Hot Touch (7 page)

She was impressed with the quality of care all the animals received. He cared for them and about them.

“So are you ready to make friends with Paul?” Frank asked hopefully.

Friendship was certainly an important issue in her life lately, she thought. Caroline shook her head. It had never sounded so dangerous.

Caroline pushed a pair of blue-rimmed sunglasses higher on her perspiring nose and watched Dabney—no last name, just Dabney, for reasons of creative impact—hiss her way through a scene inside the mansion’s main study.

Music connoisseurs under the age of eighteen had
made her a minor rock star. She looked like a young female Elvis in a leather miniskirt. In
The Legend of Silver Wolf
, Dabney played a villainess.

Elvis was probably spinning in his grave, Caroline decided.

“I want the map for the gold, you little brat,” Dabney told Toddy, a cute redhead who’d first made his name in bologna commercials.

Toddy, looking frightened but determined, just as the script demanded, wound his little hand into Wolf’s ruff. “No.”

In the tense silence that followed, Wolf looked up at Dabney with all the animation of a rock. Caroline winced. “Growl at her, dammit,” the director commanded, clutching her punkish orange hair in distress. “This is the fifth take.”

Caroline stood slightly behind Paul and to his right, where she could be effective but unnoticed. “Speak, Wolf,” he ordered.

Caroline closed her eyes and concentrated.
Please, Wolf. For Paul’s sake
.

“Urrf,” Wolf offered without enthusiasm.

Groans of dismay rose in the room. “Cut,” the director said in disgust.

“Well, at least he’s progressing,” Frank noted, rubbing his temples. “He made a sound.”

Toddy’s mother stormed onto the set like a large red-combed hen and grabbed her son’s hand. “We’re going to our trailer and channel for a while, and try to get some insight from our spirit guides,” she announced. “Toddy can’t deal with these delays. The wolf is brain-damaged.”

“Lunch, one hour,” the assistant director called.

Paul walked to Wolf and knelt down beside him. Caroline followed. Wolf looked from Paul to her mournfully.
Sad. Friend hurts. I hurt. Sad
.

Caroline inhaled sharply and removed her sunglasses
so that she could look at him closer.
What friend, Wolf?

She-friend
.

I’ll help. Show me
.

Gone now. Hope she come back
. Wolf cocked his head to one side and lifted his ears.
You help?

Yes
.

“The secret is your eyes,” Paul interjected brusquely.

Caroline glanced over and found him staring at her almost as intensely as Wolf was. “Pardon?”

“Your eyes are unusual. Animals are fascinated by them.”

She blinked rapidly, uncomfortable under his scrutiny. “That must be why you’re so intrigued.”

He made a gruff sound of amusement. “Yeah.” Then he pointed to Wolf and asked dryly, “Got him wound around your little finger yet?”

“Ye of little faith, shut up.”

He stroked Wolf under the chin. “It’s okay,
mon ami
. You’ll get it right the next time. Don’t pay any attention to Toddy’s mother. Let her go talk to her spirit guides. When she channels, she probably picks up reruns of
The Gong Show.
”

Caroline looked at Paul in wonder. She had expected him to rebuke Wolf, who was jeopardizing a lucrative project. Instead, this stressed-out, overworked, brusque tower of a man stroked Wolf’s head as if he were a sick puppy.

Her heart melted into a puddle. “He’s doing better,” Caroline said softly, her eyes never leaving Paul. “He’s concentrating more than before.”

“Yes, he is.” Paul gave her a reassessing look and nodded. “You helped. I don’t understand how, but you did.”

She was probably making a mistake, but she didn’t care. “Let’s go someplace private with him and eat lunch.”

“Oh, ho, you’ll put up with my company to help Wolf, yes?”

“I’m a martyr.”

He ran a hand through his hair, and she watched the way the black strands gleamed under the set lights. She’d never cared for longish hair on men, but on him it seemed appropriate. One didn’t clip the mane on a wild stallion.

“All right, let’s go.” There was something sly about the sideways look he gave her. “We’ll catch our lunch.”

“Oh, no. Lead me to a garden and I’ll corner some lettuce, but I’m not going to—”

“Worthless, pampered—”

“Domineering, uncivilized—”

“Hi, Paul,” Dabney interjected smoothly. “Hi, uhm, Casey.”

Caroline squinted up at the actress. “It’s Caroline.”

