Hot Touch

by Deborah Smith

  Paul chuckled. “When I diddle someone around here, you’ll be the first to know, chère.” He pointed upward. “Just listen for my bed bumping the wall.”

  “Anything would be better than listening to your accordion.” She scowled. “Enjoy my scar story?”

  “Hey,” he said softly. “You’ve got guts. It must not be easy to put up with helpful advice, especially from a kid like Dabney.”

  She shrugged. Then, spurred by a sense of trust that perturbed her, she grew very still and looked at him with quiet dignity. Caroline gestured toward her scar. “This is as good as it gets—at least until medical science advances a little more. The doctors took care of the smaller scars, and I’m just grateful my face turned out as well as it did.”

  Slowly, compassion softened his eyes. “How bad were you hurt?”

  “Well, let’s put it this way—I didn’t need a Halloween mask when I was growing up.”

  Abruptly he rose, came over to her, and cupped her chin in one hand. “How did it happen, chère?”

  The feel of his thick, warm fingertips on the tender underside of her jaw made rivulets of sensation trail down her body. His low, soothing voice with its French accent was utterly disarming. No wonder animals liked him. She realized that she was leaning toward him, her lips parted.

  And he was a reminder of everything she wanted to forget about her past.

  Caroline pulled away, tossed him a sardonic look, and put all her defenses back in place. “Forget it. I hate sentimentality. Let’s go kill something for lunch.”

  He tilted his head to one side and gazed at her intensely, his eyes burning into her. After several awkward seconds in which she felt like a butterfly pinned to the floor, she shook both fists at him and yelled, “Dammit, what do you want?”

  He blinked as if trying to remember. Then his eyes narrowed to wicked slits and he smiled. “Crawfish, chère. Crawfish.”

  They looked like tiny little ugly lobsters, and they were determined to humiliate her.

  “No, Caroline, shoo them, don’t scatter them,” Paul ordered in a loud, exasperated voice. He dipped a tightly meshed net into the water once again, waiting. Wolf lay upstream on a sandy bank, watching them with what amounted to a wolf smile.

  Caroline hopped. “They keep scooting over my toes! How do I know they won’t pinch me?”

  “A mudbug can’t hurt you.”

  Wading barefoot in the shallow creek, she shuffled around, muttering. “I walked a half mile into the woods to herd crawfish. This is what I’ve sunk to. A shepherdess for low-rent shrimp.” Her voice rose. “Mudbug? I’m not eating anything with a nickname that includes the word mud.”

  “Here they come! Yes, I’d run from such a woman too! Better to be eaten than nagged to death.” Paul lifted the net swiftly. It was full of crawfish. “Lunch!”

  Caroline picked her way across the streambed to him. She put one foot down on a harmless-looking rock. It was covered in a slick coat of algae.

  “Help!” She came very close to doing a split.

  Paul reached out to grab her. He made a chortling sound of amusement until her outflung hand caught his left knee. His foot went out from under him on the glassy rocks, and he sat down heavily.

  Crawfish flew everywhere. Caroline fell sideways and ended up with her head in Paul’s lap. She wore her hair in a jaunty topknot. A tiny crawfish latched onto the end of it and swung gently to and fro by her ear. His relatives disappeared into the creek.

  “I don’t like Cajun food anyway,” she muttered, and added several choice words hot enough to boil their escaped lunch.

  “Dieu! You’re ridiculous!” Paul told her, his face red with restrained laughter. His gaze went to her white necklace, then to the outline of her breasts in the wet maillot. “Your baubles have sand on them. But I like sandy baubles. I should keep you around just for entertainment.”

  She pushed herself up from his flat, muscle-terraced stomach, staggered to the bank, and sat down. Paul was highly impressed by the fact that she ignored the crawfish still dangling from her hair. She untied the scarf around her waist and wrung water from it.

  “This cost two hundred dollars. I don’t think it’s creek-wash and wear.”

  “What a useless way to spend money.”

