Hot Touch

by Deborah Smith

  “Perish the thought. I’d rather cuddle a tarantula.”

  “I can get you one. I’ll leave it in your bed.”

  Goose bumps scattered down her spine. She could feel him still gazing at her. At the scar, undoubtedly. “Seen enough?” she demanded, shifting with anger.

  “The scar, yes? I think it’s interesting, yes. Dramatic. Not so ugly as you think.”

  Shaken by his frankness and insight, she blinked quickly and retorted, “I’m not self-conscious about it. I’m twenty-six years old and I’ve had the scar most of my life. You startled me earlier, that’s all.” And for some insane reason, I wanted you to think I was beautiful, she added silently.

  “So why do you try to hide it?”

  “So that rude boobs won’t ask me how I got it.”

  “I’ve already failed the rude-boob test, chère. How did you get it?”

  “Look, doc, I’m not desperate to share my life story with you. I’m probably the first woman you’ve met who can’t be persuaded by your Cajun accent or your endearing little French terms. So cool the act.”

  “This is the way I always talk, pichouette. You’re in Cajun territory now, and it’s nothing like the rest of the world. Get used to it.”

  “Nothing like the rest of the world,” she echoed tersely. “Just clannish and backward.”

  He grasped her forearms in a swift, angry attack, then lifted her to her tiptoes and stared down into her wide eyes. His expression was intense. “I’ll put you out of my house if I hear that kind of insult again.”

  Her face pale, she pried his hands away and stepped back. “Apology offered. I’m not a snob. But just stay out of my way.”

  With trembling hands Caroline jerked her scarf off and flung it on the bed. “I claim this barren territory in the name of civilization.”

  She pointed to the door, giving him a stern look as she did. His eyes roamed over her hair and she knew it must be a crumpled mess from the scarf. Caroline resisted a near compulsive urge to straighten it. “Out, Dr. Dolittle,” she ordered. “Go get my luggage and leave it by the door. Don’t scratch it up. It cost a small fortune.”

  He frowned at her imperious tone and started to make a pithy comment, but someone called his name at the front door. “I’ll be back,” he told her tersely.

  “I shall alert the media,” she quipped in an English accent.

  And the moment he got beyond the bedroom door, she slammed it.

  Some people drank to forget their troubles, or ate too much, or developed other bad habits. Paul Belue played the accordion.

  He sat on the edge of his bed in the moonlight, squeezing a somber tune, his large fingers pressing gracefully into the enamel buttons that substituted for piano keys. His music, like his heritage, was all Cajun. The button accordion was a well-loved part of both.

  Dieu! Caroline Fitzsimmons would keep him up all night figuring out his emotions. She was a bossy, conceited, quick-tempered hellion, and he didn’t need to prove that he could tame that kind of woman.

  He liked women; liked being friends with them, liked being nice to them and having them be nice in return. He was thirty-two years old and proud of the loving, long-term relationships he’d enjoyed thus far. There hadn’t been hundreds of women, or even dozens. In fact, he could count the number on his fingers and have fingers left over. Quality not quantity was his motto.

  Nothing in his life had prepared him for this she-devil.

  He’d given her the worst room in the house when he could have offered her something comfortable upstairs. He’d taken cruel delight in baiting her today.

  Then she had removed her glasses and turned her fierce, mesmerizing gaze on him. Her eyes were green around the edges with sharply etched, nearly black perimeters. Near the pupils they were gold. He’d seen such strangely colored eyes in animals, but never in a human before.

  And her hair, Dieu! Even disheveled and mashed from hours under the scarf, it was glorious. Straight and thick, it hung to her shoulders in a blunt cut. It drooped over her left brow in a provocative, sultry way. The color was like blush wine or rose-tinted gold.

  He found himself feeling sympathy for her as he had the first time he saw the scar. His insinuation about Frank had really hurt her; the pain was obvious in her eyes. She wasn’t very good at hiding it. Perhaps that was another reason she favored sunglasses.

  Now Paul uttered a few ugly descriptions of his own vulnerability. It was foolish to feel softhearted toward such a silly, self-centered dame. She had marched out of her room tonight to eat dinner with Frank and some of the cast members, pointedly excluding him from an invitation. She had looked like some sort of desert queen in a sensual dress of pastel silks.

