"Of course not, Mama!" Claire exclaimed.

"Because I really can't let you take her."

Claire moved quickly to her mother's side and placed an arm around her shoulders. "Mr. Cassidy and I were just ... debating something."

"Oh."

Where was Harry? Claire asked herself. Why wasn't she with her mother? "Everything's fine, Mama. I promise. Are you feeling well?"

Mary Catherine formed a tremulous smile. "We're having stuffed pork chops for dinner. Doesn't that sound delicious? I must ask them to trim all the fat off Aunt Laurel's. That's the only way she'll eat pork, you know. Otherwise she gets indigestion. Oh, forgive me, Mr. Cassidy, for discussing such an indelicate matter in mixed company."

Cassidy cleared his throat. "Quite all right."

"Aunt Laurel wants to get some cuttings from the rosebushes here to plant in the courtyard. Wouldn't that be lovely, Claire Louise?"

"Yes, Mama. Lovely."

Mary Catherine walked past Claire to the coat tree near the door, where Cassidy's sports coat was hanging. She removed something from the pocket of her skirt and slipped it into the breast pocket of the jacket. Without acknowledging her strange action, she continued the conversation. "Claire dear, your face is flushed."

"It's hot outside."

"Are you perspiring, dear? That's not at all ladylike. Perhaps you should take a bath and change before dinner."

"I plan to, Mama. I was just on my way up."

"You work much too hard. Aunt Laurel and I were talking about it this afternoon over tea. You really should take care." Mary Catherine stroked her cheek lovingly before drifting upstairs and out of sight. The instant they heard her bedroom door close, Cassidy moved to the coat tree and reached into the breast pocket of his coat.

"Well, I'll be damned."

"What is it?" He held up a gold fountain pen.

"Is it yours?"

With a rueful smile he said, "I noticed it missing the afternoon I arrived, after I'd left my jacket hanging here for a while. I figured somebody had stolen it, although I couldn't imagine who would want to. It isn't an expensive pen, but valuable to me because it was a gift from my folks, and both of them are deceased."

Claire pressed her fingertips against her lips and turned her back to him. She leaned against one of the tall, narrow windows that flanked the front door, resting her forehead against the glass, which had retained some coolness during the sweltering afternoon.

Cassidy moved to stand close behind her. "Hey, it's no big deal, Claire."

His voice was soft, gentle, confidence inspiring. When he placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him, she was tempted to rest her head against his chest as she had the window. It would be a tremendous relief to finally unburden herself and tell him everything. "Oh, Cassidy, I wish..."

"What?" he probed gently.

She rolled her head across her shoulders. Naturally she couldn't say what she really wanted to, so she said instead, "I wish it weren't so hot. I wish it would rain. I wish we were finished here so I could go home and restore my office and home, which I'm certain the police left in shambles."

She bit her lower lip to stop tears of frustration and fear. "I wish I'd never heard of Jackson Wilde. I wish you'd have told me about your fountain pen. I could have explained days ago."

"I got it back and that's all that matters. Forget it."

But she couldn't forget it and felt compelled to explain her mother's actions. "See, sometimes Mama takes things. She's not stealing because she doesn't realize she's doing anything wrong. She's just 'borrowing.' She never fails to return whatever it is she's taken. It's harmless and innocent, really."

"Hush, Claire." He pushed his fingers up through her hair and whisked a kiss across her lips. "I believe you."

But when he ducked his head for a deeper kiss, she pushed him away and gazed into his eyes. "No, you don't, Cassidy." Suddenly they were no longer talking about her mother or the fountain pen. Claire slowly shook her head. "You don't believe me at all."

Chapter 18.

*Yasmine left before dinner. The empty place at the table aroused curiosity, which Claire satisfied without going into details. "Yasmine had an appointment in New Orleans tonight, but she's making a quick round trip. She'll be back early tomorrow morning."

Leon was excited about the photographs he'd taken that day. His enthusiasm, heightened by several glasses of excellent dinner wine, prompted him to wax eloquent throughout the meal. He lavished his captive audience with ribald stories about the famous and would-be famous who frequented Manhattan's ever-changing hotspots.

"Of course it's not like in the old days when Studio 54 was in its heyday," he remarked wistfully. "It's a shame that, what with AIDS and drug awareness, no one really parties anymore."

