“A thing? Oh, Luc, you are so full of it.” She had to laugh. “Apparently I remember better than you do just how attracted you were to me then. I distinctly recall the time you said I was the Southern belle who was never going to be tolled.”
He grinned at her. “I said that? When?”
“I don’t know… when we were ten years old or so, I guess.”
“Oh, now I remember. That was the time you sniffed at me, like you always did, as if I stunk like day-old roadkill.”
She blinked at him in confusion. Then comprehension dawned. “You, fool! I had an allergy in those days. I was always sniffling.”
They stared at each other then. Could they both have been so wrong?
“Is that why you’ve been tormenting me all these years?” she demanded. “Because I sniffed, for heaven’s sake?”
“No… well, not totally,” he said, ducking his head sheepishly. “The incident that’s stuck in my mind is the time you refused to dance with me.”
“Now, that I do recall,” Sylvie conceded. “We were sixth-graders at Our Lady of the Bayou School, and it was our first boy-girl dance.”
“Yep.” He nodded. “Do you have any idea, Sylv, how much nerve it takes for a twelve-year-old boy to ask a girl to dance? And to be refused? Mon Dieu! Talk about humiliation!”
“Oh, Luc, I was sooo shy, then.” Still am, in many ways… though you’d never know it tonight. “Having the best-looking, wildest boy in class ask me to dance… calling attention to me… well, I was the one humiliated. But it had more to do with my shortcomings than yours.” That had been the first time he’d ever brought up the nude-dancing business, but she wouldn’t mention that now.
“Really?” He grinned at that disclosure, then homed in on one part of what she’d said. “You thought I was good-looking?”
She punched him playfully in the shoulder and he pretended to be hurt, even as they swayed to the music. Without being coerced, or even asked, she returned her hand to the back of his neck. Then they smiled at each other. Just a smile. But it connected them in a way that constricted Sylvie’s heart and made her yearn for something just beyond her reach.
Luc looked a little misty-eyed, too.
If Sylvie didn’t know better, she would swear she was the one under the influence of a love potion, not Luc.
The band ended its song, and René stepped up to the microphone. “We’ve got to take a break soon, folks.”
There was a communal groan. The dancers were all having too much fun.
“But, first,” René shouted, trying to keep the crowd’s attention, “I notice that my brother Luc is out there. I just happened to write a new song today, and this one’s dedicated to you, big brother… and the sweet thong standing next to you.”
“Uh-oh,” Luc murmured.
“Uh-oh,” Sylvie said at the same time.
“This one’s gonna be slow and sexy, everyone… like my brother.”
“I am going to cut out his tongue,” Luc muttered under his breath.
René chuckled into the microphone. “So grab your favorite gal,” he told all the men, “and enjoooy. The name of this song is…”
Luc hadn’t released her yet; so, they were already in dance position.
“… ‘Cajun Knight.'”
“Oh, my God!” Sylvie exclaimed. “Did you put him up to this?”
“Hell, no!” Luc glowered up at his brother, who waved at him and grinned. “Forget the tongue. I swear, I’m gonna kill him.”
“Don’t be so hard on your brother. It’s kind of cute that he would write a song about you,” she said, smiling.
Once there was a Cajun knight
who yearned for a Creole flower…
“Creole flower? Creole? Is… is he referring to me?” Sylvie sputtered.
“Still think he’s cute?” Luc asked with a lifted eyebrow.
The knight of old…
had a mighty big lance.
The fair lady, a tempting moat.
The crowd laughed uproariously at the suggestive lyrics while René did a flourishing trill on his accordion that involved spinning on his feet in a 360-degree turn, then waggling his eyebrows at a frowning Luc and red-faced Sylvie.