Honest Illusions

  He took them out, freezing when Miranda grumbled sleepily at the dogs and rolled over. Then he crouched, a shadow in the shadows, and gestured with the bones.

  He didn’t speak, didn’t dare take the risk even when Miranda began to snore lightly. But the dogs didn’t need any verbal prompting. Scenting the snack, they scrambled off the bed and snapped their jaws.

  Satisfied, Luke pulled out the false front on the section of bookshelves and went to work on the safe.

  It was a bit distracting having the woman sleeping in the room. Not that he hadn’t burgled a home with a woman snoring close by before. But he’d never done so with a woman he’d shared the bed with.

  Added an interesting angle, he thought.

  And wouldn’t you know that the luscious Miranda slept buck naked?

  The excitement, always vaguely sexual, that he felt on lifting a lock increased dramatically. By the time he had the safe open, he was rock hard and struggling to hold back laughter at the absurdity of the situation.

  He could always climb into bed with her and seduce her while she was half asleep. After all, he had the added benefit of knowing what moves she preferred.

  And she’d recognize him in the dark, he had no doubt.

  It would be a thrill, undoubtedly, but time was against him.

  Of course, there were proprieties and priorities. As Max would have said. Then again, he was the same one who said strike while the iron was hot.

  Christ Almighty, Luke thought, his personal iron was currently hot enough to melt stone.

  Too bad, baby, he thought, taking a last glance at the sprawled Miranda. He wondered if she’d have considered a quick roll payment for the loss of the jewels. Then he had to stifle another laugh as he hobbled from the room.

  “You’re two minutes behind.” Roxanne stood at the base of the stairs, hissing at him. “I was about to come up.” Her eyes narrowed against the dark. “Why are you walking like that?”

  Luke only snorted with muffled laughter and kept limping down the stairs.

  “Are you hurt? Are you—” She broke off when she saw just what was hampering him. “Christ, you’re a pervert.”

  “Just a healthy all-American boy, Roxy.”

  “Sick,” she tossed back, unreasonably jealous. “Disgusting.”

  “Normal. Painful, but normal.”

  “Ah, children.” Like a patient schoolteacher, Max signaled. “Perhaps we could discuss this in the car?”

  Roxanne continued to whisper insults as they hurried across the lawn. By the time they reached the car, the simple thrill of the entire evening took over. She tumbled in behind Mouse, laughing. She kissed him, even as he drove the car sedately down the street. There was another smacking kiss for Max, and because she was feeling generous—and perhaps just a little vindictive—she turned and pressed her lips firmly to Luke’s.

  “Oh, God.”

  “I hope you suffer.” Leaning back, she hugged the gem-packed pouch to her breasts. “Okay, Daddy. What do we do for an encore?”

  16

  Roxanne paced restlessly from beaded lampshade to picture frame, from crystal wand to jeweled box in Madame’s shop. In faded jeans and an oversized New Orleans Saints T-shirt, she looked precisely like what she was. A newly graduated college student waiting for her life to begin.

  Madame carefully counted out her customer’s change. After thirty years in business she continued to eschew modern distractions such as a cash register. The old, hand-painted cigar box under the counter served her well enough.

  “Enjoy,” she said, shaking her head as her customer left the shop with a stuffed parrot under his arm. Tourists, she thought, would buy anything. “So, pichouette, you come to show me your new college diploma?”

  “No. I think Max is having it bronzed.” She smiled a little, toying with a china cup that had a chip on its gold rim.

  “You’d think I’d discovered the cure for cancer instead of slogging my way through four years at Tulane.”

  “Graduating fifth in your class is not so small potatoes.”

  Roxanne jerked a shoulder in easy dismissal. She was restless, oh so restless, and couldn’t quite find the root of it. “It only took application. I have a good memory for details.”

  “And this troubles you?”

  “No.” Roxanne set the cup down and took a steadying breath. “I’m worried about my father.” It was a relief to say it aloud. “His hands aren’t what they were.”

  It was something she could speak with no one about, not even Lily. They all knew that arthritis was gaining on Max, swelling his knuckles, stiffening those agile fingers. There had been doctors, medication, massage. Roxanne knew that the pain was nothing compared to the fear of losing what he held most dear. His magic.

  “Even Max can’t cause time to vanish, petite.”

  “I know. I understand. I just can’t accept. It’s affecting him emotionally, Madame. He broods, he spends too much time alone in his workroom and with his research on that bloody magic stone. It’s gotten worse since Luke moved out last year.”

  Madame lifted a brow at the bitterness. “Roxanne, a man becomes a man and needs his own place.”

  “He just wanted to bring women in.”

  Madame’s lips twitched. “This is reason enough. He’s only a short distance, still in the Quarter. Does he not continue to work with Max?”

