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“Even better.” He grinned.
“All right. If I’m going to face the firing squad over breakfast, I should at least have a good story to tell.” I plucked my beaded clutch in my hand.
“Always my motto.” His lips lowered close to my ear. “Carpe noctem.”
I tilted my eyes toward him slightly. “Seize the night.”
“What else?”
He guided me out of the bar with his hand pressed to my back. It seared as if he wanted to tattoo remnants of the night on my skin. But there weren’t needles. Just protective brushes of his fingertips. I thought I knew exactly what motto he would have chosen to ink along my body.
Chapter5
Knight
The windows were down. I looked over as Kennedy lifted the clasp from her hair, loosening the twist and freeing the pins. Her tresses spilled over her shoulders in the wind. Fuck me.
I threw the car into another gear and pressed on the pedal.
It would have been a hell of a lot easier if her father wasn’t part of the new blood moving into town. Kennedy was as defined by her role as I was by mine. I promised her a good time. I would deliver. We could deal with family ties and consequences in the morning.
I saw the confusion on her face when I pulled into the parking lot.
“What is this place?” she asked.
I laughed. “You’ll see.” We had driven farther out of town toward the riverbank. We were in bayou territory.
I walked around to the passenger side of the car and opened the door for her.
“Picnic tables?” Her head tilted.
“You’ve had New Orleans’s finest champagne. Now you need to experience the finest oysters.”
She shook her head as I led her to a table covered with a red and white vinyl cloth. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”
“Trust me.”
She sat sideways in order to spin and thread her legs over the bench. A string of lights dangled over the table. I climbed in across from her.
I placed the remainder of the champagne bottle on the table from the bar. Marguerite had wrapped and bagged it for me on the way out the door. We waited for a server.
“It’s after midnight. Why is this place still open?” she asked. “And packed.” She looked left and right at the crowded tables.
“I told you. It’s the best.” I ordered a platter of oysters when the waiter arrived and asked for cups.
“You seem so normal,” Kennedy commented. “It’s weird how normal you are. It’s almost scary.”
“I am normal.” I huffed. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
She shook her head. “No. You’re royalty. That makes you abnormal and hardly an impartial judge. I know what royalty means where I come from. In New Orleans, it’s an entirely different level. So it’s the French families in power here, not Italian. But the rules are the same.”
I poured our champagne into paper cups. Kennedy’s eyes widened when she saw the oysters on ice arrive.
“You eat this?” she pointed at them.
I winked. “You’ll love them.”
I could tell she was against the platter. She didn’t like how they looked.
