Saving Grace

“I’ll remember.”

But Grace meant to wear it anyway. It was her job.

After putting on the bustier, she stood in front of the mirror and aligned it on her body.

The garment really was sexy, pushing her full breasts up over the delicate material so that her flesh looked ready to spill out of the top. As she adjusted the shallow lacy cups, she couldn’t help but wonder how Declan would react if he saw her wearing this.

Grace struck a sultry pose as she would in front of the camera and gave her imagination free rein.

Suddenly it came to her again—that image she’d gotten when she’d taken Declan’s hand. Unable to help herself, she cupped her breasts as he might do. Her neck arched and her breathing changed and her breasts swelled until her nipples peaked over the top of the lace.

She licked her lips and closed her eyes for a moment and indulged herself in a moment of fantasy about a sexy man.

Suddenly, she got the weirdest sensation, almost feeling as if Declan were watching her. Her eyes whipped open and she stared at herself in the mirror.

No, not Declan …

Someone else.

Having the same feeling she’d had several times in the past weeks, she tugged the bustier in place and gave the room a paranoid once-over, expecting to see a peephole in the wall somewhere. Nothing. Of course not. Her imagination was simply running wild.

Thank you, Minny, she thought as she slipped into a robe.

Shaking off the creepy feeling only with difficulty, Grace quickly finished getting ready for the shoot, all the while wondering what Declan might have found out.

“IS MS. BROUSSARD EXPECTIN’ you?” the hefty woman in the gray uniform asked.

“No, actually not …” Declan quickly looked at the uniform’s pocket where the woman’s name was scrolled. “Eula. But I have business with Ms. Broussard.”

The guard narrowed her gaze at Declan before nodding. “All right, go on in. But if Ms. Broussard ain’t pleased to see you, you’ll answer to me.”

“Absolutely,” Declan said, as he headed for the door with the Gotcha! sign.

Declan entered the photography studio office and noted the unoccupied desk set in the middle of an empty and none-too-lovingly decorated room. The place was at best functional, though no receptionist guarded the gates to the inner sanctum.

Music drifted from an open doorway to the right. Declan stepped inside the studio, following the strains of a sexy tune—a woman with a low, throbbing voice warbling in French. He stood back in the dark.

Before him, in a pool of hazy lavender light, lying across a chaise lounge, Grace Broussard made love to the camera in time to the sensual music. And as she did, another woman with spiked, magenta-streaked brown hair, wearing shortshorts and a tube top, photographed her. This was Max? For a moment, Declan watched her work. Max Babin was a total professional and he got no bad vibes from her, so he turned back to the woman she was photographing.

Dressed in a cream-colored bustier, lace cheeky panties, thigh-high stockings and sling-back sandals, Grace was every man’s dream. And what she did with her body as the camera whirled softly! Max barely had to encourage her to adopt poses that made Declan physically uncomfortable.

This was work, he reminded himself. Not play.

On her knees, she stretched like a cat….

She turned on her side and lifted one leg in a seemingly impossible pose….

Then she was on her back, both legs drawn over the top of the chaise, her upper body dangling, head down….

The very atmosphere was charged with Grace’s sexuality, and Declan was a mere man, one who’d been without female companionship for too long. He wondered how he was going to work for Grace without getting himself in a knot around her.

“That should do it,” Max said none-too-soon.

“Good. I’m exhausted.”

Grace stood and walked out of the pool of light where she slipped into a silky robe. Declan cleared his throat to make his presence known.

The photographer immediately whipped around, her eyes squinting into the dark. “Who’s there?”

“Declan McKenna,” he said, stepping into the light. “I’m a friend of Grace’s.”

Grace’s eyes went wide. “Uh, Declan …” Her voice throbbed, sounding thick and undeniably sexy. “Let’s go to my dressing room.”

“Yes, let’s,” he said agreeably.

When they entered the cramped room, which was little bigger than a closet, she asked, “What brings you here, Declan? The fingerprints? Did you get the results back already?”

“On the weekend? No such luck. I simply thought it would be a good idea for me to see where you work. Where you live.”

