Chapter 8 #3
My overdeveloped sense of curiosity meant I wanted to know everything about him.
I just didn’t want to share any of my work stuff in exchange.
I didn’t need anyone to tell me how fucked up that was.
And contrary to my normal stance, and for reasons I wasn’t comfortable looking at, I didn’t want the balance of power to be that far out of whack between us.
Whatever it was we were doing, I liked the idea that it was a mutual thing that didn’t follow my old well-trod paths.
“LSU. Go Tigers.” Ford raised his hand and made a clawing motion, which had my mind spinning off in other directions. The pin me down, teeth scraping the back of my neck tiger and his prey kind of directions which, given the circumstances, wasn’t more helpful than the school/work track.
“Your family’s from Louisiana?” I asked for confirmation, not really an answer. Ford’s accent made it clear he, at least, had grown up in New Orleans.
There. I managed to slide sideways into more intimate, but somehow safer—at least for me—territory.
“Back to the 1800s. My papa’s descended from the early French settlers. My maman likes to say her people were pirates.”
“Were they?” I asked, grateful he’d shifted direction so easily.
“Isn’t everyone a little?” He hit me with a wink and that smile that made my stomach do a little flip.
“Do you have brothers or sisters?” I fought back the image of a dark-haired miniature Ford with that wicked grin running around the city like a modern-day urchin. Maybe this path wasn’t safer than mundane work questions.
“One of each. My sister Julie is six years older and terrorized my brother Nick and me.” He shuddered, and I laughed.
It was easy to laugh with him. It was easy to do everything with him except stop.
“Were you the middle child or the baby?”
He tipped his head to the side as if the answer should be obvious and maybe it was. With his ability to charm people, being the youngest made sense.
“Middle. Of course.”
So much for my powers of observation.
“What about you, cher? Where are you from?”
He watched me, his expression intent, and I fought to keep from squirming. The man’s focus was a force to be reckoned with.
“I’m from a little town outside Baton Rouge. One sister. My parents still live there.”
“Do you get back to see them often? Or maybe with your work schedule, they come here?”
“Not as often as I’d like.” It was a perfectly reasonable question, but we’d circled back to work again. A place I definitely didn’t want to go. “Explain the fascination with vampires to me again.”
If the change in subject bothered him, he didn’t let on. He relaxed back against the sofa for a moment, lost in thought.
“It’s a lot of things, but I think,” he said, after a moment, sounding like he was still working his way through his thoughts, “it’s the intensity.
Everything about them is dialed up. There’s power there to be sure, but it’s mostly about the intensity of the experience.
A bite that’s almost ecstatic.” It was easy to get lost in his gaze while he spoke.
“A creature who thrives on another’s lifeblood and all of it wrapped up in layers of sensuality.
Of pleasure as your birthright, either bestowed or as part of some kind of rebirth. It’s heady stuff.”
He tipped his head to the side and arched a brow in a way that had me fighting the urge to kiss him. An urge I was determined not to give in to.
It wasn’t the way most people thought about vampires, but I was quickly learning there wasn’t much about Ford that was like most people.
He leaned forward as he spoke, and I found myself holding my breath as he painted pictures for me with his words.
Before I knew what was happening, something started to buzz, and Ford reached for his phone.
“Want to check on the beignets?” he asked, silencing the alarm.
“Already?” I’d completely lost track of the time talking to Ford. Something he clearly enjoyed, if the smug, know-it-all grin on his face was any indication.
––––––––
I’M NOT SURE what the right word was for how happy I felt that Charlotte had been so caught up in our conversation, she forgot to watch the clock.
I’d been lost too. If my phone hadn’t vibrated to let me know the rise was done, I’d have missed it in favor of learning more about Charlotte.
Sharing more of myself with her. But my plan called for leaving her wanting more, which inevitably meant leaving me wanting more.
“Come on.” I stood and reached for her hand to help her to her feet, forcing myself to let go as soon as she was standing.
I stood back and watched as she lifted the kitchen towel covering the bowl of dough.
I swear to God, I was never going to get tired of seeing that look on Charlotte’s face.
I’d make it my life’s work to come up with new things to show her, just to see her eyes widen in surprise and delight.
