chapter Eight
THE RAGIN’ CAJUN
“YOU know, you’d think she’d have something basic I could wear. Sweatpants. Plain old jeans. Hell, a plain pair of black leather pants.”
Josie Lynn stood by the door, watching Drake rifle through Zelda’s closet like a teenage girl trying to choose a dress for the prom.
He pulled out another pair of pants. They were pink leather with silver studding around the pockets and down the leg.
“This is like the fourth pair of pink pants. She’s a dominatrix for God’s sake.” He shoved the pants back into the closet.
Josie Lynn could no longer suppress her amusement. She giggled.
He shot her a look. “What’s so funny?”
“You must be a nightmare to shop with,” she said, shaking her head and laughing again.
He looked grumpy for a moment, then he begrudgingly smiled.
“Well, I don’t usually buy clothing in the tacky section.” He pulled out a pair of silver, almost plastic-looking leggings to demonstrate his issue.
“But you are wandering around with your junk hanging out,” she said. “I think this is a prime example of beggars can’t be choosers.”
He shrugged, still not conceding she might have a point.
She levered herself away from the doorjamb and moved so she could see into the closet a little better, but still left plenty of space between herself and Drake. There were too many things that had happened between them for her to feel comfortable getting too close.
“Why don’t you just hand me something to bring the others?” she suggested. “They need to get Zelda to the hospital.”
Drake glanced at her, and she could tell he was undecided about letting her out of his sight. Clearly his admiration of how she’d wrangled the gator had worn off, and he was back to distrusting her.
“I’m not going to take off,” she assured him. “I have just as much reason to want to find those transvestites as you do.” Probably even more. Her name, her livelihood, everything rested on figuring out what had happened last night.
He nodded, and handed the silver leggings to her, then he grabbed a T-shirt that actually said, DOMMES HAVE IT ALL TIED UP.
She made a face as she took the garments. “Okay, she does have questionable taste.”
“Well, if you knew Saxon—the groom, you’d know that is really true.”
She looked down at the clothes, then asked, “Are you worried about your friend?”
Drake pulled out another pair of pants, these ones white with more metal studding. “Saxon? I’m sure he’ll turn up. This wouldn’t be the first time he’s gone missing. Last year, he disappeared for about a week. Turns out he got lost in Metairie.”
“Metairie—as in the suburb only a few miles from here?”
“That’s the one.”
“How did he manage that? Drugs? Drinking?”
He shook his head. “Nope, he was just going to Walmart. He gets confused sometimes. Well, a lot of the time. So aside from her abominable taste, I guess Zelda is good for him. At least she knows where she is most of the time.”
“Unfortunately, she doesn’t right now,” Josie Lynn said, then held up the clothes. “I better get these to your friends.”
“I’ll be right there,” he told her, his tone harder than it had been, and she realized he still didn’t trust her. And in truth, she supposed she didn’t blame him. If the tables were turned, she would think he looked pretty guilty, too.
So she was going to have to stay with him and figure this mess out. She paused on the way out of the room to snag a thick black belt, with studs of course, that was lying on the dresser.
The hallway was quiet. Waldo lay by the bathroom door, looking rather pathetic tied to the bathroom doorknob with his large snout wrapped in cord.
“Sorry, big guy,” she said on the way by him. “But you do live with a dominatrix. I suspect bondage is kind of par for the course around here.”
Waldo didn’t respond, not even with a blink of his reptilian eyes or a swish of his scaly tail, but Josie Lynn did hear something behind her. Expecting to see Drake already following her, she was surprised to see the hallway and bedroom door empty.
She must have heard Drake moving inside the room. She returned her attention to getting the clothes to Drake’s friends. Everyone seemed pretty confident that Zelda was okay, but they should probably hurry and get her checked out. Who knew what kind of drugs had been slipped in the punch, if that was even what they had been slipped into, and who knew how much Zelda had gotten.
She opened the dungeon door and hurried inside.
* * *
DRAKE DUCKED BACK into Zelda’s bedroom before Josie Lynn could see him and paused, listening, hoping she’d continue talking to herself. Or Waldo, as the case may be. Talking sweetly to an alligator like she was talking to the family dog.
He had to admit, she didn’t seem like a hardened criminal. Or a criminal at all. Okay, she could wrestle an alligator, which was thoroughly impressive. And she definitely had no qualms about stating her mind. He was pretty sure neither of those things were on any lists of top traits for criminal offenders. But those two things made her interesting as hell. And very appealing—in this oddly paradoxical way. She was clearly tough, yet she had this sweet, angel face and soft, curvy body.
He just didn’t know. Maybe she wasn’t involved in the events of last night.
