Peachy's Proposal

No, he told himself. She couldn’t. She had no idea of who he was. Of what he was. Of how he’d lived.

“Am I the first man you’ve approached about this, Peachy?” he abruptly queried.

“You mean, are you the first one I’ve asked to—?” She then gestured.

“Yes.”

Her chin went up again. A blush blossomed on her cheeks. “I don’t think that’s any of your business at this point, Luc.”

“No?”

“You turned me down—remember?”

“I’m considering changing my mind.”

Peachy’s eyes widened to the point where there was white visible all the way around the irises. “I thought that was a female prerogative.”

Luc shrugged with a casualness he was far from feeling. “Consider it a matter of equal opportunity indecisiveness.” He waited a beat, then repeated his previous inquiry. “Am I the first man you’ve approached about this?”

Peachy glanced away from him, the color in her cheeks intensifying, the line of her elegantly sculpted jaw going taut. Her reluctance to respond was palpable.

“Yes,” she finally replied.

Luc released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, a primitive sense of triumph suffusing him. He closed his mind to thoughts of how he might have reacted had her answer been different. Then, goaded by an emotion he couldn’t—or wouldn’t-identify he said, “But you have other…candidates.”

Her gaze swung back to collide with his. The expression in her eyes said he was perilously close to getting his face slapped.

“That’s really none of your business,” Peachy declared through gritted teeth.

It wasn’t and he knew it, but he didn’t give a damn.

“What about that Tulane University M.B.A. the MayWinnies tried to fix you up with last month?” he pressed.

“The MayWinnies” was Prytania Street shorthand for Mayrielle and Winona-Jolene Barnes, a pair of sprightly seventy-year-old twins who rented the apartment next to Peachy’s. Although they cultivated an image of white-gloved propriety, Luc had heard from numerous sources that they’d once been quite free with their favors.

Well, no. Perhaps free wasn’t the appropriate adjective. Because gossip also maintained that in the course of bestowing themselves on a goodly number of Louisiana’s richest and most powerful men, the MayWinnies had amassed a six-figure nest egg, which they had subsequently multiplied many times over in the stock market.

Short of inquiring of the ladies themselves, there was no way for Luc to be certain how many of the stories about the May Winnies’ alleged exploits were true. He was inclined to dismiss a few of them—most notably the one involving a former U.S. senator and a Mardi Gras float—out of hand. He was also prepared to bet a substantial amount of cold, hard cash that many of the tales were dead-on accurate.

As for the rumors about his septuagenarian tenants transforming themselves from good-time girls into gilt-edged investors…

Again, there was no way for Luc to be absolutely sure. However, he and the MayWinnies did happen to bank at the same place. He’d long ago noticed that although he and his book royalties were accorded a significant degree of respect, the bank’s president practically genuflected at the mention of the Misses Barnes.

“Are you talking about Daniel?” Peachy asked, plainly startled by the specificity of his query.

Luc was a tad surprised by it himself. He hadn’t realized he’d registered the individual in question—Daniel, had she said his name was?—quite so strongly.

“Yes,” he affirmed after a moment.

Peachy began fingering her locket again. “I only went out with him once.”

Luc couldn’t tell whether she was being deliberately evasive. He fleetingly considered pointing out that “once” was one more time than she’d been out with him, but discarded the idea.

“So?” he challenged.

“So—he’s nice!”

Luc lifted a brow, contemplating the possibility that he’d just been insulted. Under normal circumstances there would have been little doubt in his mind that he had, at least by implication. But the inflection Peachy had given the adjective strongly suggested that it was Daniel, not he, whom she’d judged and found wanting.

Nice.

Hmm.

His ready-to-be-bedded tenant had a problem with nice?

She wouldn’t be unique among her sex if she did, Luc reflected with a touch of cynicism. And heaven knew, such a prejudice would go a long way toward explaining her decision to ask him to take—er, make that “accept”—her virginity. Yet he couldn’t quite reconcile that sort of character kink with the woman who’d lived beneath his roof for nearly twenty-four months.

“You’re saying that being nice disqualifies a man from inclusion on your list of potential, ah, deflowerers,” he clarified.

