Obsession

Josie didn’t provide an answer because Philippe didn’t need one. The two of them would be eating the large pot of the New Orleans staple, with Philippe taking some of it home with him to his mother, although he was thirty and should have long since moved out on his own.

“Fine.” He began moving toward the door that would take him through the back where their only guest wouldn’t see him. “He is a looker, that one, isn’t he?”

Josie frowned at him. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Hadn’t noticed, my narrow behind. He could charm the paint off the walls, that one could.” He crossed his arms in an exaggerated way.

“I don’t think he’s your type.”

“Of course, he’s my type. He’s male, isn’t he?”

Josie smiled. “Yes, but I don’t think he’s gay.”

Philippe sighed. “Pity. Why does it seem like all the good ones want women?”

Josie shook her head as the door slapped closed behind his retreating back. She readied a sparkling glass along with a pitcher of water, put a basket of day-old bread into the microwave to warm it and therefore make it seem fresher, then went back out into the courtyard to serve Mr. Morrison.

“Ah, thank you,” he said as she filled his glass. “Tell me, is it always this hot down here?”

It was a question Josie was asked often by tourists. While most seemed irritated with the thick heat, Morrison seemed merely to be asking a question. “It will cool down some soon,” she said, glad he hadn’t commented on the emptiness of the eating area.

“It doesn’t even get this hot in the summer where I’m from,” he said.

Josie removed the other three sets of silverware and wineglasses from the table. “Where’s that?”

“Kansas City.”

She didn’t say anything as she moved to a cabinet near the kitchen door and put down the extra place settings. She’d never been outside the city. Had never had any cause to go anywhere else. While she’d heard somewhere down the line that her mother had ended up in Chicago, the northern city on Lake Michigan couldn’t have seemed farther away from Josie had it been across the ocean.

“Excuse me,” Morrison said, looking to catch her attention.

Josie turned toward him.

“What’s that music?”

She’d switched on the tape system after she’d called his room, and he’d said he’d be coming down for his meal. “Zydeco.”

He repeated the word. “Thanks.”

Josie went back into the kitchen and leaned against the prep table. Long minutes later she was still standing in the same spot, breathing deeply, her hand resting against her collarbone. As much as she tried to ignore it, she was attracted to Drew Morrison with an intensity that surprised her. His hair was the rich color of an antique copper pot, the short cut failing to disguise that the strands were thick and wavy. The kind of hair a woman could thrust her fingers into and hold on to as she braced herself for a violent orgasm. He’d come downstairs without his jacket, his crisp white shirtsleeves rolled up, and she saw that his forearms were muscular, his wrists solid. She’d caught herself staring at his hands as he’d picked up his water glass, noticing that his fingers were long and nicely tapered. The type of hands that would feel good against her bare skin.

It had been a long time since she’d been this aware of her sexuality and the fundamental need for human touch. Since before her grandmother had died, to be certain. She’d been so busy trying to keep up the hotel, she hadn’t had time to look closely at the guests, talk to them. The brief contact she’d had so far with her current guest had made her register the deep blue of his eyes, the way they creased at the corners when he listened to her, and the fullness of his mouth—a mouth that would undoubtedly know what to do with a woman who needed to be kissed.

Is that what it was? she wondered. Had it been so long since she’d indulged herself sexually that her body was responding to the first good-looking man who crossed her path?

No. It was more than that. The instant the stranger had crossed the threshold of Hotel Josephine, an undeniable awareness had traveled over her skin like a lover’s touch. It wasn’t just that she was in the market for any man. She was drawn to Drew Morrison.

Something sounded outside the screen door. A rattle of a garbage can, maybe. A rat? A cat? There’d been a black cat around the Josephine for as long as she could remember, but this last one had stuck around the longest. She and her granme had named her Jezebel. Probably it was the old cat looking for her evening meal.

“Jez?”

She moved toward the back of the kitchen and stared out into the narrow alleyway. There was the sound again. Josie pressed her hand against the wood of the screen door, the hinges giving a low squeak as she peeked out toward where the hotel cans were lined up against the back wall.

