Page 20 of Tell Me

She exhaled a soft laugh at that, and my heart soared. Brooks loved to laugh and did it often, but being the one to make it happen...

“Where were you going when my men kidnapped you?” I asked, suddenly needing to know. Her father had refused her but Brooks always had multiple plans, and I needed to know who else was on her list.

Who was her next choice after her father failed her?

When she looked up, I caught the glance of some random beam of light on the whites of her eyes. They were glassy with unshed tears and emotion. “I was coming to find you,” she whispered.

That was all I needed to know. She’d gone to the Landry mansion first, and that made sense. That was her home. Her family.

And when he failed her, she was coming to the man who should have been her family.

She was coming to me.

Brooks Landry was back in my grasp because she had come to New Orleans to find me. Maybe not first, but second, and she had to know that she’d end up in my arms when her father refused to help. She had to know we’d end up right here, with her whispering her request to me and me...

Well, what was I going to do, really? I’d prayed for years to get one more shot at her, one more kiss, one more request, and here she was. The gods had done me a favor bringing her back and giving me a way to gain her trust again.

“Then yes,” I said simply.

“Yes?” she gasped. “An army of men to help my friends?”

“An army of men to help your friends,” I agreed. “I promised to help you when you needed it and I don’t go back on my promises. But I’ll take a promise from you in return.”

Now there was a pause, the air around us suddenly thick with suspicion. “What sort of promise?” she finally asked.

I bit my lip... and then said what had been on my mind. “I’ll give you an army. You’ll help your friends. And then you’ll come home to me.”

17

BROOKS

I stared at the spot where I thought he must be, my heart stopped in its tracks.

Did he just say yes? And follow it up with me moving home?

What. The. Fuck.

We were trapped in some sort of underground cathedral full of spirits, our bodies molded together in our need to try to see each other, and I’d just told him I needed an army to save a bunch of people he’d never even met. And he’d said yes.

My mind wanted to sit here and go through it all a million and a half times to find the traps I was sure he’d laid. I didn’t want to think I couldn’t believe him, but I’d also been around long enough to know that when someone agreed to something that big, there was almost always fine print waiting.

Oh yeah, I already knew that fine print. He wanted me to come home.

I opened my mouth to ask what the fuck that even meant but shut it again when we heard a sound at the door of the cathedral. Shit, how long had we been standing around in here? The Landry soldiers were still out there searching for us, and though they hadn’t come into this room before, that didn’t mean they weren’t going to try it.

Hell, they might be trying it right now.

Lucien was moving before I could give him any signal, my hand caught in his and our footsteps as silent as we could be. We didn’t dare run when there was someone in the room with us—and when we didn’t know what else was in here. Sure, we felt like we were in some sort of aisle right now, but there was no telling when it might end, and I didn’t want to be running full speed with someone shooting at us when our shins hit a bench or altar.

We crept forward, one silent foot after the other, and I went quickly through our options. We were both hoping, I guessed, that there would be another exit at the front of the church. Behind the altar, if I was guessing. And if we got there before any of our pursuers realized we were in the room, we might be able to hit another tunnel—hopefully one that had light—and then another in time to lose them.

If.

I set my jaw and forced myself to think that Lucien probably knew what he was doing. He’d practically grown up down here if the rumors were to be believed, and surely that meant he had a working understanding of how the rooms were laid out. He was walking forward with enough confidence that I had to believe he knew where we were going.

In the meantime, he’d left me with a question to answer.

I had never considered coming back to New Orleans. I hated my father and distrusted him even more. He’d cornered me into an engagement that had served him and then threatened me when I told him I wasn’t going to be his spy in the Boudreaux operation. Sure, he was my dad and I was a Landry at heart, but as far as I was concerned once I married a guy, my loyalty was to him. Especially when that guy treated me the way Lucien had. My dad had seen me as a convenient tool and nothing else.

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