In the Dark Read online

  Frank might be clueless about managing a successful marriage, but he knew how to pry information from difficult places. He could put the Garrick Insurance case aside for a day and poke around the airlines. Maybe he’d charm the flight manifests out of them.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s dump this on Frank.”

  “Consider it done,” Louise said before disconnecting the call at her end.

  Mac flipped shut his phone, rolled his head back until he was staring straight up into a sky that resembled a sheet of blue linen dotted with cottonball clouds, and processed what Louise had told him.

  New York to Detroit to Dallas. Did the SOB even know Julie lived in New Orleans?

  He had to go back to Julie’s office. Maybe now she’d realize he was serious about her keeping him informed. Maybe she’d finally live up to her promise to tell him about all her sicko e-mails.

  He doubted it. And he doubted that if he went back to her office, either of them would be able to think straight.

  He’d go later, after she’d left for the day. He’d breakin, a she’d broken in before, and monitor her in-box. She already knew he could—and would—do that. She knew she couldn’t trust him.

  He had nothing to lose by acting untrustworthy.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHE SENSED HIM before she saw him. Once again he was lurking outside her door, watching her. It was more than just his scent that alerted her to his nearness. It was a charge in the air, a sudden heat, an awareness centered somewhere in the region of her solar plexus.

  Thank God it was centered there and not lower.

  Not quite ready to face him, she remained at her computer, finishing typing a response to an e-mail from Roxanne Levesque, who had written to remind her that if the hotel wanted to hire her for any services in the days leading up to Mardi Gras, it would have to act fast. Her calendar was nearly full.

  Given what she charged, the hotel wouldn’t be hiring her this year. Julie didn’t mention that in her e-mail, of course. She simply thanked Roxanne and said the hotel would keep her in mind for future events.

  She clicked the send icon and then, taking a slow, steady breath, rotated her chair to face the doorway.

  Mac remained outside her office, the toes of his loafers less than an inch from the threshold and his hands gripping the door frame. Was he afraid of what might happen if he entered the room? She certainly was. Merely gazing at him from eight feet away reminded her of what kissing him had been like. If he crossed that invisible barrier—the line separating her office from the hallway, the line separating two professional colleagues—he might kiss her again. And since Charlotte was downstairs reviewing her final to-do lists for the party with her mother, Julie couldn’t count on a helpful call from the office next door to stop another kiss before it blazed out of control.

  “It’s nearly six,” Mac announced. “I’ll bet you’re starving.”

  “I’m always starving,” she admitted.

  “Lately, darlin’, so am I.”

  His tone hinted that he wasn’t discussing food. She refused to rise to his bait, though. Her cheeks felt warm, but she kept her breathing steady and held her hands quietly in her lap. “Have you been skipping lunch?” she asked, choosing the most innocent interpretation for his words.

  He grinned. “I’m skipping more than I’d like. What do you say we get a bite?”

  Dinner with him? Again? Now that their relationship had gone haywire? Since when did they even have a relationship, anyway?

  Since before that morning, she knew. Maybe it had started the first time he’d eaten dinner with her. Or earlier that same day, when he’d tracked her down in the courtyard. Or even before then, when he’d first begun working at the hotel, back in November. She’d felt his nearness, his attention, right from the start. She’d been far too aware of him—and far too aware of his awareness of her.

  “I think I should just go home,” she said, as much to herself as to him.

  He remained outside her office, his fingers flexing on the door’s vertical moldings as if he literally had to hold himself back. “We’ve got to talk, Julie. We can do that here or over a plate of something edible. I vote for the second option.”

  She sighed. She’d skipped lunch herself today, and if Mac was going to insist on talking to her, she might as well eat. Food would give her the energy to ignore her attraction to him.

  “All right,” she said. “Let me just close up here.” She swiveled back to her computer. As she hit the keys to close her e-mail software and shut down her computer, she could feel him staring at her back. His gaze was almost a tangible thing, a warm pressure between her shoulder blades.

