by JoAnn Ross
“Then why are you frowning?”
“I’ve got a headache coming on.” A two-hundred-and-ten pound Cajun one. “I’ll take a couple aspirin and I’ll be fine.”
“You’re always a damn sight better than fine, chère.” His grin was quick and sexy, without the seductive overtones that had always made his friend’s smile so dangerous.
She could handle this, Emma assured herself as she locked up the spa for the day. An uncharacteristic forty-five minutes early, which had Cal Marchand, proprietor of Cal’s Cajun Café across the street checking his watch in surprise.
The thing to do was to just pull on her big girl underpants, drive into New Orleans and get it over with. Gabriel Broussard might be People magazine’s sexiest man alive. He might have seduced scores of women all over the world, but the man Cosmo readers had voted the pirate they’d most like to be held prisoner on a desert island with was, after all, just a man. Not that different from any other.
Besides, she wasn’t the same shy, tongue-tied, small-town bayou girl she’d been ten years ago. She’d lived in the city; she’d gotten married, only to end up publicly humiliated by a man who turned out to be slimier than swamp scum.
It hadn’t been easy, but she’d picked herself up, dusted herself off, divorced the dickhead, as Roxi loyally referred to him, started her own business and was a dues paying member of Blue Bayou’s Chamber of Commerce.
She’d even been elected deputy mayor, which was, admittedly, an unpaid position, but it did come with the perk of riding in a snazzy convertible in the Jean Lafitte Day parade. Roxi, a former Miss Blue Bayou, had even taught her a beauty queen wave.
She’d been fired in the crucible of life. She was intelligent, tough, and had tossed off her nice girl Catholic upbringing after the dickhead dumped her for another woman. A bimbo who’d applied for a loan to buy a pair of D cup boobs so she could win a job as a cocktail waitress at New Orleans’ Coyote Ugly Saloon.
Emma might not be a tomb raider like Lara Croft, or an international spy with a to-kill-for wardrobe and a trunkful of glamorous wigs like Alias’s Sydney Bristow, but this new, improved Emma Quinlan could take names and kick butt right along with the rest of those fictional take-charge females.
And if she were the type of woman to hold a grudge, which she wasn’t, she assured herself yet again, the butt she’d most like to kick belonged to Blue Bayou bad boy Gabriel Broussard.
Three
There was no way she could have missed him. Emma supposed that he’d chosen the plain white T-shirt, faded jeans, scuffed cowboy boots, red Ragin’ Cajun baseball cap and RayBans in order to blend into the locals crowding the terminal, but there was no way Gabriel would ever blend in anywhere.
He was six feet one before tacking on the added height from those wedged heels of the boots and his body beneath that tight shirt appeared as lean and hard as it’d been when he was eighteen. The shaggy black hair curling at the nape of his neck was as black as a moonless night over the bayou and the thin white scar running across his cheekbone added a dashing, dangerous look reminiscent of the pirates who’d once used the bayou as a home base while raiding merchant ships out in the Gulf.
A sexy stubble of beard darkened his jaw, and his mouth was set in a firm, no-trespassing line designed to discourage anyone who might recognize him from speaking to him. He made his way past the newsstands, take-out Cajun food counters, and souvenir stands selling Tabasco sauce and plastic alligators on the loose-hipped predatory stride of a swamp panther.
Emma was wondering if Nate had informed Gabriel about the change of plans, that she’d be the one picking him up, when he honed in on her like a heat-seeking missile.
“Hey, chère.”
His drawl was as rich as the pralines being sold next to those grinning plastic gators. Emma had read that when he’d first gone to Hollywood, he’d been told to sound more “American,” to which he’d responded that the last time he’d looked at a map, Louisiana was in America, and besides, having an accent sure as hell hadn’t hurt Antonio Banderas, Pierce Brosnan, or Sean Connery.
After The Last Pirate was released, and all those earlier detractors realized how sexy moviegoers found that bayou drawl, Gabriel Broussard’s name rocketed to the top of every A list in town.
