“Hey, Stacy.”
He grinned and every single part of her tingled. He was as attractive as she remembered—tall and strong, with rich, chocolate-brown hair, and a twinkle of mischief in his startling green eyes. The years had changed him only slightly, taking away the softness of youth and adding hard ridges and planes to his handsome face. His hair was a little too long, and he had a two-day beard, but the scruffiness didn’t take away from his almost poetic good looks. And though she would never admit it out loud, just the way his thighs filled out his well-worn blue jeans sent a thread of wicked heat trickling down her spine. Ten was the stuff of all kinds of naughty fantasies, and a few of her favorite ones instantly flashed through her mind.
“There you are,” Peter called, cutting through the never-ending stream of people. “We thought we’d lost you.”
“Sorry,” Stacy said, though she wasn’t. She’d forgotten all about him. She gestured toward Ten. “I ran into an old friend.”
Peter looked from her to him, back to her. He held out his hand to Ten. “Hi, I’m Peter Walker.”
Ten glanced at her, a million silent questions in his raised eyebrow. Are you with him? Should I step back? Do you want me to get rid of him? She answered them all with a slight shake of her head.
Satisfied, he turned back to Peter with his charming, professional smile, the one that had got him a lot of tips—and even more phone numbers—when they’d worked together. He dropped her arm and took Peter’s hand. “Tennyson Landry.”
Melanie joined them then, sliding up close to Peter. She was followed by the group, and they created a little cluster in the middle of the street. People flowed around them, to-go cups in hand, beads around their necks.
“It’s so good to see you,” Stacy said, touching Ten’s arm. She couldn’t quite believe he was there, but his bicep was hard and firm and very real under her fingertips. “Do you still live here?” She wouldn’t be surprised if he had moved. New Orleans was a transient city. People came, hung out for a while, and then left for better jobs, better homes, ‘real’ lives. Just like she had.
“Yeah,” he said, his eyes never leaving hers. “I’ve got a little place up on Magazine now.”
She smiled, ridiculously pleased to see him again. The huge crush she had fostered and fed five years ago had obviously not dwindled over time. He still made her weak in the knees, gave her skin that deliciously tight, tingly feeling. She probably could have spent the entire night grinning up at him like a fool, but Melanie stepped in, standing very close to Ten.
“We wanna go someplace fun,” Melanie said, giving him one of her brilliant smiles. “Do you know anywhere good?”
Stacy was about to give Melanie a few key suggestions on where she should go, but Ten put his hand on her shoulder, capturing her attention.
“Let’s have a drink,” he said, his eyes never leaving Stacy’s. “It’ll be nice to catch up.”
Plastic beads whizzed past her head, crackling on the pavement. A group of men on the balcony above chanted “Show your tits!” to a bunch of women below, and every time one of them obliged, they were showered with beads and adoration. Bourbon Street would never change, and she was sick of it already. She nodded to Ten. “Let’s go somewhere else.”
He took her hand, gave it a gentle tug. “Come on.”
She caught Melanie’s frown out of the corner of her eye and a little malicious grin curved Stacy’s lips. It was probably a character flaw that made her dislike the other woman so much, but she wasn’t about to fight that feeling. She laced her fingers through Ten’s and let him lead her away from the garish lights and drunken vulgarity.
“What were you doing on Bourbon?” she asked, as they turned onto St. Peter and headed toward the river. No self-respecting local went to Bourbon Street unless they absolutely had to.
He looked over at her, a huge grin on his handsome face. “I could ask you the same thing.”
She shook her head, smiling even as he pulled her close to get around a woman puking next to an overflowing garbage can. “I’m just a tourist now, in town for a convention.”
He raised an eyebrow, amusement flashing in his eyes. “Is that right? So, what? Are you trying to get sloppy drunk and sleep with the locals?”
She glanced over at him. Well, maybe one local. “That is a solid plan.”
He laughed with her as they turned onto Decatur, and then headed back toward Canal. A frenzied Cajun tune blasted out of a souvenir shop on the corner, bright Florissant lights illuminated the sidewalk. “I was just stopping in to see a friend at work. I don’t spend much time in the Quarter anymore.”
There were so many things she wanted to ask him. What he was doing now, where he was working, what he had been up to for the last five years, but their conversation was cut short when they approached a dark alley, a long corridor tucked between two buildings. Stacy looked around, trying to orientate herself. The fire station was still there like she remembered, and the House of Blues a little farther down, but she had no memory of this place.
“Is this new?” she asked, as he led her down the narrow alleyway.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s only been here about a year.”
The passage curved and then emptied into a wide courtyard surrounded by brick walls and banana trees. People sat around wrought-iron tables, drinking and laughing. A brass band performed in the corner, playing a low, bluesy tune filled with promise and longing.
Ten headed straight for extensive bar built into the rickety, old building that had probably once been the slave quarters for a house on Decatur. He signaled one of the bartenders, then glanced back at her. “You gotta get an Electroshock.”
“A what?” she asked.
He gave her a wicked grin. “Trust me.”
She knew that grin too well. This was going to be something dangerous. And probably really fun. She nodded, and he ordered one for her. He handed her a clear plastic glass filled with chartreuse-colored liquid that tasted suspiciously like Kool-Aid.
They meandered over to an empty table in the far back corner of the courtyard. Stacy brushed her damp hair off her forehead as she settled into her chair. She’d forgotten how humid it was here, how her skin was prone to “glisten.”
Much to her chagrin, Peter and Melanie found them and sat down without any invitation in the empty seats opposite them. Melanie brushed a lock of hair off her forehead and Stacy noticed with some annoyance that the other woman even made sweating look beautiful.
“Tennyson,” Melanie said, favoring him with her beautiful blue-eyed gaze. “What an interesting name. Is it a stage name of some sort?”
He leaned back and extended his arm across the back of Stacy’s chair. She was hyperconscious of his arm draped behind her, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up at electric attention. “Oh, no,” he said, flashing Melanie that charming smile of his. “My mother’s a poet. She teaches at Bennington. I’m just thankful every day that she didn’t name me Cummings or Yeats.”
Stacy smiled to herself, recalling the night she’d asked him a very similar question. They’d decided to conquer the ‘Drink Around the World’ challenge at The Alibi to celebrate the completion of her training at the Cabin and they’d just begun a beer from Honduras when the alcohol really started to settle in. He’d told her about his mother and how much she loved the British poet laureate. He claimed to dislike the poet’s work himself, yet that didn’t stop him from reciting one of his namesake’s more famous works,