, he knew exactly why he'd dumped that pot of jambalaya.
Guilt was not an emotion that sat comfortably on him, but it was riding him tonight. Disgust rose like bitter bile in the back of his throat. All this time he'd been playing games with her, trying to keep her away from him so that he wouldn't be forced to kill her, and she'd almost died anyway.
And, dammit, he didn't know whether to be relieved or annoyed that she'd lived.
Dispassionately, he studied her in the soft illumination from the wall sconces out in the hallway. She was a beautiful woman, this Carolina York. Beautiful and quickwitted.
That he found her intelligence as attractive as her body came as a surprise. Intelligent women were dangerous, and more often than not downright irritating. Not a man to enjoy annoyance where he was looking for simple pleasures, Gabriel had always preferred his companions to be as shallow as they were lovely. The one exception to that rule had been Mignon. Look where that had gotten him.
He snorted as he sank down onto the edge of the bed. "How about you look where it's gotten you now, Ribaud."
Carolina stirred at the sound of his voice, and light glittered coldly on the tag at her throat. Gabriel lifted the little bit of silver on the tips of two fingers. If he'd thought to read the damn thing earlier, she might be awake and out of his way by now.
Might, Gabriel had discovered long ago, was a damned annoying word.
Carefully, he let the tag droop back to rest in the satiny, sweetly perfumed hollow between Carolina's breasts. His fingertips strayed to touch the raw red welts made by her nails. It was an absolute crime to mar such skin, he thought, tracing the line of her collarbone with a delicate touch. He bent down to brush a healing kiss over the scratches.
The instant his lips brushed her flesh, a frisson of electricity seemed to jolt through him. A shock of warmth, of flavor against his tongue. He stiffened in surprise and rising sexual awareness. He had to stop, to pull away.
He couldn't. Carolina's taste went straight to his head like nothing he'd ever before encountered. He had to have more.
Like an addict, Gabriel touched the tip of his tongue to the pulse beating heavily in the hollow of her throat. Pleasure was a hard fist in his gut, knocking the breath from him. He was aware of a disorientation, a sense of wrongness. This shouldn't be happening. Couldn't be happening. He'd kissed her before. Held her before. Then where was this incredible sense of newness coming from?
Gabriel couldn't dwell on the question, not when his mouth was trailing upward along the smooth column of her throat. Not when the rich scent and taste of her was threatening to take off the top of his head. It was unbelievable; she was asleep, and here he was, damn near hard and hot enough to go off any second like a Mardi Gras firecracker.
By the time his mouth charted the stubborn angle of her chin, Gabriel had forgotten. Forgotten who she was, who he was. She was a woman, sweet and fragrant and quiescent beneath him, and he'd never felt so much a man before in all his two hundred years of existence.
He braced himself over her, his hands splayed against the mattress, his arm and shoulder muscles bunching beneath the black cotton of his shirt. The need to touch her was becoming paramount, but he wouldn't commit himself to that. Not yet. The pleasure of tasting her was growing more acute by the second.
Instead, he parted her lips with a single stroke of his tongue. Gratification pummeled him in waves, swelling sensitive flesh until he could count each heartbeat in the hardness that strained the placket of his jeans with each separate surge of blood. Again came that rolling impact of taste and sensation. He had expected it; he still hadn't been ready for it. She tasted of sleepy passion and warm excitement, tanged with the faint bitterness of medication and the heat of cayenne.
Ice streaked down his back. Cayenne. The jambalaya.
Gabriel ripped his mouth from hers. He hovered over her, panting, his arms trembling from strain. "Damn." His voice was gravelly. "Oh, damn."
Carolina murmured and stirred a little restlessly, but she didn't waken. He breathed a prayer of thanks to the medication responsible for such a heavy sleep. That was all he needed, for her to wake up and start demanding explanations. Or satisfaction.
He shoved himself off the bed and staggered over to the window. His hands were trembling. Trembling!
"Gabriel?"
It was the barest whisper, and it send shards of unreasonable fear through him. He kept silent, hoping she wouldn't see him through the netting.
"Gabriel?"
She had seen him, he thought, and swore silently. He almost held his breath and willed himself to disappear. Carolina continued to move restlessly in her half-sleep, as if she were somehow attuned to his presence. Damn. He couldn't believe it, but he was actually feeling... remorse.
Gabriel gave up. "I'm here." He knew his voice sounded rusty, but there was nothing he could do; he was lucky it was working at all.
"I'm in bed?" There was a wealth of sleepy wonder in the question. "But I'm not home. Am I?"
"You're in my bed." He jammed his hands in his jeans pockets and prayed like hell that cutting off his circulation would keep him under control. "Go back to sleep."
"Here?" She sounded faintly worried, but not nearly enough. Not nearly enough, he thought grimly.
A faint sneer curled his lip, but Gabriel wasn't sure which one of them to direct it at. "Don' worry, petite. I'll wait until you're conscious again before I ravish you."
He'd thought the threat would scare her into cooperation. He should have known better. The electricity sizzled in his blood again as she murmured, "Can't wait," and fell asleep again.
Gabriel didn't move for a good twenty minutes - the length of time it took for him to exhaust his rather extensive vocabulary of colorful French and English curses. Then he removed his numb hands from his back pockets and walked somewhat stiffly to the library. He had to know exactly how far in Annalise's diary Carolina had read.
He had to know what to tell her in the morning.
Carolina's inner clock told her that it was dawn, but the room was still evening-dim. Or at least it appeared to be from under her half-closed lids.
It also wasn't her room. There were vague shapes lining the walls, made more indistinct by the veil of netting between her and them. About the only pieces that weren't covered in yellowed dustcloths were the bed and an antique armoire of dark, elegantly-carved wood.
Carolina blinked and rubbed her eyes until her contacts weren't so uncomfortably dry. Unfortunately, her memories of last night were just as abrasive and not as easily remedied.
That was when she sensed Gabriel enter the room. Her nerve endings leapt to life under the touch of his raspy voice. "You awake yet, petite?"
She rolled her head on the puffy pillow until she could see him. He hovered like a dark specter just outside the boundary of the netting. "Yes. Why?"
"Promised you I'd wait until you were awake before I ravished you." One strong shoulder parted the curtain, and suddenly, he was inside the delicate, white world of the bed with her. Dressed in his customary black and radiating potent masculine sensuality, he should have looked out of place. He didn't.
"You mean you wanted to make sure I wasn't still doing my inflatable woman act."
He propped himself on one elbow and leaned over her, all looming male, expecting her to make a frantic bid for freedom any second. When she stayed perfectly still except for wary, currently blue eyes, he decided to up the ante a little. "You sure of that, Caro?"
She licked her cracked lips. "Maybe not."
"Good." His lips barely brushed hers. His tongue crept out to moisten them. Any second now, she was going to bolt, he told himself. Any second. "I don' want you t'be sure of me."
Carolina moaned quietly when he settled into the kiss. He was prepared for that, and for the little electric rushes of pleasure that hummed along his nerves.
He wasn't at all prepared for when Carolina locked her arms around his neck and kissed him back.
For a split second, Gabriel was swamped by the sheer pleasure of having a willing woman in his arms. No, not just a willing woman. A willing Carolina.
God, but she was generous in her passion! Had he ever, Gabriel wondered, been even half so generous with any of his lovers? Half so honest?
That honesty floored him, weakening him until his arms refused to support him. Until he collapsed and let himself be pressed into the yielding support of her sleep-softened body.
"Carolina." It was a groan, a plea and a warning all at once. "Dawlin', listen to me." How he pulled back, Gabriel wasn't sure. He couldn't let her do this, he thought. He couldn't let her weaken him. "You're playing a dangerous game."
Her breath, warm, sweet and soft as the rest of her, puffed lightly against his chin. "You started it."
"I know." He rolled off her, suppressing a heartfelt groan. "But you're the one changed the rules."
He heard her catch her breath, but she didn't speak. He hadn't really expected her to; what could she say? For that matter, what could he say?
They lay without speaking for long moments, each careful not to touch the other. Each trying to find an equilibrium shattered by the careless change of the rules.
When Gabriel finally spoke, his voice was enviably even, with only a trace of rustiness. "Are you all right to drive?"
She didn't trust herself to answer. Carolina rolled out of bed, fumbling for a moment with the unfamiliar bed hangings. She didn't look at him, but every nerve ending in her body seemed attuned to his presence just behind her. "Where's my purse?"
"The library. I put everything back."
"Thank you."
They'd been reduced to polite strangers. It bothered him, though he couldn't say why; this should have been just what he wanted. "Caro." He reached around and caught her chin, making her look at him. "I'm... Hell. I'm sorry, all right?"
"All right." She knew he was talking about the jambalaya. This new, serious Gabriel was difficult to know how to handle. He was much too... human. If she wasn't careful, she'd fall under the spell of the dark hurt in his eyes and start caring. "I've got to go. I have to open the shop today."
Some of his usual bravado came back. "You always go rushin' off. Mebbe I should bathe more often, eh?"
Carolina nearly choked. "Goodbye, Gabriel." She slid off the bed and hurried out into the hall, barely remembering to make a stop for her purse. She knew darn well he was watching as she took the stairs in a genteel rush.
Gabriel sauntered to the doorway of his room and leaned one shoulder against the jamb, listening to the subdued clatter of Carolina's leaving. Yep, everything was back to normal.
He wasn't even aware that he'd licked his lips to get the last traces of Carolina's sweetness as he headed to the downstairs game room. He felt like playing a game of solitaire.
Carolina crossed her fingers as Marguerite plunked herself down behind the counter. The many strings of Mardi Gras beads she'd wrapped around her neck clicked merrily.
"Marguerite?" Concerned, Carolina slid her own heavily sweetened mug of coffee under the other woman's nose. Maybe the caffeine jolt would perk her up; Marguerite's expression was as glum as her mauve and turquoise blouse was bright. "What's wrong?"
"Well, I was minding the shop yesterday afternoon, and we got an another one of those insurance adjusters. You know," she pulled an expressive face, "the kind with the slicked-back hair and a precisely-knotted tie. Anyhow, he said that our fire alarm system wasn't up to code. We're going to have to replace it."
She pulled out a folded piece of paper and showed it to Carolina. "Here's the quote."
Carolina's expression held equal parts grim realization and determination. "How much time do we have?"
"A month at most. Otherwise he said he'd see we were shut down for not complying with fire codes. You know how strict New Orleans is about fire codes."
Carolina knew. "Don't worry about the money. We can handle it."
"Not if we want to stay out of the red." Marguerite was appalled.
The younger woman's mind was already running through their options. "We won't go broke."
"Honey, unless you've got a stash of money somewhere with nothing better to do than bail us out..." Her brown eyes shot open. "Oh, no, not your trust fund!"
Carolina winced. "I'll try, but I don't think I'll be able to break it. Although," and she paused for a moment to consider the words, "we could always use the interest."
"But you've been using that for rent and food. What about those?"
"Don't worry about that. Besides, there's always the consulting job for Ribaud." And I can always set up a cot in the back storeroom.
"Oh, you know, I'd forgotten about Mr. Ribaud. Will you need to take time off from the shop to deal with that work?"
"And leave you to handle everything?"
"I can do it." Marguerite drew herself up proudly. "I'm just not as good with the phone queries, that's all."
"I know, I know." Carolina patted the older woman's arm affectionately. "I just meant that this is a joint business, that's all. I'm not going to drop my share of the work so that I can go read those moldy old books I love so much. It wouldn't be fair."
"If you're sure..." Marguerite wavered, still a little unconvinced.
Carolina smiled brightly, pouring every bit of self-assurance she could into her voice. "Of course, I'm sure."
That night, Carolina literally stumbled into her apartment. The heat, combined with her exhaustion, was sapping what little vitality she could still claim. She was somewhat surprised that she was still capable of movement.
Too tired to do more than remove her contacts and strip, she fell into the clean white confines of her bed. The gently humming air conditioner played blessed coolness over her naked skin. She moaned in tired delight. It felt so good to be cool and off her feet.
Carolina spared a bleary glance for the bedside clock. It was barely seven-thirty, atrociously early by New Orleans' standards. The population of the Quarter was just gearing up. She thought wistfully of her silent, expectant computer and the stack of field notes moldering in silence on her desk. She hadn't touched them since she'd gotten back. But there'd be no time for personal projects until she got the shop's troubles straightened out.
If she'd been upright, Carolina's shoulders would have slumped in discouragement. When had it all gotten so out of hand? Maybe if she'd never left for Africa...
No, she still would have been at home, not in the shop, when those kids had thrown those smoke bombs. She didn't have the energy to waste debating moot points. She had to get some sleep.
She was going to need it.
The sun was beginning to go down, fingers of brilliant color stretching across the horizon, when Carolina pressed down on the intercom button.
This time, Gabriel didn't bother to go through their little ritual. He opened the door after a moment, surprise written large on his dark face. "Carolina? What're you doin' here?"
"I know it's late, but I thought I'd put in some more work on those appraisals."
Dark eyes appraised her, shrewd yet still showing a trace of puzzlement. "You've got time."
"I want to do it." She couldn't quite keep the waspishness from her voice. "I suppose your insurance company is a lot more understanding than mine." She rubbed at the pressure beginning to build between her eyes.
"They understand who the master is."
What an odd way to phrase it. She looked at him. "If I'm disturbing you, I'll leave."
"You always disturb me, petite," he said easily. "C'mon in." His familiar, cheerful leer heartened her.
God, she had to be tired if she was comforted by a leer. "I'll just go upstairs."
"You remember where my room is? Pop in there. I'll come up in a minute and give you a nice, relaxin' massage."
"Gabriel!" It was somewhere between a wail and a growl of warning.
Black eyes laughed at her. "Aw, you never let me have any fun." He held up a placating hand when it looked as if she wanted to swat him with her bag. "G'wan, Caro. I'll behave."
"Thank God." Still clutching her purse, she squeezed by him and moved toward the stairs.
She froze when he caught her arm. Stiffening, she turned and saw him staring at her medic alert tag. The set of his mouth spoke eloquently of reluctance and a mild annoyance, but there was something soft in his expression. Something almost... worried. "Chere? Don't work too hard. Okay?"
Before she could manage to do more than nod, he let her go and walked back down the hall. Light shining from the back parlor made a vague nimbus around his powerful figure.
He moved with amazing grace, she thought on a burst of unwilling fascination, his bare feet soundless on the naked old floor. An eerie grace. Like a cat. Or a panther.
But a panther, a small voice said in the recesses of her mind, didn't have sin-black eyes made compelling by a flash of very human concern.
Carolina mounted the stairs slowly, wondering why she found the memory of that concern so comforting.
She made her way downstairs slowly out of necessity. Every muscle in her body was stiff from sitting in one place for hours on end. Her mind seemed to be almost as tired as the rest of her. I'll give Gabriel a progress report, and then I'll go home. I'll sleep.
The thought of her own familiar bed was a sweet beacon in her mind as Carolina shuffled awkwardly down the corridor. The light was still on in the back parlor. Surely that meant that Gabriel was still there. She hoped so; ingrained politeness made it impossible for her to leave without a proper goodbye, but she didn't think she was up to combing the house for her elusive host.
He slouched with studied nonchalance in a classically-styled chair. His attention was wholly on the cards spread out before him. From the intense expression, Carolina half-expected them to be tarot cards. When she edged around the doorjamb, she could see that he was playing solitaire.
She had thought that she was being as quiet as the proverbial mouse, but Gabriel looked up from his game as if she'd made some betraying noise.
"Hey, petite. C'mon in. You don't look so steady, no."
Carolina could've - probably - resisted the sexy Cajun accent, but the accompanying smile melted her weary resistance. She told herself to say goodnight, turn around and leave, but couldn't. Not when he was looking at her like that.
And certainly not when he was uncoiling from the chair and crossing the room to put large, warm hands on her shoulders. "Heat gettin' to you?"
The clean, vibrant heat of his body, so different from the cloying humidity that was the bane of Louisiana's summer, enveloped her. "Yes."
He tried to screen the concern from his voice. "You need t'take time off, Caro."
Unresisting, Carolina let him lead her to the dropcloth-draped love seat. Exhaustion made her weak and compliant with his wishes, she told herself firmly. It wasn't a yen for his company. No way. "I wish you'd stop calling me that."
He chuckled, a dark, potent sound. "You don't like the nickname?"
"It reminds me of corn syrup," she said bluntly.
He pressed her down, then took a seat behind her. Carolina's tired muscles tensed at the first touch of his hands on her shoulders.
"Ooo-wee, Caro, you all tensed up. Now you just relax and let ol' Papa Gabriel fix you up."
The wicked amusement in his voice made her grimace. His hands on her aching, spasming muscles, however, were sheer heaven. His long, elegant fingers seemed to know just where to probe, just how to knead to release tension she hadn't even known she'd had.
"The appraisals are coming along." Now, why had she said something so inane? Oh, well. "I'm about halfway through the first set of shelves."
"Let me know when you get to the erotica." Another low chuckle brushed warm, moist air over the shell of her left ear. Mad tingles zipped through her blood like a million crazed fireflies.
"It won't be for a while. Your collection is extensive."
"That's not the only thing of mine that's extensive, cherie."
Tension swooshed out of her muscles to be replaced by a melting, vibrating heat. "Gabriel..."
"Glad you know who it is who's doin' this to you," he murmured darkly, his lips brushing her temple, the curve of her cheekbone. His fingertips brushed carefully along the half-healed scratches on her neck.
"You're doing this on purpose."
"You betcha. Carolina." His deep voice dropped to a thread of sound. He turned her to face him, his hands hard and implacable, his touch oddly gentle. "Carolina, look at me."
Helplessly, she did. And she felt herself beginning to drown in his fathomless black eyes.
"What are your passions?"
"My passions?" She knew she had to look at least as bewildered as she felt.
"I know you love moldy old books. I want to know more. Hell, I want to know everything."
"Why?"
A dry smile, somehow more attractive than the come-hither grins he usually gave her. "Maybe because I'm hopin' you've got room to like a moldy old man, too."
"But you're not old." Her fingers flexed on his shoulders.
Darkness flickered in his eyes. "Chere, I'm older than you could ever imagine."
It was that darkness, not the passion, that slipped under her defenses and into her heart. She stared into his unflinching gaze, strangely unable to pull away even when she felt herself in danger of being drawn into the dark soul she could glimpse in the ebony depths of his eyes. She could see his loneliness. Immeasurable, immutable loneliness. God, how could a man live like that?
Because she didn't know, she slid her hands from the formidable breadth of his shoulders to the nape of his neck. Because she couldn't understand, she drew him to her, expecting him to pull back with every inch that disappeared from between them. And because she... yes, dammit, because she cared, she kissed him.
It wasn't like any of their other kisses. The attraction was there, yes. It was always there. But it wasn't paramount. Gentleness was.
And to Carolina's infinite surprise, she felt him shudder.
The stiff soreness flowed from her muscles to be replaced by some malleable, glittering heat she'd never experienced before. A sense of power, perhaps, that she could make a strong, worldly man like Gabriel Ribaud shudder like a frightened child.
No, not like a child. Like a man who has met his match in a woman. And liked it.
"Damn. Oh, damn." She felt his shaky whisper against her lips. "Carolina, what are you doin' to me?"
"I don't know."
"Then stop."
"I can't."
He pulled back far enough for her to see the black fire in his eyes. "Then God help us both, cherie." And then his mouth claimed hers.
Incredibly, Carolina was reminded of the first time he'd kissed her. She'd been terrified of him, of the way she responded to him. And, just like that first time, his lips wooed hers. No, wooed was the wrong word. There was nothing sweetly flowery and romantic about Gabriel, even when he was being so devastatingly gentle. He seduced. With his lips alone, he coaxed her into wanting to give him whatever he asked.
Part of Carolina rebelled at the idea of giving herself so completely to any man. She was independent and strong-minded, and she didn't need to belong to a man. But another part of her gloried in the luxury of desire slowly unfolding, like a scarlet ribbon. Gloried in the heat and electricity between her and this man.
And that was the part that took control.
Physical fatigue was dismissed in the face of the hot tide of rising yearning. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Carolina could hear a tiny, unfamiliar voice exulting. She ignored it. A whole new world was opening up for her here in Gabriel's arms; a world where taste and texture were of utmost importance, where pleasure reigned supreme.
"There's fire in you tonight, Caro." His lips scored heat down her throat. On a soft sound between a moan and a sigh, she let her head fall back to allow him better access. His hands streaked up her back and plunged into her thick braid. Her hair was hot silk, like her skin, and sent tingles through him as if he'd thrust his hands into a tangle of electric wires. "Sweet, sweet fire. Just what I need. Burn me." His voice roughened almost unbearably. "Make me feel alive again."
Carolina shivered at the poignancy of the words, but she couldn't do anything else. Not with Gabriel's lips grinding against hers. Not with his powerful arms banded around her waist as if he wanted to pull her into him and absorb her.
When he leaned back, stretching out as well as a man of his size could on a fussy Victorian love seat, and hauled her over him, Carolina almost went into sensory overload. There was something incredibly intoxicating about being the one on top. The sense of power, perhaps.
But it wasn't enough. He'd awakened a hunger with his need, one that she'd thought she'd had safely slumbering behind an inner door marked 'lady'. Ladies didn't give in to excesses of emotion. Ladies didn't get into compromising situations. Ladies didn't wrap themselves passionately around a man they barely knew.
The hell with that. Carolina wriggled a little until she was straddling Gabriel's narrow hips. The wave of sensation that crashed over her almost pulled her under. Oh, God. Oh, God.
Gabriel broke off the kiss with a sharp intake of breath. "Carolina! Oh, dawlin', that feels so good."
It did to her, too. But it could get better. She just knew it. Face flushed, her eyes half-lidded and slumberous with passion, she let herself melt into him. A minor adjustment in her position brought them into electrifying, gratifying contact.
Gabriel's big hands clamped on her hips, holding her in place. Only a few layers of cotton gauze, lace, and denim separated them. Knowledge of just how flimsy the barriers were eroded his willpower. "Cherie, be sure."
Sure? She wasn't sure of anything right now, except for the fact that she'd die if he didn't press against her soon.
And then he did. Carolina couldn't do anything but moan in utter relief and clutch at his shoulders as his hands on her hips pressed her downward. His hips moved languidly, stroking her intimate core with the heat and hardness trapped behind his jeans. Carolina couldn't control the rush of response that turned her soft and wet, dampening her panties.
Gabriel groaned deeply, and she realized that, as closely entwined as they were, he couldn't help but feel her excitement.
"Damn." Gabriel inhaled sharply. "Damn. It's been so long. You're burnin' me, cherie. Fire all the way to my soul."
"Fire..." Yes, there was fire. Honeyed flames licking over every inch of her skin. Heat and light just waiting to explode inside her. And Gabriel, her Gabriel, his strength turned to weakness beneath her.
Something black and frigid oozed in the wake of that thought. Carolina stirred uneasily, called from her passionate trance. What was she thinking? Gabriel hers? She wouldn't know what to do with him if she had him. And as for weak...
Under her, his body was a promise of passion, his kiss a taste of ecstacy. But the darkness she'd seen in his eyes before he'd taken her in his arms was still there. She could feel it lurking inside him. She could taste it on his tongue. And she was suddenly very afraid that, if she made love with him now, it would coil itself inside her and never leave.
"Gabriel..." Gathering a ragged breath, Carolina tried to lift away from him. His arms tightened around her. He wasn't going to let her escape him now. "Gabriel, stop."
The black eyes that lanced into hers were dark enough to absorb the soft light around them. "Stop?"
She shivered again at the silken menace in that voice. "We have to stop."
"We," he enunciated carefully, "don' have t'do anything."
"But I do." Fighting to control a blush, she scrambled off his lap. A twist of her hips brought her skirt fluttering into place. "I'm sorry, Gabriel. I can't. I'm just... I'm sorry."
She watched him warily for a moment. There was something vibrant and electric about his absolute stillness. Something that spoke of the amount of control he was exerting to keep from springing up and coming after her. Something that scared the hell out of her... because she understood it.
Snatching up her purse, Carolina hurried for the door. She stopped cold when she heard the mocking way he called after her.
"When you gonna stop runnin', Caro?"
The words and tone hurt. Badly. She wanted to hurt him; an eye for an eye, she thought with unusual spitefulness. "When I figure out what it is I'm running from." She threw the words over her shoulder like sharp stones and quickly stepped out into the still, wet night.
Carolina jogged along the confines of Jackson Square, sweat dampening the fuscia headband which bound back her hair. The Walkman and headphones she wore fed pulsing rock music into her ears. She notched up the volume in the hopes that it would drown out the memory of Gabriel's taunt.
Yeah, she was running for real this time. She lengthened her stride, passed a patinaed General Jackson resplendent on horseback amid a flock of drowsy-looking pigeons, and headed out of the square and down Decatur toward the French Market. Maybe she could lose herself in the scattering of early-rising street vendors and hardy tourists.
She could lose herself, Carolina discovered quickly enough, but she couldn't lose Gabriel. Without more than a half a thought, she could call up the exact feel of his arms around her, his lean, muscular athlete's body stretched beneath hers. She could taste him.
Darn. She devoutly hoped that memories of her were tormenting him. It would only be fair.
Be honest, Carolina, you don't have the slightest desire to be fair. All right, she admitted, so she didn't. She wanted very much to be able to blame the entire episode on Gabriel. He'd been coming on to her since... No, coming on wasn't right. It was too crude, too... modern. Gabriel at his most blatant was never crude, as if there were some kind of invisible line he wouldn't cross. And, she was beginning to suspect, he wasn't very modern, either.
It was an odd thing to think, and an even odder thing to say, so Carolina prudently kept her mouth shut.
Gabriel not modern? Well, no. He could never live in that moldering mausoleum of a house without air conditioning if he were modern. Besides, he'd said that he didn't have a phone. And did she remember him telling her that he didn't know how to drive?
What kind of man didn't know how to drive? Unless Gabriel had sprung fully grown from the swamp, she imagined that he'd had to have occasion to learn how to drive at least once in his life.
