He folded his arms on the table and leaned toward her. “You don’t need physical strength when you have that smile.”
Matt didn’t think it was possible for a person’s cheeks to turn such a deep shade of crimson so quickly. He had to suppress the instant, overwhelming urge to taste the demure smile that formed on her lips.
“Thank you,” she said, her cheeks still impossibly red, her face still impossibly gorgeous. She pointed to her notebook. “Can we get back to my list of questions?”
Suppressing his annoyance over her insistence on working, he made a circling motion with his hand. “Please proceed, Professor West.”
“It’s Tamryn,” she said. “And I asked if you’ve worked in your family’s law practice your entire career.”
“For the most part,” Matt answered, sitting back in his chair. “I clerked for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans for a few years while still in law school.”
“Your father is on that court, isn’t he?”
“Yes. I guess youhavedone your research.”
She waved him off with a flick of her wrist. “I was able to find out everything I needed to know about your father with a two-minute internet search. Leroy Gauthier has made some interesting rulings during his first few years as an appellate judge.”
“If by ‘interesting,’ you mean controversial, then yes,” Matt answered.
“I was trying to be tactful.”
He laughed. “Tactful and Leroy Gauthier. I doubt those words have ever been used together in a sentence before.”
Matt could practically see the wheels turning in her head with questions he wasn’t up for answering.
“Anything else?” he asked. “You want to know about my mom? She died of cancer ten years ago.”
“I read that, too,” she said. “Her obituary was in the online archives of the local paper. I’m sorry about her passing.”
Matt did his best to pull off an unaffected shrug. “She was more than ready to go. She’d suffered for years.”
The suffering his mother faced during her short bout with ovarian cancer was probably nothing compared to the misery she’d endured at the hands of her neglectful, adulterous husband. But that was something he certainly wasn’t about to share with Tamryn West.
“I’m not really sure why you requested this meeting. It seems as if Google has told you everything you need to know.”
“I want to know the things that Googlecan’ttell me,” Tamryn said.
Matt fingered a petal on one of the daisies in the slim vase in the center of the table. “And what is that, exactly?”
“Well, for instance, Google can’t tell me what it was like being a member of the founding family of Gauthier. The town is named after you, for goodness’ sake. Don’t pretend it’s not a big deal.”
“The town is named after my great-great-uncle Micah Gauthier, not me. And I already told you that I’m not all that knowledgeable about my family’s history.” He shrugged. “I just don’t have much interest in it.”
Tamryn flattened her open palm to her chest. “Do you know how much that breaks my heart?”
“Sorry to be such a disappointment.” Matt knew his grin contradicted his words.
“Once I’m done with my research, I will probably know more about your family than you do,” she said.
Her prediction caused an arrow of alarm to shoot down Matt’s spine, because that was exactly what he most feared. There were things about his family that he didn’t wantanyoneto know. He’d come from a long line of bootleggers, gamblers, and worse. The town’s founding family wouldn’t be so revered if Gauthier’s residents knew of his predecessors’ past misdeeds.
If they knew ofhismisdeeds.
Matt leaned forward again and, in a lowered voice, said, “You know, there are better ways for you to spend your summer than researching my family.”
The sexy smile that drew across her face had him thinking for a moment that he’d distracted her from her quest, until she said in an equally hushed voice, “I beg to differ. Your family is fascinating. You just don’t understand because you haven’t taken the time to delve into their history.”
Matt sat back and released a defeated sigh. She might look like sex in high heels, but her prying was still a giant pain in his ass.
