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Authors: Nancy Warren

BOOK: Bayou Bad Boys
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Three
There was no way she could have missed him. Emma supposed that he'd chosen the plain white T-shirt, faded jeans, scuffed cowboy boots, red Ragin' Cajun baseball cap and RayBans in order to blend into the locals crowding the terminal, but there was no way Gabriel would ever blend in anywhere.
He was six feet one before tacking on the added height from those wedged heels of the boots and his body beneath that tight shirt appeared as lean and hard as it'd been when he was eighteen. The shaggy black hair curling at the nape of his neck was as black as a moonless night over the bayou and the thin white scar running across his cheekbone added a dashing, dangerous look reminiscent of the pirates who'd once used the bayou as a home base while raiding merchant ships out in the Gulf.
A sexy stubble of beard darkened his jaw, and his mouth was set in a firm, no-trespassing line designed to discourage anyone who might recognize him from speaking to him. He made his way past the newsstands, take-out Cajun food counters, and souvenir stands selling Tabasco sauce and plastic alligators on the loose-hipped predatory stride of a swamp panther.
Emma was wondering if Nate had informed Gabriel about the change of plans, that she'd be the one picking him up, when he honed in on her like a heat-seeking missile.
“Hey,
chère.
”
His drawl was as rich as the pralines being sold next to those grinning plastic gators. Emma had read that when he'd first gone to Hollywood, he'd been told to sound more “American,” to which he'd responded that the last time he'd looked at a map, Louisiana
was
in America, and besides, having an accent sure as hell hadn't hurt Antonio Banderas, Pierce Brosnan, or Sean Connery.
After
The Last Pirate
was released, and all those earlier detractors realized how sexy moviegoers found that bayou drawl, Gabriel Broussard's name rocketed to the top of every A list in town.
Case closed. As they say in the movie business,
A Star Was Born.
His sensually chiseled lips tilted into a weary, all-too memorable half smile that hinted at dark secrets. The smile that made women want to take him into their arms, coddle him, and make the pain go away. The smile that had coaxed more than one willing female into the backseat of the Batmobile black Trans Am he'd roared around the bayou in back in high school.
Then, even as she braced against it, he folded her in his strong arms.
Because the feel of that hard, male, built-for-sin body against hers made her want to hold on, Emma stiffened.
If he noticed her resistance, Gabe didn't show it as he put her a little away from him, keeping his long dark fingers curved around her shoulders as he subjected her to an openly masculine appraisal, from the top of her dark head, down to her Sunset Poppy lacquered toenails. The little toe was smeared a bit from putting her brand-new sandals back on before it dried, but from the way his gaze lingered on her breasts, Emma didn't figure he'd notice the flaw.
“Damned if you haven't turned into one hot female, you.”
The intimate growl was more suited for a bedroom than the crowded concourse in Louis Armstrong International Airport. As for the words . . . well, they shouldn't have given her such a secret thrill.
They shouldn't.
But, heaven help her, they did.
They also gave her a rash, reckless idea.
While Emma wasn't one of those people who actually believed those tacky supermarket tabloid stories about bat boys and alien babies, and who in Hollywood was sleeping with whom, it was more than a little obvious that while he might no longer be the town's bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, one thing about Gabriel Broussard hadn't changed. Seduction still came as naturally to him as breathing.
So, what if she turned the tables? What if
she
seduced
him
?
After all, he owed her. Big time.
Emma was proud of how she'd moved on after her divorce from Richard, the adulterous, tax-dodging, embezzling dickhead. But some old habits died hard, and in many ways, although there were times when she aspired to be promiscuous, she was still a good girl. Sometimes too much so, if her best friend could be believed.
Roxi, who could have written a modern girl's guide to hooking up, had taped all six seasons of
Sex and the City
and every Wednesday evening, while Richard had supposedly been at his Rotary Club meetings, she and Emma had gotten together to watch them. Unfortunately, while Roxi memorized Samantha's pick-up lines, Emma identified with the hopelessly romantic Charlotte.
It wasn't as if Roxi hadn't tried to liven up Emma's life, encouraging her to push the sexual envelope, to act on impulse.
Ha! Easy for
her
to say. Emma didn't do impulsive. She made lists. Lots and lots of lists. All of which were color coded by day of the week, month of the year, and whether they were business or personal.
Not only was she diligent about crossing items off as she accomplished them, if she did something that wasn't on one of those pieces of yellow lined legal paper, she'd add it to the bottom of the list, just for the satisfaction of drawing a line through it.
After going back to school to become a professional masseuse, she'd worked on her business plan for Every Body's Beautiful for eighteen months before buying so much as a towel. Much to Roxi's frustration, most of Emma's evenings were spent alone, poring over the day spa's books and spreadsheets, looking for ways she could improve her cash flow.
Reminding her on an almost daily basis that you didn't have to be in love with a man to sleep with him, Roxi was all the time also repeating her favorite bumper sticker slogan: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Made History. But being mostly content with the life she'd made for herself after the divorce debacle, Emma didn't feel a need to make history.
Still, what woman didn't have a few things in her past she might have done differently? Like marrying the dickhead.
Or believing, back when she'd been a naïve eighteen-year-old wallflower, that Gabriel Broussard would eventually grow tired of all those nymphets who were only attracted to his bad boy aura and tragically beautiful good looks.
Having harbored a secret crush on him for years, Emma had spent long lonely hours fantasizing scenarios where he'd suddenly recognize that there was a gleaming pearl amidst all the flashy cubic zirconium he'd been wasting his time with.