  Ten minutes later they were outside, ambling down a sidewalk swarming with people. As always, the French Quarter was bustling with locals and visitors, shoppers and browsers and rowdies primed for an evening of boozing and dancing. Julie didn’t want to get separated from Mac in the crowd, but she didn’t dare take his hand. She couldn’t touch him. Too risky.

  He made no effort to strike up a conversation as they worked their way down the street. A display of painted porcelain masks in one shop window caught Julie’s eye, and Mac patiently stood by while she moved closer to the glass to admire the handiwork. Creighton had several gorgeous masks on display in his apartment. Julie wondered if they’d been created by the same artisan who’d done the ones in the shop. None of the masks had price tags visible, which meant Julie couldn’t afford them.

  Did Mac think she was a hopeless tourist? Did natives consider Mardi Gras masks a step below kitsch? Julie didn’t care. Gazing at the delicately painted china kept her from thinking too much about the man lurking close behind her.

  After a few minutes she reluctantly turned from the window and continued down the sidewalk with Mac. She could stall only so long. Sooner or later they’d have to talk. And eat. At least she was looking forward to eating.

  The first restaurant they entered said they couldn’t be seated without a reservation. The second told them they didn’t need a reservation, but they’d have at least an hour’s wait for a table. Back out in the cool, dark night, Julie kept pace with Mac—her legs were almost as long as his—and remembered the funky eatery he’d taken her to halfway down an alley a few nights ago. She wasn’t sure exactly where that place was, or if it was within walking distance. In any case, Mac seemed to know enough about the restaurants in this part of the Quarter. He bypassed one without pausing, glanced through the arched entry of another and shook his head.

  Whatever he thought they needed to talk about, he was clearly waiting to start the discussion until they were indoors, with food in front of them. His hands were in his pockets, leaving his elbows available if she chose to hook her hand around one, but she sensed no invitation from him. He hardly even looked at her. In her office doorway, he’d smiled, he’d teased her with double entendres, but here on the street he was all business, his chin jutting forward and his eyes steel hard as they scanned the teeming sidewalks.

  At last they arrived at a restaurant he deemed worthy of his business. He gestured her through the door ahead of him, and she found herself surrounded by carved mahogany paneling and the aroma of herbs and butter. Even without reading a menu, she could guess this place was a lot pricier than the café in the alley where the waitresses fawned all over him.

  “Isn’t this a little ritzy?” Julie whispered as they approached the maître d’s station.

  “I’m wearing a suit and tie,” he whispered back. “And you look…” At last he looked at her, and his eyes softened. “Fine,” he finished the thought, although his expression said a lot more than fine.

  The maître d’ was able to seat them without a wait. Their table was covered in heavy linen, a bud vase holding a fresh pink rose in the center. “If we were going to dine at such a swanky place, we could just as easily have eaten at Chez Remy,” she murmured. This was the sort of restaurant where speaking above a murmur wouldn’t do. “I’m sure the food is no bett
er here.” And the prices are no cheaper, she added silently.

  “We needed to get out of the hotel,” he explained before opening his menu.

  Julie opened hers, too, and sighed. Everything looked delicious and cost too much. She wished she earned more—and she surely deserved more than Charlotte paid her. But the hotel couldn’t afford raises at the moment, and Julie cared too much about the place and the Marchands to leave in search of a higher-paying job. During her modeling days, even after Glenn Perry had taken his commissions, she’d earned more per hour than she was earning ten years later, with a college education under her belt. But she wouldn’t trade that life for the one she had now. Getting paid for what she thought and did was much more rewarding than getting paid for how she looked.

  She supposed her budget could stretch to accommodate one of the appetizers. When a waiter in a pleated white shirt and bow tie came to take their order, she requested a salad from the appetizer list, mixed greens topped with crabmeat.

