Big Easy Temptation (The Perfect Gentlemen #3)(71)
Well, that changed tomorrow. She would make sure no one could get in. And then what? She would never leave the city again? Or get rid of the plants? Maybe. It wasn’t like they loved her back.
But she couldn’t exactly leave the stuff Dax had brought with him out there. It wasn’t sanitary.
She opened the door and quickly gathered his blood offering, her stomach rumbling and reminding her she’d had nothing to eat since a very dry piece of toast and some eggs this morning. The pizza smelled heavenly, but the wine was what she really wanted.
She locked the door and tried to put a good face on the situation. He was gone and she wouldn’t have to see him again. It was over.
He would go back to wherever he’d come from with his new data. It didn’t matter if he understood what she’d done now. It was over.
And somewhere down the line she’d find out he’d been murdered by the Russian mob.
The idea made her stomach turn. She slammed the pizza down and thought seriously about tossing the flowers, but they hadn’t done anything wrong to her. Neither had the pizza. Or the wine. Definitely not the wine. It would be wrong to waste it. All right. Being honest, she needed a damn drink.
Why had he come back to New Orleans? Why couldn’t he leave well enough alone? Nothing he uncovered would bring his father back.
She found the corkscrew and had just uncorked the wine when the door to the balcony came open. She went for her gun but stopped short when she realized who stood there.
Dax ran a hand over his slightly shaggy hair. He’d let the military cut grow out an inch or two, and it just made him all the sexier. “Sorry. I think I broke the lock on your balcony door, but then you really need to upgrade your security system. I think you need an entire new rig and I want to rethink these windows. They’re pretty but anyone from the other side of the street can see in.”
Her stomach knotted. “What the hell are you doing here? You said you’d go away.”
He shook his head. “No, I said I would leave. I left the front door and climbed up your balcony trellis, but only after I got the voodoo shop owner to promise she wouldn’t call the police. Or stick pins into a little doll of me. Luckily, she’s a romantic.”
She was going to have a long talk with her downstairs neighbor in the morning. And she might look into a little voodoo herself. “You can leave the same way you came in.”
“I understand that you’re angry with me, Holland. You have every right to be, but we have to talk, so pour me a glass of that wine. Let’s sit and be rational. I haven’t been rational in three years, so it should be an interesting new experience for me.”
She hated how calm he sounded when everything inside her felt so chaotic. “We don’t have anything to talk about. I gave you the information you requested. I’m no longer involved. And you gave me the wine. I’m not giving it back.”
His lips curled up a little, reminding her of how sexy he could be when he smiled. “You won’t even share a tiny bit with me?”
“No.”
He reached into the messenger bag that crossed his chest and came out with a small bottle. “Good thing I brought the whiskey. I remember how greedy you can be with the wine. You should remember, though, that if you don’t feed me, I get a little testy. So let’s pop that pizza open and see if I can brush the mushrooms off my half.”
He hated mushrooms, but she loved them, so he always ordered them and then he would carefully pull his off and double them up on her slices. It was a silly, but at the time it made her feel cared for.
Chad didn’t eat pizza. No carbs of any kind after noon. So when she ate pasta for dinner, he shook his head as though he could see her fattening up right in front of him.
Dax pulled his bag over his head and set it down. “If you’re still hungry afterward, I’ll run out and find us some bread pudding. Lots of caramel, the way you like it.”
The deep timbre of his voice went straight to her girl parts, bringing them flaring back to life. She might have hardened her soul against this man, but all her reproductive organs were traitors willing to lay down arms the minute the hot guy with the really talented penis walked in the room again. She wasn’t falling for it. “Why don’t you go get some now?”
“So you can find a way to lock me out?”
“Yes.” She had zero reason to lie to him.
He sobered, his smile fading. “Thank you for trying to protect me. I should have followed my first instinct. I knew you weren’t capable of that kind of betrayal. Even after I’d gone, I kept thinking that you’d always been the kind of woman to refuse me to my face, not stab me in the back. You’re a very good actress, Holland. But then the stakes were pretty high for you. You were protecting the man you loved.”
Her stomach rolled and she knew she wouldn’t be touching that pizza. “That’s enough, Dax.”
She turned away, but she could feel him moving behind her.
“I don’t think so. You sacrificed yourself to save me and I acted like a complete idiot. Holland, after you convinced me you had sold out my family, I went crazy.”
She wasn’t listening to this. She turned on him. “I don’t care. What happened between you and Courtney is your business. She was your wife. You made the decision to marry her.”
“Bourbon with a tequila chaser kind of made the decision for me, but I was the one who drowned in booze. Please, sweetheart. Let me explain what happened, how I felt.”