smile tugged at her lips and she faced him. “Can I ask how you knew there’d be condoms in the desk?”
According to Teddy, one of the perks of owning a bar in the French Quarter was what happened after closing time. But he didn’t really want to share that information with Jamie. “Um...”
She laughed. “On second thought, maybe I don’t want to know.”
He pushed up onto his elbow. “No, you really don’t.” Quite a bit more of her hair had come loose from her braid, and he toyed with a piece. Jamie leaned up and kissed him, a sweet, basking-in-afterglow kiss that had almost the opposite effect, reawakening his blood just when he thought he was half-dead.
He deepened the kiss even as the phone on Teddy’s desk began to ring. It was annoying, but ignorable, even as the ancient answering machine picked up and the Lucky Gator’s outgoing message played.
Teddy’s voice was also the incoming message. The bar noise in the background was loud as Teddy shouted into the phone. “Dude, I don’t know what you’re doing in there, but I need change. I’m trying to run a business, for God’s sake.”
Jamie collapsed into giggles. “Busted.” With a satisfied groan, she pushed to her elbows and sighed as she reached for her clothes. “Did you say something about a fresh shirt?”
Silently cursing Teddy—but applauding his timing nonetheless—he dropped a kiss on her bare shoulder. “Oh, yeah, that’s why I brought you back here. I got a little sidetracked.”
She took the shirt and slid it over her head. “Now we match.”
“Consider it a Mardi Gras costume.”
As he dressed, Jamie stuffed her ruined shirt and bra into the trash can and managed to untangle a few of her beads from the pile on the desk to put back around her neck. Holding the hopelessly tangled mound of remaining beads over the trash, she hesitated. “This seems wrong, somehow. I worked so hard to get them.” With a shrug, she dropped them in.
Dressed now, Jamie tried to push the strands of hair that had fallen out of her braid back from her face. “I don’t even want to know what I look like right now.”
“You look amazing.” Although Jamie rolled her eyes, as far as Colin was concerned, it was true. Her eyes were bright, cheeks pink and glowing, lips slightly swollen from his kisses. It was enough to make him decide to ignore Teddy’s eviction attempt.
But even as he reached for her, Jamie had the door open and reality rushed right in.
“So what are we going to do now?” she asked.
Go back to my place? “Whatever you want.”
“You know, I’m kinda feeling like I should give the French Quarter experience another try.” She seemed to have a fresh burst of confidence—as well as a burst of energy he couldn’t quite claim for himself.
“Are you sure?”
“Well, maybe we should start on Chartres and work our way back up to Bourbon Street.”
It wasn’t quite what he’d hoped to hear, but she wasn’t heading back to her friends just yet and the night was still young.
This time Jamie followed him into the bar, only blushing slightly when Colin tossed the keys back to Teddy and Teddy gave her a knowing wink along with a couple of beers. “Great shirt. It looks much better on you than Colin. Y’all go have fun.”
Jamie looked up at him and smiled. “I intend to.”
THREE
Okay, now she saw the attraction to the celebrations in the French Quarter. Maybe it was afterglow, maybe it was the fact that she wasn’t so uncomfortably conscious of Colin now—although she was still very conscious of him, it was different now and definitely not uncomfortable—but regardless of why, Jamie was truly enjoying herself and exploring that bit of her that was just a little on the wild side. There was an anonymity to being in a crowd of strangers that downright encouraged her to explore it. Anonymity was something she hadn’t had in a long time anyway, and it felt so damn good.
Colin’s mood seemed to have shifted, too. More sure of her now, his charm was on full display, and he’d quit his best behavior, leaving her to discover he had a very wicked—and sometimes dirty—sense of humor. He’d kept it under wraps most of the day, making her question her initial judgment of his bad-boy tendencies, but they were there. Oh, yeah, they were there.
But she’d worry about all of that tomorrow. Tonight, she had a bit of a buzz going, a gorgeous man on her arm and absolutely no reason not to enjoy them both.
The entire Quarter was heaving with people, but she felt a part of the crowd, a part of the experience. She danced to the music that drifted out of the clubs and bars into the street, caught beads tossed from the balconies above, marveled at the costumes on display and in between enjoyed the feel of Colin’s arms around her, the press of his body against hers and the occasional kiss he’d drop on her lips or neck.
It was the best night of her life and she was unwilling to let it end, even as Kelsey texted her repeatedly, wanting to go home now that she’d realized David wasn’t all she’d hoped he’d be. She’d delayed and stalled until Kelsey had gone home without her, and now Jamie felt a bit bad. But Kelsey had ditched her first—figuratively, at least, by fawning over David—so Jamie didn’t feel really bad about it for long.
Colin returned with their drinks and caught her frowning at her phone as she typed. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” She hit send and stuffed the phone back in her pocket. “Kelsey’s going home.” She was pleased to see disappointment flash across Colin’s face. “I told her I’d meet her there later.”
Colin moved closer, a finger hooking in her pocket to tilt her hips toward his. “There’s not a lot of later left of tonight.”
She smiled up at him in what she hoped was a seductive manner. “Then I really need to enjoy what there is of it.” Now would be a good time for you to suggest we go back to your place, get a shower... “What do you suggest—”
The question was interrupted by an earsplitting siren wail. She saw more than heard Colin curse as he grabbed her hand.
“What’s going on?” she shouted, wanting to cover her ears as the siren wailed on and a surge of people pressed toward them.
“It’s midnight. They’re clearing the streets.” Colin pulled her against his chest as he tried to move sideways through the crowd toward the sidewalk. More sirens and honking horns joined the din, and her head began to throb from the noise. Jamie peeked over her shoulder to see a horizontal line of mounted police officers visible above the crowd and the strobe of red-and-blue police lights as they moved down Bourbon Street, instructing people by loudspeaker that Mardi Gras was over and they needed to clear the streets.
She was tripping over her own feet, being jostled from all sides, and only Colin’s grip on her kept her from falling. The noise, the surge of people...it was the first time all evening that she’d felt scared, and she worried what would happen if she did fall. She gripped Colin’s wrist with her free hand and trusted him to get them both through the melee.
At the
