Tears welled in her eyes, probably due to the smoke and humidity, and she spun on her heels—Only to hit a brick wall in the form of the huge bartender. “Goin’ somewhere, pretty lady?” he inquired sweetly, with a scowl on his face. “Without paying?”
“Oh, I forgot.” She fumbled in her jeans’ pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill. “Here. Keep the change.”
The bartender raised both bushy eyebrows at her but pocketed the money. He moved aside.
And there stood Rene.
“Hey, Gator,” he said to the bartender, who jabbed him in the forearms with some hidden message and walked away.
“Hey, chère,” he drawled to her. “Goin’ somewhere?”
“Yes. I’m going home.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“No need to beg, sugar, not for my pardon anyhow,” he said suggestively, taking her by the elbow and backing her up against the wall. He stood in front of her, one hand braced over her head. Meanwhile his band continued to play some instrumental Cajun songs, and people danced up front. Rene’s absence was barely noticed. “You came to see me. Why rush off now?”
“I didn’t come to see you,” she lied. “I came to meet Sylvie for a drink.”
“Ahhh. So that’s what my surprise is. You. Remind me to send Sylvie a dozen roses tomorrow. Maybe two dozen.” He winked at her.
Valerie felt the wink all the way down to her curling toes. A part of her body that a lady never mentioned came to attention and practically hollered, “Yahoo!” Not that she would ever say any of this out loud. “I’m beginning to think I’ve been set up.”
“Me, too.” Smiling with unconcern, he twirled a strand of her hair on his forefinger, then tugged, letting it come out in a long ringlet. She’d worn her hair down tonight, and the high humidity turned it to frizz. She hated it. He seemed to like it. A lot. He repeated the twirling exercise over and over.
Who knew that twirling hair around a forefinger could be so erotic?
“Did you like my song?”
She refused to answer.
“I sang it for you.”
“Which song?”
He laughed because he knew very well that she was playing coy with him. Since coyness had never been a trait to be desired in her book, Valerie sighed deeply and admitted, “Yes, I liked your song.”
He leaned down closer to hear her words, and Valerie could smell piney soap and aftershave. He was so close, if she turned her head just so, they would be kissing.
Awareness of the chemistry sizzling between them was in his eyes and husky voice as he revealed, “It’s true... what I sang. You have been on my mind. Way too much.”
Lordy, Lordy! I am in way over my head here. I need to play it cool. Isn’t that what teenagersalways say? What made me think I could come here, say howdy, and go home unsinged? “You’ve been on my mind, too. Way too much.” Well, you idiot, so much for playing it cool!
“What are we going to do about it, babe?”
“Nothing.” But, ooh, I’m thinking stuff.
“I don’t think I can accept that.”
“I’m going back to New York in the morning.” Thank God! No telling what I might do.
His face fell before he masked over his disappointment. “For good?”
“Probably.”
“Don’t go.”
“Huh?”
“I didn’t mean to say that. It just slipped out.”
“I have to go back. I have appointments with my employer there.”
“Don’t you mean your former employer?”
“Maybe not.”
“Look, let’s get one important matter out of the way first. Are you going to file a complaint against J.B.
and Maddie? Or Tante Lulu? Or me?”
Disillusionment washed over her. Is that all he cares about? Covering his. . . their asses? “No. I’ve decided not to make a criminal complaint. Not that I couldn’t, not that it wouldn’t stick.”
He should have been ecstatic over her news, but instead he was pensive. “Why?”
She didn’t need to ask what he referred to. “It might not be my cause, but I recognize a noble cause when it hits me in the face. All of your intentions, though misguided, were good.”
“I had nothing to do with—”
“Enough already.”
“Do you know why I didn’t have intercourse with you the other night?”
Valerie felt her face heat up. Talk about blunt questions! “Because you knew your legal liabilities would go through the roof if you did. Sex with a captive—that’s a biggie.”
