Free Sandra Hill - [Creole] by Sweeter Savage Love Page B

would have pounded Etienne’s back. Instead, she squirmed madly, trying to shake the objectionable sock loose from between her knees.
    As he started walking again, Etienne commented, “I think I’m beginning to understand body language now, Dr. Ginny. Every time you squirm, your breasts rub across my back. I’m getting a mighty clear message that you want—”
    She stilled immediately. “Oooooh! That was a definite ten on the MCP scale.”
    “I aim to please,” he countered affably.
    She felt a breeze; so, they must be on the small platform connecting the trains. No wonder he felt free to talk. There were no people about to overhear.
    “Dammit, Etienne, you choose the damnedest time to get your sense of humor back,” Cain snarled. “There are passengers in this next car. And they would definitely find it scandalous to see a randy mortician talking to an overripe female cadaver,”
    “I am not randy,” Etienne said.
    “I am not overripe.” Harriet added.
    Then she heard the squeak of the door opening and the low mumble of voices in conversation up ahead.
    “Make way, make way. The undertaker is passin’ through,” Cain chanted out.
    Maybe I’m not dreaming. Maybe I really am dead , Harriet thought. Maybe, when the train derailed, I died .
    Etienne placed his hand over her behind once again. Not to tease her this time, she sensed, but more to assure her not to worry about the buzz of conversation around them.
    To Harriet’s dismay, despite his being a chauvinist to the nth degree, all she could think about was the tingle of sweet pleasure that vibrated from the brute’s fingertips out to all the erogenous zones in her body.
    Nope, I am definitely not dead .
    Just dumb .
     
    A short time later, the three of them stood in a freight car, the one containing four long wooden boxes…caskets.
    They’d been stopped two more times along the way, but Etienne and Cain had their mortician routines down pat. None of their interrogators had been from Pope’s gang…yet. His men might not be so easily duped, Harriet feared.
    “What’s in these things anyway? Besides the gold?” Harriet asked, walking over to one of the coffins with her sheet wrapped loosely around her body, no longer comfortable flaunting herself before two men in her skimpy nightgown. Even in a dream. “Real dead bodies? Ha, ha, ha!”
    “ Oui , of course,” Etienne said, coming up behind her. He and Cain had been whispering over in the corner. Making more stupid plans, no doubt. “At least, one of them does.”
    “What?” she squealed, jumping back.
    Slipping a deadly looking knife from one of his boots, Etienne pried open one of the boxes to show her a skeleton.
    Harriet shrieked with horror. “You guys are nuts! Where did you get that…that thing?”
    “A traveling medicine show,” Etienne replied dryly. “And it cost me a hundred damn dollars, too,” he said ashe pounded the lid shut again, then opened another. It appeared to be empty, until he showed her the fake bottom, which hid a fortune in gleaming gold. His heavy-lidded eyes watched closely for her reaction, still not sure she wasn’t the enemy.
    Her mouth dropped open. There were dozens of bullion bars marked U.S. MINT, PHILADELPHIA lining the base of the casket, and presumably just as much in each of the others. “How much?”
    Etienne shrugged. “A hundred thousand dollars’ worth.”
    “Did you really rob a bank?”
    His jaw clenched angrily. “No.”
    “Did you kill anyone?”
    His lips twitched as he fought a grin. “Not lately.”
    That was good enough for her, for now, anyhow. “Now what?”
    Etienne made a slight bow to her from the waist with a hand extended to the open casket. “After you, my dear.”
    “Huh?”
    “You and I are going to hide in this casket. Cain will stand guard.” The black man—could he really be a physician?—was already crouched in one corner, settling in.
    “Don’t get too comfortable, Cain. You have to nail the lid shut after