Bourbon Street Blues by Maureen Child Read Free Book Online Page B

again blindly, his eyes hazy with passion.
    “Because,” she said, struggling for air, gasping like a landed trout and trying to keep her heart from flying right out of her chest. “Because it’s too much. Too fast. And I’m more careful than that.”
    Nodding, he inhaled and exhaled several times, searching for a calm that was escaping them both. Finally, though, he reached up and dragged his fingers through his hair.
    “Okay. Okay, that was fast.” The conviction in his voice dared her to deny what he was about to say. “But fast isn’t always wrong.”
    “It is for me,” Holly said, though damned if she didn’t want to walk right back into his arms. She fit, Holly thought. She fit so neatly against him, as if her body had been sculpted as a perfect match for Parker’s. And every part of her was screaming out to feel it again.
    But she’d been down this road once before. Okay, fine, it hadn’t been this intense, but it was too damn similar to ignore.
    “Is that what your instincts are telling you?”
    She blew out a breath on a laugh. “Hardly. My instincts are shouting at me to grab hold and enjoy the ride.”
    “Well, then,” he said, one eyebrow lifting.
    She shook her head and started talking, wondering, even as she spoke, why she was telling him this. “When it comes to feelings, I’m a little more careful these days. You see, a few years ago, I thought I was in love. He was…like you.”
    His eyes narrowed. “Meaning?”
    “Meaning,” she said with a short, harsh laugh, “he was New Orleans royalty. His family was almost as rich as yours and he had about as much in common with me as I do with the Queen of England.”
    “Oh, for—Holly…”
    She held up a hand, closed her eyes briefly and took another breath. “Just—wait. I convinced myself I was in love with him. Got all caught up in the rush of feeling that flash of something hot and reckless…like a summer storm. Lightning-hot and thunder-wild. Turns out, though, while I was thinking about love, he was thinking about killing time.”
    He took a step toward her, but stopped when she backed up a step. “Damn it—”
    “Don’t swear at me,” she said, a rueful smile twisting her mouth. “I’m telling you exactly how I feel, so you’ll know why I do what I do. It’s the only fair thing.”
    “Fine. Be fair. Tell me.”
    “Not much more to the story,” she admitted, though her heart felt a tiny ping of pain, just an echo of what she’d once lived through. “The night I told him I loved him, he caught the first jet out of town. Didn’t quit running till he hit Europe. Last I heard, he was still in Paris.”
    “He was an idiot.”
    “True,” Holly agreed, letting the old hurt slide from her. The signs had all been there. She just hadn’t wanted to see them. Jeff had never taken her to meet his family, his friends. They’d always met at her place. Had dinner down in the Quarter, away from everyone he knew. Lessening the odds of stumbling across someone who might recognize him and wonder what he was doing with a jazz-singer nobody.
    At the time, she’d told herself he did it because he wanted her all to himself. She’d needed to believe that. She’d wanted so much to belong to someone. To finally matter.
    So who was the idiot, really?
    “It was just as much my fault as his,” she finally said. “Maybe more. I paid no attention to the differences between us. Didn’t take into account that my world just never really bumps up against the kind of world he lived in—the kind you live in. I mistook heat for caring, lust for love. I won’t do that again, Parker. I can’t do that again.”
    This time, he came toward her and didn’t stop when she eased back. This time, he kept coming, until his hands were on her shoulders, fingers tight. “Nobody said anything about love, Holly. And I’m not asking you to do anything.”
    “Didn’t say you were.” Holly lifted her chin to meet him head-on. She had to prove, at least