Immediately following dinner, Claire excused herself. A Trivial Pursuit tournament was being organized. She knew from past experience that they invariably turned hostile. Pleading exhaustion, she accompanied Mary Catherine and Harry upstairs, where she lingered in their room, chatting with her mother until Mary Catherine's sleeping pill took effect. Mary Catherine didn't mention Cassidy's fountain pen, nor did she give any indication that she remembered taking it.

In her rush to leave for New Orleans, Yasmine had left their bedroom looking like a storm had hit it. Claire spent a half-hour picking up strewn clothing and reorganizing the vanity table. The bathroom was in no better shape. After straightening it, she languished in a tub of cool water, trying to relax and stop thinking about Ariel Wilde's pregnancy and what adverse effects it might have on her.

After her bath, she dusted with talcum, and put on a silk thigh-length chemise that was the color of old, expensive pearls. She twisted her hair into a knot on top of her head and secured it with a clip, then stacked pillows against the headboard of her bed and reclined against them. She intended to switch on the bedside lamp, but the darkness was so soothing. More than she needed to review the schedule for tomorrow, she needed sleep.

But her thoughts weren't restful. Like intractable children, they wouldn't behave and leave her in peace. Her eyes would remain closed for only brief snatches of time before they stubbornly sprang open. The bed, on which she had spent several restful nights, had metamorphosed into a bunk full of lumps and knots. Her pillow became warm too quickly. She flipped it over several times, growing increasingly impatient with her insomnia. Laughter wafted up the staircase from the parlor where the game was still in progress. She wished everybody would shut up and go to bed.

She blamed her discontent on the mattress, the pillow, and the noise, but she knew that the real source of it, like her jealousy that afternoon, was something deep inside herself. It wasn't in her nature to be out of sorts with her friends and associates, her environment, and herself. She didn't like herself this way.

Yet, she was afraid to look too closely for an explanation. She knew intuitively that whatever had brought about this character change was something she'd rather not acknowledge. Avoidance was preferable to confrontation. She didn't want to deal with whatever was making her crazy. Left alone, maybe it would simply go away.

She heard a noise that sounded like someone moving furniture across the hardwood floors. It was thunder. Vainly willing herself to fall asleep, she listened to the thunderstorm moving progressively closer to Rosesharon. Lightning flashed through the sheer drapes at the French doors. Maybe this time the clouds would deliver a cooling rain. So far all they'd produced was a heightened sense of expectancy to an atmosphere already too thick to breathe.

As the storm came nearer and increased in intensity, so did Claire's restlessness.

Cassidy declined to join the Trivial Pursuit tournament in favor of a stroll around the grounds. However, the stifling humidity and biting mosquitoes quickly drove him back inside.

He didn't stop in the parlor to bid anyone good night but went straight upstairs to his room. He paused to listen at Claire's door, which was next door to his, but could hear nothing. There wasn't any light showing through the crack beneath the door, either, so he reasoned she must have done as she'd said and gone to bed early.

In his room, he stripped to the skin. God, it was muggy even indoors. He considered going downstairs to get a beer from the bar but decided against it. He might bump into Agnes or Grace, who were wont to engage their guests in lengthy conversations. Southern hospitality only went so far before it became cloying. His present frame of mind wasn't conducive to chatter. Tonight he wasn't fit company for anyone except himself, and he was finding himself nearly intolerable.

After taking a quick shower to cool off, he lay down on the bed and lit a cigarette. He'd quit smoking two years earlier, but he was feeling agitated. Besides, he needed something to keep his hands occupied while his mind ran in incessant circles.

Claire had motive. Claire had opportunity. Claire could be directly linked to the crime scene through fibers from her car's carpet. Claire had no ironclad alibi. Claire was his best shot at getting the conviction that he desperately needed for both professional and personal reasons.

But he didn't want Claire to be the culprit.

"Goddammit." The curse seemed to hover in the darkness long after the sound had faded. This was a bitch of a position he had placed himself in. If he followed his conscience and the ethics of professional conduct, he would distance himself from this case. Crowder had already given him a deadline for bringing in a suspect. The number of allotted days was dwindling. If he was summarily replaced, that would be a hell of a thing to live down.

But what if, before the deadline, he asked to be removed? Crowder thought he was too personally involved in the case, so he would probably be relieved by the request. The decision wouldn't damage their relationship. In fact, it would probably win his mentor's favor. Crowder would simply assign the case to someone else.