“I’m saying that Daniel wouldn’t understand my situation.”

“And you think I do?”

“Not anymore.” Peachy glared at him. “Look, Luc. This obviously was a mistake. I’m sorry I said anything to you. Just—just forget about it, all right?”

And with that, she started to pivot away. Reacting purely on instinct, Luc reached out and grabbed her by the arm, halting her in mid-turn.

It was the first time he’d touched Peachy with anything more intense than the most casual kind of affection. He felt her go rigid in response to the contact. Her gaze slewed back to slam into his, then dropped pointedly to his hand. After a taut moment, he opened his fingers and released her.

God, he thought, sucking in a shaky breath as he lowered a nonetoo-steady hand to his side. The potency of his emotions shocked him. My…God.

“Why me?” he demanded harshly. He couldn’t have stopped the words if he’d wanted to. He had to know.

Peachy blinked and edged back slightly. “Wh-what?”

“Why did you ask me to—?” he completed the question with an explicit variation of the gesture she’d made earlier.

There was a long pause. Peachy’s eyes moved back and forth, back and forth. Finally, she seemed to reach some kind of decision. After moistening her lower lip with a darting lick of her tongue she countered flatly, “Do you want the truth?”

He nodded.

“All right.” She swallowed, then cocked her chin with a hint of defiance. “I asked you because I thought you’d make it easy.”

“Easy?”

She nodded. “Do you remember me saying that I only wanted you to do it with me once?”

“Vividly.”

“Well, it seemed to me—I mean, you’ve never made any secret of the fact that you’re not inclined toward making emotional commitments. That you don’t want to be tied down. So I decided, uh, uh—”

“That a one-night stand would be right up my alley?”

“Not in a bad way,” Peachy quickly insisted.

“Oh, of course not.”

But even as he voiced the retort, Luc had to acknowledge the fundamental validity of his tenant’s assessment. He had no desire for a permanent relationship with a woman. He never had. He seriously doubted he ever would. In point of fact, he was supremely skeptical about his ability to sustain one. He’d never hidden that.

Yet for all its accuracy, Luc found Peachy’s reading of his character disturbing. The idea that she perceived him as some kind of…of…disposable stud unnerved him in a way he couldn’t fully explain.

“You’re not the only man I considered,” Peachy said earnestly. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. My first impulse was to go to the bar at a good hotel, maybe Le Meridien or the Windsor Court, and pick up a nice-looking stranger and let nature take its course.”

“What?”

“You don’t think I could have?”

“For God’s sake, Peachy.” He could barely speak. The scenario she’d sketched was appallingly plausible. “Do you have any concept how dangerous—”

“I’m inexperienced, Luc,” she interrupted, nailing him with a fulminating look. “I’m not an idiot. The hotel bar idea occurred to me while I was still pretty shaken up from the emergency landing. As soon as I got my brains unscrambled, I realized I could never go through with it. So I sat down and wrote out a list of all the eligible men I know. Then I started to eliminate. It was pretty much the same thing, over and over. ‘If I do it with him and it’s awful, he’ll probably be upset and that could get complicated.’ Or, ‘If I do it with him and it’s terrific, he’ll probably want to do it again and that could get complicated, too.’“ She paused, her cheeks flushing. “I ended up with you.”

Luc took a few moments to absorb this remarkable explanation then asked, “What about you?”

“Me?”

“Wouldn’t you be upset if you ‘did it’ and it was awful?”

For the first time, a hint of shyness entered her expression. “Actually…that was the second reason I decided to ask you first.”

Luc frowned, genuinely flummoxed. “What was?”

“I’ve been hearing stories about your love life from the moment I moved into the building. Even the MayWinnies—oh, they tut-tut about your behavior, of course. Which is sort of funny, considering the outrageous things they supposedly did when they were younger. Still, as prim as they pretend to be now, I can tell they get a kick out of having a lady-killer for a landlord. In any case, when I was thinking about who I should ask, I realized that if even a quarter of what’s said about you and women is true, you’d know how to make my first time, uh, well, unawful.”

There was a pause.