Case closed. As they say in the movie business, A Star Was Born.
His sensually chiseled lips tilted into a weary, all-too memorable half smile that hinted at dark secrets. The smile that made women want to take him into their arms, coddle him, and make the pain go away. The smile that had coaxed more than one willing female into the backseat of the Batmobile black Trans Am he’d roared around the bayou in back in high school.
Then, even as she braced against it, he folded her in his strong arms.
Because the feel of that hard, male, built-for-sin body against hers made her want to hold on, Emma stiffened.
If he noticed her resistance, Gabe didn’t show it as he put her a little away from him, keeping his long dark fingers curved around her shoulders as he subjected her to an openly masculine appraisal, from the top of her dark head, down to her Sunset Poppy lacquered toenails. The little toe was smeared a bit from putting her brand-new sandals back on before it dried, but from the way his gaze lingered on her breasts, Emma didn’t figure he’d notice the flaw.
“Damned if you haven’t turned into one hot female, you.”
The intimate growl was more suited for a bedroom than the crowded concourse in Louis Armstrong International Airport. As for the words . . . well, they shouldn’t have given her such a secret thrill.
They shouldn’t.
But, heaven help her, they did.
They also gave her a rash, reckless idea.
While Emma wasn’t one of those people who actually believed those tacky supermarket tabloid stories about bat boys and alien babies, and who in Hollywood was sleeping with whom, it was more than a little obvious that while he might no longer be the town’s bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, one thing about Gabriel Broussard hadn’t changed. Seduction still came as naturally to him as breathing.
So, what if she turned the tables? What if she seduced him?
After all, he owed her. Big time.
Emma was proud of how she’d moved on after her divorce from Richard, the adulterous, tax-dodging, embezzling dickhead. But some old habits died hard, and in many ways, although there were times when she aspired to be promiscuous, she was still a good girl. Sometimes too much so, if her best friend could be believed.
Roxi, who could have written a modern girl’s guide to hooking up, had taped all six seasons of Sex and the City and every Wednesday evening, while Richard had supposedly been at his Rotary Club meetings, she and Emma had gotten together to watch them. Unfortunately, while Roxi memorized Samantha’s pick-up lines, Emma identified with the hopelessly romantic Charlotte.
It wasn’t as if Roxi hadn’t tried to liven up Emma’s life, encouraging her to push the sexual envelope, to act on impulse.
Ha! Easy for her to say. Emma didn’t do impulsive. She made lists. Lots and lots of lists. All of which were color coded by day of the week, month of the year, and whether they were business or personal.
Not only was she diligent about crossing items off as she accomplished them, if she did something that wasn’t on one of those pieces of yellow lined legal paper, she’d add it to the bottom of the list, just for the satisfaction of drawing a line through it.
After going back to school to become a professional masseuse, she’d worked on her business plan for Every Body’s Beautiful for eighteen months before buying so much as a towel. Much to Roxi’s frustration, most of Emma’s evenings were spent alone, poring over the day spa’s books and spreadsheets, looking for ways she could improve her cash flow.
Reminding her on an almost daily basis that you didn’t have to be in love with a man to sleep with him, Roxi was all the time also repeating her favorite bumper sticker slogan: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Made History. But being mostly content with t
he life she’d made for herself after the divorce debacle, Emma didn’t feel a need to make history.
Still, what woman didn’t have a few things in her past she might have done differently? Like marrying the dickhead.
Or believing, back when she’d been a naïve eighteen-year-old wallflower, that Gabriel Broussard would eventually grow tired of all those nymphets who were only attracted to his bad boy aura and tragically beautiful good looks.
Having harbored a secret crush on him for years, Emma had spent long lonely hours fantasizing scenarios where he’d suddenly recognize that there was a gleaming pearl amidst all the flashy cubic zirconium he’d been wasting his time with.
That pearl being her. A nice, caring, good girl who truly loved him for the sensitive, emotionally wounded heart that dwelt inside that devastatingly sexy body. For the man she’d known he could become.
A helluva lot of good that did you.