“Right.” Dabney smiled at Paul. “I just wondered if you wanted to eat lunch with me again. I’m going to watch music videos in my trailer.”

“We’ve already made plans to kill our lunch,” Caroline explained.

The girl eyed her quizzically. “Excuse me?”

Paul stood, took Dabney’s hand, bent over it gallantly, and kissed her fingertips. “I’m sorry, but I have too much work to do,
petite
. Believe me, though, it’s hard to turn you down.”

“Hmmm. Okay, babe. I’ll be waiting.”

Caroline rose casually, fiddling with her sunglasses as if they required all her attention.

“You’re the dog person, right?” Dabney asked her.

“Animal trainer,” Caroline corrected the young woman.

Dabney studied her from under a tornado of black hair. “Oh, yeah. Listen, I want to ask you something. I’m real blunt, so don’t be offended.”

“Oh, I don’t offend easily.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Paul arch one brow in disagreement.

“Well, it’s just that … why don’t you do something about that scar? I could recommend a great plastic surgeon.”

Caroline stared at her for a moment.
Eat hot death, songbird
. “No, I like it. Men think it’s sexy. Sometimes I wear a patch over the eye next to it. The mystery drives guys wild.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“Try wearing a patch. You’ll see. The sympathy factor alone is worth it.” Startled, Dabney stared at her. “Unreal.”

“Absolutely not.”

Wolf picked up on her silent distress. He moved abruptly, bumping Dabney so hard that she stumbled backward. He effectively wedged himself in front of Caroline. Then he looked up at Dabney and bared his teeth.

“Wolf, no,” Paul said in surprise.

Dabney’s eyes widened in alarm. “What’d I do?”

Caroline patted Wolf’s head. “I think it’s just your perfume. He’s sensitive to odd odors. Come on, Wolf, let’s get some fresh air.” She walked out of the room with Wolf beside her.

In the kitchen Caroline grabbed a glass of water to disguise her shaking hands. She was used to comments like Dabney’s. Girls who based their careers on their looks were morbidly curious about the scar. But she wasn’t used to having Paul Belue around to enjoy her embarrassment.

He ambled into the kitchen, his thumbs latched in the pockets of his khaki trousers. He sat down on the table, his booted feet swinging nonchalantly, and grinned at her.

“Nice technique,” he offered.

“I hope she’s smart enough to be insulted.”

“She deserved it.”

“Interesting taste in women you’ve got there, doc.
How old is she? Twenty, twenty-one? Maybe Wolf just has too much class to work for you anymore.”

“Thanks, Mom, for the lecture.”

“You’re welcome. No wonder you weren’t desperate to take me to bed. You’re diddling a female Elvis impersonator. How intriguing.” Caroline put the glass down, adjusted her skirt, and glanced at him coolly.

Paul chuckled. “When I diddle someone around here, you’ll be the first to know,
chère
.” He pointed upward. “Just listen for my bed bumping the wall.”

“Anything would be better than listening to your accordion.” She scowled. “Enjoy my scar story?”

“Hey,” he said softly. “You’ve got guts. It must not be easy to put up with helpful advice, especially from a kid like Dabney.”

She shrugged. Then, spurred by a sense of trust that perturbed her, she grew very still and looked at him with quiet dignity. Caroline gestured toward her scar. “This is as good as it gets—at least until medical science advances a little more. The doctors took care of the smaller scars, and I’m just grateful my face turned out as well as it did.”

Slowly, compassion softened his eyes. “How bad were you hurt?”

“Well, let’s put it this way—I didn’t need a Halloween mask when I was growing up.”

Abruptly he rose, came over to her, and cupped her chin in one hand. “How did it happen,
chère
?”

The feel of his thick, warm fingertips on the tender underside of her jaw made rivulets of sensation trail down her body. His low, soothing voice with its French accent was utterly disarming. No wonder animals liked him. She realized that she was leaning toward him, her lips parted.

And he was a reminder of everything she wanted to forget about her past.

Caroline pulled away, tossed him a sardonic look,
and put all her defenses back in place. “Forget it. I hate sentimentality. Let’s go kill something for lunch.”

He tilted his head to one side and gazed at her intensely, his eyes burning into her. After several awkward seconds in which she felt like a butterfly pinned to the floor, she shook both fists at him and yelled, “Dammit, what do you want?”