“Supposing it isn’t?” Luc finally asked.

“Supposing what isn’t…what?”

“Supposing not even a quarter of what’s said about me and women is true? Supposing it’s all lies?”

Peachy regarded him with disconcerting directness. “If that were the case,” she said slowly, “I think you’d tell me.”

Luc stiffened. No, he thought. She can’t be that naive! She can’t believe—

But she did. He could see it in her lovely, wide-set eyes. For reasons he couldn’t begin to fathom, this woman trusted him to be truthful about a subject that was notorious for inspiring lies.

“Men don’t usually go around puncturing the myths about their sexual prowess, cher,” he said, conscious of an unfamiliar stirring of protectiveness.

“Not if they’re the ones who’ve been spreading them,” Peachy agreed. “But everything I’ve heard about your prowess comes from other people, Luc. Where they heard it, I don’t know. Except I’m certain it wasn’t from you. Because as far as I can tell, you don’t brag about what you do, how you do it, or whom you do it with. And I…well, I admire that.”

Luc glanced away, his throat tightening. Peachy’s summation of his behavior was very much on target. But if she ascribed his discretion to gallantry, she was sadly mistaken. His first inkling of the true nature of his parents’ marriage had been gleaned from a conversation he’d overheard when he was just six years old. It was the memory of the angry, anguished confusion he’d felt when he’d listened to two supposed friends of his father crudely comparing notes about liaisons with his mother that kept him silent about his sexual affairs. The possibility that some careless comment of his might hurt someone as he’d been hurt was untenable to him.

His thoughts shifted without warning to his first sexual experience. He’d been seduced during his sophomore year of high school by the wife of one of the many men with whom his mother had broken her wedding vows. While the experience had been physically pleasurable, it had left him with more than a few psychological scars.

“Luc?”

Drawing a long, deep breath, he turned his gaze back to Peachy. She’s bound and determined to do it, he reflected. If not with me, then with someone else. And if she does it with someone else—

No! He didn’t even want to think about that scenario!

Luc exhaled in a rush, his mind suddenly latching on to an astonishing idea.

What if…what if he agreed to do what Peachy had asked, then stalled consummation until she came to her senses and called the deal off?

She would come to her senses, he assured himself. Eventually.

He’d meant what he’d said earlier, about facing down death tending to reorder a person’s priorities. What he hadn’t said—but what he knew from personal experience to be true—was that such reorderings were seldom permanent.

Of course, he conceded, there was always a minuscule possibility that the passage of time would not erode Peachy’s single-minded desire to get rid of her virginity. And if that were the case…

Thirteen years ago, Luc Devereaux had found himself standing in the door of a military plane, preparing to make his first parachute jump. Half of his brain had been urging him to make the leap. The other half had been screaming that there was still time to turn back from what probably was the stupidest stunt he’d ever contemplated.

He’d glanced at his instructor, a Special Forces captain named Flynn. Flynn had grinned, his teeth flashing a predatory white against his deeply tanned skin. Then he’d leaned in, put his mouth close to Luc’s ear and counseled, “Go with your gut, kid.”

“All right,” he said abruptly.

Peachy blinked. “All…right?”

“I accept your proposal.”

“Oh, Luc—”

“But not tonight.”

Two

“This is not a date,” Peachy stated to her reflection approximately twenty-four hours later.

Leaning into the mirror over her bathroom sink, she painstakingly brushed another coat of black brown mascara on to her lush but virtually colorless lashes. Other types of cosmetics she could basically take or leave. In fact, aside from what she now drolly classified as her “Vampira” period—a mercifully brief interlude during her first semester of design school in which she’d affected a from-the-crypt pallor, dramatically shadowed eyes and bloodred lips—she’d always applied her makeup with a very light hand.

Except for mascara, of course.

She’d gotten hooked on the stuff more than a decade ago and had experimented with everything from bargain basement brands that smelled like petrochemicals to outrageously expensive ones that supposedly contained miscroscopic fibers of cashmere. Without mascara—well, frankly, she thought she appeared rather rabbitty.

