Kitabı oku: «Submission»
There were a few things a living, breathing male wasn’t equipped to resist…
And at the top of the list was a beautiful woman who smelled like sin and who wanted to be touched.
I swallowed thickly and slipped my hands from Molly’s lush hips to wrap them around her waist. She felt so good tucked against my body that I didn’t want the moment to end. My throbbing erection rested against her trembling stomach, making me want far more, but I restrained myself. Something I wasn’t used to doing.
I knew that if I wanted, I could have her. Walk her back to her hotel nearby and seduce my way into her bed. But some invisible force held me back. Her reaction a moment ago when she’d accidentally made contact with my police-issue firearm had shuddered through me as surely as if I was the one who’d had a cold bucket of reality dumped over my head.
I felt her hands move from where they were plastered against my back. Her fingertips worked their way under the hem of my shirt and touched my bare skin. I sucked in a breath.
“You’d better decide, Molly. Because in two seconds there won’t be a decision to make….”
MILLS & BOON
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Dear Reader,
When it comes to sequels, we all know that it’s hard to top the story that’s come before. But in this third and final installment in our DANGEROUS LIAISONS miniseries…well, let’s just say that our characters made our job easy, providing an explosive conclusion that pulls all three books together.
In Submission, darkly sexy homicide detective Alan Chevalier is at the end of his rope in both his career and his personal life. So far he’s arrested the wrong man, looked in all the wrong places, and the Quarter Killer seems to have singled him out for taunting. Facts that Molly, city outsider and the all-too-tempting twin sister of the first victim, won’t let him forget…in bed or out.
We hope you enjoy this journey through the minds and hearts of Alan and Molly. We’d love to hear what you think. Contact us at P.O. Box 12271, Toledo, OH 43612 (we’ll respond with a signed bookplate, newsletter and bookmark), or visit us on the Web at www.toricarrington.net for fun drawings.
Here’s wishing you love, romance and hot reading.
Lori and Tony Karayianni
aka Tori Carrington
Submission
Tori Carrington
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bestselling, multi-award-winning duo Lori and Tony Karayianni have published over thirty novels under the pen name Tori Carrington. They are two-time finalists for the prestigious Romance Writers of America’s RITA® Award, and their personal motto is “Have laptop, will travel!” Look for the authors—and if you’re lucky, a tray of Tony’s Famous Baklava—at bookstores and conferences in your neck of the woods. For more info on Lori and Tony and their titles, visit them on the Web at www.toricarrington.net or write to them at P.O. Box 12271, Toledo, Ohio 43612.
We dedicate this book wholeheartedly
to two people we encounter nearly every day—
postal workers Jeanne Murphy and Sandi Weaks.
You both make the mundane something
to look forward to. Thank you!
And to Brenda Chin’s boys, Kenai and Koda,
for inspiring a special “character” in this book.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
1
A SOUND AS GRATING AS A woman’s fingernails scratching against a chalkboard wrenched me from sleep. I pulled my pillow over my head and tried to ignore it. But like my ex-wife, it refused to go away.
I snaked a hand out from under the pillow, then dragged the telephone receiver to my ear. “What?”
“Detective Alan Chevalier, please.”
“That would be me.”
“Sir, we have a possible three-zero.” The dispatcher stated the address of the homicide.
I mumbled something that she must have taken as an okay because she hung up. On my end, it took three tries before I finally got the receiver back into the cradle. In one move I hauled the pillow from my face and sat up, then stared blearily at the closed shades drawn tight against the windows, the edges ablaze with the morning sunlight slamming against them. I squinted at the digital clock half turned away from me on the nightstand. Just after eight in the morning.
Damn.
I was late starting my normal weekday. Although the definition of normal was up for grabs.
Sometimes being a homicide detective in New Orleans’s Eighth Precinct, French Quarter, wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Sometimes? Lately I’d come to view my job as a necessary evil. Necessary because, since I presently lacked the pleasure of a big-busted blonde to wake me up in the middle of the night, what else would I do with my time? Evil because lately I didn’t look much better than the victims of a killer who didn’t want to be found.
