LITMIR.BIZ

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the pier was alive and that none of tonight was real.

      He eased her back against the headboard, then tossed her ruined shirt to the floor. When she saw his eyes stray to her chest and the bloodstains covering her white satin bra, she said, “The least you could do is be subtle, Detective Archard. Ogling a woman when she’s in need of help borders on disgusting.”

      He shrugged off her words and reached out to trace her bruised rib cage, then locked eyes with her again. “How did that happen?”

      The injury to her ribs could be easily explained, but detailing how Blu had slammed her to the pier in order to keep her alive was out of the question. Margo brushed his hand away. “I don’t remember.”

      “You don’t bruise easy, Margo. I know that for a fact.”

      “I must have fallen.”

      “Must have?” When she didn’t answer him further, he stood and strolled to the closet where he retrieved a clean shirt. As he came back to her, he said, “Do you want your jeans off before I get you drunk? I think it might be more comfortable sleeping in one of my shirts once you pass out.” Without hesitation, he ripped the sleeves out of his shirt to accommodate her injured arm, not to mention the heat outside.

      “Pass out?” Margo lifted one dramatic black eyebrow. “From the whiskey or the pain you’re going to inflict on me with that needle?” She gave the needle a wary glance. “It looks awfully big Couldn’t you have found something a little smaller?” She looked back and saw him smiling. It was the first time since he’d burst into the room wielding his gun that he’d allowed himself to relax.

      “Second thoughts, baby?”

      He was waiting for her to turn chicken, she decided. Feeling the need to win another round, she popped the snap on her jeans and slid the zipper down. She could feel his eyes hot on her, feel her own body feed off those damn unrelenting memories.

      Determined to get through tonight no matter what, she asked, “You haven’t acquired any kinky fixations I should know about before I pass out, have you, Detective Archard?”

      Chapter 3

      She had deliberately lied to him.

      Oh, she hadn’t lied about everything, Ry reasoned. She’d been shot, all right. But how and where still had to be determined. It certainly hadn’t happened on her way home from the Toucan.

      And the story she’d concocted about a mugger was no doubt a lie, as well. He’d seen plenty of gunshot wounds, and the bullet that had grazed Margo’s arm hadn’t come from a handgun a mugger would have pulled quickly and fired at point-blank range. No, Margo’s wound had come from a larger caliber weapon, fired from a distance; he’d say at least thirty yards, give or take a foot or two.

      That ruled out a face-off near her apartment. And to confirm that, no one had reported a disturbance—he’d called and checked after she’d fallen asleep. Then there was the lie about work. She hadn’t been at the Toucan; he knew that to be true because he’d been there.

      Ry’s gaze slowly drifted over Margo asleep in his bed, her pale face pillowed in navy-blue satin. Where had she been tonight? It had been fairly quiet in the city, as quiet as it could be for New Orleans. But it hadn’t been nearly as quiet across the river in Algiers.

      The minute the thought entered his mind, Ry shook it off. No, Margo couldn’t be mixed up in the shooting on DuBay Pier. But even as he dismissed the idea, he remembered how he’d found the crime scene—the way DuBay Pier had been riddled into sawdust by a high-powered gun, and his gut twisted a little tighter. Was it a coincidence that the pier wasn’t far from the duFray Fish Market, owned and operated by Margo’s mother? Or that Blu’s fishing fleet was docked less then a mile away at River Bay?

      Ry mulled over a dozen possibilities, then cursed out loud. So what if Mickey Burelly had stumbled onto the case of the century? And what if that case had involved Blu duFray?

      Goddard had mentioned a turncoat, or someone possibly looking to make a fast buck. Everyone who knew Blu knew his financial situation. It wasn’t news that the duFray Devils were struggling, doomed to go under at any moment. The repair bills alone on the aging boats were staggering. Knowing the way Margo felt about her brother, all Blu needed to do was give her a sad song and dance and her damn duFray loyalty would rise to the occasion.

      Ry honestly believed Margo would risk her life for her brother if she found it necessary.

      Had it been necessary tonight?

      “Dammit!” Ry focused on Margo’s proud, beautiful face. She had been a curious teenager when he’d first laid eyes on her, and so beautiful it had hurt just to look at her. They had met by accident. He’d come upon her and an overeager boyfriend one night behind her parents’ fish market—the boy testing his right to more than simply her company at the movies.

      Ry had played the big bad cop that night. He’d chased the kid off, and promptly been swept away by the faultless beauty left standing in front of him all wide-eyed and obviously impressed by his white-knight antics. It had fed his ego—her admiration—and so it had begun, an older man’s obsession with a teenager twelve years his junior.

      For the next three years Ry had kept his distance, though he did see Margo from time to time at the duFray Fish Market helping out her mother. It had all started out so innocently, so he had wanted to believe. Only he knew it had never been innocent—from day one, he’d wanted her.

      The night her father died, Ry found her weeping in the alley behind the fish market. He’d wanted to console her. He didn’t even remember what he’d said, but suddenly she was in his arms, clinging to him as if he were her lifeline. And like a hungry old fox, he’d reveled in the fact that he had a legitimate reason to touch her and feel her body against his. She was jailbait; she’d just lost her father, dammit. What kind of bastard did that make him?

      The guilt had driven him crazy, then it had driven him into the arms of another woman. He’d wanted Margo out of his head and out of his dreams; any woman would do as long as she made him forget his fantasy.

      A year later he’d pulled over a carload of young people—the driver obviously intoxicated. He had motioned to the young man to get out of the car. When he did, Ry caught a glimpse of a shiny black head in the back seat. When he saw it was Margo something inside him snapped. He’d hauled her out of the car and into the squad so fast, the group of young people had fallen dead quiet.

      On the way home she’d pleaded with him to let her out of the car. She hadn’t been drinking, she promised, not at all—she wasn’t going to go to jail, was she? He knew she hadn’t been drinking, and he told her he was just taking her home. Relieved that he believed her, that she wasn’t going to end up in jail, she’d leaned over and kissed his cheek. It had happened so fast, but just as fast he had pulled to the side of the rode and dragged her across the seat and kissed her the way he had always dreamed of kissing her. The next thing he knew, she was in his lap wrapping her arms around his neck offering him her hungry little mouth.

      He’d done the math quickly. She was nineteen, no longer jailbait—no longer off-limits. And she was kissing him like she knew what she was doing.

      He’d lost control after that, and before he had taken her home, they had stopped off at his apartment.

      It had been the beginning of the end for them. A short month of heaven, and then hell had arrived in town and ripped their lives to shreds.

      Ry’s gaze locked on Margo’s jeans where he’d tossed them to the foot of the bed. Immediately his body reacted to the memory of undressing her, stripping her long legs bare, exposing her slender thighs. If he was a man who believed in fate and happy-ever-after, he’d say Margo’s sudden appearance in his bed after two long years meant something.

      Swearing softly, Ry walked to the window that overlooked the backyard. It had stopped raining, the night air as heavy as a flannel blanket and twice as warm. He closed his eyes, tried to chase the sight of Margo’s lithe body out of his head,

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