  She stopped by the kitchen table, stared rudely at his bowl of red beans and rice, then ordered him to have Wolf waiting for her first thing in the morning. She rolled her eyes when he told her that he’d turned Wolf loose in the forests for a day or two, as therapy. Wolf would come back sometime tomorrow, maybe. She called him irresponsible for letting Wolf roam.

  She left hurriedly when he threatened to dump her into a bayou.

  Paul shut his eyes and concentrated on his music until an odd thumping noise interrupted him. He paused to listen, tilting his head to one side. The old mansion was full of strange noises made by benign ghosts. But ghosts didn’t pound the ceiling downstairs.

  He placed the location of the thumping and smiled broadly. The she-devil’s sticky, hot bedroom. She was undoubtedly having trouble sleeping, and his music didn’t help. She was sending him another of her orders: Be quiet.

  Grinning, Paul played on, choosing a loud, raucous jig this time. Within a minute he heard footsteps on the long staircase to the second floor.

  “Oh, no. Against the rules, chère,” he muttered aloud.

  Carrying the accordion, he strode to his door, flung it open, and went down a wide hall. She crested the top of the stairs and stopped in the pool of light from a wall sconce. He stopped in the shadows.

  “Quit playing that thing, will you?” she asked. “It sounds like a dying moose.”

  Paul ignored her words and caught his breath at the smooth sensuality she radiated. Even in the dim light he could see her breasts moving swiftly against the thin material of her silky black pajamas. Her hair glistened with red and gold highlights. Her face was flushed with anger.

  “I told you that upstairs is off limits to you Hollywood people,” he reminded her. “Don’t ever come up here again.”

  “You have window air conditioners in three rooms up here,” she protested. “I walked around the house tonight and looked. “I want one of those rooms.”

  “No. Not upstairs. You’re lucky that I let you stay downstairs.” He squeezed the accordion for emphasis. It produced a short, squawking, somewhat indecent noise. “Get back where you belong.”

  “I’ll go when you put that damned accordion down.”

  Smiling politely, Paul stepped into the light not more than five feet from her. He watched her eyes skim down his body. He watched them widen when she realized that he was wearing only the accordion, which he held at a crucial spot in front of him.

  “Still want me to put it down, chère?” He pressed the accordion together slowly. It made a sound like a luscious sigh and revealed a good deal of his outer thighs and hips.

  She lifted her chin and looked down her nose at him. She held her ground, he had to give her that.

  “Oh, I see,” she noted sardonically. “This is a sexual fetish peculiar to Cajuns. Pardon me.”

  He played several scales on the accordion, pressing and releasing it languidly between his large, sinewy hands while he gave her a lecherous smile. “Heh, heh, heh,” he chortled. “Us Cajuns call this a squeeze box. You have anything as good?”

  “Not with pleats in it.” Looking unsettled, she grasped the front of her pajama top as if she were afraid he might burn it off with his gaze, then pivoted and stomped back downstairs.

  Paul listened carefully
until he heard her bedroom door slam shut. Then his rugged face contorted in discomfort. Reaching carefully between himself and the accordion, he began to disengage a thatch of curly black hair caught in the instrument’s brass trim. He’d nearly crushed a hard part of his anatomy that desperately wanted to like Caroline Fitzsimmons, even when she was meddling and giving orders.

  This woman was going to cause him pain in more ways than one.

  Frank and the movie’s director cranked up the cast and crew that day to shoot an outdoor scene that didn’t require Wolf’s presence.

  Free to roam, Caroline investigated the plantation, meeting the staff and petting the animals. Ed invited her to play with the black-footed ferrets, a species that conservationists had barely rescued from extinction and were now trying to return safely to the wild.

  She sat down in the middle of a large outdoor pen with a screened top, and immediately a dozen half-grown ferrets scampered over to her. Caroline laughed delightedly and spread her hands. Come, babies. I won’t hurt you.

  The ferrets climbed up her arms and stretched out on her legs. One hung from the back of her oversize tangerine-color blouse, and another draped himself over the crown of her voluminous yellow sunhat.