Carolina agilely dodged a fruit vendor and continued up toward the State Museum on Esplanade. She usually enjoyed her morning jog through the Quarter, since it gave her a chance to get reacquainted with New Orleans' more famous landmarks without having to plow through droves of people. This morning, though, she was completely, annoyingly preoccupied with Gabriel Ribaud.
He was rich. At least, she thought he was rich. That house required maintenance and it was furnished with a lot of uncomfortable-looking but valuable antiques. And he obviously spent a lot of money on that blasted book collection.
Those books, a small voice whispered past the heavy bass beat echoing in her eardrums, were the key to understanding Gabriel Ribaud.
If that were true - and Carolina had to admit that in most cases it was, since people rarely bought books they didn't like - then she wasn't certain that she liked what she understood about Gabriel. His collection dealt, with the exception of the infamous erotica section, completely with folklore. The erotica she could pass off as a quirk in the collector, but the others... Books she'd only heard of, about vampires and werewolves. There was a heavy salting of witchcraft and voodoo, too. Some of the books were museum-quality. Some were a breath away from crumbling at her touch. The ones on voodoo tended to have the most appalling illustrations, she remembered with a shudder.
She tried to imagine Gabriel, bathed in soft lamplight, poring over one of those books. His elegant fingers stroking the heavy lines of the woodcuts illustrating slaves gyrating to the heavy beat of drums in Congo Square, or the transformation of a man into a werewolf. The image came with disturbing ease. Carolina's long, confident stride faltered a little and she had to step quickly to avoid tripping on a rough spot on the sidewalk.
By now, her blood was beating strongly in her ears, strong enough to mask the music from her tiny headphones. Without pausing, Carolina plucked them out and coiled them into a neat little circle of wires around the radio on her belt. Time to start heading back.
She checked her watch, then the skyline. The sun was coming up, infusing absolutely unnecessary heat into the already-thick air. Yep, time to head back. If she hurried, she could get back to her apartment, shower and still get to the shop before Marguerite.
"Another potentially exhausting day." Biting her lip, Carolina cut up a block and jogged back onto Decatur, heading back toward St. Louis Cathedral. Hopefully, there wouldn't be any more bad news waiting for her at work.
Halfway through a thankfully busy morning, a courier came into Treasured Tales. Marguerite, at the desk, waved him over. "Hey, where y'at? Can I help you with something?"
"Package for Carolina York."
Marguerite craned her neck to see Carolina bobbing in and out of the back bookshelves. "Carolina!"
"What?" The blond head perked up, and a pair of pale green eyes showed above the high water mark of the stack of books she hefted.
"Package!"
"Can you sign for it? I've kind of got my hands full."
Shrugging, Marguerite signed the delivery slip and palmed the small, hand-sized box.
Carolina relieved herself of her dusty burden and threaded her way through the customers to the register. "What is it?" she asked a little nasally, rubbing her nose to stave off the dust-fueled sneeze she could feel sneaking up on her.
"It's a box."
Carolina suppressed a groan. Marguerite was back to her old, perky self, and she didn't want to jeopardize the first true streak of good luck they'd had in a while. "Who's it from?"
"No name except yours."
Frowning, Carolina took the small box. It was inexpertly wrapped in coarse brown paper, which gave her no clues at all. Then she saw the writing. Flamboyant, thick, and curiously antique script spelled out the letters of her name.
"Gabriel."
"Well, what did he send this time? It's too small for a book." Wisely, Marguerite didn't mention anything else about the book he'd sent the last time, although she knew darn well it had been a work of erotica.
Carolina fumbled open the wrappings and drew out a small jeweler's box of worn navy velvet.
"He sent you a present?" Marguerite was nearly bouncing in her excitement, and her already treble voice soared a couple of octaves up the register until it grated painfully in Carolina's ear.
With a sense of being suspended between annoyance and trepidation, she opened the box. "No." She touched the tarnished, battered metal surface with a fingertip that trembled. "He sent me a key."
After a couple of minutes of swearing, Carolina realized that the key did not unlock the front door.
"All right, Gabriel. I'm going to find out which door this opens, and then I'm going to find you and..." She couldn't think of anything nasty enough to do to him. Her lack of imagination was even more irritating than Gabriel's inconsiderate ways.
She looked at the shape of the key and groaned inwardly. It had to go to the kitchen door. Any other doors would long since have been grown over by the out-of-control foliage in the yard. And to get to the kitchen, she'd have to go through the shadows again.
Feeling a distinct sense of deja vu, Carolina walked to the edge of the broad veranda and stared thoughtfully at the shadows. The sun was slowly drowning to the west, darkness was layering itself everywhere. If she pretended that those shadows were like the harmless ones casting themselves over the broken walk and the roadway... Could she do it?
Carolina stiffened her spine and squared her shoulders in determination, unaware that her chin had taken on a decidedly mulish tilt. She'd faced angry tribesmen, stampeding cattle, and her mother. She could darn well face a bunch of shadows.
Despite her bravado, Carolina almost hesitated just before she stepped into the darkness of the side yard. Silly, she thought, to hesitate.
The shadows closed around her. The heat she'd remembered from before was just as stifling, even in the supposed cool of onrushing evening. She tensed, expecting to feel the ghostly brush of nonexistent cobwebs over her skin. And the murmurs. She still couldn't forget about the murmurs.
The whispering shadows brushed her skin, slight, feathery touches that made Carolina jump. But the cloying sense of unease that had spooked her on her last trip through was absent. All she felt was a niggling awkwardness, as if she were performing before some unseen audience that she wished to please.
And then she was through. The last rays of the setting sun were filtering through the heavy canopy of leaves. There was an odd, burnt quality to the saffron-colored light that did little to illuminate the shadowed crevices of the rear garden. And the wind seemed to whisper secrets among the moss-draped trees.
Carolina had walked up to the kitchen door before she realized that there was no wind. An eerily still twilight had fallen like a shroud on the Ribaud house.
"Oh, great. Now I'm sounding like someone from a gothic novel." Huffing to herself in disgust, she fished the key from her pocket and stuck it in the rusty lock.
It fit.
The heat inside the kitchen had not yet begun to diminish with the day. Carolina swore she could feel her bones melt the second she stepped over the threshold. She was tempted to prop the door open to admit some of the cooler evening air, but didn't think that Gabriel would be too appreciative if she compromised his dubious security measures.
She thought about the nagging unease that the shadows around the house fostered every time she looked at them and had to admit that they were pretty effective security after all. She let the door click shut behind her.
For a split second, standing there in the sultry confines of the kitchen, she could smell the spices in the jambalaya, hear the whirring of the knife, see Gabriel, sweat-sheened and magnificent, standing behind the old table. A pool of heat, tiny and incandescent, burgeoned deep inside her.
She drifted in it, in the sensation of truly understanding her woman's body, for long moments. He didn't even have to be there. Just his memory was enough to affect her.
It always had before.
Carolina shook her head, feeling as if she were surfacing after a long time under water. She hadn't known Gabriel long enough to be thinking in terms of 'always'. Even if she had known him long enough, Carolina still didn't think she'd use the term. Gabriel was not an 'always' kind of man.
She hurried through the rest of the kitchen, hoping both to escape the heat and the hazy sensuality that seemed to envelop her.
Once in the library, Carolina felt more herself. She plucked a stack of decaying volumes off a shelf and settled in to assess them. "If he'd only put in a vault," she muttered, once again dismayed at the condition of some of the books. Then she shrugged. It was certainly no skin off her nose if Gabriel was determined to drive down the value of his collection through neglect. She supposed she should be grateful that the house was wired for electricity.
She opened the top volume delicately, grimaced when she saw the copper plate illustration of witches being burned at the stake, and hauled out her appraisal notebook. Just what she didn't need. The atmosphere in the house was eerie enough now that she was alone in it. She felt, Carolina reflected, like one very small mouse rattling around in Cinderella's castle. That was, if Cindy had lived in a swamp.
The gruesome picture drew her eyes again; whoever had drawn it had certainly relished his work. She wished she had some company, something to stave off this crawling sense of being utterly alone. A radio, a teddy bear. Something.
She knew she shouldn't - and couldn't - count on Gabriel for companionship. Not after last night. But she really did wish that she knew where he was.
Gabriel tipped his head back and drank in the damp night. The moon was rising in a gradually fattening silver crescent that glowed through the moss-draped treetops. He settled himself a little more comfortably on the weathered old cypress log. The sound of a thousand insects made the air seem to have a heartbeat. The bayou murmured to him, from the slight surussus of long grass in the infinitesimal wind, to the deep-throated belch of frogs. Somewhere in the distance, a cat screamed defiance and a gator bellowed an answer. A cottony fog that undulated above the ebony waters of the bayou like another kind of liquid obscuring the boundaries between it and the land.
Gabriel smiled.
He could see the faint lights in the upper story of his house in the distance. Carolina. If he concentrated, he could sense her. She was womanly, a gentle golden contrast to the rich power of the night.
He grimaced. He could sense her, too easily, he thought on a fleeting twinge of unrest. He was running out of time. He shot a now-jaundiced look at the moon. His not-so-constant lover. His jealous lover. Just like Mignon.
Gabriel spat a curse that was as earthy as his surroundings. Why had he never seen the wicked intelligence lurking in her eyes? He snorted in self-derision. Because he hadn't been looking at her eyes, that was why. His gaze had been aimed a little lower.
"As usual. And that's why I'm in this mess. Thinkin' with my hormones and not my head." Just like the last time...
New Orleans, August, 1854
Gabriel fastened the last button on his trousers and glanced over his shoulder at the woman in the big featherbed. He gave her a cheshire-cat smile and a wink. "Not a bad way to spend an afternoon, eh, cherie?"
Mignon pouted prettily, her usually avid eyes still liquid with satisfaction. One long-fingered, beringed hand smoothed the rumpled sheet over the curve of her hip in a way calculated to make him notice the inviting lushness of her body.
He noticed. He also noticed how it failed to move him. Well, he did have other things on his mind. "Not now, cherie. You know I've got business to attend to." He turned back to the business of pulling on his boots.
Apparently, she didn't hear the note of disinterest in his deep voice. Or, if she did, she didn't care. The crimson-tipped fingers walked delicately up his naked back, tracing the swell of muscles moving under tanned skin that was still slick with sweat from their lovemaking. Gabriel didn't need to be a mind reader to know what she was thinking. She'd told him often enough that he had a magnificent body, both in and out of clothes.
He smiled to himself. Especially out.
"That business you got anything like the business we just finished?" she purred, her stroking fingertips flowing downward to trace the waist of his trousers.
Her lover captured her hand in his and lifted it to his lips. "Now, Mignon, can you see me in bed with ol' Antoine?"
She chuckled throatily. "That scrawny little man?"
"Scrawny, yeah, but he also owns the biggest fleet of riverboats in New Orleans. I need him." He gave her a quick, slashing smile. "Gonna make more money."
"As usual." Mignon sank back to the pillows, not caring whether or not the sheet made the trip with her. It didn't. "You like mixing with the high society, don't you?"
"New Orleans is a high society town, cherie." Shrugging, he let go of her hand and moved away to put on his shirt. He'd have to go to his townhouse to bathe and change before meeting Antoine down at the club. Mignon had been even more demanding than usual, and as a result, he'd been more... energetic. Usually, he enjoyed that - hell, he thrived on it. But today... today was somehow different. He was different.
Oh, hell, was he getting bored again?
Thankfully, Mignon didn't notice the subtle lag in his attention. She could be hell to deal with if she felt neglected, something which normally amused him. He liked a woman with spirit.
But right now, a peculiar smile was twisting the corners of her mouth upward. "And do any of your fancy friends know that you're a thief?"
He shot her an semi-irritable look. Mignon really did have a way of getting on his nerves. "No more than they know I'm keepin' company with you."
Temper flashed like summer lightning in her fine eyes, and a hard blush darkened her dusky skin. "You ashamed of me, Gabriel?"
Damn, he'd set her off again. Gabriel swore under his breath in gutter French before pasting on his most charming smile. "Ashamed of you? No, cherie." Bracing one arm on the mattress, he leaned over the bed to kiss her quickly and drew back before she could lock her arms around his neck and drag him down to the bed again. "I'm selfish. I don' want t'share you with anyone else."
Predictably, she melted. "You're a rogue, Gabriel Ribaud."
Leaving his shirt half-buttoned, he swung his coat over his shoulder and headed for the bedroom door. "And proud of it, cherie."
Gabriel didn't bother to put on his frock coat or button up his shirt as he slipped out the back door of Mignon's townhouse and into the steaming embrace of a Louisiana afternoon. He did his best to keep up his pristine public image, but New Orleans in the summer was much too hot to observe the proper dress code for a gentleman unless he had a very good reason. Not that many gentlemen were left in the city; anyone who could afford to had left for cooler climes.
He could afford to leave, but there was business to take care of, and that came first. The accumulation of legitimate wealth had begun to obsess him of late. He found the ins and outs of legal commerce, while not as stimulating as that of illegal, fascinating. And certainly more permanent.
The permanency was what really attracted him. He needed it. Hell, he craved it, almost as much as he craved the excitement of the streets. Gabriel was an admitted and ardent hedonist. He liked his sheets to be Irish linen, his brandy aged, his cigars fragrant, and his women beautiful. And if the price of having all that was respectability, he'd pay it.
The heated air seemed thick in his lungs. Gabriel sighed quietly. Times like this, he actually missed his humble roots. A scion of the business world couldn't afford to be seen skinny-dipping in the river like a common urchin.
Some things, though, he hadn't forgotten since his days as a street thief. He still knew the alleys like the back of his hand, knew exactly which route to take his townhouse without being seen. Gabriel slipped in the back door without anyone being the wiser and rushed up to his bedroom.
Mignon was getting too demanding, he thought as he quickly washed and changed into fresh clothing. Demanding and possessive. Not exactly the sort of womanly behavior he liked. Or wanted to live with.
Funny, when he was making a living picking pockets, he hadn't had this problem. Oh, he'd had women, all right, but the ladies had preferred to take a thief to their beds only once or twice before returning to more respectable partners. Perhaps that had been where he'd acquired and cultivated his taste for... variety.
Of course, now he was respectable. A rising pillar of the business community. He had permanence. He had social position. He had money.
Amazing, really, how many people fell for a well-crafted illusion.
Gabriel snorted quietly at the respectable face in the mirror above the washstand as he straightened the fit of his coat over his broad shoulders. His tone was meditative, but his smile was slightly wicked. "I ain't as proper as I look, no."
Three hours later, the meeting was concluded in a manner guaranteed to make both Gabriel and Antoine very, very rich. Gabriel had elected to have a celebration slightly different than his partner's; he was in bed with the delightful Annalise Montard, who had accompanied Antoine to the negotiations. She had made no secret of her preference for the dark-haired Cajun over her aging protector - at least where her bed was concerned. Being the gentleman that he was, Gabriel hadn't had the heart to deny the lady.
"Tell me again," he whispered against her soft throat, "that ol' Antoine isn't going to call me out for ravishin' you."
Annalise giggled breathlessly and let her palms slide down the flexing length of his back to cup his driving hips. "He's not one to complain. He likes me to be happy, and lately he hasn't been able to... you know."
Gabriel lifted his head and grinned wickedly down at her. "Hasn't been able to what, cherie? Do this?" He slammed his hips against hers, and she moaned.
"He's never been able to do that," she confessed, and then bit her lip against a cry of pleasure. "Never. What about you? Is there a wife somewhere that will hate me for doing this?" Locking her fingers in his hair, she pulled his head down to hers for a passionate kiss.
Gabriel closed his mind to thoughts of Mignon. "No wife, little one." Reaching down with one hand, he pulled her legs higher around his waist. "I don' belong to anyone."
The bedroom door burst open, slamming against the wall with an ear-shattering crash. A cool female voice rose above the sounds of frenzied lovemaking. "So you're a liar as well as a bastard."
Gabriel, who had automatically frozen when the door slammed open, now propped himself on his elbows over Annalise's passionately quivering form and sent a scowl over his shoulder. Frustration made him sharp. "It's the height of bad manners t'go bargin' in where you're not invited, cherie."
Mignon stalked into the room, her eyes as feral as any tiger's, her pale coffee-colored skin mottled with anger. "Get out," she snarled at Annalise.
The pretty blonde paled. "Gabriel?" Her fingers dug into his shoulders.
Gabriel curbed his urge to bark at her, too, and dropped a kiss on her moist red lips. "Don' you fret, petite." He glanced back at Mignon. She was wet-cat mad and there was an expression in her eyes that made him... uneasy. The heat in his blood began to cool. So did he. Damn! How the hell was he supposed to handle this situation?
He tried for a little roguish humor. "Now, cherie, be nice and go wait for me in the parlor while I finish business here. You know a gentleman don' leave a lady unsatisfied."
She ignored him, fixing a basilisk stare on the blonde woman. "I said get out of here, girl."
Annalise gave a little squeak, disentangled her limbs from Gabriel's, and scrambled out of the big, rumpled bed. There was a flashing glimpse of white skin before she threw on Gabriel's dressing gown and flew out the door.
Wearing only a ferocious scowl, Gabriel threw back the covers and stalked toward Mignon. "What d'you mean by doin' that?"
Mignon bared her teeth in a smile and planted her gloved hands on her hips. "I should be asking you that, you bastard."
He folded his arms across his chest and grinned at her. Mignon in a fury was an interesting sight. "Language, cherie."
"Don't you patronize me, Gabriel Ribaud. This may be your house, but you're still my man. What you think you're doing with another woman in your bed?"
"Come now, petite, you don' need me t'explain what goes on between a man and a woman."
She slapped him as hard as she could. His indulgent smile slipped and faded. He grabbed her hand. "Nobody hits me," he said quietly.
"I'm gonna do more than hit you," Mignon hissed, eyes cold, but swimming with tears. "I loved you. I gave you everything I had, and all you did was break my heart."
He shrugged. "Sorry, petite, but if you thought that was going t'happen, you shouldn' have given it to me."
She wrenched away, spitting out a string of curses in a language he didn't understand. "You took it. Just like you've taken everything else in your whole life."
Gabriel hesitated. He could understand Mignon's anger, but he hadn't quite expected this. After all, he'd made it very clear at the start that their liaison was nothing more than a convenience. Up until that moment, he hadn't had a clue that Mignon wasn't viewing the whole situation as the game it was.
He should have been paying closer attention.
"Cherie, I've told you before, if you can't play the game accordin' to the rules, you should fold your cards and leave."
"It wasn't a game," she spat at him. "Not to me. Or maybe you just didn't care." She fumbled for a handkerchief in her reticule and dashed at her tears with it.
"I care."
"You care." She snarled the words. "I don't want your care. I want your love."
"Sorry, cherie. I love women too well t'love just one."
"You bastard." Perversely, she was more beautiful in her rage than in passion. She flew at him, long nails glittering red in the afternoon light. "I ought to kill you!"
Gabriel sighed as he caught her hands and deftly deflected her attack. Women. Hurt their feelings and they got all hysterical. Threatened all sorts of things. "Mignon, stop this. There's no reason t'have hysterics. And there's really nothin' you can do t'hurt me."
The look she gave him at that moment iced his guts, although he wouldn't admit that to her. She pulled away with surprising strength. "You'll find out just how much I can hurt you, Gabriel Ribaud." She turned on her heel, lacy mauve skirts flowing about her, and hurried from the room.
He heard the front door slam shut only a moment later.
Annalise came creeping up the stairs as soon as she was certain that Mignon had left the house. "You told me there was no one," she whispered accusingly.
Gabriel looked at her, suddenly disinterested in her fragile, pink and gold beauty. He yanked the top sheet off the bed and wrapped around his lean hips. "Looks like I was wrong, cherie. Looks like I was wrong."
Annalise was still pale. "That was Mignon Beaumont, wasn't it? The Voodoo woman?"
Gabriel shrugged. "I don' believe in that sort of thing."
She shook her head, blonde hair tumbling across her shoulders. "From what I've seen, that's not going to matter much."
The delectable Annalise had been right. After two hundred years, the realization hadn't lost its fresh, sharp edge. Or its ability to rip holes in his gut.
The night abruptly lost all its savor. Even the wind tasted bland. He was almost glad. Being part of the elemental sweetness of the night was a part of what he was now. It was the only part of his curse that actually brought him joy. Mignon had probably planned it that way; it made the rest of it that much worse.
He refused to ask himself if Annalise had been worth it. She hadn't been. No woman, he thought grimly, was worth what he had become.
And Carolina? Gabriel had been refusing to ask himself that question, too. His plan wasn't working. She wasn't staying away from him. Of course, she honestly couldn't. Not with the job she was doing for him.
And he honestly didn't want her to go. He was addicted to Carolina York, to her scent and her taste, but more, the way she made him feel. It was nothing that he hadn't felt a thousand times in the past, and still, somehow, it was something more. More than simple addiction, more than simple lust or cursed love.
Gabriel firmly shoved that thought away. Whatever it was, whatever he felt, it wasn't real. "It's never real and I know it, but I can never help myself anyway." He rubbed his hand across his chin. "So I'll just keep tellin' myself that none of this matters, that I have some control over myself at the full moon. That I won't have to kill her even if she doesn't find the cure in time."
The image of waking up to find Carolina's body in tatters beneath him was all too vivid. God knew he'd seen it before. Too many times to keep count, and not enough so that he couldn't remember every face, every name.
"You knew your work, Mignon." He speared a hand through his thick, sweat-damp hair, disordering it even further. "You knew it too well. And now I have to wait and hope that Carolina knows hers." And that the blood hunger of the other day was as far as the curse would take him. This time.
He might have been - and probably still was - an amoral, selfish bastard, but he knew with a dull certainty that he couldn't take another kill. Not without surrendering the last fragile tatters of his soul. And probably not without that last kill being Carolina York.
Gabriel thought somberly of the loaded pistol in his desk drawer. "Not yet. Not yet. I won't let you beat me that easily, Mignon. Not until I'm damn well sure it's hopeless."
The light in the upper windows drew his gaze again. Gabriel sat absolutely still on his log, oblivious to the nocturnal swamp denizens eddying around him. Carolina. Carolina.
She looked up from scrawling something in her notes. Had someone just called her name?
"Carolina York, you're getting paranoid. First whispering shadows, now you're hearing voices in your head." She shook her head, disgusted. "If you're not careful, you'll get yourself committed."
She tried to go back to work, but the imaginary voice had effectively destroyed her concentration. Either that or the gruesome subject material had spooked her. Carolina carefully closed the book. It had never bothered her to read of curses and the workings of black magic before, possibly because she'd understood that there had to be evil in order for good to exist.
It was this house. The way it seemed to hold secrets. The way it... whispered.
Where was Gabriel? She could certainly use his distracting presence. His human presence.
"There I go again, getting paranoid." She tried to infuse some disgust into her voice, but she couldn't ignore her unease. Instead of tapering off, the sense of being watched was growing. She made a face. And it was making it very hard for her to concentrate.
"Oh, the heck with it." She couldn't even remember what she'd just read, much less conduct an effective search for any mention of curses and cures. She had a feeling that Gabriel wouldn't take kindly to any slipshod research.
Why curses? The question was very much on her mind as she carefully put the book away and wandered downstairs. The hallway was more dark than not, the widely-spaced hallway sconces putting out just enough light so that she wouldn't trip.
The old stairs creaked under her feet. Carolina paused halfway down the staircase and winced. The creaks seemed to echo in the too-still house.
"This is ridiculous." Her mutter echoed, too, and she felt absurdly self-conscious, like a child who has whispered in church.
Precisely three seconds later, Carolina was on the first floor, the silence seeming to expand around her. Clutching her straw purse, she ducked through the first open door on the left. Anything was better than standing in the hallway feeling like an idiot.
"Oh, my Lord. It's another library!" Carolina stood stock-still in the middle of the room and stared, completely forgetting about looking for Gabriel.
Every spare inch of wall space was taken up by huge bookcases. The shelves were crammed to capacity with the largest collection of antique paperbacks Carolina had ever seen. She dropped her purse in the middle of the bare floor and went to one gorged shelf as if drawn to it. Victorian penny dreadfuls marched side-by-side with dog-eared yellowbacks. Vintage pulp fiction from the early part of the century. Antique treatises on gambling. Her eyes dropped to the next shelf down, and widened. Heavens above, the man had a complete paperback collection of Victorian erotica!
A sudden image of Gabriel closeted in here, drapes pulled against the glare from the sun. It was hot in the room, too hot. Especially since he was reading aloud to her.
To her?
In that split second, Carolina could see herself in the tableau. She felt the heat of the room. Sweat and sensuality drenched her. Her eyes were closed, her every particle of awareness focused on her man.
Carolina's eyes snapped open. Her man?
Enough of this. She whirled to scoop up her purse and made a beeline for the room where Gabriel had been last night. There was a slim chance that he was hiding out there.
The solitaire game was still laid out on the table, the chair still drawn up to it. It looked as if he'd just gotten up and gone for a drink.
She knew he hadn't. The room reeked of emptiness. She could feel it vibrating in the marrow of her bones. "Well," she murmured, now perversely enjoying the way her voice seemed to violate the silence, "if he's not here, where is he?"
Had he gone out? Carolina frowned delicately. It was a possibility, even though she'd never seen Gabriel leave the house since she'd started working for him. And he'd said that he didn't drive, and didn't have a phone. He couldn't have gone far.
"He must have gone for a walk on the bayou." She shook her head. "Ribaud, you're crazier than I thought. Eccentric Yankee professors ain't got nothing on you."
A moment's digging inside her purse produced a tablet of notepaper and a plastic pen. She scrawled a quick note to her missing employer, explaining that she'd gone home early and making a note of the hours she'd worked. The last thing she wanted to do was be indebted to him for an overpayment. He was already being generous enough with his money.
The folded note firmly situated beneath the stack of playing cards, Carolina let herself out the front door. It locked itself with a decisive clunk behind her.
The night masked her grimace. "So much for feeling welcome."