“You want to come home with me?”

“Don’t you want me to make sure your place is safe? If you really do have a stalker—”

“If? You don’t believe me, after all. For your information, I’m pretty sure someone was following me last night after I left your office.”

“What happened?”

“I’m fine, aren’t I? Part of me thinks I was imagining things.”

“Even so, the possibility gives me more reason to check out your place—to make sure that if someone is doing more than just sending you notes, he can’t get at you.”

“Fine. You can come home with me and check things out, then. But I would appreciate your waiting in the outer office while I change.”

“No problem.”

While he would rather remain right where he was, Declan knew that would lead to nothing but trouble.

Though he hadn’t yet gotten a report on the fingerprints, he’d called Ian to see if his cousin knew anything about their client. Declan hadn’t been in New Orleans long enough to get more than the feel of the place, but Ian had lived here all his life. Indeed, Ian had known that Grace Broussard was a trust-fund baby and something of a free spirit in a political, driven family.

Obviously, she’d found her niche, Declan thought, and a perfect one for her, at that.

And now someone was threatening to use it against her.

Not on his watch.

GRACE’S NERVES WERE already on edge. She’d been occupied for every moment since she’d had that bizarre feeling in her dressing room that morning, but once she stopped working, she couldn’t forget about it. She found herself changing in the powder room, as if she were safe in the smaller space. But safe from what?

The scariest thing she had to face was touching Declan again. The mere thought of which sent a shiver down her spine, all the way to her toes.

So a few minutes later, as they walked along Decatur and its shops filled with tourist trinkets and other souvenirs of New Orleans, Grace made certain she kept a safe distance between them.

“Do you always work on Saturdays?” Declan asked.

“No. We just had to finish up shooting the new designs for a series of ads Raphael intends to run.”

“Very provocative.”

She slashed him a look. “You don’t approve?”

“I was simply making an observation,” Declan said, his demeanor professional. He moved his gaze constantly over the crowd as if searching it for a potential stalker. “So do people recognize you when you walk down the street?”

“So far people haven’t actually come up to me and told me so.”

“Just followed you.”

“Which would be scarier,” she said.

“What happens when Raphael Duhon goes really big? Will you follow him to New York? Paris?”

“I never thought that far ahead. I like things as they are now. New Orleans is my home. I have a great job and I’m close to Mama and my brother, Corbett.” Just considering losing all that made Grace uneasy. She was happy now. “I can’t see wanting any of that to change.”

“You can’t control fate.”

Grace didn’t miss the serious note in Declan’s tone. She wondered what had happened to him to make him such a cynic.

As they walked through the French Quarter, her native city called to her, stirring her blood. Music and the seductive voices of entrepreneurs floated on the air along with the smell of Cajun and Creole cooking. New Orleans was a city of the senses and Grace was in love with her hometown, grateful its heart had survived disaster. It had taken years, but finally it was coming back from Hurricane Katrina.

They walked up past Esplanade and then away from the river. Grace lived in an old apartment complex in Faubourg Marigny, a neighborhood bordering the French Quarter. Her third-floor apartment had a balcony with black wrought-iron railings that wrapped around the corner from living room to bedroom.

“Not what you would call a secure building,” Declan said when they found the downstairs door unlocked.

“Some people think they’re bulletproof,” she muttered, releasing the latch so not just anyone could get in.

“That door needs a dead bolt.”

Grace knew he was correct, but she didn’t know what it would take to convince her landlord. They headed for the third floor. Her newspaper lay outside her apartment door. When she picked it up, she saw what it had been hiding.

“What’s this?” she muttered, stooping again to pick up a large brown envelope.

Her name and nothing else was typed on the label stuck on the front. No postage. Someone had hand-delivered it—an easy task since someone had left the downstairs door unlocked. Her pulse thudded. Or maybe whoever had left it had picked the lock and that’s why the door was open.

“Something wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Grace stared at the envelope as if she could guess its contents—something she wasn’t going to like. “Let’s get inside.”