He smiled at her use of the word “captive,” probably because of its sexual connotations. “Not even close, sugar. It was because, if I did, you’d think that the only reason I made love with you was a sort of bribe. I screw you; in return, you won’t screw me.”
“I wouldn’t have thought that.” It’s the first thing I thought of.
“Maybe not right away, but later you would have. Morning after wisdom.”
“You’ve had a lot of experience with that, have you?”
“Mais, oui!” He tweaked her under the chin, then gave her a quick butterfly kiss across her mouth.
“The reason I quit before the gospel, so to speak, and the reason why I haven’t called you, or climbed into your bedroom window one night—and, yes, don’t look so shocked, I did consider that. Well, the reason is that when we do make love, I don’t want there to be any questions why.”
Ishouldn’t ask . I really shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself. “Why?”
“Because, darlin’, I want to be inside you so bad I can’t stand it anymore. I’m tired of just thinking about you. I’m tired of waking up with you on my mind and getting no work done because you’re on my mind. I’m tired of thinking about those two damn years of yours and worrying that someone else will be the Mickey to your Minnie. I’m a walking hard-on, and it’s all your fault. I want to make you laugh and cry and scream out loud when I’m inside you. Any questions?”
Are you kidding?
“Okay, then, let’s dance.”
CHAPTER TEN
Getting down and dirty, Cajun style
Rene LeDeux was a born womanizer.
No use denying the fact. He was thirty-five years old. He’d been around the block and then some.
Hell, he’d been around a city of blocks.
He loved women. He loved pursuing them, he loved making love to them, he loved the triumph of their inevitable surrender. Despite one sexual fiasco long ago, he knew what he was doing.
From his years of scoping out females, he recognized that he had a small window of opportunity with Val. Fifteen minutes max, he figured, before her brain kicked in with logical questions, like, What the hell am I thinking? Sex with the bad boy of the bayou? I don’t think so. Nope, he had to strike while the iron—um, Valerie—was hot. . . while her hormones were still racing with this sexual chemistry that sizzled between them, while her brain was lodged about three feet lower, just like his was.
He followed her to the dance floor, staring at her transparent blouse and her nice tight jeans. He pressed his lips together to make sure he didn’t speak his observations aloud. Horniness did that to a guy—turned him inside-out, down-and-dirty crude. Like sex itself. He couldn’t wait. Besides, Val probably thought her attire was librarian tame. Hah! He had news for her. Every man in the place would take one look at her and think, Saddle up, cowboy!
She stopped suddenly and peered back over her shoulder. “Are you staring at my butt?”
Who? Me? “Absolutely.”
“Well, don’t.”
Yeah, right.
She walked out onto the crowded dance floor, turned around, and tapped her foot with impatience. Not a good sign. Yep, fifteen minutes and time’s a-wastin’. The lady thought she didn’t want to dance with him, but she did.
He made a short hand signal to his band to play a slow song next. What did they do? Playe
d a fast song, of course, grinning the whole time. As they wailed to “Big Mamou,” Val began to sway her hips from side to side in her dignified version of boogie.
Once again, he thought, Yeah, right. Grabbing her by the hips, he yanked her flush against his body, which caused her to yelp. Call me Mr Smooth. Not! Then he wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and he locked his hands around her waist. If she hadn’t known what he had in mind before, she did now.
“Jeesh, Rene, you’re embarrassing me.”
He assumed she was referring to his erection pressing against her belly. “Not half as much as I’m embarrassing myself.” Actually, he wasn’t all that embarrassed.
She arched her head back to tell him, “This isn’t a slow dance.”
“It is for us.” A little annoyed at himself now, he shoved her face into his neck, then locked his hands around her waist, as before. Surprisingly, she nestled in his arms and sighed against his neck.
He pulled her even closer and closed his eyes. Her hair smelled like lily of the valley. He moved himself against one of her valleys. She felt soft and supple and very desirable. They swayed from side to side for a while, not speaking... not with words, anyhow.