She took a careful step off the veranda - Gabriel hadn't wasted money on porch lights - and tripped on the uneven wooden stair. Her heartfelt curse encompassed the stair, the darkness, and the conveniently absent Gabriel in a few pithy words which her mama would have been shocked to hear. Carolina half-expected her mother to pop up out of the soggy night and start in on a genteel harangue about proper behavior.
"Funny how proper behavior lasts about as long as brownies at a dieter's convention around Gabriel Ribaud." Shrugging, Carolina struck out for her car.
She was about halfway there, carefully picking her way through the tangle of waist-high weeds and plants and wishing she hadn't left her machete at home, when she felt eyes on her.
A crawling sensation zipped down her spine. It wasn't too unlike being in the African bush, just knowing that there was something with claws and fangs staring at you like a housewife picking out a cut of meat at the market.
Carolina swore again. Her fingers tightened on her purse as all the tall tales about things that went grr in the Louisiana night flooded her brain.
This is no time to get superstitious! Her throat seemed to have sealed off. You're just scaring yourself. It's probably just a big ol' nutria rat or a marsh deer or one of these darned industrial-sized mosquitos.
Or Gabriel. The thought occurred to her at the same time as she heard the rustling of leaves being pushed aside. He might be perverse enough to try and scare her to death.
No, that's not right. He needed her; her death was probably the last thing he wanted. But scaring her... she could see him taking a not-so-subtle bit of revenge for what had happened last night.
Or rather, what had not happened. She began edging toward the car, cautiously, gauging every movement. Mosquitos, attracted by the stationary target, began zeroing in on her exposed skin. She swatted as discreetly as she could. Could it be Gabriel?
The thing in the underbrush moved to the accompaniment of rustling leaves. Something cracked underfoot.
Carolina screwed up her courage. "Gabriel?"
The silence seemed to intensify until she swore she could reach out and touch it. "Gabriel, is that you?"
Why am I standing here? she asked herself silently. This is just like in the movies where the idiot heroine goes to find out what made the noise in the basement and ends up getting slashed to ribbons.
The image was not a comforting one. On the other hand, whatever was hiding in Ribaud's little jungle hadn't rushed her yet, so maybe it wasn't going to.
Or maybe it was just waiting for her to turn her back.
The whispering shadows around the house, indistinguishable from the rest of the darkness, seemed to reach out to her. There was no reason to be afraid. The words floated into her mind on the gentlest of breezes. The night couldn't hurt her. Gabriel himself couldn't hurt her.
Carolina's shoulders straightened. What was she afraid of, anyway? She was tired and should go home now. She ignored the strong urge to go back into the house. The only bed available was Gabriel's and somehow, she didn't think he'd take it well if he found her there. Scratch that. He'd take it too well.
A sudden surge of fatigue eddied around her. She wasn't in the mood to deal with houses that seemed to speak, whispering shadows, or enigmatic Cajuns. She wanted to go home.
Deliberately turning her back to the house and whatever was lurking around it, Carolina walked the rest of the way to her car. The white Saturn looked strangely alien against the backdrop of the black velvet bayou night. The sleek metal shape somehow reminded her of a pale, crouching cat.
"You've got predators on the brain." Her voice sounded strangely muted, as if the night's humidity were deadening it.
Her fingers shook very slightly as she fitted the key to the lock. The interior light came on, and something about it snapped Carolina out of the half-trance she'd been in. Yep, she was overtired and stressed, especially if she was starting to believe in odd creatures of the night.
"Vampires and werewolves are all very well for folklore studies," she told herself as she got in and started the car. "But I very much doubt that I'll ever meet any."
As the Saturn's headlights cut a wide swath of light on the dark road back toward the city, Carolina could still swear that she felt eyes watching her from the shadows around the old house.
Marguerite sifted through the mail. Junk. Nothing but junk. And bills.
She looked around the shop, trying to spot Carolina. The girl was probably hiding back in the stockroom, pretending to count inventory. Marguerite hoped she was sneaking a catnap. The child had been sporting circles under her eyes for days.
A blond head bobbed up from behind a stack of books. Calmly, Marguerite herded the bills together and whisked them out of sight, stuffing them in a box under the counter. She'd take care of them later. That girl didn't need anything else to worry her.
That left the junk mail. Marguerite shuffled through the pile quickly, hoping to find a sweepstakes entry or a catalog to look at. What she turned up was an envelope of thick, expensive rag stock. The unmistakable fragrance of gardenia perfume tickled her nose, tempting her to sneeze.
Instead, Marguerite sighed. Well, now, she couldn't very well get rid of this one as easily as the others.
She inspected the envelope. The handwriting was elegant, precise, and very familiar. Marguerite slipped the envelope under the others, putting off the moment when she'd have to give it to Carolina. She didn't exactly get along with her mother these days.
Judith York was one of Marguerite's oldest friends, long before they'd had their coming out together. But somewhere along the line, Judith had changed. Probably when she married Edmund and moved to Georgia.
"Customers." Carolina ambled up to the register, dusting off her hands and arms. arms. Her soft drawl held a liberal amount of rueful resignation. "I love 'em, but they do muss up the shelves something terrible."
Marguerite smiled at the child. Carolina wasn't wearing her contacts today, and her odd eyes were noticeably red-rimmed. She was working too hard on that other job again. Marguerite suppressed the urge to ask how much sleep she had gotten the night before.
An old irritation popped into her mind. Why couldn't Judith see Carolina for the strong-willed woman she was instead of a distressingly headstrong child?
Well, she was headstrong in a way, Marguerite admitted ruefully. Just look at how hard she was working to save Treasured Tales. And then there was the time that she'd taken off for Africa... Privately, Marguerite had always thought that the trip had been for the better, since that Jean-Michael had broken off their engagement. The boy hadn't been worthy of her Carolina, too concerned with convention and appearances.
Marguerite was concerned with appearances, too; she'd been raised to the demanding standard of Southern womanhood. She just didn't take it as her Bible. Judith, however, had, and she had passed along the training to her daughters. With Arizona, it had worked. At least on the surface, anyway. But with Carolina... Oh, the manners were there, but they had never become as deeply ingrained as Judith would have liked. And Carolina had always been miserably aware that she would never be able to live up to her mother's strictures. The child had too much fire inside her to mask it completely.
Marguerite sighed again, propping her elbows on the counter. Sometimes she wished she wouldn't even try.
Carolina looked quizzically at her. "Marguerite? Is something wrong?"
"No, child. Nothing."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I am." Marguerite could feel herself getting testy and was a little appalled. She wasn't supposed to get testy. Weepy, certainly, but not testy. Carolina was beginning to rub off on her.
"How many bills did we get?"
"Oh, those." Marguerite waved her hand and jostled the neat stack of junk mail. "Electricity, rent, that sort of thing."
Carolina grimaced, then sniffed. "Smells like we got one of those mail-order perfume ads, too."
"Oh..." Marguerite fluttered her hands nervously. "It wasn't one of those." Frantically, she wondered if a convenient fainting spell would erase that look of dawning realization breaking across Carolina's face.
"Mother sent a letter, didn't she?"
Marguerite, somewhat to her own astonishment, cursed Judith's habit of saturating her correspondence with her signature scent. "She did."
"Marguerite, you don't have to hide it from me. I know you and Mother are best friends."
"Not when it comes to some things, we aren't."
Carolina looked surprised by her vehemence, but Marguerite was getting too wound up to notice. "I will never forgive her for the things she said to you before you left."
A twinge of old pain hit Carolina. "Being called an unmannerly little hussy isn't so bad."
Marguerite slammed her hand on the counter, sending mail sliding in all directions. "Yes it is. Since when is it mannerly to insult your own child because she wanted to do something?"
"Mother didn't approve of my going to Africa to study heathens."
Marguerite snorted, then looked faintly appalled. "I'm beginning to think that your mother doesn't approve of much of anything since your father died."
"She paints," Carolina offered, a faint grin beginning to soften her tightly-held mouth.
"Watercolors." Marguerite snorted again. It felt good. "You ask me, that's her problem right there. Illustrating those books on decorum, it's gone to her brain."
Privately, Carolina agreed. "She likes what she does. And the critics love her."
Marguerite hmmphed. "They don't have to live with her."
"Why, Marguerite. Mama would swoon if she heard you talking like that."
"Horsefeathers. Your mother's about as delicate as a steel rose."
Carolina gave up hiding her grin. "So are you."
Marguerite beamed at her, the same expression she wore when ringing up a sale or exchanging gossip with her bridge group. "Thanks to you, child. Working with you has given me a new lease on life. I might have turned into a fussy old lady like your mama."
Carolina fished the gardenia envelope out of the pile of mail and wrinkled her nose. "I wonder what the fussy old lady wants."
"Do you want me to open it?"
"No, I'll do it." Carefully, she slit the envelope and pulled out the heavy paper with the delicate writing on it. "She says that she'll be opening the house in the Garden District in two days. She's going to throw a birthday party for Mrs. Devane. And..." she groaned quietly, "she expects me to attend."
"Are you going to?"
"I suppose." Carolina refolded the letter carefully and then raked a hand through her hair. "Where am I going to get a dress?"
"Maybe you could ask Ribaud to advance you some of the money he owes you." Marguerite bit her tongue the moment the words were out. "Sorry. I take that back."
"It's all right." A slim hand waved in dismissal. "But you know that asking Ribaud for the money isn't an option; we need it too badly for Treasured Tales. Besides, I still have a dress or two left over from when Mother used to make me attend her parties in Atlanta. I'm sure one of them will do."
Marguerite withheld her opinion. Judith was sure to notice a gown years out of date, and comment on it. "I'm sure." She privately resolved to do something about the dress. "Two days, did you say? She'll probably be arriving tonight, then. She's sure to need time to make the party arrangements."
"Mother's never needed much time to arrange a party; she'll make a few calls, terrorize the help, and have everything perfect within an hour." Carolina's face fell slightly. "She wants me to pick her up at the airport."
"I will pick her up at the airport. I haven't seen Judith in years, and we can use the opportunity to catch up with each other's news. You," and Marguerite pointed an imperious finger at the younger woman, "will go home and get some sleep. If your mother sees you looking like one of those movie marquee zombies, she'll blame me."
"No, she'll blame me." But Carolina pulled off her glasses and rubbed at eyes that were still visibly red.
Not if Marguerite had anything to say about it. "Go home." She crossed her plump arms across her bosom and gave a decisive nod in Carolina's direction. "You're asleep on your feet."
"Marguerite..."
"No arguments. You've been carrying more than your share of the load lately, and it's time I returned the favor."
Carolina, despite her obvious reluctance, was already moving to gather her purse and sunglasses. "You're sure?"
"Of course I am. I was minding business before you were born, young woman, and don't you forget it. Besides, it's already afternoon."
"I don't believe you, but thank you."
"Thank me later. Right now, I want to see you going out that door."
"Yes, Mama." Carolina bowed her way out.
Marguerite smiled as the door shut behind her with a tinkling of chimes. There. She'd taken a little time for herself. And now, she could play fairly godmother without Carolina noticing.
Ten minutes later, Marguerite trotted back into the shop lugging the heavy book she'd borrowed from her dressmaker friend Elaine down the street. Her Carolina was just not going to appear in public in some dusty old basic black gown and risk her mama's censure. No way.
There was no way she could have slept in the middle of the afternoon, Carolina assured herself. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel of her car. Traffic was picking up, and she needed her concentration if she was going to make it to Gabriel's with all her body parts intact.
She checked the dashboard clock for what seemed the hundredth time in a few minutes. It was three in the afternoon. She slanted a glance at the world outside the car windows. Sunlight, strong and hot. It suddenly seemed very important that she go to the house while sunlight pummeled the city.
"Silly," she told herself again, "to be afraid of a rat in the underbrush." Well, maybe not. She wasn't exactly crazy about rats, especially in the dark.
But it hadn't been a rat that she had been afraid of, a small voice in her head whispered. It had been something else. Something much more a part of the dark shadows of the house than a mere rat.
"Ridiculous." But her voice lacked conviction. There was something about the house that unnerved her. As silly and superstitious as that sounded, she didn't think she could bring herself to go there at night any more.
"Absolutely ridiculous." This time, her voice was a little stronger. Pleased, Carolina flicked on the radio to a local station and treated herself to a generous serving of Beausoliel's latest.
By the time she pulled up in front of the overgrown house, Carolina was in a better humor. "Cajun music. Does it every time." She grinned faintly and tried not to think of Cajun men as she climbed out of the car. Her hair instantly frizzed into tight little ringlets around her face in the humid atmosphere of the bayou.
She ignored it. A moment's fishing in her purse produced the back door key she'd used last night. A moment's discomfort from walking through the shadows draping the side yard didn't appreciably dampen her good mood, tenuous though it was. How odd, she thought. It was almost as if the house itself were doing its best not to spook her.
As she entered the old kitchen, Carolina was again assailed with the sensual image of Gabriel, stripped to a pair of probably-illegal cutoffs and misted with sweat. The house, she thought sourly, was more cooperative than its master when it came to making her feel welcome.
She headed up to the sanctuary of the library, half-expecting to see Gabriel come sauntering out of one of the numerous rooms lining the hallway. She wasn't sure to be relieved or irritated that he didn't.
The house, for all its whispers and shadows, had that same empty feeling that it had last night. Gabriel was avoiding her again.
At least, she thought he was avoiding her. It was difficult to imagine Gabriel Ribaud running from anyone or anything, she thought as she made her way upstairs, but she was at a loss as to how to otherwise characterize his absence. His very conspicuous, uncharacteristic absence.
"I don't know why I'm even bothering to worry about it." A slight scowl distorted her face. Worry? About Gabriel? He was the last person on earth who needed someone fretting over him. "I'm just here to do my job."
As she seated herself behind the big desk with a new stack of books, Carolina admitted to herself that this, at least, wasn't a job to her. She wasn't sure if it ever had been. It was more like an... obsession.
Her mouth puckered. Obsessions were dangerous things. They distorted and twisted, until you weren't yourself anymore. Maybe you would come out of them changed for the better. Maybe not. Obsessions were too much like Russian roulette for her taste.
Thinking about obsessions made her think of her mother. Mother was passionate about manners, social place and poise, and art. She knew it wasn't true, or at least she didn't think she thought that, but she wondered of late whether her mother had ever been passionate about anything else.
Carolina dropped her head into her hands, for a moment allowing the old despair and sorrow to flood over her in a thick, blanketing tide. She loved her mother. That was what allowed Judith's elegant little barbs to hurt her. She wanted to make her mother proud of her. It was just that her mother's happiness carried too steep a price. Judith would be ecstatic if she did her duty, married a nice, stable young man of means, and settled comfortably into a niche in Atlanta's social whirl. Her daughter, as she probably saw it, would have a safe, stable, comfortable life which Judith could understand.
Carolina, meanwhile, would be miserable. She had never been able to make her mother understand that financial stability wasn't what ruled her happiness. It was challenge. She could no more live safely wrapped up in a cocoon of old money and an older name than her mother could happily hawk jewelry in the French Market. Prisons of silk were still prisons.
And a job was a job. Not, she told herself firmly, an obsession.
Flicking on the fan so that the still, thick air stirred a little, she opened the first book and bent over her appraisal notes.
The sun was almost through dipping below the horizon by the time Carolina looked up again. She closed the book she was currently evaluating for condition and content - a narration of the life of a self-professed eighteenth century minor voodoo king - and stretched a moment. The movement felt at once wonderful and torturous to the cramped muscles of her lower back and shoulders.
She indulged herself in a long sigh, then flipped the page of her notebook and prepared to enter the next title.
Her pen made it through the first two letters before the ink suddenly flowed out like a ribbon of blue blood.
Carolina blotted and patted with what tissues she had in her purse, until the pool had become an indelible stain at the top of the page. "Great." She wrapped the defunct pen in the tissues and tossed it into her bag for later disposal. For some reason, Gabriel didn't appear to have a trash can in the library.
"Must make it difficult when he decides to drool over the erotica," she muttered, beginning a hunt through her purse. The darn thing seemed to have tripled in interior capacity, and every inch of space was cluttered with junk. "He doesn't have anyplace to dump the towels."
A pen. Where was a pen? She always kept a spare or two; you never knew when you'd need to jot something down. Carolina pulled her head out of the straw bag in disgust. "This isn't a purse, it's the Bermuda Triangle." She dropped it on the floor and rubbed at the frown digging furrows between her eyebrows. "Maybe there's a pen in the desk."
It took a little persistence to open the single wide drawer, but Carolina managed it. If she'd had the fingernails of a pampered lady of leisure instead of her own short, unpainted ones, she never would have succeeded. She made a little sound of triumph when the humidity-swollen wood began to slide toward her. It was a minor triumph, but a valid one.
Her fingers began an expedition. "Even you have to have a pen or two lying around, Gabriel Ribaud. Heck, I'll settle for a pencil. A marker. Something. Anything."
Her sensitive fingertips encountered a blunt, cold shape. Not a pencil, she thought, suddenly chilled despite the warmth of the room. She eased the drawer open further.
The gun was the only thing in the drawer. It glinted dully in the light. It needed polishing, Carolina thought automatically, pulling her fingers back in an unconscious gesture of aversion. She knew something about guns, mainly how to fire one, but even she recognized that this one was an antique. A dueling pistol.
"I guess Gabriel is more worried about security than I thought." The joke fell flat in the air, the sound of her voice like a slap of cold water. Carolina began to think more rationally. A valuable book collection, a lack of sophisticated security, and a desolate location. Yes, it made sense to have a gun.
She lifted it out of the dark drawer, noting that there was little rust or corrosion evident on the steel barrel despite the lack of protection from the heat and damp. Gabriel obviously took care of the thing. She wondered if that care extended to keeping the thing loaded.
It was loaded, all right. Another shiver, more powerful, cruised down her spine like an icy snake. And the bullets were silver.
Carefully, Carolina replaced the gun and closed the drawer. When she sat back, she realized that she was shaking ever so slightly. It wasn't the presence of the gun. It was the bullets.
What was Gabriel doing with an antique gun loaded with silver bullets? Did it have anything to do with his collection. He seemed to be obsessed with tales of dark magic and darker beings.
There had to be a logical explanation. There had to be. Carolina had been born in Louisiana; she knew the lore of the loup-garou, the whispered tales of voodoo queens. Growing up with that acceptance of the power of legend, she'd become a folklorist. She'd heard a lot of strange stories, and had, admittedly, scared herself silly some nights.
Maybe Gabriel kept the gun as a talisman. After reading some of these books, she would definitely feel better knowing that she had some defense against the things that might lurk in the nearby bayou.
The explanation soothed her. Carolina leaned her head against the high back of the chair and let out a gusty breath. In fact, she was grateful for the gun's presence. If she remembered correctly, the moon was edging toward full right now.
The interlude with the gun distracted her from the fact that she was effectively crippled without a pen - at least in the sense of furthering her report for Gabriel. Carolina swiped a hand over her damp face, closed her notebook, and decided to call it a night.
She was putting the volumes she'd already appraised back on their shelves when she suddenly thought of the diary. What had been the woman's name? Oh, Annalise Montard. She had never finished her appraisal on that.
Stepping back, she quickly scanned the various shelves. The diary should have been easy to spot, since its small size set it off from the other books on the shelves. But she couldn't find it.
No, it wasn't that she couldn't find it. It wasn't there.
She frowned again. She was doing that a lot lately, she thought. She was certain that she had put the diary back on the shelf. It should be here.
Unless Gabriel had removed it.
"Why would he remove a book from his collection?" She shoved a hand through the hair hanging lank around her face. No true collector would do that.
She was beginning to think that Gabriel wasn't a true collector at all. And now she was undeniably curious. What was it about the diary that made Gabriel take it off display?
What was he hiding?
A sudden need to know seized her. Carolina felt flushed with guilty excitement. Charged. She couldn't stand still, she had to find that diary.
With a meticulous yet strangely hurried look, she swept the entire library, taking it in at a glance. When nothing that looked like the diary was immediately visible, she started peeking behind the other books. It was beginning to be an obsession, finding Annalise Montard's diary. If she had been aware of anything other than the immediacy of the search, Carolina might have worried about that.
She didn't. Scanning behind the books was a difficult proposition. She didn't want the library to appear as if it had been rifled through. Gabriel mustn't know what she was doing.
There was nothing behind the other books. Carolina blew out a low, sharp breath that was somehow more eloquent than a curse would have been. She should have known Gabriel wouldn't hide anything important in such a haphazard manner. She considered dragging over the chair and searching the upper shelves that Gabriel would be able to reach with more ease than someone of her height, but discarded that idea, too. The diary wasn't in the room. She would know if it was.
Then where? Where?
Perhaps the other library?
Carolina barely stopped for her purse as she flew out the door. But she'd need it to hide the diary in. Of course, that was providing that she'd find it.
Once in the other library, Carolina kept half an ear tuned for sounds of Gabriel's arrival. He mustn't know she was searching. If he even knew she was curious...
Curiosity was too mild. She glared at the room, trying to think. But it was hard; she couldn't seem to sublimate the driving need to find the diary. She didn't like the feeling, but...
There! Yes, behind the erotica on the lower shelf. It would be like Gabriel to hide something in plain sight, and more like him to hide it behind something he thought she'd be too timid to probe through. She almost wished he were there, so she could tell him how wrong he was. He'd been using sex as a shield against her since she'd met him. She was immune to maidenly shock.
She didn't even blush as she carefully removed some of the volumes, just enough to get her room to feel around behind them. She tried not to disturb the dust, not certain of whether he'd notice but not wanting to take the chance.
Her fingertips brushed over a corner of something. Carolina sucked in a breath tinged with dust and held it. Was it...?
It was. When she carefully wiggled it free of its hidey-hole, she could see the familiar cover. Just to be sure, she opened to the flyleaf. Annalise Montard. Her Diary.
A surge of triumph went through Carolina's body. You were sloppy, Gabriel. Your arrogance will be your downfall one day.
She sat back on her heels and carefully tucked the diary into her purse, covering it with a camouflaging layer of the detritus that seemed fated to appear in purses. With equal caution, she replaced the books she'd removed on the shelf, trying to make it look like they'd never been disturbed.
Once Carolina stepped foot out of the library, some of the thrilling feeling left her. Why on earth was she so crazy to get her hands on this diary? Sure, she had to finish the evaluation on it, but... to rifle through someone else's belongings to find something that he obviously didn't want found?
Her mama would be appalled.
Her mama, Carolina thought on a touch of rebellion, was already appalled at her half the time, anyway. She might as well earn the censure.
A pressure that had eased once she'd found the diary began to knot at the base of her skull again. Curiosity began to twist through her blood like a slim silver snake. The diary itself wasn't important. It was what was inside it that mattered. Whatever it was that Gabriel had been trying to hide. That was what she was after.
She dug her hand into the cluttered depths of the straw bag and felt the reassuring touch of the clothbound spine. She should leave now. While everything was quiet.
From the upper hall, she could hear the guttering but game whir of the fan.
Darn! She'd forgotten to turn off the fan. For a moment, Carolina was tempted to leave without unplugging the thing. It would be just her luck, though, if the antiquated machine started sparking and caused an electrical fire. She doubted if Gabriel would be pleased to come home and find his house burned to its foundations.
She stood for a few more indecisive seconds. The mechanical wheezing didn't stop. Oh, hell, she'd go up and put the poor thing out of its misery. It would be the merciful thing to do.
She closed her eyes to rub at her contacts. They were dry. How anything could be dry in this weather was beyond her, but the tiny circles of plastic were undeniably uncomfortable. Rubbing with one hand and feeling her way along the upward-stretching bannister with the other, Carolina began ascending the staircase.
She was halfway there when she heard the fan die. Frowning, wondering if it was smoking in mechanical suicide, hoping that Gabriel had lied about his not having a phone if that were the case, she opened her eyes.
In the nanosecond before her vision cleared, she felt him. She blinked furiously, then opened her eyes fully. And saw him.
"Gabriel?" The figure a few stairs above her was Gabriel, and yet it wasn't. He looked haggard, as if he hadn't slept recently. Beard stubble scored his cheeks, his shirt hung limp and wrinkled. It looked as if he'd been running his hands through his hair repeatedly, the dark waves disordered in a way that suddenly didn't seem at all sexy.
He didn't say anything, just stood there staring at her out of sin-black eyes that were hooded and curiously feral. Carolina had that wild impression of a panther, poised to spring, but not ready. Not yet. She was afraid to move.
"Have you found it?"
His voice sounded hoarse, raw, as if he'd gargled with gravel. His unblinking eyes continued to impale her like obsidian spear points.
Oh, God, he knew! Involuntarily, she twitched and saw his nostrils flare, as if he were scenting her. He reminded her of the panther again. No, not a panther. A wolf.
With an effort, Carolina controlled her breathing. She wasn't going to show fear. If she did, he'd pounce.
Idiot! Gabriel is a man. Not an animal. She looked at his eyes, saw his stillness, and lost a lot of her certainty.
"Have I found what, Gabriel?"
An almost invisible shudder passed through him at the sound of her low, soothing voice. "The cure. Have you found the cure?"
A cold shudder of relief went through her. He hadn't been talking about the diary. He didn't know what she'd done. But what was this stuff about cures? She'd found lots of cures. Just none that looked feasible. And he'd never told her that he was looking for one cure in particular. "Which cure, Gabriel? And for what curse?"
He shook his head, clawing a hand through his hair in a manner that told her he'd become very familiar with the maneuver. "Anything. Have you found anything?"
"I've found cures for vampires. They all sound pretty final." She tried for a smile and partially succeeded. "Cutting off the head, staking the body to the coffin. Pretty gruesome. Or there's the less well-known method of eating the earth of a vampire's grave and smearing yourself with its blood."
"What about werewolves?"
"You mean besides the traditional silver bullet?" For an instant, she flashed on the gun waiting upstairs in the desk drawer.
"What else is there?"
"One book," she offered slowly, "suggested that the werewolf kneel in the same spot for a hundred years."
Gabriel snorted. "What good's that supposed to do?"
"I think the idea was that the werewolf was doing penance for his sins, probably for the really serious kind - you know, like eating people. Once he got up, his wolf skin would slough off and he'd be human again."
