Hot Touch (16 page)

“You’re not going to make it easy, no. I can tell. You’re too worried that things won’t work out. I understand.”

Confused and feeling trapped by her reckless greed for his affection and approval, she braced her hands in the hay and sidled back against the wall. “I’m glad you understand, because I don’t.”

Moving slowly, he knelt in front of her. The dim overhead light bulb cast inky shadows on his hair and drew mysterious emotions on his face. That couldn’t be affection and approval she saw. The shadows played tricks on her. All her life the shadows had played tricks.

“You belong here,” he told her in a low, firm voice. “At Grande Rivage. You belong with me.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head desperately.

He grasped at the air with one hand, catching invisible problems. “Your memories about your mother,” he murmured. His hand moved again. “Your distrust of your Cajun heritage. Your insecurity about your scar. Your fears about wanting me, a man who lives a life-style that’s very different from yours.”

With one dramatic gesture Paul flung the problems away. “
Allez
. Poof.” He shook his head slowly, his eyes on hers, then touched his forefinger over her heart. “This is all that’s important.” He brought his finger to a spot over his own heart.

His eyes became possessive and even more determined. “You can run from yourself, yes, but you can’t run from me anymore.”

Caroline trembled. She shut her eyes in an attempt to dilute his effect, only to inhale the erotic, purely masculine scent of his skin and hair. It mingled with good, homey aromas—he loved to cook chicken over hickory chips in an old stone grill outside the mansion’s back veranda, and she knew from his scent that it was what he’d fixed for dinner tonight.

Hickory smoke and the sweet smell of hay—she’d never smell either again without remembering Paul and this moment. Caroline winced. And she’d remember Angelique, for whom he’d cooked dinner.

“Go away,” she begged. He settled closer, rested his big hands atop her knees, and spread his fingers as if she were a button accordion he could play at will. She pressed her head against the wall and turned her face away from him. “Why are you doing this?” she demanded hoarsely.

Every night noise seemed amplified, every movement of the horses’ hooves and every rustle of the straw was a vibrant entity because of her aroused and worried state.

“Why did you let me think you had other men when there weren’t any, hmmm?” he asked in his soft Cajun patois, as smooth as the underside of a magnolia blossom.

Her stomach knotted.
Frank, you traitor
. “Don’t be misled. I’m no shrinking violet where men are concerned.”

“For three years you hardly left Tom Windham’s side. You had only one man,
chère
. And since he died two years ago, you haven’t had a man at all. Why didn’t you tell me the truth about why you went back to California the other weekend?”

His warm breath caressed her face. She shut her eyes. “I was trying to keep you from liking me.”

“Because you don’t want me?” he asked slyly.

Caroline stared at him, her chest rising swiftly. “Just the opposite, and you know it.” His face was so near to hers that she could have nuzzled her nose to his. She was awfully tempted to bite it first.

He made a petting motion with one hand. “Easy, easy. I just needed to hear you say so.”

Her mouth went dry from nervousness. This was a totally unexpected turn of events; she was no good at handling people at close range, not people who meant a great deal to her, and especially not this assertive Cajun.

“Angelique would be good for you,” she announced. “Maybe I misjudged her.”

He began to brush a fingertip across her kneecaps. “She’s a wonderful woman. And Mark is a great kid. When did you tell him that you had a pet spider in your room?”

“Well, maybe after lunch, no, let’s see—”

“I don’t remember you having any chance to talk to him after lunch. I don’t remember you having any chance to talk to him at all. This is one of the mysteries I’ll have to figure out about you. It’ll be fun.”

Caroline shifted her knees, trying to escape the disastrous trail of sensation his hands sent slipping up and down her legs. “Stop it,” she ordered softly. “Go back to the house. Just because you’ve realized that I have the love life of a rock doesn’t mean that anything else has changed. I’m leaving for California when the movie’s finished. Don’t forget it.”

“Hmmm-mm.” He cupped his hand over one knee and curled his fingers along the inside.

“Doc,
please,
” she begged. “Go back to the house and do something smart. Play your accordion for Angelique.”

“She wouldn’t have me if I tried.”

