“Part of my mission in life is to make sure everyone who comes across my path loves Louisiana a little more.”
“And your beer here sucks?”
He laughed. “Not exactly. But when you’re in the Big Easy, you gotta soak up the atmosphere and history and the stuff you can’t get back home.”
That “stuff you can’t get back home” thing caught her attention. It wasn’t like Iowa was devoid of hot, funny, charming guys. But…she couldn’t get a New Orleans bartender like him back home, that was for sure. She narrowed her eyes. “Okay. I’ll give you another chance. Some New Orleans specialty but not a hurricane.”
A flicker of amusement danced through his eyes and he nodded at the challenge. “You got it, Indiana.” He started reaching for supplies.
She laughed. “Close, but not quite.”
“I don’t think it’s Minnesota or Wisconsin,” he said, pouring ingredients into a shaker.
“Nope. Neither of those.” She studied him as he shook the ingredients all together, particularly the sexy grin behind the short beard and the arm with the muscles and a tattoo peeking out from under one sleeve. She hadn’t even been paying attention to what he’d poured into the shaker.
“Kansas?” he asked.
“Nope. Still close.”
“Iowa then.”
She felt her eyes widen. “Yes.” It had taken him four guesses…well, kind of two. He’d known she wasn’t from Minnesota or Wisconsin. “I’m impressed.”
He grinned and poured the drink into a martini glass. “I talk to people, mostly visitors, every day, all day long. I’m good with accents.”
“I don’t have an accent.”
He passed the drink over. “Whatever you say.”
She rolled her eyes. “So the accent thing is like a superpower or something?”
“Or something,” he agreed. “I have several…gifts, as a matter of fact.”
“No kidding.” She was amused by his blatant flirting. She was certain bartenders in the French Quarter made good money, but it never hurt to give a little extra effort to the tips and she had to admit it was working. He was making her smile. Tonight, that was no small thing.
“Interestingly, my other talents have a lot to do with the girls I meet too.”
She snorted at that, glad she hadn’t yet taken a drink of the concoction he’d mixed her. “I have no trouble believing that.”
“Already?” he asked, looking amused. “I haven’t even really turned it on yet.”
“Wow. Thanks for the warning.”
He laughed, this time the sound lower and deeper. “Don’t want to scare you off. I can ease in.”
Damn, that sounded…dirty. In a good way. Not in the way she was used to getting dirty with the guys she knew. That kind of dirty was…well, actually dirt dirty. And mud. And blood. And…other things.
There wasn’t much flirting in her life, really. She typically got to know the guys she met over the back end of a cow. Being a large animal vet in small-town Iowa wasn’t the most glamorous career, that was for sure. But the guys, farmers mostly, of course, thought that her knowing about their animals—and being willing to put her hands in places a lot of men they knew wouldn’t—was some kind of turn-on. Maybe not the places she was putting her hands, but her willingness to get dirty and get the job done. But after doing that for an afternoon, the guy usually just asked if she wanted to have a drink or if he could grill her a steak or if she was going to be at the street dance on Saturday. Grilling her a steak made from the brother of one of the cows she’d just manually impregnated had always seemed like an odd offer. And she’d only said yes once. As for street dances…yeah, she went to about half of them. But she never went with anyone. She’d grown up there, for fuck’s sake. She knew all the guys. If she hadn’t been in the same class, she knew of them. And their parents. And their grandparents. The milk they poured on their cereal in the morning probably came from cows she’d impregnated.
Her world was small. And a little weird if she thought about it too hard.
But, in any case, there wasn’t a lot of flirting in her life. In fact, she spent so much time covered in animal stuff—from blood to crap to, yes, semen—that she rarely felt things like pretty or sexy.
Not so with this guy. He was looking at her like she was both. A lot of both.
So this was definitely different.
She finally took a sip of the drink. It was really, really good. “Wow.”
“Ramos Gin Fizz. A specialty around here,” he told her, looking satisfied.