I stared at my morning erection, feeling part of yet separate from the organ that had gotten me into more trouble than it was worth. I covered it by putting on the slacks lying on the floor and then I moved into the bathroom on autopilot. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, I wasn’t entirely certain what was to blame for the blurriness—the grimy mirror or the half bottle of bourbon I’d downed last night. I flicked on the light, winced at the ice pick it stuck into my skull, then switched it back off, relying on the bedside lamp in the other room to cast enough light for me to do what I had to. Which, admittedly, wasn’t much. A quick splash of water over a face that women called full of character but never handsome (although recently they hadn’t called it much of anything at all because women didn’t much factor into my life as of late): green eyes that were often mistaken for brown, sandy brown hair a month overdue for a cut and lines that may have once been laugh lines but were now just wear and tear.
I scraped my palm against the stubble on my jaw. I could get away with another day of not shaving. Anyway, a dead body waited. And while it wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon, there would be others waiting for me to do my job so they could do theirs. And while my appearance wasn’t much of a priority for me, my job was. Simply because I wanted to keep it.
Shortly thereafter I walked down the two flights of stairs to the street and stood fighting against the bright morning sunlight to keep my eyes open. An interesting percentage of the Quarter’s denizens—and an even bigger chunk of visitors—liked to think of themselves as vampires. With my present aversion to sunlight, I could have been bitten by one last night.
But I knew the only thing I was cursed with was a wicked hangover.
I stepped toward my twelve-year-old navy blue Chevy Caprice, a solid car, if unsightly. A bit like me, I supposed.
Only this morning it bore a hood ornament I wasn’t used to seeing. Well, at least not without a price tag attached. And I was pretty sure that the attractive woman leaning against the front of my car wasn’t a streetwalker, if only because her clothes revealed she was from a place where autumn required a change in wardrobe. A wool suit in New Orleans in October would immediately peg anyone as an outsider. And this girl, no matter how hot, was definitely an outsider.
She spotted me when I took my keys out of my pocket and unlocked the driver’s-side door.
“Detective Chevalier?”
She knew me. Which usually meant bad news. A looker like this one, and I didn’t recognize her? Could mean one of two things: I’d met her when I’d had too much to drink or she was associated with someone else I’d met when I’d had too much to drink.
I squinted up into her face and my stomach pitched. Because I wasn’t only looking at an outsider; I was looking at a dead woman. Claire Laraway. My unsolved-murder victim from two weeks ago.
“Are you all right, Detective?” She blinked as if a thought had just occurred to her. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget how much my sister and I looked alike. I’m Molly Laraway, Claire’s twin sister. We’re fraternal, not identical, but we still always looked enough alike to…I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Startle me? Christ, she had me wondering if there was something to the upcoming Halloween celebration, one of the longest nights of the year in the city of the dead when it was believed that ghosts walked the earth.
“I was hoping I could talk to you,” she said.
The only thing that could be worse than confronting the ghost of a victim whose murder you hadn’t solved was dealing with the sibling of one.
I inserted the key into the car door and opened it. “Call the office.”
I climbed inside, but a cleverly positioned bag with sequins on it prevented me from closing the door. “I have called the office. Countless times. And I always get the same response—I’ll hear something when there’s something to hear.”
I grimaced, recognizing the words as my own.
It wasn’t that I was a cold person. It was just that in my job nearly every victim came with well-meaning relatives attached. Wives, husbands, children, friends. And they all thought the killing of their loved ones elevated them to detective status; at best, making themselves pests; at worst, hindering my investigation.
I stared at her bag and where it was still stuck in my door. I hadn’t meant to go farther than that, but I found my gaze taking in the fullness of her breasts beneath the brown wool of her jacket, the flare of her hips, the length of her legs—which looked great in heels not too high to be impractical but not too short to be sexy.
“Detective Chevalier, I need to know what’s going on in the investigation of my sister’s death. I want to help find her killer.”