"And a hundred years older. What else?"
"Being blessed by a priest and given Holy Communion. Of course, that one's supposed to work only if the werewolf had gotten that way by being cursed by another priest."
He took a step down toward her. "That's it?"
"No." Carolina wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, suddenly very nervous. He was still at least three steps away from her, but she could feel herself being drawn to him. Like iron to magnet, she thought. "You can call the werewolf by his Christian name three times."
"Interesting." Another step, and he was that much closer to her. Carolina clutched the bannister with one hand. It gave her balance in an otherwise shaky world.
"Gabriel?"
"Where were you, Carolina?" The dark, silky voice wrapped around her. "Why weren't you upstairs?"
She took a step down, instinctively retreating from whatever it was she saw burning fitfully in his eyes. "I... was looking for you. I thought you might be downstairs playing cards again."
"My mistake." He glided down the next step. Carolina edged closer to the bannister. "You worked hard tonight, didn't you, petite? It's in your eyes. Such soft, tired eyes."
Her chin went up and her lips firmed. "The only things in my eyes are my contacts."
"I know. They're green tonight. Like peridots or spring grass." His smile was strained and a little predatory. "Makes me wonder."
"Wonder what?"
"What they look like when you're makin' love. I'd like to see that." His sensuality reached out to her. It was a live thing, fueled by the darkness in his eyes. Carolina battled the urge to stumble down the stairs and run away. She hadn't come back to New Orleans to run from things.
"Stop it." She hoped her voice was firm, but doubted it. The words, like her resolve, quavered perceptibly.
"Stop what? Le petit mort, cherie. Remember what it feels like? Remember the way the sensations peak to that pleasure that almost kills?"
"Gabriel." It was both entreaty and warning.
"Carolina." He took the final step, his black eyes blazing into hers. Her purse thudded to the floor, tilting precariously.
The diary! But she couldn't move, not with Gabriel's powerful arms wrapped around her waist and pulling her up off her feet and into him. "Gabriel!"
"Again." He brushed her lips with his and his whispered word. "Again."
Pleasure, thick and drugging, suffused her limbs. "Gabriel." It was a thread of sound.
He pulled back a fraction of an inch from the almost-kiss. His eyes blazed into hers. "I don' think it worked, cherie."
Before, when Gabriel had kissed her, Carolina had felt the tug of a passion she'd never felt before. One she'd denied wanting a taste of. But she'd lied. This was sensation, pure and powerful, a razor edge of feeling. Every sense was tuned to maximum alertness, every fiber in her body tingling with life.
She'd been kissed before. The earth had never moved for her - a mild earth tremor, she'd once admitted to herself, was all she had ever felt. Gabriel took her beyond earth moving; this was a cataclysm.
This was madness.
She melted into him, her arms wreathing around his neck with the pliant grace of the Spanish moss draping the trees. Carolina ceased to think, to function independently. Her heart raced in time with his, her blood moving through her body to the rhythms of his kiss. Her skin ached with the thwarted desire to fuse with his. The thin layers of their clothing seemed pathetically insubstantial, but frustratingly real. She could smell the night wind and the earthy fragrance of the bayou on his skin. Her head began to spin, her thoughts fragmenting into incoherent shards.
Carolina didn't care. Thought wasn't important. Gabriel was important. She wanted to melt into him, become him, give him whatever he wanted of her.
"Carolina." His lips moved away until they were barely brushing hers. She wanted to weep with frustration. "Carolina."
She couldn't hold back a tiny cry when his mouth completely abandoned hers. It shivered into a long, drawn-out breath when his lips brushed a trail up her cheek, then proceeded even more slowly down the curve of her jaw to her neck. Her skin seemed to heat beneath his touch.
"You're sweet." He murmured it, then took a tiny lick. And another. He began to form a chain of teasing, nipping kisses winding ever downward. "Very sweet. Is all of you this sweet?"
He didn't wait for an answer. Instead, he found the hollow of her throat, where the flavor and scent of her was rich and heady. He laved the fast-beating pulse with his tongue, and she moaned softly. His answering laugh was low and wicked and shivered against her skin.
Enveloped in a cocoon of feeling, Carolina was dimly aware that the dull pressure at her back must be the bannister, that the tugging at the front of her blouse must be Gabriel undoing the row of tiny buttons that marched from collar to hem. But all she was aware of was the heavy satin brush of his hair against her fingers as she held him against her unfettered breasts. For once, she was profoundly grateful that she hadn't worn a bra.
The smooth, hard caress of his teeth startled her a little. The pleasure was no less intense, but she could feel something wrong. He was nipping at the soft inner curves of her breasts, nuzzling the valley between them. Glittering lightning condensed just beneath her skin, along with a tiny, distinct pain above her heart. Was he biting her?
She winced as the nips became more forceful. Cold sanity began to replace the molten heat in her blood. "Gabriel?"
He lifted his face to hers, and Carolina bit back a gasp. His eyes were black, bottomless and almost inhuman in their sensuality, and his teeth were bared in a twisting snarl.
She jerked away from him, not feeling the bruises that formed as she slammed into the heavy cypress bannister and stumbled down a few steps. "Gabriel!"
He smiled ferally, his eyes willing her back into the embrace.
An irrational fear swept her up. She snatched at her purse, grabbing it by the straps, and stumbled down the rest of the stairs. Clutching her open blouse over her breasts, she ran.
As she fled the house, not even bothering to shut the heavy front door behind her, she heard a rising howl of a laugh echoing down the staircase.
Changed, Gabriel ran through the steaming night, feeling the smells and sounds of the bayou flow over him like water. The glittering hunger in his blood was an insistent thing as sharp and galvanizing as lightning. It was intertwined with a dark, eternal joy. When he became this, this creature beyond human constraints, he didn't have to think, only to feel.
Thinking came later, and so did the bitterness.
Wrapped in the totality of now, he headed out of Navarre at a ground-eating lope. No one saw him. No one would, unless he wanted them to.
The city lights glittered below him, drawing him in. There would be good hunting there, and challenge. There were times - like now - when he preferred hunting in the city, with its constant danger of discovery. He found it intoxicating as little else was to introduce a lethal myth into the fabric of a city full of harsh reminders of reality.
His first kill was an aging busboy who had been emptying trash into a dumpster behind Galatoire's. The man, with his sunken eyes and palpable aura of small-mindedness, didn't begin satisfy his hungers. His second, a burned-out transient sleeping in the park, succeeded in cooling his blood a little.
A little. Not enough. But by then, the minuscule part of the werewolf that was still Gabriel Ribaud knew that nothing but Carolina would satisfy his hunger.
In a city of a million people and as many ghosts, he found her apartment with an ease that was frightening. Oh, yes, the bond between them was there. And it was growing.
He hovered in the deserted street, looking up at the balcony he knew to be hers although he'd never before seen it. His eyes were gleaming points of reflected light against the fog that was beginning to crawl up from the river. Carolina. And though his changed lips couldn't shape her name, his mind could.
Carolina. Soon.
The following night, Carolina stood in the foyer and adjusted the demure bodice of the black crepe gown one final time. She took a deep, experimental breath. Plastic stays dug into her ribs. Shoot, she was probably gonna have a latticework of bruises there by morning.
Her mother's house in the Garden District was a mecca of pastel lights and cloyingly-scented flowers. Running a weather eye over the furnishings and immaculate bric a brac, Carolina grudgingly gave her mother points for appearance. No one would ever be able to tell that most of the furniture in the place had been shrouded in dustcloths only this morning. As usual, her mother had pulled off a miracle with some judicious help and immaculate good taste.
Carolina adjusted her bodice again, eyed her reflection in the mirror, noted that the makeup she'd used to camouflage the scratches was still intact, and sighed. It wasn't any use. She had refused to replace her Medic Alert tag with a standard necklace - the memory of what had happened at Gabriel's with that cursed jambalaya was still too fresh - and that was undoubtably a serious social gaffe. To make matters worse, her mother would know that this was an old dress. Carolina only hoped that she wouldn't mention anything in public.
"Psst!" The hiss came from directly behind her, and succeeded in startling the hell of her. Carolina spun around. "Marguerite?"
The petite woman, swathed in an effortlessly elegant turquoise silk dress that draped becomingly over an attractively female figure, shoved a garment bag into Carolina's arms. "Hurry! Get in there and change before Judith sees you."
"Marguerite, what are you doing?"
Marguerite shoved the young woman into the nearest room, glanced around to make certain it was empty, and made shooing motions with her hands. "Go on, get dressed. I'll stand guard."
The door shut quietly, but too quickly for Carolina to register a protest. Puzzled, she looked down at the black plastic garment bag she held. "What on earth are you up to now, Marguerite?" Rolling her eyes a little at the secrecy of it all, she unzipped the bag.
Five minutes later, she stepped out of the room and pirouetted for Marguerite. "How did you manage this? It's a miracle!" She hugged the other woman impulsively, grinning when Marguerite shooed her off before both their dresses wrinkled.
"Never you mind, child. It came out well, didn't it?" Marguerite mentally hugged herself. The gown had an empire waist and flowing sleeves, which lent Carolina a genteel romanticism, but it was made of a royal purple silk shot through with tiny metallic fuscia threads - Carolina's favorite colors. The Medic Alert tag glowed like a silver moon just above the swell of her breasts.
Marguerite hmmphed contentedly to herself; if Judith dared find fault with her daughter's appearance tonight, she would personally give her friend a talking to.
"Came out well?" Carolina suppressed the urge to dance the older woman around. "It's perfect, absolutely perfect. Thank you so much, Marguerite."
"Just get in there and knock everyone dead, sweetie. That's what I really want to see."
As Carolina glided through the crowd in the ballroom, she caught glances and whispers aimed in her general direction. She almost grinned again, but caught herself before her smile could expand into anything more than social and polite. Marguerite's gown was making a spectacular debut. She nodded and spoke to a few more people, automatically falling into the pose of the sophisticated socialite. This was, after all, what she'd been born for, trained for, and even if she'd never really wanted to be part of this world, she nevertheless hadn't lost her ability to move in it.
Out of the corner of her eye, Carolina caught a flash of a familiar face. Thin-lipped and disapproving, the matron nearly glared at her. Carolina hid a wince. Oh hell, she'd forgotten than Jean-Michael's mother would be here. Her ex-fiancé himself was probably lurking somewhere about, too.
Idiot! How could you forget? New Orleans, for all its size, was a clannish town. Everyone knew everyone else, and usually could be relied upon to show up in the same places. It's a pretty safe bet that she's already been to see Mother. Oh, shoot.
Carolina turned to shoot a discrete look in her mother's direction. Judith York was holding court with Mrs. Devane in a corner by the refreshments. She was a small woman of indeterminate age, the appearance of relative youth being largely due to good genetics and entirely natural pale gold hair that went a way toward disguising the few threads of silver - never gray - at her temples.
"Carolina? Hello, sweetheart."
The cultured baritone came from her left; with a sinking sensation, Carolina turned to face her former fiancé, Jean-Michael Beaumont.
He was a handsome man, his features even, brown hair combed into a semi-rakish style, blue eyes clear and sparkling with wit. He looked dashing in his formal wear, like some young Creole dandy of yesteryear, the kind that young ladies would flutter over and angle after. Carolina waited for that sensation to sweep over her, that old longing for him to be her Prince Charming, choosing her above all others.
It didn't come. Instead, she found herself longing for a slow, hot smile in an aristocratic face, irreverent black eyes set beneath flying brows and inky-dark hair that refused to be tamed. She wanted Gabriel.
None of her thoughts must have shown in her expression, because the smile on Jean-Michael's face didn't waver. "Carolina. I'd heard you were back in town." Gallantly, he bent over her hand. "How long has it been?"
"Ten months." Odd, how the courtly gesture left her unmoved, almost cold. "How have you been, Jean-Michael?"
"Truthfully? Lonely." He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and escorted her out into the hall. "I have something to ask you, darling."
Carolina felt her heart sink into her toes. "Oh, no."
"Did you say something, darling?"
She stopped just outside the library doors and turned to face him. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. What are you doing, Jean-Michael?"
A sheepish expression marred some of his classical good looks. "To tell you the truth, darling, I've had a lot of time to think about what I said to you ten months ago. I feel terrible that I hurt you so badly. I never meant for you to leave the country, darling."
"As I recall, our argument came about because I had already decided to leave the country, not the other way around."
He ignored her. "Carolina, I want you to give me another chance."
She eyed him in open skepticism. Had he always been this laughable? How had she missed that. "Does your mother know about this?"
Jean-Michael flushed slightly. "I admit, I allowed my mother to influence my decision to break off our engagement. I wasn't sure how to... well, handle... a fiancee who wants to go haring off to Africa to study stories with some savage tribe in some godforsaken corner of the country."
"Actually, I was in Zaire," Carolina murmured conversationally, trying to keep her temper in check. Darn it, she was going to be polite about this if it killed her. "The Bwaka are wonderful storytellers and artisans. They even presented me with a storyteller's harp when I left."
"Carolina!" Jean-Michael bit off whatever he was going to say next, obviously struggling for control. "Darling, I'm sure it was fascinating, but that's in the past. Now that you've gotten it out of your system, we're free to get married."
"Oh, but I haven't gotten it out of my system," she merrily informed him, an edge forming in her soft drawl. "I still have to write up my findings, and I'm thinking of taking another trip. Maybe down to South America."
"But, darling, what about us?"
There was a dangerous glint in her eyes that Gabriel would have immediately recognized. The earnest Jean-Michael didn't. "There is no us, Jean-Michael. I'm never going to make the proper wife you want. Why don't you just stop right here so we don't say things we're going to regret later."
He gaped at her. This was not going at all as he had expected. "I can't believe you're serious!"
Carolina patted his hand consolingly. "Oh, I am. But look at it like this, Jean-Michael. You can go back to your mother this time and tell her that I'm the one who refused to accept your gracious attempt at reconciliation. That should make you both feel much better."
She glided away, leaving an astounded Jean-Michael leaning weakly against the library doors. Her face felt like a cheap plastic mask, barely concealing the storm roiling beneath it. She wanted to laugh, to scream, cry, to howl her frustration until the crystal prisms in both chandeliers shattered from the noise. But she couldn't. Not now. Not here.
Hell's bells. She needed some chocolate.
Carolina nodded politely - maybe too politely - to her mother as she took up position in the refreshment line. She could see Judith's pale eyes widen as she took in Carolina's dress and wondered whether it was surprised pleasure or measured disapproval that had caused the reaction. And then she did grin, turning discreetly away to hide it, when she caught a glimpse of Marguerite bearing down on her longtime friend with circumspect but naked determination.
Good old Marguerite, bearding the dragoness in her den. Thank God for her faithful champion; Carolina knew she couldn't put off speaking to her mother for much longer, but she definitely needed to regain at least some of her self-control first. She tuned out the muted surf-like sound of multiple conversations and concentrated on selecting the most appetizing-looking chocolate-covered strawberry. Finding one, Carolina nibbled at it. The tart juice, wrapped in velvety chocolate, exploded onto her tongue in a tiny eruption of flavor. She was tempted to devour the whole thing, but knew that her mother definitely wouldn't approve of her gluttony. Ladies were supposed to nibble, not chomp.
"Carolina?" Her mother's cultured Southern drawl reached her ears. "Come here, darling."
Ah, a royal summons. Carolina did her best to stifle that irreverent thought as she carefully placed the remainder of her snack on her plate and wound her way to where her mother was sitting. "Hello, Mama." Dutifully, she greeted Mrs. Devane, who discretely melted away as she brushed a kiss over her mother's cheek. The faint scent of gardenia swirled around her like a halo.
Judith eyed her, a trace of maternal worry evident on her face. "Darling, how are you? How long have you been back?"
"I'm fine. Not long. I wrote you and told you when I would be getting back to the States."
"I know that, darling, but you can't expect me not to worry, can you?" Judith sniffed delicately. "My baby girl off alone in some foreign land?"
"Mother, I..." Carolina took hold of her poise with both hands. "I'm back now."
"You are healthy? You didn't catch some awful disease, did you?"
Carolina suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. A part of her was grateful for her mother's concern. The other part of her was grateful for the innate good manners that kept Judith's voice down as she asked. "I had all my immunizations brought up to date before I left, Mother. That's standard before you can enter another country."
"I'm so relieved. You don't know how worried I was, Carolina. Snakes, poisonous insects, those dreadful animals... Why, I could barely think of anything else."
Marguerite patted her friend's hand. "You can stop worrying, honey. Have you been in town long enough to see any of your old friends?"
"Why, yes." Briefly, Judith thought of the delightful time she'd had with Quincy Sullivan just last evening. He'd asked her to marry him, and this time, she hadn't been able to think of an excuse not to.
Thoughts of impending marriage reminded Judith of the other little matter she wanted to speak about with her daughter. "Darling, Mrs. Beaumont spoke with me a few moments ago. It seems," and Judith's brow wrinkled, "that Jean-Michael has decided to marry you."
Carolina didn't meet Marguerite's suddenly intent eyes. "Yes, Mama. I know. I've just come from speaking to him."
"And what did you say?"
"No."
Judith's face fell. "Oh, darling, I know he upset you when he cried off the engagement, but really, you should forgive him."
"Mama, this isn't about forgiveness. This is about sense. And it doesn't make sense for me to marry a man who gets upset every time I make a decision for myself."
"Isn't that a little... drastic, darling?"
"No." Marguerite modified her grin when she saw the way Judith was looking at her. "That Beaumont boy is too tied to his mama's apron strings and you know it, Judith York."
Judith sighed delicately. "You're right, but... Carolina, there must be someone out there that you don't object to."
Carolina thought of Gabriel. "Mama, I won't marry someone I don't love. I don't want my marriage to be a socially correct afterthought for some socially correct man. I want someone who'll love me enough to understand that I need a life of my own, too."
"Now, that's youth talking." Judith passed her hand in front of her eyes. "When you're my age - not that I'm elderly by any means - you'll realize that love isn't everything."
Carolina straightened and looked down at her mother with unfathomable eyes. "Mother, I thought that you more than anyone else would believe the exact opposite."
She turned away, threading her way to the edge of the crowd, too caught up in masking her inner turmoil to hear the excited murmur of voices around her. It sounded silly, but she felt betrayed. Had something inside her expected mama to understand and make everything better, as she had when she was a child? Judith might have, once, but not since Michael York's death. She'd apparently lost her joy in life along with her husband. Frowning, she found a quiet corner and devoured the rest of her chocolate-covered strawberry in one bite.
The moment she set the empty plate down, hands slid around her waist, their warmth burning her skin through the slippery fabric of her dress. Carolina stiffened, anger bubbling up inside her like lava. "Excuse me?"
"Uh uh, dawlin', I don' think I will, no," a deep voice drawled right into her ear. "You look good enough t'eat."
"Gabriel!" She spun around, her hands automatically coming up to push against his chest. He was wearing immaculate evening dress, she realized. The tuxedo was crisply pressed, the white of his shirtfront almost dazzlingly bright. It set off his saturnine beauty and elegant poise. Carolina would never have imagined that the earthy, unrestrained Gabriel could look so at home among her mother's glittering guests.
He grinned at her and completely ignored her discreet struggles. "Surprised t'see me, chere?"
"Surprise doesn't begin to describe it." It was the truth. Little shivers of remembered fear were running over her skin, roughening it. Her anger had evaporated, replaced by... what? "Get away from me."
"Not yet, cherie. I thought you could use a little fun. You have an argument with your mama?" He pulled her, not entirely gently, onto the cleared dance floor.
"How did you know that?"
"I saw you."
"You've been watching me." She set her mouth in a stubborn line. The consummate grace with which he led her in the tepid waltz suddenly reminded her of his grace when doing other things. Pleasurable other things. He was, even in the civilizing tux, a panther. Feral. Mysterious. Sexy. Darn! "How did you know I'd be here tonight anyway?"
"What if," and the sexy black eyes glittered mysteriously above hers, "I told you I could read minds?"
"I'd probably believe you. Gabriel, let me go!"
Though she'd spoken as quietly as she could, Carolina saw several heads turn in their direction. She could feel her mother's eyes on her, and Marguerite's as well. When they whirled by that corner, Carolina saw concern in her friend's expression, consternation on Judith's.
"Let you go?" he repeated, drawling incredulity. "Do you really want me to, Carolina?"
"Yes!"
"I think you're lyin' t'yourself, chere." He snugged her a discrete inch closer. A wall of heat seemed to bloom between their bodies. Carolina fought to control her blush. She was not going to let this Cajun flirt get the better of her. Had she really preferred him over Jean-Michael? At least Jean-Michael could take a hint and leave a lady alone!
"I know you're lying to me. How did you know I'd be here tonight?"
"Told you. I read minds." He nuzzled at one of the golden curls dangling just above her ear. "Right now, you're thinkin' that I'm crazy. And that you're a little bit scared of me."
Heck, she was definitely more than a little scared. Maybe he did read minds. And maybe, she thought furiously, Gabriel was just really darned aware of the effect he had on her. "Then you probably already know what I'm going to do if you don't get your hands off me this second."
He eyed her blandly. "I never woulda thought you were the violent sort, Caro. Opens up some interestin' possibilities, doesn't it?"
Gritting her teeth, she practically jerked back out of his hold. "Stay away from me, Gabriel Ribaud. I don't know what you want from me, but stay away from me." Ignoring the stares, she stalked out of the ballroom, leaving Gabriel standing alone at the edge of the dance floor.
She only stopped for her purse because it held her house key and mace, and got out of the house as quickly as she could. She was very definitely having a bad night.
River fog was flowing in a thin sheet across the sidewalks. Although she did know better, the entire Garden District seemed to be asleep. Her high heels made thin, stacatto clicks on the pavement as she hurried to her car and climbed in.
The drive down to her apartment in the Quarters had never seemed so interminable. Fog made the going necessarily slow, although some of the other drivers didn't seem to appreciate her caution, and the humidity that refused to relinquish its grip on the city made her dress wilt and stick to her skin.
Darn Gabriel anyway, she thought furiously. Darn him for rattling her the way he did, for playing games. For scaring the hell out of her. Who did he think he was to use her as a private toy for his amusement? The man had definitely been cooped up too long on the bayou with nothing but shadows and wild critters for company. He was certifiable.
She hurried inside once she got home, and spent a few awkward moments removing Marguerite's gown and taking down her deceptively simple coiffure. Finally, comfortable in a short batiste nightie but still too keyed up to sleep, Carolina flicked on the air conditioner and settled herself on her bed with Annalise Montard's diary. She hadn't been certain that she'd ever read it once she got home. She had been too perturbed by her own strange need to have it, and disturbed by her theft of what was a valuable antique to feel truly easy about reading it. But Gabriel's performance tonight had made her angry enough to ignore her conscience.
"I've gone to all that trouble to get the dratted thing. I might as well see what's in it." It was, she admitted, a poor excuse for the more personal revenge she wanted to take on him, but it would do.
Though she pulled out her appraisal pad and contentiously made note of the continuation of her appraisal - strictly out of habit, since Gabriel clearly hadn't wanted the darn thing appraised in the first place - Carolina quickly found herself getting lost in the diary itself.
"I must have only read the boring parts before," she commented to herself as she turned the page. "This is getting a little more interesting." Although it wasn't interesting enough to warrant her intense interest in it, she mentally added.
The year 1854 had apparently been an intriguing one for Miss Montard. From what Carolina could glean from the flamboyantly scribed entries, Annalise, though of good Creole family, had taken up with an older gentleman by the name of Antoine. Her family, consisting of a widowed Creole matriarch and two older sisters, had immediately cut her off, but Annalise didn't appear to care. She was obviously too engrossed in what Carolina could only term the good life. She seemed to actually have enjoyed the scandal she'd created upon becoming the wealthy merchant's mistress.
Or maybe not mistress. According to the diary, Antoine had been a doting protector, but hadn't been much in the lover department. That honor had gone to someone else.
He is quite a beautiful man. There is something wild and poetic about him. He wears the most elegant clothes as well as any of the Creole dandies, or better. There is nothing of the fop in his manner. He treats me with respect, although he must know of my relationship with Antoine. And his eyes burn mine as they meet in the dances.
"Hmm, sounds intriguing," Carolina murmured, shifting to make herself more comfortable on her bank of pillows. "Too bad they don't make 'em like they used to anymore."
I have decided that I want him. Antoine is understanding. He wants me to be happy in every way. He has said that I shall accompany him to the negotiations tomorrow. He will be very happy once his business with Gabriel is transacted.
Carolina's forehead wrinkled into a frown. "Gabriel? She's sleeping with someone named Gabriel?" An odd chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning streaming over her bare skin shivered through her. Was that why Gabriel had hidden this diary? Because of an ancestor's perfidy?
A strange thought, but one that could make sense. People in New Orleans were a clannish lot when they wanted to be. Many of the old families hated parading their dirty laundry in public. Was Gabriel still following that old mandate?
She couldn't imagine that. Gabriel was nothing if not blatant about his appetites. >From everything she'd seen of the man, there wasn't a secretive bone in his body. His emotions all showed in his eyes. He might be a bastard, but he wasn't a hypocrite.
He says that all parties concerned will become as rich as Croesus. He has promised to take me to Paris to celebrate, and buy me a dozen new gowns. I confess that the prospect did not thrill me half so much as the idea of leaving the city for the rest of the summer. The heat is ungodly. My hair cannot keep its proper curl; if Antoine were not already besotted, I would be fearing for my livelihood.
Carolina bit back a smile. "Fearing for her livelihood? What a quaint way to put it." Although good ol' Annalise apparently had done pretty well for herself, securing a wealthy older protector who didn't mind sharing her with another man if that was what it took to keep her winsome and sweet.
"Heck of a deal you had going there, sweetie." Carolina bent her head to the book and read on. Annalise had apparently written this entry in a great deal of haste, making it difficult to decipher the words accurately.
The regret and fear will consume me if I am not careful. No, because I was not careful. The negotiations went well, with both men pleasantly agreeable. Antoine patted my hand and told me to go with Gabriel, and to enjoy myself. I confess, I was longing to leave him at that point. Perhaps it is because of my wicked desire for physical pleasure that I was punished.