“I’m a fan.”
“Awesome. I’ll keep plying you with those all night.”
“How many do you think it will take?”
“Until?” he asked. But the way he quirked that one eyebrow told her that he knew what she was talking about.
“Until I decide that there’s more of New Orleans I should sample before I go home.”
Heat flared in his eyes. “Damn,” he’d said softly. “Didn’t know Iowa girls were so upfront.”
Well, crap. She was a matter-of-fact person. She mostly dealt with rugged farmers who didn’t beat around the bush and who needed to flat out know if their cow could be saved and if so, how much the bill was going to be. Frankly, sometimes the bill was too high.
Again, not a lot of flirting, of any kind.
Maybe she needed to dial it back a notch. She could be coy. Or cute. Or whatever the hell she was supposed to be.
Probably.
She tipped her head. “How do you know I’m not talking about beignets?”
He gave her a slow, knowing grin that made her tingle. Whoa. The last time she’d tingled it had been because she’d gotten too close to Mr. Lencroft’s electric fence.
This wasn’t the same. At all.
“Are you talkin’ about beignets?” he asked. “Because I’ll very gladly help you get all the…beignets…you could possibly need.”
That little pause of his made her wiggle on her barstool. Yeah, they weren’t talking about beignets. And she wanted exactly what he was offering to give her.
“Is your nickname Beignets, by chance?” she asked.
He laughed. Low and deep and she had to swallow hard.
“If you say you’ve never wanted anything as much as you want beignets, then it’s gonna be.”
She grinned. She never talked like this with guys. And she loved it. Tori picked up her glass again. “The way I understand it, I can’t leave New Orleans without having Beignets.”
He stuck his hand out across the bar. She took it. But rather than shaking it, he just squeezed and held on. “Hi, I’m Josh ‘Big Beignets’ Landry.”
She laughed, feeling the fun and pleasure wash through her. “I’m Victoria Kramer. My friends call me Tori.”
“Is there anyone calling you Tori in here with you tonight?” he asked, still holding her hand.
“Actually no,” she said. “Not yet,” she added.
The flicker of heat and interest lit his eyes again and Tori couldn’t help the little thrill that shot through her. She might not flirt much—or at all—but maybe she didn’t completely suck at it.
“Tori,” Josh said. “I would really like for you to go over to that booth—” He pointed over her shoulder.
She swiveled to look at the empty booth in one corner. If she sat on one side, she’d be able to see the entire bar. If she sat on the other, she could hide away.
“—I would like for you to order whatever you want—food, drink, whatever—from Kara, the waitress who’s covering that table. And I’d like you to stay until I get off work.”
Tori looked up at him. “Why that booth? Why not stay here until you’re done?”
“Two very good reasons,” he told her, stroking his thumb over the back of her hand. “One, Kara has known me for about five years and can tell you all about me. Assure you that I’m a good guy. She can even bring Liz over to talk to you. Liz doesn’t really like me, so you can be assured to get an honest ans
wer from her about my flaws.”
“You have flaws?” Tori teased.
“Two, according to Liz,” he said with a nod. “I don’t like ginger beer—which is one of our specialties here—and I do like brunettes, maybe a little too much.”
Jealousy stabbed Tori in the chest before she realized that was ridiculous. She was brunette, after all. And she’d just met him. She was expecting…what? Him to have never been with another woman? Him to swear off all other women now that he’d met her? That was crazy. She smiled. “Liz isn’t brunette?”
He laughed. “She is.” He paused. “So’s her daughter. Who is the one I hit on before I knew she was my boss’s daughter.”
Tori couldn’t help her grin. “You work for a woman who doesn’t like you?”
“She gets…exasperated with me,” he said. “But I’m fantastic at what I do, so she keeps me around. And I stay because she runs an awesome business and treats her employees very well.” He paused. “And I kind of like exasperating her.”
Tori shook her head, still grinning. “You need someone to exasperate?”