And maybe he was just getting suckered in by a lovely face and sexy body. God knows he had an MO for that sort of thing. How many of his worst choices in life were made because he’d fallen for a pretty face?
He looked down at his dick—blessedly flaccid at the moment, and it wasn’t many times in a man’s life that he thought that. But his buddy down there had made far too many of the most important life decisions for him.
“And you are not a good judge of character, my friend,” he informed his penis.
Still, he was having doubts about Josie Lynn’s guilt. He did see her take the money, but she hadn’t denied that fact. And while she did make and have access to the punch, she’d also made a valid point about that, too; dozens of people had had access to it.
He guessed that the only way he was going to figure out the truth was to find the gang of transvestites, and just to be safe, he was going to keep Cupcake with him. He was sure she wouldn’t like it. She’d made it abundantly clear last night and tonight that he was not one of her favorite people. But he couldn’t risk her possibly being a part of this mess and getting away with robbery. So they would go search the French Quarter for clues.
How hard could it be to find five drag queens dressed like Cher?
* * *
“SO HOW LONG have you known Drake?” Katie asked as she hefted Zelda’s leg in the air.
Josie Lynn instantly felt her cheeks burn.
“Umm, I just met him last night.” She started to fidget with his pirate shirt, but caught herself.
“Well, welcome to the weird world of The Impalers.”
Josie Lynn frowned at Stella, who struggled to get the silver legging over one of Zelda’s large feet. “The Impalers?”
“Hold her leg still,” Stella told Katie, then answered Josie Lynn, “The Impalers is the name of the band that all of our boys are in. Wyatt, my boyfriend, plays rhythm guitar and tries to sing.” The redhead stopped her exertion to shoot Josie Lynn a conspiratorial smile. “Don’t tell him I said that. He thinks he’s got a great voice.”
Josie Lynn readily nodded, although she wondered when exactly she would ever meet her boyfriend. She didn’t expect to see these people again after tonight.
“And my husband,” Katie said, trying to get a better grip on Zelda’s long leg, “actually can sing. He’s the lead singer.”
Josie Lynn nodded, a little surprised and overwhelmed by the two women’s friendliness, but she supposed they didn’t know that Drake thought she was the villain of last night. They probably wouldn’t be so nice if they knew that. There was still every chance Drake might tell them, too. Not that any of that mattered as long as she found out the truth.
But even as her thoughts went to all those places, she found herself asking, “What does Drake play?”
“Oh, he’s the lead guitarist,” Katie said smiling at her. She had such a lovely smile. One of those smiles that made the person she was smiling at want to smile, too.
“Probably the best guitarist on Bourbon,” said Stella, still focused on dressing Zelda, a satisfied smile curving her lips as she finally managed to get the legging over Zelda’s foot. “Maybe even all of New Orleans. He’s amazingly talented.”
“Although he’d deny that,” Katie added. “He can be very humble about his talent.”
Humble? Josie Lynn hadn’t gotten that vibe from him. But these were his friends; they would see him differently than she would.
“But only about his talent,” Stella said, waiting for Katie to step over Zelda and raise her other leg. “About everything else, he can be pretty arrogant.”
“Well, I think that’s because of how he was raised, don’t you?” Katie said.
“Probably,” Stella agreed, then bit her lips as she concentrated on lining up the leg hole of the legging with other Zelda’s foot.
Again, almost against her will, Josie Lynn found herself asking, “How was he raised?”
Stella’s stopped her lining up, and Katie almost dropped Zelda’s leg. Josie Lynn didn’t miss the look the two women exchanged. They thought they had said too much.
“He was raised . . .” Katie looked at Stella for help.
“He was raised very privileged.”
Josie Lynn got the feeling that wasn’t exactly the word either of the women wanted to use, but she didn’t get the chance to ask more, because the door opened and the privileged Drake strode into the room. She was pretty sure none of them were thinking about his past now. All eyes and thoughts were locked on his outfit. Wow, and what a look it was.
He’d managed to find pants that fit him and that weren’t pink or white or sparkly. However, they were turquoise. Skintight, shiny, vinyl turquoise pants. And with that he wore a plain black T-shirt, except it was also skintight and had a low V-neck, exposing his lightly hairy chest. On his feet, he wore black flip-flops that were a little too small, so that his heels hung off the back, and there were silver metal studs along the straps.
Josie Lynn smiled despite herself. So he hadn’t totally avoided the studding.
“Drake,” Stella said, “you look so . . .”
“Fashion forward?” Katie suggested.
“That wasn’t exactly the description I would have gone for, but it will do,” Stella said, then laughed.