People talked about things like childlike enthusiasm, but there was nothing childlike about it.
It was the force of Charlotte when something caught her interest. She was so present.
That kind of focus—that kind of awareness—was seductive as hell.
“It’s grown so big.” She shot a cheeky grin over her shoulder at me, clearly intending the double entendre.
“Did you just set up a that’s what she said joke? We’re so much better than that.”
“Speak for yourself.”
She bit her bottom lip, and I tucked my hands in my pockets.
I’d pretend it was so she could take the lead on turning out the beignet dough, but the reality was I didn’t trust myself not to reach for her.
To pull her into my arms and tug her lip between my teeth, catching her answering gasp with my mouth and kissing her until she went soft and pliant in my arms. I was going to have to spend a significant amount of time later reminding myself why that wasn’t the brilliant idea it seemed in the moment.
“What do we do now, chef?”
Right. We were making food, not devouring each other.
“Put a little flour on the counter, turn out the dough and roll out the beignets. You’ve got a rolling pin, right? We can use a wine bottle if not.”
“Ye of little faith.” She muttered the words, more to herself than to me, and dug around in a cabinet, emerging with a sleek wooden rolling pin that looked like it had never seen action.
“Use it a lot?”
“To crush ice,” she said, resting a hand against her breastbone in faux outrage.
“Okay, cher.” I didn’t bother to try to hide my smile. This woman charmed me. Over and over again. “Make a rectangle about a half an inch thick. I’ll get started on the oil.”
I opened the cabinet beside an oven with a top warming section that had me rethinking the layout of my kitchen. Whoever did Charlotte’s was good. There was a heavy Dutch oven that would work perfectly. I set it on the burner, turned on the gas, and poured a couple of inches of oil into the pan.
“You can do that on the stove? I thought you needed a deep fryer or something.”
“Watch and learn, grasshopper.”
“We’re supposed to be too good for that’s what she said, but Kung Fu references are fine?” She pushed the hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving a smudge of flour behind.
“Always.” I reached up to brush the flour away and had the pleasure of watching her eyes widen as my fingertips skimmed her forehead. She leaned into my touch, and for a fraction of a second, I weighed the cost of cupping her face in my hand. Of closing the distance between us.
“Are these thin enough?” she asked, coming to her senses first and turning back to the dough on the counter in front of her.
“Perfect.” I was grateful for the bit of control having a task to do provided. I clearly couldn’t trust myself to hold things together on my own. “Now we cut them into rectangles. Like this.” I took a paring knife and cut a strip of dough about two inches wide, dividing it into three-inch pieces.
She took the knife from me, her hand warm against mine, and made quick work of cutting the rest of the dough into beignet-sized rectangles.
I carefully held my hand over the open pot, feeling the warmth coming off the oil.
I still wasn’t sure what that step accomplished—aside from a double dog dare kind of recklessness—but my meme had done it that way, so I did it too.
I pulled a plastic bag with a few cubes of bread from the bag of things I’d brought and held one out to Charlotte.
“We’re taking communion now?” She arched an expertly groomed brow at me.
“Not unless you’re ordained in something I don’t know about. Lord knows, I’m not holy enough to handle the Host.” I gave her my best wicked smile, made wider by the mischievous look in her eye.
Charlotte might have her own corruption fantasies. Definitely something worth exploring the next time we got together. When I was allowed to touch her the way I ached to.
“It’s to test the temperature of the oil. Drop it in and we’ll see how long it takes to turn golden brown. Too long and it means the oil is too cool and will make greasy beignets. Too fast and they’ll burn before they’re cooked.”
She dropped the cube of bread into the oil and peered carefully into the pot. It hit the bottom and bobbed once or twice before rising to the surface surrounded by a thin ring of bubbles.
“How long should it take?”
“Not this long.” I fished the oil-soaked, anemic-looking crouton from the pan and dropped it onto the stack of paper towels I’d laid out. “Let’s give it a couple more minutes. Do you want another café au lait?”
“More coffee? Always,” she said, repeating my word back to me. “I can do it this time. You watch the oil.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I kept half my attention on the pot and half on Charlotte.
She went through the steps like a pro, making short work of the coffee. In a few minutes, I had a fresh cup on the counter beside me and another cube of bread in my hand.