One-Night Man

“A life companion?” Auntie Q rolled her gaze heavenward. “Old people have companions. I’m not even old enough for one and I’m eighty-two.”

Lennon didn’t point out that her assistant, Olaf, who cared for her in myriad capacities, could be considered a companion. She gently squeezed her great-aunt’s hands instead. “Trust me, Auntie. I know what I want. And with the bachelor auction, you’ve provided me the perfect place to find him.”

“You need grand passion.”

Lennon peered back into the entrance hall at her great-uncle’s portrait. Maybe it was the night lighting or staying up long past her bedtime, but Lennon recognized the underlying excitement in his green eyes, the zest for living that had been so much a part of the man she’d known. And admired.

Great-uncle Joshua had been the only steady male presence in her life while Lennon was growing up. A kind, fun and very noble man, he’d had the ability to make her great-aunt feel like the most important person in his world. And Lennon, too.

He’d been a part of every important step in her life, from dance recitals and graduations to helping her cope with her flighty mother. She’d always considered her great-uncle family-by-love. He may not have been officially related, but he’d always encouraged and supported her, and she still thought of him as her ideal, a man she modeled her romance heroes after.

“You had grand passion, Auntie,” she said, guessing that if Great-uncle Joshua had been free to marry, Auntie Q would probably have considered life perfect. “Maybe if there was another man as wonderful I might consider a different sort of marriage. But Great-uncle Joshua was one of a kind.”

Auntie Q regarded her from beneath a wrinkled brow. “I really wish you’d reconsider.”

“I know what I want, and it’s not a life full of emotional upheaval. I want to marry a man who’ll help me create a stable, normal family. I wouldn’t change a moment of my life with you, but we’re not exactly normal, are we?” She smiled lightly, hoping to ease her great-aunt’s concern. “Besides, I’ve had my share of affairs and romances. I’ll settle down with a man I can love, and keep passion for my romance novels.”

She kissed her great-aunt’s cheek. “Now will you go to your office and try to catch a few hours of sleep? The museum directors will be here at the crack of dawn and we won’t have a chance to slow down before the reception. I still don’t know when we’ll find time to check into the hotel.”

“We’ll manage, dear.” Auntie Q squeezed her hand. “Why don’t you come, too? A few hours wouldn’t hurt you, either. You’ll want to look fresh for the bachelors.”

Lennon couldn’t tell if this remark meant Auntie Q had accepted the game plan or not. Her bright eyes and easy smile didn’t reveal a thing. Too late and too tired for more debate when she still had so much to do, Lennon let the matter drop and focused on settling Auntie Q in her office, before she herself returned to the entrance hall to tackle The Promise.

Smoothing the black velvet drape over the display, she maneuvered the pieces around like men on a chessboard. The penis at a forty-five degree angle from the mouth. No. Too far apart, the pieces didn’t appear like part of any yin-yang whole. She moved them closer and thought the penis looked as if it stood sentinel over the mouth.

The Promise was the first piece of artwork the guests would see after Great-uncle Joshua’s portrait. Possibly the first, if their gazes didn’t follow the lines of the room to the portrait. The arrangement had to be right.

One hundred eighty degrees southeast? Ninety degrees northwest? The penis lying on its side, its huge marble head touching the open mouth?

No, no, no. With a disgusted groan, Lennon snatched the penis off the base and dropped it into her lap. There, no penis at all. Worked for her. And displayed alone, the mouth looked sort of like a huge white rose. Rather attractive, really.

Laying an arm on the display base, she wearily rested her head on the crook of her elbow and decided Auntie Q was probably right. She just didn’t like the sculpture because she hadn’t seen the real thing in a while.

2

IF JOSH EASTMAN HADN’T known better, he’d have thought he’d walked into a storybook illustration of Sleeping Beauty. Security lights washed the new gallery’s entrance hall with a pale gleam, illuminating the beauty asleep at the foot of his grandfather’s portrait. This woman was a late-night fantasy, all long, long legs and sleek blond hair.

Her filmy skirt and clingy sweater drew his gaze to willowy curves curled around a low display case, and to smooth golden skin where her bare arm draped over the black velvet.