Caroline gaped at him for a second. “What happened? Did you sic the cats on her again?”

He lifted a black brow. “That’s more your territory, eh, witch?”

She shook her head solemnly, and was perturbed to see his eyes crinkle with amused disbelief. He patted the inside of her knee. “I’ll figure you out eventually. There’s plenty of time.”

“No, there’s not.”

His teasing look faded. “Angle’s leaving early in the morning. We had a talk after that mess with the camera this afternoon. She said she saw things between you and me that I can’t ignore.”

Unable to speak without her voice breaking, Caroline squinted at him and tried to look nonplussed.

He moved his fingertips in lazy circles, making tingles run down the muscles of her legs. “I thought you just wanted anything that was Cajun to be your joke—especially me,” he continued, his tone low and apologetic. “I thought that you were laughing at me for being old-fashioned.”

Tenderness burst inside her. “I was envying you. And trying to protect you from making a mistake with Angelique.” She paused, grimaced with the effort of revealing her motives to herself as well as to Paul, then finally admitted, “And I was trying to drive my competition away.”

He bent his head to her knees. “It tore me up when I realized that I’d humiliated you for caring about me,
chère
. I won’t ever do it again.”

Tears flooded her eyes. She pressed her fingertips to the corners. “Cut it out, doc. I don’t deal with kindness real well.”

“You’ll have to learn.” He grasped her by the shoulders. Caroline lifted her head just as he leaned forward, and suddenly he was kissing her, his mouth a gentle, possessive force that made her whimper with pleasure.

His tongue stroked hers for a moment, the action meant to soothe but also to excite. Caroline wound her fingers into his shirt and sagged forward, giving herself to his delicious mixture of sweetness and passion.

He pushed her knees apart and moved within the boundaries of her legs, then slid his hands down to her hips. He sat back and lifted her to his lap.

Still lost in his intimate, ever-changing kiss, Caroline straddled his thighs, her knees hugging them on either side. She draped her arms around his neck and drew away from his seductive mouth just enough to dab urgent kisses across his lips.

She saw her own desire reflected in his half-shut eyes and flushed face. Just looking at him made her quiver from restraint; the squeezing pressure of his hands on her rump was an enticement as old as time, and she wanted to surround him, to let her hips arch against him while his hands urged her on.

“This is why people do crazy, foolish things,” she murmured brokenly. “This feeling. I finally understand how people can claim that nothing else matters.”

He tilted his head and gave her one of his solemn, endearing looks of bewilderment. “Don’t make it sound so terrible.”

Caroline rested her forehead against his. For a moment her mind remained in a haze, every nerve ending geared to the scent and feel of him. Her fingers itched to explore the expanse of hard, muscled shoulders under his shirt; her face tingled as she imagined herself rubbing catlike along the hint of beard on his jaw.

“I don’t want to hurt or disappoint you,” she said plaintively. “I’ll leave this place tonight rather than take that chance.”

“I’d just come after you. Shhh. I’m a big ol’ tough man with a hide like a ’gator’s, yes? Don’t worry about me.”

She shook him lightly. “I can’t stay in Louisiana, Blue. There are too many bad memories, and I’d live in dread of running across my mother’s family one day.”

“Shhh. Why try to answer all the questions before the test starts?”

He pulled her forward a little, then lay back on the straw and smiled at her wickedly.

Caroline gasped as his tactic brought her feverish center into direct contact with the rising bulge inside his trousers. He held her hips still and arched gently against her.

“You’re seducing me against my will,” she whispered, her eyes heavy with desire and her voice husky. “I
thought this kind of thing could happen only in my imagination.”

“If we weren’t lying here where anyone could walk up and catch us, I’d give your imagination an even bigger jolt.”

“This is … new. I feel
new.
” She gestured vaguely, then let her hands fall to his chest.

His breath short, his eyes tender but questioning, he relaxed underneath her. He reached up and cupped her chin. “
Chère
, what does sex mean to you?”

Caroline blinked in surprise, and a chill of regret ran through her. She looked at him worriedly. Understanding filled his expression, and he grasped her arms.

“Come here. Beside me,” he asked, pulling her down.

