Saving Grace. Patricia Rosemoor
her eyes squinting into the dark. “Who’s there?”
“Declan McKenna,” he said, stepping into the light. “I’m a friend of Grace’s.”
Grace’s eyes went wide. “Uh, Declan …” Her voice throbbed, sounding thick and undeniably sexy. “Let’s go to my dressing room.”
“Yes, let’s,” he said agreeably.
When they entered the cramped room, which was little bigger than a closet, she asked, “What brings you here, Declan? The fingerprints? Did you get the results back already?”
“On the weekend? No such luck. I simply thought it would be a good idea for me to see where you work. Where you live.”
“You want to come home with me?”
“Don’t you want me to make sure your place is safe? If you really do have a stalker—”
“If? You don’t believe me, after all. For your information, I’m pretty sure someone was following me last night after I left your office.”
“What happened?”
“I’m fine, aren’t I? Part of me thinks I was imagining things.”
“Even so, the possibility gives me more reason to check out your place—to make sure that if someone is doing more than just sending you notes, he can’t get at you.”
“Fine. You can come home with me and check things out, then. But I would appreciate your waiting in the outer office while I change.”
“No problem.”
While he would rather remain right where he was, Declan knew that would lead to nothing but trouble.
Though he hadn’t yet gotten a report on the fingerprints, he’d called Ian to see if his cousin knew anything about their client. Declan hadn’t been in New Orleans long enough to get more than the feel of the place, but Ian had lived here all his life. Indeed, Ian had known that Grace Broussard was a trust-fund baby and something of a free spirit in a political, driven family.
Obviously, she’d found her niche, Declan thought, and a perfect one for her, at that.
And now someone was threatening to use it against her.
Not on his watch.
GRACE’S NERVES WERE already on edge. She’d been occupied for every moment since she’d had that bizarre feeling in her dressing room that morning, but once she stopped working, she couldn’t forget about it. She found herself changing in the powder room, as if she were safe in the smaller space. But safe from what?
The scariest thing she had to face was touching Declan again. The mere thought of which sent a shiver down her spine, all the way to her toes.
So a few minutes later, as they walked along Decatur and its shops filled with tourist trinkets and other souvenirs of New Orleans, Grace made certain she kept a safe distance between them.
“Do you always work on Saturdays?” Declan asked.
“No. We just had to finish up shooting the new designs for a series of ads Raphael intends to run.”
“Very provocative.”
She slashed him a look. “You don’t approve?”
“I was simply making an observation,” Declan said, his demeanor professional. He moved his gaze constantly over the crowd as if searching it for a potential stalker. “So do people recognize you when you walk down the street?”
“So far people haven’t actually come up to me and told me so.”
“Just followed you.”
“Which would be scarier,” she said.
“What happens when Raphael Duhon goes really big? Will you follow him to New York? Paris?”
“I never thought that far ahead. I like things as they are now. New Orleans is my home. I have a great job and I’m close to Mama and my brother, Corbett.” Just considering losing all that made Grace uneasy. She was happy now. “I can’t see wanting any of that to change.”
“You can’t control fate.”
Grace didn’t miss the serious note in Declan’s tone. She wondered what had happened to him to make him such a cynic.
As they walked through the French Quarter, her native city called to her, stirring her blood. Music and the seductive voices of entrepreneurs floated on the air along with the smell of Cajun and Creole cooking. New Orleans was a city of the senses and Grace was in love with her hometown, grateful its heart had survived disaster. It had taken years, but finally it was coming back from Hurricane Katrina.
They walked up past Esplanade and then away from the river. Grace lived in an old apartment complex in Faubourg Marigny, a neighborhood bordering the French Quarter. Her third-floor apartment had a balcony with black wrought-iron railings that wrapped around the corner from living room to bedroom.
“Not what you would call a secure building,” Declan said when they found the downstairs door unlocked.
“Some people think they’re bulletproof,” she muttered, releasing the latch so not just anyone could get in.
“That door needs a dead bolt.”
Grace knew he was correct, but she didn’t know what it would take to convince her landlord. They headed for the third floor. Her newspaper lay outside her apartment door. When she picked it up, she saw what it had been hiding.
“What’s this?” she muttered, stooping again to pick up a large brown envelope.
Her name and nothing else was typed on the label stuck on the front. No postage. Someone had hand-delivered it—an easy task since someone had left the downstairs door unlocked. Her pulse thudded. Or maybe whoever had left it had picked the lock and that’s why the door was open.
“Something wrong?”
“I don’t know.” Grace stared at the envelope as if she could guess its contents—something she wasn’t going to like. “Let’s get inside.”
She was barely through the door when she moved around the counter in the kitchen area to keep distance between her and Declan. Wanting to see what was inside the envelope before he did, she ripped it open, then tilted it to spill the contents into her hand. A glossy photograph of her.
Shocked, Grace went still and wide-eyed.
The woman in the photograph was and was not her. She managed to appear seductive in the ads modeling Raphael’s designs, but this woman was wanton.
Her eyes were closed, her head thrown back, her breasts half-spilled out of the bustier. The facial expression got to Grace, tied her stomach in a knot. This woman looked like she was in the throes of passion. Her face left nothing to the imagination.
She’d been warned—I CAN EXPOSE YOU—and now the threat was a reality.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, wondering how the photo had been taken without her knowledge.
She’d done a lot of crazy things, but basically her march to freedom from the Broussards had been innocent stuff. Posing for pornography hadn’t been anything she’d ever contemplated.
She looked in the envelope and found a note still clinging to the side.
THERE ARE MORE WHERE THIS CAME FROM. HOW MUCH IS THE DISK WORTH TO YOUR FAMILY? CHECK YOUR E-MAIL AT MIDNIGHT TONIGHT FOR INSTRUCTIONS.
Grace sounded appalled when she said, “This looks like I posed for an adult magazine!”
Her horror washed over Declan and he was hard pressed not