  He stood, pulled his tank top off, and tossed it on a low bush. His unbelted trousers hung low on his hips. Caroline tried to give him no more than a baleful glance, but her hands twisted the scarf with increasing tension. If Dr. Blue had indeed risen full-grown from the swamp, the swamp had done a fine job creating his essentials.

  “Cut the self-righteous attitude,” she said in a strained voice. “You’re just like everyone else. If you had the money, you’d buy all sorts of frivolous things.”

  He stretched on his side next to her, looking languid but poised in a way that reminded her of the panther. Before she could stop him he reached out and deftly removed the crawfish from her hair, then tickled it along her cheek before he tossed it into the creek. The warmth of his hand and the scent of his skin lingered like a caress.

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “But I wouldn’t build my life around them. We Cajuns know what’s important.”

  Caroline flung the scarf into her lap. “Being Cajun isn’t the most wonderful claim in the world,” she told him, her voice low and fierce. “Despite the fact that the media has made it into something romantic. There’s nothing romantic about your damned heritage, and I’m tired of hearing you brag.”

  His cold blue eyes warned her to watch her step. “How did you get so prejudiced and small-minded?”

  After a moment of silence she sighed as if she’d just made a painful decision. “My mother was Cajun.” Caroline pointed to her scar. “She’s responsible for this.”

  Four

  He couldn’t have been more stunned if she’d told him that her mother came from the moon.

  Paul sat up slowly, studying her, watching her jaw flex with emotion and her cheeks flush darkly, making the scar stand out like a vivid white brand. She stared down at her wet scarf and began wringing it again while her lips pressed tight in a line of defense.

  Now he understood her infinitely better—the private look in her eyes, the reserve that kept her a little separate from other people, the jaunty anger, and the vulnerable underside that made her put up a shield.

  “Michelle Ancelet,” she said suddenly, her voice grim. “That was her maiden name.”

  “What parish was she from?”

  “I don’t know. I never tried to learn anything about her.”

  “You know enough to hate her, chère. Where did you learn that?”

  He calmly absorbed the sharp look she flung at him.

  “I don’t hate her. I’d have to remember her to do that, and the accident wiped out my memories. Anyway, I was only five when it happened.”

  Caroline paused, and he watched the subtle shifting of sorrow and disgust across her face. A killdeer startled her with its loud, ringing call from a nearby marsh, and she hugged herself as though the sound hurt.

  “Caroline,” he said gently, “how much do you know about your parents?”

  “My father was a regular Américain, as you Cajuns call them. John Fitzsimmons.” She looked down her nose with mock grandeur and added in a haughty tone, “Of the Connecticut Fitzsimmons. He was an engineer.”

  “And how did a Connecticut Yankee end up in King Arthur’s swamp?”

  “I’ve been told that during college my father had a roommate from New Orleans. Dear Old Dad visited his roommate’s home a few times, loved the city, and came back after college to live there.”

  “And so, your mother?”

  “Came from a Cajun farm family, worked in a food-processing plant in New Orleans, and met my father when he was hired to redesign the plant.”

  The delicate distaste in Caroline’s voice annoyed him. “Vegetable chopping is honest work,” Paul told her.

  To his surprise, she nodded. “I wouldn’t care if my mother had d
anced naked with a stalk of broccoli if she were a good person. But she wasn’t.

  “She was looking for a way out of her situation. She was very pretty and exotic, and apparently my father was a shy, awkward, and not particularly handsome man who thought he’d died and gone to heaven when she showed some interest in him.”

  “Who told you all this?”

  “His cousin. My stepfather.”

  “Give me more,” Paul urged, scooping his hands toward his chest with great impatience, eager to pull the information out of her realm and into his.

  Her eyes widened at his attitude. “Why do you care so much, doc?”

  “More!”

  “All right!”

  She squirmed and eyed him warily, but the expectant way she bit her lower lip told him that she was glad to unload her past on a good listener. Poor Caroline, he thought sadly. How few people had ever heard this story?

