Insatiable. Julie Leto

out the most impressive catcall whistle Sam had ever heard from a woman.

      “Who’d you sleep with to get this assignment?” Ruby asked.

      “Who’d I sleep with?” Samantha counted back six months to her move from Hollywood, California, to her return to New Orleans. After adding another six months to account for brooding after her breakup with Anthony, Sam shook her head. No wonder the Pasta God had her on the sexual edge of insanity. In this entire year, she hadn’t slept with anyone but her older sister’s cat, Tabitha II. Unless she counted Maurice. Which she didn’t. He was Serena’s mixed-breed sheepdog, and unlike her Himalayan feline, he preferred the cool floor to the cozy bed.

      “I figured I must have insulted someone,” Sam quipped. “Listening to all the oohs and ahs isn’t exactly my idea of an ideal workday.” Neither is swallowing my own oohs and ahs, thank you very much.

      Samantha forced her gaze away from the damn label that inspired all the appreciative groans. Some women were such suckers for a pretty face. Even she had been once, dating some of Hollywood’s heartthrobs, even living with Anthony Marks, the biggest cardiac arrester of them all. Thanks to her father, famed action-flick director Devlin Deveaux, she’d met and mingled with every male celebrity ever chosen as People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, and more future coverboys than she cared to count.

      And yet, this Pasta God had her fantasizing about new and interesting uses for extra virgin olive oil just from a pencil-drawn ad.

      “If you want a lesson in bad pick-up lines,” Sam concluded, “you should trade places with me.” Sam watched another gaggle of suited, female conventioneers leer and snicker as they strolled by the sexy label. “If you want excitement and mayhem, unfortunately, this isn’t the place.”

      Ruby’s smile curled with ageless wisdom. “Life ain’t like the movies, Deveaux. Mostly, this job is standing around, looking tough and politely asking people to follow the rules. Not to mention giving directions to the bathroom.”

      Samantha stepped down from the box dais that provided a clear vantage of her area and wished she hadn’t made such a disparaging remark. She already strongly suspected that once again, this job wasn’t going to work out. She’d tried approximately four other professions in the past six months and nothing kept her interest. Except for becoming a personal bodyguard. That one really had her blood pumping. If only her brother-in-law, bodyguard Brandon Chance, would come home from his honeymoon with her sister so they could get to work. He’d already put her on the payroll, but with Brandon out of the country and no clients to serve, Sam had done little but earn some of her certifications and licenses and spend the petty cash on neat gadgets. She’d taken the security job at the Dome for two reasons—to pay back the money Brandon had originally budgeted for office rent and electricity and, at Brandon’s suggestion, to garner some experience.

      So far, all she’d learned was that her attention span was shorter than even her second-grade tutor would have imagined. Oh, and that she could now be aroused by a pencil-drawn hottie on a pasta-jar label.

      “I don’t mean to insult the job, Ruby. I know you love it. It’s just…”

      Ruby pushed the sunglasses higher on the bridge of her nose. “Not what you expected. Never is, ’specially with your background. Pretty girl like you. Working in the movies, living the good life…”

      “Define good,” Samantha interrupted, well aware that Ruby was teasing. They’d had this conversation over coffee at Café du Monde after last week’s Julio Iglesias concert. During her Hollywood childhood, Sam had always had food in her belly and a roof over her head—if take-out Chinese and trailers on movie lots counted. Her father had loved her in the way only a self-absorbed genius could, meaning that he showered her with affection whenever he didn’t have something more important to do.

      A child thrust into an adult world from the age of five, Samantha was lucky to have escaped relatively unscathed—at least on the surface. She was only now starting to repair the damage to her heart. Her life in Hollywood could not be described as good unless the standards were incredibly shallow.

      Ruby’s chuckle lacked humor. “Good always is a relative term. For today, this is a good job. No worries. Easy money. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?”

      Samantha frowned, knowing full well what she’d encounter tomorrow—another day of watching conventioneers stuff food samples into their mouths while planning to cut out early and hit the bars on Bourbon Street. Samantha had wished this temporary job would work out, but she had her heart set on a career whose main benefit would be excitement. A little danger. Maybe she’d be lucky and there’d be a scuffle over the free tortilla chips or a grab for the Godiva. Anything to keep her from hijacking the next flight to Brazil so she could drag her brother-in-law back to the States.

      “You sound like my mother,” Samantha said. “Sometimes I think she forgets that she stole ‘Tomorrow is another day’ from Scarlett. Unfortunately, I’ve always been a now and today kind of person. You’re less disappointed by life that way.”

      “Are you? Less disappointed?” Ruby shook her head and grinned, her bob of raven hair not daring to move from where she’d gelled the strands in place. “Just wait until Signore Gorgeous makes his appearance. That ought to liven things up.”

      Samantha swallowed her shock.

      “The LaRocca model is coming here?”

      “That’s the scoop. They’d be stupid to keep him under wraps. He’s the hottest draw I’ve seen in the Superdome since Mike Ditka coached the Saints.” Ruby lowered her shades. “Whoever he is, the man’s a god.”

      Samantha felt inordinately annoyed she couldn’t argue that point without sounding like a big fat liar. Gorgeous men, real or in pictures, simply weren’t on her agenda anymore. She was done equating lust with love—with allowing her passions to triumph over cool thinking and common sense. She’d banked on coming home to Louisiana to find her focus. But since her job experience consisted of baby-sitting her father—a creative prodigy who could barely balance his checkbook—and stunt work that kept Devlin’s high-priced actors out of harm’s way, Sam wasn’t exactly a good candidate for the secretarial pool.

      Her life had always been about adventure. Thrills. Discovery. When Devlin left her mother and sister in New Orleans after the divorce, Sam had followed, anxious even at five to see the world with her father, to live on location and mingle with the stars. She’d even appeared in a few films until she hit those awkward teenage years. By then, Sam had already begun to despise the celebrity spotlight. Becoming a stunt double had been the perfect profession—anonymous but exciting.

      Then she’d been injured. She’d moved in with Anthony, followed a few months later by their heart-wrenching breakup. Returning to New Orleans after twenty-three years hadn’t been easy, but she’d come determined to heal all her wounds—physical and emotional—start over and reconnect with her family.

      She’d made some headway. Her agility and strength were at one hundred percent. She no longer thought about Anthony every day or about the choices she should have made. The future beckoned.

      Unfortunately, even romantic, outrageous New Orleans had held little promise by way of truly exciting career choices, until her sister married Brandon. Too bad the eldest Chance brother, in addition to his military background, had an insatiable sexual appetite that kept the couple on their honeymoon four weeks past their scheduled return date. Or maybe Sam should blame her sister. Surrendering to passion seemed to be a genetic trait.

      Aw, hell. She couldn’t blame either of them. She’d never been one to deny her own desires—and she’d never even really been in love. Sam couldn’t begrudge her sister or Brandon their wedded bliss, but she still wished they’d be blissful at home.

      In the meantime, Brandon had suggested that Sam pull some security gigs for hands-on learning. Nothing too risky, he’d insisted. Her stunt-work training gave her physical agility and mental preparedness, but the movie sets, speeding cars and fireball explosions had been controlled. Carefully planned and painfully executed. She