No, that was no good. That someone else would probably be aggressive and sly and would slap handcuffs on Claire as soon as she returned to New Orleans. She'd be booked for murder two. Fingerprinted. Photographed. Jailed. The thought of it made him sick.

On the other hand, he couldn't live with the thought that he might let a guilty woman go free because he had the hots for her. Only it wasn't as simple as that. It never had been. Since he had first walked into French Silk and met Claire Laurent, nothing had been easy or routine.

It was as though he'd been bewitched. French Silk had an ambience that mystified and intrigued him. It wasn't the old building itself, or even the French Quarter. He'd been there many times since he'd moved to New Orleans. He'd found it charming, but it had never made him feel as though he had gone through a time warp on the other side of which everything moved in slow motion and nothing was what it seemed.

It wasn't the physical place that had mesmerized him. It was Claire. She exuded a mystique that confounded him. That unnamed quality was dangerously romantic, totally alluring, and potentially disastrous. It had trapped him like an invisible web. The harder he struggled against it, the more ensnared he became. Even now, while he should be plotting a way to catch her, he was devising means to protect her from prosecution.

Crazy, he thought, shaking his head over his own culpability. But he went with it anyway. There was no harm in exploring alternatives, was there? In fact, wasn't that the sensible, responsible, professional thing to do?

Who else was a viable suspect?

Ariel Wilde. She was pregnant now, but she could have offed her husband for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, it would be tough to prosecute her and emerge a hero. He could always raise doubt as to who had fathered her child. But a good attorney would object to that line of questioning. The judge might rule in defense's favor, and that would be that. Nipped in the bud. The jury would never know about Ariel's affair with her stepson, and Cassidy would be despised for casting aspersions on a saintly expectant mother.

Joshua Wilde. Cassidy's gut instinct told him that the young man wouldn't have the gumption to kill a fly, much less a tyrannical father. On the other hand, he'd had the moxie to boink his old man's wife.

The problem with prosecuting Ariel or Josh was that he didn't have a shred of physical evidence on either of them. It was all circumstantial and conjecture. If the jurors followed the judge's instructions and entertained any reasonable doubt, Ariel and Josh would walk. Assistant District Attorney Cassidy would have lost his credibility and let the real killer, whoever it might be, go free.

That prospect was unthinkable. His main objective was to make sure that didn't happen. Above all else, he was committed to catching the bad guy and convicting him.

Or her.

Thoughts of Claire made him swear liberally as he ground out his first, virtually unsmoked, cigarette and lit another. He envisioned her as she had been that afternoon. Her dishevelment had been fetching, the perspiration having given her skin a healthy glow. The humidity had made the hair around her face curl beguilingly. She had looked hot and bothered. But when he'd confronted her about it, she'd been too damn proud to claim those two human frailties, jealousy and lust.

Feeling restless and mean, Cassidy rolled off the bed and hiked a pair of jeans up over his hips. He didn't bother buttoning them before he yanked open the French doors and stepped onto the balcony. The air was even sultrier than it had been earlier. There wasn't a breath of breeze.

He glanced toward the French doors of Claire's room and saw darkness. She was sleeping. He gazed up at the sky; the low clouds looked swollen and bruised. The smell of rain was pervasive, but he didn't feel a drop. The atmosphere was electrically charged, as though something consequential were about to take place.

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than a flash of lightning sizzled across the sky just above the motionless treetops.

When the sky was split by a brilliant, jagged fork of lightning, Claire sprang into a sitting position. She held her breath in anticipation of the thunder. It cracked like a whip across the roof of the house, rattling windows and glassware. It was followed by a strong gust of wind. Her French doors burst open, swinging into the room and banging against the interior walls. The sheer draperies billowed like sails suddenly unfurled.

Claire slid from the bed and walked across the room. Rosesharon's trees were swaying in an angry wind that seemed to be blowing in no particular direction. It tore at her hair and molded her chemise to her body. Another bolt of lightning temporarily spotlighted the balcony.

That's when she saw Cassidy. He was standing at the railing, shirtless, smoking, looking straight at her. She started to duck back into her bedroom and seal shut the French doors, but she couldn't move. His riveting gaze had immobilized her. Saying nothing, he pushed himself away from the railing and came toward her with a slow, measured, predatory tread.