  “None of my father’s family knew about her until Dad announced that he’d gotten married. He brought his new bride to Connecticut and introduced her.”

  Her voice became sardonic. “She couldn’t read or write—to the intellectual Fitzsimmonses I’m sure she must have seemed like a bad joke. She caused some kind of embarrassing row with my grandmother Fitzsimmons over the treatment of a pet cat—the story goes that she called Grandmother several choice names for having the cat put to sleep. And last but not least, she was a chronic flirt and she tried to seduce my uncle.”

  Paul frowned. “And you think that’s all true?”

  Caroline smiled grimly. “I don’t know. I’ll give my mother one credit—she was right to hate Grandmother.”

  “Don’t you have any respect for your grand-mère?”

  She shot him a piercing glance. “You loved your grandparents?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Respected them?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. I envy you. Grandmother Fitzsimmons was the only one of my grandparents I ever knew. One Christmas she gave her other granddaughters porcelain dolls in full Victorian dress. I got a stuffed bear with that cheap, slick polyester fur that melts when you get it too close to heat.”

  Caroline paused. “I tested it. I burned the damned thing.”

  Paul grimaced with sorrow for her. “Hey, I shouldn’t have—”

  “My grandmother Fitzsimmons liked to pinch blue marks on my arms and tell me how glad she was that my face was so ugly—that way I couldn’t cause the same kind of trouble my mother had. She said God was making me suffer for what my mother did.”

  Paul stared at her in silent, sympathetic horror. His reaction made Caroline look away quickly, swallowing hard.

  “You see,” she added in a hoarse tone, “it didn’t help that I was born only five months after the wedding.” She glared at him meaningfully. “And I was not premature.” Wilting a little, she clasped her hands in her lap and slumped. “So I was probably the only reason for the marriage. Everyone, dear Mom and Dad included, must have really been thrilled about me right from the start.”

  He reached out and brushed the backs of his fingers across her scar, the gesture soothing. She didn’t pull away as she had the night before. This time her eyes flickered with a gratitude that seared him to the core. Paul withdrew his hand slowly. She probably wouldn’t admit it for some time yet, but she wanted every ounce of friendship he had to offer.

  Friendship, not just sex. The former was much more difficult, and he’d have to work fast before she traipsed back to California.

  “The accident,” he said simply.

  She took a deep breath, then exhaled with weary resignation. “Pit bulls have less tenacity than you do.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah.”

  Her gaze held his. “She and my father had a lot of problems. Even with plenty of money and a big house in New Orleans, she wasn’t content.”

  “This is what you remember?”

  “No, this is what I’ve been told. I have only flashes of memory from that period, nothing concrete.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “She had a lover. A Cajun.”

  “Of course. We Cajuns are all bad.” He said the words sardonically.

  “Now look, Dr. Blue, this is the truth about my past. You wanted to know.”

  “The truth you’ve been told might not be true at all.”

  She drew back angrily, like a cat about to arch its back and spit. “No one from the Ancelet family ever cared to offer a different version!”

  “Keep going, don’t argue,” he ordered, waving her anger away impatiently. “Tell me all these rumors you were given.”

  Breathing hard, staring at him furiously, she gathered steam like an overworked engine, which was what he’d hoped she’d do. He wanted to get everything out in the open before she realized how much she was revealing about herself and retreated.

  Her voice rose. “My mother deserted my father and took me with her.”

  Caroline stood up, walked a few feet away, and stood with her back to him. “She took me to live with her parents. My father went after her. There was a big fight, she got drunk, she and I left in a car, and he followed. A few minutes later she lost control and the car ran headfirst into a tractor-trailer rig. Mother was thrown out of the car and killed. I went through the windshield.”

  “Dieu!”

  Paul got up and reached for her, but she moved away, bitter with the world now. She clutched her wadded scarf to her stomach, whipped around to face him, and planted her bare feet solidly in the deep sand.

  “My father found the accident. That night, while I was in surgery, he shot himself.”