He blinked as if trying to remember. Then his eyes narrowed to wicked slits and he smiled. “Crawfish,
chère
. Crawfish.”

They looked like tiny little ugly lobsters, and they were determined to humiliate her.

“No, Caroline, shoo them, don’t scatter them,” Paul ordered in a loud, exasperated voice. He dipped a tightly meshed net into the water once again, waiting. Wolf lay upstream on a sandy bank, watching them with what amounted to a wolf smile.

Caroline hopped. “They keep scooting over my toes! How do I know they won’t pinch me?”

“A mudbug can’t hurt you.”

Wading barefoot in the shallow creek, she shuffled around, muttering. “I walked a half mile into the woods to herd crawfish. This is what I’ve sunk to. A shepherdess for low-rent shrimp.” Her voice rose. “Mudbug? I’m not eating anything with a nickname that includes the word
mud
.”

“Here they come! Yes, I’d run from such a woman too! Better to be eaten than nagged to death.” Paul lifted the net swiftly. It was full of crawfish. “Lunch!”

Caroline picked her way across the streambed to him. She put one foot down on a harmless-looking rock. It was covered in a slick coat of algae.

“Help!” She came very close to doing a split.

Paul reached out to grab her. He made a chortling sound of amusement until her outflung hand caught
his left knee. His foot went out from under him on the glassy rocks, and he sat down heavily.

Crawfish flew everywhere. Caroline fell sideways and ended up with her head in Paul’s lap. She wore her hair in a jaunty topknot. A tiny crawfish latched onto the end of it and swung gently to and fro by her ear. His relatives disappeared into the creek.

“I don’t like Cajun food anyway,” she muttered, and added several choice words hot enough to boil their escaped lunch.

“Dieu! You’re ridiculous!” Paul told her, his face red with restrained laughter. His gaze went to her white necklace, then to the outline of her breasts in the wet maillot. “Your baubles have sand on them. But I like sandy baubles. I should keep you around just for entertainment.”

She pushed herself up from his flat, muscle-terraced stomach, staggered to the bank, and sat down. Paul was highly impressed by the fact that she ignored the crawfish still dangling from her hair. She untied the scarf around her waist and wrung water from it.

“This cost two hundred dollars. I don’t think it’s creek-wash and wear.”

“What a useless way to spend money.”

He stood, pulled his tank top off, and tossed it on a low bush. His unbelted trousers hung low on his hips. Caroline tried to give him no more than a baleful glance, but her hands twisted the scarf with increasing tension. If Dr. Blue had indeed risen full-grown from the swamp, the swamp had done a fine job creating his essentials.

“Cut the self-righteous attitude,” she said in a strained voice. “You’re just like everyone else. If you had the money, you’d buy all sorts of frivolous things.”

He stretched on his side next to her, looking languid but poised in a way that reminded her of the panther. Before she could stop him he reached out and deftly
removed the crawfish from her hair, then tickled it along her cheek before he tossed it into the creek. The warmth of his hand and the scent of his skin lingered like a caress.

“Maybe,” he admitted. “But I wouldn’t build my life around them. We Cajuns know what’s important.”

Caroline flung the scarf into her lap. “Being Cajun isn’t the most wonderful claim in the world,” she told him, her voice low and fierce. “Despite the fact that the media has made it into something romantic. There’s nothing romantic about your damned heritage, and I’m tired of hearing you brag.”

His cold blue eyes warned her to watch her step. “How did you get so prejudiced and small-minded?”

After a moment of silence she sighed as if she’d just made a painful decision. “My mother was Cajun.” Caroline pointed to her scar. “She’s responsible for this.”

He couldn’t have been more stunned if she’d told him that her mother came from the moon.

Paul sat up slowly, studying her, watching her jaw flex with emotion and her cheeks flush darkly, making the scar stand out like a vivid white brand. She stared down at her wet scarf and began wringing it again while her lips pressed tight in a line of defense.

Now he understood her infinitely better—the private look in her eyes, the reserve that kept her a little separate from other people, the jaunty anger, and the vulnerable underside that made her put up a shield.

“Michelle Ancelet,” she said suddenly, her voice grim. “That was her maiden name.”

“What parish was she from?”

“I don’t know. I never tried to learn anything about her.”

“You know enough to hate her,
chère
. Where did you learn that?”