She seemed to remember that the bayou cottage where he and his brothers had lived as young boys had been notoriously filthy… rusted cars, hot-water heater, and bathtub in the front yard… that kind of thing. Was there something about his deprived childhood that had generated this personality trait? As she recalled, his father hadn’t sold his land to the oil companies till Luc was about fourteen. Before that, there was lots of speculation on how Valcour LeDeux, a known alcoholic and brutal father, supported his family… or rather, did not support his family.
There were so many things she was learning about Luc that made her wonder who he really was. Like an uncompleted puzzle, the whole picture was not yet clear, but it was slowly taking shape.
Just before she prepared to go outside, Sylvie noticed a sealed cellophane package on a side table. She smiled when she saw what it was: three pairs of white boxer shorts imprinted with glow-in-the-dark red hearts. They had to be a “gift” from his aunt… or a prod, more likely.
But Sylvie wasn’t smiling when she saw what lay under the boxers. It was a flame-red nightgown that dipped low, low, low in front; its hem would hardly reach the thighs. And it even had a name: “The Naughty Nightie.” Gawd!
Merciful heavens! What could Tante Lulu be thinking?
She was afraid she knew.
After gathering together her notebook and pen, she found Luc down by the stream, calf-deep in the water, working a net to catch some crawfish. He wore a pair of cutoff jeans, and that was all.
Lordy, Lordy, looking as he did, the man could catch a whole lot more than a netful of mudbugs.
Lucien LeDeux was a well-built man. His arms and shoulders and chest, even his legs, showed well-developed muscle definition… not the pumped-up muscles of an exercise fanatic, but the healthy muscle tone of an active man. His black hair was a little long on the neck, and Sylvie remembered from the night before how silky it had felt against her hands. His fingers were long and deft and way too interesting as he maneuvered the net.
He was not yet aware of her scrutiny; so, Sylvie watched as he performed his tasks… lifting the net; tossing crawfish of a suitable size into a bucket on the bank and the babies back into the stream; rebaiting the traps with what she recognized as cow lips—a favorite Louisiana bait for crawfish—which must have been sent with the supplies; and unfurling the net over the stream once again.
He bit his bottom lip in concentration as he worked… clearly a labor of love. Truly, Luc was a man with bayou mud in his veins… a Cajun at heart. It was said that you could take the Cajun out of the bayou, but you couldn’t take the bayou out of the Cajun. It was certainly true of Luc… a man in his element here in the primitive swamplands. How hard it must be for him to switch personas when he had to enter sophisticated courtrooms for his regular work!
Luc raised his face to the hot sun and stretched with lazy pleasure. Only then did he notice Sylvie watching him.
“Did you have a good sleep?” There was a twinkle in his eye as he asked the question. The man got way too many twinkles in his eye, even for the most innocuous reasons.
She nodded. Faced with the full splendor of his bare chest, she was suddenly at a loss for words.
“Eat?” he asked.
She nodded again. Mercy, the man was a dangerous six-foot bundle of male testosterone.
Splashing noisily through the shallow stream, he walked up to her on the bank. His eyes roved over her, from her bare feet, the toes of which were wriggling in the streamside mud, up her legs, over his shorts and T-shirt, which were too big for her but suddenly felt revealing, to her rumpled hair, resting finally on her lips. Then he smiled… with an odd, knowing look on his face.
“What?” she asked.
He lifted an eyebrow in question.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”