Born to be Bad. Crystal Green
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him all at the same time. He traced circles, reducing her to helplessness.
“You get that sort of pansy boy in California, for certain,” he said, watching her.
She couldn’t meet his gaze, not straight on, so she glanced up at him through her eyelashes. “How do you know I’m from…?” She gasped as he gave her delicate palm nerve an especially persuasive nudge. “Ah. Oh. Right. You must’ve talked to Roxy about me.”
Dammit, she was supposed to be questioning him.
“She’d have all the information, being the boss round here.” With unexpected care, he lowered her hand, then slid his own around her neck, massaging her tense muscles.
“Mmm.” In spite of her caution, Gemma leaned into the pressure. “And what else do you know about me?”
“Not much. Just that you follow…strangers…down streets and into dark bars.”
“I told you, I need this job.”
Theroux kept rubbing, watching. Gemma’s chest rose and fell, marking the seconds.
“Let me guess what you’re about,” he said. “I think you’re a ‘never left.’ One of many who came to this place just to visit. You fell in love with the jazz, the Creole sauces, the romance of not knowing what goes on behind the lace curtains. Then, as we say, you never left.”
He’d gotten most of it, except the part he’d skipped about coming here with the hopes of finding a life, too.
“And you?” she asked. “Why are you in New Orleans?”
Theroux paused, then trailed his hand from her neck to her collarbone, running his fingers under her tank top’s neckline until his nails smoothed against the tender skin of her upper chest. Without thinking, Gemma took her arm from her breasts, reached out to grab his jacket’s lapel, leaving herself open.
Obviously encouraged, he slid his fingers outside the material of her shirt, cupping a breast, tracing his thumb over the awakened crest of it. Gemma winced, arching into his caress. Her other hand mindlessly shot out to cover his knuckles in pleased wariness.
What the hell was she doing?
“I think maybe you like strangers,” he said, ignoring her personal questions.
Not that she could remember what they’d just been talking about.
Fascinated by his aggression, her fingers moved with his as he absently toyed with her nipple.
“I think,” he continued in that soft, lethal whisper, “that you aren’t what you seem.”
Her heart punched against her ribs, then wavered in real fear. He couldn’t know she was a reporter. How…?
Theroux lowered his lips to her ear, his breath warm. “You tease. You act nice. But that’s not what you want, a nice man.”
Thank God, he didn’t know. The buzz of passing danger melted downward, coating her with dampness, readiness. She wanted him to touch her there, to give her what she really wanted.
“I do want a nice man,” she said. “I’ve been looking for one, but…”
He skimmed his hand down her ribs, over the curve of her butt, the back of her thigh, searching.
“…it never seems to work out.”
“I wonder why.”
She did, too. She did like nice guys, even if they’d never been enough to hold her interest. But that was her fault, not theirs. She’d tried a few normal, home-by-six-for-dinner relationships, tried men her family approved of.
But there was something untamed in Gemma. Maybe something might be wired wrong in her. Was it normal to lust after men like Theroux? To find yourself in a position like this?
She reached down and captured his wandering hand with hers, putting an end to the spell.
For a moment, he froze. Without moving, he created a space between them with the sting of his gaze.
“I think my break’s over,” she said, voice wavering. She cleared her throat. “First night. Good impression. All that.”
A calculating smile settled on his mouth. Reaching up, he grabbed a packet of napkins, deposited it into Gemma’s hand, then backed away.
“Roxy’ll wonder what took you so long,” he said. “Should I tell her?”
He was baiting Gemma, so she sent him her toughest glance. “Your call, boss.”
“As I said, Roxy’s in charge. I’m inconsequential to this bar.”
She’d see about that.
He ushered her away from the shelves with a sweep of his arm. “After you.”
Had she alienated him with her hot/cold change of reaction? Way to go, Duncan. Gemma could almost hear Waller Smith congratulating her on messing up already.
Much more painfully, she could hear her first boss saying, When you’re assigned a story, you get your ass out there and do it. Don’t piddle around. Your scaredy-cat caution has no place in this business, girl.
She left the room, feeling her redemption—Theroux—following right behind her.
Toughen up, she thought. Next time, don’t stop. Get your man, no matter the consequences.
When she emerged into the bar again, she turned around to fire a parting shot at her mysterious subject.
But he’d already disappeared.
WALLER SMITH LIKED A proper nap.
So, as he sat at the Cuffs bar, his body relaxing on the scuffed wood, Waller sighed, content.
In his forty-four years of life, he’d sat on a lot of bar stools across the country, liking how the chattery, friendly voices made him feel a part of something. In fact, even if he nursed one gin and tonic all night, he always fell asleep to the lullaby of conversations.
New York, L.A., Dallas, Miami, Chicago. He’d lived in all the big cities, getting jobs at local papers to support himself and trolling the bars for a kind voice or two. Tonight, he’d decided to try Cuffs, not only because he wanted companionship, but because it’d come highly recommended by Ms. Gemma Duncan during her unsuspecting story pitch to The General.
And speaking of the little devil, Gemma had emerged into the bar again.
See, not only could Waller sleep on a dime, he could wake up with the best of them, too. It just took a sound, a feeling. The best sleepers could all stay slightly alert in their slumber.
Screw the fact that his ex-wife had chalked up the ever-increasing number of his naps to depression. Waller merely believed he was getting older. More used up and worn out.
Fully awake now—except for some blurred vision—he watched his co-worker, the newest reporter at the Weekly Gossip, strolling out of a back room, tailed by none other than Damien Theroux himself.
She’d made quick time, hadn’t she?
Waller wondered just how much information she’d gotten out of the guy. How she’d gotten it out of him.
Young pup. Reporters were always bright eyed and eager until a few years passed. Years of seeing bullet-riddled corpses at drive-by-shooting crime scenes. Years of seeing crack babies who’d been stranded by their strung-out mothers living on the street and prostituting themselves for their next fix.
Like Gemma, Waller used to love chasing a story.
That was before the stories chased him, caught him, burned themselves into his memory until nothing on earth could erase the pImages**. Except a good sleep.
As Theroux disappeared into a patch of darkness behind Gemma, she straightened her tank top, turned around and found herself alone. After a beat, she raised her chin and extracted