Maybe it was time, just for the few days he’d be in town, she ditched Emma, the good girl. And tried being Emma, the good-time girl.
Besides, part of Gabriel’s appeal was that he’d always been a forbidden pleasure. Like all things forbidden, the fantasy undoubtedly surpassed the reality. Maybe it was time to find out if the bad boy of Blue Bayou could actually live up to his reputation.
And then, once she’d gotten a long overdue satisfaction, she’d just leave. The same way he had.
Later, when she was thinking clearly again, Emma would remind herself that her own reputation wasn’t exactly that of a wild-woman seductress. And her body certainly wasn’t Hollywood tucked, buffed, and toned.
But it was hard to even think at all when her mind was being bombarded by pheromones from a damn testosterone bomb.
Feeling uncharacteristically reckless—not to mention light-headed—she backed two steps away to give him a good look. Trying not to teeter on the ridiculously high fuck-me stilettos that had seemed like a good idea when she’d seen them in the window of The Magic Slipper, and resisting the urge to lick her suddenly dry lips, Emma smoothed her palms over the hips of the brand-new flowered silk skirt she’d bought after closing up today.
She hadn’t bought the outfit for Gabe. The timing was only coincidence. No way would she risk maxing out her AMEX for any man.
Apparently the money, which could have paid Every Body’s Beautiful’s electric bill for six months, had not been wasted. Emma experienced a sudden surge of feminine power as his gaze followed the provocative gesture.
Channeling her inner Samantha, Emma checked him out in turn, drinking in the mouthwatering sight of broad male shoulders, bulging biceps and the strong V-shaped torso that arrowed down into lean male hips. Allowing her gaze to linger suggestively on the button placket of his jeans, she watched his penis flex beneath the worn denim.
Oh. My. God.
An illicit thrill zinged through Emma. Hot damn if Roxi wasn’t right.
Men were easy.
Wishing she’d known this feminine secret back in high school, Emma lifted her eyes back to his, which were still shaded by those damn sunglasses, and treated him to a bold, sultry look hot enough to melt steel.
“You’re not looking so bad yourself, sugar,” she said on a throaty let’s-get-naked drawl Emma figured Samantha would use in this situation, if New York City’s most famous bad girl had been born in bayou country.
When Gabe’s lips twitched in a faint smile, Emma’s rebellious mind conjured up an X-rated fantasy of them tugging at her suddenly sensitive nipples.
“Nate called me just as I was leaving for the airport this morning,” he said.
In Emma’s fantasy, his mouth was moving south, trailing wet hot kisses over her naked flesh. And she’d begun to tingle in places she’d forgotten could tingle.
“I wasn’t real thrilled when he started in explainin’ about havin’ to go out of town, since that meant I was gonna have to rent a car, me,” Gabe continued.
In her fantasy, he was nudging her dampening panties down with his beautiful white teeth. His words were beginning to be drowned out by the thundering hoofbeat of stampeding hormones.
“Which wasn’t real high up on my Top Ten things to do right now since I’m trying to stay under the radar. Then he told me he’d found a stand-in.”
“That stand-in being me.”
Standing in. Standing up. Lying down. Against the wall, on the floor, the ceiling. Emma didn’t care how. Or where. She just wanted him. Any which way.
“Mais, yeah.” His slow, lazy gaze traveled slowly, erotically, down the length of her again. “If I’d known certain things about Blue Bayou had gotten so appealing, I’d have come back a helluva lot sooner.”
What on earth would Samantha say to that? Emma’s mind stalled; her breath caught.
Think!
Since her brain seemed to have crashed, more vital regions leaped into the breach. “Some days a guy gets lucky,” she heard herself cooing in a very unEmma-like way.
Emma realized she’d hit the bull’s-eye when an ebony brow lifted above the frames of those wraparound shades. “You sayin’ this is going to be one of those days, chère?”
Emma had spent most of her teenage years—and later, even after a marriage that should have been declared dead at the altar—dreaming about Gabriel looking at her this way, as if she were the most desirable woman he’d ever seen. As if she were a whiskey-drenched bread pudding smothered in whipped cream he wanted to eat up.