Jezebel would have shown herself by now if it had been her.

“Shoo!” she said loudly, kicking the bottom of the can closest to her.

Nothing. No scurrying of a rodent or a hungry feline.

She stepped completely outside, the door slapping shut behind her. Picking up a stick, she poked at the next garbage can, then made her way down to the one after that. She’d reached the fourth one when a shadow leaped out behind the last can, running in the opposite direction.

Josie put a hand to her chest, as if to contain her rapidly beating heart. Jesus.

Philippe appeared from the direction the man had run.

“Damn homeless,” he muttered. He handed her the bag of food from André’s, then looked at her closer. “Are you all right?”

Josie swallowed hard, then managed a nod. “Um, yes. He just startled me is all. I thought he was a cat.”

“An awfully big cat. More like a rat.” He righted the empty can the man had overturned in his hurry to make haste. “You’d think he’d have figured out that we don’t have anything to pick from here.”

Josie led the way back inside the kitchen, vaguely wondering if she’d ever again have anything left to pick from.

Philippe washed his hands at the sink while she rearranged the food on a hotel plate.

“Do you want me to take it out to him?” he asked with a suggestive grin.

Josie shook her head. “No. I’ll take care of him.”

As she placed a sprig of parsley next to the trout, she ignored the many ways she’d been fantasizing taking care of Drew Morrison.

3

LATELY, NIGHT WAS the worst time for Josie. It was when she most profoundly recognized the reality that there was nothing she could do to help what was going on with the hotel. When long, quiet hours stretched out before her devoid of hope.

It was when the ghosts came out to play.

The muted night amplified the panting sound of the ceiling fan turning lazily above her. She looked up from the papers spread before her on the front desk to gaze out onto Bourbon Street. The stream of tourists’ faces was occasionally interrupted by familiar faces from the neighborhood, some laughing, others drawn in thoughtful conversation. Some faces that were a lot more familiar up until recently, because they’d frequented the Josephine with their paying guests towed behind them.

She heard the creak of the stairs.

To conserve energy, she’d turned the dimmer on the lights down to low, the small banker’s lamp on the desk illuminating the papers before her.

There was only one guest, so she didn’t have to look up to know that Drew Morrison was coming downstairs, probably to add his face to the others flowing past her door.

Josie concentrated harder on her work.

“Evening,” Drew said quietly, his voice closer than she was prepared for as she made a note in the margin of one of the ledgers.

She looked up. “Evening.”

In the low light he looked like any one of a hundred attractive men capable of attracting any one of a hundred attractive women. Women who filled the bars and restaurants and Bourbon Street itself.

Why, then, was she wishing she were one of those potential females?

She absently rubbed the back of her damp neck, suddenly all too aware of how alone she was at the hotel. A fact that normally didn’t bother her. After all, she had been alone in the Josephine since Granme had passed away.

She swallowed hard and forced her gaze away from Drew and back to the ledger. Tomorrow she’d ask Philippe if he’d mind staying over for a night or two until she shook the uneasiness she’d been feeling lately.

Footsteps. She glanced up to find Drew walking toward the open doors. Probably to go on the hunt for one of those hundred attractive women. Instead, she watched him stop in the doorway and lean against the jamb, his legs crossed at the ankles as he slid his right hand into his pants pocket. His back was to her, so she felt safe in watching him without his being any the wiser. He seemed to be considering the foot traffic on the street much as she had earlier. A part of, yet separate from, the crowd.

“It’s quiet.” He cleared his throat and added, “At least it’s quieter than I would have expected.”

Josie lifted her brows. “Yes.” She fiddled with the curls pressing against her forehead then slowly closed the book in front of her, placing it under the desk. “Would you like some recommendations on where to go?”

He grinned at her over his shoulder. “No. I think I can find my way around.”

She had little doubt that he could. A man of his caliber could probably find his way around anywhere. And have a warm and willing companion in his bed for as long as he chose.

“That is if I was interested in going out.”