Her heart started racing as fast as the frenzied wind. Her mind spun as erratically as anything in the wind's path. She spoke the first inane words that came to her: "I didn't know you smoked."

Cassidy still said nothing but continued moving forward in that same dangerous manner. He didn't stop until he was within arm's reach. Claire felt herself drawn to him by a physical and inexorable tug, as though he had a powerful magnet inside his chest.

Breathlessly she said, "I think a storm is finally about to break."

He flicked his cigarette over the balcony railing, then reached for her, pulling her against him with the force of the next thunderclap. The kiss he ground upon her mouth was as ruthless as the wind. He snapped open her hair barrette and let it drop unheeded to the floor, then moved his fingers through her hair, tilting her head first to one side, then the other, so that her mouth had to obey the rapacious demands of his.

Heat emanated from him, through his skin, through the hair that matted his chest. His unleashed sexual desire seeped into Claire and she responded, suddenly acknowledging it as the source of her recent discontent. It blossomed and spread through her-a sweet, aching need for this ... for Cassidy.

Her fingers curled into the fleshy part of his shoulders and she arched against him. He made a low, erotic sound. His mouth left hers to seek the hollow of her neck. Claire's head fell back as she welcomed the sucking motions of his lips.

He slid his hand down her back, over her bottom, and tilted her higher and closer to him, pushing his erection against her cleft. He lowered one strap of her chemise and bared her breast. He sought the nipple first, closing his lips around it and madly laying it with his tongue. Soft, glad little cries escaped Claire's parted lips until he took them again in a kiss.

The ferocity of the storm was fully upon them now. The fierce wind howled. Lightning flashed and thunder cracked. Rain fell in torrents. Sheets of it were driven beneath the balcony roof to splash against their bare feet. They were mindless of it all.

Until they heard approaching voices.

In order to enjoy the rain, two of the models had decided to take the balcony route to their rooms instead of the interior hallway. Claire pushed Cassidy away and glanced toward the corner of the house, where at any moment the models would appear.

Taking her hand, he stepped into her room and pulled her in behind him. He latched the French doors just as the models rounded the corner, where they paused to watch the storm.

Cassidy backed Claire against the French doors and they became hopelessly entangled in the sheer drapes. Any objections she might have uttered were silenced by his kiss. His tongue entered her mouth and plumbed it seductively. His hands moved beneath her chemise. They felt warm and strong against her derriere as he lifted one of her thighs and propped it on his. His knuckles lightly fanned her pubic hair. Her belly quickened reflexively and she almost cried out. To trap the sound, he covered her mouth with his.

Outside, one of the models said, "It's really coming down. I've never seen lightning like this."

"Shh! You'll wake up Claire."

Claire was fully awake. Every fiber of her body was responding to Cassidy's touch. His fingers separated the lips of her sex; one slipped inside her. With a subtle flexing motion, he extended it fully before gradually retracting it again and again. Claire clutched at him. He ended a torrid kiss and penetrated her eyes with a hot, hard stare while continuing to stroke her.

"We'd better get to bed, too."

"What time's your call?"

"Eight-thirty."

A squeal. "Watch it, it's slippery. I almost fell."

"Rue would shit if you showed up tomorrow with bruises."

Cassidy withdrew his finger and found the distended heart of her sexuality. Round and round he caressed the slippery nubbin. Claire blinked frantically in an attempt to keep her eyes open. Cassidy's image was blurring. She noted that his hair was falling over his brows, that his features were set and tense, and that his eyes were feverish.

Claire was seized by a purling climax. She fought it, but it washed through her like a powerful, intravenous drug. Instant warmth. A jolt of passion. A rush of sublimity.

The models' voices had faded, leaving only the sounds of the storm and the silky rasp of heavy breathing. Cassidy wrapped his arms around her and carried her to the bed, where he laid her down before following with his own body. He removed her chemise, then his hands moved over her flushed breasts. His fingertips lingered on her nipples, and the sensations that concentrated there were so strong, Claire whimpered. He lowered his head and kissed them urgently but tenderly. She grasped handfuls of his hair, knowing she should stop this, but conceding that she might just as well try to stop the pounding rain.

He kissed her belly. Anxiously she murmured, "Cassidy?"

"Shh." He blew gently on her delta of hair.

"Cassidy?"