Voodoo Love (And the Curse of Jean Lafitte’s Treasure) (6 page)

             
He planted his mouth on my neck, creating a hot trail of desire as he made his way down to my collar bone. Juan opened a couple of the top buttons of my blouse with his teeth, and I sucked in my breath, waiting for him to do more. Pushing back the cup of my bra, he tongued my nipple, causing my heart and mind to go crazy. I couldn't help the moan that escaped me.

             
The front door lock jangled.

             
I jerked away from Juan like a guilty teenager, and though it wasn’t my parents on the other side of the door, I knew the person coming in would not be thrilled about a dead guy hanging around the living room.

             
Eddie has always been very close-minded about that sort of thing.

             
“Quick,” I said, thinking I could shove Juan into a closet, but there was no need for my
Three’s Company
antics. Juan was gone. One minute he'd been on top of me, the next he'd vanished. Even the shirt he'd so casually tossed to the floor had disappeared. Swishing my fingers through the space he’d occupied, I felt a cold spot. “Wow. Just like on
Ghost Hunters
.”

There wasn’t time to investigate further. It was all I could do to try and pull myself together as my husband came in the house.

             
“Hi,
Elizabeth
,” Eddie greeted me as he opened the door. “Are you okay?”

             
“Uh-huh. I'm great!" My enthusiasm may have been a little over the top.

             
“You look…flushed.” He looked at my blouse. "Did you forget to button your shirt this morning?"

             
Damn! The top two buttons were still undone and the lace of my bra could be seen. With clumsy fingers, I fixed that.

             
“I’m fine. Really. I was just thinking about having a glass of wine. The very thought just got me overexcited.”

             
“Hmmm….did you take the gun out of your purse?”

             
I held it up from where Juan had put it on the coffee table. Eddie nodded his head, still looking at me, emotions flickering across his face. What they were, I couldn't quite decipher.  Most of the time I think Eddie's an open book, but I knew there must be things about him that I didn't know. He was an undercover cop before hooking up with me. I always assumed he had interesting stories to tell but oddly, he never really shared much about his past. Eddie was comfortable. I trusted him. And now that my heartbeat was settling down and strength was coming back into my legs, I felt a little guilty. I mean, I am a married woman and I'd just "made out" with another man in the living room! He'd had his mouth on my nipple!

             
I guess I should explain about our marriage of convenience. We don’t have sex, and we didn’t get married for love, although there are times…well, I think there could be more. Sure, I knew Eddie was assigned the duty of watching over me by the Feds, but he'd done his job well. He became a close friend, and I couldn’t have gotten through that first year without him. The paranoia would have swallowed me. When he asked me to marry him, at first I thought he was serious. But he explained that the government thought it would be a good next step for them.

             
Not for us. For them.

             
"You'd only have to be married a few years," Agent Pemberton, one of my least favorites of all the Feds who interviewed me, explained. He always looked at me like I was a complete idiot. "If in that time things die down and nothing happens, you can get a divorce. Besides, the monetary compensation we are providing you with should keep you in financial security for the rest of your life."

             
"What things need to die down? It's not like I can remember what happened to me in the first place," I asked. "I hit my head during the helicopter explosion. That's what brought on this amnesia."

             
"Look,
Elizabeth
, we're going to level with you." Pemberton leaned forward. "We've been after Diego Martes for years for money laundering. We believe that a prize like the treasure Martes has indicated you found with your…friend…Juan will help us arrest him. It's too tempting of reward for someone like him to give up on. You are the only person still living who saw it besides Martes, and we think he'll try to enlist your aid to retrieve it. Problem is, Diego isn't known for his kindness towards women, and since you can't seem to remember anything that can help us out, that makes the situation all the more difficult when it comes to providing protection for you."

             
As if I needed to be reminded.

But after hearing that, I said yes to Eddie, though a part of me was disappointed that it wasn’t a real proposal. In another time and place, I would have snatched a guy like Eddie up and sunk my woman claws into him until he begged for mercy. But it’s hard to think like that when you know he’s only asking you to marry him because his boss is making him.

And there was still Juan Carlos haunting my dreams.

             
From time to time, Eddie and I have toyed with romance. Sometimes he looks at me, and I think I see a longing in his blue eyes. But I can’t be sure. In the year we’ve been married, we have hugged and touched but never been intimate. I had thought to change that with my condoms and wine. I’d been having urges…desires…okay, I’m horny. It had occurred to me that there was no reason why I couldn’t have sex with Eddie. We slept in the same bed, after all. If I rolled over and curled my body around his, I was sure he could be brought around to my way of thinking. Just in case it wasn’t so easy though, I’d purchased the bottle of wine. The condoms were for…well, you know.

