Kitabı oxu: «Sudden Attraction»

In the darkness, he couldn’t see her face, but he didn’t need the sense of sight to know what she looked like.

He lowered his head, and as his mouth touched hers, he was caught by a blaze of need that radiated to every cell of his body.

They’d gone from strangers to intimates in seconds. Without understanding why it had happened, he wanted her. Right here. Right now. Out in the open.

Those heated thoughts and the pain pounding through his brain almost wiped out his ability to think, but not quite. Somewhere in his consciousness, he understood that what they were doing was dangerous. That knowledge was as sharp and insistent as the desire binding them together.

About the Author

Award-winning, USA TODAY bestselling novelist Ruth Glick, who writes as REBECCA YORK, is the author of more than one hundred books, including her popular 43 LIGHT STREET series for Mills & Boon^® Intrigue. Ruth says she has the best job in the world. Not only does she get paid for telling stories, she’s also the author of twelve cookbooks. Ruth and her husband, Norman, travel frequently, researching locales for her novels and searching out new dishes for her cookbooks.

SUDDEN
ATTRACTION
BY
USA TODAY Bestselling Author REBECCA YORK
(Ruth Glick writing as Rebecca York)

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Chapter One

While Gabriella Boudreaux filled a tray of chocolate eclairs with pastry cream in the kitchen of Chez Emile, she was fighting off panic. When the phone rang, she knew it was for her. With bad news.

As one of the prep staff called her name, she put down the pastry bag she was holding, wiped her hands on her white apron and crossed the kitchen.

The anxious voice on the other end of the line belonged to her mother.

“Gabriella, you’ve got to come home.”

“Mom, we’ve talked about this before. I’m in the middle of getting ready for the evening rush. I can’t drop everything and drive to Lafayette.”

“You have to!”

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s a man stalking me.”

Gabriella’s hand clamped on the receiver. Over the past few years, she watched and worried as she’d seen her mother’s mental state deteriorating. There had been too many instances when Gabriella had hurried home to take care of some emergency or another—only to have her mother ask why she was there.

“I can’t leave right now,” she said. “I have to work.”

“I need you.”

The mom’s pleading tone almost undid her, but she managed to say, “Can you get Paula to help you out?”

The voice on the other end of the line turned petulant. “I don’t want Paula.”

“She’s your best friend. I’ll come home as soon as I can get away,” she answered, thinking that she’d have to spend the night in Lafayette, then rush back to New Orleans to start work again in the morning.

When her mother started crying, Gabriella’s heart squeezed painfully. “Mom, I’m sorry. Truly. I’ll be there in a few hours.”

“That will be too late.”

She looked up and saw Emile Gautreaux watching her. A short, plump man with thinning gray hair, he had been a darling of the New Orleans restaurant scene for more than thirty years. When arthritis and his increasing bulk had curtailed his ability to function efficiently, he had hired several surrogates to populate his kitchen. Gabriella was the senior pastry chef.

“I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later,” she said into the phone.

Her mother’s high-pitched voice still rang over the line as she replaced the receiver in the cradle. Dropping her hand, she took a moment to compose herself before looking up at the man who treated his professional staff like plantation hands.

He was still eyeing her. “Something wrong, chère?” he asked in the deep bayou accent that his customers found so appealing.

“No. Everything is fine.”

“I hope there is not going to be a problem,” he replied with the edge in his voice that he only used with staff.

“I’ll handle it.”

“I hope so.” He gave a curt nod. When he strode over to the stove to taste the shrimp and andouille gumbo simmering in a large pot, she let out the breath she was holding.

She wanted to make her mark in the food world, and despite Emile’s slave driver attitude, he’d provided her with a wonderful chance to showcase her work. She’d received some glowing reviews in the local papers, on food blogs and even one of the airline magazines, but she’d started to wonder if she could have a life and work for Gautreaux at the same time.

She longed to tell him she had to take some personal time this afternoon, but it wouldn’t do her or Mom any good if she got fired and had to look for another job.

She finished the eclairs on automatic pilot, cataloguing her own shortcomings as she worked.

She’d never been the daughter her mother wanted, and Mom had never let her forget it. Which left her feeling more on edge than ever.

Janie Rivers glided over. Janie was also working as a pastry chef at Chez Emile—under Gabriella’s direction—and Gabriella’s intuition told her that the other woman was looking for an opportunity to move up in the food chain.

“Did you get a complaint about one of your desserts?”

“No,” Gabriella snapped. Then softened her voice. “A problem at home.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Yeah, I’ll bet, Gabriella thought, but there was no point in saying it aloud.

“What can I do to help?” Janie asked.