  Even his worst imaginings hadn’t prepared him for this. Stunned, Paul stared at her open-mouthed.

  Her anger deflated and she looked as if she might crumple. “He didn’t even care that his daughter was alive and needed him. He just didn’t care. See? Those are my memories. Those are what ate at me the whole time I was growing up. I can barely stand to be back in Louisiana.”

  “Caroline, shhh.” He held his hands out, cajoling her with body language because he didn’t have adequate words.

  “It appears that after I got out of the hospital no one in my mother’s family wanted me. None of the noble Cajuns wanted a hideous little mangled girl. So I got stuck with my father’s cousin and his wife in Connecticut, who never let me forget how much trouble I was and how grateful I ought to be that my father’s family, at least, was decent!”

  Paul moved toward her, crooning a soft, deep sound in the back of his throat.

  She looked at him in alarm. “Stay back! I don’t want sympathy from you or anyone else around here!”

  The broken, pleading quality of her voice told him that she didn’t know what she wanted, except to figure out how people could be so rotten to their own flesh and blood.

  “That’s okay, I understand,” he murmured as he reached her. Then he swept one arm around her shoulder and the other around her waist.

  Her mouth popped open and she dropped her lump of scarf. He pulled her against his half-clothed body and cuddled her in a bear hug that was too kind and soothing for her to resist.

  “We’re capable of lots of good things too, us Cajuns,” he told her in a very low voice. “Like this, see?”

  She shivered, covered her face with both hands, and stood rigidly within his grasp while he talked to her softly, telling her that he understood why she felt the way she did, telling her that it was all right for her to take it out on him, that he didn’t mind.

  When he said that, she sagged against him like a broken doll, digging her hands into his arms while she bowed her forehead to his shoulder. “I’m sorry for taking it out on you,” she offered in a tearful voice. “My feelings are nothing personal against you, Blue.”

  “You think all Cajun women are like your mother? I take that personal.”

  “That’s not what I meant. It’s just that I’ve spent my whole life hating her and my father for the mess they made of their lives and mine. I didn’t dese
rve to suffer for their mistakes.”

  “You’re right, chère, you’re right.” He rubbed one big hand up and down her back, massaging the tense muscles there. The wind brushed through the trees around them, showering them with leaves. One fluttered into her hair and he carefully removed it, then stroked the hair back into place.

  Paul frowned, thinking of ways to reason with her. “My father, he was a fisherman, okay? Couldn’t read or write. Neither could my mother. We lived in a lousy little frame house with a rusty tin roof.”

  He chuckled. “But that was one clean and neat lousy little frame house. My folks worked hard, and they were honest. I have four fine brothers. We had good food, good music, friends, church, community—very strong.”

  Paul held her a little tighter. “So don’t hate the whole barrel of apples because one was rotten.”

  She groaned into his shoulder. “I know. It’s wrong.” She looked up at him regretfully. “I just don’t belong here. The sooner I get through with this job and go back to California, the better.”

  Paul cradled the back of her head in his hand and looked down at her silently. With her gold and green eyes so close, so sad, and her hands laying against his chest trustfully, she showed a side of herself that drained him of rational thought and made his heart hammer in his chest.

  After what she’d just shared with him, he knew that he’d completely misjudged her character. This woman had whipped dragons all her life, and there was nothing pampered about her. The knowledge quickly aroused him.

  “You’re quite a lady,” he whispered.

  She tilted her head to one side in surprise. With her bobbing topknot of hair, she reminded him of a sad, curious poodle. He smiled.

  She gave a mildly annoyed sigh but admitted, “I like your smile even when you’re making fun of me. Maybe we could strike a truce until I go home.”

  “Bien. I like your smile too. Maybe I can provoke it more often.” He shifted against her, trying politely to move his blatant stiffness out of the way.

  Too late. Her lashes flickered as she glanced down at their melded torsos. “That doesn’t make me smile, doc,” she said in an awkward tone, the color rising in her face. “Although it definitely would if I planned to stay around here, which I don’t.”