Chapter 6
For a long moment, Ronan mistook the vibrating of an incoming call for Blizzard’s purrs.
Just by chance, he glanced away from the search he was conducting on his laptop and saw his sister’s contact photo brightening his phone’s screen.
Noting the time, he sighed before answering her call.
“Don’t you have anything better to do on a Saturday evening than worry about me? ”
“If only, beau-frère,” Claudette said in an exasperated tone. “Genevieve said the police came by looking for you.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“She wants me to convince you to come home, bête. Have you called Harper yet?”
His brow arched at the segue and he removed his glasses, tossing them on the keyboard. “I see what you did there. You know I haven’t. My grand-mère will insist I return immediately, and I don’t have the energy to placate her now.”
“It would be so much easier to do what everyone wants, non?”
“What about what I want?” He slid off the kitchen island barstool.
“Let’s focus on what you need for now. You told me last night that you’d stay near Genevieve, and I could trust that you’d be looked after. Now, I hear you’ve already left and taken your things with you.”
“What few things I have.” Moving the short distance into the living room, he half-sat on the back of the sofa. “You do recall that I’m the eldest in our family, and it’s my job to look after you and not the reverse?”
“Yes, well, I’m at the boarding gate for my flight to LaGuardia now. So, you can remind me of how old you are when I see you. Where am I going when I get there?”
Ronan could picture her at the airport, elegantly dressed, with minimal but expensive accessories, her dark mass of hair framing her lovely face. Their mother had been blond, but he could sometimes catch glimpses of her in Claudette.
That she was already at the airport told him she’d planned to come to the city regardless of where he stayed or with whom. “You won’t be joining me where I’m at,” he warned.
“Which is where? And why not?”
Gripping the back of his neck, he said ruefully, “I’m squatting at Ireland’s.”
Claudette’s sharp inhalation made him wince. “Beau-frère, this midlife crisis will be the end of you if you don’t find your common sense and start using it.”
“She has a cat,” he explained. “A massive creature. Someone has to take care of him until she can. And her home isn’t ready for her to recuperate comfortably in. Someone has to see to that, too.”
There was a long pause. Long enough that he was about to break it when she spoke. “Oh, Ronan. That’s probably the most ridiculously, ludicrously romantic gesture I’ve ever heard of a real person making.”
“As opposed to a fake person?” he queried.
She sighed. “You hardly know this woman. I hope she appreciates how far you’ve stuck your neck out for her.”
“She’s defied her family to be with me, petite s?ur. It takes two to tango, as they say.”
Claudette hummed dubiously. “Since you’re determined to dance, I’ll do what I can to keep you out of trouble. I’m coming in late tonight, and I’ll stay with Genevieve and Valentin, but you’ll have a meal with me tomorrow. Breakfast…lunch…dinner… I don’t care which, but I will watch you eat.”
Knowing how stubborn she could be, he simply agreed. “C’est bon.”
“Are you sure you shouldn’t have someone with you as an alibi? I’m very worried about Gideon Cross escalating things the way he has.”
Blizzard walked along the back of the couch to Ronan, then flopped shamelessly onto his side and stretched his tremendous length so that his rear paws pressed hard into Ronan’s thigh.
“What’s foolhardy is for the kidnappers to drag this out any further.
” He gently smoothed the cat’s sensitive belly.
“I was with Cross when he learned what happened, and his initial reaction was rage. If Ireland were home, he’d be focused on her.
Because she’s not, he’s focused on the kidnappers—that’s not good for them. ”
“Mais yeah.”
“And if she never comes home…” His eyes closed on a hard swallow. “Cross will never stop hunting them. If he’s willing to pay one hundred million for her return, I imagine he’s willing to spend all of his billions to avenge her.”
“Merde,” Claudette breathed.
“He told me something last night, and I keep thinking about it. He said the toll his vengeance takes on me depends on how quickly he forgets I exist. I expect that’s true for anyone who incites his wrath.”
“My flight’s boarding now.” The stressed urgency in her tone made Ronan regret his candor. “Please lie low. If the police should find you, don’t say a goddamned word! Nothing at all.”
“I’m not completely without sense, Claudy.”
Her exasperated sigh refuted him. “And stay the hell away from Gideon Cross.”
Jules Robicheaux gripped the cool edges of the pedestal sink in his bathroom and stared into the eyes of his reflection.
