Luke (17 page)

The worry under that spate of harried annoyance was balm on Luke's own wrath. A slow grin mounted to his lips. In lilting tones, he asked, “So, what if I did take her?”

Kane ignored that for the blatant provocation it was. “Since you're here, and in such a jolly mood, I think I'll let you deal with the ex. You can field the next call from a pushy woman named Cazenave, too. After I have your word that April is safe, sound and unmolested.”

“My word is good enough? Amazing,” Luke commented. If Roan wanted to take that as an assurance of April's well-being it would be all to the good, but he had other things on his mind. “Why is Tinsley in such a dither? He's supposed to be history.”

“Maybe April's the love of his life and he's still hoping. Maybe she's his meal ticket and he's hungry. And maybe he's just a decent guy worrying about a woman who was once important to him. How the hell do I know?”

“You could have asked.”

“You do it, if you're so interested. I had other things on my mind. Such as what reason you might have for disappearing with her.”

“You didn't know I had her, so how—?”

“She was last seen leaving the river dock in your company, like I said, and her car is sitting in front of your house. And I know how you think.”

“You should have known, too, that I'd be back to tell somebody what's going on. You were at the top of that list, though it's nice of you to save me the trouble of going by your office.”

“I didn't much feel like waiting. Besides, I had to bring your Jeep back here.” Roan paused, then added, “You sure you know what you're doing?”

“I'm sure it's necessary.” There were certain methods Luke wasn't so certain about any more, but it was too late to agonize over them.

“You may have faith in your precious swamp to cover your tracks, but don't push it too far. It's water and mud and trees, not your private compound.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Luke countered with exaggerated courtesy. “I'll try to remember.”

They watched each other, gray eyes clashing with black, there on the damp wood dock, while the rising sun used scissors of light to cut the lake mist into gray streamers. A breeze rustled the leaves of the live oak overhead and brought the drifting scent of cape jasmine from the shrub border near the house. Somewhere, a rooster crowed, the sound traveling across the water.

Finally, Roan nodded. “Don't forget to go by your grandmother's, too. She's another one who's been driving me to drink.”

“That'll be the day,” Luke said.

“Yeah,” Roan answered, unsmiling.

Luke drove Roan back to his office in town since he needed the Jeep that his cousin had delivered. Afterward, he stopped by his grandmother's place. Granny May was much happier to see him than his cousin had been. Feeding him buttered biscuits and
fig preserves washed down by chicory-spiked coffee so strong it was a serious threat to stomach lining, she sat bright-eyed and straight-backed at the table. She accepted his heartfelt compliments as her due, but he knew she enjoyed watching him eat as much as he enjoyed the food.

She questioned him about the explosion, gave him a rundown on the injuries of the survivors, and brought him up-to-date on the public remarks and private sentiments of the festival committee. However, she was not at all pleased to discover that he'd made off with their neighbor the writer.

“You did what?” she screeched, pushing her bifocals up on her nose so she could glare at him through the correct half. “Have you gone
totally
mad?”

Blandly slathering a biscuit with jewel-like preserves, he said, “You don't think it's a good idea?” He popped the biscuit into his mouth.

“Your being alone for hours on end with a woman who writes love scenes for a living? She'll have you in her bed before dark.”

Luke choked as a biscuit crumb went down the wrong way. Coughing, gasping for breath, he protested, “She writes them, she doesn't live them.”

“Oh, God,” his grandmother moaned. “She's got you already.”

He grabbed his coffee and took a swallow. “I thought it was the other way around.”

“No, no, it doesn't work like that, not once you fall. You think you can change her mind, get her to stop putting our family in her book. Instead, she'll worm all the juicy details out of you.”

“But I don't know any juicy details.”

“You just think you don't.” She gave a weary shake of gray head.

“Even if I did, I wouldn't tell her anything damaging.”

“Oh, you won't even notice. She's like a spider enticing you into her web. She'll smile and tease and play with you until she gets what she wants from you. Then she'll eat you alive.”

The idea conjured up images he definitely didn't want to share with his granny. “You don't give me much credit.”

“With anyone else, any of your other women, I would. This one's different. She's more than a pretty face. She's smart. She knows people—how they think and what makes them act as they do.”

“Why, Granny May,” he mocked, “if I didn't know better, I'd think you'd been reading her books.”

“So I have—though I skip all those parts that are about—well, you know.”

“You mean sex?”

“Take that smirk off your face, young man! You may think you invented procreation, but it was around long before you were born, let me tell you. I just don't need to read detailed descriptions to enjoy a book.”

“Oh, you enjoyed April's book, did you?”

“She's a good writer, but that's beside the point.”

“What is the point? That April knows what love between and man and a woman is all about or that she dwells on it?”

“She uses it to explain what her men and women are all about, how they are deep inside where most books never look, to show how they feel and think when they're at their weakest.”

“Or strongest,” Luke said, unable to stop teasing her in spite of his fascination with how she saw April's writing.

“Well, yes. But those things are private. They cut too close to the bone. I don't want to know what a man thinks about when he's holding a woman, don't want to read how being kissed feels because it makes me remember—”

“What?” he asked softly as he watched the color come and go in his grandmother's face.

“Your grandfather, and how I used to get all—Never mind! The point is that she's dangerous.”

“To me, you mean. Maybe I'd better read some of her books to protect myself.”

“No, no, you don't want to do that!”

He lifted a brow at her vehement tone. “Now, why not?

“Because her voice is in them, her words flowing as if she's reading, or maybe singing, to you. It leads you on page after page until you forget the time or what you're supposed to be doing. She makes up this world and pulls you into it bit by bit until you feel like you know her people, can see them walking around, hear them talking. And you want to know them, wish you could know them, but never can, so it's a cheat.”

