“Thank you,” she said. She waited until Ezekiel exited the archives room before turning to Matt. She shouldnotbe so excited to see him, but she had a better chance of stopping a freight train with her bare hands than stopping the flutters flickering throughout her stomach. They had been there since the moment his lips had touched hers in his office on Friday night.
No, that was a lie. That tingly sensation had bombarded her the moment he’d pulled up to her disabled car, and it had only intensified with every encounter they’d had since her arrival in Gauthier.
She folded her arms over her chest and gave him a chastising frown. “Tell me you didn’t come all this way just to take me to lunch.”
“Only if you want me to lie,” he said. He tugged her arms loose and captured her hands, pulling them around his waist as he buried his head against her neck.
Tamryn’s eyes fell closed as her head tilted back.
“Matt,” she said on a weak sigh. “Matt, you have to stop doing this.”
“Not really,” he murmured against her skin as his lips traveled along her jawline. “Three. No, four,” he said. “That’s how many times I had to stop myself from getting in my car and driving to Belle Maison last night, just so I could get another taste of you.”
Tamryn told herself to put an end to this before things went too far. Anyone could walk into the archives room and discover them together. But her weak mental protests were no match for Matt’s exquisite kisses. His hands gripped her hips, pulling her to him as his mouth continued its foray along her neck, his teeth nipping at her skin.
“Matt, please,” Tamryn purred. She should have been asking him to stop, but instead it sounded like a plea for more.
Just as she was about to ask him to stop—for real this time—her stomach made an indelicate, hungry growl.
Matt’s deep chuckle resonated along her skin. “I guess that means you really want some lunch.”
Tamryn’s eyes slid shut again, this time in abject mortification. “I’m trying to think of the last time I was this embarrassed. I think it was back when I forgot all my lines during my third-grade Christmas play.” She peered up at him, her face hot with humiliation. “I skipped breakfast this morning, and the granola bar I found buried in the bottom of my purse stopped being effective a long time ago.”
“A granola bar?” Matt’s brow narrowed with his censorious frown. “Now I see why your stomach is arguing with you. You’re in a city that’s known for its cuisine and you feed it a granola bar?”
“What can I do to persuade you to never bring up my noisy stomach again?”
His grin was pure sin. “You really want me to answer that?”
He didn’t have to. The answer was more than obvious from his heated stare, and an answering heat flashed all over her body. Why did she have to meet this incredibly sexy man at a time when getting involved with him was the very last thing she needed? It was as if he was determined to keep her in a state of perpetual lust, and it was becoming downright impossible to fight it.
“I can tell by the way those cheeks are getting even redder that you don’t need an answer. I love the way your skin blushes, by the way,” he whispered against her lips. “It makes me want to come up with a bunch of other ways to make you blush.”
“Oh, God, just stop,” Tamryn said with a deep sigh.Irresistibledidn’t even come close to describing this man. She was insomuch trouble.
“Come on.” He laughed against her lips. “Let’s get some food in you. And then I’ve got a surprise.”
Tamryn looked up at him.
“Trust me. It’s something your little history-loving heart will adore.”
Two hours later, Tamryn found herself seated in the back of a horse-drawn carriage, the beautiful animal’s heavy hoofs clopping along the narrow French Quarter streets. She tried to engage Matt in a discussion about the various historical structures, but his enthusiasm for history was pathetically lacking.
Once their tour was done, the carriage pulled up to the front gates that surrounded Jackson Square in the very center of the French Quarter.
“I think it’s been long enough since lunch,” Matt announced. He gestured with his head to the open seating area covered with a green and white awning. “No visit to the French Quarter is complete without a stop for beignets at Café du Monde.”
“After the huge lunch we had at Antoine’s? There’s no way I can fit in more food. I think I’ve eaten more in the few weeks I’ve been here than I would have in two months back in Boston.”
Matt took both of her hands in his and tugged her gently. She didn’t resist nearly as hard as she should have.
He seated her at a wrought-iron table overlooking Decatur Street. A few minutes later, he joined her, placing a plate of the powdered-sugar-dusted French doughnuts, along with two cups of café au lait, on the table. Tamryn bit into the light dough and groaned. “Oh my goodness, this is good,” she said.
Subtle, sexy humor lit up Matt’s eyes. “You’re very vocal when you eat,” he teased.
Her cheeks warming with embarrassment, Tamryn set the doughnut on the plate and dusted off her fingers. “How very ungentlemanly of you to point that out,” she said.
“It has to be the sexiest sound I’ve ever heard.”
