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Ty ducked into the next bar he recognized, knowing the guys would follow. None of Sidewinder had the slightest clue just how much trouble Ty could get into if someone recognized him in New Orleans. At least Zane had an idea of how badly things could go here. He scanned the dark bar quickly with the hope that his team would assume he was looking for a table and not the people looking to kill him—or deliver him to someone else who would do the job.
He found a small bar table near the back. As he made his way to the table he grabbed two empty barstools to give them enough seats. He sat with his back to the wall and eyes on the door. He signaled the waitress as Zane and the remaining members of Sidewinder joined him.
There was a brief tussle over who would get to pick up the tab for the evening. After several minutes of swearing and finger pointing, Nick turned to the table with a grin before explaining that he’d slipped his credit card to the pretty waitress while Digger and Ty were yelling at each other.
Ty rolled his eyes.
It wasn’t until the waitress returned with their drinks that Ty really noticed how quiet Zane was being. Ty knew New Orleans was one of the last trips Zane had gone on with his wife before she’d died and he could tell that being back in the city was getting to his lover. He just didn’t know what to do about it.
Nick caught his attention with a questioning look and nodded his head in Zane’s direction. Ty shrugged slightly. It would take a lot more than silent communication to explain why Zane was drifting out of their conversations and staring around the bar like his eyes were chasing ghosts.
Or a single ghost, Ty supposed.
“So Garrett, you ever come to New Orleans before?” Nick asked.
Zane nodded and took a sip from the Coke he was drinking. “Yeah, my wife and I came here once years ago. It was a few months before she died, actually.”
“That’s…painful,” Nick said.
Zane shook his head. “A little, but it was a good trip. The city is mostly filled with good memories, even if they are some of the last I have of her.”
“Are there any bars that you remember that we need to visit while we’re down here?” Kelly asked.
Nick threw him a look, but either Kelly didn’t notice or ignored him.
“I think Grady would be the one we should ask about that,” Owen added, breaking his relative silence.
“Why would we ask the hillbilly? I live here.” Digger swatted Owen in the shoulder.
Owen snorted. “Yes, you do. Which means your idea of the sort of bar we should visit would be one located in the middle of the fucking bayou and the only spirits they’d serve would be moonshine that tastes like gasoline.”
Owen ducked out of Digger’s grasp and laughed.
Zane chuckled and shook his head. “I remember one place. But I don’t think I could find it again if you paid me. I’m not even sure it’s still there.”
“What makes you remember it?” Nick asked.
Zane licked his lips and his cheeks began to flush. “It was the floor show and the eye candy that I remember.”
“Nice, was the eye candy guys or girls?” Kelly asked.
“Kelly,” Nick scolded.
“What? It’s a valid question.” Kelly frowned at Nick.
Ty pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Both, actually,” Zane responded. The blush on his cheeks was dark enough to make out even in the dim bar lighting. “There was a man and a woman who performed.”
Ty’s heart sped up, and he took a sip of his drink. It could have been any number of bars in New Orleans. He and Ava hadn’t been the only male and female performers in hard-to-find bars in the city. It was also entirely likely that the bar Zane was thinking of really had closed down after Katrina.
Ty swallowed a few times, trying to fight the speed of his heart. “What do you remember about the bar?”
“Yeah, give us a story, Garrett,” Kelly said as he waved his drink in the air.
Zane smiled and nodded his head. “Well, it all started with Becky dragging me through these sketchy backstreets outside of the French Quarter. I thought we were going to get mugged or something, but she kept insisting that there was some bar the locals had talked about. One with sexy performers that invited people to join them after the show.”
“Join them?” Kelly asked as he tilted his head.
“What, they picked out random people in the crowd to fuck?” Nick’s eyebrows raised as he spoke.
Ty’s stomach tumbled.
“That’s what the locals told her.” Zane shrugged.
“I’m not sure if that’s brilliant or just slutty.” Nick frowned.
“You’re a whore, Irish. I don’t think your opinion counts.” Kelly grinned.
“What did the bar look like?” Ty asked.
He wanted Zane to finish his story quickly so he didn’t have to hear his friends or Zane pass judgement on how he and Ava had survived all those years ago. His gaze drifted past their table and took in the dark bar around them. Flashes of memories ghosted through his vision as he looked for familiar, threatening faces in the bar patrons.
Zane’s brow furrowed and his gaze went distant as he recalled the details. “It was old and dark inside. There were candles everywhere and brick walls. The place was pretty as hell.”
Kelly snorted. “No one cares how pretty the bar was, man. Tell us about the eye candy!”
