The light tangled in his five-o’clock shadow and tipped his eyelashes with the same silvery gloss as the hair on his arms. Mia had to lick her parched lips to get any words out. Breakfast seemed like a dream now. Watching his mouth move as he talked made every nerve ending in her body lean forward. She wanted to touch. Be touched. God. She hunched because she could feel her nipples hardening just from thinking about having him inside her again.
She cleared her throat. “Everyone knows everyone else’s business, and a new, single woman in town is cause for gossip.” She’d decided that the less interaction she had with the town’s people, the better. The last thing she wanted was for anyone to recognize her from the news media.
“Let’s see how fast they learn I’m parked outside your house.”
His eyes weren’t dark brown, they were a rich deep amber. The color of her father’s best double-malt scotch, just much, much darker. “Parking isn’t a crime,” she pointed out. “Not even here. I don’t think—”
“So,” the owner of the restaurant addressed Cruz, having pushed aside the only waitress to get to their table, and effectively cutting Mia off midsentence. “You checked out of Gracie’s to go stay at the old Broussard place, huh?” She held a notepad under a beefy arm and the coffeepot in one fist, her small inquisitive eyes darting between Mia and Cruz as she waited for the salacious details. “Pretty isolated out there for a single gal alone.”
The insinuation floated over Mia’s head. Sandy could use both Blush’s Fountain of Youth intense hydrating gel and the Forever Young eye cream. And apparently she’d had her hair butchered by the same walk-in salon Mia had gone to, because her bleached hair looked as though a rat had gnawed at it. Lacquered and gelled, bleached and spiked, she thought she was something else.
“He’s not staying in my house. He’s staying at my house,” Mia clarified, her tone cool, feeling bitchy and not giving a shit. The woman should take some etiquette lessons. “I’ve hired Cruz to do some repairs.” She never explained herself. To anyone. But she didn’t want to arouse suspicion in town while she lived here. She didn’t give a damn what they said about her after she left.
“Are you going to bring us cups so we can have some of that coffee?” she asked, much more polite than she felt. “And menus and silverware, too, while you’re at it?”
Without looking behind her, Sandy snapped her fingers at the hovering, painfully thin waitress, who, with the cook, watched them from kitchen doorway. “You hired my brother, then let this man fire him for no God-given reason. Just so you could have a good-looking man around the place? Marcel’s a hard worker. You shouldn’t have done that.”
Mia gave Cruz a puzzled glance and raised a brow.
“Latour,” he told her. “He was drunk at eight a.m.”
“He’s a good man.” Sandy took a step closer so they got a good whiff of her eau de cigarette. “He’s got his troubles, but he’s a good man. Got a wife and kid to feed. He wasn’t yours to fire.”
“Then he can come by tomorrow when he’s sober,” Mia asserted. When had Marcel come— Ah. The Jehovah’s Witness.
Sandy cocked an ample hip, gaze fixed on Cruz as she said pointedly and completely out of left field, “That camper ain’t got no faculties.”
Faculties? Between the accent and the word, Mia was puzzled for a second. Facilities.
“And you would know this how?” Cruz asked.
“I just happened to be over at Te Jean’s mechanic shop to pay for the outboard he fixed for my ol’ skiff. He asked me to take a look in your camper, see if I could find gros chat, his big, mean, ugly cat who’s always going missing. Sure hated to have it get stuck in your camper and die from the heat. That wouldn’t be good, no. That would be a mess, yeah.”
“You know what curiosity did to that cat, right?” Cruz said mildly, with a thin smile that should’ve warned the woman to shut up and do her job. It was a smile Mia recognized. She’d caught it in her own mirror a few times.
“Mais, it’s why I was in the camper. Weren’t you listening, man? You may be pretty, but you must have bad hearing.”
“Cups, coffee, menus,” Cruz said, maintaining his polite expression. “We can always take our appetites into Houma.”
“Here’s Daisy with your settings. I’ll tell Marcel Miss Mia wants him to come by tomorrow.” She shot Mia a pointed look.
“Only if he’s sober,” Cruz added, as Sandy stomped off.