Mallory Kane - Blood Ties in Chef Voleur

He put the letter back in its ragged envelope, slid the rubber band around the stack and inserted it under the architectural plans and drawings. Then he took out a small spiral bound notebook and paged through it for the notes he’d jotted as he’d read through the letters the first time. After glancing at his handwritten notes, he leaned back in the kitchen chair and stretched.

He didn’t have to refer to any notes to recall what his grandfather had said to him at their last meeting. Ah, Jacques. You are so smart and so wise for your years. But you’re drowning your talents in jealousy and hatred. It’s no way to live, mon petit. It will eat up all the goodness and love inside you and leave you empty and alone. You must forgive them, son. The murder of Con Delancey was only one act by one pathetic individual. The Broussard name is a proud one, but it is not worth the ruination of your life. You can be the better man.

“I’m sorry, Papi,” Jack muttered. “I can never be as good a man as you were.”

Standing, Jack locked his briefcase and slipped into the bedroom and lay down beside Cara Lynn, whose back was turned. For a few seconds, he lay and watched her sleep. She was so beautiful, with her eyes closed and her lips slightly parted.

As he’d thought earlier at the reception, she really was one of the most genuine people he’d ever met. Her eyes were always clear and blue, her expression was always open and trusting. He sometimes felt guilty for deceiving her. But it had been the perfect ruse. After all, she was a Delancey, and the Delanceys had ruined his grandfather’s life.

As the thoughts flitted drowsily through his mind, his gaze traced the flowing line of her shoulder and torso where the moonlight danced off her skin. He admired the curve of her hips and imagined the shadow centered between them and felt himself harden with desire. He closed his eyes deliberately and turned over, putting his back to hers.

As he did, the bedclothes rustled. After a second, she slid her arm under his and rested her hand on his flat belly. The muscles there contracted when her warm fingers splayed against his skin and the arousal he’d almost managed to quell rose up again.

Desperately, afraid she might decide to slide her hand lower and coax him into early morning sex, he wrapped her hand in his.

“What time is it?” she asked drowsily.

“Five thirty or so,” he said.

“Have you been up all night?”

He nodded. “Told you, I had some plans to go over, but I don’t have to go in early today, so I’ll have plenty of time to take a nap after you leave.”

“Well, in that case...” she murmured in a low voice. At the same time she leaned forward and kissed his bare shoulder.

He grimaced, but he turned onto his back and held up his arm so she could slide into his embrace and rest her head in the little hollow between his neck and shoulder. “I’m way too tired,” he said.

She chuckled and the sound of bells filled his ears. “That’s disappointing. Maybe next time you’ll think twice about staying up all night,” she whispered, then nipped at his ear lobe.

The gentle bite startled him and he jumped, which made her laugh harder. He flipped over on top of her hands, then held them in one of his while he tickled her sides.

“Jack, don’t!” she cried breathlessly, amid giggling laughter. “I thought you were too—tired.”

“Don’t what?” he said, slowing down the tickles and allowing them to become caresses. “Don’t do this?” he whispered as he slid his hand down her flat belly to caress her. “Or this?” he whispered, pushing into her with a gentle finger.

“Oh—” She wrapped her hand around his wrist, but not to stop him; she pressed his hand down and arched against it.

Jack felt her readiness and entered her, doing his best to stay disconnected, to keep the coupling casual, but that was never easy with Cara Lynn. She lifted her head to kiss him. As soon as her lips touched his, as soon as he felt her tongue along the seam of his mouth, he reciprocated, cursing himself for being so weak he couldn’t resist the person he’d targeted to pay for destroying his grandfather’s life.

* * *

PAUL GUILLAME LAY awake and watched the purple glow grow lighter in the sky. He felt as though he hadn’t slept a wink all night. After seeing Betty Delancey’s bestowal of the Guillame fortune on the sweet princess of the Delancey clan, Paul had felt an urge to break one of the expensive bottles of champagne and use its sharp, rough edges to rip all their throats out.

His frustration was that the people whose throats he most wanted to cut were already dead. His Aunt Lilibelle, for one.

She’d yanked him free of the harsh ruling of juvenile court when he was seventeen and raised him as her own, and he’d worshiped her as much as he’d hated her husband, Con. She’d always promised him that he would have her journals. Promised that even after she died, her best friend, Con’s sister, Claire, would keep them safe for him.

But years later, when Cara Lynn graduated from high school, she’d been presented with the journals by her mother, who told her that Grandmother Lilibelle had wanted her to have them. Paul protested, but when he saw the first journal, the inscription inside the cover read To Cara Lynn, in his beloved Aunt Lili’s flowing, decorative hand.

He’d never dreamed that Lili would betray him, not after taking him in to rear along with her own two sons. Not after all the times he’d comforted her when Con was photographed in the company of other women. Not after everything Paul had done for her and everything she’d done for him. They’d always protected each other, and they’d sworn that they always would.

And now, once again he felt the sting of Lili’s betrayal. Her last journal, the one that could destroy the Delancey family, had also gone to Cara Lynn along with the Guillame tiara, worth so much it was generally referred to as priceless.

As fascinated as he had always been with the tiara, he wasn’t concerned about it. There was an unreal quality about jewels that large. Plus, what good would having the tiara do if he couldn’t sell it?

Still, although he was terrified at what someone might find in Lili’s last journal, it was some comfort that none of the Delanceys had gotten their hands on it, either. He’d felt a thrill almost as satisfying as a climax when the lights had gone off and people had started shouting and panicking. The seemingly superhuman Delanceys had been as helpless as ordinary people in the face of the sudden, temporary blackout that lasted for only a few minutes until the emergency generator had kicked on.

But the idea that nobody in the room could see, or know what was happening or who was causing it, had given him a particular thrill. Then when the emergency lights came on and the table was empty—the journal and the tiara gone, he nearly went over the edge.

It had taken every ounce of self-control he had to keep from literally rubbing his palms together with glee. The thief had walked into the Delancey mansion and walked out—or run out—with the journal and the tiara right under the noses of the Delanceys.

But the most exciting thing of all, precisely because he’d been watching Cara Lynn like a hawk all evening, and had made sure his eyes were on her and no one else when the lights came on, was that she had covered something with her hand just before the lights went out. Something white and flat, like a sheet of paper or an envelope.

Once the lights were back on, whatever the bit of white had been, it had disappeared as if it had never been there. Three Delancey men were hovering over her, and her husband was standing on a chair, apparently trying to get a good look at the thief.