She was barely through the door when she moved around the counter in the kitchen area to keep distance between her and Declan. Wanting to see what was inside the envelope before he did, she ripped it open, then tilted it to spill the contents into her hand. A glossy photograph of her.

Shocked, Grace went still and wide-eyed.

The woman in the photograph was and was not her. She managed to appear seductive in the ads modeling Raphael’s designs, but this woman was wanton.

Her eyes were closed, her head thrown back, her breasts half-spilled out of the bustier. The facial expression got to Grace, tied her stomach in a knot. This woman looked like she was in the throes of passion. Her face left nothing to the imagination.

She’d been warned—I CAN EXPOSE YOU—and now the threat was a reality.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered, wondering how the photo had been taken without her knowledge.

She’d done a lot of crazy things, but basically her march to freedom from the Broussards had been innocent stuff. Posing for pornography hadn’t been anything she’d ever contemplated.

She looked in the envelope and found a note still clinging to the side.

THERE ARE MORE WHERE THIS CAME FROM. HOW MUCH IS THE DISK WORTH TO YOUR FAMILY? CHECK YOUR E-MAIL AT MIDNIGHT TONIGHT FOR INSTRUCTIONS.

Chapter Three

Grace sounded appalled when she said, “This looks like I posed for an adult magazine!”

Her horror washed over Declan and he was hard pressed not to step forward and take her in his arms to bring her down. “I take it you didn’t pose for whatever is there.”

“Of course not. This was taken in the dressing room this morning when I was getting ready for the shoot. What if it gets out? It could ruin Mama’s chances at the judgeship. And Corbett could lose the upcoming election. There must have been a hidden camera. Who could have done this? Why does someone want to blackmail me?”

“Can I see?” Declan asked, holding out a hand.

She flipped the photograph to her breast. “No!”

“How am I supposed to help you if I don’t know what I’m dealing with?”

“Use your imagination.”

He doubted anything she’d done in front of a camera could be as racy as where his mind took him. “It’s probably not as bad as you think.”

“It’s worse.”

Declan fell silent. He couldn’t force her to show him the photograph. Her escalating emotions bombarded him—fear,

hurt, panic—and he stared at her hard enough to make her squirm visibly.

“All right.” She set everything down on the counter between them. “Go ahead. Look.”

The moment she gave him permission, Grace turned her back on him as if she didn’t want to see his reaction. Her tension was palpable and quickly spread to him.

Declan flipped the photograph over. She was right—it was a lot worse than he’d thought. And better. He couldn’t help his appreciation as his imagination put the woman in the photograph right into his bed.

Reading the note, he knew he needed to play it cool, to hide what he was really feeling. “Blackmail,” he murmured. “This is serious, Grace. Time to take this to the authorities.”

“Are you out of your mind? I go to the police and those photos become public knowledge. I can’t do that to Mama and Corbett—their careers will be destroyed.”

But he suspected a photo like this would probably give her career a boost. Even so, Declan figured she had to be upset at the violation of her own privacy.

“Come on, sit.” He led her into the living area and waited until she threw herself into a chair. “Perhaps the police could be persuaded to keep the case low-key.”

Grace forced a laugh. “I don’t want anyone seeing me like this. Maybe Raphael can help us catch the creep.”

“If this Raphael is on the up-and-up.” He paused a minute before asking, “How do you know he’s not the one who put the camera in your dressing room?”

“No, not Raphael. That doesn’t make any sense. He wouldn’t want to ruin the connection I have with the public.”

“Or he could think a little scandal will up sales.”

“No,” she said again, her chest tightening. “How will I get out of this? What do you propose I do now?” she asked Declan. “Other than going to the police.”

“You say Raphael and Max are the only ones with access to the photography studio on a regular basis?”

“Right. Raphael occupies the whole third floor for both Voodoo offices and his living quarters.”

Declan took the chair opposite her. “Offices. Do a lot of people work for him?”

“He has a personal assistant, a design assistant, a cutter and sewer to execute the early incarnations of his designs, a saleswoman and a receptionist.”