I moved her bag out of the way. “Go home, Miss Laraway, and let me do my job.”
She replaced the bag with fingers I couldn’t exactly slam in the door. “From what I can see, you’re not doing that job very well.”
Now that would get her far. Pretty much as far as she’d gotten.
“Remove your hands from my vehicle, Miss Laraway, before I remove them for you.”
She stared at me as if gauging my willingness to do just that. She removed her fingers.
I closed the door and started the engine.
A knock at the window.
I pushed the button to open it a crack.
“Here,” she said, holding a card through the slit. “This is my contact information. I’m staying at the Ritz.”
I didn’t take the card.
She didn’t retract it.
“Detective Chevalier, I think it only fair to warn you that I’m not going anywhere. I’m here for the duration. However long it takes to find my sister’s killer.”
“Alan,” I said automatically.
I took the card.
She smiled at me.
I wished I hadn’t taken the card.
“I’d like to treat you to lunch today if you can spare the time,” she said.
“I’m busy.”
“Dinner, then.”
I thought of the two nickels I had in my pocket and grimaced.
“Coffee?”
“Look, Miss Laraway, I don’t know what you hope to accomplish by coming down here from…”
“Toledo.”
Was that even a real place? I thought it was something made up on TV. “The best way you can help is by letting me do my job.”
“How does coffee prevent you from doing your job?”
My hangover-dulled mind couldn’t produce a response to that.
She said, “Eleven o’clock, then. At Tujague’s in the French Quarter.”
Tujague’s happened to serve the best beef rémoulade in New Orleans, if not the whole of Louisiana. And it had been a while since I’d had it.
I knew I should refuse the invite. But damn if I could come up with a real good reason why.
“I’ll be there if I have the time.”
I put the car into gear and pulled away, looking into the rearview mirror at the woman with legs that went all the way up to her beautiful neck. I told myself she was nothing but trouble with a capital T.
But it had been a long time since I’d gotten myself into that kind of trouble. And so long as she wasn’t married to my superior, well, maybe this kind of trouble was just what I needed….
MOLLY LARAWAY STOOD staring after the departing Chevy, feeling frustrated and defeated and intrigued all at once. Detective Alan Chevalier was everything and nothing she’d imagined him to be. Oh, the cavalier attitude she’d expected, since she’d received as much from him on the phone. But there was something more about the rumpled man, something that niggled under her too-warm jacket and her damp skin. Something that made her itch more than the worsted wool did.
She glanced at her watch. She’d been in town since yesterday morning and, aside from coaxing the detective’s home address out of a desk sergeant at the Eighth Precinct with a few crisp bills and collecting her sister’s things from FBI agent Akela Brooks, she hadn’t accomplished a lot. Of course, what had she expected? To come down here and have Chevalier lay the case out on a table in front of her? To see a pattern in the evidence and immediately pinpoint the killer’s identity?
“I don’t know why you’re wasting your time, girl,” her mother had said last night when Molly had called her from the hotel to tell her where she was. “You always were a little too ambitious for your own good.”
She’d heard the sentence more times than she could count over her twenty-seven years, but she’d always taken it as a compliment. At least someone in their family was determined to do something with her life.
But last night she’d taken the comment as an insult.
Probably because she’d been in a strange room in a strange city, alone and without anything to occupy her but the box of Claire’s meager belongings.
She realized she was still standing on the street staring after a car that had long since left. She’d found herself in similar positions in the past two and a half weeks—being somewhere and forgetting why she was there and where she needed to go next. But right now, part of the reason was that she didn’t have anywhere to go next.
Her head jerked up, a chill running up the backs of her arms. She had the odd sensation that she was being watched. She scanned the windows of the houses and apartments squashed together on the narrow street. Not a face or a moving curtain among them.
She regained her bearings and turned around, going back the way she’d come, toward the spot where the taxi had let her off near the French Quarter.
Where should she go next?
