Big Easy Temptation

  “Yay! Margarita!” Courtney’s eyes widened as the bartender placed the fishbowl-sized cocktail in front of her. “This afternoon was so pleasant. I swear I could look at that man all day. We were supposed to go over how we’ll lay out the training materials, but mostly I just looked at his arms. Do you think I could convince him to work without his shirt? I mean, writing training manuals is a really hard job. Oh, I’ll tell him the air conditioner is broken and see if I can fast-talk him down to his underwear.”

  Courtney’s antics usually amused her. They’d become fast friends right after Holland had taken the New Orleans job. It was good to have a girly friend. Most of her work colleagues were male. The lone exception was Berta, who looked as if she’d been a former pro wrestler in a past life. She was a nice lady, but she didn’t give a damn about mani pedis or where to get her hair done. Courtney was smart and funny, if a little shallow when it came to men.

  The problem was Courtney was talking about her man.

  Stop. Halt. Do not go there, Holland. He is not yours and he never will be.

  It had been a whole ten hours since Dax had made her coffee and then left to go back to his mother’s house. He’d slept on her couch and she’d let him. What had she been thinking? She’d taken a shower and hustled into work after he’d left this morning, but all she could concentrate on was the file he’d given her. And how masculine he’d looked standing there wearing nothing but a thin T-shirt and a pair of khaki pants. They’d rode low on his hips, and that white, almost transparent tee had shown off how well shaped his body was.

  “Earth to Holland?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry. I was thinking about something else.”

  “Yeah, I can tell. What’s his name?”

  Holland stared down at her beer, wondering how much to tell her friend.

  Courtney put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, seriously, what’s wrong? Did I say something?”

  “I know Captain Spencer personally.”

  Courtney sat back. “I was wondering about that. You don’t like to talk about it, but I know you were friends with Joy Hayes. That means you probably knew the PGs.”

  She hated that nickname. The Perfect Gentlemen. The press used it all the time. Somehow Captain Awesome was a better fit for Dax Spencer. “I wasn’t his girlfriend or anything. We’ve never been anything but friends.”

  Courtney stared at her with disbelieving eyes. “Really? That’s good because I’ve got a date with him tonight.”

  She felt herself flush. Well, she’d told him flat out she wouldn’t date him. She’d said it in no uncertain terms. Somehow she hadn’t expected him to give up so easily. But she’d also thought that maybe he’d give it a few days before he moved on to the next woman. This underscored one of the main reasons she refused to get involved with him.

  “There it is.” Courtney sat back with a shake of her head. “Damn. I was hoping that was all one sided, but it’s plain to see you like him, too. I don’t have a date with him. I just wanted to see your reaction.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the fact that once the man found out you and I are friends, he very subtly tried to get as much information out of me as possible. Give me the scoop because if you don’t want Captain Spencer, I’ll go after him.”

  The idea of Courtney—gorgeous, fun Courtney—with Dax made her flush all over again and it wasn’t with embarrassment. She was angry. Holland forced herself to calm down, but Courtney was making her think. She wouldn’t be so irrationally angry if she didn’t care at least a little. “We never had a relationship, but I do have some feelings for him. I can’t seem to help it.”

  “I think he likes you, too. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to resist the girls.” She thrust her chest out. “They were on full display today and I got nothing out of him. Not even a lingering glance, just questions about how I met you and what we do in New Orleans. So he got to hear about our hairdresser and our favorite spa. No man listens to spa stories if he isn’t interested.”

  Holland sipped her beer. He’d left her a message today, asking for a meeting to discuss the case when she had the time. She’d called back and gotten his voice mail. It wasn’t so surprising. They were both busy professionals. The next few days were fairly packed, and so she’d offered him a meeting on Friday. In her office. In the morning after breakfast, but not so close to lunch that he could persuade her to join him.

  She was feeling weak where Dax was concerned and she didn’t dare tempt fate.

  “I walked away from him once before,” Holland admitted. “He wanted to move past friendship, but I couldn’t do it.”

  Her friend blinked. “You know you’re insane, right? That is the hottest man I’ve ever seen. How could you sleep with him and not want to be with him?”

  “I didn’t sleep with him. Like I said, we didn’t move past being friends.”

  Courtney waved her off. “I sleep with lots of my friends. How am I supposed to figure out if I want to be more than friends if I don’t take a test drive, so to speak? The last thing I want to do is get all emotionally invested in some dude who can’t find my clitoris.”

  “Dax Spencer? Bad in bed?”

  “He could be,” Courtney said with a shrug. “I mean some guys who are that good looking and have that much money don’t even need to try. Women fall into their beds. They get lazy.”

  “Somehow I doubt a man whose penis has its own Twitter account is bad in bed.”

  Courtney snorted. “That’s not Dax. That’s Maddox Crawford.”

  “Well, I’m sure they’ll all have them soon. He kisses like he would be good in bed.”