  “You need more than that,” Mac chided.

  She couldn’t very well tell him she wasn’t hungry, after admitting back at her office that she was. “I think it’ll be enough,” she said instead.

  Mac scrutinized her for a moment, then turned to the waiter and said, “She’ll also have the Cajun shrimp. I’ll have a bowl of gumbo and the grouper. And we’ll share a half bottle of the Zinfandel.” He pointed to an item on the wine list, then handed it and his menu to the waiter.

  Julie seethed. Sure, she was hungry enough to scarf up everything Mac had ordered for her. But that wasn’t the point. “I resent your making decisions for me,” she said, her voice taut and her jaw clenched.

  “You need to eat, darlin’. I’m paying, so don’t worry about the prices.”

  “How can you afford this restaurant? And your fancy car, and your tailored suits…”

  “I’ve got a little side business robbing banks,” he joked, then whipped his napkin free of its elaborate folding and spread it across his lap.

  “I’m serious, Mac. I know what the hotel pays you.”

  “I manage my money well.” He smiled cryptically, then leaned back as the waiter arrived with their wine.

  Julie ought to refuse on principle to drink any. But after Mac tasted and approved of the wine, the waiter filled a glass for her. The wine looked too tempting, the crystal stemware too pretty. Julie was tired, she was working so hard in the run-up to the party…and damn it, if she’d gone home she would have poured herself a glass of wine there, or accepted Creighton’s offer of one of his heady alcoholic concoctions.

  She took a sip and tried to convince herself that drinking the wine wasn’t a mark of defeat. Lowering her glass, she scrutinized Mac across the table. If he could watch her, she could watch him.

  Who was he? Too wealthy to be a hotel security guy—even the head of security. If he’d been telling the truth about his modest beginnings the last time they’d been in a restaurant together, then he hadn’t inherited a fortune. She didn’t believe he was a bank robber, but…

  Success. That was a part of his charisma: he carried himself like a successful man. Not a man who’d won the lottery or married an heiress and taken her to the cleaners in a divorce, but rather someone who’d started with little and created something big. Someone who knew just how talented and capable he was. Someone used to admiration and respect.

  He wasn’t arrogant—well, not usually. But he exuded confidence. He knew he was hot stuff.

  Yet he refused to explain himself. When she questioned him, he became evasive. How could she trust a man who was obviously keeping secrets from her?

  “The e-mails you received came from different cities,” he said.

  So that was what he wanted to talk about. Not the security measures he was taking for the Twelfth Night party. Not the hotel’s strained finances. Not the kiss.

  To her, that kiss and her memory of it were like a thumbprint smudging her mind’s window—she could look past it but couldn’t stop seeing it.

  She had no idea whether or not Mac had been as strongly affected as she’d been, but that kiss was not what this meal was about. Probably just as well, she decided. What could they say? That it shouldn’t have happened? That it would never happen again?

  Forget the kiss. They were going to talk about her damn e-mails. Mac had steered her into this restaurant, ordered for her, decreed that she would be his guest, and now dictated the topic for tonight’s conversation. He was the boss, in control.

  She didn’t have to be happy about it, though. “So they came from different cities,” she muttered. “What does that mean?”

  “It could mean one of several things.” He paused as the waiter delivered their appetizers, then ticked off the possibilities on his fingers. “More than one person could be sending them. It could be a coordinated attack on you. Or the person sending them is on the move, traveling from city to city.”

  “It’s not an attack,” she retorted, then lowered her voice. “It’s minor harassment that turned into a joke.”

  “No one would fly around the country or solicit friends to do the same thing just for a joke, Julie. I don’t know how to get you to recognize how serious this is, but—”

  “If someone wanted to attack me, why would he fly around the country sending me e-mails? He could just as easily fly to New Orleans and punch me in the nose.”

  “Or worse,” Mac said grimly.

  “It just seems like an awful lot of effort for anyone to go to if they really wanted to get me.”

