Bayou Justice. Mallory Kane
breath. This was the deciding moment. To his surprise, she didn’t slap him. She merely executed a spectacular pirouette and walked away.
“Molly, wait.” He reached for her arm.
She jerked away and squared her shoulders. That gave him enough time to jump in front of her. “Come on, Molly. Let’s talk. Catch up.”
She whirled back to face him, the sudden dampness in her eyes catching the late-afternoon sun. He felt a pang in his chest.
“Catch up?” she echoed. “No. I don’t want to catch up with you. So if you didn’t die, I guess that means you just up and left. Went back to wherever it was your family lived. It must have been nice to have someplace to go to escape the inconvenience of Katrina.”
She swiped at her cheeks. “I’m not crying about you,” she said defiantly, her chin going up another millimeter. “It’s just—even after eight years, I still hear about someone I knew who died in the flooding. Or somebody I thought was dead shows up.”
That last had a bitter flavor to it.
She gestured, open-handed, toward her eyes. “It’s kind of an emotional roller coaster.”
“Let me buy you a cup of coffee,” he tried.
She glared at him. “Congratulations on living through the storm, Ray Storm.” With that, she turned on her heel and flounced off.
Ray watched her until she entered a drugstore. Then he looked back at the neutral ground, but Acles had disappeared.
MOLLY HENNESSEY CLOSED the front door behind her and took a deep, shaky breath. She set the bag from the drugstore on the kitchen counter along with her purse, then held out her hands and watched them quiver.
Ray Storm was the last person in the world she’d expected to see today—or ever. She still had nightmares about the last time she’d seen him—the day before the storm. The day she’d realized that the only reason he’d slept with her was to get evidence that her brother was skimming federal grant moneys from the Louisiana Disaster Avoidance Task Force, or LDAT. Stupidly, she’d given him every last bit of information she’d known.
She hadn’t heard a word from or about Ray since Katrina. She hadn’t lied when she’d said she’d thought he was dead. In the chaos that reigned once the flooding started, thousands of people were left wondering about friends, neighbors and family. A significant fraction hadn’t made it. She’d grieved for Ray until anger finally replaced the sadness. Anger at him for using her teenage rebelliousness and her self-righteous outrage at her brother’s thievery to get evidence against him. Anger at him for making her fall in love with him.
No. Not in love. She shook her head as she headed for her bedroom to change, kicking off the heels. It had been a hard lesson to learn at age eighteen that the man she’d given her virginity to had used her to get proof of the discrepancies she’d found between funds received and funds used for the LDAT program. Once he had them, he was practically out the door.
Then, as soon as Katrina had hit, he’d disappeared. She’d feared the worst. Now she knew. Of course he hadn’t died. He’d just escaped back to wherever he’d come from. He’d deserted New Orleans. He’d deserted her. He didn’t deserve her love.
But damn, he’d looked great today. Really great. Same thick black hair, same dangerously dark eyes and the same crooked smile that had never once failed to melt her heart. His lanky body had filled out in the past eight years. He was still lean, but in a hard, silk-over-steel, grown-up way.
Then he’d had the gall to offer her a cup of coffee—to catch up. Catch up! Like coworkers who’d lost touch. Her fingers curled into claws. If she had a do-over and longer fingernails, she’d claw his eyes out for walking out on the devastation and sadness of the storm. For walking out on her.
She closed her eyes and tried to banish that first shock of recognition when she’d looked up from her spilled purse. But the darkness behind her closed lids made a nice canvas on which to display his handsome face.
It had taken her a long time to get over his callous betrayal. She’d been only eighteen. He’d been her first lover. She remembered the tender surprise and chagrin on his face when he’d realized that.
She’d grown up a lot during the past eight years. She’d dated some pretty fine men, but no matter how much she cared about them, she’d never been able to commit to the long haul. The memory of Ray’s crooked, dimpled grin always got in the way.
Okay. That was enough thinking about Ray Storm. It was Wednesday night and she had a date—with herself—to watch her favorite cooking competition show. She needed something for dinner that was portable, satisfying and yet with zero calories. That was the only way she’d fit into the red designer dress she planned to wear to her brother Martin’s $500-a-plate gubernatorial campaign kickoff dinner on Friday night.
Just as she opened the refrigerator to check if the lettuce in her crisper had turned to slime, her doorbell rang. Frowning, she glanced up at the kitchen clock. It was after 7:00 p.m. She rolled her eyes. It was probably some kids selling candy for a school fundraiser or hawking subscriptions to the daily paper.
She went to the door and looked through the peephole but saw nothing. She put the chain on and opened the door a crack. “Yes?” she said, letting impatience tinge her tone.
“Molly, hi.”
The familiar voice sent a shiver up her spine. It was Ray. How had he gotten her address? As soon as the question flitted through her mind, she berated herself for her stupidity. He was an FBI agent. He probably had a file with everything from the address of her first-grade teacher to the date of her last period.
“What are you doing here?” she asked tiredly.
“Open up. I need to talk to you.”
She peered through the tiny opening allowed by the chain. He was standing a nonthreatening foot and a half away from the door. “I’m not dressed.”
That crooked smile raised the corners of his mouth. “Ha. That shouldn’t be a problem. From what I remember, you probably have two closets full of clothes in there.”
“Bite me,” she said and pushed the door closed. But she didn’t walk away. Her mistake.
“Molly, please.”
Her heart gave a little jump. He’d closed that nonthreatening eighteen inches by at least twelve. It sounded as though he’d put his mouth to the crack between the door and the facing.
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