Then waited some more.
A split second before the plane bumped down on the runway, Pamela Gayle Keene made a solemn vow about her sexual future.
Sometime later—in the middle of a “How does it feel to have cheated death?” interview conducted by a vaguely familiar male TV reporter with an off-kilter nose and a cemented-in-place hairstyle, to be precise—it occurred to her that the fulfillment of this solemn vow was going to require the cooperation of a second party.
That started Peachy thinking…
Lucien “Luc” Devereaux, scion of a tradition-rich but financially strapped Louisiana family and veteran of an elite U.S. Army special operations team turned bestselling novelist, had been propositioned by a lot of different women in a lot of different ways for a lot of different reasons since his sexual initiation at age sixteen. Nonetheless, the proposal he received from Pamela Gayle Keene five days after she and all the other people aboard her flight from Atlanta survived an emergency landing at New Orleans International Airport left him temporarily bereft of speech.
“You want me to what?” he finally managed to ask, staring at the improbably nicknamed redhead who’d been his tenant and downstairs neighbor in a mansion-cum-apartment building on Prytania Street for about two years.
“It’s no big deal,” Peachy responded, sustaining his gaze with remarkable steadiness even as she started to flush.
“My taking your virginity is no big deal?” he echoed tightly, wondering whether her dismissive comment had been inspired by her feelings about the sexual act itself, her expectations about his performance of it or a mixture of both. He also wondered why it should matter to him. Because there was no way—no way in hell—he was going to do what he’d just been requested to do.
Luc watched as Peachy veiled her green-gold eyes with her lush, mascara-darkened lashes. After a few moments, she lifted her left hand and began fiddling with a silver locket at the base of her throat. Her rhythmic fingering of the pendant had an odd effect on his already erratic pulse.
He’d never seen it coming, he thought, trying to rein in emotions that ran the gamut from strangely flattered to furiously stunned and then some. He, the man who’d been accused more than once of having distrust of the opposite sex imprinted on his DNA, had been blindsided by a blush-prone innocent, a decade his junior!
The weird thing was, Peachy had done it by behaving in the same straightforward way she’d behaved since the first day he’d met her. There’d been no deceit involved, no sneakily seductive tricks. Armored against guile, he’d been ambushed by honesty.
It was a perverse state of affairs, to say the least. And Luc Devereaux was a long way from understanding how it had come about.
He and Peachy had had a brief encounter in the foyer of their Garden District apartment building that morning. He’d been heading in after a five-mile run, mulling over the fate of a minor character in his latest book. She’d been heading out to her job as a junior designer with one of the city’s finest custom jewelers.
They’d chatted for a minute or two. Right before they’d gone their separate ways, she’d asked him to drop by her apartment after she got home from work.
“I need a favor,” she’d said simply, gazing up at him with clear, candid eyes.
“I’ll try to oblige, cher,” he’d answered, his grin as easy as his unthinking use of the colloquial endearment.
He’d knocked on her door about twelve hours later. She’d invited him in.
They’d talked a bit. She, perched on the edge of a lavishly fringed but slightly moth-eaten hassock. He, sprawled comfortably in a funkily shaped armchair he’d helped her lug home from a flea market the previous spring. Their conversation had been a genial one, spiced with good-natured laughter.
Eventually, he’d gotten around to asking what he could do for her.
She responded promptly and without mincing words.
It had taken him several minutes to accept that she’d actually said what he’d thought she’d said.
“I don’t think taking is the right word,” Peachy suddenly declared, lowering her hand from the locket. She shifted her position on the hassock, crossing her long, slender legs beneath the crinkled, paisley-patterned cotton of the calf-length skirt she was wearing. The toenails of her bare feet were painted a vibrant coral pink. “It’s not—I mean, it’s so—so—”
“Politically incorrect?” Luc offered sardonically.
She lifted her lashes and gave him a look he couldn’t interpret. Something—annoyance? impatience? embarrassment?—flashed in the depths of her eyes.
“It’s not as though I’m trying to keep it,” she retorted.
“True,” he acknowledged with a humorless laugh. “You’re offering to give it away.”
There was a pause. After a few moments Peachy smoothed her curly tumble of red-gold hair back from her face, squared her slim shoulders and calmly replied, “That’s right.”
“To me.”
There was another pause, a little longer than the preceding one. Then, again, a quiet affirmative.
“So that the next time you confront the possibility of dying you don’t have to worry about going to your grave wondering what all the fuss was about.”
Peachy’s eyes flashed a second time. Her delicately made features took on a decidedly determined cast. “More or less.”
“And this is a no-strings-attached, one-time-only deal.”
“Yes.”
Luc inhaled a short, sharp breath, struggling with a sudden surge of temper. He couldn’t define the source of his anger, nor determine whether it was directed more at himself or her.
When he thought he could trust his voice he said, “No.”
Peachy stiffened. Her chin went up a notch. “No?”
“No,” he repeated, underscoring the negative with a shake of his head.
“You mean—” she swallowed “—you don’t want to do it.”
Luc felt the muscles of his belly clench and fervently wished she’d phrased her statement in a different way. Preferably one that omitted the word want.
He wasn’t oblivious to Peachy’s appeal. Although she was a far cry from his usual type—he was inclined toward experienced blondes and exotic brunettes, not arty, ethereal redheads—he’d felt a powerful tug of attraction the day she’d shown up on his doorstep, seeking to rent the unit one floor down.
He’d refrained from acting on this attraction for a variety of reasons. Peachy’s comparative youth had been part of the equation. His firm conviction that getting entangled with any female tenant—much less one who’d become the darling of their mutual collection of rather eccentric neighbors within a week of moving in—would be asking for trouble had been a factor, as well.
But the key basis for his decision to clamp down and hold back had been his gut-level feeling that there was a lot more to Ms. Pamela Gayle Keene than immediately met the eye. For all her seemingly free-spirited manner, she’d exuded an aura of potential complications.
Luc grimaced, raking a hand through his hair. “Look, cher,” he began, letting his gaze slide away. “My saying no to you—it’s nothing personal.”
The ludicrousness of his words registered with him even as he was uttering them. Nothing personal? Peachy had asked him to be her first lover and