After the first couple offers, she’d stopped opening the envelopes, merely stuck them in a drawer under the front desk. Now she ripped open the end and shook out the letter within, then unfolded the single piece of thick stock paper. The amount they were offering had gone up significantly. It was surely enough to cover her debts, give Sabine the money she was looking for and see to it Josie got a fresh start.

Fresh start where?

She looked over her shoulder at the lobby. She didn’t know anything else but the Josephine. What else could she do?

She held the letter tightly. Selling would mean no more sleepless nights. No more eighteen-hour days spent doing nothing for stretches at a time. No more dealing with leering old men who insisted on thinking the right dollar amount would put her in their beds for the night.

No more fearing that a killer somewhere out there in the sea of faces had her name on his list.

A loud thud coming from the lobby behind her sent her pulse racing. Whipping around, she searched the shadows to no avail. She looked back over her shoulder at the crowded street filled with people who didn’t have a clue of the fear she felt, much less could care. She reached to shut the doors, then thought better of it. She didn’t want to close herself in should she have company.

Her pulse pounding in her ears, she crept slowly forward, her ears alert, her eyes wide. All the lights were off except for the dim emergency lights leading up the stairs and a small pool of light created by the banker’s lamp on the front desk where she’d been sitting. The farther away she moved from the door, the louder her heartbeat sounded. The more isolated she felt.

The lobby smelled of candle wax and furniture polish. The tall plants cast eerie shadows against the walls. Too many dark places for someone to hide. No one around to care.

That thought more than anything caused Josie’s chest to hurt.

No matter the warnings or how well Granme had tried to prepare her, there was no way she could have been ready for the sheer loneliness that would descend on her upon her grandmother’s death. She had no one. Not a single person she could turn to with her fears or for help.

No Drew…

She hadn’t realized how profoundly his absence was affecting her until that moment.

She’d taken her sandals off earlier and now her bare feet padded over the grit dusting the marble tile, the shells around her ankle quietly clinking together.

She was almost to the desk and the light there. More importantly, the shotgun she had hidden behind it was nearly within reach. She might not have anyone, but she had herself. She’d done a pretty good job of taking care of herself for the past year, and for some time before that when Granme had given her more responsibility at the hotel. She’d do the same now.

With a shaking hand, she reached over the desk and lifted the weapon with a minimum of noise. She tucked the butt between her arm and rib cage and pulled the cocking mechanism, metal scratching against metal as buckshot shells were loaded into the gun, ready to be fired through the short barrel.

Fear no longer paralyzing her, she gave the lobby another quick scan, noticing a broom she had propped against the wall behind the desk had fallen over.

She dropped the gun to her side.

“You’re letting all this voodoo crap get to you,” she muttered to herself.

A loud shriek sounded at the same time as something launched in her direction. Quick thinking kept her from filling the black cat with buckshot.

Josie was convinced her heart hadn’t just leaped into her throat; it had catapulted from her body altogether.

“Jesus, Jez, what in the hell’s gotten into you?”

The cat wound around and around her legs, rubbing the side of her face against Josie’s ankle.

“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry,” she said, putting the shotgun back behind the desk and scooping the old feline up into her arms. “I forgot to put food out for you today, didn’t I?”

Jezebel’s response was a loud purr as she licked Josie’s chin.

Scratching the cat behind the ears, she headed toward the kitchen.

She pushed open the door and Jez jumped from her arms, scratching her arm in the process.

“Ow.” Josie switched on the overhead light and checked the shallow scratch. Thankfully there was no blood, but it wouldn’t hurt to put some disinfectant on it.

She wondered how the cat had managed to get in.

A loud meow and a hiss drew her attention toward the back of the kitchen. The door she had locked and double locked an hour ago stood wide open, the screen door squeaking on its hinges.

And Josie was without her shotgun.

13

JOSIE COULDN’T BELIEVE that someone had gained access to the back door…again.

