“You were dreaming about me.”
“Wh-what?” The nerve of him!
“You were making sexy sounds and movements while you slept, and then you said my name.”
“You’re making that up.” She refused to ask what sounds and what movements for fear of what he might reveal. But she’d really like to know how long he’d been watching her as she slept, and why.
“No, I’m not.” His eyes were smoldering with some heated emotion, and more than a little promise. Of what, she dared not ask.
Her face heated with embarrassment. Oh, this was too much. First, she had to live with the way she’d behaved in Luc’s arms the night before. Now, she had to live down what she’d allegedly done in her sleep.
“I love your shyness, Sylv.” Luc was bending over the five-gallon bucket, checking on his crawfish, as he spoke in a voice gravelly with appreciation.
“Where did that ridiculous statement come from?” she demanded. Really, the man had a way of disconcerting her. She’d come out here all prepared to tell him how things were going to be between them from now on, and he’d thrown her off guard by mentioning her dreams—which were coming back to her with graphic detail—and her shyness, which he knew had to be a sore spot with her.
“You were blushing so sweetly, like you always do,” he explained, standing upright and arching his shoulders back to work out the kinks. “And I realized how much I like that shy side of your personallity.”
“As if I care what—” She started to say something about how she couldn’t care less what he thought of her shyness, but he put up a halting hand so he could continue.
“I understand… at least, I’ve been told… that you hate your shyness… that you’ve even had therapy to deal with it. But I’ve gotta say, babe, that there’s something really appealing about a woman who can be hot in bed and shy over breakfast.”
“You… you… you…” she sputtered.
“See?” he said, patting her on the behind as he walked by on his way back to the crab net in the water. “Your face is turning red again. You have the prettiest blush, chère.”
Outraged, she tossed her notebook and pen to the ground and stomped after him, right into the water. “Number one, my shyness is none of your business. Number two, I am not hot in bed.”
“Too bad,” he said drolly. “I know you’re a hot kisser; so, I just assumed—”
“Assumption is the mother of all screwups.” She inhaled deeply to calm herself, and continued. “Number three, my face is red… not because I’m blushing, but because I’m furious. You… you… you…”
He just grinned at her… which was the last straw. She shoved him in the chest, causing him to lose his footing and fall backwards into the murky water. But in the process, the brute grabbed a hold of her leg, pulling her down with him.
When he came shooting up from the water, he flicked his hair back off his face and laughed. When she came up from the water, there was duckweed in her hair and brackish water in her mouth and she was choking, not laughing. He was still laughing joyously, splashing water at her in a teasing fashion like a little boy.
But Sylvie had gone stone still as she combed her fingers through her hair. She’d just noticed that the top button of Luc’s cutoffs had come undone and the denim pants were riding low on his hips, exposing his navel and part of his flat stomach.
Luc’s laughter stopped abruptly, and she thought she’d been caught in the act of ogling him. But no, he was staring at her, lips parted, eyes glazed. She looked down and could have died. She might as well have been naked for all the coverage the wet fabric provided.
With as much dignity as Sylvie could muster, she walked stiffly out of the water, up the bank, and pointedly picked up her notebook and pen. “You and I have to talk,” she told Luc then.
He looked at her face, then at the notebook, then back to her face again. “If you pull out a measuring tape, Sylv, I swear I’m gonna wrap it around your neck.”