Bayou Heat

by Donna Kauffman

  Without waiting for a response, she took a step back. She’d get either four hours of sleep—or an eternity of it. Please, she silently pleaded, just let me out of this room.

  “You’re amazing, chèr, you know that?” he said. “I imagine that ‘I know best’ take-charge voice works real well with those collegiate types.”

  Erin was so tense she half expected her bones to crack, but she slid another step toward the door. Something he said nagged at her, but she was too busy fighting for her freedom to worry over it.

  She managed a tight little shrug. “Yes, well, one has to make do with what one has.” Her mouth was dry as dust because all of her bodily moisture was running out of her pores. Another small step. “I imagine that lazy Cajun charm fools most people into thinking you’re not the least bit dangerous either. Me, I appreciate that.” She kept her gaze firmly on his eyes in a vain attempt to prove she wasn’t scared of him. “In fact, if anyone asks, I never saw you. Never met you. Have no idea how that blood got all over my—”

  He lifted the gun a mere fraction of an inch and with a short scream she turned and launched herself as far into the main room of the apartment as she could.

  She hit the floor hard but ignored the numbing pain shooting from her elbow to her shoulder. She scrambled to her knees, only to get tangled up in discarded clothes and duffel straps. A loud thud then a string of curses echoed behind her.

  She felt the floor vibrate under the weight of his footsteps. She felt more than heard him stumble as she frantically tried to claw the straps off her arms. Don’t shoot me, don’t shoot me, don’t shoot me.

  “Stop,” he ordered from way too close behind her.

  Sweat slicked her palms, making things worse. She swore under her breath.

  “Dieu, would you just stop? I won’t shoot you!”

  “Yeah, right.” Hopelessly trapped, she went limp in resignation. “How dare you do this to me!” she raged at him as she twisted around, putting her weight on her good elbow. “I know you couldn’t possibly care, but I’ve busted my ass to get to this point. You can’t just waltz in here and ruin it all with one friggin bullet!”

  She was breathing heavily, sweat streaming down her face, into her eyes. He was a blur, wedged in the bathroom doorway.

  “I don’t care who you are or what trouble you’re in. I forget all about you, you forget all about me. Easy.” She couldn’t control the sudden trembling as exhaustion from too long a day took over. “I swear it.”

  He said nothing. She wiped her face on her shirt, then looked stubbornly back at him. And immediately wished she hadn’t.

  She swallowed hard. He was very large, very menacing, and very naked. Nothing about him was blurred now.

  He held the gun loosely in his hand, his elbow propped on the doorframe. And, damn the man, he was smiling. She scowled.

  “Now that is one thing I don’t think I can ever do, ange.”

  “What? And don’t call me angel.”

  He even winced beautifully. “Forget you. Easily or otherwise.”

  She swallowed again when his gaze dipped below her face. She groaned softly, knowing even before he pulled his other hand out from behind his back what he’d be holding.

  “Drop something?” A white towel dangled from his fingertips. “I tripped over it.” He eyed the tangle of clothes twisted around her and made that tsking sound again. “For both our sakes you really should learn to put things back where they belong.”

  Erin released it all—humiliation and indignation—in a pounding thump on the floor. “Go ahead, shoot me. I give up. You win. Happy?”

  He wrapped the towel around his hips and moved slowly toward her.

  “Aw, chèr, don’t give up now.” His voice sounded strained. “Things were just getting … interesting.”

  When he bent over, bracing his hands on his knees, her strength to fight came roaring back with a vengeance. She scooted rapidly backward, dragging the duffel and clothes with her, until her back hit the day-bed. Clawing her way upright, she managed to sit on it. Obviously he was still affected by whatever wound he’d incurred. A momentary twinge of … what? Compassion? For God’s sake, Erin, the man threatened you at gunpoint! She kept her attention split between him and the gun in his hand as she yanked the clothes from her sticky skin.

  He started to waver and barely righted himself. “Ange,” he said, roughly. “Come here.”