But Josh knew better. She might be a sleeping beauty, all right, but not from any child’s version of the tale. Not with a huge marble erection propped upright on her lap.

Sleeping Beauty could only be Lennon McDarby, all grown up.

Moving silently into the new gallery, he drank the espresso he’d picked up in the museum’s security office and surveyed the woman before him. She’d been, what?—ten, maybe eleven the last time Josh had seen her, right before he’d headed off to college. A skinny girl, all arms and legs and conversation about things he couldn’t have cared less about.

He hadn’t thought much about her since, though he’d heard of her from his grandfather and Miss Q. But who’d have guessed that gangly kid would have grown into this golden vision? Not him.

Even if Josh had guessed, he’d never have pictured the erection—which wasn’t, incidentally, the only erection around. A watercolor nearby showed a man servicing his own needs.

“Don’t blame you a bit, pal.” He rested his gaze on a sleeping Lennon. “She’s definitely something to look at.”

Definitely.

She was the best sight he’d seen in a long time. More sexy than all the art in the room combined. With her long slender curves, silky blond hair and gold-dusted lashes fanned out in half circles on her cheeks, Lennon couldn’t look more delicious if she’d been spread out on a bed.

Unless she’d been naked.

Now there was an image to inspire more than a few late-night fantasies. Lennon, all gleaming gold skin and sleek curves, with her eyes closed and her lips parted as if awaiting his kisses.

An image that made Josh long to kneel down beside her, peel away her clothes and wake this sleeping beauty with a kiss right now, because the very idea of tasting those pouty lips and touching all that smooth golden skin clouded his thoughts and inspired an upsurge in his pulse rate.

Josh shook his head to erase the image. How in hell was he supposed to help Miss Q by protecting Lennon this weekend, when he’d spend his time protecting her from himself, instead of the bad guys?

A damned good question. This woman was passion personified. The closest he’d ever come to his perfect fantasy. And except for the unusual piece of art resting strategically on her lap, the only thing to mar the view was the portrait of his grandfather, which loomed above her head to remind Josh why he’d come. Guilt. Loads of guilt. Otherwise he’d never be in this new gallery wing at the crack of dawn. In the French Quarter during Mardi Gras, no less.

Josh didn’t celebrate Mardi Gras, hadn’t for years, anyway. When he’d been a kid, his grandfather had routinely commandeered him from his parents and grandmother, all of whom had believed the party in New Orleans proper was nothing more than a peasant festival. The real action, as far as they were concerned, took place uptown, in the mansions of the Garden District.

He hadn’t partied with his grandfather at Mardi Gras since he’d been seventeen years old. A lifetime ago. Nowadays, Josh scheduled himself out of town during the first half of February, and he’d managed that task for the past five years running.

This year he hadn’t been so lucky. A self-employed private investigator, he was just wrapping up a missing person case that had ended with a corpse, and he’d spent the past two weeks giving depositions to multijurisdictional authorities.

Just his luck. If he hadn’t been in town tonight, his answering service would have fielded the call that had turned out to be the last person on the planet he’d expected to hear from—Quinevere McDarby, his late grandfather’s mistress and the woman he’d known as Miss Q throughout his youth.

She’d worked him over in a big way, and here he was with the unenviable task of breaking the news to her great-niece.

“Lennon,” he whispered quietly, not wanting to startle her. “Lennon, wake up.”

She inhaled deeply, a soft sound that rippled in the quiet, and made the slight parting of her pouty peach lips seem as enticing as if she’d brushed that sexy mouth across his skin.

Josh swallowed hard. Without even opening her eyes, grown-up Lennon was having an absurd physical effect on him. An effect that had to be the combined result of his too-long-ignored libido and the giant phallus sitting in her lap. With that giant open mouth propped on the display case, firing his imagination with all sorts of tempting pImages**, no wonder the seam of his jeans suddenly dug into his crotch.

She tipped her heart-shaped face up and blinked open whiskey-colored eyes. Eyes he hadn’t thought about in years, but suddenly remembered with startling clarity.

Startling being the operative word, because Lennon shot bolt upright at the sight of him, inadvertently rolling the sculpture off her lap. It hit the carpeted floor with a thump.

