“There’s always a reason,” he commented without inflection. “But even so…”
There was a pause.
“Even so?” Peachy prompted.
Luc unsteepled his fingers and extended both hands toward her, palms up. After a moment of internal debate, she reached forward and placed her hands in his.
“Even so,” he said quietly, feathering his thumbs against the sensitive skin of her inner wrists, “I can promise you that everything that happens between us from this moment on will be by your choice.”
Peachy inhaled an unsteady breath. She dimly registered that the rhythmic pounding of her heart was in sync with the stroke-strokestroking of Luc’s faintly callused thumbs.
She gave a shuddery sigh.
His eyes compelled her. She’d never realized how the brown of his irises shaded around the edges to a hue that matched the ravendarkness of his hair. Nor had she ever noticed the fine flecks of topaz and carnelian—
Way to go, Pamela Gayle, the small voice that had goaded her earlier piped up snidely. You’re really in control now. What’s next on the schedule? Melting into a puddle the way you almost did last night when he chucked you under the chin?
Peachy blinked several times, feeling the humiliatingly familiar surge of hot blood rushing up her throat and into her cheeks. She searched her response-fogged brain, trying to remember what Luc’s last words to her had been. Something about a promise that from this moment on—
Oh, yes. Right.
She withdrew her hands from his and folded them primly in her lap.
“Am I to take it that everything that’s happened between us before this moment hasn’t been?” she inquired, keeping her voice steady through sheer force of will. “By my choice, that is.”
The question clearly caught Luc off guard. For a moment it looked as though his surprise might turn into anger. His eyes narrowed. His lips compressed into a thin line. The tanned skin of his cheeks seemed to tighten.
And then, astonishingly, his expression eased and he started to chuckle.
“Touché,” he said, miming a fencer’s salute.
Although uncertain what Luc found so funny, Peachy succumbed to the lure of his laughter. By the time their shared merriment died away, she felt more relaxed than she had since she’d heard the announcement that the plane she was flying on was going to be forced to make an emergency landing.
“I’m still paying for dinner, Luc,” she asserted a bit breathlessly.
“Of course, cher,” he responded with a roguish grin. “And this is still not a date.”
Lucien Devereaux was an attractive man.
A very attractive man.
This fact had registered on Pamela Gayle Keene in a multitude of ways the instant they’d met. Yet she would have sworn that her response to his compelling good looks had been essentially platonic until…oh, about twenty-four hours ago.
Forking up the next-to-last bite of the broiled grouper with tomato-tinged butter sauce she’d ordered for her entrée, Peachy assessed the tall, self-contained man sitting across the table from her through partially lowered lashes and uneasily contemplated the implications of what seemed to be her abrupt change of attitude.
Take Luc’s hair, for instance. She’d noted its rich, raven-wing darkness and luxuriant thickness in the past, of course. But had she ever before felt the urge to stroke it that she was experiencing at this very moment?
Not that she remembered.
That she’d been prompted to try to capture her landlord’s distinctive, slightly asymmetrical features on a sketch pad many times was something she would readily admit. Why shouldn’t she? She was an artist, after all. She’d been trained to react to the visually interesting. And heaven knew, Luc’s face was that…and more.
The boldly marked brows.
The arrogant nose and sharply angled cheekbones.
The mobile mouth, bracketed by experience-etched grooves.
She’d drawn these features over and over again. Yet never until now had she wondered how they might contort at the instant of sexual release. Never until now had she wondered whether sleep might relax their disciplined maturity sufficiently to reveal a hint of the boy he once had been.
At least, she didn’t think she’d wondered.
Peachy shifted in her seat, crossing her right leg over her left. The stir of silk skirt over nylon stocking sent a shiver coursing through her.
Was it possible that at some subconscious level—?
She denied the notion before it was fully formed. While she’d be the first to concede that she could be oblivious to certain facets of her nature at certain times, she wasn’t completely lacking in selfawareness.
And yet…
Peachy’s mind flashed back to the potent effect Luc’s touch had had on her the evening before. Then it jumped forward to the moony-goony way she’d behaved just a short time ago when she’d been gazing into his eyes.
His eyes.
Oh, Lord. Luc’s eyes!
The searching intelligence in them had impressed her from the very first. She’d seen them glint with anger and spark with humor more often than she could count during the past two years. And she’d seen them turn brooding, too. But until a short time ago she’d never realized that their expressive brown depths contained so many different—
”You know, cher,” Luc said suddenly. “There’s something I’ve been curious about.”
Peachy started, nearly dropping her fork. She drew a tremulous breath, wondering how much of what she’d been thinking might have shown on her face. If Luc had any idea what was going on inside her head…
Not that there was anything wrong with her thoughts, she quickly assured herself. Luc had said that they needed to become “aware” of each other as man and woman, hadn’t he? Well, that’s what she was doing! And given the circumstances, it was a darned good thing her burgeoning awareness of her partner-to-be was as, uh, uh…positive as it was.
She just had to be careful that it didn’t become too positive. She had to keep things in perspective. And above all, she had to remember her pledge to Luc that all she wanted from him was a nostrings-attached, one-time-only encounter.
“You want to know what the National Football League really thinks about Terree LaBelle?” she suggested after a moment or two.
Her dinner companion gave her an odd, assessing look, then started to smile. “I wouldn’t mind having the inside scoop on that, either,” he admitted. “But at the moment I’m more interested in finding out how you came to be ‘Peachy’ Keene.”
“You mean…how did I get my nickname?”
Luc nodded.
Peachy lifted her napkin to her lips and patted, trying to hide the rush of relief she felt. Questions about her nickname she could handle. She’d had lots of practice with it. Almost as much as she’d had responding to inquiries about whether her hair color was natural.
“You know my real name is Pamela Gayle, right?” she asked.
Luc nodded, taking a sip of the white wine he’d ordered to accompany her grouper and his shrimp etouffée. “I seem to recall reading it on your lease.”