“It’s a piece of Louisiana history, Sylvie, and you know it. Don’t you have any community spirit?”
Sylvie was spared making an answer when Blanche returned, grinning from ear to ear. Sylvie made a mental note to cut off her friend’s supply of margaritas. But then Blanche jabbed her in the arm with an elbow and whispered, “Here comes boot-scootin’ trouble.”
She peered toward the house through eyelashes that felt intensely heavy. Then she gasped.
Lucien LeDeux.
Uh-oh!
Chugging down the last of her margarita, she tried to remember if she’d had two or three… whatever, it wasn’t enough.
The brute had promised to stay away for a week. One day had passed, and already he’d broken his word.
As to Blanche’s reference to “boot-scootin’ trouble,” well, trouble didn’t begin to describe the long, tall Cajun in jeans, white T-shirt, navy-blue blazer, and scruffy boots, headed in her direction with fire in his eyes.
With hysterical irrelevance, Sylvie wondered how much crawfish fat he’d ingested over the years.
“Sommese, Blanche,” Luc said, greeting the other two with a nod, then adding bluntly, “Get lost.”
Matt and Blanche glanced at each other, then back to the spectacle about to unfold before them. “Hah!” they both muttered, not budging an inch.
Directing his attention to Sylvie, Luc pulled her off to the side and got right to the point, barely able to keep his voice down to an outraged undertone. “What the hell have you done to me? That love potion you invented is driving me up the wall.”
“Shhh.” She put a hand of caution on his arm. Even though they were several feet away from Matt and Blanche, she worried that they might be overheard. “What are you doing here? You promised to stay away.”
He shrugged her hand off angrily. “I went deep into the bayou, just like I promised, and the only thing I could think about was you.”
“Did Luc say that Sylvie has invented a love potion?” she heard Matt ask Blanche. “I wonder if she got her ideas from that voodoo journal?”
Oh, Lord! The man must have a reporter’s sixth sense, or else he could read lips.
Luc noticed and deliberately turned his back on them. He whispered raspily, “I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t even fish. All I do is daydream about a woman I loathe.”
Loathe? Sylvie cringed.
“Dieu, you have me picturing you in some hokey Acadian house on stilts, along a stream, with a white picket fence and a horde of grimy-faced kids with blue eyes and heart-shaped asses. But that’s not all. I—”
“I am not flattered by that heart-shaped business, you know.”
“I picture you in my boat, in a thong bikini. Red. Made of some lacy material. And you know what the best thing is about lace, don’t you, chère? All the holes.”
Sylvie inhaled sharply. “I have never worn a thong bikini in my life. In fact, I don’t even own a bikini.”
“Worst of all, I picture you in my bed… oh, Lord, do I picture you in my bed! Hot damn, I didn’t even know they could do that with licorice whips.”
Licorice whips?
“Then there were those black fishnet stockings. Man, I about had a heart attack.”
Oh, my God! Sylvie thought her face would burst aflame. Even if she weren’t chronically shy, that last remark would be embarrassing. Lucien LeDeux made a habit of not only crossing the line between good taste and crudity, but pole-vaulting over it with great glee… at least, he did when around her. “You are making this all up,” she accused him huffily, and punched him in the chest.
“Am not,” he asserted, making a cross over his heart with a forefinger. “Really, can a man die of a perpetual hard-on? And mushy emotions are banging against the walls of my brain like ping-pong balls, and each of them has your picture on it, sweet cakes.” He took a glass of Scotch off the tray of a passing waiter and belted it down in one long swallow, then let out a whoosh of exasperation.
Forget about Luc dying of… that thing he’d said; Sylvie was the one who felt like dying… of mortification. It wasn’t that Luc was speaking loudly. Far from it. His words came out in more of a low growl.