Page 97 of Girl Between

“I want to. You took care of me. I appreciate that. You didn’t make a big deal about it. I appreciate that even more.”

“I know,” he said quietly.

“I know you know.” She bit her lip, then said, “Sometimes I think you’re the only person left who truly knows me.”

“Ditto.”

She crossed her arms. “Don’t do that.”

“What am I supposed to say?” he demanded.

“Something real.”

Jake moved closer, invading her space until her back was pushed against her door. Her hands landed on his warm, hard chest. “Gray, I came here for you. I said my piece. You know how I feel. You know what I want. Now it’s your turn. Figure your shit out,” he growled. “That real enough for you?”

He was halfway down the hall when she could breathe again. “Jake!” she shouted, making him pause. “Get yourself a tux. I need a wedding date.”

He didn’t turn around, but she hadn’t missed the imperceptible way his shoulders relaxed before he walked out of view.

Dana slipped into her room and undressed. She climbed beneath the sheets, her subconscious chiding her for going to bed alone when she had two gorgeous options willing to help warm them.

Jake was right. She had to figure her shit out.

85

Dana’s fingernailswere already suffering and that was before Henri Taurant sauntered into her office with his insufferable sneer. “Look who decided to grace us with her presence,” he crooned to no one—it was just the two of them inside the old mansion.

Thanks to the FBI’s pre-dawn meeting, she’d been up and at ‘em at an ungodly hour, waiting to hear if she’d be invited onto the joint task force between the NOPD and the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.

Dana didn’t know who she owed her thanks to yet, but by 6 AM she’d received her official invitation and clearance package to what had been dubbed the Casquette Girls case.

With a million questions rattling around her brain, she’d gone for a run and still managed to arrive at the NOSA office first today. A fact she knew would be useless to mention to the irrational Taurant. Instead, she offered her sarcastic condolences. “I know you’ll be sorry to see me go, but I’m only here to wrap up loose ends.”

“I have to agree,” he said in his usual mocking tone. “Your work here has been ratherloose.”

“For your information, I’ve been recruited into a federal investigation, which trumps ancient ship manifests. I’m here to give my official notice and write up a report of my findings thus far.”

“Which are?” he drawled.

When she didn’t answer he gave a victorious little harumph. “That’s what I thought.”

Dana fought the urge to roll her eyes. “You know as well as I do that vampiric origins have not been ruled out of New Orleans. They probably never will be. I would love to stay on and continue my research, but this is ancient history,” she said, gesturing to the pile of ship manifests she’d been cataloging. “It’s not going anywhere.”

“Wow, how ever did the Smithsonian manage without you these past few weeks?” he mocked. “Your devotion is so admirable.”

“I take my career very seriously,” she seethed. “But saving living people takes precedence over cataloging the dead.”

Taurant’s bushy brown eyebrows rose. “You’re talking about the Harvest Girls, aren’t you?”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to. This is a small town, Dr. Gray. I told you that already. We may be backwoods compared to Washington D.C., but one plus one still equals two here. You paid a visit to the Goode sisters’ cabin yesterday with Detective Gorgeous George, and today the FBI ride into town. That’s not happenstance.”

“How do you know I was in the bayou?”

He laughed. “I make it my business to know everything that goes on in my town.”

Dana could easily see Taurant sticking his oversized nose into his neighbors’ lives. The mercurial man turned hovering into an art form.