  “In your dreams,” she muttered as she managed to shake out her shorts and jam her feet into them. Her shirt was inside out but she didn’t stop to fix it. For all she knew he could be playing some sick game with her. Even if the only thing that looked really sick right now was him.

  Don’t even think it. Leave. Call the police. Better yet, go find the police in person and stay there until morning. Maybe they’ll even let you take a cold shower.

  “You can’t go.” The last word came out on a long groan.

  “Watch me.”

  Just then he pitched forward onto his knees and fell to his side.

  Good, she told herself. With a sigh of self-directed disgust, she looked back at him. How did someone so big and brawny, still clutching that damn gun, look so defenseless?

  She caught herself before she took a step in his direction. “I’ll call an ambulance,” she said out loud, hoping, for some reason, that he heard her. “Anonymously,” she added warily, confused by the conflicting emotions assailing her.

  She grabbed her satchel, her hand was on the door—

  “Erin.”

  She froze. Then, very slowly, she turned. One word, and he was once again in command of the situation. In command of her.

  He was still on the floor, his back to her. The towel had slipped and she saw now the gash on his right hip. The discoloration and swelling on the back of his shoulder.

  “Erin.”

  The shock of hearing her name a second time snapped her back to the moment. “How do you know me? Who are you?”

  “Come … here.”

  She took half a step before she realized it and stopped. “How do you know me?”

  “Dammit,” he ground out. “Can’t you … just once”—he groaned again—“do as I … ask?”

  “You never ask for anything,” she shot back. “And I can’t think of one good reason why I should.”

  He rolled to his back. The towel had come loose and didn’t travel with him. But her gaze was riveted to his face. He pinned her with those magic voodoo eyes and said the one thing guaranteed to make her do whatever he wanted.

  “Because I’m Teague Comeaux. Your guide.”

  TWO

  Stunned, Erin didn’t move.

  His head dropped back to the floor, his eyes closed.

  “What the hell are you doing here now?” she demanded. “Like this? With a gun?”

  No answer. Shutting the door none too gently, she stormed back into the room. He was out cold. Again.

  She sighed, then looked longingly at the bed. “So much for sleep.” She spared a thought for the phone. She doubted a man who clutched his gun like a teddy bear, even when unconscious, would appreciate men in blue or white right now.

  Since he hadn’t seemed too concerned about his injuries, she was willing to put the hospital off for the moment. And until she knew more about what was going on, the police were out too.

  She stared grimly at her ticket into the bayou and voodoo country. He was half on his side, half on his back, all exposed. Every glorious inch. She pointedly turned her attention to his left hand. And still armed. That left one option. Letting him stay right where he was.

  At least he was bleeding on the towel, she thought as she hunted down a lamp and flicked it on. Yellow light from the dim bulb bathed his body in a soft glow. What was she going to do with him? Several indecent and wholly female ideas sprang to mind, but she ignored them. He wasn’t even her type.

  She snorted under her breath. Who was she kidding? She was female and breathing. He was her type. Her only saving grace was the
security of knowing she wasn’t his. But then, as far as she’d been able to discover, she wasn’t any man’s type.

  Of course, his requirements were probably not much more demanding than the female/breathing ones. Erin hated herself for the split second of yearning she experienced when she flashed on the two of them together … that way. But she was helpless to stop it.

  The gun. She forcibly dragged her mind back to that annoying little detail. Erin debated the merits of easing the lethal thing from his grasp but dismissed the idea quickly.

  With her luck she’d make him pull the trigger and wind up killing herself.

  Instead she went into the bathroom, closed the French doors, ignoring the blood-smeared walls more easily than the shower nozzle and it’s faded promise of cool relief. She dug up several worn rose-patterned towels, a half-empty bottle of grape flavored children’s pain reliever, and a handful of plastic strip bandages.

  She smiled a bit wickedly at the bright green turtles decorating the last item. Wouldn’t he look cute in those. Well, beggars couldn’t very well be choosers.