Carolina bit her lip. "What the heck are you talking about, Annalise? All this melodrama is driving me crazy. I hope you get to the point soon." Before I get sick, she added silently to herself.
I did, at first, enjoy myself. Gabriel is a man of means, which I saw when he escorted me to his townhouse. Such lovely furnishings, many imported. But then, he is in that business.
The man himself is as much a work of art as his home. He is beautiful, a god. Though his dark skin is not entirely fashionable, it is smooth and warm to the touch. I wonder at what he has done before, to be so strong. I have never known a man of such power.
His greatest power is his ability to please a woman. It as if he is a warlock, with unholy knowledge of a woman's secrets. I have never felt such sublime pleasure. He seemed to take pleasure in giving me pleasure. I sank my teeth into his shoulder the first time it happened. I was afraid he would be upset, but he actually seemed pleased that he would gain an interesting scar in such a fashion.
Carolina's fingers stilled in the act of turning the page. A bite scar on the shoulder? "No, it's coincidence. Has to be. The Gabriel Annalise writes of would have to be over two hundred years old by now. It couldn't be..."
She wouldn't even complete the thought. The air conditioner was still pumping out crisp air. Shivering with a chill that was more inside than out, Carolina climbed out of bed and shut the unit off. Much more and she'd turn into an ice cube.
She didn't want to read the rest of the diary, and knew that she would in spite of herself. There seemed to be a compulsion in her to go on.
"I don't like this." Carolina muttered it as quietly as she could. Her voice seemed to shatter the sudden stillness like brittle glass. "I really don't like this. And, dammit, I'm gonna do it anyway."
She snuggled into the pillows, as much for emotional as physical comfort. "I must be nuts."
She snorted quietly as she read the next line aloud. "'I feel strangely compelled to write what happened next.' I know how you feel, honey. I know how you feel."
I remember that the door suddenly burst inward, as if I had somehow conjured the interruption. A woman strode into the room. Though I was frenzied by that time, I saw her eyes and felt my inmost self freeze. Gabriel, too, seemed to grow colder. More distant.
She was quite the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Her skin was the color of cream-laced coffee, and flawless. She was dressed elegantly, and despite my distracted state, I could see a regalness to her. She was dressed as smartly as any female of my acquaintance, although she was obviously a woman of color. And her eyes were dark, cold chips of glass.
She terrified me. Even now, I can feel those icy eyes on me. She dismissed me as a nothing, a mere servant. I should have been indignant - after all, it is she who is a quadroon, not me - but I was not. When I realized that Gabriel would not defend me from her, I fled. It was only after she left and I crept back to him that I realized who she was. Mignon Beaumont, the Voodoo woman.
Carolina leaned back. Mignon Beaumont. She recognized the name from some of her archival books at the shop. A local nineteenth century Voodoo woman, reputed to be very powerful. And very possessive.
It didn't take much imagination to realize why Mignon had been so angry. This Gabriel must have been sleeping around on her. A burst of anger flowed through Carolina like poisoned wine. If she had been betrayed like that, and had power at her disposal, she would have...
"Would have what?" Carolina let go of the book and speared her fingers through the loose waves of her hair, holding it near the roots. The pain helped her focus her thoughts. "Would have cursed the guy? Would have destroyed him?"
The diary might have the answer. When Carolina scanned the next entry, she recognized the date. One of the most virulent outbreaks of yellow fever had occurred during August of 1854. Thousands had died.
Antoine has died of the fever. He was making plans to leave New Orleans for his country house in Navarre, but fell ill before plans had been completed. Now I lie ill, too. I wonder if I will die as he did. I somehow feel I owe it to him. I loved Antoine, but never as he had wished me to. Instead, I loved another.
But Gabriel, too, has succumbed. I never thought it possible. He somehow seemed so invincible. I cannot help but wonder if Mignon Beaumont had a hand in his death.
Carolina sank back into the pillows. "My God, she cursed him to death?"
"You got it in one, chere."
Carolina would have gasped, but shock had paralyzed everything inside her.
Gabriel stalked into the softly lit room on bare, silent feet, bringing the darkness of the night outside into the room with him. "Except that the curse wasn't what killed me. The fever did that. And Mignon wasn't merciful enough t'leave me dead." His eyes were cold. "And you... you weren't smart enough t'leave well enough alone."
Fear and fury combined to feed the unfamiliar, white-hot rage inside her. It wasn't her rage, the words that surged to the tip of her tongue weren't hers, either. But she couldn't stop them from spilling over.
"I wasn't smart? You're a fine one to cast blame. Are you that foolish, or are you simply still upset that you got what you deserved?"
He moved almost too swiftly for her eyes to follow, and was suddenly simply there, standing at the foot of her bed. "Got what I deserved?" His tone was so soft and so lethal that it almost didn't sound human. "Would you care t'explain how I deserved two hundred years of living death?"
"You tell me." She snarled it, and hurled the diary at him in a flutter of leatherbound pages.
Was that a shadow of disbelief flitting across his face? "I tell you? You're the one with all the answers, chere. Except the one I need."
He reached for her, dragging her free of the tangle of sheets and hauling her against him. A musky heat radiated through the civilized veneer of his clothing, reminding her of... what? "Damn you," he grated, "tell me what I need to know. How do I break this curse?"
She laughed at him. "I'll never tell," she chanted in a mocking sing-song.
He shook her briefly, but fiercely; she got the impression that he'd rather shake her until her head snapped off, but reined himself in. "What's wrong with you?" he growled.
"What's wrong with me?" Carolina panted, glaring up into his dark, feral eyes through a veil of shimmering golden hair. She felt the unfamiliar madness receding like an ebbing mist. "You're the one who thinks he's cursed. You're crazy!"
"Maybe I am, chere. But so are you." His mouth swooped down on hers, capturing it easily.
In the next breath, she wrenched her lips away. "Let me go!"
His harsh, barking laughter startled her. And infuriated her. "It's way too late for that, chere. Way too late."
He brought them both down to the bed, falling heavily atop her. The impact knocked the breath out of her, but that didn't stop her from struggling. Adrenaline had replaced blood in her veins. She felt absolutely wild, almost crazy with panic.
No, not almost crazy. She was crazy, because she could feel the wildness in him now. It called to her, lured her into the darkness where he waited. She suddenly wanted to throw her head back and howl at the uncaring stars.
"Don't fight it, Carolina. Go with it." The murmured words scorched her skin. Teeth nipped at her vulnerable earlobe, sending a shower of dark sparkles through her. "Let it sweep you away."
"No..."
"Yes. I can make you want me."
No. She wouldn't let him dirty what she felt for him, even if she didn't know what it was half the time. "I said let me go!" With a wild surge of strength, Carolina shoved him off her and rolled off the bed. Not even bothering to fling her hair out of her eyes, she scrambled for the door.
He caught her before she reached it, a long arm snaring her around the waist and jerking her back against him. His free hand slapped the door shut. She wriggled free, spun to put her back to the solid wood, and lashed out at him.
Gabriel caught the punch a bare instant before it would have caught him in the throat. "Hellion! Hold still!"
The command ringing in his voice made her stop. Carolina raked a hand through her cascading hair, pulling the mass out of her eyes. Her hands were trembling, but she knew it wasn't from fear. It was from sheer fury.
She glared up at him. "If you think I'm going to make raping me easy for you, you're crazier than I thought."
"You've never made a damn thing easy for me, chere. And I told you before, I don' believe in rape, no. Remember?" He planted a hand on either side of her head and leaned into her. She tried to shrink back, but the door thwarted her. His body began a slow, beguiling rub against hers.
"Say yes, Carolina. I need you."
"To find your cure," she spat bitterly.
"To keep me sane!" He shook her again, his hands hard enough to leave bruises. "D'you realize what's happening, Carolina? D'you know what you've gotten yourself into?"
She stared at him, mute.
"The hell with it," he muttered, and ground his mouth down on hers.
Passion, dark and beguiling, roared up from somewhere deep inside her. Carolina felt the voice in her head fade into silence. She felt herself growing weak and limp from lack of oxygen and the burgeoning heat inside her. Against her, Gabriel seemed a tower of hard male strength. She leaned into him, her hands beginning to clutch instead of push away.
He lifted his head just enough to let her catch a breath. "Make me feel alive, Carolina."
He wasn't asking her cooperation, he was commanding it. Resentment for his arrogance leapt in her, but so did desire. She hated it, and herself, for her weakness. "You're a bastard," she hissed.
"Yeah." He crushed her backward into the door, his arms braced on either side of her. "And you love it." And then he held her captive with the simple expedient of fusing his mouth to hers.
Her resistance lasted for exactly the length of the second it took for his tongue to spear past her resisting lips. He plundered her mouth as if seeking a treasure hidden there. The taste of him swept through her, dark and pungent and intensely male. Carolina's objections began to puddle into mush. She'd wanted this, really wanted this, since she'd danced with him that night in the Quarters.
Suddenly, Carolina didn't care what he thought he was, what the diary said about Annalise's Gabriel. She wanted the fulfillment this Gabriel was dangling like a glittering golden prize just out of her reach with an urgency that nearly defied description. She wanted... to feel alive.
"Touch me." The hoarse whisper didn't sound like hers, but suddenly Carolina wasn't interested in analyzing her responses anymore. "Touch me."
Gabriel smiled hungrily against her lips, and then slid his hands down her arms. Warm palms cupped her breasts. The sweet, feminine swells just filled his hands. Perfect. She was perfect, soft and firm and so responsive. Was her skin as silky as he remembered? Would she still shiver when he touched her? He had to know.
The sound of tearing fabric only startled her for a moment, before heat rushed in to replace innate caution. The fire twisting inside her flared to new heights when Gabriel's fingers burned a descending trail of caresses along the gently curving lines of her body. The knowing hands molded the curve of her hips before long fingers ripped through the triangle of fuscia silk guarding the silky delta at the juncture of her thighs. The torn remnants of her panties drifted down to join the remnants of her nightie on the worn wood plank floor.
Gabriel drew back, putting a hand's-span of echoing space between their humming bodies. His midnight eyes raked over the shivering length of her, as tangible as a touch, and she knew that with that single, measuring glance he'd seen every one of her imperfections.
The fire inside her cooled noticeably. This was where Jean-Michael had faltered their first time together. She raised her chin in an attitude of challenge, silently daring him to say anything snide about too-small breasts, too-lush hips. She was darned if she'd apologize for the way her body was put together.
Gabriel touched the callused tip of one finger to the pert, rosy tip of one breast. Gratification swept through him when Carolina bit back a gasp as her flesh pearled beneath the so-light touch. He'd been wrong, so wrong, when he'd tried to tell himself that the way she made him feel didn't matter. It did matter, more than anything else; he was swept up into the storm, riding the wave of sensation, avidly drinking in her responses.
Carolina cried out again when his now-avid fingers raked through the golden curls shielding her fragrant feminine secrets. Gabriel smiled slowly, the deepening curve of his lips eloquent of pleasure and deep male satisfaction. "I knew you were a natural blonde."
Her eyes widened in shock, then narrowed. Her hand moved suddenly, pressing flat against the blatant bulge testing the strength of his zipper. "Are you naturally dark?"
He went rigid. God! Just that one touch, and he was almost in meltdown. If he'd been able, Gabriel would have sworn out loud. Instead, he did as his screaming body demanded and pressed himself more deeply into Carolina's palm.
Carolina watched his taut face, fascinated. She could practically see the energy singing along his nerve endings, overloading pleasure centers. For the first time since she'd known him, she was the one in control.
The knowledge gave her an almost overwhelming sense of power. Emboldened, she reached for the waistband of his slacks with her other hand, popping the snap and working the zipper with fingers made clumsy by eagerness. And then she slid her fingers into the gap.
He wasn't wearing underwear.
Gabriel's hands knotted into white-knuckled fists as she touched him, lovingly easing his throbbing satiny length outside the confines of dark cloth. He thought he would explode from the tenderness of the caress, if not from the excitement. In a white-hot flash of an instant, the memories of the many lovers he'd had in his lifetime were burned away. Beauty and experience paled into insignificance next to the outright reverence that this woman showed. He had never imagined how that one simple emotion could heighten the touch, sending it beyond pleasure to something that must be as near to heaven as someone like him could get.
Carolina wasn't certain what the caresses were doing to Gabriel, but she knew what they were doing to her. He was so hard and smooth, so enticing! Carolina couldn't seem to stop touching him, savoring weights and textures; he was sleek and satisfyingly heavy in her hands, velvet at the tip, silken along the shaft. "You're beautiful," she whispered huskily, cupping the heavy, secret flesh hidden in the dark curls at his groin.
He swore savagely, and yanked her against him, taking her mouth in a hard, hot kiss. The naked length of his arousal jutted against the smooth skin of her stomach, eliciting a rush of response from deep inside her. His body was massive, solid, and crushed her into the door, but Carolina never felt it. All she knew was the heat and seductive promise of his body.
The crispness of cloth against her breasts shocked her into some awareness of what she was doing, but Carolina didn't stop. She couldn't stop. Not with the need to feel him, skin to skin, becoming paramount. Her fingers tripped nimbly up the row of studs on Gabriel's formal shirt, releasing them one by one.
When her hands slid inside the opening to caress his slick, hair-roughened skin, he shuddered. A curse slid out from between clenched teeth. Carolina could almost hear the shattering of the final, tenuous fragments of control.
Without ever freeing her lips from the thrall of his, Gabriel shifted until he could peel out of his dress shirt. That done, his hands resumed their hurried exploration of Carolina's body, somehow catching and tugging at the sweet, hot ribbons of sensation that rippled just beneath the surface of her skin.
His long fingers slid from her swollen, flushed breasts, over the tightening muscles of her stomach, until they brushed the heart of her. "Gabriel..." He used a single finger to open her petaled flesh, sinking easily into her moist heat.
Carolina stifled a gasp. "Oh..."
"You're so ready for me." He pulled away from her again, but only a critical inch or two, to shove down the now-unnecessary dress slacks. "It's gonna be so damn good, petite."
There was the muted thunk of a belt buckle hitting the floor, but Carolina wasn't paying attention to anything but Gabriel. The roughness of his voice sent another little thrill through her when he growled, "Hold on to me," widened the spread of her thighs, and sank himself into her.
Carolina's head went back against the door, her mouth a perfect, silent o of satisfaction. Her nails sank deeply into the hard flesh of his shoulders. It had never been like this before. She'd never imagined it could be like this. He was so full and hot inside her, filling the empty places in her, body and soul. He wanted her, just her, just the way she was.
And then all her thoughts spiraled off into tangled incoherence as Gabriel's hands slid down the curve of her spine to cup the luxuriant curve of her buttocks. He lifted her to fit more perfectly against him, wrapping her long legs around his waist so that he could drive himself more deeply into her.
Carolina felt a hot spiral of sensation inside her begin to coil more and more tightly, a swirling of power gathering deep in her core. Short, sharp bursts of lightning were racing along her nerves with every hammering thrust of his hips. The door began to rattle on its hinges.
If Carolina had been capable of awareness of anything beyond the awesome pleasure Gabriel was giving her, she might have been embarrassed. But she wasn't. She wanted more. "Gabriel..."
"The bed?" The two words, muttered against her lips in her lover's dark, harsh voice, sent another burst of fire through her.
"Yes."
Groaning, he levered their joined bodies away from the door. Carolina bit her lip against a protest against the fractions of an inch that now separated her tingling skin from his. The protest died when one arm cinched around her waist like a bar of hot iron and crushing her against him again.
Better, she thought with a sudden, wicked stab of amusement. Much better.
And then she couldn't think. Every step Gabriel took toward the bed shifted her around him, sending a sweet, electric thrill through her. Involuntarily, Carolina clenched those sensitive inner muscles gloving his turgid length. He stumbled a little, his breath hissing out from between tightly-clenched teeth. His eyes opened and captured hers. "That feels... so... damn... good!"
The scorching words, or the naked honesty in them and in his eyes, sent a fresh surge of liquid heat through her veins. She clenched around him again.
A muffled French curse caught in the back of his throat as he stumbled on the discarded tangle of his slacks. They fell together to the bed, Gabriel angling himself so that he took the brunt of the fall. Carolina let out a small, muffled shriek as the impact slammed them together, until he was buried to the hilt in her seething softness.
For a second, Gabriel also held himself still, as if the sensations jangling along his ragged nerves were too much to bear. Then he kicked free of the interfering slacks, slid his hands down to the lush flare of Carolina's hips, and thrust powerfully.
She went rigid, her eyes unfocused, liquid, incredibly bright with the force of the inner explosion clawing its way out of her. And then she let it go, the hot, molten contractions of her pleasure engulfing him.
Gabriel threw his head back, torturing his lower lip with his teeth until he was sure that he'd fought down the surging tide of his own release. He didn't feel the tiny cuts inflicted by the sharp canines. All he could hear was the pounding of his own blood in his ears, all he could feel was the fierce rapture that he was trying so desperately to prolong. Not yet. He didn't want this to end now. He hadn't gotten nearly enough of her yet.
Then his tongue swept his parched lower lip, touched the sharp, metallic sweetness of blood. The hungering darkness inside him lunged to the fore.
Before Carolina's climax could wane, Gabriel flipped their joined bodies over. The rumpled sheets slid against their sweat-slick skin as he began a driving rhythm that propelled them up the bed. His mouth and hands swept over her, touching, tasting, laving, nipping. The heady, musky aroma of flesh and blood mingled with the spicier fragrance of feminine excitement. He didn't think it possible that he could become any more aroused, but felt himself swell just the same. God, what she did to him!
Carolina was panting now, her thighs tight around his hips to keep her with him. A moment ago, her short nails had been clawing at his back. Now, her hands were braced against the pillows packed against the brass headboard. Her small, full breasts bobbled enticingly against his chest. Gabriel propped himself on his elbows and filled his hands with the soft, satiny flesh. Drawn by the intense need to experience her fire again, and the even more urgent one to taste her, he surrounded one proud nipple with his mouth and sucked fiercely.
Carolina's back arched like a bow. Her arms came down to circle his flexing shoulders, her legs tightened around his hips, and she screamed.
Gabriel lifted his mouth to hers and drove his hands deeply into the wild, tangled mass of her hair. He growled a sound that could have been her name as he gave a last, convulsive thrust and then let the eruption boiling inside him go.
The small, tingling pain brought Carolina awake. She blinked eyes still clouded with the stars and colors of pleasure, but some primitive instinct kept her from moving.
Puzzled, she let herself come more fully awake. That was when she realized that the skin between her breasts once again felt itchy, almost raw. Her pendant must have somehow gotten a rough edge and scratched her. The discomfort banished a little of the languorous mist of pleasure wrapped around her.
That wasn't fair, Carolina thought sleepily. She'd never felt like this before. She wanted to savor it a little longer, before reality came crashing in. Irritated, she blinked again. When her vision cleared, she saw Gabriel leaning over her, a peculiarly intent expression on his aristocratic face. The heavy beginnings of a beard and tousled mess of his hair made him look adorably rumpled and outrageously sexy.
Until she saw his eyes. His inhuman eyes.
Carolina held her breath, afraid to so much as twitch. He wasn't watching her face, but the movement of his finger on her skin. He bent to rub his stubbled cheek against the invisible patterns he'd been drawing on her skin. She winced at the tiny pain.
Gabriel froze. His gaze shot up to catch hers. Dangerously dark. Hypnotically feral. Wolf eyes.
A very strange smile lifted one corner of his sensuous mouth and he slowly lifted his head. "Carolina."
She couldn't suppress a shiver. Was it arousal or fear suddenly streaking along her veins? She parted dry lips, but couldn't find any words. Or her voice.
He gave her one last slow stroke with his cheek, never taking his eyes from hers. It was extraordinarily erotic. Carolina felt her body responding to the incredible sexual magnetism of the man, even as her mind rebelled against his effortless control. Not like this, she thought at him desperately. Please, not like this.
Gabriel stretched out over her, his powerful arms keeping his not-inconsiderable weight from doing more than lightly touching her. Paradoxically, she'd never felt more trapped.
He drifted his mouth along the flowing lines of her treacherously responsive body, until his moist, hot breath just brushed her straining nipple. "I'm supposed to kill you now."
Carolina's sensual lethargy vanished in a burst of adrenaline. Gabriel's nostrils flared as if he could scent the change, and he grabbed her arms before she could react, pinning them above her head.
Still smiling that awful smile, Gabriel let himself sink down onto her struggling body, effectively thwarting her attempts to free herself. For one sickening moment, the weight and strength of his naked form against hers reminded her of the night's pleasures. A hectic blush flooded her cheeks as her body softened inside, preparing for him even as her muscles tensed again for combat. Darn him! Did he have to make her hate herself as well as him?
He bent his head, nuzzling the curve of her throat, bathing his face in the tangled sunlight of her hair. "Sweet, sweet Carolina." His fingers slid down her arms to her breasts, cupping the rounded flesh.
Paralyzed by an unexpected, unwelcome surge of pleasure, she closed her eyes. Help me, she thought. Please help me. Claustrophobia rose in a swirling, nauseating wave, pressing down on her chest until all she could think was that she couldn't breathe.
And then there was nothing. No weight, no pressure. Not even any sound. By the time Carolina could open her eyes, Gabriel was gone.
The air in the back parlor was so thick he could chew it. He'd had the windows open earlier and only succeeded in letting in the humidity and smells of the bayou, and a drove of insects the size of carrier pigeons. He remembered slamming them closed in disgust not ten minutes later, as much against the bugs as the daylight that lay thickly against the outer walls of the house. Gabriel had wanted to keep the parlor as gloomy as possible. The gothic ambiance suited his mood perfectly.
He'd been sinking steadily into a black temper ever since leaving Carolina that morning. He leaned back in his chair, aware that it didn't comfortably accommodate his size and not giving a damn. He closed his eyes against all of it, the heat, the discomfort, the exhaustion.
Almost immediately, Carolina's image was seared on the insides of his eyelids, her face a taut, pale portrait of ecstasy. Without any effort, he could recall exactly how she'd felt against him. The precise flavor of her skin, its texture. She'd felt so sweet, so damn right in his arms as he'd lain awake in the hour before dawn. For an instant, just one instant, wrapped in the memory of soul-deep satisfaction and lured by the promise implicit in the womanly body lying quiescent against his, he'd allowed himself to dream. That he was free to wake beside her every morning. That he was free to love her every night.
When the familiar, hated tug at his soul had come, he'd had to face the fact that his fantasies were just that. Flimsy little daydreams that turned too brittle to be realized in the cruel light of dawn. There would be no more fierce midnight loving, no early-morning cuddles. He'd never be able to warm his shriveled soul at the fine blaze of hers.
The thought hurt. He didn't want it to, didn't want to care, but it did. He did.
Gabriel flicked another card over on the worn green baize of the table. A thin, humorless smile flickered over his mouth when he realized that he had drawn the queen of diamonds.
Mignon's card. How appropriate. "You can tell what I'm gonna do, can't you?" The harshly drawled question vibrated against the silence in the room. Gabriel had never been entirely certain as to whether or not Mignon could hear him, but somehow, now, he didn't doubt it. Not this time.
And he didn't care. There was nothing more she could do to him; hell, he didn't even think she'd want to do anything. He was as good as admitting that she'd won. With consummate nonchalance, he flicked over the next card in the deck.
It was the queen of hearts. And he knew that it meant Carolina.
As if he'd conjured her up, Gabriel heard familiar quick, light footsteps clicking softly down the hall. They stopped just inside the parlor door. Her scent reached out, wrapped around him like a thousand invisible silken filaments. He spared himself a few brief seconds to fight the attraction and to think of a way to get rid of her.
"You crazy to come here, petite." Gabriel didn't look up from the cards, but he could feel her eyes rake over him. "Or didn' you get enough of a scare this morning?"
He knew the exact instant that firm, stubborn little chin set mulishly; he seemed to be tuned in to her to the point of pain. And there was pain, hot and unexpected and stabbing somewhere in the region of his nonexistent heart when he heard the faint wobble in her voice. "Oh, you scared me, all right. I can't remember when I've ever been so terrified in my life."
"Then why are you here?" The question slipped past his guard, and he swore inwardly.
"Because I want answers."
"No, you don't."
"Don't you dare tell me what I do or don't want, dammit! People have been giving me my opinions for years, and I'm sick of it."
"That explains why you're so damned stubborn," he muttered, running his fingers along the worn edges of the cards.
"But it doesn't explain your stupidity, Gabriel Ribaud."
He shook his head. "You don' want t'hear that explanation, chere. Trust me."
"The last thing I'd ever do is trust you," she retorted hotly. "You've been manipulating me since the day I met you."
"Maybe I have." He raised his eyes to hers, knowing that the sardonic smirk curling one corner of his mouth lent extra menace to his already-disreputable appearance. "Seemed like the thing t'do."
"And now?" She gestured toward the revolver lying next to the carelessly-placed cards on the table. "You got your appraisal, you got sex. Are you done using me now, or do you want me to pull the trigger for you, too?"
"The only thing I want is for you to go away."
"For God's sake, Gabriel, didn't last night mean anything to you? Anything? Maybe not, but it did to me. That's why I'm not leaving, because I'm not willing to pretend it didn't matter."
Gabriel swiped a hand over his face, suddenly feeling very, very old. Very tired. "What do you want, Carolina?"
She brushed her fingers briefly over the raw spot between her breasts. "I'll take what I can get. Answers."
He turned back to the cards, staring blindly at their inscrutable faces. Why did it hurt so much to hear that odd note of defeat in her voice? He should've been glad that she wasn't making demands, wasn't wailing over the fact that he didn't love her. He wasn't, because he was used to the wailing and demanding; he didn't know how to handle Carolina's quiet dignity. "Sorry. None t'give."
"Liar."
He looked at her, then away, and shrugged loosely, his long fingers automatically dexterous as he shuffled the deck. "Been called worse in my time."
