“So you’re self-taught?”
“No, not entirely. I’ve worked in hotels all my life, sometimes in the kitchen. I learned a lot by watching some really good chefs.”
“Hmm, maybe it’s in your blood, what with your cousin Melanie being a chef, too. Was it your mother or your father who was a Robichaux? Oh, that’s a silly question,” she said before he could answer. “Since your last name is Carter, it must be your mother.”
“No, actually, my father was Celeste Robichaux’s son. My mother’s name was Carter. She took it back and changed mine, too, after she divorced.”
“Oh.” Way to put your foot in your mouth, Loretta. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed-”
“Don’t worry about it. I didn’t know my father well growing up, and that’s probably a good thing. He was the proverbial black sheep of the family, although it took me a long time…”
“What?” She paused in slicing the cheddar cheese to look at him, wanting him to continue. She was surprised at how badly she wanted to know more about him.
He abruptly clammed up. “Sorry. You don’t want to hear all that old family history. People who drone on and on about their past are a dead bore. And if you’re going to all the trouble to fix me lunch, you don’t deserve to be bored.”
“I wasn’t bored,” she said pointedly, but she sensed that was all she was going to get right now, so she didn’t press.
She thought, not for the first time, that there was something very mysterious about Luc and the way he’d shown up in Indigo. Something painful had brought him here. Maybe it was a divorce, or a broken romance, or that mysterious long-distance girlfriend. Maybe he’d lost a job and hadn’t had any place to go, although Loretta doubted that. With his startling good looks, his charm, his intelligence and his experience, this man would have no trouble getting a job anywhere he pleased.
She was dying to know, but she sensed she wouldn’t get the answers she wanted from him, not till he was ready to reveal them.
CHAPTER SIX
LUC AND LORETTA talked of trivialities while they ate their lunch, and afterward she expected Luc to leave. So she was surprised when he asked if he could watch her make her artisanal bread.
“It’s not that interesting,” she said, though she was thrilled at the idea that he wanted to hang around some more.
“It is to me.” His voice was low, seductive. Or was that just her, misinterpreting everything? “Besides,” he added, “someday I might be stranded in the wilderness with only some flour and a couple of matches. I might need to know how to do this.”
She laughed at his justification. He wasn’t trying to seduce her. He was just Luc being Luc. And the attraction she felt toward him wasn’t simply because he was an exotic outsider. He was an interesting person. And, most flattering, she supposed, he found her interesting.
“Fine,” she said, “you can help me.”
Preparing the dough was a simple enough process. Loretta sifted equal amounts of white and whole wheat flour, then some sourdough starter and just enough water to form a thick dough. She floured her marble preparation surface and began to knead.
Luc leaned against the counter and watched intently. “Where did you get your starter?”
“Believe it or not, I inherited it. I come by my baking genes honestly-my Grandma O’Donnell baked all the time and I spent my formative years helping in her kitchen.”
“So you’re part Irish. I wondered where you and Zara got all that red hair.”
She didn’t confess that she hadn’t always been a redhead. Her natural color was a rather dull brown. Zara’s beautiful red hair had inspired Loretta to try to match it, and the short spiky cut meant she didn’t have to spend a lot of time caring for it.
Her red, spiky ’do also ensured she stood out in a town full of dark-headed Cajuns. There was something inside her that refused to be ordinary or commonplace. It was the very thing that had gotten her into loads of trouble as a child and had caused her to rebel and marry Jim against her parents’ wishes.
It was the thing that made her start this crazy baking business in a small town in the middle of nowhere, where conditions weren’t that favorable to a small retail business. She wanted to make a mark, be someone special.
And it was the thing that drew her to Luc. Because he was special, and the fact he was attracted to her made her special, too.
The logic was flawed, she was sure of it. She should be setting a good example for Zara by living a sane, ordered, responsible life. Lord knew Zara had much of her mother in her, which was both good and bad. Certainly Loretta would prefer her rebellious streak to Jim’s penchant for criminal behavior.
“You can help knead,” she said to Luc. She could use another pair of hands. She’d made a big batch of dough, which required kneading in two parcels, anyway.
They stood side by side at the counter working the dough. Loretta had always enjoyed kneading bread. It put her into a meditative state. She felt connected to the earth and all its bounty with the heady smell of flour and yeast all around her.
But now the experience contained a whole new level of sensuality. She found herself paying attention to Luc’s strong hands working the springy dough, squishing it between his fingers, then balling it up and pounding it with his fists. Her mouth went dry and other parts of her sprang to life as she imagined those hands on her, kneading, massaging…
She took in a sharp breath and forced her attention back to her own ball of dough. But she couldn’t block out his presence when he was standing inches from her and she could smell him and hear his breathing and the rustle of his clothes and see his sinewy forearms as his muscles stretched and bunched.
“How long do we do this?” he asked.
“Hands getting tired?”
“No. It feels good. I like the feel of the dough.”
Oh, Lord. Luc was a sensualist, like her.
“I guess that’s good enough. Now we let it rise.” She got out a couple of bowls and set the balls of dough inside, covering each with a clean towel. She set them near enough to the oven that they would receive some ambient warmth.
“How long do they have to rise?”
“An hour should do it.”
“So what do we do while we’re waiting?”
Did she only imagine the blatant invitation in his voice? What happened to their agreement to ignore their mutual attraction?
It wasn’t really an agreement, she realized. She’d been the one to declare she didn’t want or need a man in her life. Luc had never said he wouldn’t try to change her mind.
“I have a jillion things to do-like package up orders for the school bus.” She explained about how she marketed her products to the parents of the kids on Zara’s bus.
“Very clever,” he commented. “You get the kids hooked on free samples, then they beg their parents to buy sweets from you.”
“Mostly it’s the parents who get hooked. But, yeah, that’s exactly the idea. Free samples are the way to go.”
She was pleased she had turned the conversation to something as innocuous as marketing, skillfully ignoring the challenge in Luc’s eyes. Now, she should just thank Luc again for all he’d done and send him on his way. Didn’t he have a B and B to run?
But she couldn’t find the words to send him away. She simply liked having him around. It would be way too easy to get used to this.
She went to her bakery cases, where she’d stored the items she’d baked that morning in her conventional oven. Thank goodness they hadn’t still been on the cooling rack during the raccoon incident. They’d have gotten all tainted with smoke and she would have had to start over.