Her lashes finally darkened to a satisfactory degree, Peachy stepped back from the sink and scrutinized her mirrored image with a critical eye. There’d been a time when she’d absolutely loathed the way she looked. A time when she would have given anything to trade her gaminely irregular features, sprite-thin body and uncontrollable mop of red-gold curls for her older sister’s classically pretty face, shapely figure and straight, chestnut-colored hair. Fortunately that time had passed.

Although she still considered Eden an extremely attractive woman, Peachy had learned to appreciate and enhance her own quirky looks. The three years she’d spent in New York—the first two as a design student, the third as an apprentice with a jewelry firm—had been extremely important ones in this regard.

Where her mass of pre-Raphaelite ringlets and rather avantgarde wardrobe choices, basic black everything accessorized with purchases from army-navy surplus stores, thrift shops and garage sales, generally had been regarded as just a wee bit weird in her hometown in Ohio, they’d turned out to be very much “with it” in the Big Apple. This had done wonders for her shaky self-esteem.

Oh, sure, she’d succumbed to a few in-your-face fashion trends during her first few months in Manhattan. But she’d eventually realized that shocking people in the street really wasn’t her thing. She’d abandoned stylistic extremes, let all but two of the holes in her earlobes heal up and begun developing her own personal look. This look wasn’t middle-of-the-road by any means. But it wasn’t so far out on the edge that it scared innocent little children, either.

Interestingly, her artwork had improved as her vision of who she was and how she wanted to present herself to the world had become dearer. By the time she’d won the design contest that had led to the job offer that had brought her to New Orleans, she’d had more confidence in herself—both personally and professionally—than she’d ever had in her life.

As for the impact the last two years in New Orleans had had on her…

Perhaps it was a response to the ambrosial food or the profusion of flowers or the remarkable diversity of cultures. Or maybe it had something to do with the local credo of letting les bon temps rouler. But within weeks of her arrival in the Crescent City—shortly after moving into her Prytania Street apartment, to be precise—Peachy had realized that she felt totally at home. No matter that she’d still needed a map to find her way around, mistakenly believed Burgundy Street was pronounced like the wine and thought chicory coffee tasted like something that should be used to clean paintbrushes. Somehow, someway, she’d found a place where she fit in.

Which was not to say that everything was absolutely perfect. The weather, for example, was a tad problematic. Peachy had heard natives claim that New Orleans, which had been carved from a swamp, only had two seasons—summer and February. She’d come to the conclusion that this was code for muggy and about-to-be muggy. She’d also discovered that the local climate played havoc with what Bible scholars would call her “crowning glory.”

Grimacing wryly at her reflection, Peachy plucked a brush from amid the clutter on the counter to the left of the sink. Maybe she should wear her hair up after all, she mused. She’d styled it into a chignon earlier then unpinned it after deciding the coiffure was too fussy and self-conscious. While making herself attractive to Luc seemed a sensible thing to do given the request she’d made of him, she was wary of creating the impression that she’d expended a lot of time and effort preparing for this evening’s, uh, uh—

“Whatever,” she said, yanking the brush through her incorrigible curls.

It was unsettling, Peachy admitted silently. She knew Luc intended to make love to her, because he’d promised her he would. Yet she had no idea when or where he planned to perform the deed.

Assuming he’d even decided those details, which she was strongly inclined not to do.

How had it happened? she demanded of herself. How had Lucien Devereaux shifted from accepting her proposal, to imposing his terms in the space of a few seconds? More importantly, why had she acquiesced in a situation where she had every right to be in charge? It was her virginity, dammit!

Her mind flashed back to the previous evening.

“What do you mean…‘but not tonight’?” she’d asked once the implications of Luc’s unexpected declaration had begun to sink in.

“I think we should wait,” he’d answered calmly.

“I have waited!” she’d exclaimed, swatting a stray lock of hair out of her face. “That’s why I found myself on a malfunctioning airplane thinking I was going to die a virgin. The waiting’s over, Luc. I want to do it and be done with it and get on with my life!”

It had not been the most felicitous way of describing the consummation for which she so devoutly wished. Peachy had recognized this the moment the words had come tumbling out of her mouth. A sudden lifting of her partner-to-be’s dark brows had suggested that he, too, found her phrasing a trifle cold-blooded.