  “Yes, yes.” Roxanne waved a hand in dismissal. “I didn’t mean to get off the subject. It’s my father I’m concerned about. I can’t reach him the way I used to, not since he’s become obsessed with that damn stone.”

  “Stone? Tell me what is this stone?”

  Roxanne wandered over to the counter. She picked up the tarot deck Madame left there and began to shuffle. “The philosophers’ stone. It’s a myth, Madame, an illusion. Legend has it that this stone could turn anything it touched into gold. And . . .” She glanced up significantly. “Give youth back to the aged. Health to the ill.”

  “And you don’t believe in such things? You, who have lived your lifetime in magic.”

  “I know what makes magic work.” Roxanne cut the cards and began a Celtic cross. “Sweat and practice, timing and misdirection. Emotion and drama. I believe in the art of magic, Madame, not in magic stones. Not in the supernatural.”

  “I see.” Madame cocked a brow at the cards on the counter. “Yet you seek your answers there?”

  “Hmm?” Caught up in interpreting the spread, Roxanne frowned. Then flushed. “Just to pass the time.” Before she could gather the cards up, Madame caught her hand.

  “A shame to disturb a reading.” She hunched over the cards herself. “The girl is ready to become a woman. There’s a journey ahead, soon. Both figuratively and literally.”

  Roxanne smiled. She couldn’t help it. “We’re taking a cruise. North, up the Saint Lawrence Seaway. We’ll perform, of course. Max sees it as a working vacation.”

  “Prepare for changes.” Madame tapped the Wheel of Fortune. “The realization of a dream—if you’re wise. And the loss of it. Someone from out of the past. And sorrow. Time to heal.”

  “And the Death card?” It surprised Roxanne that her skin prickled when she looked at the grinning skeleton.

  “Death chases life from the first breath.” Madame stroked the card with a gentle finger. “You are too young to feel it whispering at your ear. But this is death that is not death. Go on your journey, pichouette, and learn.”

  Luke was more than ready to go. There was nothing he could think of he’d rather do than get out of town. The latest payment to Cobb sat on his coffee table, addressed and stamped.

  The demand for money had been as steady as mortgage payments over the years. Two thousand here, four there, to an average of fifty thousand annually.

  Luke didn’t mind the money. He had plenty of that. But he’d yet to control that greasy wave of nausea each time he found a plain postcard in his mailbox.

  2K, it might say. Or perhaps when Cobb’s luck was running
thin, 5K, and the post office box. Nothing more.

  Luke had had four years to reconsider the extent of Cobb’s brainpower. The man was much smarter than Luke had ever given him credit for. A fool would have pushed for the big score and quickly dried the well. But Cobb, good old belt-wielding Al, knew the value of a steady trickle.

  So Luke was more than ready to get away—from the postcards, from the dissatisfied tickle at the back of his neck, from worry over Max’s overpowering obsession with a nonexistent magic rock.

  They’d be too busy on the ship to worry about such things with performances, ports of call and the tidy job they had planned for Manhattan.

  When they did have free time, Luke planned to plop himself down by the pool, clamp headphones on his ears, bury his nose in a book while some nubile strolling cocktail waitress kept the cold beer coming.

  All in all, life was good. He had a bit more than two million in his Swiss accounts, that much again floating in various stocks, bonds and money markets in the States, along with some modest real estate investments. In his closet hung suits from Savile Row and Armani, though he still preferred denim by Levi’s. Perhaps he was more at home in Nikes, but there were highly polished Gucci shoes in his rack, and a selection of John Lobb boots. He drove a vintage ’Vette and piloted his own Cessna. He indulged in imported cigars and French champagne and had a weakness for Italian women.

  All in all, he figured the half-starved pickpocket had turned himself into a discriminating, cosmopolitan man.

  What it cost him to maintain the image was a bit of blackmail—and the repression of one small, nagging, incessant need.

  Roxanne.

  But then, Max had taught him never to count the cost, unless it was pride.

  Luke took a mug of coffee onto his terrace to watch the action down in Jackson Square. There were girls in pretty summer dresses, babies in strollers, men with cameras slung around their necks. He spotted three black kids tap dancing. Their feet were moving like fury. Even with the distance, he could hear the cheerful click and clatter of their shoes on the concrete. They’d drawn a crowd, and that pleased him.

  The woman he’d heard on that first day in New Orleans no longer sang in the Quarter. He missed the sound of her, and though he’d never quite had the same emotional tug toward anyone else, it satisfied him to see the cardboard boxes of the street performers fill with silver.

  Without Max, he thought. Without Max and Lily he could have done much worse than dance for pennies.

  That brought a frown to his eyes. He knew why Max was handing over more and more of the sleight of hand and close-up work to him and Roxanne. He thought he even understood why Max was devoting so much of the time he’d once earmarked for preparing the act toward the damn philosophers’ stone. And understanding hurt.

  Max was getting old, right in front of Luke’s eyes.