Josie would have been surprised to find herself walking toward the door had she taken half a moment to think about it. But the truth was, she was tired of thinking for the night. Tired of thinking about the hotel and her problems. Her mind clamored for a few minutes of peace. Of quiet conversation.

Drew moved slightly as she leaned against the opposite doorjamb and crossed her arms in front of herself. A couple strolled by, arm in arm. Newlyweds, maybe. Or perhaps in the beginning stages of love when there existed no flaws, only the need for the other’s company.

The reflection made her overly aware of the man next to her. Of how tall he was. Of the subtle scent of starch and fresh cologne.

“First time in New Orleans?” she asked quietly.

She felt his gaze on her. “Yes.”

She nodded, going silent again as a group of young men who stumbled by apparently weren’t holding their first beer. They hooted at a group of women half a block up, too young to realize the loud attention would get them nowhere. Too old to be indulging in such juvenile behavior.

“You?”

Josie looked at Drew. She wasn’t prepared for the intensity in his eyes.

“Are you from here or a transplant?”

She felt the man next to her so completely she nearly couldn’t draw a breath. “Fifth generation New Orleanian.”

“Where was your family from before then?”

Josie had never been asked that question before. She supposed because her answer was usually all that the other person needed.

“Carrefour, Haiti.”

“Ever been?”

She shook her head, keeping to herself that she’d never really traveled outside the city and its surrounding bayous.

She considered him for a long moment, trying to ignore the slow thud of her heart at being this close to him. “Anyone ever tell you that you ask a lot of questions?”

His grin was slow and wide. “All the time.”

“Part of your job?”

There was an almost indistinguishable stiffening of his limbs although he hadn’t moved. “You could say that.”

It seemed that the man liked to ask questions, but he didn’t like answering them.

Josie cleared her throat and turned her attention back to the street. Most men she crossed paths with were the same. It was almost as if they wanted to adopt a different persona while in the decadent city. Live out some kind of anonymous fantasy. Many of them forgot that she and the natives were just like everyone else. That they hadn’t been placed there strictly for their amusement or as players in whatever fantasy they’d concocted on the plane ride down.

If it was disappointment she was feeling that Drew was just like every other man who visited the city, she told herself she was being stupid.

JOSIE VILLEFRANCHE WAS A RARE and unusual beauty.

And the faint line that marred her lovely brow told Drew he’d just said something to upset her.

The mellow almost longing sound of a saxophone drifted out of the open door of the club across the street, lending a certain moment-outside-of-time element to the atmosphere.

When he’d decided to come downstairs to try again to connect with the exotic hotel owner—both to further his business intentions and to combine a bit of business with pleasure—he would never have expected her to stand next to him, inviting conversation. During dinner earlier, she’d disappeared into the kitchen, sending out a dark-haired young man, who’d smiled at him too widely, to handle him for the rest of his meal.

Now…

Well, for a moment he’d been lulled into a false sense of normalcy. Into thinking for a dangerous moment that he was there for no other reason than to enjoy her company, instead of her company being a bonus on top of something more important.

He slid his hand from his pocket and gestured to the hotel. “You work here long?”

A faint smile that seemed inspired more by irony than by humor. “You could say that.” She looked at him.

It didn’t take a NASA scientist to know that she had just turned his words back on him.

Intriguing.

“Do you like it?”

That seemed to catch her off guard. As if perhaps she’d never really stopped to think about the enjoyment factor of her responsibilities. He, of course, knew she outright owned the place. He also knew she had a female cousin who was breathing down her neck trying to extort money from her. And that she had a tax bill that was accumulating more penalties and interest on a daily basis. Not to mention that she hadn’t had a full paying guest before him since the murder that had taken place in the hotel a couple weeks ago.

Now what was there not to like about that?

She gave a small shrug that drew his gaze to the golden, damp skin of her bare shoulders. “That’s like asking me if I like my right arm. Or my toes.” She turned her whiskey eyes on him. “It’s so much a part of me that I don’t much think about it beyond it’s always been there.”