  “So you’ve kissed him. What was that like? Too much tongue? Not enough?”

  “There was exactly the right amount of tongue. Why are we talking about this?”

  “Because we’re girls and that’s what we do. Also because you haven’t slept with anyone interesting in the last couple of years, so I’m all kinds of on board for you jumping into bed with the captain. I have the biggest crush on him, but I know the girl code. Thou shalt not sink your well-manicured claws into your best friend’s dream guy.”

  Holland opened her mouth to dispute that claim and then sighed. “I like him a lot. But his lifestyle . . . God only knows how many women that man has gone through.”

  “It’s a lot according to Star. They have a timeline and everything,” Courtney supplied helpfully. “They also tend to exaggerate. He’s a Naval officer. He’s working most of the time. I think you’re damning him for his misspent youth. The last few years the man has been doing his best to protect his country. That should count for something.”

  It did. “Any woman who dates him is going to have to deal with his past and the press.”

  “You’ve dealt with shit before. Listen, if you’re seriously not interested I would like to take a shot with the guy. He’s gorgeous and kind and really smart and funny. I know this might make me a bitch, but I’m not going to stand back and let him go if you’re too scared to even try.”

  Once again hot anger filled her. “Can I have a couple of days to settle into seeing him again before you jump him?”

  Courtney nodded. “You may. And again, I point out that I’ve never seen you get this emotional about a guy you were actually dating, so maybe you should think about taking a chance for once in your life. I know you think I take too many of them.”

  She thought Courtney might jump into bed with guys way too soon, but it didn’t make her a bad person. “I think you get hurt a lot.”

  “But one day it’s going to pay off. One day the right guy is going to make me an offer and I won’t refuse it. I won’t stand back because I’m scared I’ll get hurt or it won’t work out. I’ll jump in with both feet and never look back. It looks like I won’t be doing that with Captain Awesome. The good news is he’s got two friends in town.”

  She shuddered to think about who was here. She
prayed it was Connor. Connor was levelheaded, if a bit dark. Gabe Bond was nice. If Maddox Crawford was in town, then she should really alert the authorities because that man was trouble. “I’ve got more problems than his lifestyle. He wants me to reopen his dad’s case.”

  “That’s why you didn’t join the watercooler chat.” Courtney took another drink. “I always wondered. Everyone else was gossiping up a storm and there you were with the scoop. I thought you were being all stoic and NCIS we-don’t-talk-about-our-cases girl. You were protecting the man you loved. That’s really romantic.”

  Courtney could go way out there. She was the very definition of overdrama at times. “I knew the admiral. I liked him and his family. I wasn’t going to gossip. But now I’m faced with the dilemma of working on a case where I have feelings for a person directly involved in the outcome.”

  “It’s not an official thing, right? It’s off the books. You’ve done that before. You found Mrs. McCallahan’s granddaughter when she ran away. And you found George’s cat.”

  Mrs. McCallahan lived in her building. She was a nice older lady raising her wild grandchild. It hadn’t been hard to find the girl and bring her home. As for the cat, it had been up a tree. No real investigative work there. She’d simply followed the meows.

  “This feels different. I didn’t start the investigation, so I’m at a bit of a loss about where to begin. I’ve read the case file a hundred times. I’ve talked to the NCIS investigators.” She’d tried to avoid thinking about this all day, but she wanted to have something to tell Dax when she saw him on Friday. Something beyond “I read over the reports again.”

  “You should do what we do in tech writing. Start at the beginning of the process and work your way through. You already know everything NCIS does, so start outside your group.”

  “I have to talk to my uncle.” Her uncle had advised her against touching this case. He’d called her after some gossip rag had reported that Dax was in town and warned her away from it. He wasn’t going to be happy that she was diving in now.

  “I think you do. Tell Beau hi for me. Now, let’s talk about potential double dates. You and Dax and me and whoever he has with him.”

  Courtney chattered on, but Holland was already thinking about how to approach her uncle. It would not be a pleasant meeting.

  But her friend was right. It was time to start over, at the beginning.

  FOUR

  Why are you doing this, honey? This case is closed and all you can possibly do now is kick up a mess of trouble. What did I teach you about a hornet’s nest?”

  Holland had to give it to her uncle. Beau Kirk could likely make anyone feel as if they were twelve years old again. Even though she was a grown woman with a career and responsibilities, when her uncle looked at her, his eyes narrowed ever so slightly and that Cajun drawl deepening, she would almost swear she was sitting in his big office at the house along the bayou, hoping she didn’t get grounded.

  After her mother had died, she’d lived with her aunt and uncle. She’d seen her dad when he came home on leave, but her aunt had been the steady influence in her life and her uncle the authority figure.

  “You taught me not to kick one,” Holland replied. “I’m not trying to cause trouble, Uncle Beau. I’m simply trying to give a friend some peace of mind.”

