Steamy Southern Nights Read Online Free

marshaled her thoughts.
    She knew from his mother that he wasn’t married and never had been. Beatrice had also made it clear that there hadn’t been a steady woman in his life for a while, though he was too obviously sexual not to have had plenty of unsteady women. Which, come to think of it, was exactly how he made her feel. Unsteady. Thrown off her course. Out of control.
    She breathed in the scents of New Orleans at night, the dust and flowers, the mélange of cooking styles, the saffron scent of Creole, the butter-garlic-wine of French, the spiced fish and then, oddly, the smell of frying donuts. Beignets, she corrected herself mentally. Claude led her around a group of college-aged kids who’d been overdoing the go-cups.
    Behind them a quartet of Japanese girls giggled and shot each other with digital cameras.
    What exactly did she know about this man her body wanted to jump all over naked she wondered as she stopped at a questioning gesture to take a group picture of the girls. Next to nothing.
    Sense, Lucy, she chided herself. Where’s your common sense?
    They walked a little farther and even as she tried to take in the atmosphere of this amazing city at night, even as the scents of one fabulous restaurant after another teased her and the jazz ebbed and flowed as they approached one club after another, she found this man beside her clogging all her senses.
    He looked, felt, smelled and sounded delicious. She hadn’t tasted him yet, but every part of her knew it wouldn’t be long.
    “Claude, I know so little about you,” she said, deciding to come right out and ask. If she was cramming her study time with this man she had to go straight to the important facts.
    He glanced down at her and his eyes glistened as they passed under one of the restored gas lights.
    “I would like to change that,” he said, tightening his hold on her hand ever so slightly.
    Oh, come on. What was she, stupid to fall for this smooth seduction? They’d wandered onto Royal Street; she could see the sign. She turned to face him.
    “I’m a researcher. A pretty good researcher. In thinking about this book, which I’ve done for some time you understand, I’ve studied all the branches of our family. That’s why I was so excited when your mother invited me to come down and meet you. You see, I already know a lot about your family.”
    “Do you?”
    “Yes. When the Acadians were expelled from Nova Scotia, many of them fled to Louisiana where the only other French colony of any size existed in North America. Their descendents are the modern day Cajuns.”
    “We learn this history in grade school cousine.”
    “Of course. And when families were split, as in our case, when the men and boys were shipped off first, and the women later sent for, they wrote letters to each other, some of which actually made it. I’ve got one or two. And one amazing diary. They’re heartbreaking.”
    “That will be very helpful for your research,” he said, running a single fingertip down the slope of her cheek. It was probably the practiced gesture of a professional flirt, but he did it so well it was almost as though he couldn’t help himself. She shivered, feeling the finger trace its path like a tear.
    “I’ve gathered quite a bit of information over the years. The point is, Claude,” she took a deep breath and blurted out what had been bothering her since the cab pulled up in front of his mansion, “If anyone in the family had amassed a fortune I’d have heard about it.”
    He stiffened slightly. Whatever he’d been expecting, it hadn’t been that. “Have you perhaps shared these thoughts of yours with my mother?”
    “No. Of course not. But she told me your father inherited from a distant uncle.” She shrugged, letting the fact that she knew every one of his uncles, distant uncles, cousins and pretty much everyone else with a drop of shared family blood.
    “Ah.” She thought his eyes crinkled in amusement. “The uncle was a