It was said that twins shared a special connection, but she’d never really believed it. Claire had. She’d spent many a conversation trying to convince Molly that she knew how she felt, what she was thinking. But while Claire may have had some sort of insight into her thoughts and feelings, Molly had never understood the same of her sister. When they were younger, Claire had spent the majority of her time outdoors—usually with boys—while Molly had stayed indoors, taking care of the house while their mother worked or reading in the room she shared with her twin. When they were in high school, Claire had dated the football captain and had gone to all the “in” parties, while Molly had studied hard, graduating at the top of their class. She’d been offered scholarships at three different universities and had picked the one closest to home for practical reasons.
No, she’d never felt any sort of paranormal connection to her twin sister…until two and a half weeks ago.
Molly caught herself rubbing her neck. She’d known the instant Claire had died. Had felt the knife that had taken her twin’s life as surely as if the cold blade had been pressed against her own throat. Had experienced her sister’s horror, dread, then felt the life slipping from her body just as the blood had flowed from her wound.
Every minute of every day Molly felt her twin’s ghost haunting her, demanding that she find her killer.
And Molly intended to do exactly that. Either with or without Detective Chevalier’s help.
2
I PULLED THE OLD CHEVY to the curb outside Hotel Josephine in the old section of the French Quarter. The place had become familiar to me lately. Not because I’d ever stayed there but because just over two weeks ago another body had shown up in one of the rooms. A body that had looked remarkably like the woman I’d just left standing in the street outside my apartment.
I got out of the car, grabbed my hat from the front seat, then stood staring at the four-story structure not unlike countless others in the Quarter. It was probably at least two centuries old—and looked it.
A uniformed NOPD officer who’d arrived on the scene before me hiked up his pants as I approached the door.
“What do we got?” I asked.
“Thirty-C. Room 2B.”
Damn. The thirty indicated homicide. The C indicated homicide by cutting, which meant this victim might very well be connected to the one before.
The pretty hotel owner, Josie Villefranche, was standing near the front desk, her honey-colored skin looking pale. Not that I could blame her. I’d heard business had taken a nosedive after the first unsolved murder. Now that there was a second, Lord only knew how she’d manage to keep afloat.
“Miss Villefranche,” I said.
“Detective Chevalier.”
I knew she kept an illegal sawed-off shotgun behind the front desk, which probably explained why she was partial to standing near it at all times.
Since I couldn’t ask questions until I actually had them to ask, I climbed the stairs to the second floor. Another uniformed officer stood outside the door to 2B, guarding it.
“John,” I said, recognizing him.
“Alan.”
I stepped into the doorway and stared inside the room. And for the second time that day I saw a ghost. Because the victim stretched across the bed, her head hanging over the foot, was in the same position and had the same throat wound as Claire Laraway.
I’d never been one to buy into coincidence. If it looked like a crawfish, smelled like a crawfish and tasted like a crawfish…well, it was a goddamn crawfish.
I rubbed my closed eyelids and took a deep breath, then stepped farther into the room, pushing aside the similarities between the last victim and this one and instead focusing on the differences. Number one, I knew this victim. Her name was Frederique Arkart and she was a streetwalker, not a new resident to the city. Number two, she was African-American. I slowly crouched down, taking in the way her eyes seemed to stare at a point I couldn’t see. For all intents and purposes, she couldn’t see it, either, but it was apparent that she’d been looking at something—or rather someone—while her life was being taken away from her. I blindly reached for a rubber glove in the pocket of my trench coat and put it on my right hand. Number three, the wounds were different, I found as I lightly probed the victim’s neck. Laraway’s had been made with a sharp instrument, while the blade used here had been duller, making a sloppy job of it.
I took off the glove and sat crouched for long minutes, staring at the floor in front of me.
New Orleans ranked pretty high in the nation when it came to murder statistics. I knew this not because I read the papers but because I was kept busier than most other detectives in bigger cities. I’d seen more than my share of murders and had no fewer than a dozen actively open cases sitting on my desk at any one time, with a countless number of others that had been marked cold cases and filed away.
“Looks familiar.”
I craned my neck to look at the chief of forensics, Steven Chan, then stood up. “Yeah.”
