Big Easy Temptation Read Online Free PDF Page B

and a pink shirt that hugged her slender curves.
    Years, miles, war, and death stood between their kiss in the library and now. He’d
     never gotten this woman out of his head.
    “This looks amazing. Thank you. You have no idea how long it’s been since someone
     cooked for me. Well, someone who didn’t learn his skills from the Navy,” Dax admitted.
     Captaining his own ship had its privileges, but made-from-scratch Cajun food wasn’t
     one of them.
    She sat across from him and lifted her wineglass with an elegant hand. “My mother
     was a good cook, but after she passed, my dad was still at sea. So I ended up here
     in New Orleans with my uncle. Now, that man can cook. This is his gumbo recipe. Sorry
     it’s nothing more exciting.”
    “This is the most excitement I’ve had in a while, Holland.” He took a spoonful. The
     dish was perfectly made with just the right bite of heat. “It’s excellent. And I really
     do thank you for hearing me out.”
    He was going to do his damnedest to be polite with her. He needed her on his side.
     If this investigation wasn’t between them, he would have walked into her office and
     finished what they’d started almost seven years before.
    The only times he’d seen her since that kiss had all been at funerals. First Zack’s
     mother had perished in a car accident about a year after the wedding. He’d glimpsed
     Holland there from a distance. She’d certainly been at Joy’s funeral, but that had
     been a clusterfuck. So many reporters, so many people mourning the woman who would
     have been first lady. Then Holland had attended his father’s services. Even though
     Dax had viewed the whole thing through a filter of disbelief and rage, the one sweet
     moment had been when he’d scanned the sparsely attended event and seen her sitting
     in the back pew, silently honoring his father.
    Besides his family and best friends, she’d been the only person he knew to show up.
     Everyone else had run from the scandal and abandoned the Spencer family during their
     time of tragedy.
    Now she was his only hope of seeing any kind of justice done. He’d spent the last
     week before his return to New Orleans plotting and planning ways to persuade her to
     do what he needed. He couldn’t get emotional no matter how much she moved him.
    “You can’t behave the way you did before,” Holland said, her mouth turned down. “My
     coworkers gave you a pass because they knew you were hurting. They won’t do it again.”
    He’d been a righteous prick and a pain in the ass. He’d battled withanyone who got in his way. NCIS had definitely seemed like one obstacle after another.
     “I understand. I was running on emotion at the time. I’ve cooled off and I’m coming
     at the problem logically now.”
    Well, with as much logic as he could. It wasn’t easy watching others sling mud and
     tarnish his father’s reputation. Hell, they’d ripped a dead man to shreds and fed
     what had been left of his good name to the dogs of the press.
    “You’ve been conducting your own investigation?” Holland asked, passing him the cornbread.
    He accepted it gratefully. He hadn’t been joking about his last decent meal. It had
     been months ago, right before Joy Hayes had died. He and the other Perfect Gentlemen
     had come together for Labor Day in the Hamptons. They’d had a cookout and laughed
     and joked around about what perverted things they would all do in the White House
     once Zack was elected.
    That had been less than a year ago. Why did he feel a decade older now?
    “I hired a couple of private investigators and had some friends look into a few things
     for me.” It didn’t hurt that his best friend was an analyst with the Central Intelligence
     Agency. Though Gabe and Mad thought Connor was in deeper than that. Dax often wondered
     if they were right. “They found some information I thought was disturbing.”
    “Do you think Jim and Bill didn’t do their jobs?”
    She asked the