“Are you trying to seduce me?” she asked, her warm lips moving against his neck.
“Yes. Do you mind?” I wonder if she’d like to go outside and hop in the back seat of my car with me. Probably not. Calm down, big boy. You’re gonna scare her away. Hell, I’m scarin’ myself.
She paused for a long, telling second. “No.”
“Good. I wasn’t going to stop anyway.” That back seat’s look in’ better and better.
She laughed, and the soft flutter of her breath against his ear felt like fingertips... somewhere else.
Suddenly, inordinately happy, he stepped away from Val and twirled her under his arm twice in an old jitterbug move, then dipped her low in his arms, her back bent, hair hanging almost to the floor. While she was in that vulnerable position, he kissed her. As far as kisses went, it wasn’t anything special. Still, Val gasped and stared at him, wide-eyed, when he drew her upright and back into his arms.
He heard clapping and hooting encouragement from behind him and guessed it must be his family. He could care less if he was making a spectacle of himself. He felt too friggin’ good.
Val stepped back from his embrace and smiled. “You think you’re such hot stuff, don’t you?”
He shrugged and smiled back at her. Define hot. Do I think I could make you burn? Mais, oui.
“You think you can pull my strings and I’ll do anything you want?”
Oops! Guess I’m a little too obvious. But she was still smiling.
“Guess again, big boy!”
Oops again!
Val did something then that proved to him what he should have known all along: Val was not like any other woman. She began to dance in front of him. She shimmied down into a bent knee position, then shimmied back up. The embroidered swans on the front of her see-through shirt danced, too. Snapping the fingers of her widespread arms, she beckoned him forward. When he stepped forward, the contrary witch moved seductively to the side. Now she danced around him, rolling her hips, swaying her shoulders, making a flirty moue of her mouth, brushing him as she passed by... a breast against his arm, a hip over his butt, her fingertips grazing his jaw, which hung open with incredulity.
He laughed with appreciation of her provocative show. But if she thought to challenge him by dancing, she had another think coming. Rene was a good dancer, most Cajun men were. It was in the blood. Next time she moved in front of him, he stepped in behind her. Putting a hand on each hip, he undulated behind her. Catching the beat, he met Val rhythm for rhythm. He was better than Patrick Swayze any day of the week. Into her ear, he whispered, “We Cajuns invented dirty dancing, chère.”
She put her hands over his, still on her hips, and moved against him. He saw stars, he swore he did.
“We Creoles know a thing or two, as well, cher.”
“For sure,” he choked out.
They danced their hearts out with the next two fast songs—”Sugar Bee” and “Louisiana Man”—all of it foreplay of the best possible kind. Both of them laughed and smiled at each other as they teased and raised their mutual arousal a notch or two.
When the band started a slow song, he pulled her back into his embrace and hugged her warmly.
Sweat rolled off both of them in the steamy heat they created. At first, they just danced in silence. Well, silence, except for the panting from physical exertion... or something else. He kissed the side of her head.
“Are you crazy?” she said.
He wasn’t sure if she referred to his blatant seduction, his dancing, or his general state of mind. It didn’t matter. “A little bit,” he admitted, then added, “over you.” And that was the God’s truth. He might kid himself that he was in control of this seduction, but his attraction to Val was way out of his scope of expertise. He was flying without a net here.
He thought she would call him on the cheesy remark, accuse him of giving her a line. But, no, Val fooled him again. “Me, too,” she whispered.
This caused his already feverish testosterone level to go ballistic, like one of those hammer and bell games at a carnival. But then he realized something truly embarrassing. The band had stopped playing to take a break, and he and Val were dancing alone to no music.
“Oh, shit!” he murmured and steered a seemingly dazed Val toward his family’s table where everyone was grinning from ear to ear. Normally he would have been pleased at Val’s dazed condition. Hell, he would have been clapping himself on the back with self-congratulations. Now he pinched her arm to wake her to the reality of the teasing that was sure to come.