"I can imagine." She sighed, a short, sharp burst of exasperated sound. "Fine, then. Don't answer. I'll just draw my own conclusions."
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "About what?"
"About why are there silver bullets in that dueling pistol."
The silence was sudden and absolute. Gabriel swivelled slowly to look at her again. She was pale except for the fire in her eyes - peridot green today, he noted irrelevantly - and stood her ground with a quiet determination that spoke volumes. "Maybe I like the occasional dramatic flourish, eh?" His tones were measured, dark.
She shook her head slowly. "Not this time, Gabriel. I'm not buying it."
The memory of her as she'd been during the small hours of the night, sweet and pliant and rosy with satiation, rose up to taunt him. It was the height of irony that he realized that he actually preferred her the way she was now, spitting like a wet kitten and giving him hell.
It made him furious, but he battered the feeling down. Damned if he was going to lose it now. "Do yourself a favor, chere. Don't think."
She actually smiled. Smiled! "Sorry. I told you I don't take orders very well."
"Try this one, petite. Get out. I'll see you're well paid for your time." He looked away from her, dismissing her as if she'd already left. Damn, he wished she'd just go. Why did she have to make him think about it more than he already had? Why did she have to remind him of what he was giving up?
"In a hurry to end it all, loup-garou?"
He stiffened.
"Honestly, Gabriel. You hired me because of my intelligence and background in folklore. Did you think I wouldn't put the clues together?" He could hear the exasperation as she continued, "I admit it took a while for me to accept what every piece of evidence was pointing to. I usually try to keep a reasonably firm grip on my imagination. But I wasn't seeing things this morning. Was I?"
"No." Sudden rage poured through him, and he exploded out of his chair. "You happy now? I'm a murderer, Carolina. I've been a murderer for the past two centuries." A sudden, almost ferocious sensuality gripped his features. He glided toward her with a wolf's silent hunting tread, his bare feet noiseless on the creaking wooden floor. A demon looked out of his eyes, promising heaven and hell, and his voice was a black satin ribbon of seduction. "I stalk. I beguile the unwary. The innocent. And when you're sated and sleeping in my arms," his long fingers slid caressingly around her throat, and then tightened, nearly cutting off her air, "I kill you."
Carolina never moved except to tip her head back to offer her throat more fully. Her trust ripped at his gut, and her quiet, drawled words only opened the wound more. "You didn't kill me. Why?"
His anger made him snarl. "Maybe I wanted t'wait until now."
She didn't have any more breath to speak, but her eyes remained locked on his. Gabriel found himself almost mesmerized by those deep, pale green pools. By the utter fearlessness in them. By the time he noticed the thickening flush climbing her cheeks, he also sensed her growing weakness. Her growing breathlessness.
"Dammit!" Snarling again, this time in self-disgust, he spun her into the nearest chair and retreated a safe distance away. As if any distance could make it safer for her, he thought bitterly. The wildness inside him was growing like a fast-spreading cancer, feeding on the weakness he sensed from her.
And damn it, Carolina didn't seem to realize her danger. She was sitting in that chair, rubbing at her throat and trying to catch her breath. He could see the faint red marks where his fingers had pressed that fragile white skin. She'd probably bruise within the hour; if she lived that long.
With an effort, Gabriel stuffed his feelings into a small corner of his soul and locked the door on them. It wouldn't last - peace never did for him - but perhaps it would be long enough. To do what he had to.
But, God, he didn't know if he could!
"You have to leave." There, he'd said it.
"So you can kill yourself."
"Yes."
She eyed him, a question in her eyes. "Can you?"
"I have to."
"Because of me?"
His laugh was more of a sneer. "Don' flatter y'self, chere. I'm just bein' selfish as always, me. I don' want any more deaths on my soul. If I still have one."
She smiled. Dammit, she actually smiled! Torn between the desire to howl his indignation and the desire to laugh along with her, he could only stand and watch those slender white fingers close around the pistol. She hefted it, eyeing it with the air of one who knew what she was doing. In spite of himself, Gabriel was surprised. And he was mad as hell at himself for it, too. After all, he'd known from that first night that Carolina was a bundle of surprises and contradictions wrapped up in silky woman's skin.
"What are you doing?"
She tilted that silky blond head at him like an inquisitive bird. "What do you want me to do, Gabriel? Do you really want me to pull the trigger?"
She'd do that for him? After all he'd said, after all he'd done? An unaccustomed sense of wonderment swept over him. "Yes."
Calm as you please, she got up and walked over to him. He took a long moment to look into her eyes. There was a serenity there, a strength that he knew he'd never had himself. And it humbled him.
She cocked the pistol, laid the mouth of the barrel to his chest. The cold metal grazed his skin like a lover's kiss. He shuddered. His eyes slipped closed, and he held very still. "Do it." Now, before I lose my nerve, do it.
"I can't."
The aching simplicity in her voice brought him fully alert. His eyes snapped open. He stared at her.
Carolina licked her lips. "I'm sorry, Gabriel. I just... I can't. Not after..."
"Last night?" He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. Hard. "Last night was nothing, Carolina! I told you that. It was my way of getting my victims. It meant nothing t'me!"
"I know." For all the softness in her words, there was steel in her body as she wrenched away from him. "But you're the first man who's ever made me feel like that. Like a woman. Like no matter what I said or did, I couldn't scare you away." She was shaking her head now, backing away. Biting into her soft lower lip with even white teeth until he thought she would bleed the way he was bleeding inside. "I'm sorry, Gabriel, but I can't give you death when you just gave me a taste of life."
"I'll come after you," he told her fiercely, needing to try one more time. "We're linked now. I'll come after you, and I'll have t'kill you. Even if I don't want to."
"I know." Carolina backed away. "But what if... What if there's another way?"
He shook his head. "There isn't one. You said it yourself."
"There has to be one. You believe that. That's why you wanted me to appraise your collection. The cure is in there!"
"There's no time, petite. The moon is full."
"But you're not changing!"
"Not yet. Soon. I can hold it off a little while yet. I... fed a day ago."
"You... fed?" She felt a little sick.
"Yeah. That kill was for the wolf. The next one will be for the curse. And it'll be you." His smile was ghastly. "Mignon must be getting old; she didn't used to give me ways to hold back the change like that. Or she's playing with me again."
"It doesn't matter. We have some time. Let me try, Gabriel! Who knows, now that I know what I'm looking for..."
Hope surged in him, but that wasn't the reason for the huge velvet lump in his throat. "What if you're wrong?"
"Then... I'll give you peace, Gabriel."
Bowing over her hand like the gentleman he had once pretended to be, Gabriel pressed a kiss to the backs of her trembling fingers. "You have a great heart, ma belle fille." His lips twisted. "Let's hope I don't have t'take it, yes?"
Slender, clever fingers closed on his with surprising strength. "Yes."
Carolina had been upstairs in the library for over an hour now. She glanced at her watch. Midmorning. How much time did she have left? A quick glance at the stack of books in front of her didn't do much to encourage her. There were so many!
"Dammit, Gabriel, why did you have to tell me that you wanted the whole collection appraised? We wasted so much time!" She scrubbed the heels of her hands into her stinging eyes, refusing to give in to the lurking sense of despair that seemed to hover around the perimeter of the library like a gray mist.
"All right, York. Let's think about this logically. You're trained to find information. All you have to do is find the right books." She raked a hand through her hair. Finding the books was only the first step. Normally, she would search out chapters which pertained to her subject and annotate them, but she was afraid that, if she did, she'd miss some vital clue. If Gabriel's cure was buried somewhere in these moldering tomes, it wouldn't be hiding in plain sight.
She glanced down at the pad she'd prepared for notes. It was still blank. The only cures for curses which she'd found so far were, as she'd told Gabriel a day ago, fairly final. She suppressed the thought of the loaded dueling pistol waiting in the downstairs parlor. They already had one reliable final alternative. She didn't want to find any others.
Half an hour later, she closed another book. "Nothing. Just... nothing."
A throbbing began behind her eyes. Carolina closed them, intending to rest them, and leaned back in the big leather chair. Visions of wolves with Gabriel's dark, passionate eyes floated across the blank screens of her eyelids.
"Darn," she whispered, barely denting the humid silence. "Oh, darn." With sudden, cockeyed humor, she had a vision of what she must look like; wearing a halter top and scandalous cutoffs, her hair in a straggly ponytail, ensconced in a sticky leather chair in a strange man's library. Reading crumbling old books about voodoo. Mama would swoon. Especially if she saw Gabriel.
A faint smile lifted her lips. As if in punishment for the momentary mirth, her headache went from throbbing to a sledgehammer pounding.
She pressed her fingers into her temples. "Ignore it. You've got work to do."
"Talkin' t'yourself, chere? That's usually the first sign of insanity, y'know."
Carolina swivelled the chair until she could see Gabriel propping himself against the doorjamb. "It's also a sign of vampirism in Eastern European mythology."
"Those books tell you that?"
She felt a pain in her temple and realized that she was massaging the spot hard enough to leave marks. "These books tell me nothing."
Gabriel felt another twisting near his heart. "Easy, Caro. You won't get anywhere if you kill y'self in the next five minutes."
"I know, I know."
"Head aches?"
"A little."
He gave her a chiding look. "Who you kiddin' chere?"
So much for her poker face. Carolina sighed softly, carefully. Then again, he could probably see the brass band playing merrily between her ears. "Never mind." She waved him away as she swivelled back to face the desk. "I'll be fine. I've got to get back to work."
"I'd help. If I could."
The hesitancy in his voice struck at her. "I know." She yanked another book out of the unread pile, for once uncaring of the fragility of old cloth bindings, and pretended to concentrate on it until she heard him go down the stairs.
This new Gabriel, she mused as she speed-read through the pages, was a lot harder to take than the old one. The Gabriel she'd thought she knew was bold as brass and sexy as hell. He didn't have feelings to hurt. He wasn't dangerously complex.
He wasn't cursed.
Carolina slapped the book closed. A small puff of dust exploded into the air. "Nothing." She didn't even look at the next book when she pulled it to her. A few pages in, it dawned on her that she was reading Vodou. The book that had started all of this. Carolina leaned back a moment and looked at the lovely old thing. It was beautiful. It still pulled her to it, hinting of secrets, as it had from the first time she'd taken it from its packaging at the shop.
If it hadn't been for Vodou, she might never have gotten to know Gabriel. She didn't think she'd have insisted on hand-delivering another purchase by another customer. And she certainly wouldn't have argued with the then-unseen and very crotchety Mr. Ribaud about the treatment of any other book.
She skimmed the edges of the slightly-worn pages with reverent fingertips. And here she was, finally able to read it at her leisure.
A frown tugged down the corners of her mouth. "Leisure later. When there's time." Carolina had never been so conscious of time in her life. Except, possibly, when her mother had been entertaining the idea of sending her to finishing school.
She bent her head, trying to concentrate on the words printed across the page. Her headache intensified until she was forgetting what she'd read the moment she moved on to another sentence.
Gamely, Carolina tried to concentrate for another few minutes, but she knew it was no use. The humidity, she thought, squinching her eyes shut fretfully. It was giving her a migraine. She had to leave before she became totally useless.
A vision of Treasured Tales' air-conditioned and blessedly mildew-free environs hastened her as she stacked the books into neat, easily identifiable piles. Read and not-read, she thought, mentally taking note of which was which.
"Gabriel?" She called out as she reached the bottom of the stairs. He appeared at the kitchen end of the hallway like a dark ghost.
"You found it?" Veiled eagerness vibrated in his voice.
The knowledge that she had to disappoint him ate at her. "Not yet. I looked, but I can't... God, I can't even think anymore."
"Are you all right?"
She toyed with the notion of lying, but decided she didn't have the energy. "No. I'm going to go back to the shop. I've got other books there that aren't in your collection. Maybe there's something in them."
He nodded once and turned away, but not before she caught a flash of the controlled desperation in his eyes.
Carolina caught herself reaching for him, then pulled her hand back. "Gabriel? I will find something. I promise."
His mouth tightened. "Don't make promises you can't keep, petite. You know where t'find me."
Marguerite popped up from her chair the moment Carolina stepped foot in the shop. "Honey, where have you been?"
Carolina wrestled with her conscience a moment, then admitted, "Mr. Ribaud's house."
Marguerite cocked her head and peered at her like an inquisitive bird. "Was he that gorgeous man you were dancing with last night Mr. Ribaud?"
"Yes."
"Well, I never would have thought... He's so young!"
"Mmmm." Carolina made a noncommittal sound and tried to edge away.
Marguerite's green eyes noted every detail of her disheveled, tired appearance, and then widened. "Honey, you didn't go home with him, did you?"
"No." Carolina slung her bag behind the counter and shoved her hands through her hair, pulling it away from her perspiring face. The air conditioning in Treasured Tales was going full bore, but it would be a while before her body caught up with the lower temperature. "He was at my place."
"Hallelujah!" Marguerite threw up her hands and crowed with delight. "It's about time!"
Carolina had the lurking suspicion that her mouth was hanging open.
Marguerite caught the look and grinned. "Honestly, honey, I love you like my own daughter, you know that. But I've been worried about you, you never date, you never seem to like any of the men you've met. Honestly, if that man didn't get you going, I was going to take you to a doctor."
Carolina felt a smile tug the corners of her mouth upward. A small chuckle shook its way out of her chest, then another. Something wet slid down her cheek, and from the look on Marguerite's face, Carolina knew she was crying.
"Oh, sweetie!" The older woman scooted around her chair and engulfed Carolina in a fierce hug scented with her favorite perfume. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I've just got a headache, that's all."
"Must be some headache."
"It was. The air conditioning is helping a little."
Marguerite drew back and eyed the younger woman critically. "You still look tired, honey. Why don't you go home and rest?"
"I might. But I wanted to do a little more research first."
"Whatever you think will work, honey." Privately, Marguerite was considering her chances of dragging Judith out of her Garden District ivory tower and hustling her down here for some time in the real world. It was way past time for her to realize what kind of woman her younger daughter had become. "You're still working on Mr. Ribaud's appraisal, is that it?"
"Always. I really need to get it done as soon as I can."
"Is Ribaud's insurance company giving him that much of a problem?"
"You wouldn't believe," Carolina said a little grimly. "I'll be in back if you need me."
"I won't," Marguerite assured her, sliding behind the counter and smiling brilliantly as a customer entered Treasured Tales. The bell on the shop door tingled cheery accompaniment. "Go on, shoo."
Smiling a little more naturally than she had before, Carolina retrieved her purse and threaded her way through the teetering bookshelves to her cubbyhole of an office in the back of the shop.
Her notebook computer was still sitting where she had left it, perching atop several neatly-arranged stacks of bills. It held a complete list of all of Treasured Tales' stock, but Carolina knew her inventory well enough not to need it. She dumped her paraphernalia and headed for the shelving that held her occult collection.
Five minutes later, she had her nose buried in a dusty but otherwise excellent first edition of Encyclopedia of Magic and the Occult. Within another five, she'd gone on to another book. And another.
Twenty minutes later, Carolina had exhausted her material on curses and cures.
"Nothing! It's all the same thing over and over again." She plopped her chin in her hands and glowered at the wall. Apparently, none of the writers of that era had cared to include anything on curses beyond a few sample curses. And even fewer cures.
"None of which do me the least bit of good." She swiped her hand over her face, rubbing at the tension hovering between her eyes. Her headache had lessened to a mere distant throbbing in the time she'd been inside with some decent air conditioning. "All right, York. Start thinking." She scrunched her face into a contemplative frown. "Maybe I'm going about this all wrong. Maybe I should... Yeah. That might work."
Yellowed pages flew beneath suddenly busy fingers. "Forget curses. Let's see what there is to see about voodoo itself. Ah," her dust-smeared fingertip skimmed a chapter heading, "voodoo. The religion and the loa... Ceremonies... Dances and symbolism... Magic!"
Carolina smoothed the old pages out, her eyes narrowed to pick out the fading printing. "'The devout voodoo often attends a powerful houngan or a queen, whose magic is considered to relieve many ailments. Magic charms are used to effect the desired remedy.'" Carolina frowned thoughtfully. "Charms? I wonder if..." She skimmed the page until a passage caught her eye. "'Charms of all sorts are used to convey magical power; indeed, it is more common to find items which curse rather than items with curative properties.'"
That had to be it! She sat back in her chair, then sprang up. It was a start, at least. And Gabriel still had Vodou, which undoubtably contained more information...
She had to get to Gabriel.
Carolina grabbed blindly for her purse, headed for the door and came to an abrupt halt. What would she tell Marguerite?
"Hi, honey!" The older woman caught sight of her and nodded in her direction. "You finally going home to pamper that headache of yours?"
"Yes. I think I'll just go lie down. Ignore the world for a while."
"Good. You turn off that phone and the lights and just sleep. I'll see you when I see you."
Carolina started to protest that she'd be there in the morning to open the shop, and then stopped. If her hunch was wrong, if Gabriel couldn't be cured... "I'll see you when I see you, Marguerite. And thanks." She slipped out the door before Marguerite could say anything else and headed for her car.
She had to get to Gabriel.
For the first time since she'd known him, Gabriel had the front door open and was waiting for her when she arrived.
Carolina stopped dead in the middle of the walk. She took a second to stare at him in blank shock before she made herself hurry to the door. "How did you know?"
"I told you, we're linked. I could feel you." He hauled her against him and kissed her, briefly and hard. "What is it, chere?"
"I think I found it. Or a part of it. The answer, Gabriel!"
Bemused, he allowed her to tug him inside and up the stairs to the library. He had just enough time to slam the door decidedly shut behind them.
Words tumbled out of Carolina's mouth. "It wasn't curses that I had to research, it was voodoo itself. The source. The books I found state that voodoo practitioners used charms to bless and curse."
"Charms?"
"Think, Gabriel! Did Mignon ever give you anything that she wanted you to keep with you? A love charm?"
"No way. Mignon didn' need charms to get her men. And she wasn't the giving kind."
Carolina thumped into the big leather chair behind the desk and plucked Vodou out of the stack of books she'd left earlier. "Well, there had to be something. Or I'm missing something." She rubbed fretfully at her forehead. Her migraine was coming back in waves. The valiantly wheezing fan wasn't holding back any of the heat.
"What are you looking for?" Gabriel leaned over her shoulder.
"Notes about charms. And death."
He drew back and rubbed a hand over his chin meditatively. "I think you're too into this, cherie. Mignon died of the fever before I did. And I know she never gave me anything."
"But did you ever give her anything?" Carolina turned all her attention on the book. "Ah, here we go. Death rituals. 'The Voodoo believes that the soul, or ti bon ange, hovers above the body directly after death and remains for seven days, during which it is extremely vulnerable to manipulation by an evil sorcerer. Therefore, it is of prime importance for a queen to perform the ritual to free the ti bon ange as soon as death occurs, lest an evil magician capture the soul and use it to feed his power.'" The face she turned to Gabriel was troubled but radiant. "You see? That must be how she cursed you. You said yourself that you stalk and kill..."
"And take my victims' hearts." Gabriel firmly shut the memories out of his mind. Carolina's theory suddenly didn't seem so far-fetched. "But I don' know about this business with the ti bon ange. Sounds too damn strange, you ask me."
She shot him a look fueled by the pain jabbing at the inside of her head. "Honestly, Gabriel, do you know how ridiculous that sounds? Remember who the werewolf is around here?"
He had the grace to look sheepish. "Yeah. But how did she... I know I died of the fever, not some curse."
"I don't know." She closed her eyes and gasped. It felt as if someone were jamming a red-hot icepick between her eyes. It wasn't the heat, she thought on a sudden, brilliant burst of revelation. It was the book. Somehow it was the book.
"Carolina?" Gabriel's hands, large and warm on her shoulders. "You okay, petite?"
"No." Vodou seemed to mock her, its pages writhing in a faint, hot wind that was fetid with swamp gas. Pain spread into a black vise that gripped her entire skull. It was as if the whispering shadows that surrounded the house were flowing into the room. Into her. Strangling her.
"Carolina?" There was more concern in his voice now, as if he could sense what Vodou was doing to her, but Carolina didn't notice. There had to be some way to stop the book from hurting her anymore. Her fingers spread out across one page, flexing, testing the resilience of the old paper. It gave easily beneath neat nails that suddenly seemed as sharp as claws.
On a laughing snarl, she tore into the book. Pages flew like shed leaves before a wind.
"Petite! Stop this!" Gabriel jerked her out of the chair and shook her. She let her head loll back and looked up at him through slitted green eyes.
"I'm through listening to you."
The voice was Carolina's, but not the words. A chill slithered down his spine. "Carolina?"
She laughed. "Maybe."
"Mignon." He shook her again, hands intentionally bruising. "Leave her alone."
She hissed at him, her eyes so deeply green they were almost black. "Make me." Her hand shot out, fingers hooked into claws and aiming for his eyes.
Gabriel instinctively dodged, heard a sharp crack of sound, felt a tingle run up his palm. Only when he saw the red mark rising on Carolina's fair skin did he realize that he'd slapped her. He swore savagely.
And then he did the only other thing he could think to do. He kissed her.
A memory of last night rose up to taunt him; he shoved it down ruthlessly. This had nothing to do with last night. He tightened his arms until she couldn't breath, much less attack him, and ground his mouth down on hers. He could taste blood and didn't know if it was his or hers.
Something of the wolf rose in him then, hovering just below the surface of his psyche. He crushed it as remorselessly as he was crushing her, and for the same reason. He didn't dare let go.
Suddenly, Carolina contorted with new energy, tearing her mouth from his. He caught a slashing glimpse of pale green eyes in a rigid white mask of a face before her entire body arched backward in a taut bow, an agonized scream clawing its way out of her throat.
Vodou exploded into flame.
"God!" It was both prayer and profanity. Gabriel felt himself blanch, but didn't allow himself to react any further to the knowledge that Mignon was somehow present in the house. He didn't have time to react.
He had to get Carolina out of here.
She had gone limp, as if that soul-deep scream had driven Mignon out of her body. Gabriel hoped like hell that was so, because he didn't dare spare time to think about it. He scooped her up like a sack of feed and ran for the door. Pieces of burning paper darted after him, as if alive and determined to get their share of his hide.
"You'll have t'wait in line," he growled at them as he took the stairs two at a time. His footfalls sounded abnormally loud in the empty hall. The crash as he kicked the kitchen door open was deafening.
Once he reached the garden, he gave in to his clamoring instincts and stopped and looked Carolina over. Even in the bleeding light of sunset, she was ashen, her lashes stark black against suddenly hollow cheeks. She looked even more frail than she had the night she'd been sick. Gabriel mentally kicked himself for dredging up that memory. He didn't like dealing with guilt; he didn't need to give himself a double dose of it. Not now.
She was stirring now, moaning low in her throat. He let her down so that her feet were brushing the ground, but didn't remove the support of his arm around her waist. She felt too damn fragile, too vulnerable. "Carolina? C'mon, petite. You're scarin' me, now. You gotta wake up."
He surrendered to the impulse to brush back her disheveled hair, swallowing against the lump of emotion in his throat. He'd gone decades without ever caring this much about one person. One woman. And now... Hell. He didn't know how to handle this. Didn't want to know.
She weakly batted his hand away. Her eyes fluttered open. "The book..."
He shot a half-glance over his shoulder. Through the uncurtained library window, he could see flaming bits of paper flittering around the darkened room like deranged fireflies. "Destroyed."
"Destroyed? But..."
"Mignon." Carolina's face was a blur of white skin and big, pale eyes in the gathering darkness, but Gabriel could see the alarm there.
"Mignon? The shadows..." Her voice changed from a query to a hiss of discovery. The eyes she turned up to his were suddenly blazing, even though her hands gripping his forearms were kitten-weak.
"The shadows?"
"Never mind. We've got to get out of here."
He eyed her in patent disbelief. "To where? The bayou?"
"Yes. Now!" She wasn't looking at him, but something just over his shoulder. And she looked frightened. No, terrified. "Gabriel, now!"
He glanced over his shoulder and saw a thick, noxious gray mist oozing around the edges of the house. Suddenly, he knew what Carolina had meant by 'the shadows'.
He had a split second to assimilate the information before a wave of black agony rolled over him, chewing him up from the inside out. He was barely aware of sinking to one knee, of Carolina's cool hands framing his face. All he could do was hold his breath and wait for the grinding nausea to fade.
When it finally did, he had to blink repeatedly to clear the cold, stinging sweat from his eyes. And then he realized that he was running. That Carolina was leading him deeper into the bayou.
He tried to call her name, but only managed to groan.
"Running water," she explained breathlessly, saving the majority of her energy for running. "Evil spirits can't cross running water."
"More... of your... folklore?"
"Shut up and save your breath for running." She didn't give him a chance to reject the grim advice. Taking a firmer grasp on his hand, she tugged him after her on what looked like a suicide course along the barely-perceptible trail.
Suicide was the word for it, he thought when he could. Night in the swamps fell with an almost-audible whomp and staked itself down like a tent until sunrise. Mangrove roots rose above the soggy earth like hundreds of knobby knees, almost invisible in the blackness. He hoped she was watching where she was going. The last thing either of them needed was to run into an irate cottonmouth or 'gator.
"Don't worry, I'm watching," she said as if she'd read his thoughts. "Besides what could a snake or alligator do to you, anyway? You're a werewolf."
He aimed a limp scowl at her back, annoyed with the reminder. "I was... worried about... you." And immediately regretted the gruff admission. Dammit, what was wrong with him lately, anyhow? One night of magnificent sex, and he was losing his mind! Either that, or it was the pain talking.
"Sorry."
And damned if she didn't sound sorry, he thought on a small burst of amazement. It was incredible what this one woman could do to him. Could give him. And what could he give her in return? Nothing.
Ribaud, you're nuts, he thought savagely. You got no call t'be thinkin' like this. Even if you live through this, Carolina isn't gonna stick around.
Carolina turned south to follow along the edge of the bayou. Gabriel stopped her with a tug on her arm. She turned in surprise.
"Not that way." It was ragged, but determined. "I know a place."
