Her eyes flare with heat as she shifts her weight on her heels. “Don’t call me that.”
I can’t help but grin. “Make you remember things you’d rather keep forgotten?”
“I never said I’d forgotten a damn thing, but I just got here, so save it. Unless you want me to leave already? And why the hell are you smiling like that?”
“Because I just had a prayer answered. Guess I’m fucking thankful.” And proud and relieved. “You came.”
Once and for all, the winds of change are at my back and guiding me home. Guiding me to the future. Guiding me to her.
Twenty-One
Magnolia
He’s smooth. Too fucking smooth for his own good. Goddamn it.
I shouldn’t be reacting to Moses at all, but just seeing him in a three-piece pin-striped suit, looking like the Creole kingpin he told me was going to become, I can’t help it.
I lift my chin higher, wishing I could look down my nose at him, but his tall frame seems even broader with the sleek lines of his jacket, making it impossible.
Although I’ll never admit it to him, I waited outside for a good twenty minutes, watching him through the window, wondering if he’d give up and leave. True to his word, he didn’t.
Too bad he wasn’t true to his word when he said he’d come back for me. The memory of being forgotten comes to the forefront and hardens my heart enough for me to take control of the situation.
“I’m here. If that’s an answered prayer, then you’ve got a fucked-up god.”
His teeth flash white as he smiles again. Damn. I forgot how much his smile affects me. I always know how to handle men, but right now, I’m not sure, and I hate the uncertainty.
I tried to come up with a plan, but Moses Gaspard can’t be planned for. Now I’m winging it.
“Maybe I just say different prayers than you do.” He gestures to the seat across the white linen tablecloth from him. This restaurant has been a fixture in the French Quarter for over a hundred years, and yet I’ve never eaten here.
“I don’t have much time for prayin’ these days. What with getting stabbed in elevators and whatnot,” I say with a phony bored undertone. My side still gives me twinges of pain, and the whiskey on the table looks like exactly what I need to forget about the wound—and the memories of how we once were.
“I’ve got some news on that front,” Moses says, pulling out my chair.
I take the seat, nearly shivering when his fingertips drift across the skin of my bare upper arms. My nipples take notice too. What the hell? They’ve basically been ornamental for years, but like the ghost across from me, they’ve been resurrected too.
I’m not used to physically responding to men like this. Not anymore. It’s been a long time since sex was anything but a basic urge to have met by someone who had no power over me. But with Moses . . . suddenly my body turns traitor.
And you’re surprised because . . . ? Ho-It-All pipes up, and I shake my head to shut her up.
As Moses takes his seat, the server comes to the table.
“Sir, I see your companion has arrived. What can I get you to drink, ma’am?”
I don’t bother to look at him or the menu. “Three fingers of Seven Sinners’ Spirit of New Orleans. Neat.”
“Excellent choice. I’ll give you a few moments, and then I’ll be back to take your order.” The server, a middle-aged woman with a bun in stark black and white, hurries away through the tables.
I glance at the glass in front of Moses. “What are you drinking?”
“Did you really come here to shoot the shit about my beverage selection?”
My gaze cuts to his face, and I get snared by those damn green-and-gold eyes, but he asked for it. So I bite the bullet. “Fine. What the fuck do you want, Moses? Fifteen years is too damn long to assume you can come back for a woman, no matter what you said last night.”
“Who says it’s the first time I’ve been back?” He has one eyebrow with a thin scar above it, and it’s lifted. I wonder how he got it. It’s new, but he’s too damn smug to ask.
My mouth is agape, and before it draws flies, I speak so he won’t notice it’s because of what he does to me and not from what he said. “The fuck does that mean?”
Sometimes my street shows, and I check myself. Diners at the tables around us turn to look at me, so I fold my hands in my lap demurely.
Instead of replying to my question, he drops another bomb on me. “You’ve got a ghost.”
I look around, trying to find my calm, before I drill a stare into him. “What the hell are you talking about?” The only ghost I know is him, but at the moment, he’s more real than anyone I’ve ever known.
“The guy from the elevator. He’s a ghost.”
I blink and lean forward with my elbows on the table. “He wasn’t a ghost. He was living and breathing just like us. I know this because ghosts don’t stab people.” I’m proud of myself for keeping my voice low enough that no one else in the restaurant can hear a damn thing I’m saying over the murmur of conversation and clinking of silverware against china.
Moses mimics my movement, leaning forward far enough that I catch a whiff of cedar with a hint of spice. That scent nearly steals me away for another trip down memory lane, but I keep my focus on his lips as they begin to move.
“He’s flesh and blood, but he’s not in the system. Prints were a dead end. No hits on facial recognition yet. His ID was fake.”
My hair sways across my shoulders as confusion has me moving my head from side to side. “What does that mean? Is he . . . was he a hit man?” I ask quietly, because this isn’t exactly something we should be discussing here, although I have a hell of a lot more questions, including how Moses knows all this.
Although, Moses doesn’t seem to have any compunction about it. I remember he once told me the easiest way to get away with something was to do it in plain sight. Maybe that holds true for discussing murder at fancy restaurants. Hell, in this day and age, we could be simply having a chat about a true crime podcast for all anyone would know.
“Possibly,” he says with a hint of skepticism. “Or he’s someone who didn’t want to be found by people who wanted him literally dead. We’re still digging.”
I picture the man’s brown eyes that shined with evil intent from behind that balaclava he wore like a fucking coward.
He can’t get me. Not now. He’s dead.
But if he was a hit man . . .
“If he was truly after me and only me, will someone else be coming next?” I ask Moses quietly, the fear that I don’t want to acknowledge giving my tone a jagged, broken edge.
“Depends,” he says, his reply equally serious.
I fight a chill skating up my spine. “On what?”
“On whether someone paid him to kill you. If someone did take out a hit on you, they won’t send someone else unless they really want you dead bad, and have the money to pay someone else to do the job he couldn’t finish.”
The way he says it, so matter-of-factly, gives me pause.
“Fuck.”
Moses’s hand reaches out and covers my balled fist on the table. “Magnolia, I ain’t gonna let no bogeyman get you. Not on my watch or while I’ve still got breath in my body.”