“Oh, I’ve got plenty of those—a mom, three grandmas, a sister, aunts, a whole town full of girls I went to school with—it’s just that I’m really good at it and Liz needs someone to keep her on her toes.”
Tori nodded. “Got it.” He had three grandmas and a sister. And an affectionate look on his face when he talked about exasperating them. That made her like him even more. “I’m sure Liz agrees.”
“You can ask her.”
“You really think I should ask your co-workers and boss about you?”
He sobered a bit. “You should definitely not take me back to your hotel without asking some people about me.”
The idea of taking him back to her hotel room made her heart thump hard against her sternum and she had to take a quick breath. “How do I know they’re not going to lie just to help you get lucky?”
“Good girl,” he said. “Always assume guys are lying to get you into bed.”
She laughed. “Well, I can assure you that most of the guys I spent time with are not trying to get me into bed.”
He studied her face, then shook his head slowly. “Not true. I promise you.”
Her heart did a little stutter. He was wrong. But that was really nice.
“Taking you back to my hotel isn’t a good idea then, huh?”
He shrugged. “It is. But you have no way of knowing that. So you shouldn’t do it.”
Now it was her turn to study his face. He was gorgeous. But there was more than that. He had an air of mischief and, dare she say, sweetness about him. She had no doubt that he charmed women out of their panties on a regular basis, but she also had a feeling that he enjoyed the flirting and serving them their first Ramos Gin Fizz as much as he enjoyed getting them naked. Okay, almost as much as he enjoyed getting them naked.
He has three grandmas that he clearly loves and loves to tease.
He could be completely lying about that.
You could talk to his boss though.
Really? What am I going to say? Hi, I’m Tori, do you think sleeping with Josh is a good idea?
You could just take a chance for once.
I could also end up hacked into little pieces and shoved into the ice bucket in my hotel room.
Don’t be ridiculous. He couldn’t get all of you into the ice bucket.
She blew out a breath. She couldn’t take a total stranger that she’d met in a bar on Bourbon Street back to her hotel room.
But she wanted to.
Josh was different. She didn’t have to know him well for there to be something very appealing about him. Namely, that she didn’t know him well. And he hadn’t known her all her life.
He hadn’t seen her wrestling a sheep down for a vaccination or up to her knees in mud or dodging a pissed off goat. He hadn’t witnessed her punching Mike Trotter in the nose when she’d realized he was messing with her animals at the State Fair. Josh hadn’t seen her slip in the afterbirth of a mama sow and end up on her ass in the pile of slop in the pen. He hadn’t seen her burst out crying and run from the room when Allie Donally did a report about the inhumane treatment of animals in packing houses. He didn’t know about the time she’d been picked up by the local cops for rescuing a bunch of dogs from an area farm and hiding them in her barn. He hadn’t been in the truck when she and a group of friends hit a deer on the way to the river and she’d jumped out to check on the deer and then grabbed the shotgun and put the poor thing out of its misery when she found it still alive but dying.
All the guys she saw on a regular basis had been there for those events. They all knew her as the animal-crazy tomboy who preferred time alone on the farm and who was very socially awkward when she did go out.
Tori shook all of that off and focused on Josh. The guy who had no idea that she owned fourteen cats—and three dogs, two horses, two fainting goats, a geriatric pig, a stupid chicken named Cher, and a miniature cow. She lived on a farm. It wasn’t like she had all of those animals in a trendy apartment in some big city. But…even she knew that was a lot of cats.
And it was because of those cats—kind of—that she realized she couldn’t take a hot New Orleans bartender back to her overpriced hotel room on Canal Street. She wasn’t that girl. She might want to be that girl. A little. When that hot New Orleans bartender was holding her hand and looking at her like she amused, and aroused, him. But when it came right down to it, she couldn’t even deal with the guys she’d known her whole life. She didn’t want to talk to them or eat with them. She was far more interested in their dogs and cats. Hell, even their chickens—and she pretty much hated chickens. The only guys she liked to talk to were her dad and Andrew. And now Andrew was gaga over a bubbly, blonde heiress who probably couldn’t tell the difference between a Buckeye hen and a Plymouth Rock.