Kelly’s outburst drew out a chorus of groans and chuckles from everyone at the table. Eventually Zane smiled and started talking again.
“It was a burlesque comedy show. So the woman was all curves and feathers in a corset. She stalked the stage like a predator, but somehow managed to seem soft and seductive.” Zane chuckled. “She was very good at her job.”
Ty clenched his teeth and chuckled along with everyone else.
The inside of his head was filled with a fog of memories. Memories of helping Ava cinch up her corset before a show and the fire in her eyes as she sang back at him onstage. The predator comparison wasn’t one that he’d heard before but it fit astonishingly well. She’d always had that aura of a panther in a cage to her.
“What about the guy?” Nick asked.
Zane’s blush returned in full force. “He was…unlike anyone I’d ever seen before. He wore a bowler hat and a vest over a ruffled shirt. He had green eyes, I remember that much.”
Ty felt lightheaded.
On the one hand, it was entirely possible—even likely—that Zane and his wife had visited the city and La Fée Verte months before Ty showed up in New Orleans. Which meant that the man Zane had seen couldn’t have been him. That was a good thing. Ty didn’t even want to begin to ponder how Zane would react to knowing how Ty had really spent those years in New Orleans. Wearing eyeliner onstage and fucking strangers to get information wasn’t exactly Ty’s proudest moment, even though they were some of his happiest memories.
At least, of the memories he had before he’d met Zane.
There was another part of him that was a little nauseous with jealousy. He knew Zane had slept with other people, other men, before him. That much was obvious. But to hear him talk about someone other than Ty who could make him blush like that over a nearly decade old memory? He was torn between the need to get Zane to stop talking and the nearly overwhelming urge to drag him off to a coat closet or their hotel room and maul him.
Nick nudged Zane’s elbow. “So what happened next? What made this guy so unforgettable?”
Zane huffed and swirled the ice in his glass. “He, uh, called me out. He was heckling members of the crowd as part of the opening act and spotted Becky and I. Then he said something like, ‘Hey, gorgeous. Where have you been all my life?’”
Ty bit down on his tongue. A pair of dark eyes on a stunning, dark haired man in the crowd during the first few months he’d been in the city came burning through to the forefront of his memory. What he’d actually asked was, “Well, hello, beautiful. Where have you been all my life? Where are you from, gorgeous?”
Dammit.
“Becky told him she was from Austin and he shut her down almost immediately.” Zane managed to blush even harder. “He said he was talking to me and she should wait her turn.”
Ty’s stomach soured.
There was still an extraordinarily slim chance that it could have been someone else. Some other bar or even someone that worked in the bar before Ty was assigned to New Orleans. But Ty knew better.
Fate was a cruel mistress with a wicked sense of humor. Ty didn’t know why he was surprised.
“Damn, son,” Nick said with a laugh. “That is quite the line.”
“Did you get invited to fuck them?” Kelly asked.
Ty’s breath hitched.
Zane nodded. “After the show the woman came up to us and asked us to join them.”
“Did you do it?”
Kelly’s inquisitive nature was beginning to grate on Ty’s nerves. He loved the man like a brother but there were times when Ty wished he was a little less…him. This was one of those times.
Zane shook his head. “Becky wanted to, but I said no.”
“Did you think you’d get too jealous seeing her with someone else?” Nick asked.
“It wasn’t that. Honestly, she’d been pushing me at the guy all through the show. She kept telling me that she’d be happy to just watch the two of us together if I wanted to go for it.”
Digger snorted. “Woman sounds like she was crazy.”
Ty cursed under his breath and glared at Digger.
Zane’s eyes went distant and started to shine. “She was.”
The table was quiet after that.
Ty studied the melting ice in his glass in an attempt to avoid pointed looks from the others. He never knew what to say in the face of Zane’s grief at the best of times. Tonight he was more lost than usual as he struggled to fight off the seductive and tempestuous pull the city had on him.
Nick was the one who eventually broke the silence. “Did you ever end up going back there or seeing either of them again?”
“I caught a glimpse of the guy smoking in the alley outside the bar… But, no, we never went back.” Zane looked thoughtful for a moment. “It was a weird situation because he was the first person other than my wife that I’d been attracted to in years, if ever.”
“Was it weird because he was a guy?” Ty asked. He knew he shouldn’t have asked, but the curiosity was overwhelming.
“No, that didn’t bother me. I just wasn’t used to being drawn to anyone who wasn’t my wife.” Zane shook his head. “We got together in high school there’d never been anyone else for me. Not for a long time.” He turned his gaze toward Ty and gave him that world weary smile that always sent Ty’s pulse racing.