Katie smiled. Josie Lynn had already figured out the pretty blonde was too sweet to outright laugh at him. Josie Lynn didn’t have such qualms, but she did try to hide her amusement behind a hand.
“Laugh it up, ladies,” Drake said. “I can go back to wandering around with Mr. Big hanging out.”
He started to reach for the top button of the pants and all of them shouted, “No!”
He dropped his hands to hips. “Then don’t be mocking the look.”
Then to Josie Lynn’s utter surprise, he cat-walked over to join them, singing “I’m Sexy and I Know It.” She laughed again, as did the others. Clearly he didn’t really mind that they found his clothing amusing. He did, too. He may be arrogant, but he also didn’t take himself too seriously. She also learned that he couldn’t sing either.
He stopped his out-of-tune singing and asked how Zelda was. Then he crouched down to check Zelda, his fingers deftly finding her pulse. Again there was a confidence about him that Josie Lynn found very appealing.
“I think she’s fine,” he said to Katie, then smiled to reassure his friend. That smile was very, very appealing, too.
Stop it! She didn’t want to find more things to like about this man, because she was far too attracted to him already. Yet here she was, finding him funny and sweet and totally sexy, while he thought she was a liar and a thief. Okay, a liar and a thief he’d do the dirty with, but not one he respected. Or believed.
Again, leave it to her to get all moony about a man who didn’t respect her in the least. Hmm, that was another pattern in her life, though, wasn’t it?
“I really think she’d just passed out,” he said after a minute. The vinyl of the turquoise pants creaked as he stood.
Katie straddled Zelda, her back to the prone woman’s face. She bent forward and grabbed both of Zelda’s ankles and yanked them upward. At the same time, Stella tugged the leggings up the unconscious woman’s legs toward her hips.
“Well, we’ll take her to the hospital anyway,” Stella said, then grunted slightly as she tried to get the pants the rest of the way under Zelda’s butt. “Better safe than sorry.”
Then she paused her pulling and added, “So why don’t you let us handle this, and maybe you two can start trying to figure out what happened to all of us.”
Stella raised an eyebrow at Drake when he didn’t react right away.
“Right,” Drake said, seeming to get the unspoken hint. He looked at Josie Lynn. “We do have some leads we need to follow.”
Josie Lynn waited for Drake to elaborate, to finally tell these women that he’d already figured out that she was involved in last night’s disaster. But instead he walked over to Josie Lynn.
“Are you ready to go see what we can find out?”
She nodded, wondering why he hadn’t shared what he’d seen last night.
He looked her up and down, his expression unreadable, and her stomach sank. Now he was going to announce her suspected involvement.
“You definitely pull off that shirt a lot better than I did.”
Josie Lynn stared at him, almost sagging with relief. “Th—thanks.”
“It looks cute,” Katie said. “That belt really works.”
“Yes, you can definitely pull off ‘pirate chic,’” Drake said with a slight smile. “But then you are already a pro at pillaging and plundering.”
Josie Lynn’s relieved expression disappeared. She shot an awkward glance toward the two women, who both looked curious about his comment. Josie Lynn waited with them for his explanation. The explanation that would definitely make her look guilty.
“Because she’s already stolen my heart,” he said pressing his hand to his chest in an overly dramatic way.
Josie Lynn felt her cheeks burning. He hadn’t told them about the fact that she’d taken money to let strangers in to the wedding reception. But he had made the comment to let her know he still thought she was guilty. And then the second comment was obviously to mock her.
And she’d just been thinking how likeable this guy seemed to be. Again, that was just another sign of her colossally bad judgment.
“Aww,” Katie said, clearly missing any of Drake’s sarcastic undertone. Stella didn’t seem to notice either, although from the roll of her eyes, she clearly thought his vow was corny.
But Josie Lynn knew it wasn’t meant to be corny, it was designed to make sure she knew she had to clear herself tonight. Or she would be in trouble with him and all of the wedding guests.
And she was going to clear herself.
“Let’s get going,” she said, her tone cool. She needed to keep her emotions in check, and the best way to do that was to stay as removed from Drake’s charms as possible. He didn’t believe her. He wasn’t going on this search with her to see if she was telling the truth. He was going with her to make sure she didn’t get away and that she paid. That was it.
She had to prove herself, and protect herself. Period.
* * *
DRAKE FOLLOWED JOSIE Lynn, who didn’t wait to see if he was going to join her. He was a little baffled by her sudden shift in mood. Probably he shouldn’t have flirted with her so blatantly in front of Stella and Katie. That had made her uncomfortable, which wasn’t his intention, but he should have known that would be her reaction. He had seen a lighter, more open side of her and thought he could get away with a little flirting. Obviously not.