  Stopping long enough to wet down a few washcloths, she crossed back to him. Staring alternately at the gun and his half-hidden face, she carefully nudged his thigh with her toe.

  Nothing.

  “Mr. Comeaux?” Still nothing. She crouched down beside him, his back to her, and dumped her small stash on one of the towels. She shook his arm. “Teague?” He didn’t move so much as an eyelash. She noticed, half-distracted, that he had the thickest, blackest eyelashes she’d ever seen.

  His breathing was deep and even. She prodded him a bit more firmly. Satisfied he wasn’t pulling some sort of trick on her, she eased into a cross-legged position behind him and went to work gently cleaning out the shallow gash just above his hip. With a pair of nail clippers from her satchel, she fashioned a few crude, but effective, butterfly bandages from the plastic strips and applied them over the deepest part of the wound.

  With a dry smile at the green turtles decorating his dark hide, she gave him a light pat on his perfect tush. “There you go, mon Cajin ninja.” She pulled the towel over his hip and tucked it in—firmly—at his waist. “Okay,” she said on a weary sigh as she scooted over a few feet. “Upward and onward.”

  It had been strangely easy to keep her eyes on his hip wound and off everything else. Anatomy, she’d told herself. Basic arrangement of bone and muscle. Despite the fact that he was just about as perfect a specimen as she’d ever encountered, it was still just arms, legs, hips, buns … perfectly sculpted buns.

  Get a grip, McClure. Clearing her throat, she delicately probed the mat of blood-caked hair on his temple. Okay, so perhaps she wasn’t as unaffected as she’d like to believe. As she needed to be. Even unconscious, he was a bit bigger than life.

  Hell, she was only human, she told herself. But Erin had discovered long ago that her unusual life had stamped her with some sort of indelible mark that, even when she was playing staid collegiate professor, alternately bewildered and intimidated the men she occasionally dated.

  Teague Comeaux didn’t strike her as a man who’d ever been intimidated by anything life tossed at him. And picturing him bewildered was simply impossible.

  Belatedly realizing she was stroking the side of his face, she tensed, inadvertently pressing on his wound a bit too hard.

  He moaned, low and guttural. She yanked her hand away too late. Her neck had been taken hostage by a large, warm palm. One second later, he neatly flipped her over his back, her bottom tucked in the cradle of his hips, her legs still dangling over his waist. With her torso twisted against him, he dragged her face to his.

  Glassy black eyes bored into hers. He wasn’t choking her, but there was no mistaking the strength in his fingers. She didn’t try to move.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked, his voice not more than a rasp, his eyes still clouded with pain.

  She swallowed slowly. “Playing Nurse Ratched?”

  He winced sharply when his smile tugged at the split skin on of his lip. “Mais yeah, Florence Nightingale you’re not, ange.”

  “No point in pretending to be something you’re not.”

  The smile disappeared from his eyes instantly, and Erin felt the hair on her arms and neck rise. She swallowed again, but this time she tasted a tiny bit of fear.

  “I’d appreciate having my neck back, thanks,” she said with all the bravado she could muster.

  He loosened his hold but kept his fingers pressed to the skin covering her pulse. Her rapid pulse. So much for cool. Erin wondered if she’d ever have any secrets from this man. Even the tiny, sanity-saving ones.

  No. Teague Comeaux wouldn’t let her have even the smallest edge. Ever.

  “Why didn’t you leave?” he asked quietly.

  Good question. “You know damn well why.”

  “Smart girl.”

  She veered sharply from feeling like a small trapped animal to feeling supremely human and very female. The only similarity between the two was the fear of being devoured. Whole.

  Trying to forget she was draped across his mostly naked body, Erin discovered that looking into his eyes was just as fraught with danger. But maintaining eye contact was a universal method of proving strength, equality, invincibility. And the only prayer she had of getting off this floor.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me right off who you were?”

