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A PERFECT BLEND of the absurd and obscene. That described the French Quarter during Mardi Gras. Scantily clad women strolling beside men in cat costumes and stilts, all while evangelists screamed about the perils of sin.
Excess. Excitement. And that ever-present air of danger...because just about anything could—and did—happen.
Strangers rubbing against strangers because that was the only way through the wall-to-wall humanity. Heat and hedonism. Music, loud voices and raised laughter filling every available inch of space.
All around him, the party raged. But Beckett Kayne didn’t care.
Leaning against the railing, he watched dispassionately as the crowd beneath the balcony swelled. Beside him Mason Westbrook, his best friend since childhood, held out several blinking LED necklaces. Shaking them enticingly, he yelled something crude.
Two women, wearing short, flared skirts and bustiers, giggled up at them with glassy-eyed interest. They clung together, no doubt keeping each other from falling flat on their wasted asses.
“You know what you have to do to get ’em,” Mason taunted.
One of the women—and Beckett used the term loosely, because if they were a day over twenty-one he’d be damn surprised—shook her head slowly. Considering he owned a series of nightclubs scattered in major cities across the United States, he’d gotten pretty talented at spotting minors.
The brunette pouted. “We can’t.” Tugging at the edge of her top, she yelled, “It’s too tight.”
Mason simply grinned, his teeth flashing white through the dark night. “Then show me something else.”
Moments like these, Beckett wondered why the hell he’d kept Mason in his life past the bonding years of their uninhibited carousing. Yes, there was a time when he would have been beside his friend, trying to coax the coeds into showing what the good Lord gave them.
But at thirty-two he was getting too old for this shit. Certainly too old for the doe-eyed girls on the street.
With a sense of disgust and inevitability, Beckett watched their heads go together as they whispered to each other, cutting quick glances up. After several moments they spun around. Beckett really hoped they were leaving but knew they probably weren’t.
Instead, he watched them bend at the waist and flip up the edges of their skirts to show their practically naked rears.
Mason let out a wolf whistle and rained necklaces, gold coins and a handful of cheap trinkets down onto the street at their feet.
Tonight, the uncontrolled excess seriously bothered Beckett. Or maybe that was just the bad mood he’d been fighting for the past few weeks. He was getting jaded.
Instead of growling something at Mason he’d most likely regret later, Beckett raised his glass and pulled a healthy swallow of expensive scotch into his mouth. It was smooth, and the welcome fire burning down his throat beat back the words threatening to break free.
He didn’t want to be here. Had tried to tell Mason he’d be bad company, but his friend had guilted him into coming anyway. A private balcony party the Friday before Fat Tuesday, thrown by one of the partners in his firm, wasn’t something to be missed.
But his head was firmly embedded in business and the way everything he wanted was slowly slipping through his fingers.
A dark scowl, an expression he’d been wearing all too often lately, pinched his brows. Beckett wasn’t used to being...ignored and dismissed, but that was exactly what V&D Mobile Technology was doing.
Although not anymore. Not after tomorrow.
“Seriously, man, you’re scaring off the chicks. Stop scowling. It’s Mardi Gras,” Mason yelled, as if the music, the people and the mask Beckett was currently wearing weren’t enough for him to notice.
The air of wild debauchery, so palpable he could taste it on the back of his tongue, dark and sinfully sweet, was hard to ignore. Even if he would have liked to.
The girls on the street moved on, but Mason wasn’t disappointed. Not when several feet away two more women, also decked out in feathered masks and barely stable enough to stay atop their skyscraper heels, pulled up their shirts and flashed their naked chests. A hailstorm of beads, accompanied by catcalls, landed at their feet.
Charming. Beckett looked away, disgust twisting hard in his gut. Shaking his head, he watched Mason scoot down the railing toward the women busy gathering the beads they’d exposed themselves to win.
Using Mason’s distraction as a chance to finally slip away, Beckett moved farther into the shadows along the balcony. The big building was divided into expensive townhomes, making the space long and narrow. The balconies, on the second and third levels, curved around the front and all the way along the far side. Most everyone crowded near the street, so they could watch the people and party going on below.
Beckett just wanted a moment of peace to try and combat the headache threatening to balloon into a migraine. Settling his back against the rough brick, he propped a single foot on the intricate metal railing in front of him and closed his eyes. A deep breath and another healthy swallow of scotch had some of the knots unwinding from between his shoulder blades.
He could still hear the noise from the street, but the side balcony wrapped around into a controlled-access alley. During Mardi Gras, without fences—and sometimes with—every square inch of real estate was covered with humanity. But this building was pricey enough to have very good security—high fences, electronic locks and surveillance cameras. With a practiced eye, Beckett had noticed the expensive recording equipment.
The alley was empty, filled with nothing but shadows, trash cans and a black cat that stared at him with wide, yellow eyes. He was enjoying the muted solitude, gearing up for his inevitable return to the decadence, when a light snapped on in an apartment across the alley.
It startled him. That was the only reason he looked. But once he did...he couldn’t tear his gaze away.
The balcony he was standing on was higher than the windows he was staring straight into, which meant he was looking slightly down into the room.
A bedroom.
A woman’s bedroom.
Blue, green and purple light scattered across the space from a stained-glass lamp on the bedside table. Shadows chased across pale green walls and smooth, dark floors. Heavy furniture, the solid kind that carried age and history, filled the room.
A four-poster bed occupied most of the space with gleaming golden wood and an inviting cloud of fluffy jewel-toned pillows. Appealing and comfortable, the whole room looked like a sumptuous invitation he wanted to accept.
But that really wasn’t what had his gaze glued.
She stood framed by the window. A soft radiance from the lamp slipped across her body. It lit her from behind, painting her in an ethereal splash of color that made her seem dreamy and tragic and somehow unreal.
Maybe that’s why he kept watching. Logically, he realized he was intruding, but there was something about her....
Her
