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didn’t want to believe him. But she wouldn’t. Not yet. He was a Charbonnet, and lying came as naturally as breathing.
    Neither of them said anything while their food was served. She breathed in the spicy tomato scent of her mémé’s crawfish jambalaya, the house specialty, and then watched with amusement as Hawk eyed her dish suspiciously after cutting his cheeseburger in half.
    “What’s the matter, cher? You forget where you be from? You don’ know how to eat ’dem spicy crawfish, no?” Danielle asked, affecting her mémé’s manner of speech.
    Hawk laughed, sending a shiver up her spine. “You’re very good at that, sugar.”
    “I never forget where I come from,” she said with an easy smile. “Eat up. My mémé might not have cooked your burger personally, but it’s the best in town, I guar-un-tee!”
    While they ate in a surprisingly companionable silence, she took advantage of the break in the verbal sparring to think. She was about to take a free pass to poke around the Charbonnet mansion—well, one room in the mansion. Dani finished formulating her plan.
    “Okay,” she told him. “I’ll look into this and keep your involvement off the record for now. I’ll need to get into your room and look around. I’ll dust for prints myself, so we don’t need to bring anyone else in on this. But don’t doubt for a minute, Hawk Charbonnet, that I have what it takes to bring you down if I find out you’re lying to me.”
    “I’m not, I swear,” he said, looking at her with his deep brown eyes. “I’ll find out who was behind this. And when I do, I’ll k—”
    “Kill him? Be careful what you tell me, Hawk,” she warned. “It just might come back to bite you in the ass.”

     

Chapter Three
    Nic stood in the fluorescent glare of the clinic hallway, her hand gripping the door handle while the scene from the afternoon played over and over in her mind. “Are you using again?” Nicolette had hissed. She hadn’t needed to ask. As soon as the words left her mouth, she knew they were true. Goddamn it! Del had worked so hard to break free of his addiction. She closed her eyes. You could never be free from an addiction, just work to hold it at bay. Del hadn’t been able to this time. She’d cleaned him up and got rid of the stained clothes. Then she’d packed his bag and taken him straight to Serenity, the drug rehab facility closest to Généreux.
    It wouldn’t have been his grandfather’s choice, but Nicolette was sick of trying to please Constantine. As both her former husband and Del’s grandfather, Constantine refused to accept that she and Del were a genuine couple.
    Years earlier, she’d barely been twenty-three when she’d married old man Constantine for his money, so she could hardly blame him for his suspicions, but she wasn’t lying about her feelings for Del. Constantine would blame her for Del’s relapse and send him back to the rehab clinic in Switzerland. She wouldn’t be able to see him.
    Well, she’d just discovered she couldn’t see him here, either. At least not for the next fourteen days while he went through what the staff called the detox period. Then it would depend on the specific treatment the doctor designed for Del.
    The doctor had permitted her to return to say good-bye for now and to tell Del she would wait for him. The doctor said he would need to hear that. It was important she make him believe her. She could wait. As long as they got him off the goddamn drugs.
    With a deep breath, Nic opened the door and stepped inside.
    Del was a beautiful man, big and strong, with short brown hair and deep brown eyes. Now he looked shrunken, faded. It was as if the few hours in the clinic had already robbed him of his vitality. She watched as he sat on the edge of the bed, head down, hair gripped tightly between his fingers.
    Her first instinct was to scream, to hit, to ask how he could do this to her. Instead, she pushed her feelings aside—this wasn’t about her. She