A Dangerous Dance by Pauline Baird Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

what he wanted. Murder was on the list, but only as a last resort. It was messy and dangerous. Occasionally someone came along, though, that made it worth the risk and the mess.
    He snapped off the radio and the last bombast of Remy Mistral and his so-called cold wind of truth. He was annoying enough to be worth almost any risk, even before he'd decided to run for governor. If he was able to align himself with the Wizard's daughter, well, it was almost a moral imperative to stamp him out.
    Dorothy . It was a pity she'd come back. There had been so much tragedy in her young life. He hadn't expected her to care this much about a father she'd known so briefly. He hadn't expected this kind of loyalty, considering her maternal roots.
    Emma Merlinn . She'd been fascinating, but had lacked the attribute of loyalty. It was still hard for him to believe she was dead. She'd been so alive, so super charged in those days when they were all young. All of them had lost their heads over her, but he was the only one who'd learned how inimical passion was in the well-ordered life. And if she'd chosen him instead of Magus?
    Darius pushed his chair back from his huge, sterile desk. The wheels rolled silently, smoothly until he stopped them and stood up. The air in the room was cool and devoid of scent. It was a place of metal and wood, designed for efficient use of space and time, not for looks.
    He paced to the bank of windows that looked down on the New Orleans city street. No sound from outside penetrated the inside. There was nothing and no one in his sterile world to distract him from the past. From remembering Emma and how he'd felt when he was with her, what it had felt like to be intimate with her.
    With her, he'd felt less distant from the human race. He'd almost felt...redeemed. His mind wrapped around the word. It implied he'd done something wrong, rather than just what was expedient, but it was the truth. He always faced the truth, no matter how hard, about himself and others. Clarity must precede action. It kept him from an unseemly and foolish reaction. He disliked losing control.
    He could still remember what she looked like, despite the nearly thirty years it had been since he last saw her. What was it about her that had made her so enticing? She wasn't the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, but she was the only one he couldn't forget, no matter how hard he tried.
    Certainly her red hair was striking with violet eyes, but they were just body parts, meaningless without what was inside her animating it all. Intimacy with her had been...amazing. Unforgettable. In the years since, he'd failed to experience anything like it. He hadn't even minded the loss of control at the time. The satisfaction that followed was ample compensation. He'd had sex with women since, but not intimacy or satisfaction. Sex merely provided physical release, a hollow thing when one knew what one was missing.
    Magus had never appreciated what he had with Emma or she wouldn't have sought Darius out. His vision had always been too narrow, and too quick to shift, once a goal was reached. He could never be satisfied. The fault must lay with him, because Emma had been without flaw in the bedroom. Death may have obscured reality from some people, but Darius wasn't one of them. Magus would have bored of being governor as quickly as he'd lost interest in his wife, had he lived to be elected.
    When Darius learned Emma was dying, he'd thought of going to see her. He was glad he hadn't, that his memory of her was untainted by cancer's ravages or the march of time, though it was still hard to imagine the Emma he knew waiting tables and taking care of a baby. Motherhood must have changed her. Perhaps, he thought wryly, it blind-sided her. It was obviously the reason she left Magus. According to the detective he hired to find her, she had Dorothy six months after leaving Magus. Maternity had muted her essence, if the pictures the detective took were any indication. A