Drew had to look away. Her words hit a chord with him he was loath to dwell on.

“So the place is yours, then.” It was a statement more than a question.

She lightly bit on her plump bottom lip and nodded. “My granme, my grandmother, left it to me when she passed away last year. It’s been in my family for generations.”

Drew knew that. He also knew that her grandmother had been a shrewd old woman who’d also refused to sell. He wondered if shrewdness ran in the veins of the Villefranche women. And he referred to women because as far as he could uncover during his extensive investigation, there were no Villefranche men.

Drew pretended to look around. “Is it always this quiet?”

“No. It’s been a bit less busy than usual lately.”

A couple walked by in front of them.

“Hey, Frederique,” Josie greeted.

The overly made-up woman with a stretchy, low-necked top and short skirt smiled at her. “Hey, yourself, Josie girl.” She looked between them to the hotel lobby beyond. “How’s business after, well—” her gaze flicked to Drew’s face “—you know?”

Josie smiled. “Fine. It’s fine. Back to normal for all intents and purposes.”

“They catch…the person?”

Josie said they hadn’t.

The Quarter Killer. That’s what the murderer of the woman two weeks ago had been called by the local paper, the Times-Picayune. Drew hadn’t thought much of it. He’d reviewed the info he could get his hands on and suspected that the police had arrested the right man to begin with, and that Claude Lafitte had been released only because his older brother had married the daughter of a rich New Orleans businessman.

The woman stopped, nearly causing her overweight male companion to run into her back. “I think we’ll stop here,” she said.

The man pushed up his glasses, a nearby streetlight glinting off his balding head. “I thought we were going to your place?”

The prostitute Josie had called Frederique smiled and smoothed back the tufts of hair over each of his protruding ears, giving him a loud kiss. “I can’t wait that long, baby. I want you now.”

She kissed him again, then edged him between Josie and Drew into the lobby.

“My regular room,” she whispered. “Oh, and he’s got money, so don’t worry about overcharging, if you get my drift.”

Josie’s gaze met Drew’s and he wondered if she would raise the room rate for the drunken john.

“A regular?”

“You could say that.”

Then he watched as Josie left him to go check in her latest guests, and just like that Drew lost his tentative connection with her.

“Mr. Morrison?”

He jerked to look at Josie, who had stopped halfway to the desk. He was so taken off guard that he didn’t think to tell her to call him Drew.

“Would you like a nice, ice-cold glass of tea?”

Drew smiled. “Yes. Yes, I’d like that.”

4

ONLY DREW HADN’T GUESSED he’d be drinking that tea alone.

He lay back in his double bed staring at the whirling fan and the shadows playing across the ceiling. It was somewhere around 3:00 a.m., and in the room next to his the squeak of bedsprings had finally stopped along with the moaning he suspected was faked, but he couldn’t be sure.

What he was sure about was that the sound of a couple having sex, albeit it professional sex, ratcheted up his own growing desire for the elusive hotel owner.

He rubbed his forearm draped over his brow then sighed. It was hot. Hotter than he could remember it being for a long time. Or perhaps his keen awareness of it was due to the lack of air-conditioning.

His gaze fixed again on the ceiling. But not to look at the shadows there. Instead, he tried to detect any more sounds from the room two floors above his. A room he assumed was Josie’s because when he’d been standing on the balcony over the hotel entrance, he had heard her lock up and shortly thereafter had followed the sound of her footfalls up the stairs. There had been no more customers. But earlier, at around midnight when he’d been sipping his tea—alone—in the open doorway, he’d watched as a walking tour of some sort had stopped in front of him and a guy in period clothing had outlined the happenings of a couple weeks ago. The nine or so tourists had stared at him and the hotel in awe. Then the guide had gone into a story that went back much farther than recent history, and had made the murder of Claire Laraway pale by comparison.

“It’s said that Hotel Josephine is still haunted by the ghost of the original owner, Josephine Villefranche, who wanders the halls at night. Some say she seeks revenge for the wrongs done to her. Others say it’s a heart-wrenching attempt to find her lost love—the man who took her life during the fires of 1794.”