Amazingly, this reality was proving even more exciting. She took her time, pretending to think it over, while, relying on age-old feminine instincts she hadn’t even realized she possessed, she slowly trailed her fingers along the V-neck of her silk blouse.
“That’s for me to know.”
His shielded gaze followed the deliberately languid gesture, honing in on her cleavage.
Easy.
“And you to find out.”
He moved closer, the pointy tips of his boots touching her bare toes. “Sounds like a treasure hunt.”
His deep, rumbling voice caressed every nerve.
“It just might be.” She cocked her head. Electricity was sparking all around them. “Do you enjoy treasure hunts?”
He rubbed his square jaw, drawing her gaze to that cleft just beneath his lower lip. “That depends on the treasure.”
He moved even closer, so that there wasn’t a breath of air between them, and toyed with a strand of auburn hair, wrapping it around his hand in a way that had her imagining him dragging her by the hair below deck to his pirate captain’s quarters, where he’d force her to do all sorts of wicked, wild, wonderful things.
His hand—his large, dark hand—skimmed down her neck, sliding over her shoulder like warm silk. “If I have enough motivation, I can be very, very good at them.”
Emma gave him the fluttery Scarlett O’Hara smile Roxi used to practice in the mirror back when they were thirteen. “I’ll just bet you can.”
Emma was hot, hot, hot.
So blisteringly hot she was on the verge of melting into a pitiful puddle of need right here in front of a display tower of Mean Devil Woman Cajun Hot Sauce.
“What do you say we blow this place and get started?” Gabriel suggested, lowering his head until his mouth was hovering just above hers. So close she could feel his hot breath against her lips.
Some faint vestige of reason in Emma’s mind managed to break through the hormones that were jumping up and down, screaming yes, yes, yes! to remind her that this was no longer her own private erotic fantasy.
The game she was playing with Gabriel Broussard was all too real. What on earth made her think she was up to playing in this man’s league?
Still, the part of her mind that was still functional asked, what was the worst that could happen? That he might reject her? So? Wasn’t it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?
Not that they were talking about love.
It was lust. Pure and simple.
What would Samantha say?
It’d be his loss.
Good answer.
“So,” she asked brightly, with renewed confidence, “do you have luggage?”
“Just this.” He held up a scuffed leather duffle bag that looked as if it’d been around the world at least a dozen times. Emma wondered if it was the same one he’d packed before leaving her sleeping in his bed.
You’re a survivor. You can do this.
“I’m parked outside,” she said.
Duh! Where the hell else would she be parked? A blonde with a cotton candy mass of frosted and over-teased hair and a dangerous spark in her overly made-up blue eyes was headed toward them. If they hung around here any longer, any opportunity to escape unnoticed would be lost.
“We’d better get going before we draw a crowd and you end up on the front of some tabloid.” She turned and started walking toward the exit.
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” He smiled like an unrepentant sinner and fell into step beside her, shortening his stride to match hers.
His response brought to mind Tamara Templeton’s alleged reason for breaking her engagement to Gabe. Which, in turn, had Emma wondering what kind of kinky situation she was getting herself into, driving this man out to that isolated camp in the bayou.
This was insane.
Amazing.
Insanely amazing.
Heat, thick with moisture, hit like a fist as they left the terminal. Emma could feel her hair, which she’d spent twenty minutes this morning blow-drying to a smooth, auburn sheen, spring into a mass of wild, unruly curls.
It figured. Even her hair couldn’t control itself around Gabriel Broussard.
Four
What the hell had he been thinking? Coming on to Emma Quinlan that way? Christ, Emma, of all people.
As he’d followed that magnificent J.Lo butt out of the terminal, to the sporty, cherry red Miata convertible that fit the bold, adventurous female Emma Quinlan seemed to have metamorphosed into, Gabe was having trouble reconciling this lushly curvaceous, sexy, incredibly hot female with the shy, plump girl who’d so openly adored him back in high school.
