Cypress Nights (2 page)

Later the same evening

“W
hy are you here?” Bleu Laveau said. She knew Roche Savage had come to the parish hall meeting, because she was the one giving the presentation. He couldn't have any interest in plans to build a new school.

He had come for her.

A tall, rangy man, with curly, almost black hair and the bluest eyes she had ever seen, he was in the business of fixing minds. And from his reputation, he was very successful. She wondered if he could somehow have found out her secret and if she was a challenge to him now.

Only one person in Toussaint was aware of the life she had been trying to outrun, and her cousin, Madge Pollard, wasn't the gossiping type. That didn't mean Roche couldn't track her down some other way.

Why didn't he say something? Dressed in jeans and an open-necked shirt with its sleeves rolled back over his
forearms, he looked casual but Bleu felt his tension. She edged away from him.

His relaxed stance didn't match the way he stared at her. As if he was planning his next move.

Roche weighed what he should do. Bleu's behavior had caught him off guard. The woman trying to put distance between them, as if he might pounce on her, wasn't the one he'd first met a couple of weeks ago over a cup of coffee. Something had happened to make her afraid of him, and he wished he didn't feel so certain about what that was.

Bleu was still moving. With her hair streaming in the wind, she took sideways steps up the slope from the parish hall to the spot where she had parked her Honda in the lane above.

Roche didn't follow her. “Just talk to me,” he said. “That's all I want. Tell me what's wrong and I'll try to make it right.”

She had been the last to leave a packed meeting about plans to build a new school where the old one had burned down years ago on existing church property. Everyone else had already driven off.

And the instant she saw him, she had just about run away. He didn't get it.

Bleu's head pounded. “Please excuse me, “she said. “I have to get home. Tomorrow's a full day.”

What she wouldn't ask him was if he knew about her marriage, about the horrible, personal things she'd been forced to discuss with strangers. If he did know, he could also be aware of the way her former husband had turned sex into something horrifying and that she had been left with a fear of intimacy.

Yesterday, the potential truth about Roche's interest in her suddenly became clear. She had been looking forward to having dinner with him when she figured it out: She
wasn't his type. He had another reason for wanting to spend time with her—to see if she would make an interesting case study, maybe?

Roche felt furious that he'd missed some signal she must have given him. He picked up some of the documents and files she'd dropped when she saw him waiting for her. “You'll need these,” he said.

Last night, she stood him up for dinner, but he had put it down to her preoccupation with getting ready for tonight's meeting. Obviously he had been wrong; she'd ducked out of the date to avoid him.

Damn. He was a healer, a seasoned psychiatrist who had only ever wanted to help people, not a man who terrified women in the dark.

When he looked up again, she stood like a stone, utterly still. He saw her honey-blond hair glint in the moonlight, saw the glitter in her eyes. In the daylight, they were bright green—always questioning, always vulnerable.

She took the paperwork from him. “Thank you.” Her soft words were difficult to hear in the wind.

Bleu Laveau, with her unassuming air and the way she listened closely when he talked, and her passion for the job she'd come to Toussaint to do, had captured him. His fascination with her, the urge to protect—and possess—almost disoriented Roche.

Disorientation was dangerous. He had to be in control of himself at all times.

She must not get any idea of his single-minded focus on her—not unless he could be sure she wanted it.

“I heard your presentation,” he told her.
And afterward, I stood in the shadow of a wall out here, waiting for you. You and I were meant to be together, Bleu. If someone's
told you I like adventure with my sex—the wilder, the better—they're more or less right, damn them, but I can be whatever you want me to be. I'm the one in control, not my sex drive. You'll never be afraid with me.

She looked from him to her car, probably figuring out how fast she could get away from him and what the chances were that he wouldn't catch up.

About zero, lady.

Bleu felt foolish. She took another small step. He must be adding up symptoms to analyze later. He would be thinking she seemed nervous, and she was.

The only way out of this was to change the subject and calm down. “It will be a fight to rebuild a school here,” she said. “So many people are against it.” Holding her ground wasn't easy.

“If anyone can do it, you can,” he said. Bleu had come to Toussaint to do a study on the feasibility of building a new school on St. Cecil's property. The church, the parish hall and the portion where the school had originally stood came close to filling the available space, and it had been made clear that buying additional land wasn't financially feasible.

The rectory had been built next to St. Cecil's but was separated from it by small Bonanza Alley. That was the full extent of their holdings.

“A lot of people are angry,” she continued, her voice tight. “The money hasn't even been raised yet, but they're talking about using it for a multipurpose center instead.”

Now she was babbling. One more symptom for his list.

“Yeah,” he said. “Some of them. Not all.”

Roche finished gathering her papers from the ground and walked toward her. The pale moon did nothing more than suggest a light all but snuffed out, and his eyes looked black, fathomless.

“Some of them made it clear they wish I'd go away,” Bleu said.

Roche would have expected her to be tougher. He knew she had been through the same type of process a number of times before. “They'll come around,” he said. “There are a lot more children in need of a good education than there are folks who play bingo. They've got the parish hall for that. Anyway, who could resist you for long?”

That had been the wrong thing to say. She turned away at once. Her breath came in loud, rough gasps.

“Bleu! Damn it, why are you afraid of me?”

She had made a pact with herself that no one would frighten her again. Now the pact was broken.