“I’ve finished the eclairs, the chocolate torte and the flourless chocolate cake. I’ve still got to do the lemon sponge, the cinnamon ice cream that goes with the torte and the peach crisp.”

“I can do the ice cream.”

Despite her previous thought about Janie’s career ambitions, Gabriella gave her a grateful smile. “I’ll owe you one.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. We all help each other out when we can.”

When Janie reached out to touch Gabriella’s shoulder, she automatically took a step back, and the other woman dropped her hand.

As long as she could remember, Gabriella hadn’t liked being touched. She couldn’t explain the aversion. She only knew that it usually made her nerves jangle.

“Got to get started on the lemon sponge.” Quickly Gabriella went to the storage bin where the restaurant kept the flour, then brought out lemons, eggs and sugar.

Ordering herself to focus on her work so she could finish up and get out of here, she began grating lemon peel.

But she couldn’t shake the worry that something was different at home this time. Something bad was going to happen, and she was going to be too late.

There was no way to explain the feeling. It might simply have come from guilt or from the abilities that she’d developed in her teens. It wasn’t anything that she could explain—or wanted to talk about, to be frank. But sometimes she caught a glimmer of the future.

Like when little Billy Poirier had wandered into the bayou, and she was sure he wasn’t going to be found alive. Or maybe that had been her fear—not her foreknowledge. Because there was no way to prove it either way.

By the time she packed up some of yesterday’s desserts for Mom and left Chez Emile, it was already late in the afternoon and rush-hour traffic on I-10 was brutal. As she sat in the car, gripping the steering wheel, her sense of anxiety grew.

Drivers weren’t supposed to talk on the phone without a headset, which she didn’t have. Nevertheless, she punched in her mom’s number and listened to the phone ring.

When she heard her mother’s voice, her heart leaped, but it was only the answering machine asking her to leave a message.

“Mom, I’m on my way. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Her stomach was in knots now. Three hours later, when she finally reached the turnoff to the plantation where she’d grown up, she breathed out a small sigh.

If you didn’t know much about the Boudreaux family, you might think they were well off.

Her mother still lived in the nineteenth-century mansion she’d inherited from her parents, but she’d abandoned the whole second floor to save on utilities, and she supplemented her income by renting out furnished cottages on the property. Still, when Gabriella had suggested selling off some of the acreage, her mother had refused.

Mom’s car was in the circular drive in front of the mansion, but another vehicle was pulled up, too.

As Gabriella cut the engine, her mother’s friend Paula Aucoin came rushing down the steps. The expression on her face was a confirmation of Gabriella’s worst fears.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Honey, I’m so sorry. There’s been an accident.”

Her throat clenched, but she managed to say, “It’s bad, right?”

“It looks like Marian fell down the steps. I’m sorry. She’s dead.”

Gabriella struggled to take that in. “But … but she never goes upstairs.”

“I know. That’s why it’s so strange. She was worried about something, and she called me. When I got here, she was sprawled at the bottom of the steps, unconscious.”

Gabriella gasped. “She called me. I … I couldn’t leave the restaurant. I …” Her voice trailed off as terrible guilt assaulted her. “She wanted me to come home.”

“It wouldn’t have done any good. I think she called me right after she talked to you, and I came straight over. I’m right here in town, but when I got here, she had already fallen.”

Gabriella nodded numbly. The explanation didn’t help. All she knew was that she should have dropped everything and come home.

“Where is she now?”

“The LeBlanc Funeral Home. She’d written me a letter about what she wanted to happen after she died.”

Gabriella swallowed hard, thinking that she should have been the one to get the letter. But Mom had relied on Paula more than her own daughter.

“Come in. Sit down and have a cup of coffee.”

She was torn. She should go to the funeral home, but she sensed that Paula wanted to talk to her, so she allowed the older woman to take her into the kitchen. It was at the back of the house, and the breakfast room looked out over weedy gardens and a slow-moving bayou.

She stood for a moment, breathing in the familiar scents. Fried bacon. Strong Cajun coffee. This was where her love of cooking had been born. First she’d helped with mixing batter and stirring soup. Then she’d started following recipes on her own. Her relationship with Mom might have been troubled, but the kitchen was one place where they had connected.

When Gabriella walked to the coffeemaker on the worn Formica counter, Paula waved her toward the table. “Sit down. I know you’ve had a bad shock.”

“So have you.”

“I’ve had some time to absorb it.” Paula got down mugs and poured two cups of the strong coffee that Mom must have made that morning.

“Your mother was so proud of you.”

Gabriella looked up in surprise. “She was?”

“Yes. She’d talk about your career all the time. About how the famous Emile Gautreaux relied on you.”