  A knock on the door had him turning reluctantly away from the street scene. But when he opened it, there was only pleasure.

  “Lily.” Luke bent to kiss her, to breathe in the wonderfully familiar Chanel before taking the various bags and boxes she carried.

  “I was shopping.” She giggled, patting her fluffy blond hair back into place. “I guess that’s obvious. I got the urge to stop by. Hope it’s okay.”

  “It’s always okay.” He dumped her purchases on an overstuffed chair beside a Belker table. “Ready to give Max his walking papers and move in with me?”

  She laughed again, that bubbly, champagne sound that he loved. Past forty now, she remained as lush and pretty as she’d been when Luke had first seen her strut across the stage. It took a bit more woman’s magic to maintain the illusion, but Lily had an endless store of it.

  “If I did, it would be to give those ladies of yours the once-over as they sashay in and out.”

  “I’d give them all up, for the right lady.”

  Lily didn’t laugh this time, but there was a different sort of amusement in her eyes. “Oh, I’m sure you would, honey. I’m getting old waiting for you to make the next move. But,” she continued before he could speak, “I didn’t come by to talk about your love life—fascinating though it may be.”

  He grinned. “You’re going to make me blush.”

  “Fat chance.” She was proud of him, so proud it almost burst her heart. He was tall and trim and gloriously handsome. And more, much more than that, there was a goodness inside of him that she knew she had nurtured herself. “I dropped by to see if you needed any help packing—or if you needed anything while I was shopping. Socks, underwear?”

  He couldn’t help it. Setting the mug down he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her again. “I love you, Lily.”

  Pleasure had her cheeks blooming. “I love you, too. I know how men hate to pack and shop for undies and stuff.”

  “I’ve got plenty.”

  “They’ve probably got holes in them, or the elastic’s gone.”

  Sober-eyed, he lifted a hand in an oath. “I swear to God, I didn’t pack a single pair of jocks that I’d be ashamed to wear if I were in an accident.”

  She sniffed, but her eyes were laughing. “You’re making fun of me.”

  “Yeah. How about some coffee?”

  “I’d rather something cold, if you have it.”

  “Lemonade?” He headed back toward the kitchen. “I must have had a premonition that you’d drop by when I squeezed those damn lemons this morning.”

  “You made it fresh? Yourself?” She was as proud of that as she would have been if he’d won the Nobel prize.

  He took out a squat pitcher of pale green glass and matching glasses. His kitchen was neat and small, with an old-fashioned two-burner gas range and a short, round-edged refrigerator. Lily thought the herbs potted on the windowsill were the sweetest things.

  “I know you’re competent.” It hurt only a little that he could do so easily without her. “You always could do anything you set your mind on.” She took the glass he offered and rattled the ice in it, wandered back into the living room. “You have such good taste.”

  He lifted a brow, noting the way she ran fingertips over the curve of his love seat, the surface of an antique commode. “I got it through osmosis.”

  “From Max, I know. Me, I have terrible taste. I just love tacky things.”

  “Whatever I got, I got from both of you.” Taking her hand, he drew her down with him on the love seat. “What’s this all about, Lily?”

  “About? I told you, I just stopped by.”

  “You’ve got worry in your eyes.”

  “What woman doesn’t?” But her eyes slid away from his.

  He brushed his knuckles over her cheek. It was soft as a baby’s still. “Let me help.”

  That was all it took to crumble the fragile wall she’d managed to build before knocking on his door. Tears blurred her vision as he took her glass, set it aside, then drew her into his arms.

  “I’m being silly. I know I am, but I can’t help it.”

  “It’s all right.” He kissed her hair, her temple, and waited.

  “I don’t think Max loves me anymore.”

  “What?” He’d meant to be sympathetic, comforting, supportive. Instead he jerked back, laughing. “What a crock. Oh, shit,” he muttered as she dissolved into helpless sobs. “Don’t. Come on, Lily, don’t cry.” Women’s tears remained the one thing he had no defense against. “I’m sorry I laughed. What makes you say such a crazy thing?”

  “He—he—” It was the best she could do as she wailed against his shoulder.

  Change tactics, Luke thought, and stroked her back. “Okay, okay, baby, don’t you worry. I’m going to go right over and beat him up for you.”

  That brought a gurgle of laughter to mix with tears. She wasn’t ashamed of the laughter, or the tears. She’d learned never to be ashamed of what felt good. “I just love him so much, you know? He’s the best thing that ever happened to me. You don’t even know what it was like before.”

  “No.” He sobered, resti
ng his cheek on her hair. “I don’t.”

  “We were so poor. But that was okay, because my mama was wonderful. Even after Daddy died, she held everything together. She’d always see to it there was a little extra, for a movie, or an ice cream. I didn’t know, not till later, that she took money from time to time from men. But she wasn’t a whore.” Lily lifted her