White Hot by Sandra Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

they break the law?”
    “Huff subsidizes Red’s insufficient salary.”
    “He bribes him.”
    “Huff’s subsidies make for more money in the parish till,” he said tightly. “Which prevents a tax increase.”
    “Oh, right. It’s for the taxpayers’ benefit that Huff bribes local law officials.”
    “Everybody benefits from his generosity, Sayre.”
    “Including you.”
    “And you. ” He pushed himself away from the tree trunk and walked toward her. “Tell me, would you have rather spent the night in jail those times Red caught you driving drunk. Or skinny-dipping. Or making out on a city park picnic table. Or drag racing down Evangeline Street?
    “On those occasions—and I’ve only scratched the surface of what I’ve heard about your adventurous youth—weren’t you glad that Huff slipped the sheriff a few bills each month so your indiscretions would go overlooked and unpunished? Never mind answering. The answer is obvious. Try looking at the big picture for a change and you’ll see—”
    “What I see, Mr. Merchant, is how neatly you’ve rationalized your corruption. Is that how you manage to sleep at night?”
    He stepped close enough for his pants legs to brush against her shins. As on the piano bench, he was crowding her. She had to either tilt her head back to look into his face or fall back several steps, which she wasn’t about to do. She wasn’t going to give an inch of ground.
    He spoke in a rough whisper. “For the last time, Sayre, call me Beck. And if you want to know how I sleep, consider this an invitation to find out. Anytime.”
    Before she struck him, which she was sorely tempted to do, she turned away and began walking toward the house.
    “He died.”
    Stopping, she looked back.
    “Old Mitchell,” he said. “A couple years ago, they found him in his house. He’d been dead for several days.”
     
    Following the departure of the last guests, Huff went upstairs to his bedroom to exchange his dark suit and dress shirt for more comfortable clothes.
    In the hallway, when he came even with Danny’s room, he paused, but didn’t open the door. Selma had closed off the room, leaving it as Danny had on Sunday morning when he went to church. She would probably wait for a signal from him on when to reopen the room, sort through Danny’s things, decide what to keep and what to give away to charity. That task would fall to her. He wasn’t sure he could look at or touch anything that had belonged to Danny, ever again.
    He wasn’t without regret, but what was done was done. Dwelling on it would be a waste of time and energy, and Huff never squandered either.
    On his way back downstairs, he glanced out the double French doors adjacent to Laurel’s portrait on the landing. The doors opened onto the second-floor balcony. He spotted Sayre and Beck standing on the bank of the bayou in the shade beneath a grove of trees.
    Amused, he anchored his cigarette between his lips, placed his hands on his hips, and stood there to watch. Beck was carrying out his latest assignment and, as usual, was applying himself. Sayre just might have met her match.
    She was a double handful of hotheaded, short-
tempered, out-spoken female, but Beck had the tenacity of a pit bull. He hadn’t retreated yet, where a lesser man would have waved the white flag after just one of Sayre’s acid put-downs.
    In her whole life, the girl had never done anything without putting up an argument about it first. Even her birth had been a battle royal. Laurel was in labor for twelve hours, twice as long as she’d been with the boys.
    Sayre, her temperament already in keeping with the color of her hair, had emerged from her mother’s body red in the face with anger and screaming in rebellion over the trauma of—or maybe the delay of—her birth. She’d been giving those around her a hard time ever since.
    No doubt she was giving hell to Beck now, although Huff wondered what Beck was saying to her to have kept her in place for