17. Brooks
Istared at the spot where I thought he must be, my heart stopped in its tracks.
Did he just say yes? And follow it up with me moving home?
What. The. Fuck.
We were trapped in some sort of underground cathedral full of spirits, our bodies molded together in our need to try to see each other, and I’d just told him I needed an army to save a bunch of people he’d never even met. And he’d said yes.
My mind wanted to sit here and go through it all a million and a half times to find the traps I was sure he’d laid. I didn’t want to think I couldn’t believe him, but I’d also been around long enough to know that when someone agreed to something that big, there was almost always fine print waiting.
Oh yeah, I already knew that fine print. He wanted me to come home.
I opened my mouth to ask what the fuck that even meant but shut it again when we heard a sound at the door of the cathedral. Shit, how long had we been standing around in here? The Landry soldiers were still out there searching for us, and though they hadn’t come into this room before, that didn’t mean they weren’t going to try it.
Hell, they might be trying it right now.
Lucien was moving before I could give him any signal, my hand caught in his and our footsteps as silent as we could be. We didn’t dare run when there was someone in the room with us—and when we didn’t know what else was in here. Sure, we felt like we were in some sort of aisle right now, but there was no telling when it might end, and I didn’t want to be running full speed with someone shooting at us when our shins hit a bench or altar.
We crept forward, one silent foot after the other, and I went quickly through our options. We were both hoping, I guessed, that there would be another exit at the front of the church. Behind the altar, if I was guessing. And if we got there before any of our pursuers realized we were in the room, we might be able to hit another tunnel—hopefully one that had light—and then another in time to lose them.
If.
I set my jaw and forced myself to think that Lucien probably knew what he was doing. He’d practically grown up down here if the rumors were to be believed, and surely that meant he had a working understanding of how the rooms were laid out. He was walking forward with enough confidence that I had to believe he knew where we were going.
In the meantime, he’d left me with a question to answer.
I had never considered coming back to New Orleans. I hated my father and distrusted him even more. He’d cornered me into an engagement that had served him and then threatened me when I told him I wasn’t going to be his spy in the Boudreaux operation. Sure, he was my dad and I was a Landry at heart, but as far as I was concerned once I married a guy, my loyalty was to him. Especially when that guy treated me the way Lucien had. My dad had seen me as a convenient tool and nothing else.
Lucien had respected me as an equal and promised me even footing in my marriage.
And then I’d decided that he had to be in on the game with my father and decided to run. Once I got back to New York and the world I knew, I’d scratched New Orleans out of my mind and never looked back. New York was my home, where my new family and friends lived, and I had never wanted anything more than that. I had a career and a city full of people who respected me. A reputation that always proceeded me.
But Lucien was my family, too. And Camille, and Beau, and the people I used to run with down here when I was forced to visit. And the thought of being with them again—the thought of Lucien saving me so many times tonight and then saying yes to sending his men with me to New York—was tempting in a way I’d never seen coming.
Fuck, one night back in New Orleans and I’d lost all my New York saunter and become a god damned romantic. Where the fuck was the girl who could twist men around her finger with a single glance and get them to do whatever she wanted? What about the girl who had managed to stitch a man up with little more than a first aid kit after he’d been shot?
The girl who could find a solution for a problem anyone might have, and never even chip her nail polish?
I felt my lips twitch. That girl was still in there. She just knew a good deal when she saw it. And Lucien was offering me a good deal. I’d just have to get my own feelings out of the way to take it. And figure out how to adjust the idea of ‘coming home.’
We found a door before I could follow that thought any further, and moments later I was slipping through it after the broad shoulders of my one-time fiancé. We darted into a well-lit hallway, but I didn’t get a chance to breathe a sigh of relief. Instead, Lucien spun and pinned me to the wall with his body, every inch of him hot as fire and his eyes burning right through me.
“Well?” he asked.
I tipped my head. “Well what?”
He leaned in and brushed his lips against mine, giving me just enough of him to bring my blood to a boil. And when he drew back, his eyes were even hotter. “Well, I asked you a question. And you have yet to give me an answer. I’ll loan you my men. But first...”
But first.
Right.
I took a deep breath, opened my mouth, and gave him my answer.