Ty smiled back at him, trying to keep the twinge of sadness out of his eyes. It would always be painful to hear how he wasn’t the love of Zane’s life. That there’d been someone else who shared Zane’s life before him who should have still been there at his side. That realization would forever make Ty feel like a fraud. Still, if he had to settle for the scraps of Zane’s love that weren’t dedicated to the memory of his wife? Well, Ty was selfish enough to hold onto them with a dying man’s grip.
Ty asked Zane a few more questions about the man who’d caught his eye and when it all happened. He was relieved when Zane said that he didn’t remember what the man looked like and that they’d come to the city months before Ty had been assigned to New Orleans. He caught Zane’s curious expression over his obvious relief but he didn’t bother to acknowledge it.
Zane’s story was eerily familiar but, thankfully, it was just a coincidence.
Ty breathed easier as the tension that had wrapped itself around his spine tumbled to the floor.
Before anyone got to the point where they felt the need to start up a new conversation, Zane patted his pockets in search of his cigarettes and excused himself. Ty still hated that Zane smoked but he didn’t have the energy to fight him over it this weekend. He was hoping that giving Zane the illusion of permission to indulge in one of his vices would be enough to keep him from growing too moody. Otherwise, he knew he’d grow frustrated of the idea that their quiet weekend plans had been interrupted and he’d start taking it out on Ty and his friends.
Ty watched Zane walk away. Faint echoes of the conversations picking up again around him teased at his senses but he didn’t allow them to steal his attention.
Whispers of piano notes Murdoch played years before drifted through his memory. As his eyes unfocused, he was transported back to the night that the dark eyed man came into La Fée Verte with his perfect little wife.
2003 New Orleans, Louisiana
They were halfway through their Friday night show when Ty undid the top four buttons on his ruffled shirt as he swaggered toward the old fashioned microphone on the dimly lit stage. The catcalls from the crowd made a smile tug at his lips. He tilted the bowler on his head until it was cockeyed and left his hazel eyes in shadow. Partly to add mystique to the character he played on the stage and also to keep people from getting a good look at him.
Murdoch began playing the first few notes of “Sinner’s Prayer” on the piano. The bar’s guitarist Laurent started strumming at the same time the lines of the song began spilling from Ty’s lips. The crowd went nuts, as they had at the beginning of each set that night. Just like they did every night. The sound sent a thrill over Ty’s skin. Performing was certainly better than getting shot at.
The song was nearly over when Ava stalked onto the stage. Ty turned to her and began singing the haunting lyrics in her direction. She waved him off, much to the delight of the audience members. As soon as the song was over they moved into a rendition of “Layla” that had Ty chasing her around the stage on his knees and waving his hands in mock-desperation as she moved through the crowd, touching different audience members and whispering wicked things in their ears. She joined him onstage to help him croon out the last few lyrics as they stared into ear others eyes.
They held that pose for a few heartbeats as the crowd cheered.
Ty and the band took a bow before he slipped behind the curtains and made his way into the crowd to collect tips. He performed tricks and taunted audience members. When the music from Ava’s burlesque acted picked up its tempo, Ty clapped along and urged the audience to ramp up their energy.
Now that he was here on the floor among the audience his stomach twisted with every step. He felt eyes on him, not from the crowd specifically, but from a man with dark eyes he’d called out to at the beginning of the show. The same man his gaze had been drawn to over and over again throughout the night. The pull was magnetic and unlike any he’d experienced before in his life.
Eventually he wasn’t able to avoid the man’s table any longer. He sauntered toward him with a smile on his face. His heart fluttered with each passing moment. His breath caught in his throat when the man turned as if Ty had called out to him and met his gaze with matching intensity.
All thoughts of extending an invitation for the man to join him in a casual fuck disappeared as Ty lost himself in those dark eyes. He didn’t know what it was about this man that had him enchanted but he realized as he held out his bowler for the man to drop a tip into that one night wouldn’t be enough. In that moment he was convinced that only getting a glimpse at the man as he came undone under Ty’s fingers would hurt more than not taking the chance to experience him in bed.
When the man pulled the hundred dollar bill from his wallet and deposited in the hat, Ty caught a glimpse of a gold wedding band on his left hand.
His chest ached at the sight.
Of course a man that gorgeous would be married. They’d probably come to the city on some sort of rekindle-the-romance vacation and were spending their evening slumming it in one of the bars the locals spoke highly of. Suddenly he was having a lot less fun being on display in front of a crowd of tourists.
He took a steadying breath and tried to remind himself why he was in New Orleans. Of his real job.
He turned his attention to the bill in his hat and after a bit of sleight-of-hand he made the bill disappear. He threw the man a scandalized smile and had to stop himself from doing something stupid when the man’s warm laughter flooded his ears.