  “I was a bit out of it, chèr,” he reminded her. “Until your lovely screech woke me up.” He seemed amused by her scowl. “And then there was that show you put on. What man in his right mind would stop that?”

  “We’ll never know, will we?”

  The deep grumble of sound he made might have been a chuckle, she wasn’t sure. She was too busy feeling his body move under hers. “Since you know I won’t run, can we get off the floor?”

  His finger traced a lazy pattern along the vein in her neck. “The floor’s not so bad, ange.”

  Erin’s blood warmed and seemed to pool low in her belly. “Let me up,” she said roughly, not caring what he saw, what he knew he was making her feel.

  He released her neck, but when she moved to slide off, he held her captive again with one finger to her chin. “This time.”

  Careful not to hit his wounded hip, she lifted herself off him and scooted several feet away before standing and moving to a small, overstuffed chair.

  Facing him now, she sat down and braced her elbows on her knees. “Let’s get one thing straight up front. I’m here to do research on a project I’ve dedicated most of my life to. Not to indulge in some steamy bayou affair with the local parish stud.”

  “And here I thought my reputation had spread statewide.”

  His tone told her he wasn’t the least bit intimidated by her words. But he didn’t bother to deny the proposition he’d clearly made. Hell, he was a living, breathing proposition just lying there doing nothing.

  She barged ahead. “I appreciate your taking me into the bayou. I know you realize how important your role is in my research. And because of that I’m willing to overlook being held at gunpoint and having my room invaded.”

  “No questions?” Gone was the teasing scoundrel. He looked wary. The predator, sniffing the air for danger once again.

  She squared her shoulders. “Just one.”

  “Shoot.”

  She glanced at the gun. “Very funny.”

  “I aim to amuse, chèr.”

  I’ll bet you do, “I’m counting on you to get me in, to be a sort of translator/guide/ambassador.” She sighed heavily when he quirked his brow at the last part. “You know these people, right? So they’re used to you.” Her tone clearly said she couldn’t fathom such a thing. “Are you prepared to do this?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Okay then, we have a deal.”

  “That’s it? No more questions about tonight? About this?” He lifted the gun off the floor.

  “Would you answer them honestly?”

  “P
robably not.”

  “Then why bother, right?” Pressing her palms against her knees, she stood. “You’re not expecting anyone else to crash in here tonight, are you?”

  “At this late hour?” The rogue smile returned. “Why that would be so rude, mon chèr.”

  “Yes, I’m sure your friends, that’s accepting you have any, are all well-mannered gentlemen.”

  “We may not be the classiest bunch, but we know how to treat people right, ange.”

  “Yeah.” She gestured to his bruised forehead and swollen mouth. “I can see that.”

  “Aw, chèr, that weren’t nothing but a little barroom brawl between longtime acquaintances.”

  “A real fun date, I’m sure,” she said dryly. “All this and live ammo too.”

  He chuckled, then winced and held his hand to his mouth. “And here I didn’t plan on liking you very much.”

  She arched one brow. “Yeah, us ethnobotanists are always getting a bad rap.”

  “I can see that.”

  The quietly spoken words unnerved Erin as nothing else had so far. “Can you point that thing somewhere else?” she snapped.

  Teague looked down at himself, then up at her. “You want to clarify that, ange?”

  “The gun,” she ground out. “The deal, remember?” Gun or not, she turned her back to him and poked into her duffel. Dragging out a pair of baggy, ratty sweats, she tossed them at him. “Here, I imagine they’ll be a bit short, but probably easier to get into than your jeans.” She nodded to the small pile next to him. “There’s some alcohol and wet washrags and children’s medicine. That’s the best I could do. Help yourself. I’ve got to get some sleep. I have an appointment in—” she looked at her watch and groaned, “four hours.”

  Without further hesitation, she stalked to the small wrought-iron bed and drew off the chenille spread.

  “Does this mean I don’t get the bed?”

  She climbed under the sheet and turned her back to him. “I believe the tub is still available.”

  “You’re more than kind, chèr.”