Page 20 of Lulu’s Recipe for Cajun Sass

She was laughing, which caused him to stop and blush.

“I do get carried away.”

“I take it you’ve had to defend our culture up north.”

“A time or two,” he admitted.

Louise wrapped one of the books in oilcloth…the one that had the plants she was seeking today…to protect it against any dampness or accident while traveling in a pirogue through the bayou.

“I’m ready,” she said when she was all packed up. “Are you sure you want to spend your day off out on the bayou?”

“Well, I can think of a few things I’d rather do.” He gave her a quick once-over and stepped closer.

She backed up and hit the counter. She wasn’t dumb enough to ask what he meant. She knew. His arrogance was maddening…and unwarranted. At least, she didn’t think she’d given him welcoming signals. “That’s the only activity on the agenda.”

“Not even a kiss?”

“No! Why would I kiss you?”

“To be friendly?”

“I don’t know you well enough to be friends. Besides, I don’t make a habit of kissing my friends.”

“Because you like me, then.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I can tell. Your cheeks are flushed.”

He put a hand to the side of her face, and she felt an electric shock, accompanied by a dizzying current of heat that traveled to all her extremities. She hadn’t felt this kind of instant arousal since Phillipe.

Before she had a chance to object to his touch, his hand moved lower, and his fingertips brushed her mouth. “Your lips are parted,” he pointed out.

She would have been hugely embarrassed, except that his voice was whispery raw. He was equally affected.

“Sorry. That was a bit too much…too soon,” he said, stepping back.

“I should say!” She put her hands to his chest, about to shove him away.

But he leaned in quickly, took her hands in his, and brushed her lips with his, soft as a butterfly, fast as a dragonfly. Then, just as quickly, he backed up, grabbed her carry bag, and said, “You gonna dawdle all day, chère?”

Louise was stunned speechless, but only for a moment. Time to tie a knot in this boy’s tail. As she walked out the door in front of him, she put a little extra swing in her hips, knowing without looking back that his eyes were glued to her hiney. She was pretty sure she heard him murmur, “Mon Dieu!”

Yep, the rascal should be praying. She intended to show him what a bayou gal with Cajun Sass could do to an overconfident man, with or without Cajun Brass.

Chapter 4

Love is a burning fire, or is that lust?…

Justin was playing with fire. He knew, sure as sin…and, yes, sin was exactly what he had in mind…that he was treading too close to the inferno where Louise Rivard was concerned. That little swish of her hips was a challenge he found both tempting and dangerous.

His stay in Houma would end with his brother’s wedding at the end of the month. When he returned north to complete his medical studies, he would no doubt stay there; the opportunities were so much greater. And he liked it there, dammit. Sure, he was bayou-born and Cajun to the bone, but he was sick of the blistering hot weather, the bothersome gnats and dangerous snakes, the violent storms, the ignorance of some of the people.

Bottom line: he had no business playing with a Cajun girl when they had no future. He needed to ignore the gauntlet she’d thrown down with that wicked roll of her hips, which caused the fabric of her overalls to tighten over a bottom that was…yes, yes, yes!...in the shape of an inverted heart, just as he’d suspected. And, yes, it had caused the fabric of his pants to tighten, too, over an important part of his body.

Futile or not, he was sooo tempted. And like men, North or South, he was thinking with an organ other than his brain.

It didn’t help that Louise was on to him, and was playing him with an erotic expertise that surprised him. Not just the thing with her hips, either. She must have put something on her lips to make them extra luscious. And the way she looked at him through half-lidded eyes…Holy sac-au-lait! Heat curled in his stomach and skittered out to all his extremities, lodging between his legs, which was already standing at attention, with an embarrassing flare. Good thing she wasn’t looking at him there.