Bourbon Street was no problem to traverse, despite several groups who were three sheets to the wind. But she cut over to Royal more quickly than she had intended. With her head pounding, she just wanted to get away from the crowds. To her amazement, she wound up disoriented and ended up close to Canal before realizing she was going in the wrong direction. She must have been even drunker than she realized, because she should have been able to walk home in her sleep.
She silently cursed Vinnie as she finally headed in the right direction. He had gotten her all upset with that surprise of his. On top of that, she couldn’t help but feel a little hurt. With the man plaguing her for assistance, she would have thought he could sit through her song, just to be polite. Then she cursed her own insecurity and forced Aidan Flynn out of her mind.
No going out tomorrow night. She was going straight home after work.
She was about a block from her house when she thought she heard someone calling her name.
She paused and looked back. Nothing. She looked around; she was already on a mostly residential block of Royal. Windows were closed; the streetlights flickered. She felt alone, chilled. A mule-drawn carriage full of tourists went by on the cross street, and she taunted herself for being an idiot. She had walked this way hundreds of times in her life. She’d never seen so much as a fistfight in this neighborhood.
She turned for home again, then became convinced that she heard footsteps following her.
She turned again, and again there was nothing. But the chill had returned, and this time there was no carriage passing by to provide the illusion that she wasn’t alone.
She quickened her pace, then thought she saw a shadow emerging from a narrow alleyway.
Instinct—and fear—took over.
She started to run.
7
Kendall heard someone call her name—loudly.
Loudly enough to carry down the street.
She stopped and turned, panting slightly, relieved to see that she wasn’t being hailed by a shadow but by a flesh-and-blood man. She saw him coming down the street and recognized him immediately, though from this distance, it was only his tall, broad-shouldered form she knew.
Was she crazy? Or had the shadow she thought she’d seen by the alley disappeared?
When Aidan Flynn reached her a moment later, she knew her heart was still pounding too quickly. “Were you calling my name before?” she asked him.
“No, just now. Why?” he asked, looking at her curiously.
“Must have been someone else,” she said. Her head was throbbing, and she didn’t want to accept the fact that he had hurt her feelings by ducking out earlier.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“You never answered me,” he said.
“About what?”
“Dinner.”
“What?”
“Dinner. Whatever you’d like, wherever you’d like to go.”
“Out of the Quarter,” she said without thinking.
What the hell would have been wrong with, “Thanks, but no thanks?” she thought immediately.
“Sure. Out of the city entirely, if you like.”
“I can’t tell you anything helpful, you know,” she said, and was alarmed that she sounded almost as if she were pleading with him.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“You could at least try being polite to me, you know.”
He drew in a breath, looking away. “I guess I’m not known for my charm,” he said ruefully. “But, I swear, I can be courteous.”
“You know, I can afford to feed myself. I make a good living, even if you consider me to be a quack.”
“Do you think you can read the future?” he asked her.
“No,” she said flatly.
Then he smiled. She hated the smile. It didn’t just make him human. It made him ruggedly striking. Sexy and even charming.
She took a step back. She wasn’t about to be charmed by him.
He was ex-FBI, she reminded herself. He had, no doubt, been taught to be charming when necessary as an interrogation technique.
“You’re crazy, and you’re driving everyone else crazy,” she told him.
His smile deepened suddenly. “Let me see you the rest of the way home.”
“I live on the next block.”
“I know.”
They started walking, and Kendall remembered his earlier claim.
“You said you found blood?” she asked.
“On one of the gravestones,” he agreed. “Old blood,” he added, when she stopped and stared at him.
“How old?”
“I don’t know. I took some scrapings and brought the samples to Jonas.”
“Jonas the FBI guy who was there tonight?”
“Right. We’re old friends,” he told her.
They reached her front door. She hesitated, then slipped her key into the lock and looked up at him, praying he would go away.
He laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ll see you all the way in.”
“I’ve lived here a long time,” she told him. “I have nice neighbors.”
“I’m sure you do. But I’ll still see you in.”
She stepped into the hallway and unlocked the door to her apartment, relieved when he didn’t try to follow her in.
He did catch her arm before she could enter, though.
“Dinner? Tomorrow night?” he asked her.
“Yes, yes, I suppose. Just go away now, all right?”
“Sure,” he said and, smiling, released her arm and turned away.
She watched him go out the main door, heard the lock click automatically in his wake.