“Penis envy, chère?”

She dragged her wide-eyed gaze down to the marble sculpture. Her mouth popped open. With jerky, panicked motions, she grabbed the huge phallus and lifted it off the floor.

Even with the low lighting, Josh could see the flush of color stain her cheeks as she repositioned the sculpture on the display base. But her flush was nothing compared to the heat rushing through him at the sight of her fingers wrapped around that smooth marble.

Taking another gulp of espresso, he barely noticed it scald his throat on the way down. “Long time no see, charity case.”

He called her by the nickname he’d coined during a long-ago conversation where he’d lamented his grandmother’s never-ending disapproval. Lennon had countered with her own tale of being quasi-orphaned and totally dependent on her great-aunt’s charity. He remembered thinking that she’d had the better deal.

Shooting a startled glance at his grandfather’s portrait, Lennon shook her head as if trying to shake off sleep, before turning back to stare at him.

“Black sheep!” She continued the name game, using a soubriquet he hadn’t heard since the last time he’d seen her, and that she remembered it pleased him. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he extended a hand and helped her stand—a fluid movement that drew his attention to every curve between her head and her toes. Then he noticed her whiskey gaze glued to the cardboard travel cup he still held in one hand.

“Espresso, black,” he said.

“Do you mind?”

He handed her the cup and watched as she sucked down an appreciative swallow. Her eyes shuttered briefly and she sighed as if she’d never tasted anything as good. “It’s uncanny.”

“What?”

“How much you look like your grandfather.”

He gazed up at the portrait again. No denying it. The resemblance was nothing short of remarkable—a fact that came as a mild surprise. His grandfather had been close to sixty by the time Josh had been born, so the only memories he’d had of the man in his prime had been from photos. No getting around the fact that besides their dark coloring and green eyes, the facial structures matched almost identically.

Though Josh had spent most of his adult life establishing himself independently of the Eastman family, he found it ironic that the shirt his grandfather had worn while sitting for this portrait some forty-odd years ago was the same green-gray shade Josh had on right now.

“Except for the hair,” Lennon observed, gaze darting back at him. “You’ve got a ponytail.”

He shrugged, unsure whether this was good or bad. The length of his hair had been a grooming concession for his latest investigation. When he went undercover with drug dealers, he looked the part. With all the red tape and police reports he’d been wading in lately, he hadn’t found time for a haircut.

“Life been treating you all right?” he asked, deciding that if her luscious appearance was any indication, she’d been treated very well.

“Sure has, thank you. How about you?”

“Better than I deserve.”

Except at the moment. Somehow when he’d agreed to help out Miss Q, he’d still thought of Lennon as a girl.

A big mistake, he now realized, but one that didn’t surprise him. Bottom line was he hadn’t thought much about Lennon, Miss Q or any of his own family since he’d gone to college and devoted his life to breaking away from his controlling grandmother.

She’d been hell-bent on grooming him to pick up the reins of the family art import-export business. The business hadn’t interested Josh, but the art had, so his grandfather had encouraged him to explore where that path might lead. There’d been tension between his grandparents over which direction Josh’s life should take. His parents had routinely swung back and forth between the opposing factions, wanting their son to be happy, yet wanting the demanding matriarch to stop making all their lives miserable with her efforts to get her way.

Thanks to youthful stupidity, Josh had simply walked away from the fight. He’d had a big chip on his shoulder at the time and felt as if he was disappointing everyone. Swapping the family mansion in the Garden District for a refurbished warehouse in the art district, he’d cut himself off so completely from his family’s social circles he may as well have been living on another planet.

His grandmother had written him off as a lost cause, but his grandfather and his parents had kept in touch through the years. They told him what happened in their lives, tried to find out what was happening in his. But Josh rarely picked up the phone himself. More often than not, he’d used work as an excuse to avoid meeting his mom for lunch, or dropping by his dad’s club for a drink, or making an appearance at his grandfather and Miss Q’s annual Mardi Gras masque.