That pearl being her. A nice, caring, good girl who truly loved him for the sensitive, emotionally wounded heart that dwelt inside that devastatingly sexy body. For the man she'd known he could become.
A helluva lot of good that did you.
Maybe it was time, just for the few days he'd be in town, she ditched Emma, the good girl. And tried being Emma, the
good-time
girl.
Besides, part of Gabriel's appeal was that he'd always been a forbidden pleasure. Like all things forbidden, the fantasy undoubtedly surpassed the reality. Maybe it was time to find out if the bad boy of Blue Bayou could actually live up to his reputation.
And then, once she'd gotten a long overdue satisfaction, she'd just leave. The same way he had.
Later, when she was thinking clearly again, Emma would remind herself that her own reputation wasn't exactly that of a wild-woman seductress. And her body certainly wasn't Hollywood tucked, buffed, and toned.
But it was hard to even think at all when her mind was being bombarded by pheromones from a damn testosterone bomb.
Feeling uncharacteristically reckless—not to mention light-headed—she backed two steps away to give him a good look. Trying not to teeter on the ridiculously high fuck-me stilettos that had seemed like a good idea when she'd seen them in the window of The Magic Slipper, and resisting the urge to lick her suddenly dry lips, Emma smoothed her palms over the hips of the brand-new flowered silk skirt she'd bought after closing up today.
She hadn't bought the outfit for Gabe. The timing was only coincidence. No way would she risk maxing out her AMEX for any man.
Apparently the money, which could have paid Every Body's Beautiful's electric bill for six months, had not been wasted. Emma experienced a sudden surge of feminine power as his gaze followed the provocative gesture.
Channeling her inner Samantha, Emma checked him out in turn, drinking in the mouthwatering sight of broad male shoulders, bulging biceps and the strong V-shaped torso that arrowed down into lean male hips. Allowing her gaze to linger suggestively on the button placket of his jeans, she watched his penis flex beneath the worn denim.
Oh. My. God.
An illicit thrill zinged through Emma. Hot damn if Roxi wasn't right.
Men were easy.
Wishing she'd known this feminine secret back in high school, Emma lifted her eyes back to his, which were still shaded by those damn sunglasses, and treated him to a bold, sultry look hot enough to melt steel.
“You're not looking so bad yourself, sugar,” she said on a throaty let's-get-naked drawl Emma figured Samantha would use in this situation, if New York City's most famous bad girl had been born in bayou country.
When Gabe's lips twitched in a faint smile, Emma's rebellious mind conjured up an X-rated fantasy of them tugging at her suddenly sensitive nipples.
“Nate called me just as I was leaving for the airport this morning,” he said.
In Emma's fantasy, his mouth was moving south, trailing wet hot kisses over her naked flesh. And she'd begun to tingle in places she'd forgotten
could
tingle.
“I wasn't real thrilled when he started in explainin' about havin' to go out of town, since that meant I was gonna have to rent a car, me,” Gabe continued.
In her fantasy, he was nudging her dampening panties down with his beautiful white teeth. His words were beginning to be drowned out by the thundering hoofbeat of stampeding hormones.
“Which wasn't real high up on my Top Ten things to do right now since I'm trying to stay under the radar. Then he told me he'd found a stand-in.”
“That stand-in being me.”
Standing in. Standing up. Lying down. Against the wall, on the floor, the ceiling. Emma didn't care how. Or where. She just wanted him. Any which way.
“
Mais,
yeah.” His slow, lazy gaze traveled slowly, erotically, down the length of her again. “If I'd known certain things about Blue Bayou had gotten so appealing, I'd have come back a helluva lot sooner.”
What on earth would Samanatha say to that? Emma's mind stalled; her breath caught.
Think!
Since her brain seemed to have crashed, more vital regions leaped into the breach. “Some days a guy gets lucky,” she heard herself cooing in a very unEmma-like way.
Emma realized she'd hit the bull's-eye when an ebony brow lifted above the frames of those wraparound shades. “You sayin' this is going to be one of those days,
chère
?”
Emma had spent most of her teenage years—and later, even after a marriage that should have been declared dead at the altar—dreaming about Gabriel looking at her this way, as if she were the most desirable woman he'd ever seen. As if she were a whiskey-drenched bread pudding smothered in whipped cream he wanted to eat up.
Amazingly, this reality was proving even more exciting. She took her time, pretending to think it over, while, relying on age-old feminine instincts she hadn't even realized she possessed, she slowly trailed her fingers along the V-neck of her silk blouse.
“That's for me to know.”
His shielded gaze followed the deliberately languid gesture, honing in on her cleavage.
Easy
.
“And you to find out.”
He moved closer, the pointy tips of his boots touching her bare toes. “Sounds like a treasure hunt.”
His deep, rumbling voice caressed every nerve.
“It just might be.” She cocked her head. Electricity was sparking all around them. “Do you enjoy treasure hunts?”
He rubbed his square jaw, drawing her gaze to that cleft just beneath his lower lip. “That depends on the treasure.”
He moved even closer, so that there wasn't a breath of air between them, and toyed with a strand of auburn hair, wrapping it around his hand in a way that had her imagining him dragging her by the hair below deck to his pirate captain's quarters, where he'd force her to do all sorts of wicked, wild, wonderful things.
His hand—his large, dark hand—skimmed down her neck, sliding over her shoulder like warm silk. “If I have enough motivation, I can be very, very good at them.”
Emma gave him the fluttery Scarlett O'Hara smile Roxi used to practice in the mirror back when they were thirteen. “I'll just bet you can.”

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