“But they're always there between the book's covers, aren't they? Anyway, it's what storytellers
have always done, create imaginary people, imaginary worlds.”

Her face crumpled. “You're taking her part against me. She has you already, and she hasn't had time to even get started on you.”

“Don't fret,” he said with as much patience as he could muster. “April Halstead doesn't want or need me, and hasn't tried to get a thing from me. I took her away from here, remember. She didn't take me.”

“More fool you!” Her eyes filled. “She'll hurt you, my honey Luke. She will, without half trying, because she doesn't know what you're really like.”

“It's just for a few days.”

“A few days too long. She'll hurt us all, and she won't care as long as she has her story. She lives in those stories of hers. She's there on every page, all the things she thinks and feels and knows. Too much of her is in those stories of hers, I think. She's exposed for all to see. I don't know how she stands it. But she doesn't have time for anything real. She just—couldn't.”

It was a fascinating theory, he thought. He was really going to have to check it out.

The couple of hours Luke intended to use taking care of business at Chemin-a-Haut turned into half a day. It was midafternoon before he could wind things up and head over to Mulberry Point. He parked the Jeep in back to keep from attracting attention. Getting into the house was no problem; he simply used the key taken from the small handbag he'd found in April's car.

He had given a lot of thought to the things she
would need while on the boat. As he gathered them and stacked them in the upper hall, he checked off a mental list. The stack grew bigger and bigger. He eyed it with jaundiced consideration for the size of the dinghy, but he didn't stop.

He was standing with his hands on his hips, contemplating the printer for her computer, when he heard a metallic squeak from the direction of the kitchen. A few seconds later, Midnight padded into view. The cat paused as he saw Luke, then streaked from the room. Luke shrugged and forgot him.

It was maybe five minutes later when a car pulled up outside. Stepping out of the office, Luke glided down the hall and into the parlor. At one of the front windows, he carefully lifted the drape and lace sheer to look out.

It was Martin Tinsley. He was dressed like a male model in an ad for golf clubs as he climbed from a green Jag and sauntered toward the house. Removing thirties-style round sunglasses and tucking them into his shirt pocket, he glanced around with an elaborately casual air. He mounted the front steps and started across the porch floor before Luke lost sight of him. Then his footsteps stopped.

Luke stepped back a little, frowning as he listened. Then the screen that covered the front window closest to the door creaked. A grim smile settled over his mouth. He eased over to that window and put his back to the wall next to it. Then he folded his arms and waited.

Tinsley had one leg over the windowsill and was reaching inside for purchase when Luke grabbed his shirt collar. A hard yank, and April's ex plunged
headfirst into the room. Luke was upon him in a second, kicking him flat, putting a knee in his back and twisting a wrist into an extremely uncomfortable angle between his shoulder blades. Tinsley howled and began to curse.

“What are you doing here?” Luke growled.

The man he was holding down squirmed, fighting for a furious second, before he stopped abruptly. Breathing hard, with his hundred-dollar haircut in disorder and his red face against the hardwood floor, he answered, “I could…ask you…the same thing.”

“I doubt our answers would match. Talk to me. Unless you want a broken arm.”

“No! I thought—I hoped I might find something to show where April is, a message on her answering machine, a note, an E-mail post. I don't know, just…something.”

That was almost incoherent enough to be the truth. Exerting more pressure on the arm he held, he asked, “You can access her E-mail? You know her password?”

Tinsley grunted. “I had a few guesses at her password to try, that's all!”

“I doubt the lady would appreciate your screwing around with her computer, even in such a good cause. Me, now, I've got doubts your cause is worth a damn.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I'm wondering what else is on her computer that you might want,” Luke answered impatiently. “A manuscript, maybe? Or could it be a list of payments—especially royalty payments due?”

“I'm just worried about her. That's no crime, is it?”

“You don't strike me as the worrying kind.”

“Same to you,” Tinsley gasped.

He was probably right, Luke thought, but he'd get no prize for it. He studied the sweat that streaked the face of the man on the floor and dampened the expensive knit of his shirt. “What are you hanging around April for in the first place? It's supposed to be over between you two.”

“It's never over. Don't you know that?”

Luke's grip tightened an instant before he forced himself to relax. No doubt he should have felt fellow sympathy, but that was the last thing on his mind. “So, are you trying to make sure she needs you? Is that it?”

“What?”

“Or have you figured out some other way to make a profit off her?”

“You don't know a damn thing about it.”

“Don't be too sure, pal,” Luke said, the anger in his voice slicing like a whetted sword. “I know that you worked less than ten months out of the years you were married to April. You not only took a settlement big enough to choke a mule during the divorce proceedings, but also had the nerve to ask for alimony—and might have collected if the judge hadn't decided you were able-bodied enough to work. I also know that you were ass-high in credit card debt before you married her, and have piled up the bills again since the divorce.”

“How'd you find out? You have me investi
gated?” Martin Tinsley lay rigid as he waited for the answer.

“Let's just say I'm interested, have been for a long time. And I have a cousin with access to information.”

“You want her, don't you? And you actually think she'll trust you enough to let you get close to her again? That's funny, or would be if you'd ever heard what she had to say about you.”

April had spoken to her ex about him? Somehow that possibility had never crossed Luke's mind. He didn't like it. He also didn't like the fact that Tinsley thought he knew and understood her better. “My wants and prospects aren't the question here,” he said, the words so discordant they clanged together in his own head like badly strung wind chimes. “We were talking about you. There are names for men who live on women, none of them too pretty. If you don't leave April alone, you won't be too pretty, either. And that's a promise.”