With age and experience came the knowledge that he might have handled his rebellion with more maturity and less rebellion. He suspected that if he’d just stood up to his grandmother, he might have found his grandfather and parents supportive of whatever path he chose. Which was why he’d rushed to Miss Q’s assistance tonight. He owed his grandfather at least this much.

“Listen, charity case, we’ve got a problem,” he said. More than one, actually, but his starved libido was technically his problem and not hers.

“I assumed. Why else would you be here? Is your family all right?”

Josh nodded, surprised that she would inquire about people who’d never had the time of day for her. Then again, he shouldn’t be surprised. Quinevere McDarby had reared her, and she was a woman who opened her heart to everyone. Including him.

Which was another reason he’d come tonight.

Miss Q had always been full of the hugs and approval Josh had professed not to need, but had secretly placed himself in the line of fire for. He remembered thinking that fate had played a nasty trick by not allowing his grandfather to meet Miss Q long before he’d met Josh’s own grandmother.

Then again, if his grandfather had met Miss Q first, Josh would never have been born. That just proved how satirical love could be. One of the reasons he made no time for it in his life. He did short-term relationships. Period.

“The family’s fine.” At least he hadn’t heard otherwise. And what was the cliché? No news is good news….

“Then what’s up?” Lennon took another long swallow of espresso, appeared to brace herself.

“A few hours ago, Miss Q left the museum to get some papers from your car. Someone assaulted her with a flash-and-bang grenade. She wasn’t hurt, but we think it was a protest of my grandfather’s collection.”

“What are you…Auntie Q…someone threw…” Lennon’s features blanked in the sort of stunned expression he knew all too well, from being a frequent bearer of bad news. She finally zeroed in. “A grenade? As in…hand grenade?”

“A flash-and-bang,” he explained. “It’s a nonlethal stun device used to disorient an enemy.”

A clever device, and one he’d been grateful for on more than one occasion. But the way Lennon gaped drove home the differences in their interpretations of nonlethal.

A flash-and-bang grenade was useful in his line of work, but he doubted Lennon had ever heard of one, which reminded him why he didn’t invite pretty, pouty-mouthed blondes into his life for more than a quick visit.

“It’s a nonfragmenting type of grenade,” he offered, hoping to reassure her. “The kind that doesn’t explode.”

Lennon didn’t look reassured. “Josh, you must be mistaken. Auntie Q is in her office, asleep.”

“It’s almost six in the morning and I just put her in the car with Olaf. She’s on her way home.”

“I’m confused.” Lennon ran a shaky hand through her hair, sending waves of honey-gold tumbling around her face, and inspiring thoughts about what that silky blond hair would feel like beneath his fingers. “Auntie Q couldn’t just go out to my car. We’re in a secure museum. The security guard has to let her out of the building after hours.”

“The guard was asleep. She didn’t want to disturb him when she can disable the system for the Eastman wing herself.”

Apparently Lennon didn’t have any trouble believing her great-aunt capable of that sort of recklessness. A frown creased her smooth brow and she shivered.

Plucking the cup from her hand, Josh marched her toward a nearby bench and forced her to sit. He didn’t dwell on the awareness that ripped through him the minute he touched her bare arm. And he refused to acknowledge the naked lovers twined around each other on the canvas directly above her head.

“She’s okay?”

“She’s fine. The noise startled her.”

“Thank goodness.” Breathing deeply, Lennon cradled her face in her hands. She shivered again.

“Are you okay?”

Looking back up at him, she nodded. “But I don’t understand why you’re here. Where are the police?”

Josh shrugged. “Miss Q decided she doesn’t want an investigation. She’s afraid the museum will postpone the gallery opening. Instead of reporting the incident so the authorities can conduct an inquiry, she hid the discharged grenade in her handbag, lied to security and called me and Olaf.”

“Where have I been while all this has been going on?”

He glanced over his shoulder at the phallic sculpture resting beneath his grandfather’s portrait. “Given the way you were hanging on to that penis, chère, I’d say you were dreaming.”

“Josh.” Scowling, she grabbed the coffee cup and slugged back the remains defiantly.

He couldn’t contain a laugh at her look of outrage.

