Lulu's Recipe for Cajun Sass - Sandra Hill Page 0,23

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.

He tried to be a gentleman. He really did. Was it fair for him to start something with Louise when there was a fairly good chance he wouldn’t be around for the long haul? But then, there was just as much chance that he was the one who’d be scorched in this play with fire.

With a grin, he decided all was fair in love and all that. And Louise was not so young that she needed a handicap in this contest of wills. He suspected she was not an innocent, especially having had a fiancé during the war. At least, that’s how he justified his upcoming all-out assault.

“Why are you smirking?” Louise asked as she dumped her canvas bag into the center of the pirogue which was beached up on her lawn that abutted the stream. She untied the mooring line attached to a nearby tree and shoved the vessel out onto the shallow water, holding onto the rope so it wouldn’t drift away until they were inside.

“I do not smirk,” he said, taking the long-handled paddle she poked him with and stepping into the stern of the narrow canoe, then sitting on the seat at the back.

She jumped into the pirogue, just front of center with an expertise born of years of practice, and dropped the rope. Still standing, she spread her legs for balance and used a long pole to punt them out onto deeper water. The canoe wobbled from side to side at first before righting itself.

“Holy shit!” he exclaimed, grabbing onto the sides of the pirogue, before using his oar to guide them with steady strokes in the traditional J-pattern. “You could have warned me.”

She eased down onto the front seat, setting her pole in brackets along the side, then looked back at him over her shoulder. She was grinning. “Sorry.”

“Sorry don’t make the gumbo boil,” he muttered. One of his mother’s old sayings. Damn! They hadn’t even started their trek, and Louise was making him feel like a namby-pamby idiot, almost falling out of the pirogue, and channeling his mother, for heaven’s sake! Was that her intention? Of course it was. Lure the city sucker into the swamp and make him look like a fool.

He narrowed his eyes at her back, and vowed to make her pay.

In a way he would enjoy.

“Are you smirking again?” she asked, without turning around.

“Just smilin’, sugar,” he lied.

They remained silent then. With him paddling, they streamed steadily eastward. The earlier balmy weather had turned blistering with humidity. Sweat streamed down his forehead and its saltiness stung his eyes. He blinked several times, then swiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt, only then to be hit by a swarm of gnats.

He swore under his breath and blew outward so the little buggers wouldn’t enter his mouth or nose.

“Here,” Louise said, turning adeptly on her bench seat and handing a small jar back at him. “Smear on a little of my insect repellant. The no-see-ems hate its smell.”

No-see-ems was the name