She allowed him to lead her in the new direction, secretly relieved to have the burden of command taken away. She'd been running blind and trusting luck not to land her in more trouble than she already had, but Gabriel had lived here for decades. He must know the bayou. He probably been hunting on it for longer than she cared to imagine.
Carolina firmly shut the vision of half-blind, inhuman eyes mocking her from Gabriel's elegant features. She didn't want to think about what he must have done to survive all this time.
Lost in her thoughts, Carolina couldn't keep herself from slamming into Gabriel's broad back. "Gabriel?"
"Here. We need to cross here." A short, chopping movement of his hand indicated the sluggish, black expanse of river between them and what looked like a small, plant-choked island.
She looked in vain for a boat, dreading the thought of entering the water. "How?"
He suddenly doubled over in pain, and it was all Carolina could do to keep him from tumbling headfirst into the bayou. "Gabriel!"
"She's coming." He brought his head up to look over his shoulder, and Carolina shuddered. His eyes were the wolf's eyes, soulless and predatory.
"She's changing you." Carolina's hands latched on to his shoulders, gripping with a strength he wouldn't have guessed belonged in those elegantly slender fingers. "What do you need me to do?"
My God. He thought it was an awe he'd thought he had lost years ago. She'd help me, even now?
He didn't let himself follow that thought. Instead, he blanked his mind of everything except her and let the lurking transformation loose.
But not completely. Just enough so that he could feel the wolf's strength flowing through his body in a midnight tide. Through the pain of Mignon's anger, he could feel the familiar, glittering pleasure-pain of his transformation. Nails grew into claws, the very bones in his skull slid and shifted subtly, realigning. There was a sharp tingle in his gums as his canines elongated.
The darkness of the night was abruptly halved as his vision changed, and the world was suddenly composed of scents; humid, fecund perfume of earth and water, pungent animal spoor, rotting vegetation... Carolina.
A bladelike hunger twisted in his vitals, goaded by nothing more than that petal-soft fragrance. The fragment of him that was still Gabriel battered it back. This woman was his hope of salvation.
He could smell her fear as he rounded on her, but she stood her ground. He wanted to tell her that he wouldn't hurt her, but he couldn't make that guarantee. And he wouldn't lie to her. That much he could give.
If she'd felt like a feather when he'd carried her before, she was nothing to him now. Still, as one foot cautiously tested the ground for the best footing possible, he'd never been so aware of another being. Except when he'd been loving her...
Carolina felt trapped in a timeless agony of waiting. Waiting for Gabriel's transformation to complete itself. Waiting for him to leap with her... or on her. Waiting...
And then she wasn't waiting, because the oily gray mist that had followed them out of the house was flowing in a brackish tide into the tiny clearing at the edge of the bayou. The sweat-drenched night was abruptly and utterly cold. The hair on the back of her neck stirred in primitive reaction.
Gabriel spun around to confront the mist. All of Carolina's senses seemed tuned to the instinctive awareness of the hunted. She could feel the tension in his powerful body as clearly as she could feel the evil that the mist embodied. A hundred distant, disembodied voices seemed to call her name, something prodding at the back of her mind, and Carolina squeezed her eyes closed in an effort to keep the thing out. She wasn't going to fall for the same trick twice.
Gabriel growled defiance at the encircling, writhing mists and leapt.
For the first time, Carolina experienced something of the primitive exultation that Gabriel must feel when he changed under the moon. To be in control of such power, to know the satisfyingly uncomplicated hungers of the beast must be intoxicating.
They landed on the opposite bank with a lightly jarring thud, and Gabriel set her down slowly in a full-body caress that was as basic as it was seductive. Her nerve endings leapt to life with stunning force. This was the power of the loup-garou, Carolina thought with wonder, staring up into those mesmerizing, liquid ebony eyes. The seductive lure of the forbidden, of pleasures that no human lover could ever bestow.
Until the morning. Until the fruition of the curse.
The reminder chilled her. She stepped away, cautiously. No sudden movements. No threatening postures.
But he wasn't watching her. He had turned away to glare at the mist-filled clearing they'd just left. The dark, viscous stuff was oozing upward now, writhing into a shape. A woman's shape. Mignon.
Gabriel threw his head back and bayed his defiance to the black velvet sky.
Carolina waited tensely beside him, praying that those old wives' tales had been correct in presuming that evil couldn't cross running water. Praying that Gabriel wouldn't turn out to be more deadly to her than that mist.
The mist seethed on the opposite bank, rippling around the woman form in a restless tide. It lipped at the water, and Carolina found herself holding her breath. Her relief gusted out of her in a long sigh as the stuff drew back with obvious alacrity.
Oh, God, it was working. It had to be! The whispering voices in her head had quieted, along with the rest of the night. It was eerily silent, so silent that she could hear her heartbeat as if she were drumming it on a huge hollow log.
And then Gabriel cried out.
Carolina sprang toward him, catching his arm. His heavy weight bore her to the marshy ground. "Gabriel?" Panting, she worked him around so that he was lying on his back, his head on her lap. "Gabriel!"
His altered features were stark with pain, his clawed hands gouging up clumps of earth. As she watched, another convulsion hit, wracking his entire body. Gabriel curled into a fetal position, moaning brokenly.
White-hot rage flooded through Carolina, burning away the lingering touch of the clammy mist in a burst of incandescent heat. Her light eyes stabbed through the murky night to the other bank, and the cloudy female shape. "Leave him alone, damn you! Leave him alone! I won't let you hurt him anymore!"
There was a blunt shower of pain at the back of Carolina's skull as the thing - Mignon - tried to influence her again. And failed. Whether it was her determination, her fury, or if the water barrier kept her at bay, Carolina wasn't sure. What she was sure of, however, was that the mist was slowly de-evolving, flowing back into its original shape as she watched. And then it receded like a second tide, leaving the opposite bank clear.
Gabriel moaned again, quietly. Carolina turned her attention to him, bending low so that she could see his face clearly. The white lines of pain were gone, and as she watched, the wolf left him, slipping away like a discarded caul.
She touched her fingers to the achingly familiar roughness of his beard-stubbled cheek. "Gabriel. It worked."
He rolled his head sluggishly against the resiliency of her lap. "It worked?"
"Yes. She can't cross the water."
He peeled his eyes open and met hers. "Safe?"
"Well, there's still the local wildlife to worry about." Carolina glanced around uneasily. Staying out on the bank was asking for trouble from any number of sources, besides being extremely uncomfortable. And soggy.
"Over there." A pointing finger rose, and Carolina couldn't help but notice that it was no longer clawed. "Past that." A wave indicated the tangle of bushes and moss-shrouded trees.
"What?"
"A house." He struggled to his feet, leaning heavily on her. "C'mon."
She yielded, but wouldn't allow him to take the lead as he wanted to. "You're too weak." The moment the words were out of her mouth, she felt like a fool. Or worse, a Grade B movie heroine. But curiosity prodded her onward. "Are you supposed to be so exhausted after..." She couldn't finish the sentence.
"After?" he repeated sardonically. "No. This isn't from the change, petite. It's from Mignon."
"What? But, she can't..."
"No, she can't. She doesn't have to. All she has t'do is withdraw her curse and make me mortal."
"Oh my God. Gabriel, why?"
"She's punishin' me."
He sounded so matter-of-fact about it that Carolina wanted to hit him. "How can you be sure?"
Gabriel smiled despite his better judgement. She was a fierce little thing when she was riled, that was for sure. "I just am."
"That bitch." She tightened her supportive grip on his arm, not knowing how much her honest indignation warmed him. It had been a long time since anyone had cared enough about him to be infuriated on his behalf.
He battered down the warm, sweet feeling and glared feebly at the sagging porch that encircled the once-proud house. Years of neglect and the steadily encroaching bayou had gutted the structure, but it was still sound. He hoped.
"Is it going to fall down?" Carolina was dubiously eyeing the house.
"Only if you breathe hard on it," he murmured, only half-facetiously. "Don' worry, Caro. I always thought that this place would hold up pretty good, no matter what you threw at it."
She watched him with wise eyes. "You were planning on coming here to die, weren't you? If I couldn't find a cure?"
"Yeah." The single word fell flat on the thick air.
She helped him up the rotting stairs and somehow managed to muscle the moisture-swollen door open. The interior wasn't as bad as she'd feared. There were still vestiges of grandeur in the meticulous woodworking, the spotted but still magnificent chandelier, the few remaining furnishings, obviously hand-crafted. But after the first appreciative moment, Carolina was just glad that the walls still appeared sound in spite of their decorative pattern of mildew.
Gabriel sketched an elegantly ironic bow, upsetting his balance and nearly toppling over. Carolina caught him just in time and hauled him back upright. He grinned in tired self-depreciation. "Welcome t'my home away from home."
His face contorted suddenly, a strangled groan forcing its way through his clenched teeth.
"We've got to get you to someplace where you can rest." Carolina neatly insinuated herself against his side, draping his arm over her shoulder. Gabriel felt like an absolute jackass, leaning on her slender form like a sinner hanging on the coattails of a saint. But she seemed full of the strength that he had lost, and he couldn't help himself, no matter what the blow to his pride.
Under his directions, she got him to an upstairs bedroom. The linens were surprisingly fresh, she noted as she tumbled him awkwardly into the wide bed. He looked almost as gray as the warped floorboards did, she thought, perching carefully beside him. And he looked... older.
"Gabriel?"
He waved her concern aside. "There's nothing you can do, Carolina. Don' fret about it."
"What's she doing to you?"
"Its what she's not doin' that's the problem." He sighed heavily. "I told you outside, I'm human now. And mortal. I'm aging all those years that I lived."
Horror made Carolina almost physically ill. "But you're two hundred years old!"
"I know."
"Oh, Gabriel." It was a soft sigh, and it tore at him, bringing a fresh slash of pain. "Oh, Gabriel, I'm so sorry. I wish I'd known."
"No way you could have. Don' fret, ma belle, there's nothing you can do." He rolled his head against the pillow and laughed softly, almost to himself. "I always wanted t'die in bed."
Carolina surreptitiously dashed at her brimming eyes. "I can't believe that this was what you meant. Being alone in bed, I mean."
"Never in my wildest dreams," he admitted dryly. He watched her try for a watery smile, and that was when Gabriel realized that he was scared. Gut-ripping, bone-chilling scared. "Carolina, I don't want to die. Not yet. Not without..." His hand slid up her bare arm. She felt like the only source of heat and light in a cold, dark world. He craved her.
Carolina tried to pull away, but gently, careful not to hurt him further. "You can't!"
Gabriel was very much afraid she was right, but he needed her too much to tell her so. He ignored the protests he saw in her eyes, cupping his wandering hand around the back of her neck. "C'mere, petite. We gonna celebrate life, you and me."
"Gabriel, I don't think..."
"Shhh." He pulled her over him and gently brushed his lips over hers. Once. Twice. And then he drew back so that he could look into the suddenly-bottomless green depths of her wide eyes. There was shock there, and sweet, swelling passion. And... something he couldn't, wouldn't name, but that made everything seem right. "Just this once, mon petite amoreuse, let me do somethin' selfless."
Her lips parted on a puff of air that barely shaped his name. The burnished golden lashes floated down to rest on her cheeks in acquiescence.
She wanted him. The knowledge was a balm to his pain-wracked body. Knowing what he was, what he'd done... she still wanted him.
With a feeling close to awe, Gabriel tugged her closer, until she was lying atop him. His battered body protested, but he ignored the pain for the sweet ache burgeoning in his chest. He'd lived with pain of one kind or another for so long that he could ignore it, but he couldn't ignore this. This... it went far beyond simple need, but that was the only name he had for it. Need. Longing.
"Ah, Carolina. Carolina." He whispered her name into her mouth even as he drank deeply of her sweetness.
She moaned softly, wriggling atop him as if needing to feel all of him with all of her. Pleasure began to pulse along pain-deadened nerve endings. It hadn't been a fluke, he realized. She could still make him feel alive.
She could feel the heat and pressure of his palm at the base of her spine, and at the apex of her thighs, heavy male flesh nuzzled her through the wet denim of her cutoffs. She felt tinglingly alive, wholly feminine. The danger that they had escaped was a cold, distant speck in her memory. It didn't exist. Nothing did, except the two of them, locked together and generating enough heat to burn down the night.
But when Gabriel slowly rolled them over on the bed with a fraction of his usual grace and power, Carolina remembered. "Gabriel, you're hurting, we shouldn't..."
"Shhh." His lips caressed hers. Gently. Thoroughly. "Don' say that. Just tell me you want me."
"I do. I do, but..."
His large, warm palm slid over her hip, mapping the planes and curves of her body. Stealing her words and her breath. His mouth brushed hers with butterfly lightness, making her soften and shiver.
"Gabriel..."
His hand slid under her clothes, loosening the sweat-damp cloth. "Do you want this, petite?"
She opened her eyes and looked at him. His face was drawn, his eyes so black, so wild... but so gentle. She felt her heart melt, her doubts unravel. "Yes."
He closed her eyes with kisses, and somehow, her clothing seemed to melt away. His touch traveled everywhere, telling her silently that he found her beautiful, desirable, eminently feminine and fascinating. In a low, hoarse voice, he praised the smoothness of her skin, the shape of her breasts, her responsiveness as he caressed her in places that made her gasp. And when he found those sensitive places, he lingered, his touch gently eager as he drank her low cries.
"Let me, Carolina. Please let me." Gabriel knew that he sounded desperate, but he didn't care. Carolina's sweet body sang of life and pleasure beneath his hands. His own body was clamoring for the honeyed oblivion of release, and he ignored it. There was ecstacy here already in the knowledge that he could give pleasure without death. Without sacrificing more of his soul than he could afford to lose. That, he thought triumphantly, was his pleasure, and his penance.
So he called forth the glittering tide of ecstacy and watched it consume her, stopping her broken cries with his mouth. And he gloried in the proof that he was still a man.
He gently captured her soft, trembling hands when they began to wander over him. "No."
She had to wait a moment before she had enough breath to speak. "But why?"
"Because for once, I want t'give. No strings attached. Nothing expected in return." He tasted her trembling lips. "All my life, I've never done that. Never been... selfless."
"Were you just now?"
"Not exactly." His lips twisted. "I wanted t'see your eyes when I brought you a taste of heaven." He brushed a fingertip over the arch of her eyebrow. "When you look at me, just the way you are now, you almost make me believe..."
"In what?"
"Possibilities."
"You make me believe, too."
"In what?"
Sanity started its cold slide into her mind. What was she doing, baring her soul like this? "Nothing."
"C'mon, Carolina. I've bared my soul t'you."
The unconscious reminder of her own words made her tense, but then she relented. He was right, and after all, it wasn't as if either one of them had many secrets left anyway. "You make me believe that I'm a real woman. That I'm enough... just the way I am."
If possible, his touch turned even more soothing. "Good God, 'tite fille, where'd you get an idea like that?"
Carolina shifted uncomfortably, suddenly, oddly conscious of her vulnerable state of undress. "My fiancé."
"You're engaged?' Somehow, he'd never thought of that possibility. But what kind of man was this fiancé, to leave this deliciously tempting woman free to run around consorting with jaded, reclusive men like him?
Her next words explained at least some of the puzzle. "Not anymore. Jean-Michael broke it off just before I left for Zaire. Said it was him or my foolish projects, and I chose the projects. I figured that with them, at least I wouldn't be bored."
Privately, Gabriel considered the consummate stupidity of the man and realized that it had contributed to his own good fortune. But that didn't make it easier for him to swallow. Imagine any man worth the name letting Carolina York slip through his fingers! He sifted a handful of her long, fine hair through his own fingers, imagining that it glowed in a hundred shades of gold in the moonlight pouring through the uncurtained window. "Bet you were a hit with those tribesmen."
"Sort of." Her chuckle turned to a yawn.
A quiet laugh shook Gabriel. He tucked her sated body closer to his despite the pervasive humidity. "Go to sleep, petite."
"Should we?" Her sleepy tone held doubt. "I mean, shouldn't we be trying to figure a way out of this?"
"Carolina, we can't. We can't go blundering about the bayou at night. Not safe. And we don't know if the curse'll come back on me once I'm across the river."
"You said she withdrew it."
"T'punish me, yeah. But it'd be just like Mignon t'decide that I'd be more chastised by forcing my transformation and watching me kill you." He felt the shudder that wracked her. "I'm too tired t'fight it, Carolina. I might..."
She brushed quieting fingertips across his lips, checking the flow of words. "I understand." She hesitated. "Should I leave? I mean, won't I hurt you if I stay?"
"You're about the only thing stoppin' the hurt," he admitted roughly, wondering if he'd lost his mind along with his youth.
Carolina seemed to sense his turbulent thoughts. "Goodnight, Gabriel." She snuggled her cheek into his chest and let her free arm go around him, holding him as if she could keep him from flying apart.
"Goodnight, cherie." The soft, fragrant weight of her against him really did lessen the agony, he thought fuzzily, just before he let exhaustion claim him.
Gabriel woke sluggishly, not wanting to budge from the gray world of sleep where pain was a distant memory.
But something - no, someone - was shaking him. Insisting that he awaken. He rolled his head on the flattened pillow and growled peevishly. "Dammit..."
"Gabriel, wake up!"
She wasn't cooperating. He opened his eyes, intending to glare at her. He was sidetracked by the absolutely glorious sight of Carolina naked, sitting back on her heels beside him, bathed in liquid sunlight that held as many shades of gold as her hair.
It took him a moment to realize that there was a strange, excited light in her eyes. And that she wasn't giving him a chance to wake up enough to investigate any of the intriguing possibilities that were suddenly occurring to him.
"Gabriel, you said that Mignon wasn't a giving woman. But she did expect things from you, didn't she?"
He growled an affirmation.
"Good. Now think back. Was there anything you gave her that she particularly seemed to want? Something she got really excited over?"
"You mean, besides this?" He gestured toward his lap, where the sheet was barely enough to maintain his modesty.
She glared.
"All right, all right." Gabriel raked a hand through his hair. "I gave her a lot of things. Dresses, jewelry..."
"Jewelry." Carolina pounced on the idea. "What was her favorite piece of jewelry?"
"A diamond necklace." He could still remember how Mignon had purred over the glittering stones. And how she'd rewarded him for it later.
"That's it. That has to be what she used to capture your soul."
"What makes you so sure?"
Carolina rolled her eyes expressively. "If I had been her, I would've liked the poetic justice of using something you'd given me to take what was most precious from you. Besides, in folklore, diamonds are often associated with curses."
"More folklore?"
"Don't knock it, Gabriel. It's worked so far, hasn't it?"
A twist of a smile signaled his agreement. "Now what?"
She twisted her hands together. "We have to figure out where she put it."
"She didn't destroy it?"
"If she had," Carolina said a bit grimly, "you'd be dead. Or free." Her fingers massaged her temples. "Darn it, my head hurts."
"Is it Mignon?"
"No. There aren't any shadows here."
Gabriel stilled. "Shadows?" Carolina had been affected by the shadows around the house. Mignon - or what was left of her - had flowed out of the shadows. And suddenly, he knew where the diamonds had been hidden. "The house. They're somewhere in the house. We have to go back."
"Yes. We have to go back." But I don't have to like it. Carolina kept that thought to herself as she threw on her sadly-wrinkled, slightly damp clothes.
But Gabriel caught her expression. "Carolina? What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Don' start lying t'me now." He caught her arm and made her look at him. "Something is wrong. Tell me, petite."
She wrenched away. "I just don't want her to hurt you anymore."
Such simple words to move him so much. Gabriel reached out to stroke her face. "One thing I've learned, cherie. Life hurts. That's how you know you're still livin' it." He hesitated. "I can go alone."
"You can," she agreed quietly, drawing herself up to her full height. "But you won't."
His sudden, fierce kiss belied his diminished strength and left her reeling. "No, I guess I won't." He gripped her hand, as much for reassurance as to reassure. "C'mon, petite. Time's runnin' out."
The bayou was more eerily beautiful by daylight, and certainly more navigable, but Carolina would have preferred not to see all the hazards she could have tumbled into last night. It was one thing to know there were snakes and bugs and nutria rats lurking in the underbrush. It was another thing to exchange long looks with them.
She shivered.
Gabriel's hand tightened its clasp on hers. "Cold?"
In this heat? Was he kidding? Even in her damp and bedraggled cutoffs and halter top, she was ready to wilt. Carolina stared at his broad back in shock, and then she realized that he was trying to distract her. "Very," she replied gravely.
"Too bad it won't snow anytime soon. I always wanted t'rescue some beautiful, bedraggled damsel from a raging blizzard and carry her t'my isolated cabin deep in the woods."
"You've been reading too many dime novels. Have you ever even seen snow?"
"Once or twice," Gabriel admitted with forced cheer. "Strange stuff."
"Gabriel?"
"Hmmm?"
"You don't have to keep talking. I can handle the local wildlife."
Gabriel brushed aside a particularly low-hanging swath of Spanish moss. "Hell, chere, I'm not doin' it for you. I'm doin' it for me."
She hid a smile. "Nervous?"
"Scared stiff."
"It'll be all right, you know. One way or another."
He turned and took a long look at her. "Carolina, I won't hold you to your promise."
"I will."
For a moment, he was speechless. And then he drew her close, holding her within the circle of his arms with such gentleness that she had to blink back tears. "I... don't know what to say."
"You don't have to say anything. I just hate breaking my promises, that's all."
Gabriel looked at her strangely, and she had the feeling that he could see through the lies and read what had to be written in flaming letters all over her body. What a hell of a time to realize that she loved him, she thought miserably.
"Hey, shouldn't we be going? We're losing the light." It wasn't precisely true, but there was an impressive bank of storm clouds beginning to form overhead. She definitely didn't want to get caught out in a torrential rainstorm.
"We'll go." But he cupped her face in his hands first. "Thank you, Carolina York."
"For what?" She didn't think she'd ever seen his eyes so soft, not even last night when he'd made her shiver and unravel with just his hands.
"Everything. Just... everything." He smiled a little before letting her go. But not entirely, she noted, because his hand closed on hers again with reassuring strength. Neither of them said a word as they resumed walking.
Carolina had lost track of the time. The leafy canopies overhead were so thick with summer greenery that she couldn't accurately gauge the position of the sun, and Gabriel wouldn't release her hand so that she could consult her watch. In a way, she didn't mind. The bayou was timeless, and this journey through it might well be the last bit of time she'd have with Gabriel. It could go on forever, as far as she cared.
A moment later, it seemed, they were entering a clearing. No, a garden, she thought with a strange sense of despair as she recognized it. Gabriel's garden. The house itself loomed ahead, its peeling stucco facade subtly menacing.
Carolina's head began to pound in a familiar rhythm. Her hand tightened on Gabriel's.
"I know," he said roughly. "I feel it, too."
"The pain?" If her anxiety was mirrored in her voice, she couldn't help it. "Is it worse?"
He didn't say anything, but he was frighteningly pale beneath his tan. "Let's get this over with."
The house was echoingly empty and still, as if a great storm were beginning to gather beneath the old roof. The vaguest tingle of electricity touched the atmosphere with the stink of ozone.
"Gabriel?"
He tightened his grip on her slender fingers. It was all he could do. The pain was growing worse by the moment, sapping what little was left of his strength. Gabriel swore under his breath. What good would he be to Carolina if Mignon decided to strike at them? How would he be able to defend her?
Defend her? He looked down at her blond head. He'd never in his life wanted to defend a woman. Fighting duels over a woman's honor didn't count; he'd viewed those as challenges to his skill with firearms or sword. They hadn't been serious. They hadn't meant life or death. And he'd never even loved the various ladies the way he loved... Carolina.
She turned her face up to his, and he was startled by the amount of sheer stubbornness he could see in the jut of her chin. In the flash of her peridot eyes. She'd been tramping through a swamp for days, looked as if she hadn't slept at all, had garnered more scratches on that beautiful skin, and dammit, he'd never seen any woman look so beautiful.
The atmosphere in the house tightened a notch, as if Mignon could sense his thoughts. He didn't care. Let her know how he felt!
And then he reminded himself that he couldn't feel this way. He couldn't possibly love Carolina. It was all part of the curse.
Then why, a part of his mind wondered idly, was Mignon so damn mad?
"Gabriel?"
"Sorry, petite. I was just... thinking."
"I hope it was about where to look for those diamonds, because I think we're running out of time."
The set of his lips tightened, and she wondered if her words sounded as final to him as they had to her. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. One way or another, I'm gonna be free of that woman."
"I hope you have a preference as to which way," she muttered under her breath. "I'd hate to lose the best verbal sparring partner I've ever had."
He grinned faintly, white lines of suffering etching the corners of his mouth. "Want to try the parlor first?"
"Why not?" At least then he wouldn't have to climb any stairs.
Once inside the parlor, her optimism dimmed. There were so many places to hide something so small as a diamond necklace. Assuming, of course, that whoever had helped Mignon carry out her vengeance hadn't broken up the necklace and put each stone in a different location. Carolina devoutly hoped that wasn't the case. This venture already had enough strikes against it.
Gabriel was frowning as he looked around. "Damned old houses. There're too many places t'hide things."
"I was just thinking that," Carolina admitted. "Where do we start?"
"When I was a street thief, I used to put my takes under the floorboards before I sold them."
Carolina looked at him in fascination. "You used to be a thief?"
Gabriel shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah." Somehow, something he'd once been proud of had become something he did not want to admit to Carolina. He'd gotten to like the way she watched him sometimes, as if he were just a step below being a god. He didn't want to see that light in her eyes dim into disgust.
But it didn't. "Is that how you've been financing your collection? From your takes?"
Damned if she didn't look fascinated. "Sometimes. But I went legitimate a few years before..." Before I died, he added silently.
"Gabriel, I'm not going to condemn you for something you did over a hundred years ago. If you think we should look underneath the floorboards, then that's what we'll do."
They hadn't pried up very many before Carolina saw a small gleam amid years of dust. "I think I found something," she called eagerly over her shoulder, then crouched lower to dig into the dust. Something cold and hard met her searching fingertips. Carolina felt a thrill of triumph.