“Lots of possible suspects.”

“I guess. He has an office at another location. That’s where the marketing and financial people are located. He also owns two other buildings in the French Quarter and a few in the Commercial District. One of those didn’t fare too well when Hurricane Katrina hit. I understand there was a problem with the insurance. As far as I know, he still doesn’t have it ready for rental.”

“Not in all this time?” Declan mused. “Sounds like Raphael might have some money troubles.”

“Well, he’s put a lot into Voodoo, which is his real love,” Grace said. “He’s been working for other people for years and finally got his own business off the ground. You don’t really believe a man suddenly shooting to the top of his profession would involve himself in blackmail, do you?”

Thinking blackmail money might be just the thing to get that commercial building up and running—not to mention Voodoo, possibly the reason Raphael gave a trust-fund baby work—Declan said, “Hard to say what anyone would do where money is involved. I’ll be checking on his other properties, see what’s going on. Who else works in your building?”

“There are a couple other businesses, but I don’t know any of those people—I can’t imagine they even know I’m around.

As to Max,” Grace went on evenly, “she has a part-time photography assistant who sets up the set. She works when needed and that’s it. Usually Max has a full-time employee who does some of everything—reception, billing, secretarial—but she let Eva go and hasn’t talked about replacing her. I don’t think it was Eva’s work. I suspect Max couldn’t afford to keep her.”

Making the photographer another suspect, Declan thought. “I’m going to need a list of everyone who works in the building so I can run security checks on them.”

“Okay, I can put that together for you.”

“Good. If you add the building employees, that offers more variables to the situation. Lots of people who have access to the studio and therefore the dressing room.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“How about we start by finding the camera—assuming it’s still in place. If we’re lucky we can track it back to its source.”

Grace shuddered. “The studio isn’t open.”

“Even better.”

“You want to break in?”

“The security guard—will it be the one who was on duty earlier?”

“Eula? I’m not sure.”

“Well, hope she is. She seemed to like you.”

“She’s always been friendly to me.”

“Then chances are you can talk our way back into the place.”

On the way back to the studio, Declan couldn’t erase the photograph in his mind. He tried—really—but his libido was stronger than his will, at least in this case. He kept seeing Grace in undergarments that begged to be removed.

So when he opened the door of the taxi he’d hailed for her and she sort of ducked so as not to touch him as she slid inside, he was a bit relieved. But when he noticed that Grace was practically huddling against the opposite door leaving two feet of space between them, Declan tried not to take offense.

“So what’s this event we’re going to later?” he asked, thinking talking would relax her.

“It’s a bipartisan fund-raiser for the local schools. Mama was on the committee that put it together.”

“It doesn’t sound like your kind of scene.”

“It isn’t. But I support my family. And the kids. The schools still don’t have everything they need. If I can do something to make it happen, you bet I will.”

The fervor in her voice got to Declan. So Grace was more than a pretty face.

The taxi stopped at the studio. While Declan paid, Grace let herself out. She went inside and raced up the steps to the second floor. Sure enough, Eula was still at the security desk.

“Miss Grace, what you doin’ back here?” she asked. “Don’t tell me Ms. Babin is makin’ you work tonight.”

“Oh, no. I’m not working. I’m going to a party tonight. That’s the problem—I can’t find my invitation. I must have left it in the dressing room.”

“You need an invitation to get in?”

“It’s sort of an invitation-receipt for the school fund-raiser. My mother is on the committee and wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t show up.”

“Your mama’s a smart lady,” Eula said to her while eyeing Declan with suspicion. “I hear she’s gonna be a judge.”

“She’s hoping. At any rate, I was showing the invitation to my cousin and I guess I never put it back in my bag. Can you let me in, Eula?”

“Sure, no problem.” The security guard stepped out from behind her desk. “Follow me.” But when Declan started off, as well, Eula gave him another piercing look. “Where do you think you’re goin'?”

Seeing that Eula’s bristles were up, Declan winked at her. “I can’t let this woman out of my sight. I’m sure you know how that is.”

