should really wait.”
“Until your misplaced friends are located?”
She turned her attention to the street momentarily, then looked back at him. She was startled when he set a hand over hers. Pinpricks of sensation seemed to leap like fire across her flesh, pass into her bloodstream and balloon at the center of her being like a flow of lava. She was tempted to pull her hand away, then realized that would be far too indicative of her feelings.
She stared at him instead, slowly arching a brow.
Suddenly his expression grew serious, and his tone matched it when he spoke. “Please, you may think I’m insane for saying this, but I promise you, I’m not. I’m afraid that you and your friends are in danger here.”
Yes, there had been more to his earlier question.
“Oh, please,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment against her disappointment that he’d turned out to be a loon. “Not this again.”
All she wanted now was for him to go away. She’d been far too tempted to give in to the appealing fact that he seemed to find her interesting, attractive. To be pursuing her. Because she wanted to be pursued.
What she didn’t want was this feeling that something was lying beneath every word he said, that he didn’t actually want to be with her and was just plain crazy.
“Again?” he asked sharply.
Irritation filled her, along with an uncanny sense of fear. “The fortune teller gave me the same line of bull. We’re here for a bachelorette party, Mr. Davidson. Pure and simple. Heidi is about to get married, and the three of us have been planning this trip for ages. I can’t imagine why you—a stranger—would want to ruin it for us.”
He was quiet, leaning back. She could read little from his expression, because his sunglasses suddenly seemed as dark as night. She knew she should just ask him to leave her alone.
Somehow, she couldn’t.
He was still touching her hand, but that wasn’t what was stopping her. It was simply his presence that she couldn’t resist.
“I swear to you,” he said very softly, “I want nothing more than your complete safety.”
“I’m not in any danger.”
“Yes, you are. You saw this morning’s headline.”
She shook her head, a chill snaking through her. “Does that mean every single woman anywhere near the Mississippi River is in danger?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, please!”
“There’s a killer working the area,” he said with such assurance that she felt an ever greater sense of being encompassed of ice, despite the heat of the day.
“Are you a cop?” she asked sharply.
“No.”
“FBI?”
“No.”
“So exactly what are you?”
“I told you. A writer and a musician.”
“Oh, well, that answers that, then. I’m sure you know all about serial killers, not to mention exactly how and why my friends and I are in danger.”
She was stunned when he replied calmly and in a tone of such level and deep authority that it was the scariest part of it all. “I do.”
She just stared at him.
The waitress brought his tea, and he thanked her, bringing Lauren back to the moment.
“I’m going to leave now,” she said. “And you are going to leave my friends and me alone,” she told him firmly.
He ignored her words when he spoke. “I know who the killer is. I’ve known about him for a very long time now. He was responsible for the death of my fiancée.”
Lauren couldn’t believe it of herself, but she didn’t move. She remembered what he had said when she crashed into him the night before. The name he had spoken.
“Katie?” she said, then hesitated before going on. “The woman you think I resemble.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not your Katie,” she told him.
A rueful smile curled his lips. “I know that,” he said.
“But you think this man…killed her?”
He hesitated, then nodded.
“She died here, in New Orleans?” Lauren asked.
“No,” he admitted.
“I see.”
“No, you don’t. Katie did see him here, on a trip. And now I’m afraid he’s after you—just as he was after her.”
She sighed, looking down.
He was just as attractive and possessed of all the raw sex appeal as she had thought from the beginning—and he was completely crazy. Maybe even a murderer himself.
He could be stalking her, for all she knew.
She was finally about to get up when he asked, “Did you all stay in your cottage last night, locked in, once you got home?”
“I saw you out on the street, watching us,” she accused him, instead of answering.
“Did you stay in?” he repeated.
“Yes, which is none of your business,” she lied.
He still seemed concerned. “I only asked because it’s important,” he told her quietly.
She felt oddly uncertain and was angry with herself, but for some reason she couldn’t seem to walk away with things hanging between them.
And Deanna had been outside, sleepwalking, something she’d never done before in her life, and Lauren had been out there with her. Not only that, she’d felt as if someone else had been out there, too, and that somehow this man knew about it.
And at the edge of her consciousness was the memory of how she had dreamed about him, and the ridiculous longing somewhere inside that, against all the evidence, he would turn out not to be crazy.
She forced a casual smile onto her face. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why is so important?”
Instead of answering, he reached into his shirt pocket. “I’d like to give you something.”
“Please, I can’t accept anything from you.”
He smiled then, a charming smile that also managed to convey amusement. “No strings attached,” he assured her.
She