He found her attractive when she was guarded and serious. But damn, he’d found her outright stunning when she let her guard down and laughed and smiled. She was gorgeous. He really did want to get to know her. She fascinated him. But that openness was gone. He didn’t like that she was all shut down again.
They stepped back into the hallway where Waldo sat looking decidedly uncomfortable in his makeshift muzzle.
“I bet you’d like to wrap a bungee cord around my mouth, too,” he said as they skirted the big animal and headed to the door at the end of the hall.
“Or neck,” she muttered, and Drake actually found himself amused.
“So vicious,” he said.
She spun toward him just as they would have reached to door. “And let me guess, you are now going to add potentially violent to liar and thief.”
Drake frowned. “No, I don’t get any real violence vibe from you, Cupcake. But I am going to keep you in my sight until we sort out exactly what happened last night. I’m quite sure you’d do that same thing in my shoes.”
She stared at him, and he could see some of the defensiveness fade from her bright blue eyes.
“Yes,” she finally admitted. “Yes, I would.”
“So why don’t we call a truce for now.”
She considered him, then nodded. “Truce.”
He nodded, too, and pushed open the door to the main rooms of Zelda’s house. Even though Drake had never been here before, since he liked to avoid the whole domme thing, it wasn’t hard to find the front door.
When they stepped out onto the street, Josie Lynn paused, looking around as if she was trying to get her bearings.
“Don’t worry, I know where we are.”
She shook her head, still looking around. “It’s not that. It’s just—I didn’t expect it to be nighttime.”
“Of course, it’s nighttime,” he said automatically, then realized that wouldn’t make sense to her. She had the luxury of being awake either night or day, unlike him.
She turned her quizzical gaze toward him. “Why ‘of course’?”
“Well, I just figured we had to have been out for a long time, you know, since we were drugged.”
She seemed to accept his explanation. She started down the sidewalk, and he fell into step beside her.
“So where should we go first?” he asked. “Is your place nearby? Do you want to change?”
“I don’t live walking distance from here,” she said, then looked down at herself. “I think this looks all right.”
Drake nodded. His shirt as a dress was more than all right. She’d rolled back the sleeves so the ruffles at the wrist were less noticeable. She’d also undone a couple of buttons to give glimpses of her pale neck and chest, while only hinting at her full breasts under the cascade of linen and lace that was cinched at the waist with a wide belt. The hem fell a few inches above her knees, far longer than Zelda’s wedding dress, and on her feet, she somehow still had the black utility-style boots that had been a part of her work uniform.
Josie Lynn looked cute and sexy and kind of hip. Even the boots worked with the outfit.
But he’d already learned where saying anything flirty would get him: standing outside the walls she put around herself. So he simply nodded. “It looks fine.”
She inspected it once more, tugging down the hem a little, then said, “I’d like to go back to Gautreaux’s. I want to see if my stuff is still there, and maybe if it is, we could test the punch bowl or glasses for traces of whatever drug was used.”
“Good idea.”
They headed down St. Louis toward Chartres, where the reception venue was.
“If it is the band of marauding Chers who did this, do you think robbery was their main goal?”
Drake shrugged. “Who can know what marauding Chers want, but since we don’t have any of our valuables, it seems likely.”
“But why were we missing our clothing, too?”
“Well, I don’t know if you recall how you felt before you blacked out, but I do, and I definitely wanted to be doing things that required me losing my clothes.”
Josie Lynn didn’t say anything, but her deep pink blush was answer enough.
They both fell silent.
“Do—do you think we did have sex?” she asked, her voice quieter than normal. Her cheeks pinker still.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “But I think it’s very possible. What do you think?”
When she fell quiet again, he glanced at her profile. Her lips were pressed firmly together, and she blinked several times as if she was fighting tears. That was answer enough, too.
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if she felt different, if she thought she could even tell, physically, if something might have happened. But her forlorn expression stopped him. He reached out to touch her arm. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “I—I just hope all my catering stuff is still at Gautreaux’s.”
Drake didn’t doubt she was concerned about that, but he knew that wasn’t what had her ready to cry. He tried not to be offended that the idea of possibly having had sex with him brought her to tears. After all, she had made it clear, pre-drugging, that she wasn’t interested in him, and if they had done the dirty, the act hadn’t been her choice, but because of the effects of the drug.
He had to admit that he didn’t like the idea either.
“You know what, we probably didn’t,” he said with feigned decisiveness.
“You don’t think so?”
He shook his head. “Nope, and since we don’t remember what happened anyway, I think we might as well assume nothing did.”
She didn’t say anything more, and he got the distinct feeling that plan didn’t soothe her as much as she’d like.