Drew had saluted the group with his empty glass, then headed upstairs to his own room.

He wondered how Josie felt about being associated with such notoriety.

From somewhere in the hotel he heard a phone ring. He suspected it was the main phone. He looked up at the ceiling again, wondering how long it had been since Josie Villefranche had gotten a break from all the hotel’s demands.

And wondering how he might convince her that was exactly what she wanted most in the world.

JOSIE’S HAND STOPPED its rhythmic motion of smoothing lotion over her calf as she stared at the ringing telephone. While the city might never sleep, calls after eleven were rare. And given her recent experience with late-night calls, she wasn’t sure she wanted to answer this one.

Still, she had three guests to consider. And, true to form, this late-night caller had no intention of giving up until she answered.

On the eighth ring she slowly picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

No response.

She breathed a sigh of relief. They’d hung up.

She was about to return the receiver to its cradle when a low, familiar voice asked, “Josie Villefranche?”

Familiar not because she knew the owner of it. But because she’d heard it often in the past few months.

“I know you’re there, Josie.”

The caller was a man. That was all she knew. Well, that and the fact that his sole intent was to frighten her.

“I hear the murdered girl’s ghost is still in room 2D, Josie.”

Since the calls had begun long before Claire Laraway’s murder, she had never linked the two.

Until now…

“She wants some company.”

“Who is this?”

But she knew her whispered inquiry would go unanswered.

Instead she heard an eerie chuckle. “Good night, Josie. Sleep well.”

Then the line went dead.

Josie slowly hung up the receiver, her blood flowing thickly through her veins. She rose from the wrought-iron chair her grandmother had given her as part of a vanity set when she was fourteen and moved toward the open French doors, looking into the dark night beyond the lights of Bourbon Street.

When she’d received the first call some months ago, she’d assumed it might be someone who had once stayed at the hotel who was playing an awful prank. But when the calls continued, with no pattern that she could make out, a deep sense of dread and fear had pierced her initial nonchalance, leaving her creeped out for a long while afterward.

Could the caller be Claire Laraway’s killer? Is that what all this had been leading up to? Was there some sicko out there who had targeted her for some sort of demented plan and was even now playing it out?

A sound caught her attention. She jumped then looked down to find that Drew Morrison had stepped out onto his balcony two floors below, his slacks hanging low on his hips, his well-defined torso bare. Had the ringing phone awakened him? Or was he, like her, incapable of sleep just now?

She didn’t realize that he’d looked up and spotted her until he said something.

“Is everything all right?”

Josie grew aware of her faraway thoughts and the expression she might be wearing as a result of her disturbing midnight caller.

“Yes… I’m fine.” She crossed her arms to ward off a shiver. “Is there anything else you need?”

She caught the way he scanned her body. She wore a light slip that clung to her damp skin and left very little to the imagination. The intensity of his gaze made her nipples tighten beneath the silky material.

If there was one thing she’d learned very young, it was how to read a man’s expression. And the expression Drew wore told her that he did, indeed, want something, if not need it. And that something was her.

The fact that she wanted him right back didn’t help cool her body temperature.

She cleared her throat. “Very well then. Good night, Mr. Morrison.”

She stepped back inside her room and closed the screen door.

She had little doubt that his quiet, sexy chuckle would resonate in her mind, and her dreams, well into the night.

LATE THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Josie accepted the package of cleaned and pressed guest linens and towels from the service. She stared down at the bill that had been payable on delivery. If things didn’t change soon, she’d have to see to the washing herself.

“Did you get the supplies?”

She blinked up at Philippe who’d appeared beside her behind the desk.

Supplies…

She handed him the plain brown wrapped linens. “No. Why don’t you see to it right after you take these up to Monique? She should still be on the second floor.”

He didn’t look pleased. But Philippe’s displeasure at the moment was the least of her concerns. If she didn’t come up with a plan to turn things around and quick, they’d all be very displeased indeed. Monique and Philippe would be without jobs…and Josie would be without her hotel.