“She didn’t say that to me.”

“It was hard for her to … reach out to you.”

“Why?” Gabriella asked, curious to get Paula’s take on their relationship.

“When your father was sick, she wanted to spend as much time with him as she could. After he died, she felt like she’d lost her connection with you.”

Gabriella had been only three years old when her father had been diagnosed with stomach cancer, and her mom had thrown herself into nursing him. When he’d died a couple of years after that, Gabriella had felt as if her mother was a stranger, and they’d never been able to reach across the breach.

“She considered herself a failure for not being closer to you,” Paula said.

Gabriella raised her head in shock. “But I always thought that was my fault.”

“I guess Marian had the same feelings. Too bad the two of you didn’t communicate better.”

“I …”

“I’m not blaming you, child. It was on her as much as on you. Maybe more. The adult is the one who’s supposed to take the lead.”

Paula brought two mugs of coffee to the table, both with cream and sugar. When she sat down and stirred her coffee, Gabriella had the feeling there was more she was going to say.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A couple of months ago, your mom rented the Cypress Cottage to a man named Luke Buckley.”

“Yes, she mentioned that. She was glad of the extra income. He wasn’t any trouble, was he?”

“You mean complaining about stuff? I don’t think so. But I think she regretted having him on the property.”

“Why?”

“I think she was afraid of him.”

“Why?” she asked again.

“She said he was secretive. I tried to tell her that maybe he just wanted to keep to himself. He could have lost his job or his wife for all we knew. Who can say why a man moves into an isolated cottage in a new location?”

“Because he’s hiding from the law?” Gabriella asked, putting a different spin on the speculations.

“I don’t know, but I do know she kept going on about him. He was stony. Aloof. Abrupt. He was always in there working on the computer. And there were papers scattered all over the place. When she’d come in, he’d hide them.”

“Hide them?”

“Well, gather them up. And there was something about him that she just didn’t trust.”

“Did he have a lease?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she thought he was all right at the beginning. Or … you know … she was …”

Paula let the sentence trail off, and Gabriella was sure her mother’s friend was referring to her recent mental problems, although she wasn’t willing to come out and say it.

Gabriella glanced out the window toward the Cypress Cottage. “Should I be worried?” she asked.

“I don’t know. But you might want to watch out for him while you’re here. You know, keep the doors locked.”

“If he’s so much of a loner, I probably won’t run into him.”

“Maybe, but you’ll have to deal with him eventually. I mean, now he’s renting from you.”

Gabriella nodded, realizing that she’d inherited this property and would have to decide what to do with it.

“How long are you staying here?”

“Just a few days.”

“Your mom would want you to get back to your career.”

Gabriella made a soft sound. Her career. She’d made it the most important thing in her life. Until today.

If it wasn’t for her ambitions, she might have stayed home, but then what? Work as a short-order cook in Lafayette? That wasn’t why she’d gone to the Culinary Institute of America in New York state, then come back to Louisiana to look for a job in the best restaurants in New Orleans. Creating wonderful food gave her a satisfaction nothing else did. Or it had.

“I’d better get to the funeral home,” she murmured.

“Your mom didn’t want to be a burden to you, so she had everything spelled out—before …” Again Paula stopped.

“But I’m going over there anyway.” Gabriella stood and carried her coffee mug to the sink. “Thank you for being here.”

“Just tell me if you need anything.”

“Thanks. I will.”

BEING CAREFUL NOT TO STEP ON anything that would make a crunching noise, the man watching from the shadows of the trees saw Gabriella Boudreaux hurry back to her car. Probably going to the funeral home.

He waited another minute for the other woman to get into her vehicle. When they had both driven away, he made a satisfied sound.

With the two of them gone, he could finally have a smoke. He was starving for one. After quickly using his pocket lighter, he took a deep drag on the fag, grateful for the nicotine rush. He’d broken the habit out of necessity in prison. As soon as he’d gotten out, he’d started again.

While he smoked, he reviewed the day’s events. The old lady had darted upstairs, and he’d followed, knowing that if he pushed her down, the daughter would come running home.

He was an expert at digging into people’s backgrounds, and he knew that she was one of the children from the Solomon Clinic in Houma.

It had been set up to help infertile couples conceive children, but that was only a cover for something else. The guy who’d hired him had wanted to know what had happened there. Not the covert purpose, the unintended consequences.

The doctor had kept records of his activities, of course, but those had been destroyed in a fire long ago.

A few people in Houma had talked to him about the clinic. Which was how he’d gotten Marian Boudreaux’s name.

She’d been a good place to start, but his real objectives were the children, like Gabriella. She was the one he really wanted, out here in the country, where there was more privacy and little chance of her screams being heard.