And then something slammed into her from behind and sent her sprawling.
Carolina fetched up hard against the wall, feeling the breath gust out of her. She lay there, dazed, until Gabriel's concerned face swam into view. "Carolina? Don't move, dawlin'. You gonna be fine."
"Of course I am." Darn, she wished she didn't sound so breathless. It didn't seem to be helping her allay Gabriel's anxiety any. But then, she reminded herself, she didn't exactly have much say in how she breathed at the moment.
Still wearing a dubious look, he helped her sit up straight. "I'm fine. Did you see what happened?"
"All I saw was you gettin' tossed like a hat against the wall." Remembered anger darkened his face.
"Then I'd say I was making her nervous." Triumphantly, Carolina held up her clenched fist and opened it slowly. A large, square-cut diamond glittered with a fractured, almost yellow light against her palm. It seemed to pulse eerily as it warmed from the contact with her skin.
Thunder boomed suddenly, sounding threateningly close.
They looked at each other. Carolina cleared her throat delicately. "Do you remember that storm being so close?"
Gabriel shook his head. "I'd say you were right 'bout her bein' nervous. Where else should we look?"
By the time they'd unearthed the second yellowish diamond, Carolina's headache had intensified. Gabriel, too, was feeling the effects of Mignon's almost palpable rage. He was gray beneath the natural bronze of his skin. He seemed to be aging faster, gaining years with the hours.
"I don' think there are any more in here."
Carolina nodded agreement. "Where next?"
Another roll of thunder rattled the house on its foundations. Carolina stifled a small, instinctive shriek as an unnaturally arctic wind exploded through the window and brawled through the house.
"Come on!" Gabriel grabbed her arm and ran for the door.
"Where are we going?"
"Out!" But he came to a dead stop in the hallway. Carolina peeked around him, her hand clenched so tightly around the two recovered diamonds that it ached.
"Oh... my... God..." She stared at the figure. The mist that formed it lent it a curiously insubstantial, but the threat it exuded was all too real.
"Mignon," Gabriel whispered.
The figure didn't say anything, but the floor began to ripple, as if some giant worm were burrowing under it. Heading straight for them.
"Come on!" Carolina sprang for the stairs, tugging Gabriel behind them. She headed unerringly for the library. She slammed the door and leaned against it, adrenaline still pumping through her. Her head was on the edge of exploding. She bit her lip against the rolling pain that seemed to echo the thunder outside.
Gabriel's own breathing was ragged. He leaned against the desk for support, hating his weakness, hating his inability to fight it more. "Carolina... I want you... to leave. Now."
"I'm not leaving." She regretted the ferocity of her reply only because it augmented her headache. "I made you a promise, remember?"
"Dammit..." He was glaring at her, looking as if he wanted to throttle her... or kiss her. Lordy, Carolina, you want to jump a man who's so weak that he needs to lean on a desk to stay upright? How positively indecent.
"You're not changing my mind," she told him in a voice that only shook a little. "Don't even try."
He bit off a curse that probably would have singed her ears. "Stubborn woman. Don't you see that I don't want you hurt?"
"Why not?"
The library was abruptly quiet. Even the storm outside seemed to hold its breath for that moment. Carolina could swear that she could hear the ashes that had once been an almost-priceless copy of Vodou filtering slowly from the desktop to the floor.
"Damn." A pulse at the base of his throat throbbed visibly. "D'you want me t'say it now? Do you really want that?"
Her tongue crept out to moisten parched lips. "Maybe I do."
The door exploded inward, flinging Carolina into the opposite wall. Through a hot red haze, she heard a surging roar of agony. She struggled to a standing position, catching tentative handholds on the bookcase and praying that she didn't pull it over on herself. "Gabriel!"
The wind had somehow entered the room, creating a tornado of papers and swirling ash. Carolina thought that she saw Mignon's ghostly figure in the center of the maelstrom, but only for a second. Her attention was all for Gabriel.
He was bent double, hands wrapped around his middle as if attempting to keep something inside him from getting out. As she watched, horrified, he slid to the floor.
"Gabriel!" Fighting the wind and the massive pain in her head, she hurried to his side. Please let him be all right, please...
She lightly rested her hand on his back, felt muscles jump and tense beneath her touch. God, what was Mignon doing to him?
"Carolina... Carolina... Do it..."
"Do what? I don't understand."
"The gun... in the desk... Use it."
Carolina's heart shuddered to a standstill and lay leadenly in her chest. "No! I can't!"
Gabriel's head jerked up; his features were contorted almost beyond recognition and she saw the unmistakable mark of the wolf in his eyes. "You've got t'kill me. Now. Before I kill you!"
As she watched, horrified, the transformation began. Claws grew from the elegantly masculine fingers, teeth bared in a grimace as they became fangs, his whole body began to shift and realign itself into an alien pattern.
And then it stopped. Carolina stared at him with disbelief and a barely-born hope. He was fighting it!
The wind seemed to shriek a command, and she could see Gabriel struggle visibly for control of himself. Something inside her snapped. She jumped to her feet, facing into the seething wind but not feeling it at it tore at her hair and clothing. "Leave him alone! Do you hear me, you bitch? I said leave him alone!"
The inside of her head seemed to coalesce into hard, writhing knot of destructive force. Carolina staggered, falling against the edge of the desk. She knew she was going to die like this, with her head imploding like an egg in vacuum...
But not without a fight. "Get out of my head." Her growl sounded startlingly like one of Gabriel's. "I won't let you use me again! Get out of my head!" Lightning seemed to sear the inside of her skull; in desperation, she clumsily directed the energy outward, picturing it streaming out of her head and into the room.
The desk burst into flames.
Carolina ducked as a halo of sparks ignited one of the drapes. It shouldn't be burning so fast. The weather's been too wet for too long. But she couldn't deny that the furnishings were burning with an almost sentient fury. Reflexively, she tore the drapes off the walls and tried to stomp out the flames. They leapt up, licking at the toes of her sodden tennis shoes. Carolina leapt out of the way; as if frustrated, tiny red lines of fire began to fracture across the floor like hungry snakes seeking a meal.
It took a few seconds for her dulled senses to notice that the wind had begun to abate. Almost... almost as if it were growing weaker.
That was it! Comprehension dawned in a brilliant inner burst of light. That was the key! Elated, she turned to look for Gabriel. And felt her heart thud to a stop somewhere high in her throat.
He towered behind her, a stark, terrifying figure silhouetted against the growing flames. He was still only half-transformed, but it only served to make him seem more terrifying. Holding on tightly to her rapidly-vanishing courage, she took a step forward.
He growled softly.
She swallowed, and her chin went up that crucial notch. "Gabriel? Gabriel, can you hear me? Can you understand me?"
Two clawed hands shot out with incredible speed. One fastened around her throat. The other traced a meandering pattern over her suddenly-pounding heart, then down along her ribs. The thin cloth of her top snagged on his claws, shredding as easily as if it were wet tissue.
Carolina licked her lips again. 'Call a werewolf thrice by his Christian name, and reasoning shall be restored to him'. She swallowed hard. I really hope this works. "Gabriel, please..."
He hesitated, and the powerful hand her throat loosened almost imperceptibly. She jumped on the hesitation. "The house is her power, Gabriel. The diamonds must have been hidden all over. In the floor. In the walls. Everywhere." She knew she was babbling, but was afraid that if she stopped, she'd lose that fragile thread of humanity that she'd somehow managed to secure in him. "That makes the house her source of power. We have to destroy the house. We have to burn it. Do you understand?" Please understand, she pleaded silently. Please.
Something flickered in those feral eyes. It might have been his soul. It might have been a trick of the light. Carolina held her breath as she waited, wondering. Time had never passed so slowly before.
Finally, a low growl that could have been her name passed his lips. He let her go, but didn't release her from the black spell of his eyes. Not for an endless, aching moment.
And in the next breath, he had launched himself at the wall, clawing at the peeling paint and the plaster behind it. The long, wicked gouge marks gleamed whitely, like exposed bone from a wound.
Galvanized, Carolina snatched at more burning material and flung it at one of the unscathed walls. It caught as if it were bone-dry tinder.
The shadows seemed to scream in soundless rage.
Carolina ignored it. Gabriel was a dark, massive shadow in the fire-lit darkness, moving, slashing, ripping at walls and bookcases alike. She began to choke from the soot and ash lacing the already-thick air, but Gabriel didn't seem to be affected. Maybe he couldn't be affected.
Carolina put everything else out of her mind except making sure that the lovely old plantation house burned to the ground. The fire was spreading quickly now, and she spared a moment to thank whatever gods were listening for Gabriel's lack of neighbors. The last thing they needed was the fire department showing up.
She shoved at the big mahogany desk until its burning surface was against the last wall. Licks of flame leapt to the new surface as if compelled toward it.
The wind had all but died, Mignon's power weakening rapidly with the destruction of the house, but Carolina swore that she heard a wicked peal of laughter, followed by a creaking groan. She looked up just as the ceiling directly above her began to give way.
She wanted to move, but her body was frozen - by fear or by Mignon in her final attempt to destroy her rival, Carolina was never sure. All she knew was that an involuntary scream was clawing its way to her lips when something slammed into her from behind. A hard body cushioned her fall to the floor just as the ceiling collapsed in a shower of flame and plaster.
Gabriel. She only had the energy to think the name. He swept her up in a rush of disciplined power, carrying her through the smoke-filled house with a speed that rendered her breathless. By the time she realized what had happened, the blessedly smoke-free air of the back garden filled her lungs. Something wet spattered her face. Rain? Yes, the storm had brought rain. Momentary panic filled her. Would that put out the fire?
Carolina lifted her face from the hollow of Gabriel's shoulder. No, the flames were still going strong, spreading throughout the entire upper story at a rate that she would have thought impossible, if she hadn't known the cause. Mignon's second death, unlike her first, would be both spectacular and final.
She hoped.
The lower floor lit as they watched. Carolina squashed a pang as she thought of the books being destroyed. Better the books than the man you... She forced herself to complete the thought. The man you love.
She felt the growl go through his chest like distant thunder, felt a new tension take his body. Carolina looked up, alarmed. "Gabriel?"
He wasn't listening to her. Following the line of his gaze, she saw the upper library window. A voluptuous female form was silhouetted against the writhing flames.
Gabriel snarled again, louder, and put her from him as easily as she would set aside her purse. Suddenly, she knew what he was going to do. "Gabriel, no!"
The form in the window raised a beckoning hand.
"No!" Carolina clutched at him. She might as well have tried to catch the wind in her bare hands. The whole house seemed to sizzle in the rain as he plunged back inside.
"Gabriel!" His name was ripped from her. "You can't fight her! Oh, God, please, please let him be all right. Please..."
The house shimmered for a long second, for as long as it took her heart to beat once.
And then it exploded.
Marguerite gazed anxiously at the young woman behind the counter. In the two weeks since the Ribaud house had been destroyed, Carolina had said little other than she had been leaving when the antique fan in the library had started spitting sparks. After that, she only remembered the fire and Gabriel getting her out of the house. Why he'd gone back in, she hadn't known. Or hadn't cared to tell.
Marguerite didn't care. Her little girl had become progressively more withdrawn, apparently eating little and certainly saying less. She plopped her hands on her hips and blew out a decidedly unladylike sigh of frustration. There had to be something she could do. Anything.
With a sense of being steered by the whims of Fate, she picked up the phone.
The bell over the door jangled merrily. Carolina looked up, trying without much success to paste a matching smile on her face. "Welcome to Treasured Tales. Go ahead and browse, and if you have any questions, please feel free to ask."
"Just one question," a woman drawled in a cultured voice that sounded like magnolias and cream. "When are you going to forgive me?"
Carolina's head jerked up. She knew she had just heard her mother's voice, she could smell the gardenia perfume, but the only person in the shop at the moment was a petite woman who stood before the counter. She blinked to clear her contacts. The woman was still wearing shorts and a halter top that showed off a still-arresting figure, things her mother would never be caught dead in.
The woman smiled. Not a gracious, practiced smile, but a full-blown, girlish grin. "Pretty shocking, isn't it?" she asked in that familiar Southern drawl. "I'll bet you didn't even know I had this stuff."
"No... no, I didn't." Carolina squinted again. "Mother? Is that you?"
"Oh, it's me, all right," the older woman answered cryptically. "Really."
The reality of the situation was sinking in. Carolina was suddenly glad of the supportive expanse of the counter. "Why are you... What happened?"
"Among other things... Marguerite." Judith privately wondered how she'd spring her news - that she and Quincy were planning on eloping next week. "She marched over to my house and gave me a good shaking up - literally, I might add. And then she marched me down here to help her while you were gone. I'm glad she wouldn't take no for an answer." Approval shone out of Judith's eyes. "You've accomplished so much, Carolina Virginia, and you've found a way to make yourself happy. I'm so proud of you."
Carolina had the disorienting feeling of having fallen through the rabbit hole when she wasn't looking. "You are?"
Her refined, genteel mother gave a little cry and skirted the counter to wrap her in a very unrefined, rib-cracking hug. "Yes, I am. And your father would be, too. You're so much like him, you know. So stubborn. I suppose that was why I always tried to mold you with decorum and rules. I was afraid I'd lose you to all those dreams you always wanted to pursue. Just like I lost him."
Inadvertently, Carolina grimaced. "You didn't lose me, Mama."
"Almost. And don't argue with your elders. It's not polite." Wrinkling her nose at the slip, Judith gave her daughter one last squeeze and stepped back. "Now, I know that the shop is in trouble - don't fuss, Marguerite told me - and I want to help." It was a good thing Marguerite had told her; the child looked positively gaunt, as if she'd lost weight that she really couldn't afford to lose. "What can I do?"
"Nothing, honestly. We're fine now, with the money I earned from Gabriel..."
"Gabriel Ribaud?" Understanding dawned. "The man you worked for? Didn't he..." Judith remembered the fragmented account of the fire that she'd gotten from Marguerite. "Oh, darling, I'm so sorry. You loved him, didn't you?"
"Yes. But... I never got a chance to tell him."
The older woman's features softened. Her baby girl really had become a woman, but not in a manner Judith would ever have wished for her. "Oh, Carolina."
"No, it's all right. It's something I'll have to live with, that's all. Guess I'd better start now. I've already wasted enough time as it is."
"Is there anything I can do?"
Carolina caught sight of Marguerite grinning mistily from behind a shelf. "Well..." The first genuine smile she'd worn in two weeks touched her face. "How are you at checking inventory?"
It had certainly been a day for miracles, Carolina thought as she locked the shop door behind her. Lord, she was tired, but she didn't mind. It was a good kind of tired, a satisfied kind of tired, the kind you got after a long, rewarding day. It even almost dulled the hollow pain deep inside her. Almost. She didn't think she'd ever really get rid of it.
Shoving her hands into the pockets of her shorts, Carolina started walking home. How long would it be before she could come to terms with what had happened that night?
She was so deep in her thoughts that she didn't realize how long she'd been walking until she looked around and found herself passing through the thick shadows cast by the cathedral. Carolina shivered. She'd never again be able to feel at ease wrapped in shadows, and the weather didn't help dispel the primal chill that had gripped her body. It was another eerie night, with river fog rolling up to carpet the city in muted gray. She shivered again. Mist was another thing she wouldn't miss if she never saw it again. Not after...
Carolina came to a dead halt, her hand automatically tightening around the cool metal cylinder in her right pocket. It wasn't unusual to hear footsteps echoing all around at night, even in New Orleans, but these sounds seemed to be coming from directly behind her. Keeping pace with her. Her heart began to race as she calculated the odds of a fast shot of Mace disabling whoever was lurking behind her enough for her to get away.
Didn' your mama ever tell you there's scary things wandering around in the dark? The memory came quickly, unbidden and painful. She banished it. Trying to look confident, Carolina started walking again. Her mind was racing; where were all the people who usually thronged the Quarters on a warm Friday night? Jackson Square seemed to be deserted except for her. She strained her ears for some sound that would tell her that the other person had moved on, and only heard the muted rumble of an incoming summer thunderstorm.
There! She'd heard the footfalls again. But they'd stopped when she did, just like before. Adrenaline pumped through her system, combined with irritation and a growing, reckless conviction that she had nothing more to lose. So what did it matter if someone with a switchblade was following her? She was dead inside already. She swivelled to face the fog-filled square behind her and whatever lurking presence it held.
Nothing happened. No more sounds came through the still air except the distant sounds of the river boats plying the Mississippi and the closer revelers on Bourbon Street. There were no more footfalls. Not a whimper, not even a growl.
She waited another minute, beginning to feel a little foolish and more than a little disappointed. Well, what did you expect, Carolina? A late jogger? A beat cop? A hooker? An axe murderer? You've finally gone off the deep end, haven't you? Sighing again, she turned to head toward her apartment.
And found herself face to face with a man.
At first glance, she didn't know him. The fog dispersed the illumination from the streetlights, making it impossible for her to see anything other than the sharp planes and shadow-defined hollows of aristocratic features. But then she saw the ebony eyes staring out at her from that chiaroscuro portrait of a face. Black eyes with secrets burning fitfully in their depths, making them seem like slices of the night itself.
She knew those eyes.
Somehow, the whisper slid past Carolina's constricted throat. "Gabriel?"
The man didn't answer, only looked at her with those black, black eyes. Oh, God, I really have lost my mind. I have to be dreaming. I have to be, because it just isn't possible. It can't be possible...
A memory surfaced in her stunned mind. When you look at me like that... you almost make me believe.
In what?
Possibilities.
You make me believe, too.
Carolina felt her eyes begin to sting, but her voice remained amazingly steady. "Gabriel."
She only remembered him snatching her into his arms, arms that were hard and warm and wonderfully familiar. She didn't remember him carrying her to her apartment, or unlocking the door. But it had to have happened because somehow suddenly they were naked, twined together on her big bed.
Gabriel's hands streaked over her yielding flesh, molding it with touches that just escaped being painful. His mouth devoured her. And Carolina submitted eagerly, her hunger just as potent as his. She made him shudder with the merest touch of her fingers on his skin. He made her sob, writhing on the bed as she cried out for him to come to her, to heal the hurt.
Finally, because he was just as tormented, as desperate as she, he made her his with passion and fire, with the urgent hunger of a warrior who had just come home.
Carolina opened her eyes to darkness. The storm had finally rolled in while she slept, filling the air outside with the pounding of rain and the scents of wet earth and concrete.
Inside the bedroom, she could sense the aftermath of a different kind of storm. She stretched, vibrantly aware of the myriad of sensual aches in her body. Equally aware of Gabriel's absence from her bed.
He was a large, still shadow standing by the opened balcony doors. A light breeze blew in the rain dripping from the lacy ironwork, lightly gilding his magnificent bronzed body. A flash of lightning illuminated his face for a moment; she saw the new lines at the corners of eyes and lips. He had aged further since she'd last seen him; he looked to be in his early forties.
He spoke without turning around, his voice mingling with the elemental song of rain and thunder. "What now, Carolina?"
"What now?" She nearly choked on the words. "You're asking me? Dammit, how should I know? I've spent the last two weeks thinking you were dead!" Her fingers yanked taut furrows in the rumpled sheets. "Are you a ghost?"
Gabriel moved suddenly, striding to the bed and coming over her in a lithe rush. His body sank into hers, pinning her to the mattress, and his voice held danger. "Do I feel like a ghost t'you? Do I feel dead?"
"No." But, deep inside, she still did. The joy they'd found in each other still shimmered along her nerve endings, but it didn't seem real. It seemed a memory of other times, other places. Other people.
She was withdrawing from him; he could feel it as surely as if it were an ebbing tide lapping around his body. Gabriel felt an unfamiliar surge of panic. He couldn't lose her now. Not now. His hands resumed their wandering route over Carolina's body again.
She shuddered. He wasn't sure whether it was in pleasure or revulsion. After all, she'd seen what he was. What he had been. It hadn't stopped her before, but maybe now... He stopped the thought.
Carolina twisted suddenly under his hands. "Gabriel, don't."
"Don't what? Don't touch you?"
"I need to think about this. I can't think when..."
"When I touch you? When I taste you?" He did, quick and hard, and left her breast flushed and wet from his mouth.
"No." It came out as a long, sighing moan. "Oh, no."
"Yes." He had to have her, now. She was his anchor to reality, the reason he'd had to come back. Because a part of her was still a part of him, shining like a beacon in his darkness, giving him light, life...
His eyes were so dark, so wild, as if the storm outside was raging in them. But they were hard, too, corrupting the memory she had of them when they had been soft... almost loving. She hated him for that, hated him. And she hated herself, because she still loved him. "Why are you doing this?"
Gabriel stilled for a moment at her aching whisper, but he didn't stop. His fingers brushed the heart of her, eliciting a gasping moan. "Maybe because I suddenly find myself willing t'do anything t'make you look at me the way you did that night on the bayou."
Carolina fought the ecstasy he brought her even as she fought the man himself. She didn't know that it amazed him that there was such strength in that slender, feminine body. "It won't mean anything. You know it won't mean anything. Is that what you want?"
Slowly, reluctantly, Gabriel withdrew his hands from her crying body. Despite the warmth of the night, he felt cold. "No." He moved away, back to the balcony. Without a shred of modesty, he stood full in the path of the chilly, wind-driven rain as if he wanted its bite to exorcise the dark hunger from his body. Tiny wet pellets struck his overheated skin, making him shiver. He was worse than the wolf. It had been a creature of instinct, casually destroying because it had to. Gabriel the man didn't have any such excuse for what he'd been prepared to do.
Carolina sat up, awkwardly wrapping the sheet around her. "Gabriel?" She thought she saw him quiver. "What happened? Why aren't you..." She couldn't finish.
"Dead?" A short, hard laugh ripped its way out of Gabriel's chest. He didn't want to answer, but he had to. Hell, he owed them both that much. "I honestly don' know. I remember the fire... and Mignon." His powerful body tensed. "She was beckoning me in, taunting me. I remember going into the house. I remember... you. Screaming my name like it had been torn out of you." He rounded on her, his eyes glittering. "Why?"
She didn't have to ask what he meant. "Because I loved you."
"For how long?"
"I don't know. Since that night I was sick, I suppose."
"And you never told me?"
"I thought... I knew you wouldn't believe me."
"You were right."
Carolina blinked and sat up straighter. "I was?"
Gabriel didn't think he could bear to see the fragile softness in her eyes die. He'd gone this far, he reminded himself brutally, he had to tell her the rest. "I never told you that part of my curse, did I?"
That damned curse again. Carolina wanted to be done with it once and for all, and she didn't care what she had to do to get her wish. Her chin went up. She slipped out of the bed, still holding the sheet around her like a shield. With quick, silent steps, she crossed the room to stand beside her lover's motionless form. Her light eyes seemed to burn through the rain-soaked darkness. "Tell me now."
He glared at her as if he hated her. And then he said, "I was in love with you."
Carolina felt her heart stumble painfully. She opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it. He didn't need her words. Not yet. First he needed his own.
They began to tumble out of him in a halting but steady stream. "That was Mignon's real legacy t'me. To be in love, as she had loved me, and to kill what I loved. Over and over again... I could never help myself. After a while, I even started not to care; it just happened. When I... it started to happen with you, I tried to tell myself that it wasn't real. Just like all those other times. And I thought I was right, especially when I realized that the curse hadn't faded out as I'd hoped. But I wasn't."
The eyes he turned on her held naked pain, so stark and powerful that Carolina unconsciously caught her breath. "I tried so hard not t'love you, petite. And I tried not to let you close enough to fall in love with me. And I failed at that, too."
He looked from her to the rumpled bed, and she somehow knew he was remembering their first glorious night together. "I was gonna put a bullet through my head before the rest of the curse could happen. I couldn't... hurt you, couldn't let you... I just hadn't counted on how damn stubborn you can get."
Her whisper barely scratched the silence. "When did you know it was real?"
Gabriel suppressed the urge to ask her the same question. "When you gave yourself to me that night that Mignon tried t'kill us. You knew what I was; you'd seen me change. You knew what could happen t'you if I lost control. But you trusted me not t'hurt you." His voice roughened to a painful whisper. "In two centuries, I have never been given such a precious gift than your trust."
Gabriel drew a deep breath. It was almost over. "I know you won't believe me, not when I've done so much t'try and hurt that trust tonight. But I just can't walk away from you." The carnal lips twisted. "I'll never be that noble, no matter how much I want to be. If you want me t'leave, cherie, you're gonna have t'tell me so."
Carolina looked deeply into those black eyes, searching for some sign of the wolf. And found none. Just as well, because she knew now that she'd take him, wolf or no wolf. Which only served to prove that she was crazy. Not too crazy, just enough to say what next sprang to her lips. "Do you really think I'd give up a man who loves me just the way I am?"
A smile split across his face like the brightest dawn. With a low growl, he scooped her up and carried her the few steps to the waiting bed. "I do love you, Carolina York." He growled softly as his tongue did wonderfully wicked things to her ear.
The small portion of Carolina that was still ladylike was astonished. The part that wasn't was... intrigued. "Gabriel? Are you sure there's nothing left of the wolf?"
"Mmm, just a little. Just enough t'make things interesting. Say that you love me now, Carolina. Please."
She gasped and clutched at him as he filled her. Her hands went to his shoulders, her short nails leaving red marks on the smooth, tanned skin. "I do love you, Gabriel." Her legs wrapped tightly around his driving hips. "Oh, I do..."
He couldn't stop his arms from sliding under her to lift her against him, but that was all he allowed himself. His muscles trembled with the effort of holding back, but he wanted her with him. Now and always. "For how long?"
"The rest of our natural lives." Her kiss-swollen lips tipped upward into a trembling smile.
The words soothed the last bit of old pain that had lingered in him. "Well, if that's all the time we have... best to make the most of it, eh?"
Carolina laughed, then began to convulse around him. Gabriel gathered her beloved body close, her soft cries of pleasure echoing sweetly in his ears, and followed her over the edge of oblivion.
In a corner of the room, lying hidden in the back pocket of Gabriel's discarded jeans, a single large, square-cut diamond shimmered with clean, white fire.
The End