  “They may not know where you are. Your e-mail address is with a national ISP. They’re stalking you with these e-mails while they try to figure out your physical location.”

  “Why are you so determined to scare me?” she asked.

  Mac’s eyes were profoundly dark and steady on her. She wished she could read them, wished she knew what he was really thinking and feeling. “I don’t want to scare you, chère. But I think you’re in danger, and you keep blowing it off like it’s a game.”

  “I’m not blowing it off. I don’t like getting these e-mails. But I’m not going to stop living my life because of them. And I’m definitely not going to run to some big strong guy and beg him to protect me.”

  “Am I supposed to be the big strong guy you’re not going to run to?” Mac asked, the slightest hint of a smile on his mouth.

  “I don’t know what you’re supposed to be,” she said wearily. “But you’re a pest and a nag.”

  “A pest and a nag.” His smile widened as if she’d given him a compliment.

  “I don’t need protection, Mac.” She struggled to keep her tone muted. “And I don’t like being patronized.”

  Her bitter words didn’t seem to trouble him. He tilted his head and studied her for a long moment before lifting his glass to his lips. After drinking a bit, he smiled tentatively. “Is that a general statement, or am I—” he groped for the right words “—stirring up something from your past?”

  She opened her mouth and then closed it. She wasn’t used to men being so perceptive—even men who’d studied psychology in college, as Mac told her he had. She ought to have come to terms with the fact that he simply wasn’t like most men.

  She didn’t trust him…but maybe if he understood the source of her resentment, he’d back off a little. “The man I used to work for when I was a model was very protective of his girls, but all that protectiveness was actually his way of exerting control over them.”

  “You think I’m trying to control you?”

  “Yes.” The answer seemed so obvious she saw no need to elaborate. Instead she dug into her salad. Overpriced, perhaps, but delicious.

  “Isn’t it just possible that I’m trying to keep you out of harm’s way?”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ve got lots of noble rationalizations,” she said, softening the words with a hesitant smile. “Glenn did, too. He was our agent. He had to protect and control us because without him we wouldn’t be able to work. And some of
the girls in the agency were so vulnerable, they had no defenses against him.”

  “What did they have to defend against?” Mac stirred his gumbo, then consumed a spoonful. “As their agent, didn’t he have their best interests at heart?”

  “He had only one interest—his own. These young girls would come from all over the country, so eager to be high-fashion models. Maybe they’d won a local beauty pageant, or maybe, like me, someone they knew thought they had what it took and suggested they give the business a try. So they flocked to New York, sixteen and seventeen years old, some of them dropping out of high school. Of course they needed someone to protect them. And there was this big, strong, wonderful man, Glenn Perry, who promised to take care of them and turn them into models.”

  “If they were that young, they probably needed his guidance,” Mac suggested.

  “Guidance, sure. They didn’t need his exploitation.” She lowered her fork and sighed. Much as she hated to remember those awful days, they weren’t exactly a secret. If Mac truly wanted to know, he could comb through the newspaper archives and find out what had happened ten years ago in New York. She might as well spare him the effort and tell him. “Some of the girls had trouble keeping their weight down. It’s hard, let me tell you. But it’s not as hard if you use amphetamines.”

  “Ah.” Mac ate some more of his soup and nodded. “So this agent—Glenn, was it? He supplied them with drugs?”

  “For their own good, of course,” she said sarcastically. “So they could keep their weight down. Those drugs can be addictive. Cocaine helps you lose weight, too, so he made sure the girls had plenty of that.”

  “This guy was bad news, huh.”

  “He arranged for their housing. He arranged for their bookings. He managed their money—and he deducted the cost of their drugs along with their housing expenses and his commissions. He coached them. He molded them. He was kind of a Svengali—which I suppose isn’t against the law. Giving them drugs was against the law.” She shuddered. “He was sleeping with a couple of them, too.”