Sandra Hill - [Jinx 03] Read Free Page A

tucked into dark blue chinos. He looked like a college student.
    Then maybe the older gentleman with salt and pepper hair. Fiftyish. Well-built. Designer suit.
    Third . . . hmmm, she couldn’t decide. She should probably invite the guy who looked like Tony from
The Sopranos,
if she had the nerve. Or the scowling man who was both homely and tempting as hell; rough sex, for sure.
    She had her hand on the phone, about to request her first “date,” when she noticed two men amble into the room laughing at some private joke. Her survey started to swing on a return scan, then doubled back.
    Oh. My. God!
    Could it be . . . ? No, it’s impossible.
    The tall man with dark hair, late twenties, wearing a black suit over a tight white silk T-shirt, stopped dead and was staring at her, too. Her camera took him in, which she intended to erase the moment she got home. Or maybe not.
    This was an absolute nightmare. The worst possible thing that could have happened.
    It was that slimebucket, oversexed, full-of-himself Cajun jerk. John LeDeux.
    Whom she’d had a crush on as a girl and been hopelessly attracted to as a woman, despite her seeming intelligence. What was it about men like John LeDeux that caused women’s IQs to nosedive? She had successfully avoided him for five long years. Why else would she have stayed in Texas for so long? What irony, to finally run into him, after being back here for only six months, in a . . . a sex club.
    If some higher power would just let a crack open in the floor, she would gladly jump in, assignment be damned.
He’d like to be on her menu, guar-an-teed! . . .
    John LeDeux ambled into the Playpen for his night shift.
    The idea of him selling sex, or buying it for that matter, was ludicrous, but the dickhead managers of this place couldn’t see past their cash registers.
One hundred dollars for a blow job? I don’t think so! I’m worth way more than that.
    He scanned the room, looking for potential “customers.” Then went stone cold still.
    Well, well, well, lookee here. Celine Arseneaux, out to buy herself some action.
    Was she that hard up? She always was a stick-up-the-ass prudish geek, too smart for her own good. Thought she was better than the rest of stupid mankind. Except for that one time that he barely recalled. She’d been hot damn non-geeky that night if his fuzzy recollection was accurate.
    But wait, wasn’t she supposed to be some hotshot newspaper reporter in Dallas? No, wait, someone mentioned recently that she’d moved to the
New Orleans Times-Tribune.
Why would she be here . . . ?
    Oh, good Lord. She’s here on assignment. Man, this is a FUBAR waiting to happen.
    He whispered to Tank Woodrow . . . Police Lieutenant Clifford “Tank” Woodrow . . . at his side, “Nine o’clock. Lady in black and red dress. Reporter.”
    “The one with the flame-colored mouth that looks like it could melt salt off a pretzel stick?”
    He laughed, just knowing how much Celine would appreciate that description. Not! “That would be the one.”
    “Shiiit! She’s gonna blow our cover.”
    He and Tank had been undercover at the Playpen for the past week. The Fontaine police department, in conjunction with the special state organized crime unit, were about to bust this and other operations of the Dixie Mafia wide open. This woman would ruin it all.
    Not if he could help it.
    The instant she saw him, she recognized him, her eyes going wide as saucers.
    “Watch my back,” he told Tank.
    Against Playpen rules, he approached the table, amused to see Celine averting her face, hoping she could escape his notice. Fat chance!
    He yanked a chair around and sat down close to her, with his back to the bar, where the client facilitator stood watching. Yeah, that’s what the pompous pimp called himself.
    “Hey, darlin’, lookin’ fer a date?” he asked with the lazy southern drawl he had perfected over the years.
    She mumbled something, her face still averted. He was pretty sure she’d told him