             
“
Elizabeth
,” Eddie said, jolting me out of my thoughts. “You sure you’re okay? You seem distracted. And what's up with your hair? You've got bedroom hair going on."

             
“That's because I was just taking a nap on the couch.” I picked up the gun and smoothed down my hair as best I could. “I’ll just go put this away.”

             
I walked into the kitchen with Eddie on my trail. My intent was to slip the weapon back into my purse, but I couldn’t do that with the long arm of the law behind me. I laid it on the counter instead. My eyes were drawn to the package of Trojan condoms, size large, on the counter, placed next to the bottle of wine. I swallowed hard, suddenly feeling very embarrassed.

             
“You got plans for the evening?” Eddie nodded his head towards the condoms, a little blush creeping into his cheeks. It was cute.

             
“Umm….well, I thought…” Damn! This wasn’t the smooth seduction I’d planned. Of course, now there was the Juan Carlos thing, too. How could I have sex with a dead man hovering nearby?

             
Eddie picked up the box and examined it. He grinned and tossed it to me. “Large, huh? Well, at least you got the size right.”

             
With those words, he sauntered out of the room, a little spring to his step I’d never seen before.

             
I debated over telling Eddie about seeing Juan Carlos. After all, I trusted Eddie. He would know what do, but it sounded so crazy. And now, I was starting to have my doubts that Juan had been real. I mean, where the hell had he gone? Maybe I'd imagined the whole thing. Maybe my desire to see him again was causing my mind to play tricks on me. I could feel paranoia rearing up, but I fought against having a full-blown anxiety attack. Eddie would really know something was up if that happened, and that would lead to questions and confessions. Better to drink my wine and start cooking supper.

             
I pulled the Devil card out of the ribbon attached to the wine bottle and tossed it on the counter, wondering what Juan was trying to tell me with it. That he was my addiction? My desire? No one had to give me a card to tell me that.

             
“Something smells good.” Eddie came back into the kitchen.

             
“Thanks. I’m making mushroom chicken with rice.”

             
“Sounds great. I’m starved. Mind if I help myself to a glass of wine?”

             
“Go ahead.”

             
He held the bottle up, staring at the label. Uh-oh. Had I mentioned the significance of that brand before? I didn’t think so or else I would never have bought the first bottle this morning. He glanced at me, but said nothing as he opened it, poured a glass, and took a small sip. He picked up the tarot card and frowned.

             
"What's this,
Elizabeth
?"

             
"Um…a tarot card." I stirred the chicken, trying not to meet his eyes. "Could you pour me a glass of wine, too?"

             
He did so and then asked, "Where did the card come from?"

             
"I don't know. I just found it…around.  Lots of people in this town are into that voodoo crap. Why?"

             
"Just curious. It looks like something I've seen before. Any idea what it means?"

             
"Not really," I lied. "I think the guy on the card is the devil or something."

             
I looked at the clock, noting that it was 5:00. I could have sworn when I talked to him earlier he’d said he would be home late. Anxious to change the subject, I said, “Thought you were working late. Any special reason you are home early?”

             
“Yeah.” He sipped from the glass again and put the card back on the counter. “We need to talk.”

             
“Look, I said I was sorry about the gun thing in the supermarket. It was a bad decision that’s not going to happen again.”

             
“Good, but that’s not what we need to talk about.”

             
Eddie walked to the stove and turned the chicken to low. He grabbed my hand and led me to the kitchen table where he sat me down and placed the wine glass in front of me, saying, “You’re going to need this.”

             
“Okay.”

             
Oh, god. Did he know about Juan?

             
He took a long breath and stared at the kitchen table. “I got a call after we talked, one I’d been waiting on since this morning. Seems someone is stirring up interest again in finding the lost treasure of Jean Lafitte.”

             
“Who is this someone?”

             
But I thought I knew-- Juan Carlos, that sneaky bastard, toying with my emotions. He wasn’t dead. Just really good at hiding! He’d been real after all. He didn't have any superpowers. Seeing him had just…jogged my memory, breaking down the barrier my mind had put open surrounding the past. However, Juan was slipping a little if someone had spotted him.

             
“Remember Diego Martes?”