conceded, “Sounds like they were a fun couple.”
“They were.” He reached over and took a strand of her hair between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing sensuously. “What did you do to your hair to make it so…” he wanted to say sexy, but figured it was too soon for that intimate word, “…luxurious.”
“One of my grandmother’s recipes. An herbal remedy.”
He groaned inwardly, suspecting a trap. “Just don’t tell me it has something in it like gator snot.”
“I said herbs, lunkhead. Gator snot has its uses, but it’s not an herb.”
Gator snot has its uses, he repeated to himself, but had the good sense not to say it out loud. He put both hands up in surrender. “Truce?”
She shrugged. “That depends. Are you still dead set against folk healing?”
“I never said I was totally opposed…oh, maybe I did give that impression. But, darlin’, I grew up on the bayou, too. I know the value of certain plants. I know that some modern medicines are just sugar-coated herbs I lived with in my backyard.”
“Well, hallelujah! I do declare, an enlightened physician.”
He gritted his teeth to keep from making a retort.
“And I have to make an admission, too. I want to throw up when I go into a drugstore and see something like Dr. Jessup’s Miracle Herb Tonic that cures everything from baldness to toe fungus. In fact, I think it’s on the shelf of your daddy’s store.”
“It is not!” he swore, but decided he should check next time he was there.
The whole time they talked, her eyes kept darting to the playing field, keeping an eye on her niece.
“I thought she was your daughter,” he said.
“There you go, thinking again. Must put a strain on that Yankee education.” She gave him a look, which pretty much said she knew how bachelors felt about single women with children. “But, frankly, she’s the same as, for me.”
In other words, if a guy wanted her, it was a bundle package. He wasn’t thinking that far into the future. He couldn’t, not with his career just starting off, and so unclear. But he was tempted. Very tempted.
“Can I come see you sometime?” he asked suddenly.
She arched her brows at him. “Why?”
“Because I’d like to get better acquainted.”
“Why?”
“You’re cruel.”
She shook her head. “No. Just careful.”
“Why?” he was the one asking now. “I’m not dangerous.”
“Oh, yes, you are, cher. A dreamboat like you never hears no when he’s hustling a woman.”
Hustling? Hustling? “I hear plenty of no’s,” he contended, even though he hadn’t done a whole lot of asking, or hustling, the last few years. Too busy with studies, and no money. But inside, he was patting himself on the back. She thinks I’m a dreamboat. I’m practically “in like Flynn.”
“Listen. My mama allus said, beware of Cajun men. They have a twinkle in their naughty eyes. Sweet words flow lak honey from their fool tongues. And mischief simmers in their blood, sure as rain on laundry day.”
He grinned. “As I recall, you accused me of turning Yankee last time we met.”
“Oh, you Cajun, all right.”
He loved the way she reverted to the language of their mutual roots on occasion. In fact, he suspected that she alternated between what Northerners considered an almost illiterate Southern language with words and sentences that clearly bespoke some education and intelligence. Did she do it deliberately? Probably. And it would fool outsiders. Not him. He could do Cajun with the best of them.
“Sugah, Ahm thinkin’ y’all need a little joie de vivre.”
“And you’re the one to put that joy in my life?”
Her sarcasm was a little bit offensive. But he was undaunted. “I could try. What say we go out on a date Saturday night?”
She arched her brows in question. “Go where?”
She probably thought he was inviting himself to her house, to spend the evening on her porch swing, necking…or even petting.
Which was highly appealing. But even a dreamboat like himself knew that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. “There’s a little club on Bourbon Street where we could dance and listen to music.”
“You dance?”
He put a palm over his heart, as if wounded. “I’m Cajun,” he said as if that said it all. It did. Cajun men were taught to dance from the time they were toddlers prancing around the living room, diapers drooping, in rowdy two-step dance moves to loud zydeco music on the family record player. He’d learned the words to “Jolie Blon” before he’d lost his baby teeth.
“I don’t date,” she said finally, and moved a few steps