But Eula didn’t relax until Declan slipped an arm around Grace’s waist. Then it was Grace who became instantly uptight. He felt the tension the moment he touched her. Still, she forced a convincing smile.

“Declan’s helping me will make the search go faster, Eula,” she choked out.

“Okay, okay,” Eula muttered, leading the way to the Gotcha! entrance.

Declan took a quick look at Grace, who wiggled out from the protection of his arm. Tension was evident in her beautiful features.

Just from his touching her?

Stopping in front of the photography studio door, Eula sorted through keys on a heavy ring until she found the right one. Seconds later, the door stood open.

“Okay, there you go now.”

Grace gave the other woman a warm smile. “Thank you,

Eula.”

Declan let Grace take the lead inside, but he made sure to close the door behind them.

Declan reached past her and turned the doorknob. “Ladies first.”

When he pulled back, he brushed her in the process. She practically jumped away from him. For a second, her gaze went blank, as though she were somewhere else. Declan was hit by a sense of panic that didn’t make any sense. Then Grace quickly gathered herself and went inside the dressing room. She flicked on the light, then slowly turned, her gaze furtively darting around the room.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Slow down. Think about the angle from which the photograph was taken. The camera had to be in front of you. So which way were you facing?”

“The mirror.”

“The camera wasn’t straight on—”

“It was up a little,” she finished for him.

They both looked up, over the mirror.

Declan’s gaze settled on the mirror frame itself—about four inches wide with a shiny black finish. Tall enough to reach over, he ran his fingers along the edge of the mirror.

“Got it,” he muttered, “and it’s Wi-Fi.” He ran his fingers over the front of the frame, then tapped the spot where a small chunk of wood had been drilled out. “The lens such as it is lines up right here.”

“I can’t see anything.”

“The shiny black paint presents you with an optical illusion, but there is a peephole. If you look closely, you can see it.”

Grace moved closer so that she was almost touching him. “There it is. Wireless, huh? It’ll make it easier to pull out.”

“We don’t want to do that. If all else fails, we might be able to trap whoever did this with his own camera.”

“In the meantime, there’s an unwanted set of eyes in the dressing room.”

“So don’t dress in front of the mirror.” What he was really thinking was that she shouldn’t play out her fantasies except in the privacy of her own home, but he didn’t think she would appreciate the advice. She’d already learned the hard way. “Just in case, let me check the room over. And the powder room.”

“All right,” Grace conceded, aiming a resentful glare at the hiding place as she sank into a chair.

Declan felt her eyes on him as he searched every nook and cranny. And her emotions. They were in a whirl. Anger mixed with hurt. He realized she couldn’t conceive of anyone betraying her like this. He wanted to put his arms around her and tell her that he would catch the creep and stop the blackmail and everything would be all right. Only he wasn’t sure it would be that easy. And, from her attitude toward him, she apparently didn’t want him to touch her.

He could only speculate on the reason—her emotions told him what she was feeling, but they didn’t explain why.

“The room seems to be clear other than the camera we found,” Declan said. “How much time do you think we have before Eula comes looking for us?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a bit. She’s pretty relaxed. Usually.”

“Then let’s take advantage of every moment and check out Max’s office.”

Leading the way out the door, she asked, “What do you expect to find there?”

“A Wi-Fi camera can send a signal to a compatible printer or computer.”

“I’m not what you would call a techie.”

“Don’t worry, our firm can high tech along with the best of them. My cousin Ian makes sure we keep up with the latest gadgets.”

“You think Max is the one, don’t you?”

“The people here are the most logical suspects. Cameras are Max’s thing, after all, and this is her business.”

“Seems too easy to me,” she said. “She’d know that I would figure it out and press charges.”

“But if she’s getting big bucks from someone for doing this, she could think it’s worth the risk. You have to know that whoever did this is probably counting on the fact that you love your family too much to see their careers destroyed.”

A quick tour of Max’s office did show that both her printer and her desktop computer had a wireless card. But if there was a file with the explicit photos of Grace stored on the system,