He looked like a guilty fils d'putain, because he was unquestionably a son of a bitch.
His sweat-drenched hair was slicked back from his face, and his chest glistened with perspiration.
Tingles raced down his legs, and a muscle in his right buttock twitched spasmodically from the past hours of exertion.
His brother, the man he loved and respected as both a sibling and quasi-parent, was in a situation. Claudette was en route to New York, and he should’ve gone with her, but a single phone call was all it took to delay his departure.
Glancing back into the bedroom, he eyed the voluptuous blonde on his bed, her arms and legs stretched wide beneath the swirling ceiling fan.
His unruly but thoroughly spent dick attempted to stir at the sight of her heavy breasts, taut belly, and full hips.
He cursed it, damning the lack of control he had over the thing.
“Such language,” she teased, her lush lips curving in a satiated smile. “That’s no way to talk around a lady.”
His nostrils flaring with a sharp intake of breath, he turned on the faucet and splashed cool water on his heated face. “A lady wouldn’t be fucking the brother of the man she wants to marry.”
Eyes closed and face tilted up to the fan’s breeze, Scarlett Claiborne laughed.
“Ah, here comes the inevitable guilt. When will you get over it, Jules? Your brother—who’s been busy fucking Ireland Vidal, I’ll point out—and I, we have an understanding.
I don’t tie him down, and he doesn’t hold me to a higher standard than himself. ”
“There are different rules for brothers.” He walked to the doorway and leaned against the jamb. “We can’t keep hooking up like this.”
Pushing onto her elbows, she looked at him with those lovely cornflower blue eyes, her heated gaze roaming the length of his nude body.
She was insatiable. He could say without exaggeration that he’d fucked hundreds of women—too many of them serving as distractions from his craving for Scarlett—and none could match the well-regarded socialite’s greed for pleasure.
“Well, then, don’t answer my calls or open the door when I come over. ”
Her golden curls fell in a messy, damp cascade to the bed behind her.
A rivulet of sweat coursed between her gorgeous tits and slid toward her navel.
The Claibornes were an even more prominent family than the Boudreauxes, and when Jules crossed paths with her in public, Scarlett was the epitome of an impeccably pedigreed Southern belle.
But in the bedroom, she was temptation incarnate.
“I haven’t the willpower to resist you,” he said grimly. “I can only beg you to take pity on me and leave me in peace.”
She gave him a come-hither smile as she cupped one breast in her hand and rolled the taut nipple between her thumb and index finger.
“But I can’t go without you, either, cher.
No one fucks me like you do. As if you’d claw through steel to get your hands on my body.
Your brother handles me with kid gloves—it might as well be a handshake. You, however, leave bruises.”
“Désolé,” he breathed, knowing it was true. He held her too tightly, kissed her too roughly, rode her tender pussy too hard.
How had he fallen so easily into this hellish arrangement?
He and Scarlett had been introduced at one of the public events held at Bellefleur, the famed Boudreaux estate, one of the few that he and Claudette were invited to attend.
Harper Boudreaux would’ve preferred it if Ronan, her favorite grandchild, had no ill-bred half-siblings, so he and Claudy were excluded from Boudreaux family gatherings.
That distinction always put Jules on the back foot, playing on his deepest insecurities and self-loathing.
Meeting Scarlett under those conditions had tilted the world on its axis.
Jules had never seen a woman more lovely before or since.
He’d flirted with her simply because it was second nature to him, and he could do so even when dumbfounded by her beauty and sharp wit.
The minx had flirted back and charmed him in the process.
She shared his mother's middle name, and he told himself that was the fingerprint of fate.
Since she wanted to ensnare his brother, he left her responsible for drawing the line. That was one of many mistakes he’d made. Moderation wasn’t a virtue to Scarlett.
“Oh, my word.” She flopped onto her back dramatically. “Apologize for being gone for weeks, Jules Robicheaux, not for fucking the hell out of me when you returned.” Lifting her head, she gave him a narrow-eyed glance. “And I won’t let you stop.”
Shaking his head, he straightened. Scarlett believed Ronan was her perfect match for an open marriage, and Jules understood why.
His brother was like catnip to women. And Ronan had the added lure of being an heir to Bellefleur—although he didn’t want it—and the historic estate was a dangling carrot for many well-heeled Southern bachelorettes.