“‘Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am?’“ he’d quoted after a fractional pause.

She’d felt herself start to blush for what seemed like the millionth time but she hadn’t dared back off. “That’s one way of putting it.”

Luc’s deep brown eyes had narrowed very slightly at this point. The corners of his sensually shaped lips had quirked upward. The shift in both instances had been a matter of no more than a few millimeters. Yet the effect on his overall expression had been devastatingly seductive.

“But that’s not my style, cher,” he’d replied, his voice dropping into a velvet-lined register she’d never heard before. Even the offhand endearment he’d been using since the first time they’d met had suddenly sounded foreign to her ears.

She’d opened her mouth to say something. He’d forestalled her before she’d uttered a peep.

“The first time between a man and woman is always awkward, Peachy,” he’d observed. “No matter how much experience one—or both—of them has. There’s uncertainty about what the other person wants and there’s insecurity about whether you can provide it. It’s not…easy.”

There’d been no doubt in her mind that his choice of the final adjective had been deliberate. Easy had been the word she’d used earlier in explaining why she’d chosen him as the first recipient of her unorthodox proposal.

“So?” The breathlessness of her voice had appalled her.

“So, I think it would reduce the inevitable awkwardness if we got to know each before we head to bed for the first and only time.”

“Got to know—?” she’d echoed incredulously. “We’ve been living under the same roof for nearly two years!”

“Which means we know each other as neighbors,” he’d replied without missing a beat. “I’m talking about becoming acquainted as man and woman. About becoming…aware…of each other.”

Peachy had hesitated. She’d sensed that there was something crucial he wasn’t saying and searched his dark, deep-set eyes to try to discover what it might be.

Yet even as she’d sought for answers to questions she wouldn’t have been able to articulate if she’d tried, she’d had to concede that Luc’s arguments for “waiting” sounded reasonable.

“Well,” she’d finally begun. “I suppose…”

Luc had smiled. There’d been a brief hint of teeth, reminding her that the human race was innately carnivorous.

“There’s also the matter of my masculine pride,” he’d said. “I’d like to be sure your first time is something better than—what was your word? Oh, yes. Unawful.”

And then he’d touched her. Lifting his right hand to her face, he’d brushed his fingertips slowly down the curve of her left cheek. After that he’d stroked them, very lightly, along the line of her jaw.

The contact had affected her like a jolt of electricity. It had gone surging through her nervous system, throwing her already accelerated pulse rate into overdrive and causing her breathing pattern to unravel into short, shallow pants.

For one insane instant she’d honestly thought she might swoon. And in that same insane instant she’d decided that asking Lucien Devereaux to relieve her of her virginity was either the smartest thing she’d ever done or a mistake of such monumental proportions that she’d spend the rest of her life—

The sound of her hairbrush clattering against the tiled floor of the bathroom yanked Peachy back into the present. She blinked several times, conscious of a wild fluttering deep in her stomach. Her hands were trembling. She could feel the nipples of her small breasts straining against the lacy cups of her bra.

A glimpse of her reflection did nothing to restore her composure. Her cheeks were flushed, almost feverish looking. And there was a glazed expression in her eyes that reminded her of the zombie lore she’d heard from Laila Martigny, the fiftyish psychologist who lived in the apartment directly below hers.

Rumor had it that the regal-looking Dr. Martigny was a descendant of New Orleans’s famed witch queen, Marie Laveau. But while she would admit to being the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter and to having occasional flashes of what some others might call ESP, Laila simply smiled away questions about her possible connection to the legendary “Madame L.”

“Get a grip,” Peachy ordered herself through clenched teeth as she bent to retrieve the brush. Her hair cascaded forward in an unruly tumble. She shoveled it back over her shoulders as she straightened up.

A glance at the small alarm clock that sat on the back of the commode informed her that her ill-advised stroll down memory lane had put her behind schedule. It was nearly half past seven. She was supposed to meet Luc for dinner at eight. Although the restaurant he’d chosen was within walking distance, she’d have to hustle to arrive there by the appointed hour.