  Laughing, the sunhat mashed around her face like a collapsed buttercup, she didn’t notice when Paul walked up and gazed at her with astonishment.

  This couldn’t be the same glitzy babe who’d showed up in a limo yesterday, he thought. But yes—even covered in ferrets she looked chic, clean, and cool, untouched by human hands. Her blouse was orange; her flared shorts were yellow, like her sandals and the silly hat she wore and the scarf she’d twisted around her throat as a necklace. He could almost drink her; she was a tequila sunrise, sweet with a punch.

  Paul rubbed a grimy hand across his sore jaw. What a punch. He listened to her soft, carefree laugh and wondered what kind of magic the animals wrought on her. He couldn’t imagine her laughing like that around people.

  She spotted him watching her, and her laughter faded. She lifted the brim of her hat, ferret and all, and squinted at him.

  “You’re filthy,” she noted cheerfully, sweeping a jaunty gaze over his dusty jeans and T-shirt. His face and arms were streaked with dirt and sweat, and his hair was plastered to his head. She clucked her tongue in reproach. “Have you been wrestling with your conscience again?”

  He was too tired to fight the she-cat, and the sound of her laughter had softened him in some way he didn’t understand. He shrugged and smiled at her. “Been wrestling with an injured antelope.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “Got its leg twisted in a fence. Tore ligaments. I operated on her a few days ago. She’s not doing too well. We can’t keep her off the leg without sedating her. If we sedate her, she won’t eat or drink. Today we moved her into a smaller stall, where she’d be forced to rest.” He paused, frowning distractedly at the scuff mark his work boot was making in the thick sawdust around the ferrets’ cage. “She’s one of only a dozen of her kind left in the world.”

  “Dr. Bluebeard, Frank said that you traded a fancy racehorse practice in New Orleans for this hard-luck life. Why?”

  “Priorities, chère. The world has enough racehorses. It has enough doctors who want to take care of them.” He gestured around him with one hand. “When I heard that this place was for sale in the parish where I grew up, I came back. It’s where I belong.”

  “And you’ll do anything to keep the place running. Even put up with a movie crew.”

  “You got it, orange blossom.”

  “Frank said your wolf was doing great, and then one morning he just refused to cooperate.”

  “He’s not used to so many people, that’s all.” Paul grimaced in disgust. “One of the actors bit him on the ear.”

  “Kids can be—”

  “Hell, I’m talking about the old guy who plays the hermit.”

  “Frederick?”

  “He was supposed to whisper in Wolf’s ear. In the script it says, ‘Silver Wolf listens with great concentration.’ Ol’ Fred, he used to be on some soap opera or something and he says he would bite actresses on the ear to make them pay attention. Before I could stop him he bit Wolf.”

  “Oh, Lord. He bit a wolf? Did Wolf bite back?”

  Paul looked proud. “Wolf’s too well trained for that. No, he got revenge later, though. It was classic. Bien!”

  She cocked one elbow and pantomimed a leg raising and lowering. Paul chuckled. “Exactly. Fred the fireplug.”

  They both laughed. Paul realized that he wasn’t supposed to like her enough to laugh with her, and she seemed to have the same thought. They stopped awkwardly. She cleared her throat.

  “How did Frank hear about you and Wolf?”

  “One of the networks did a feature about the wildlife preserve here. Frank saw Wolf when I was being interviewed. When he came up with a script and movie deal, I didn’t know how complicated it would make my life. I wish I didn’t need the money.”

  Paul watched her pull the ferret off her hat and cup him in her arms, stroking his head. She was covered in the little animals, and they nuzzled her as if she were a long-lost friend. He’d never seen anything like it.

  “What did you do?” he demanded, pointing at her. “Hide nuts in your clothes?”

  She shrugged and looked away. “They probably just like my perfume or something.”

  “Ah. Parfum de Nut.”

  She glanced at him and smiled, her head tilted to one side. Damn, the woman almost looked sweet. “Can I see the antelope?” she asked abruptly. That snapped him back to reality. “No. No visitors.”

  “I could help her, I’m sure.”

  He bristled at her self-confident words. “You have a degree in veterinary medicine, yes?”