“You think we’re dealing with the same killer?” He put his box down in a corner where it was least likely there would be any trace evidence.
“That’s your job, not mine.”
“Well, that’s the first time I’ve heard you say that.”
He was right. Usually I would be telling him that it looked as though the wounds were different somehow. But I thought it was a good idea if I was a little more careful nowadays. I’d arrested the wrong man in the Laraway murder and didn’t want to be placed in that position again anytime soon. Especially considering that my career already hung by a very thin thread.
“Let me know what you come up with,” I said. “I’m going down to talk to the owner.”
MOLLY SAT AT A BACK table at Tujague’s and stared at her watch. It was a quarter after eleven and Detective Chevalier was late.
Either that or he’d never planned to come.
“Decide yet?” the young waiter asked.
“I’m waiting for someone,” she said again.
He smiled at her in a way that said he knew she was waiting but he’d approached her to see if she’d given up and decided to eat anyway.
She pulled a menu in front of her.
A cordially shouted greeting drew her attention toward the door. She was mildly surprised to find Alan Chevalier stepping inside, his overcoat as wrinkled as it had been earlier, holding his hat as he shook hands with the portly man behind the bar—apparently the issuer of the hearty welcome.
Molly was both glad and nervous that he’d decided to come. The mix of reactions intrigued her. His being there meant he might include her in the investigation, or at the very least keep her informed on his progress.
Her gaze mingled with his across the already crowded dining room and she swallowed hard, aware now, as she had been earlier, of the strange chemistry that seemed to exist between them.
His being there also meant that he might feel the same pull.
It took him a few moments to make it to the table. She expected him to take off his overcoat—her own wool jacket was on the back of her chair—but he didn’t. He merely sat back in his chair, staring at her silently, his arm stretched out so that the hand that held his hat lay on the table between them.
“I’m glad you could make it,” she said quietly.
He didn’t say anything, almost as if he was as surprised to be there as she was to see him there.
Finally he leaned forward and placed his hat on the empty chair to his right. “Yes, well, this happens to be one of my favorite places. I might have been planning on coming here anyway.”
Molly had given up all pretense of reading the menu and looked him over instead. She’d noticed this morning that he’d looked a little ragged around the edges. It had been at least a day since he’d shaved, and he was in need of a haircut. His clothes…well, it looked as if he might have slept in them, the wrinkles and creases speaking of a man who was either too busy to make or uninterested in making an effort with his appearance.
Strangely this lack of concern for the way he looked appealed to her on a level she hadn’t been aware of until now. She usually went for the well-groomed types. Career-driven, gym-obsessed overachievers in pressed suits who carried expensive briefcases and drove cars that cost more than some houses.
But Alan Chevalier…
She realized she was staring and dropped her gaze to the white tablecloth.
“Has anything—” she began, then stopped, realizing the futile nature of her question.
“Happened in your sister’s case since I saw you a couple of hours ago?” He shook his head. “No.”
“Hello, Detective Chevalier. The usual?” the young waiter asked the man across from her.
“Yes,” he said. “And bring the same for the lady.” He considered her. “Unless you’re a vegetarian?”
Molly said that whatever he’d ordered was fine.
The waiter disappeared, leaving them alone again.
Well, alone really wasn’t the applicable word. The small restaurant was packed with other diners, despite the early hour. But as far as Molly was concerned, they could have been alone in the popular eatery.
“So, Miss Laraway, what is it that you do for a living?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
His eyebrows rose.
“You seem surprised.”
“Your career doesn’t impact me one way or another, Miss Laraway.” He shrugged. “Which branch of law?”
“Right now I’m assigned to business law at the firm where I work.”
“But you hope to…”
“Eventually move on to criminal law.”
He nodded, as if expecting the answer. “A defense attorney.”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
He looked over her suit as if trying to put the pieces of her together. “Getting off the same people I bust my ass trying to put behind bars?” He shook his head. “No, I don’t have a problem with that.”
Molly tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “Anyway, my career isn’t the reason we’re here, is it?”
