One-Night Man

“You had grand passion, Auntie,” she said, guessing that if Great-uncle Joshua had been free to marry, Auntie Q would probably have considered life perfect. “Maybe if there was another man as wonderful I might consider a different sort of marriage. But Great-uncle Joshua was one of a kind.”

Auntie Q regarded her from beneath a wrinkled brow. “I really wish you’d reconsider.”

“I know what I want, and it’s not a life full of emotional upheaval. I want to marry a man who’ll help me create a stable, normal family. I wouldn’t change a moment of my life with you, but we’re not exactly normal, are we?” She smiled lightly, hoping to ease her great-aunt’s concern. “Besides, I’ve had my share of affairs and romances. I’ll settle down with a man I can love, and keep passion for my romance novels.”

She kissed her great-aunt’s cheek. “Now will you go to your office and try to catch a few hours of sleep? The museum directors will be here at the crack of dawn and we won’t have a chance to slow down before the reception. I still don’t know when we’ll find time to check into the hotel.”

“We’ll manage, dear.” Auntie Q squeezed her hand. “Why don’t you come, too? A few hours wouldn’t hurt you, either. You’ll want to look fresh for the bachelors.”

Lennon couldn’t tell if this remark meant Auntie Q had accepted the game plan or not. Her bright eyes and easy smile didn’t reveal a thing. Too late and too tired for more debate when she still had so much to do, Lennon let the matter drop and focused on settling Auntie Q in her office, before she herself returned to the entrance hall to tackle The Promise.

Smoothing the black velvet drape over the display, she maneuvered the pieces around like men on a chessboard. The penis at a forty-five degree angle from the mouth. No. Too far apart, the pieces didn’t appear like part of any yin-yang whole. She moved them closer and thought the penis looked as if it stood sentinel over the mouth.

The Promise was the first piece of artwork the guests would see after Great-uncle Joshua’s portrait. Possibly the first, if their gazes didn’t follow the lines of the room to the portrait. The arrangement had to be right.

One hundred eighty degrees southeast? Ninety degrees northwest? The penis lying on its side, its huge marble head touching the open mouth?

No, no, no. With a disgusted groan, Lennon snatched the penis off the base and dropped it into her lap. There, no penis at all. Worked for her. And displayed alone, the mouth looked sort of like a huge white rose. Rather attractive, really.

Laying an arm on the display base, she wearily rested her head on the crook of her elbow and decided Auntie Q was probably right. She just didn’t like the sculpture because she hadn’t seen the real thing in a while.

2

IF JOSH EASTMAN HADN’T known better, he’d have thought he’d walked into a storybook illustration of Sleeping Beauty. Security lights washed the new gallery’s entrance hall with a pale gleam, illuminating the beauty asleep at the foot of his grandfather’s portrait. This woman was a late-night fantasy, all long, long legs and sleek blond hair.

Her filmy skirt and clingy sweater drew his gaze to willowy curves curled around a low display case, and to smooth golden skin where her bare arm draped over the black velvet.

But Josh knew better. She might be a sleeping beauty, all right, but not from any child’s version of the tale. Not with a huge marble erection propped upright on her lap.

Sleeping Beauty could only be Lennon McDarby, all grown up.

Moving silently into the new gallery, he drank the espresso he’d picked up in the museum’s security office and surveyed the woman before him. She’d been, what?—ten, maybe eleven the last time Josh had seen her, right before he’d headed off to college. A skinny girl, all arms and legs and conversation about things he couldn’t have cared less about.

He hadn’t thought much about her since, though he’d heard of her from his grandfather and Miss Q. But who’d have guessed that gangly kid would have grown into this golden vision? Not him.

Even if Josh had guessed, he’d never have pictured the erection—which wasn’t, incidentally, the only erection around. A watercolor nearby showed a man servicing his own needs.

“Don’t blame you a bit, pal.” He rested his gaze on a sleeping Lennon. “She’s definitely something to look at.”

Definitely.

She was the best sight he’d seen in a long time. More sexy than all the art in the room combined. With her long slender curves, silky blond hair and gold-dusted lashes fanned out in half circles on her cheeks, Lennon couldn’t look more delicious if she’d been spread out on a bed.

Unless she’d been naked.

Now there was an image to inspire more than a few late-night fantasies. Lennon, all gleaming gold skin and sleek curves, with her eyes closed and her lips parted as if awaiting his kisses.