She really didn’t understand men.
“Those wheels are really spinning in that pretty head,” Josh said after a long silence. “You realizing that you could do a lot better than me?”
Tori gave him a little smile. She shook her head and reluctantly pulled her hand back from his. “Just realizing that I’m not really a gin fizz kind of girl.”
Josh didn’t say anything for a beat. Then he nodded. “I figured.”
“Yeah?”
“I think that must be part of what I like about you.”
She laughed softly. “Or is it just that I’m a brunette?”
He gave her a grin. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”
She laughed again and swiveled on her stool, sliding to the floor. She reached for her purse, but Josh stopped her. “Don’t you even think about paying for that drink.”
“You’re not getting my number. I should at least give you a tip,” she said. Was that flirtatious? Maybe.
He opened his mouth, then shut it, and shook his head.
“What?” she asked.
“There’s nothing I can say here that doesn’t sound like a come-on.”
“No?” She grinned and handed him a twenty.
He handed her back nineteen-fifty.
“A fifty-cent drink and no tip or a free drink and a fifty-cent tip?”
He tossed the two quarters in the tip bottle on the bar. “Free three sips of a drink. Fifty-cent payment for the advice to stay the hell away from N’Awlins boys who drink too much bourbon and barely recognize nice girls anymore.”
“You think I’m a nice girl?”
“I definitely do.”
She was. She didn’t realize she broadcast it quite so loudly, but yeah, she was. She nodded. “Sorry about that.”
He gave her a smile. “Somebody’s gotta go square dancing with all those nice farm boys up north.”
She gave a little gasp, but she couldn’t help her grin. “I’ve never been square dancing in my life.”
He chuckled. “But I bet you’ve let a nice Iowa boy drive you around on his tractor.” He wiggled one eyebrow suggestively.
<
br /> She scoffed. “Not even once.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “Don’t need a boy for that.” Tori slid her purse strap up on her shoulder. “I’ve got my own tractor to drive around. When I’m in the mood for…tractor driving.”
There was a brief pause and then he laughed.
In a brief flash of sassiness, she winked at him. “But if you ever make it to Iowa, I’ll take you on a ride.”
“Damn, girl, that’s tempting.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Josh.”
“For?”
“Being a good guy.”
He gave a little shrug. “I’m already regretting it, I’ll be honest.”
With a smile, she turned and started for the door.
She’d just stepped out onto the sidewalk when she felt someone grasp her upper arm and twirl her around.
It was Josh.
“Wha—”
He cupped her face and covered her mouth with his.
Whoa.
It took her about three seconds to recover from her shock. She tilted her head to deepen the kiss, opening her lips under his, and stepped in until they were belly button to belly button.
He gave a soft growl that made heat curl through her and settle between her legs. She arched closer. He swept his tongue over her lower lip and then in along her tongue.
God, he tasted good. He felt good. He smelled good.
A far-too-short moment later, someone bumped into him from behind and broke them apart. Josh stood, still cradling her face, staring down at her.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Came to tell you to assume all the guys you’re going to meet down here are N’Awlins boys who drink too much bourbon and don’t recognize nice girls when they meet them.”
“Most of these guys are tourists,” she pointed out.
He nodded. “Even worse than N’Awlins boys.”
She chuckled at that. “So just stay away from all the guys here no matter what?”
“Definitely.”
“And the kiss?” she asked softly.
“That, I just couldn’t help.”
“Because you’re a N’Awlins boy and all that?”
“Ah, girl,” he said, his drawl getting deeper and longer. “I’m way more fun, and dangerous, than a N’Awlins boy.”
My Best Friend’s Mardi Gras Wedding: Boys of the Bayou Page 3