“Oh, my God!” she said when she realized what she’d... they’d... done. “What are you doing to me?”
What am I doing to myself?
Introductions were made all around to the six grinning people sitting at the table. Val sat down next to her cousin Sylvie, and he sat on Val’s other side. Charmaine, his half-sister, sat next to him. She sported big Texas hair and lots of makeup. From her ears dangled glow-in-the-dark dangly earrings. Good God, what kind of shirt was that she was wearing? She was the owner of several hair salons, but a skin-tight T-shirt that proclaimed in glittery letters, Expert Blow Jobs? Talk about! The fact that smaller print read Houma Hair Spa was beside the point. What was she thinking? What was her husband thinking, to let her go out in public like this? Hell, what was he thinking, to suppose anyone could tell Charmaine what to do?
Charmaine just grinned at him, as if reading his mind, daring him to say something negative. If he did, she would cut him off at the knees with some outrageous remark. He knew she would—probably something to do with his badass reputation.
“So, Val,” Luc said, mischief glimmering in his eyes, “I hear you haven’t had sex in two years.”
Rene gave Luc a dirty look for blabbing. Sometimes his brother had a warped sense of humor.
Sylvie elbowed Luc for his insensitive remark and whispered something in his ear. Immediately, Luc reached over Sylvie to take Val’s hand and squeeze. “Hey, Val, I’m sorry. Me, I’m just a crude Cajun boy who doan know no better.” Luc was playing the dumb Cajun role to the extreme.
Val turned to Rene in horror. “You told him?”
“I didn’t tell him,” he lied. “He guessed.”
“How could he guess such a thing?” She slapped him on the arm, real hard.
He winced. “Luc is really talented that way. Psychic. Sort of.”
“Bullshit!” Remy said.
Everyone laughed.
“Hey, Val, nothing to be ashamed about,” Charmaine said. “I was a born-again virgin recently.”
Everyone turned to stare at Charmaine, who had been married and divorced four times—virginity on her was like a wart on Cinderella. At least it took the attention away from him and Val.
“Darlin’, be honest with these folks,” Rusty t
old her. “Your born-again crap didn’t last very long.”
“Long enough,” she said, elbowing him.
“How long?” Remy asked. His wife, Rachel, elbowed him.
Rene moved away slightly from Val in case she decided to join in on the elbowing.
“A few weeks,” Charmaine said. “And it was rather nice. Sexual tension out the kazoo, if you know what I mean. So I admire you for taking a stand, Val. Good for you!”
Rachel and Sylvie concurred.
Val groaned and put her face in her hands for a moment.
No, no, no! Two years of celibacy is not good. Do not encourage Val.
“Could we talk about something else?” Val urged.
The subject changed, thank God, to Tante Lulu’s upcoming birthday bash.
“We rented the Veterans Club meeting hall down the bayou, with all its picnic grounds,” Charmaine told them. “The reception hall at Our Lady of the Bayou church isn’t big enough. Plus, they don’t allow liquor there, and I can’t imagine any Cajun party without beer.”
The men all nodded.
“Just how big is this party going to be?” Rene asked.
“Three hundred or so,” Charmaine said.
“Three hundred?” Val was surprised. None of the rest of them were, though. Tante Lulu had touched a lot of lives over the years.
“Will The Swamp Rats play?” Rachel asked him.
He nodded. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Will you be contacting Richard Simmons about coming?” Charmaine asked Val.
“Huh?” Val appeared as stunned about being singled out as by the question.
“Tante Lulu told us that Val knows him,” Charmaine informed the rest of the table. “God knows where or how Tante Lulu developed this fascination for the guy, but she did, and it would be the biggest thrill for her if he could come.”
Everyone turned their attention to Val, who looked as if she’d been poleaxed. “I... I... I” she sputtered at first. “I don’t know Richard Simmons. I just said I had met his manager a few years ago and—”