No! He didn’t even want to think about that scenario!
Luc exhaled in a rush, his mind suddenly latching on to an astonishing idea.
What if…what if he agreed to do what Peachy had asked, then stalled consummation until she came to her senses and called the deal off?
She would come to her senses, he assured himself. Eventually.
He’d meant what he’d said earlier, about facing down death tending to reorder a person’s priorities. What he hadn’t said—but what he knew from personal experience to be true—was that such reorderings were seldom permanent.
Of course, he conceded, there was always a minuscule possibility that the passage of time would not erode Peachy’s single-minded desire to get rid of her virginity. And if that were the case…
Thirteen years ago, Luc Devereaux had found himself standing in the door of a military plane, preparing to make his first parachute jump. Half of his brain had been urging him to make the leap. The other half had been screaming that there was still time to turn back from what probably was the stupidest stunt he’d ever contemplated.
He’d glanced at his instructor, a Special Forces captain named Flynn. Flynn had grinned, his teeth flashing a predatory white against his deeply tanned skin. Then he’d leaned in, put his mouth close to Luc’s ear and counseled, “Go with your gut, kid.”
“All right,” he said abruptly.
Peachy blinked. “All…right?”
“I accept your proposal.”
“Oh, Luc—”
“But not tonight.”
“This is not a date,” Peachy stated to her reflection approximately twenty-four hours later.
Leaning into the mirror over her bathroom sink, she painstakingly brushed another coat of black brown mascara on to her lush but virtually colorless lashes. Other types of cosmetics she could basically take or leave. In fact, aside from what she now drolly classified as her “Vampira” period—a mercifully brief interlude during her first semester of design school in which she’d affected a from-the-crypt pallor, dramatically shadowed eyes and bloodred lips—she’d always applied her makeup with a very light hand.
Except for mascara, of course.
She’d gotten hooked on the stuff more than a decade ago and had experimented with everything from bargain basement brands that smelled like petrochemicals to outrageously expensive ones that supposedly contained miscroscopic fibers of cashmere. Without mascara—well, frankly, she thought she appeared rather rabbitty.
Her lashes finally darkened to a satisfactory degree, Peachy stepped back from the sink and scrutinized her mirrored image with a critical eye. There’d been a time when she’d absolutely loathed the way she looked. A time when she would have given anything to trade her gaminely irregular features, sprite-thin body and uncontrollable mop of red-gold curls for her older sister’s classically pretty face, shapely figure and straight, chestnut-colored hair. Fortunately that time had passed.
Although she still considered Eden an extremely attractive woman, Peachy had learned to appreciate and enhance her own quirky looks. The three years she’d spent in New York—the first two as a design student, the third as an apprentice with a jewelry firm—had been extremely important ones in this regard.
Where her mass of pre-Raphaelite ringlets and rather avantgarde wardrobe choices, basic black everything accessorized with purchases from army-navy surplus stores, thrift shops and garage sales, generally had been regarded as just a wee bit weird in her hometown in Ohio, they’d turned out to be very much “with it” in the Big Apple. This had done wonders for her shaky self-esteem.
Oh, sure, she’d succumbed to a few in-your-face fashion trends during her first few months in Manhattan. But she’d eventually realized that shocking people in the street really wasn’t her thing. She’d abandoned stylistic extremes, let all but two of the holes in her earlobes heal up and begun developing her own personal look. This look wasn’t middle-of-the-road by any means. But it wasn’t so far out on the edge that it scared innocent little children, either.
Interestingly, her artwork had improved as her vision of who she was and how she wanted to present herself to the world had become dearer. By the time she’d won the design contest that had led to the job offer that had brought her to New Orleans, she’d had more confidence in herself—both personally and professionally—than she’d ever had in her life.
As for the impact the last two years in New Orleans had had on her…
Perhaps it was a response to the ambrosial food or the profusion of flowers or the remarkable diversity of cultures. Or maybe it had something to do with the local credo of letting les bon temps rouler. But within weeks of her arrival in the Crescent City—shortly after moving into her Prytania Street apartment, to be precise—Peachy had realized that she felt totally at home. No matter that she’d still needed a map to find her way around, mistakenly believed Burgundy Street was pronounced like the wine and thought chicory coffee tasted like something that should be used to clean paintbrushes. Somehow, someway, she’d found a place where she fit in.
Which was not to say that everything was absolutely perfect. The weather, for example, was a tad problematic. Peachy had heard natives claim that New Orleans, which had been carved from a swamp, only had two seasons—summer and February. She’d come to the conclusion that this was code for muggy and about-to-be muggy. She’d also discovered that the local climate played havoc with what Bible scholars would call her “crowning glory.”
Grimacing wryly at her reflection, Peachy plucked a brush from amid the clutter on the counter to the left of the sink. Maybe she should wear her hair up after all, she mused. She’d styled it into a chignon earlier then unpinned it after deciding the coiffure was too fussy and self-conscious. While making herself attractive to Luc seemed a sensible thing to do given the request she’d made of him, she was wary of creating the impression that she’d expended a lot of time and effort preparing for this evening’s, uh, uh—
“Whatever,” she said, yanking the brush through her incorrigible curls.
It was unsettling, Peachy admitted silently. She knew Luc intended to make love to her, because he’d promised her he would. Yet she had no idea when or where he planned to perform the deed.
Assuming he’d even decided those details, which she was strongly inclined not to do.
How had it happened? she demanded of herself. How had Lucien Devereaux shifted from accepting her proposal, to imposing his terms in the space of a few seconds? More importantly, why had she acquiesced in a situation where she had every right to be in charge? It was her virginity, dammit!
Her mind flashed back to the previous evening.
“What do you mean…‘but not tonight’?” she’d asked once the implications of Luc’s unexpected declaration had begun to sink in.
“I think we should wait,” he’d answered calmly.
“I have waited!” she’d exclaimed, swatting a stray lock of hair out of her face. “That’s why I found myself on a malfunctioning airplane thinking I was going to die a virgin. The waiting’s over, Luc. I want to do it and be done with it and get on with my life!”
It had not been the most felicitous way of describing the consummation for which she so devoutly wished. Peachy had recognized this the moment the words had come tumbling out of her mouth. A sudden lifting of her partner-to-be’s dark brows had suggested that he, too, found her phrasing a trifle cold-blooded.