An image that made Josh long to kneel down beside her, peel away her clothes and wake this sleeping beauty with a kiss right now, because the very idea of tasting those pouty lips and touching all that smooth golden skin clouded his thoughts and inspired an upsurge in his pulse rate.

Josh shook his head to erase the image. How in hell was he supposed to help Miss Q by protecting Lennon this weekend, when he’d spend his time protecting her from himself, instead of the bad guys?

A damned good question. This woman was passion personified. The closest he’d ever come to his perfect fantasy. And except for the unusual piece of art resting strategically on her lap, the only thing to mar the view was the portrait of his grandfather, which loomed above her head to remind Josh why he’d come. Guilt. Loads of guilt. Otherwise he’d never be in this new gallery wing at the crack of dawn. In the French Quarter during Mardi Gras, no less.

Josh didn’t celebrate Mardi Gras, hadn’t for years, anyway. When he’d been a kid, his grandfather had routinely commandeered him from his parents and grandmother, all of whom had believed the party in New Orleans proper was nothing more than a peasant festival. The real action, as far as they were concerned, took place uptown, in the mansions of the Garden District.

He hadn’t partied with his grandfather at Mardi Gras since he’d been seventeen years old. A lifetime ago. Nowadays, Josh scheduled himself out of town during the first half of February, and he’d managed that task for the past five years running.

This year he hadn’t been so lucky. A self-employed private investigator, he was just wrapping up a missing person case that had ended with a corpse, and he’d spent the past two weeks giving depositions to multijurisdictional authorities.

Just his luck. If he hadn’t been in town tonight, his answering service would have fielded the call that had turned out to be the last person on the planet he’d expected to hear from—Quinevere McDarby, his late grandfather’s mistress and the woman he’d known as Miss Q throughout his youth.

She’d worked him over in a big way, and here he was with the unenviable task of breaking the news to her great-niece.

“Lennon,” he whispered quietly, not wanting to startle her. “Lennon, wake up.”

She inhaled deeply, a soft sound that rippled in the quiet, and made the slight parting of her pouty peach lips seem as enticing as if she’d brushed that sexy mouth across his skin.

Josh swallowed hard. Without even opening her eyes, grown-up Lennon was having an absurd physical effect on him. An effect that had to be the combined result of his too-long-ignored libido and the giant phallus sitting in her lap. With that giant open mouth propped on the display case, firing his imagination with all sorts of tempting pImages**, no wonder the seam of his jeans suddenly dug into his crotch.

She tipped her heart-shaped face up and blinked open whiskey-colored eyes. Eyes he hadn’t thought about in years, but suddenly remembered with startling clarity.

Startling being the operative word, because Lennon shot bolt upright at the sight of him, inadvertently rolling the sculpture off her lap. It hit the carpeted floor with a thump.

“Penis envy, chère?”

She dragged her wide-eyed gaze down to the marble sculpture. Her mouth popped open. With jerky, panicked motions, she grabbed the huge phallus and lifted it off the floor.

Even with the low lighting, Josh could see the flush of color stain her cheeks as she repositioned the sculpture on the display base. But her flush was nothing compared to the heat rushing through him at the sight of her fingers wrapped around that smooth marble.

Taking another gulp of espresso, he barely noticed it scald his throat on the way down. “Long time no see, charity case.”

He called her by the nickname he’d coined during a long-ago conversation where he’d lamented his grandmother’s never-ending disapproval. Lennon had countered with her own tale of being quasi-orphaned and totally dependent on her great-aunt’s charity. He remembered thinking that she’d had the better deal.

Shooting a startled glance at his grandfather’s portrait, Lennon shook her head as if trying to shake off sleep, before turning back to stare at him.

“Black sheep!” She continued the name game, using a soubriquet he hadn’t heard since the last time he’d seen her, and that she remembered it pleased him. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he extended a hand and helped her stand—a fluid movement that drew his attention to every curve between her head and her toes. Then he noticed her whiskey gaze glued to the cardboard travel cup he still held in one hand.

“Espresso, black,” he said.

“Do you mind?”

He handed her the cup and watched as she sucked down an appreciative swallow. Her eyes shuttered briefly and she sighed as if she’d never tasted anything as good. “It’s uncanny.”

“What?”

“How much you look like your grandfather.”