Before he had the chance to do something he’d regret, he took a bow and dropped the bowler back onto his head. He winked at the man one last time before disappearing back into the audience.
Several minutes later, Ty stood draped in shadows to the side of the stage. He and Ava had given their last bows for the night and the audience were beginning to do the dance where they decided whether to leave immediately or stay for the last hour that the bar was open after the show. If enough of them stayed Ash, their bartender, would end up doing his bottle spinning tricks until it was time to close the doors.
An arm wrapped around his waist and another draped over his shoulder. Slender fingers slid under his unbuttoned shirt and smoothed over his chest. "Il est charmant.”¹
Ava’s voice purred in his ear. He smiled at the familiar rush of affection that flowed over his skin. He reached up and wrapped his fingers around the wrist of her hand on his chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, cher.”²
She chuckled darkly and pressed a kiss against his jaw. “The man you’ve been watching all night, with the pretty little woman from Texas.”
He hummed noncommittally.
“You look at him like you want to drown in him, mon cher chat.”³
He laughed. “Non.”⁴
She rested her cheek against his shoulder. He fought to keep his pulse from hammering under her fingers. He mentally cursed himself. He was here to investigate her father, not to fall for strange, married men.
“Did you invite him and his girlfriend to come play with us?”
“No, he and his wife are tourists. I don’t think they’d be interested.”
Ava laughed. “I saw the way he watched you, Ty. I think he’d be happy grabbing his ankles for you.”
Ty refused to dwell on that mental image. “Regardless of any attraction he may have toward me it’s obvious he’s scared shitless. Not to mention married, that actually means something to some people, you know?”
Ava kissed his cheek and pulled her arms away. “You’re such a romantic.”
Ty frowned. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to persuade them to play with us.” Ava laughed. “I bet she’d be fun.” She winked at him before slinking off in the direction of their table.
“Ava,” He hissed but she ignored him. “Merde.”⁵
Ty watched as Ava gently held the dark eyed man and his wife in their seats after she reached their table. They looked surprised but receptive to what she was saying. He knew he should be trying to look busy instead of watching them with a fissure of hope in his chest. But no matter what command he tried sending through his body, his feet refused to move from where they’d rooted themselves on the old wood floor.
Murdoch came to stand next to him as Ava talked to the man and his wife. Ty could barely make out the flustered smile on the man’s face as he responded to Ava’s question. The slight drop in her shoulders told Ty everything he needed to know. He felt Murdoch’s reassuring palm rest on his back as he tried to convince himself he wasn’t disappointed that the man had turned them down.
“Je suis désolé, mon ami,”⁶ Murdoch said in a warm voice.
Ty gave him a brittle smile and shrugged. “Ça va.”⁶
He excused himself and ducked backstage to grab a cigarillo and his lighter.
He was leaning against the wall outside the bar when the sound of laughter caught his attention. He looked up just in time to see the man and his wife walk out of the door.
Once again the man turned to look at Ty as if Ty had called out to him, as if he couldn’t ignore the pull between them. It made Ty’s heart clench. The man nodded when their eyes met. Ty tipped his hat to them, before watching the man scurry off into the night with his wife.
After that night, Ty made it a point to never speak to a member of the crowd with the same intensity that he gave to the man with the dark eyes. Ava didn’t notice the change and if she did she never mentioned it. He began to hold his cards closer to his vest and made sure no one, not even the woman he shared his bed with, caught a glimpse of his real attraction to anyone again. They continued to bring people to their bed but Ty tried to keep it as close to business and the occasional dabble of fun whenever possible.
“Grady,” Nick’s voice tore Ty out of his memories.
Ty smiled and fought off a blush. “What?”
“Where did you just disappear to?”
He shook his head at Nick’s raised eyebrow. “I was just…remembering. This city is filled with a lot of years worth of memories for me.”
Nick nodded.
“Let’s get out of here. I’m tired of this bar,” Kelly said as he slid off his barstool. Owen reached out and steadied him as Kelly swayed on his feet. “I’m okay.” Kelly waved a hand.
Ty chuckled.
Nick settled their bill with the waitress. They all stood and made their way toward the door. Nick draped an arm over Ty’s shoulders. “Let’s go see what kind of trouble your boy has gotten himself into now.”
Ty laughed.
¹ - He is lovely = Il est charmant
² - My dear = cher
³ - My dear cat = mon cher chat
⁴ - No = Non
⁵ - Shit = Merde
⁶ - I’m sorry, my friend. = Je suis désolé, mon ami
⁷ - It’s okay / I’m fine = Ça va