Night Moves : Dream Man/After the Night Read online

  “You think so?” Monica asked, eager to believe any excuse other than the most likely one.

  Gray shrugged. “It’s possible.” It was also possible a meteor would strike the house that day, but not very likely. He drank the last of his coffee and pushed back his chair. “When he comes in, tell him I’ve gone to Baton Rouge to look over that property we were talking about. I’ll be back by three, at the latest.” Because she still looked so forlorn, he put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her. Somehow Monica had been born without the decisiveness and arrogant self-assurance of the rest of the family. Even Noelle, as remote as she was, always knew exactly what she wanted and how to go about getting it. Monica always seemed so helpless against the forceful personalities of everyone else in the family.

  She buried her dark head in his shoulder for a moment, just as she had when she’d been a little girl and gone running to her big brother whenever something had gone wrong and Guy hadn’t been available to put things to rights again. Though he was only two years older, he had always been protective of her, knowing even as a child that she lacked his own inner toughness.

  “What do I do if he has been out with that slut?” she asked, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

  Gray tried to stifle his impatience, but some of it leaked through in his voice. “You don’t do anything. It’s none of your business.”

  She drew back, stung, and stared reproachfully at him. “How can you say that? I’m worried about him!”

  “I know you are.” He managed to soften his tone. “But it’s a waste of time, and he wouldn’t thank you for it.”

  “You always take his side, because you’re just like him!” The tears were slowly dripping down her cheeks now, and she turned away. “I bet the property in Baton Rouge happens to have two legs and big boobs. Well, have fun!”

  “I will,” he said ironically. He really was going to see some property; afterwards was a different story. He was a strong, healthy young man, with a sex drive that had shown no signs of slacking off since his middle teens. It was a persistent burning in his guts, a hungry ache in his balls. He was lucky enough to be able to get women to ease that hunger, and cynical enough to realize that his family’s money added to his sexual success.

  He didn’t care what the woman’s reason was, whether she came to him because she liked him and enjoyed his body, or whether she had her eye on the Rouillard bank account. Reasons didn’t matter, because all he wanted was a soft, warm body beneath him, taking his surging lust and giving him temporary ease. He’d never loved a woman yet, but he definitely loved sex, loved everything about it: the smells, the sensations, the sounds. He was particularly entranced by his favorite moment, the instant of penetration when he felt the small resistance of the woman’s body to his pressure, then the acceptance, the sensation of being taken in and enveloped with hot, tight, wet flesh. God, that was wonderful! He was always extremely careful to protect against unwanted pregnancies, wearing a rubber even if the woman said she was on birth control pills, because women had been known to lie about things like that and a smart man didn’t take chances.

  He didn’t know for certain, but he suspected Monica was still virgin. Though she was far more emotional than Noelle, there was still something of their mother in her, some deep remoteness that so far hadn’t let any man get too close. She was an awkward mix of their parents’ natures, receiving some of Noelle’s cool distance without any of her self-assurance, and some of Guy’s emotionalism without his intense sexuality. Gray, on the other hand, had his father’s sexuality tempered with Noelle’s control. As much as he wanted sex, he wasn’t a slave to his cock the way Guy was. He knew when, and how, to say no. Thank God, he seemed to have better sense picking his women than Guy did, too.

  He tugged on a strand of Monica’s dark hair. “I’ll call Alex and see if he knows where Dad is.” Alexander Chelette, a lawyer in Prescott, was Guy’s best friend.

  Her lips trembled, but she smiled through her tears. “He’ll go find Daddy and tell him to come home.”

  Gray snorted. It was a wonder how Monica had reached the age of twenty and learned absolutely nothing about men. “I wouldn’t bet on that, but maybe he can ease your mind.” He intended to tell Monica that Guy was in a poker game, even if Alex knew the number of the motel room in which Guy was screwing the morning away.

  He went into the study from which Guy handled the myriad Rouillard financial interests, and where Gray was learning how to handle them. Gray was fascinated by the intricacies of business and finance, so much so that he had willingly bypassed a chance to play pro football in favor of plunging headlong into the business world. It hadn’t been that much of a sacrifice for him; he knew he was good enough to play pro, because he had been scouted, but he knew he wasn’t star material. Had he given his life to football, he would have played eight years or so, if he’d been lucky enough to escape injury, and made a good but not spectacular salary. What it came down to, in the end, was that, as much as he loved football, he loved business more. This was a game that he could play much longer than he could football, make a hell of a lot more money, and was just as dog-eat-dog.

  Though Guy would have burst his buttons with pride if his son had gone into pro football, Gray thought he’d been somehow relieved when Gray had chosen to come home instead. In the few months since Gray had gotten his degree, Guy had been happily cramming his head full of business knowledge, stuff that couldn’t be gotten from a textbook.

  Gray ran his fingers over the polished wood of the big desk. An eight-by-ten photograph of Noelle was positioned on one corner, surrounded by smaller photos of himself and Monica at various stages of growth, like a queen with her subjects gathered around her. Most people would have thought of a mother with her children gathered about her knee, but Noelle wasn’t in the least motherly. The morning sunlight was falling across the photograph, picking up details that usually went unnoticed, and Gray paused to look at the still image of his mother’s face.

  She was a beautiful woman, in a totally different way from Renee Devlin’s beauty. Renee was the sun, bold and hot and bright, while Noelle was the moon, cool and remote. She had thick, sleek, dark hair which she wore in a sophisticated twist, and lovely blue eyes which neither of her children had inherited. She wasn’t French Creole, but plain old American; some folks in the parish had wondered if Guy Rouillard wasn’t marrying beneath himself. But she had turned out to be more queenly than any Creole born to the role could have been, and those old doubts had long since been forgotten. The only reminder was his own name, Grayson, which was her family name, but as it had long since been shortened to Gray, most people thought it had been chosen because of its similarity to his father’s name.

  Guy’s appointment book was open on the desk. As Gray hitched one hip onto the desk and reached for the telephone, he ran his eye down the appointments listed for that day. Guy had an appointment with William Grady, the banker, at ten. For the first time, Gray felt a twinge of uneasiness. No matter what, Guy had never let his women get in the way of business, and he would never go to a business meeting unshaven, and without a fresh change of clothes.

  Quickly he dialed Alex Chelette’s number, and his secretary answered on the first ring. “Chelette and Anderson, Attorneys at Law.”

  “Good morning, Andrea. Is Alex in yet?”

  “Of course,” she replied with good humor, having immediately recognized Gray’s distinctive deep voice, like smoky velvet. “You know how he is. It would take an earthquake to keep him from coming through the door on the dot of nine. Hold on and I’ll get him.”

  He heard the click as he was put on hold, but he knew Andrea too well to think that she was buzzing Alex on the intercom. He’d been in the office often enough, as both child and man, to know that the only time she used the intercom was when a stranger was in the office. Most of the time, she simply turned around in her chair and raised her voice, since the open door of Alex’s office was right behind her.

  Gray