“I'm not afraid of you,” she lied. “I've got to go.”

“Fine. Here, take these and I'll wish you goodnight.”

“You don't understand,” she told him.

“No, I don't. What is it about me that's suddenly disgusting to you? We've had coffee together, and—”

“All Tarted Up was packed that morning,” she shot back. “The only empty seat in the whole café was at my table. You asked if you could sit there.”

He held out the folders. “We enjoyed talking. Can you say that's a lie?”

“It's—not a lie.” She inched forward to take her files, then held the whole pile of documents against her chest. “Thank you for picking all these up. I'm…I got rattled in there tonight. That's all.”

Her excuse didn't cut it with Roche. “That afternoon when I ran in to you by the bayou, you seemed glad to walk with me. We talked about a lot of things. You're great to talk to.”
But you're damaged, even if you do try to put up a good front.

“I was interested in the clinic, and your brother Max
and the plastic surgery he does. And in your work out there. That's all. You're making too much of it.”

The cut didn't bother him. What he wanted was to figure out the reason for her change in attitude.

“You had lunch with me at Pappy's Dancehall. I invited you, and you accepted. You seemed comfortable. You met Annie, and if you didn't like her, you put on a good act.”

Annie was Max's wife and she managed Pappy's.

“She's nice,” Bleu said. “Thank you for introducing us.”

“Last night, you were supposed to have dinner with me. You didn't call. You just let me show up at your place and find out you weren't there. You didn't forget, did you?”

“I'm sorry.” The thin skirt of her dress blew back, gripping her thighs.

Roche felt the swell of anger. “You don't have to be.” She was small, but her shape was sweet, curvy, all woman. What the wind did with her dress against her legs also did things to him.

“Good night, then,” she said.

The old wildness attacked him. Bleu hadn't gone two steps before he reached her and settled a hand on her shoulder. “Look at me.” Her pause let him know this could go either way, but then she turned toward him. Roche stepped up beside her. “I'm not a threat to you,” he said.

Bleu couldn't hide her spasms of shivering. “Roche,” she whispered. “I don't know you. You don't know me.”

He knew himself. This was a test and it wasn't going well. He had decided to prove he could be alone with a woman he wanted desperately and not make the kind of move that might turn her off.

“It's time we did know each other,” he said. He didn't give her a chance to argue.

He kissed her, and her body tensed.

It had been so long since she had felt like this—invaded. Yet Roche didn't intend to violate her. Her eyes closed and she tried to relax. With the tip of his tongue he made soft, sleek and persuasive passes until her lips parted. Where they touched, she tingled. Her muscles softened and she leaned closer.

Finally, it had happened. The cold place she had lived with for so long was thawing. She wanted intimacy. The excitement she'd dreamed of but been denied hammered at her. And it was this man who had stirred the feelings she thought she'd never have.

Tightening low in her belly stole her breath and her attention. Downward between her legs it went, sharper and sharper. Then she felt wet.

“Women are weak, they need saving from themselves.”

That voice she thought she had forgotten, the one from her wasted years, sounded so clear that she braced for the shove, the fall to the bed and the punishing pressure of a big man's body on top of her.

“No.” Bleu jerked her head sideways. “I don't want this.”

Roche held her firmly, wrapped his arms around her and pressed her face into his shoulder. “Hush,” he said, wishing her damn paperwork wasn't between them like a shield. For a little while, she had started to respond to him, but she was rigid now.

Careful. Don't push too far.

He used his thumbs to raise her chin, and he brought his mouth to hers again. Holding her against him with pressure on the back of her head, he emptied her hands and leaned them both sideways to put the pile on the ground.

She kissed him in return, but not like a woman who had done a lot of kissing. With his mouth and tongue, turning her head with his fingers, delving deep, he showed her that this wasn't about putting one mouth to another. It was a connection, and could be a prelude, a small, erotic promise of a closer joining.

A promise wasn't enough.

Already hard, he strained against his jeans.

“You're okay with me,” he whispered, leaning away.

No, she wasn't entirely, but he had a logical mind and he worked to make it heed him in situations like this one, where lust had taken him over the edge in the past.

His heart thudded. Slowly, gently, he put his hands beneath her arms. Her body was warm, the bodice of her dress made of a silky stuff.

His palms settled on the sides of her breasts.

Again, she stiffened in his arms.

He rested his forehead in the curve of Bleu's neck. Tonight, he felt leaden, but even that didn't dampen his need to make love to her. Nothing had ever dampened that need, only kept it in check.

“You feel so good,” he whispered, his lips against the soft skin of Bleu's neck.

“I don't…I'm not…”

“I know,” he murmured. “You're not casual. I like the way you are.” Moving carefully, he nipped her ear then kissed her shoulder—and wasn't quick enough to avoid the slap that landed on his face.

He flinched and gave a surprised laugh. Her next swipe cut off the laughter.

“You've made your point,” he said, ducking number three.

She dropped her arms to her sides. He could hear her
hard breathing and see the glimmer of tears on her cheeks. “You're going too fast for me,” she said. “But I shouldn't have hit you.” She sounded upset, but not sorry.

“I'll live,” he said. “I deserved what I got.”

Bleu looked at the sky and felt a stillness capture both of them. “Why would you deserve it? You couldn't know I'm not ready…for anything, really. Maybe one day I'll tell you why. Not now.”