An elderly couple approached and took their sweet time selecting a crystal plate and fruit, drenching it in chocolate, smiling at each other the whole time. Vanessa had seen the same effect on many people over the past few years. There was just something plain decadent about chocolate. Liquefy the stuff? Oh, boy. The sparks will fly.
With her own sparks ready to ignite, she turned.
Knowing she should take a cautious look around, but ignoring the call to respectability, she cupped her hand under the dripping strawberry and held it in front of his lips.
He turned his head. “Lose the skewer.”
She hesitated. She was a rebel, not a troublemaker. Most of the time anyway.
“Come on,” he added.
Hardly able to believe she was complying in a room filled with her parents and all their respected cronies, but unable to resist his dare, she slid the dripping strawberry off the skewer and held it between her fingers, against his mouth. His gaze never leaving hers, he bit in, his tongue catching the tip of her finger. The juices flowed over her fingers, dripping into her palm. Her body tingled; her stomach fluttered.
She wanted him. Wanted him like crazy.
Heart hammering, she popped the rest of the berry in her mouth, then chased the sweetness with champagne. As the icy drink rolled down her throat, she wiped her hand on a napkin and tried to find some balance, some reason to resist him. And came up flat empty.
“How fast can you get out of here?” he asked, setting aside his glass.
“I—” She put down her glass. “This is nuts. I don’t even know your name.”
“Lucas.”
“Is that first or last?”
“First. That’s enough for now, isn’t it? I’m tired of networking and dropping names to impress. I don’t want to compare stationery or brag about judgments and client lists.”
For a second, she was shocked by the naughty “first names only” suggestion. But it also appealed to her on a couple of levels.
First, it was naughty.
Second, if he learned her last name, he’d most likely connect her with her father. How many guys had she gone out with at her mother or sister’s suggestion, only to learn they were aspiring attorneys looking to break into her father’s firm?
“And your name?” her gorgeous companion asked.
Her mother would probably have a stroke if she found out her daughter had picked up a man—a stranger—at her dignified children’s hospital fund-raiser. Her sister would demand lineage and financial-status reports. Her father would want to see his law degree and standing with the American Bar Association.
Really, discretion was in order.
And yet she itched—in more places than just her brain—to take a chance. To plunge and then dive. To walk down an expected road and see where it led. She was literally on the edge of jumping in with both feet and not asking too many questions.
So she did. Ask a question, that is.
“Do you have a fiancée?”
He angled his head. “No.”
“A wife?”
He grinned. “No.”
She tapped her foot.
Then again, picking up a guy at a party would be a scandalous—and honest—way of telling her sister she was dating. Lately, she’d been assuring her matchmaking-minded sibling that she had all the dates she needed. Not exactly a lie. She just didn’t need any dates at the moment.
Mr. Scrumptious, however, could easily change her mind. She glanced up at him. And smiled.
“Vanessa,” she said, sliding her hand across the lapel of his suit jacket. “My name’s Vanessa.”
2
SHE WAS A CONTRADICTION.
Manners, but flaunted tradition. Elegant, but proudly sported a tattoo. Vanessa had cued in on his Rolex, but didn’t seem moved by the moneyed crowd.
A puzzle Lucas would like to solve. Later, much later.
Even though he stepped outside into the blast of a humid summer night, the heat couldn’t match the fire coursing through him. He could still feel the brush of her hand against his chest. Instead of the sweet scent of the magnolia trees dotting the country-club lawn, he smelled her alluring Asian-spice perfume.
As much as he valued the control he’d gained over his life and his actions, he’d only narrowly resisted yanking her against himself and kissing her until neither of them could breathe. Forget networking. Reputations and decorum be damned.
For the first time in a long, great while, the thrill of the hunt had taken over but had nothing to do with his career.
When his senses seized him, so did the memories. He longed for the cigarettes he’d given up, since trips into the past didn’t come without ghosts. Wandering past manicured flower beds behind a posh Atlanta country club, he instead remembered the scent of chicory, fish fresh from the stream, Spanish moss dripping like tattered lacy curtains over the swamp. He recalled friends he’d partied with in New Orleans, the small knot of family he’d left behind and crawfish boils shared with both—the potatoes, onions and dark red crustaceans spilling out across a newspaper-lined folding table, while the music heated up and whiskey cooled the fire.
Louisiana would always be in his blood, he supposed, even if sometimes he wanted to exorcise it from his mind.
And here, on the outside, beyond the windows where the thoroughbreds looked out into the mundane, with his past shimmering in his blood, seemed the perfect place to wait for Vanessa. When the party was over, they would continue what they’d started.
He justified his exit from party networking by reminding himself he was mostly a mystery to the people inside, and it wouldn’t be wise to push himself too firmly just yet. His change of heart and legal specialty wouldn’t be welcomed by some, wouldn’t be believed by others. Keeping his distance, allowing them to learn about him in pieces, and, of course, letting the rumors fester and grow more elaborate could only help.
For years he’d deliberately kept the details of his past sketchy. Having a shady cousin who specialized in security matters worked in his favor at times. Some of his history they would never learn—or understand—but that also had its advantages. In his new life he wanted to walk in the light. He was tired of wading through muck, even though he always managed to find the gold in places nobody else wanted to go.
A talent or a curse?
He wasn’t sure he cared anymore. At least the money he’d earned had its uses. It provided comfort and security where once he’d suffered misery and chaos.
He heard the stumbling shuffle behind him before he turned and saw the heavyset man coming down the path. He guessed his age at under twenty-five, possibly a former athlete who’d stopped intense training and taken up late-night steak dinners and bourbon.
“Hallooo!” the guy said as he waved—and weaved—drunkenly toward Lucas.
Damn it to hell. I don’t have time for this.
“Bea-u-ti-ful night, ya think?” the drunk guy mumbled, gesturing with the crystal tumbler in his right hand.
“Ou—” Lucas had to physically stop the Cajun French from leaking out. “Yes.”
“I tell ya.” The man clapped a friendly hand on Lucas’s shoulder. “I haven’t seen a night like this ’un since our big hunt of oh-two. We were stalking these turkeys…”
Please,