“Don’t you dare apologize, or call me ma’am, one more time,” she ordered Remy. Then she turned to Luc. “You, on the other hand, could apologize till the ducks return to Lake Ponchartrain and it wouldn’t be enough. And, frankly, a ma’am or two would be a welcome change.”
“Yes, ma… I mean, Sylvie,” Remy said with a grin.
“Yes, chère,” Luc said with a grin.
“Aaarrgh!” Sylvie said, and she wasn’t grinning.
“Enough of this foolishness!” Luc said then. “Do you have the plane ready?”
Remy nodded. “The hydroplane is anchored in the water next to the houseboat.”
“You’re early,” Luc commented.
“I decided to get you out of Dodge quick as I could. All hell’s breaking loose back in Houma. Is there anyone you haven’t pissed off today?” The cowboy seemed to call himself to task. ” ‘Scuse my language, ma’am. I’ve been hanging around cattlemen and oil riggers too much lately, I reckon. And my bro.”
“That’s okay,” she said, trying to see his face. Even in profile, Remy was motion-picture gorgeous. Not just classically handsome, he was beautiful. With a perfectly square chin, a straight nose, finely sculpted lips, and what appeared to be mile-long, black eye lashes. “I’m getting used to your brother’s foul mouth. Are you sure you’re brothers? You’re so polite, and he’s so… not polite.”
“I taught him everything he knows,” Luc told her in a deliberately loud undertone meant to be overheard.
Remy made a snorting sound of disbelief. “Emily Post, he never was, ma’am,” he informed Sylvie. “Luc might have taught me how to tie my shoelaces, and how to sneak a Playboy magazine out of Boudreaux’s General Store, and how to undo a bra snap in two seconds flat, and… and other good things. But I was the one who taught him proper etiquette. Yessirree, ma’am.”
Luc made a rude harrumphing noise.
“Why do you call me ma’am?”
“He calls all the ladies ma’am,” Luc piped in before his brother could answer. “It’s a surefire way of getting them to shuck their drawers, I suspect.”
Remy and Sylvie both gasped at that crudity.
“What does Luc call you?” Remy asked.
“Babe,” Luc said with a grin.
“Chère,” she said with a frown.
“Same thing,” Luc countered with an even wider grin.
“I’m beginning to think you’re both crazy.” Remy kept glancing from one to the other of them with puzzlement.
They’d arrived back at the tavern area, with its bright lighting. She noticed the hydroplane sitting in the bayou stream next to the houseboat.
Luc went up ahead to get a few items, including her lab rats, from the houseboat. She turned to say something to Remy at the same time he turned around fully, and she got her first real look at him. She barely stifled the gulp that sprang to her lips.
Oh, she remembered the gap-toothed Remy who had followed his bigger brothers, René and Luc, around Houma as children. Now she remembered something she had heard about Remy as an adult. He’d been a pilot in Desert Storm, where his helicopter had been shot down, causing him massive burns.
Remy was still a beautiful man, depending on the angle at which one viewed him. He was angel-gorgeous on his right side, including intact lips and nose and both eyes, but the left side of his face was scarred and puckered with pink burn tissue.
To Sylvie’s embarrassment, she saw that Remy was taking in her survey with a lifted brow and faint smile. He didn’t turn away as some men might, but then he was probably accustomed to the scrutiny. Instead, he froze in place and waited for her to register the full extent of what he no doubt considered his grotesqueness.
Neither one of them wanted to break eye contact. Remy seemed to want her to shy away in revulsion. She refused to do so.
Remy was the one to snap the silence, and his words shocked her. “Don’t hurt my brother.”
“Wh-what?”
“Luc is a good man. He’s been a father to me and René. Lots of people depend on him… too much, sometimes. I would take it kindly, ma’am, if you wouldn’t break his heart.”