Free Hot Touch by Deborah Smith Page A

brushed through the trees around them, showering them with leaves. One fluttered into her hair and he carefully removed it, then stroked the hair back into place.
    Paul frowned, thinking of ways to reason with her. “My father, he was a fisherman, okay? Couldn’t read or write. Neither could my mother. We lived in a lousy little frame house with a rusty tin roof.”
    He chuckled. “But that was one clean and neat lousy little frame house. My folks worked hard, and they were honest. I have four fine brothers. We had good food, good music, friends, church, community—very strong.”
    Paul held her a little tighter. “So don’t hate the whole barrel of apples because one was rotten.”
    She groaned into his shoulder. “I know. It’s wrong.” She looked up at him regretfully. “I just don’t belong here. The sooner I get through with this job and go back to California, the better.”
    Paul cradled the back of her head in his hand and looked down at her silently. With her gold and green eyes so close, so sad, and her hands laying against his chest trustfully, she showed a side of herself that drained him of rational thought and made his heart hammer in his chest.
    After what she’d just shared with him, he knew that he’d completely misjudged her character. This woman had whipped dragons all her life, and there was nothing pampered about her. The knowledge quickly aroused him.
    “You’re quite a lady,” he whispered.
    She tilted her head to one side in surprise. With her bobbing topknot of hair, she reminded him of a sad, curious poodle. He smiled.
    She gave a mildly annoyed sigh but admitted, “I like your smile even when you’re making fun of me. Maybe we could strike a truce until I go home.”
    “
Bien
. I like your smile too. Maybe I can provoke it more often.” He shifted against her, trying politely to move his blatant stiffness out of the way.
    Too late. Her lashes flickered as she glanced down at their melded torsos. “That doesn’t make me smile, doc,” she said in an awkward tone, the color rising in her face. “Although it definitely would if I planned to stay around here, which I don’t.”
    He clucked his tongue in mild reprimand. “Here I’m being a gentleman, and you complain.” Paul finally managed to twist his torso so that his arousal no longer indented her stomach, but he felt her heart racing against his chest and knew that her resistance was a desperate facade.
    “Is that a sigh of relief I heard, doc?”
    “Nah,
chère
, it was your own sigh of disappointment.”
    They gave each other looks that quickly became strangled with repressed smiles of pure naughtiness. He arched a black brow at her. “Now that we’re friends,how about I introduce you to a few local treasures?” He cut his eyes with comic lechery.
    From the intense way she gazed up at him, her eyes half shut, her mouth half open, as if she wanted to be kissed—could the she-devil read his mind?—Paul knew that he had a very good chance of convincing her to go along with his offer.
    “What treasures?” she asked softly.
    “Cajun things.” He rubbed circles in the curve of her spine, letting his fingertips explore the territory of bone and muscle so that she had to know that he was making a map in his mind. Paul felt her quiver under his touch.
    She tossed a disapproving look toward the creek. “Will we have as much fun as today?”
    “Better than that. We’ll go eat some Cajun food tonight and do some dancing.”
    She looked skeptical.
    “You know so little about your mother’s people,” he reminded her. “Be fair. I have a feeling that you want to be fair with people if they’ll be fair too.”
    She nodded, her eyes flickering with admiration for his insight. “It’s all I ask.”
    On impulse he kissed the tip of her nose. When he drew back, her eyes shone with emotion. She blinked, squinted at him shrewdly, and asked in a firm voice, “I won’t have to catch my dinner, will I?”
    He laughed