Page 13 of Lulu’s Recipe for Cajun Sass

“Now?” she prodded.

“Now, you’re Hedy Lamar’s body double.”

He caught a brief flash of a smile twitch at her luscious lips, which he could see now, up close, were a slick Kiss-me-please crimson, but she managed to hold the smile back. “Save the fake compliments, Casanova.”

He made an X sign over his chest and said, “Cross my heart and hope to die. You are hotter than a goat’s behind in a pepper patch.”

She laughed out loud. “Such charm!”

“Oops. It was the best I could come up with on short notice. That’s an expression my grandfather used when teasing my grandmother out of the grumpies. She would tell him he was as crude as a farting horse.”

She gave him a quick survey that put him in the same farting horse category, but then conceded, “Sounds like they were a fun couple.”

“They were.” He reached over and took a strand of her hair between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing sensuously. “What did you do to your hair to make it so…” he wanted to say sexy, but figured it was too soon for that intimate word, “…luxurious.”

“One of my grandmother’s recipes. An herbal remedy.”

He groaned inwardly, suspecting a trap. “Just don’t tell me it has something in it like gator snot.”

“I said herbs, lunkhead. Gator snot has its uses, but it’s not an herb.”

Gator snot has its uses, he repeated to himself, but had the good sense not to say it out loud. He put both hands up in surrender. “Truce?”

She shrugged. “That depends. Are you still dead set against folk healing?”

“I never said I was totally opposed…oh, maybe I did give that impression. But, darlin’, I grew up on the bayou, too. I know the value of certain plants. I know that some modern medicines are just sugar-coated herbs I lived with in my backyard.”

“Well, hallelujah! I do declare, an enlightened physician.”

He gritted his teeth to keep from making a retort.

“And I have to make an admission, too. I want to throw up when I go into a drugstore and see something like Dr. Jessup’s Miracle Herb Tonic that cures everything from baldness to toe fungus. In fact, I think it’s on the shelf of your daddy’s store.”

“It is not!” he swore, but decided he should check next time he was there.

The whole time they talked, her eyes kept darting to the playing field, keeping an eye on her niece.

“I thought she was your daughter,” he said.

“There you go, thinking again. Must put a strain on that Yankee education.” She gave him a look, which pretty much said she knew how bachelors felt about single women with children. “But, frankly, she’s the same as, for me.”

In other words, if a guy wanted her, it was a bundle package. He wasn’t thinking that far into the future. He couldn’t, not with his career just starting off, and so unclear. But he was tempted. Very tempted.

“Can I come see you sometime?” he asked suddenly.

She arched her brows at him. “Why?”

“Because I’d like to get better acquainted.”

“Why?”

“You’re cruel.”

She shook her head. “No. Just careful.”

“Why?” he was the one asking now. “I’m not dangerous.”

“Oh, yes, you are, cher. A dreamboat like you never hears no when he’s hustling a woman.”