Instead, what the heat did to him, especially since he’d just spent the day in an air-conditioned room, was make his body remember all the hot things he and Josie had done last night. He glanced down to make sure that his arousal-brought on by merely thinking about her dark, lush body-wasn’t having an obvious effect. While more unusual things had probably been seen on Bourbon Street, he was no exhibitionist.

This was a first for him, this incessant lust he felt for Josie Villefranche. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her, no matter how much sex they had or how often he was in her presence. In the year that had passed since his divorce, his social life had included a few select women, none of them making it far beyond the morning after. Hell, even with Carol, his ex, he couldn’t remember feeling this way. Perhaps he had, back in the beginning of their relationship, but what had transpired between then and now had sullied all that, making what he was feeling for Josie fresh and new and perplexing.

Never, ever had he turned his professional attentions toward helping a mark before.

He slid his right hand into his pocket, pondering that reality.

He was hired to do a job and he did it. That’s where his interest began and ended. Only this was no longer just a job to him. Not this one. Not Josie. So he’d begun digging. And he wasn’t so much surprised by what he’d uncovered as he was enlightened.

It seemed Rove had bought the two buildings to the right of Josie’s establishment, the private residence to the left, and also held the deeds to a warehouse behind the Josephine.

Obviously Dick Rove’s intention had never been to renovate the hotel and make a go of it. He planned to raze it and build a bigger hotel, something more befitting the Royal Emperor Suites family of hotels.

If Drew hadn’t been so distracted by how smalltime the job had been and so focused on the next job he wanted to win, he’d probably have picked up on that.

Then he’d let Josie into his life.

Or, rather, she’d sneaked into his mind and heart like a bewitching enchantress.

So Rove had a lot more riding on the outcome of this project than Drew had originally suspected. Which led him back to his earlier suspicion that Rove also had someone else working the case.

But who? And was he or she responsible for what was happening?

Drew neared the hotel, taking in the old place and her flower-decorated balconies and dark windows. Was the building on the city’s historical register? If it wasn’t, then Josie should take measures to make sure it was placed there immediately. Also, he needed to check into the laws that would prevent Rove from building something not in line with the architectural integrity of the area. Laws Drew’s client may have already bypassed by greasing a few of the right palms.

The Mississippi River wasn’t the only thing that ran crooked down here.

Drew stopped in front of the double doors. Closed. He cupped a hand and looked inside. Dark.

Damn.

Had Josie closed up and gone to bed?

He rang the bell he knew would alert her up in her private rooms.

Nothing.

He stepped back and looked up at the fourth floor. He thought he saw movement near the balcony to what he guessed was her room, but he couldn’t be sure.

What he could be sure of was that she wasn’t going to answer the door. And he realized it was no more than he deserved after deserting her.

He waited for five minutes, then wove his way through the tourists back toward the Marriott.

JUST AFTER DAWN, Josie locked the hotel after herself, leaving a note for Monique and Philippe that they should take the day off and that she’d call them later. She tucked her handbag under her arm and watched as Jez scampered down the street, surprisingly limber given her age. Apparently she was satisfied that her company was no longer needed and was off to do whatever it was she did between feeding times.

Josie glanced around the street before choosing a direction. At this time of the morning, the area looked like a ghost town. Stores and clubs and restaurants were closed up tight, discarded cups and litter dotted the curbs and sidewalks, and the stench of urine and beer was strong. At somewhere around ten, when everyone stirred to start the workday over again, employees would sweep and water down the sidewalks and street in front of their places of business. Until then, it looked like someone had held a party and left a helluva mess.

Josie was used to it. This was where she’d grown up. She knew which corners the homeless preferred for sleeping. Knew which puddles not to walk through. Which alleys to steer clear of.

Of course, trying to focus on her surroundings was a diversionary tactic that wasn’t quite working. She’d gotten little sleep last night. Not just because of her mysterious back-door visitor. But also because all she could see was Drew’s somber face as he’d stood on the street below, waiting for her to open the door.

For some reason she couldn’t define, she’d simply peered through the balcony doors at him, leaving him standing there. Perhaps it was an instinctual reaction designed for self-protection. Not from physical harm. But from emotional devastation.

She’d never have expected that she would come to feel what she was for the striking, grinning stranger from Kansas City. She’d had great sex before without attaching herself to the individual. But with Drew…

With Drew, all she had to do was think his name and her pulse thickened and her heart gave an off beat.

If pressed to point at any one reason for her uncharacteristic behavior, she couldn’t have done it. It was the way he put his hands on her and the way he didn’t. It was what he whispered into her ear and what he left unsaid. It was the way he slept with his arm protectively encircling her, as if he didn’t want to let her go. It was the way he did release her without her saying a word, seeming to understand her need for freedom and independence.

It was everything. It was nothing.

And she had as much control over it as she did her own heartbeat.

A trombone player was already setting up on a corner, using his case as a chair while he polished his instrument, a small cigar box at his feet for change. He spotted Josie and smiled.

“Morning, Miss Villefranche.”

“Good morning, Harry. How’s life treating you?” She tossed a dollar bill into his box.

“Better all the time.”

She smiled and continued down the street.

It took her about twenty minutes to walk to her destination. Thankfully the caretaker had already opened the gates, which were closed at night because the voodoo queen Marie Laveau’s grave had been looted one too many times by tourists and locals alike. She passed the aboveground tomb in question, which was decorated with all sorts of mementos and voodoo icons, walking silently between the narrow rows until she reached the far wall. She paused for a long moment, unmoving, then touched the plaque engraved with her grandmother’s name.

In the past year, it seemed only this place was able to give Josie a sense of peace she’d lost along with Josephine Villefranche. Her mind cleared of all thought and her body relaxed, the act of being there giving her a sense of life’s cycles. Her, her mother, her grandmother and her mother before her. Each woman different yet with the same blood running through their veins.

Even her cousin figured in there, as part of a long line of strong Villefranche females.

“Granme, I need your help,” she said quietly, the raised lettering defined under her fingertips. “I’ve fallen in love.”

She hadn’t been aware that’s what she was going to say when she’d opened her mouth, but there it was. Two women had been murdered at the Josephine, and she was in danger of losing the hotel altogether, but it was her conflicted emotions for Drew Morrison that had drawn her here, searching for some of her grandmother’s no-nonsense advice.