Chapter Two

Gabriella was already wiped out by the time she met with Burt LeBlanc from the funeral home.

He’d gone to high school with her, although they hadn’t known each other well. She hadn’t been really close to anyone, except one girl named Julie Monroe. It was as if she and Julie were on the same wavelength, although she wasn’t sure what that meant exactly. They’d spent time together, until Julie had moved away in their sophomore year, leaving Gabriella feeling more alone than ever. Because she’d never been great at making friends, it had been easier to keep to herself than to try and work her way into any of the established groups.

Burt LeBlanc, who’d inherited the business from his dad, greeted her as if they’d been buddies.

She shook his hand, getting through the physical contact the same way she was getting through everything else.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said in the deep, reassuring voice that he must have cultivated.

“Yes—thanks.”

“Sit down. Make yourself comfortable.” He gestured toward one of the padded leather chairs across from his broad desk. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?”

“No, thanks,” she answered as she lowered herself into one of the chairs.

“I read about your pastry chef career in that airline magazine.”

She blinked. “You did?”

“Yes. Very impressive. People in town were talking about it.”

Again, she was surprised that anybody in Lafayette would take notice of her.

After relaxing her with a little more small talk, Burt addressed the arrangements that her mom had spelled out—in an envelope full of instructions that she’d given him several years earlier.

“Your mom wished to be cremated, like your dad,” he said. “There’s a place waiting for her in the columbarium, next to him.”

The columbarium was a building with rows of little vaults along the walls. Putting Mom next to Dad made sense, particularly because it appeared that the space was already bought and paid for.

“All right.”

Burt consulted some papers on his desk. “And, of course, there’s to be no viewing and no funeral.”

Gabriella stared at him as she struggled to take that in. “What?”

He tapped one of the papers. “She didn’t tell you that she specified a memorial service—six weeks after her death?”

“No. Did she say why?”

“She wanted the shock of her death over, and …” He paused for a moment. “And she felt it would be less expensive. The lead time would give you a chance to prepare some of the food yourself if you wanted to. She thought you could make some of those pecan pies she loved.”

“Uh, yes.”

Lord, Mom had certainly gotten into micromanaging the event.

Gabriella left the funeral home feeling light-headed. She’d braced to deal with her mother’s friends. Now she had plenty of time to get ready for the service. And to plan what she wanted to say.

Her mother always had been detail oriented. She must have obsessed over all this before she started losing her grip. Or had she already felt her mental state deteriorating, and she’d hurried to write down these instructions while she could still think clearly?

Gabriella made a small sound as she realized the implications of Mom’s carefully considered list with its wealth of details. Her mother had been forced to deal with a daughter who didn’t always follow the parental script. In death, she had the upper hand—at last.

BY THE TIME GABRIELLA returned to the plantation house, it was after sunset. The gathering darkness contributed to her feeling of being utterly alone. Neither Mom nor Dad had brothers or sisters. Which meant no aunts and uncles or cousins. It had been a small family, and it would die with her because she wasn’t going to get married and have children.

Did that make her feel sad? Or relieved? She was too off balance to know.

Glad that she had left some lights on in the house, she hurried up the steps to the front door. But walking into the hall was like a sudden shock to her already frazzled nerves.

When she’d come through here with Paula, she’d been focused on her mom’s friend. This time she was alone, and when she stood looking up the steps, an inexplicable feeling of terror swept over her, making her reach out and brace her hand against the wall as she struggled to catch her breath—and scrambled to make sense of what she was feeling.

Her mother had fallen here. The impact of Mom’s death was hitting her again, which was why her temples were suddenly pounding. However, she knew deep down that her attack of nerves wasn’t just from the accident.

Paula had said her mom had climbed the steps and fallen. But why had she gone up? To get something? Or to run away from someone? Or both?

Gabriella couldn’t shove away the notion that another person had been here and something evil had happened in this hallway.

Her speculations immediately went to the tenant—Luke Buckley. Mom had been afraid of him. What if he’d come over here and attacked her?

But why?

Maybe he didn’t have the rent money. They’d gotten into an argument, and he’d killed her …

“Stop it,” she muttered to herself. “You’re just letting your speculations run wild because this is the worst day of your life.”

She clenched her fists, sure that Mom’s sudden death and her own feelings of guilt were making her jump at shadows.

What did she really believe? Nothing she could prove. Not without some evidence. If she went upstairs, would she find anything suspicious? Or was there something incriminating in Cypress Cottage?

She gritted her teeth as she imagined herself spying on Luke Buckley. What if one of Mom’s friends caught her doing it? People in Lafayette already thought she was a little off. Which was one of the reasons she’d known she didn’t want to stay in town once she had graduated from high school.