  Her uncle frowned, sitting back in his massive chair. He’d moved up the ranks of the NOLA PD and now occupied a large office and headed a division of men who handled some of the city’s worst cases. “You’re talking about the son, right? Daxton? Isn’t he some sort of war hero?”

  Her uncle knew exactly who she was talking about, but she played along. “Yes, Captain Spencer is considered one of the Navy’s finest.”

  “I’m sure he was on track to follow in his daddy’s footsteps.” Commander Beauregard Kirk was in his mid-fifties, but he was still a powerfully built man. He wasn’t one to slide into middle age gracefully. He still trained with his men on a daily basis. “I doubt he’ll make it past captain now.”

  Holland frowned. Dax was meant for bigger and better things. He was certainly capable of them. The minute she’d met him, she’d known he would go far in the Navy. “What is that supposed to mean? He’s great at his job.”

  “Oh, the Navy will certainly move him around and give him bigger ships, but they won’t want the Spencer name to ever again come anywhere near the rank of admiral. Too much bad press.” Uncle Beau shook his head. “That story took forever to die. The Spencer boy has to know his career in the Navy has an invisible wall he’ll never scale now.”

  “He’s not pursuing this investigation because he wants a higher rank,” Holland tried to explain. “He’s doing this because he loved his father.”

  Her uncle sat back, scanning the office. He left the blinds open as though he was watching and waiting for something to happen. “I’m sure he does. That’s the problem with parents and children, though. As a child, you tend to see your parents in the best possible light. It’s hard to understand that they’re human like the rest of us. Some people can’t handle it. I remember how disappointed I was when I realized my father was a drunk. Growing up, I always thought he was the life of the party. A truly happy man. Then I realized he was happy because he didn’t have to face a thing. Momma did all the work and it wore her out in the end. I had to face two facts: my father was an irresponsible asshole and my mother let herself become a doormat.”

  Her uncle had always been terribly good at giving lectures.

  “I think his case is different,” she argued.

  He sent her a cool stare. “Yes, it’s much worse. He thought his father was a hero. It turns out the man was a criminal. Which is precisely why I told you to stay away from this investigation in the first place. You did the right thing by recusing yourself. Why would you go back and screw things up now?”

  She’d known she would have to endure this lecture. That’s why she’d put off seeing her uncle until this afternoon. But she planned to meet with Dax tomorrow and she wanted to have something to tell him. Otherwise, she might never have forced herself to come here. “This isn’t a formal investigation. This is me looking into a few questions for a friend.”

  “A friend or a lover?” He managed to make the question sound like an accusation.

  Holland sat up straighter, fingers curling around the arms of her chair. “Uncle Beau, I love you, but I’m an adult. My relationship with Captain Spencer is none of your business.”

  “It damn straight is if he’s causing trouble for you at work.”

  “There won’t be any trouble.” Sometimes, like now, Holland really missed her aunt Dixie. She’d divorced her uncle a few years back and moved to Texas with her sister. If her aunt was still here, Dixie could have reasoned with her stubborn uncle. Of course, his stubbornness had been one of the major causes of the divorce in the first place. “Uncle Beau, I’m asking as a favor. You’ll save me some legwork if you’ll let me read the file. Think of it as a professional courtesy.”

  “I’m sure NCIS has the file somewhere,” he replied with a sour expression.

  “Again, I’m not doing this on the clock. It’s why I came to you and not my colleagues. I want to peruse the file, maybe close some of those open-ended questions and make Dax feel more comfortable.” She wasn’t about to mention that she thought Dax could have a point. She didn’t want her uncle to think she was seriously considering building a case to bring to her superiors.

  Uncle Beau ran a frustrated hand across his almost nonexistent hair and cursed under his breath. “Fine.” He picked up his phone and asked his assistant to get a hard copy of the file. “I still don’t understand what that boy thinks he’s going to prove. That his father wasn’t guilty? Because he was, Holland. I wouldn’t have sent the accusation to NCIS if I hadn’t found it to be credible. I didn’t like ruining the life of a man so many people admired.”

  Finally they were getting somewhere. “I know you didn’t.”

&n
bsp; “If I’d found even a hint that it might be false, I would have tried harder to disprove it before the press got hold of the story. I knew the minute I found out the admiral was involved that the incident would blow up in everyone’s faces. There are days I wished that call had never come in. Not on my watch.”

  Yes, she had some questions about the call that had led her uncle to that seedy motel. “So the original tip came from an anonymous source?”

  “Yes, we didn’t realize the tip involved a high-ranking Naval officer at the time.” Beau seemed to settle in as though he realized she wasn’t going away.

  She could be stubborn, too. She’d learned through the years that she had to be if she was going to survive her uncle. He’d taught her to be like a dog with a bone. “So you got a call?”

  “Yes, to this very precinct, shortly after midnight on the day in question. I’ve attempted to ID the caller, but it’s impossible. The caller reached out via a landline from somewhere inside the motel the admiral had taken that girl to.”