With a troubled sigh she snuggled into the harbor of his shoulder and hugged one arm over his chest. He languidly caressed her face, and she was glad that her scar lay hidden against his side.

“What does it mean for you?” he repeated gently. “A few minutes of physical sensation? A way to show love? Or just something to offer so you’ll get the affection you need?”

Caroline shut her eyes. “The last one. At least that’s the way it was until I turned seventeen—when I ran away from home. I learned a lot about sex and nothing about love.”

Paul’s hand never faltered. He touched her hair, stroked it gently, and tightened his arm around her shoulders. “That was your stepparents’ fault.”

His attitude and gentleness scattered her worries. Caroline exhaled shakily. “I’m just being honest with you. I was nobody’s angel. I wanted to embarrass my stepparents and thumb my nose at all the average, regular,
happy
kids my age.”

She shook her head. “So I dated the bad guys, the troublemakers—and I did what I thought I had to do to make them like me.”

“It’s no crime for a mixed-up teenager to make mistakes. I just wanted to know how it had been with you.”

“Oh, doc,” she whispered. “Doc.” Her tears dampened his shoulder. Caroline admitted silently that she loved this sweetheart of a man. No matter what distances might separate them, no matter what happened to their mismatched pairing, she loved him.

She made a soft keening sound of devotion and turned her face toward his chest. “Later, when I was older, it was different with Tom,” she murmured.

“I figured that, yes.”

“He taught me how to care. Everything he did was unselfish. There weren’t any fireworks with Tom, but I didn’t mind.”

Paul twisted his head and kissed her hair. “So you went from one extreme to the other.” His deep voice was a little coy. “How would you like to try a mixture, hmmm? Sex
and
romance?”

Caroline’s heart clattered in her chest. “Sounds lovely, but I’m not sure I’d know how to act.”

“You’ll learn.”

“I should pack my fanny onto the next plane for California. For your sake as well as mine. Getting involved is not as simple as you want it to be,” she protested.

He shook his head and chuckled. “ ’Tis too,
chère
.”

“You’re forgetting that I can truly be a bitch at times.”

“And I can truly be a bastard.”

“No, you’re a hellion. That’s much nicer.”

“Well then, you’re no worse than a hellion either.”

Caroline began to smile helplessly. She knew deep down that they were headed for some devastating decisions, but that realization couldn’t overwhelm the sweet sense of happiness growing inside her chest.

She cuffed one of Paul’s ears playfully. “We’ve never had a good, long conversation about regular stuff. Maybe we can’t do it.”

“Like what stuff?”

She thought for a moment, her hand curling and uncurling in his shirt. “Favorite movies, books, foods, etcetera.”

“
The Day the Earth Stood Still
, any mystery by Dick Francis, and seafood.”

Caroline huffed drolly. “Not bad. I like those things too.”

“Let’s have a date. Right now. We’ll stay here all night and get to know each other.”

“A date?”

He tickled her cheek with his fingertips. “It’s one of those romantic things where a man and a woman talk to each other without arguing or making love.”

She smiled tentatively. “Are you sure we can manage that?”

“Let’s give it a try,
chère
.”

Feeling giddy, Caroline propped herself on one elbow and stuck a piece of straw in her mouth at a jaunty angle. Tenderness and affection coursed through her like a fine wine as she looked at the gentle barbarian sprawled next to her, his expression absurdly prim.

Caroline smiled at him and was rewarded by a searing look of affection. For the first time in her life, she felt very much at home.

Angelique left the next morning with great dignity and a handshake that nearly crushed Caroline’s fingers. Her son, unaware of the mood, hugged Caroline good-bye.

“I will,” he said.

As soon as Angelique’s zippy red subcompact disappeared at the end of the long oak corridor, Paul turned to Caroline and asked, “Will what?”

She laughed to hide her awkwardness. “He thinks I can read his mind.”

Paul grinned widely and shook his head. “Kids live in a great fantasy world.”

“Yeah.” As Paul took her hand and led her to the house for breakfast, Caroline fought a twinge of guilt over her deception. She’d never told Tom about her gift, so why should she tell Paul?

Because Tom didn’t inhabit your soul the way Paul does, she told herself.