“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised,” she finally said. “Auntie Q isn’t about to let anything come in the way of this opening. Great-uncle Joshua loved Mardi Gras. ‘A celebration of being alive,’ he used to call it. She has had her heart set on this weekend ever since he died. I won’t even bother trying to convince her otherwise.”

Great-uncle Joshua. Damn, but that reference to his grandfather brought him back a lot of years. Lennon wasn’t related, yet his grandfather had been as much a part of her family as his. Her posthumous concern for this memorial showed a graceful acceptance of the sordid triangle of man-family-mistress that Josh couldn’t help but admire.

Though he’d grown up knowing his grandfather divided his time between two families, he couldn’t help perceiving the entire situation as strange. True, people had done things differently back then. Otherwise his grandmother might have divorced his grandfather after realizing she wanted no part of marriage save the social and economic position it provided her.

She hadn’t. Instead, she’d suggested her husband tend his needs outside their marriage. Her solution had offended his noble grandfather, who’d resisted for well over a decade—until Quinevere McDarby had come to work for Eastman Antiquities. Thus the Eastman-McDarby connection had been born, and this gorgeous woman before him had become a part of Josh’s life.

“I tried reasoning with your great-aunt,” he admitted. “Didn’t work.”

“So she wants you to investigate. Isn’t this a little out of your normal line of work? I heard you freelance for a bunch of government agencies. Looking for missing people and heavy stuff like that.”

Evidently Lennon knew a lot about him, and for some reason the realization pleased him. He nodded.

“How’d Auntie Q rope you into this, then?”

“She called me Josh Three and I caved. I haven’t been called that since she gave me the nickname to distinguish me from my father and grandfather. It was a time warp.”

“Joshua Eastman the third sounds so…highbrow.”

“Confusing.” At least while he’d been home.

“That’s it?” Lennon eyed him doubtfully. “All a girl has to do is call you Josh Three to get her way with you?”

“And heap on the guilt. Works every time.”

She tipped the cup at him and said, “Aha! I knew it.”

“She laid a whole trip on me. Told me that she and my grandfather had been watching every move I’ve made during my career. She knew all about my college education, the civil and criminal programs, the certifications and the police training seminars. She even knew the exact date when I graduated with my master’s degree.” He shook his head, still staggered by Miss Q’s revelation. “She said they’d thrown a party for every damned milestone, that they still had the right to celebrate my accomplishments, even if I chose not to be there.”

“Whoa. She worked you over big time.”

“Like a pro.” He had to force a smile. “She resorted to threats, too. Told me my grandfather would haunt me for the rest of my life if I let her—or you—get blown into bits all over the parish. Then there’d be no one left to fund-raise for the Eastman Gallery until the museum can afford to support it. It would be sold off piecemeal…all my grandfather’s acquisitions, his life’s work—”

“Gotcha.” Lennon laughed, then sobered. “Is she in danger?”

“After fifteen years in my business, I’ve learned it’s never wise to ignore this type of incident. I can’t rule out the possibility of a threat, and that’s enough for me.”

Lennon nodded and jumped on his reasoning like a speeding bullet. “We’ve already had some trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

She rose in a lovely display of slim curves and sleek lines, then strode toward his grandfather’s portrait to retrieve an envelope from beside the display case below. “Negative letters and some picketing. Given the, er, sensitive subject matter…” she said, studiously avoiding the marble sculpture propped erect beside her. “There are always supporters and detractors.”

“Let me see.”

She sat back down and passed him the envelope, which he opened to reveal a bold message in computer-generated type: “Erotic art is just an upscale name for smut. Smut doesn’t belong in our museums.”

“Have they all been like this—computer printouts with no signatures?

Lennon shook her head, sending pale hair slipping over her shoulder in a sleek wave. “Most, but not all. Some have been handwritten.”

“I’ll investigate and find out what’s going on.”

“Thanks. But I’m still worried about Auntie Q’s safety.”

“For the time being Olaf will be a more than adequate bodyguard. Not too many people would want to mess with him, based on his size alone, and he promised me he won’t let her out of his sight. But I’ve got to tell you that Miss Q has the exact same concerns about you.” Josh paused for effect before adding the kicker. “She wants me to be your bodyguard.”

A golden brow arched skeptically. “Oh?”