He couldn’t be sure what it was about the woman. For sure, she was attractive. Beyond merely attractive, if truth be told. She had a lush body that her simple, understated slip dress merely served to emphasize. Her dark hair hung in soft ringlets to her sleek shoulders. But none of that made her any different from countless other women he ran into on the street.
It was her eyes, he realized. The color of rich whiskey when you reached the bottom of a crystal tumbler. Eyes of a Caribbean witch who looked too old to be in this young woman. Eyes that could see straight to the core of a man, talk him into giving up his heart, before she left him to rot like garbage at the curb.
For a minute Drew forgot why he was there. Dangerous, that. He cleared his throat and tugged at his tie. “I’m in town for a convention at the Marriott.”
Her expression remained the same. “How long do you want the room?”
He looked around, then remembered the flyer he’d serendipitously picked up at the airport. Copied onto light purple paper, it looked like the original had been haphazardly drawn up with Magic Marker. And added a little extra credibility to the story he would weave.
“This coupon still good?”
She accepted the piece of paper from him. It was for a one-week stay at a rate lower than anything he would find anywhere else. And a hell of a lot lower than it would be when the hotelier who’d contracted Drew got his hands on the place.
“Yes.” She picked up a pen from its stand. “So you’ll be staying a week, then?”
He nodded and pulled his wallet from inside his suit jacket, wondering if it was always so hot down here in October. Oh, he’d been to the Crescent City before. Mostly to wine and dine marks and get them laid so they’d be more relaxed and open to his suggestions. “Sign here and you’ll have the time to do this every weekend if you want”—that kind of shtick. But he’d never noticed how heavy the air was until today. Until he stood before the bewitching receptionist in front of him.
“Yes,” he answered her question. “I figured since I’m down here for the Innovation in Auto Parts convention, I might as well make a vacation of it.”
He cringed the minute the words were out. The key to selling someone on an identity was to keep it simple. The less said the better. Yet he found himself laying it on a little too thick here.
Those eyes focused on him again. “Why aren’t you staying at the convention hotel?”
Reason Number One why you never offered up more than necessary: unwanted questions.
Drew switched his attention to his wallet and smiled. “I wanted something a little more…private.”
He figured she was used to people saying that, because she didn’t question him further.
“The full amount is due up front,” she said, taking his information then turning around for a key that hung on a hook near the mail slots.
Drew’s gaze lingered on the way the silky material of her dress clung to her long back and rounded bottom. She moved in a way that could inspire a poet. Slow and fluid, there was something almost ballet-like in her movements. Something alluring and sexy and very provocative.
“How about half now, half on checkout?” he asked.
Her movements slowed even more as she turned back to face him. “If you want the deal on the flyer, it’s all due up front.”
He pretended to consider her words, then offered up a grin with the money. “A woman who means business.”
She smiled back, although it didn’t reach her watchful eyes as she accepted the money.
Drew put his wallet away then extended his hand across the counter. “Thank you… I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
“Josie.” She briefly took his hand and then turned around to put the money into some sort of lockbox. He noticed her feet were bare and that she wore a chain of tiny shells around her left ankle. “Josie Villefranche.”
Drew was mildly surprised she was the owner. His target.
He picked up his hat from the counter. Maybe this one last crappy job before he moved on to bigger and better things might not be without its fringe benefits.
2
DREW LET HIMSELF into room 2C, put his suitcase on the wrought-iron bench at the foot of the matching double bed, then crossed to the open French doors. He stepped out onto the narrow balcony and gripped the ornate railing, Bourbon Street spilled out like a strand of black pearls before him. He’d never actually stayed in the Quarter before. He might entertain his clients there, but he’d always stayed at the better hotels on the fringes of the famed district.
There was something almost…decadent about being there now. Although it was Sunday afternoon, he made out the sounds of a jazz band warming up in a bar across the street, watched as a few teenage girls, apparently on vacation, shopped for beads in a place a couple doors up, the faint smell of decay and beer and Cajun spices filling his nose.
A homeless black man wearing a crocheted African hat and holding a trumpet case walked by the hotel, raising his hand to wave inside, presumably at the alluring owner, Josie Villefranche.
The view Drew took in was worlds away from the cityscapes he usually saw outside his hotel-room window. For that matter, it was certainly worlds away from the trailer park he’d grown up in outside Kansas City. In KC, being poor meant to the bone, no romance in the situation as families and single parents tried to make the rent and put cheap food on the table. Here…well, here poor seemed to be worn as a badge of honor. It didn’t appear to be something you were, but a state you just happened to be in. In the French Quarter, strippers mingled with CEOs of large corporations, while in KC, most of the strippers would be lucky to meet a guy who worked at the Midland factory.
The contrast interested him. How would he have ended up had he been raised in a place like this, rather than the only son of a diner waitress in Missouri? A woman who’d smoked and drunk too much and had never let him forget where he came from? Who’d ceaselessly told him that his father was a useless, good-for-nothing deadbeat who had probably died when Drew was three to get out of paying child support?
Then again, you could change the story’s setting, but the characters would still be the same, so Kansas City or New Orleans, it likely wouldn’t have made a difference.
He stepped back into the room and looked around. It wasn’t bad. Not too big. Not too small. The high ceilings helped, even though the ceiling fan did little more than stir the heat. The carved woodwork and cornices were original if painted over and chipped. The walls needed a fresh coat of paint, and he made out what looked like a water stain in one corner, but overall the structure looked solid. He ran his finger along the top of the dresser. It was also clean. A double wrought-iron bed, two matching nightstands and lamps, and the bench were the totality of the furnishings, although the room was large enough to accommodate a desk and a couple of chairs. He moved toward the bathroom and switched on the light. The blackand-white mosaic tile that might date back at least a century needed re-caulking, and the claw-foot tub could use some attention. The cloudy mirror needed to be replaced and the sink held iron stains. He switched the light back off. The entire hotel would need a complete renovation before it could even be considered as part of the Royal Emperor Suites empire.
Then again, that wasn’t part of his job, questioning his clients’ motives. It was how to get them what they wanted. And this particular client wanted Hotel Josephine.
The black, rotary phone on the nightstand rang. Drew stared at it, then crossed to pick up the receiver, idly wondering when the last time was that he’d seen such an old phone.
“Hello?”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Morrison.” He recognized Josie’s sexily husky voice. “I just