She positioned a two-by-four diagonally across the closed doorway and took a nail out of her mouth, then hammered it in. She repeated the process with twenty nails until she was convinced that there was no way anyone was going to be coming through that door again until she could get the locks changed.

She looked over her shoulder at the brightly lit kitchen. She only hoped she had locked the intruder out instead of in.

After picking up the shotgun from the cutting-board table, Josie made her way back out through the courtyard and into the lobby, Jez following on her heels. She’d switched on all the lights so not a shadow remained, and had even gone through the rooms upstairs, although she was relatively certain whoever had gained access to the kitchen hadn’t made it up the stairs. She would have heard them.

She glanced down at the inexplicably friendly feline. “Have you decided to keep me company tonight?”

Jez rubbed Josie’s shin with her nose.

Josie picked her up with her free hand. “Good. I could use some.”

She’d already locked the front door and put a Closed sign in the window. While it wasn’t the first time she’d been alone in the hotel, that way, it was certainly the first time she was overly aware of it.

And if Drew returned?

For some reason she couldn’t explain, she knew he wouldn’t be coming back tonight.

And maybe not for any other night.

The possibility made her feel even lonelier.


DREW SAT BACK FROM where he’d been diligently working at the desk and glanced at his watch. After midnight.

Shit.

He’d been so engrossed with the information he was uncovering on his client, that he hadn’t realized how late it had gotten.

Josie…

His throat tightened. He was surprised that the first person who entered his mind was her. Then again, maybe it wasn’t so much surprise as a realization.

What he was coming to understand was that his connection to the exotic hotel owner involved more than just fantastic sex.

He got up from the chair, checking to make sure he had his wallet, cell phone and card key before leaving the room. He took the elevator to the lobby then stepped outside. He envisioned her sitting at the front desk of Hotel Josephine, cooling herself with that lacy fan he’d seen her use the first time he’d laid eyes on her.

Days had passed, but rather than the city giving itself over to autumn, it appeared to be getting hotter still. He didn’t know if that was the norm, but he did know that he was getting used to the heat, his body adjusting so that he didn’t find walks like the one he was taking now as taxing as he would have a few days ago.

Instead, what the heat did to him, especially since he’d just spent the day in an air-conditioned room, was make his body remember all the hot things he and Josie had done last night. He glanced down to make sure that his arousal-brought on by merely thinking about her dark, lush body-wasn’t having an obvious effect. While more unusual things had probably been seen on Bourbon Street, he was no exhibitionist.

This was a first for him, this incessant lust he felt for Josie Villefranche. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her, no matter how much sex they had or how often he was in her presence. In the year that had passed since his divorce, his social life had included a few select women, none of them making it far beyond the morning after. Hell, even with Carol, his ex, he couldn’t remember feeling this way. Perhaps he had, back in the beginning of their relationship, but what had transpired between then and now had sullied all that, making what he was feeling for Josie fresh and new and perplexing.

Never, ever had he turned his professional attentions toward helping a mark before.

He slid his right hand into his pocket, pondering that reality.

He was hired to do a job and he did it. That’s where his interest began and ended. Only this was no longer just a job to him. Not this one. Not Josie. So he’d begun digging. And he wasn’t so much surprised by what he’d uncovered as he was enlightened.

It seemed Rove had bought the two buildings to the right of Josie’s establishment, the private residence to the left, and also held the deeds to a warehouse behind the Josephine.

Obviously Dick Rove’s intention had never been to renovate the hotel and make a go of it. He planned to raze it and build a bigger hotel, something more befitting the Royal Emperor Suites family of hotels.

If Drew hadn’t been so distracted by how smalltime the job had been and so focused on the next job he wanted to win, he’d probably have picked up on that.

Then he’d let Josie into his life.

Or, rather, she’d sneaked into his mind and heart like a bewitching enchantress.

So Rove had a lot more riding on the outcome of this project than Drew had originally suspected. Which led him back to his earlier suspicion that Rove also had someone else working the case.

But who? And was he or she responsible for what was happening?