“Ah, yes.” He leaned forward, folding his hands on top of the table. “Your sister.”
Had he forgotten?
She realized with some interest that it appeared he had. And that he didn’t seem concerned about the fact, either.
An unwelcome thrill raced through her bloodstream as her gaze took in his hands. Strong hands, clean, nails clipped and neat, dark hair peppering the backs of his thick, square fingers. They were capable hands, manly.
And she was paying them far too much attention.
Molly cleared her throat and took a notepad from her bag.
“Were you and your sister close, Miss Laraway?”
“Molly, please.” She pulled out a pen and laid it against the pad. “And, no, unfortunately my sister and I were never very close. Despite the belief about twins, she and I were nothing alike. And when she moved down here last year, we pretty much fell out of touch.”
She didn’t like admitting that. Seeing as they’d been the only two siblings in their single-parent household, she thought she should have made more of an effort. Called her sister. E-mailed her. At least kept track of how she was doing.
“Do you know if she was dating anyone at the time of her death?”
Molly shook her head, unable to bring herself to meet his gaze.
“Isn’t that the type of thing a sister—forget a twin—would usually know?”
“Do you have any siblings, Detective Chevalier?”
He seemed taken aback by her response. “That’s not at issue here.”
“And my closeness to my sister is?”
He squinted at her, bringing out the crinkles at the sides of his eyes. Were they brown? No, they were green, she realized. A deep leaf green.
“I thought you wanted to help find the person responsible for your sister’s death.”
Molly drew in a deep breath. She did. That was the whole reason she was there.
Appetizers were served and Alan chatted with the waiter for a couple of moments, talking about what had been brought in this morning. After the young man left, Chevalier motioned for her to help herself.
“It’s meant to be shared,” he said.
She accepted a small plate on which he’d placed two of the thick shrimp scampi—or did they call them something else down here?
“I have three sisters,” he said, looking at his food rather than her as he spoke. “All younger. And I couldn’t tell you much about what’s going on in their lives, either.”
Molly felt as though he’d just pressed a thumb against a low pressure point, releasing the tension there.
She smiled easily. “Thanks.”
He shrugged, considering her warily. “Don’t mention it.” He ate for a couple moments, then asked, “So when do you go home?”
Suddenly Molly stiffened again, because it was obvious he’d meant as in today or tomorrow, the day after tomorrow at the latest.
He leaned closer to her, his expression intense. “Look, Miss Laraway, I know your intentions are good, but the fact is, there’s nothing you can do down here. You might as well go back home and resume your life. Nothing you can do can bring your sister back.”
Molly leaned forward, as well. “Tell me, Detective Chevalier, how many unsolved homicide cases do you have open at any one time?”
His eyes narrowed.
She picked up her purse and took out a photograph. “This is a picture of me and my sister taken at our college graduation.” She put it on the table in front of him. “Look at it.”
“Miss Laraway—”
“Look at it,” she repeated.
He sighed and picked up the shot.
“My twin, my sister, was a living, breathing human being, not just a crime victim.”
He tried to hand the picture back.
“No, you keep it. Put it on top of the countless ones you probably have of her postmortem.” She crossed her arms. “The sooner you accept that I’m not going anywhere, Detective, the sooner we can push aside all the BS and get down to the business of catching this killer before he takes the life of someone else’s sister.” She swallowed hard. “And before you have someone else like me to deal with.”
He seemed unfazed by her words, looking at her much the way he had when he’d first sat down at the table.
Molly searched for more arguments with which she might convince him. “I’m a lawyer, Detective. Familiar with the law. Use me. I can do legwork you might not have time for. Investigate far-fetched angles you’ve already ruled out that might still be viable. Make sure you’re not without a cup of coffee at all times.”
“You’re personally attached to the case,” he said.
“Which means I’m doubly committed to seeing the job gets done.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Coffee, huh?”
His lopsided smile made her retract a few claws. But just a few. Because she had the feeling that if he did take her on, he’d send her out for coffee…permanently.
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