In the nearly empty hallway, the grin faded and he rubbed an absent hand over an unexpected ache in his chest. The edgy punch of desire had caught him unawares. Forget it, he warned himself. The husky-voiced professor was certainly striking, but not his type. He definitely preferred the effortlessly stylish to the functional bookworm. Besides, the Ledger left no time for anything else.

I came; I saw; I admired; I moved on.

It was harder than he expected, though, for Gabriel to banish the temptation to discover what lay beneath the professor’s poorly fitted clothes. Shaking his head, he continued his journey along the citrine-tiled hall. Three doors down, he knocked on the faux oak and listened for the exasperated call to enter. Yep, he sighed, he should’ve brought candy.

“You’re twenty minutes late,” Genevieve declared from behind her desk. Carefully framed diplomas decorated the faded beige walls behind her. As was his habit, Gabriel read yet again the gilded nameplate announcing: DR. GENEVIEVE MOSS. Like their mother, she’d chosen the life of the academic, rather than that of their father, the journalist.

With a scowl, Genevieve soaked in the sight of her brother. Finally, a feminine echo of his own smile curved her lips as she stood up to offer a tight hug. “Would it kill you to be on time once in a while?”

Gabriel shrugged negligently. “Stranger things have happened. Why tempt fate?”

“Live dangerously,” she retorted.

“I gave that up when I left the big city. No more intrigue for me.”

Gabriel grinned, but Gennie saw that the smile didn’t reach his eyes. They rarely talked about his life before he came home to work with their father at the New Orleans Chronicle. Before then, she’d faithfully clipped Gabriel’s articles from trouble spots around the world. Whether it was at the massacres in Uganda or with weapons cartels in Kyrgyzstan, he’d been on the ground, in the thick of the action. For better or worse, those days were gone. Loyalty brought him home to New Orleans, but it was the vengeance holding him here that worried her. A vengeance she was about to stoke. Bracing herself, she pushed him into one of two chairs that flanked her desk.

Perching on the desk’s smooth surface, she pouted and said, “I’m starting to annoy Peter.”

“Peter is always annoyed. It’s his trademark.”

Forced to agree about his cranky managing editor, Genevieve tried a different tack. “One might imagine he’s the owner of the Ledger rather than you.”

“Sometimes, he thinks so, too.” He leaned forward and stole a sip from the coffee mug steaming near her. The robust chicory flavor, the essence of New Orleans, settled on his tongue. He grinned. “Peter’s attempted coups are usually my cue to return.”