  “Medicine can only go so far, doc. I use massage on injured or tense animals. They like it just as much as humans do.”

  He stood hip-shot and leaned against the ferrets’ cage, eyeing her sardonically. “You have a license to massage antelopes, yes? You have training?”

  “I’m self-trained, doc. There aren’t any schools for what I do.”

  “Let me guess. Mommy and Daddy bought you a liberal arts degree at college, and you couldn’t get a real job with it.”

  “Wrong, doc. My parents died when I was five. I was adopted by my father’s cousin and his wife. To put it mildly, we Weren’t the happiest family in the world, and I left home when I was seventeen. I never went to college.” She hesitated. “I didn’t even graduate from high school. But I’m damned good with animals. If you don’t let me help your antelope, you’re an idiot.”

  His curiosity over her turbulent background was lost in annoyance. Paul bowed with mock gallantry. “Your lack of charm is exceeded only by your bad temper.”

  Caroline watched him walk away and mentally rebuked herself for being so undiplomatic. He limped a little. Obviously the antelope had put up quite a battle with its three good legs. She told herself that she felt sorry for the antelope.

  She left the ferrets’ cage and went in search of Ed. She found him inside the plantation’s aviary supervising two college interns in the feeding of baby birds.

  “Quill sparrows,” Ed explained. “Development in the Florida Everglades has almost destroyed them.”

  “Blue wants me to take a look at the injured antelope. He said you’d show me where she is.”

  “Sure.”

  An hour later Caroline walked out of the antelope’s stall, smiling. Her subterfuge had been worth it. The delicate little creature was calmly curled up in a plush bed of straw, munching from a pile of alfalfa hay. Miss Antelope understood what Paul was trying to do for her now. She’d cooperate. Dr. Blue had better appreciate that fact.

  Caroline frowned. Even the antelope had air-conditioning.

  Thank goodness for moonlight. It turned his dark bedroom into sharply etched shadows. She found her way to the air-conditioner easily.

  Caroline knelt beside the humm
ing unit and glanced fearfully at the large bed where Paul lay under nothing but a white sheet. He made a disturbing sight—large, prime, and extremely masculine, sprawled on his stomach with the sheet pulled low on his back and one long leg angled out.

  He was a wild man. He undoubtedly slept naked.

  Keep sleeping, she urged silently as she took a second to scan his room. The furniture was antique, and sparse; old rugs covered the hardwood floor; the tall windows were covered with thin white curtains. A set of doors opened onto the back balcony.

  His bedstead was a huge, ornately carved contraption set high off the floor. How regal, she thought, a majestic antique befitting a barbarian king. Her throat dry, she stared at his sleeping form for a long moment. She was treading in the barbarian’s lair, and he was one savage beast who couldn’t be soothed by the psychic music of her mind. That realization was wildly challenging.

  Caroline turned quickly to the air conditioner. She latched a hand around its electrical cord and worked her way down to the plug. She wiggled the plug away from the wall outlet and held her breath as the unit went silent.

  Sweat, Dr. Doolittle, she ordered grimly but silently.

  A few determined sawing motions with a kitchen knife neatly cut the cord in two. Caroline tucked the severed end into the waistband of her pajama bottoms and stood up.

  Tiptoe like crazy, her nerves urged. Don’t look back. Go!

  She had just reached the foot of the bed when his low, sinister voice floated off the pillow. “What do you think I should do in revenge, chère?”

  Caroline jumped. The knife clattered to the floor. The cut electrical cord slithered down to the crotch of her pajamas. “Nothing, if you’re smart,” she answered as boldly as she could, considering that her knees were weak.

  He turned over languidly, his broad torso looking very dark and imposing against the white sheets.

  “Agree to give me an air-conditioned room and I’ll apologize,” she told him.

  “You’ll apologize anyway.”

  He swung his legs off the bed and tossed the sheet back. The moonlight covered him with teasing shadows, and he was definitely naked. He stood up and came around the corner of the bed toward her, his steps relaxed. He cleared his throat like a man just rising from a good night’s sleep, ran a hand through his hair, then held out his hand palm up. He was close enough to touch her if he wanted.