She’d fled her childhood reputation for being weird by going across the country to culinary school then moving to New Orleans, and she didn’t want it back.

But nobody was here to observe her now. Could she start with some kind of psychic impression of what had really happened in the hall—then back it up with evidence? She focused her attention on the stairs, trying to bring the past few hours into focus. Mom had been here. She’d fallen to her death, but had she been alone?

Gabriella put everything she had into trying to bring back the scene. Even as she focused on her mother in the hall—with someone, she silently wondered if she was sending herself on a fool’s errand. No matter how much you wanted to, you couldn’t see the past. Could you?

She’d never tried anything like that before, but she sensed that the scene was hovering almost within her grasp. Shadowy figures flickered at the edge of her vision. Her mom and a man?

She closed her eyes, straining to bring the vision into focus. Yes, she saw her mom, a look of fear on her face as she rushed up the stairs, trying to get away from the stalker. Gabriella saw him only from the back. Or was she making it all up?

Probably.

Struggling with frustration, she tried to see his image from a different angle. Maybe she could have done it, but a massive bolt of lightning struck nearby, so bright that she saw it through her closed eyelids.

It was followed by a clap of thunder that shook the house.

As the thunder rumbled, the lights flickered out, plunging Gabriella into inky, disorienting blackness.

She pressed her back against the wall, suddenly alarmed by the darkness, just like when she’d been little and Mom had insisted on turning out the lights at bedtime. At night, she’d always imagined ghosts from the past coming back to claim this house. Even the toys on her shelves took on sinister shapes, and the closet door had to be closed before she could even think about sleep.

In adulthood, she’d talked herself out of those juvenile fears. But in her fragile emotional state, the sum of her childhood terrors came rushing back to her as she stood in the darkened hallway.

“Stop being ridiculous,” she ordered herself. “The lights are just out. There’s no bogeyman lurking around the corner.”

But she couldn’t deny why she’d come here in the first place. Mom had called her in a panic, talking about a stalker, and there was a man living right on the plantation property who could be up to no good.

With her heart pounding, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. The moon was up, and a small amount of light came through the windows on either side of the door.

When she could see well enough, she crossed the hall and turned the lock on the door. Then she started for the kitchen to get the flashlight that Mom kept in the utility drawer.

Was there anything she could use for a weapon?

They’d never kept a gun in the house, but maybe she should have something with her, like a hammer.

SHE MADE IT TO THE KITCHEN as fast as she could in the dark and opened the utility drawer. The flashlight was there, but when she tried to click it on, the batteries were almost dead. Only a feeble light came from the bulb, and she clenched her fist on the shaft, then shut it off again. All it would do would tell someone where she was, not light her way.

Now what?

Go up to her old room? Or was it better to get out of this house, where she already felt spooked?

Luke Buckley was living in Cypress Cottage. But there were two others on the grounds. Water Iris was the closest. She’d feel more secure spending the night over there than here.

Wishing she could see what she was doing, she fumbled through another drawer and found the wad of spare keys that Mom kept. In the dark, she couldn’t even be sure they were the right ones, but that was the best she could do at the moment.

After slipping the set into her purse, she headed for the back door. On the porch, she looked toward the cottages, barely making out their shapes in the darkness. Water Iris was on the extreme right. Cypress was on the left. And Crepe Myrtle was between them. That would put some space between her and Buckley.

All were blacked out, and she couldn’t even discern the shape of a car parked in front of Cypress. Maybe Luke Buckley was away. Or sitting in the dark plotting murder? He’d taken care of the mother, and now he would finish off the daughter.

Acknowledging that her fears were making it difficult to think rationally, she descended the steps, then headed across the yard to the cottage. It hadn’t started raining yet, but the wind was blowing the trees, sending leaves flying across the lawn.

In Gabriella’s long ago memories, the grass had been well tended by a gardening company that did yard work in town. Mom had given up that service after Dad had died. For a few years, she’d tried to keep up the grounds around the house herself. But that had gone by the wayside, too, and now the grass was choked by weeds and needed mowing. She stumbled several times into what had formerly been flower beds, then finally made it to the cottages. But as she approached Water Iris, she had the sensation that someone was stalking her—like they’d been stalking Mom.

She started running, but before she’d gotten more than a few yards, a figure sprang out of the darkness at the side of Crepe Myrtle, grabbing her and pulling her to the ground.

A scream rose in her throat. Before it reached her lips, it choked off as large hands grabbed her throat. A man’s hands.

At his touch, a confusing welter of impressions and sensations assaulted her.