She wasn't ready to help him brainstorm solutions to their dilemma. And right now she wanted a happy memory to remind her why she put up with him and all that driven, relentless ambition, which kept him from getting too close to anyone. She blamed that and his need to prove himself to his family for his unwillingness to take a risk with the relationship.
Although maybe she just needed to tell herself that to protect her heart from the more obvious explanation-that he saw any attraction as a fleeting response doomed not to last.
"I didn't steal it." He sounded as incensed about it now as he'd been when he was twelve years old. "If a crawfish happened to walk over to me, it was exercising its free will."
Laughing, she set aside the jambalaya that had made her think of that day. They'd walked to a nearby crawfish festival. When one of the restaurants selling food at the event refilled its tank of crawfish, a few escapees had headed toward Dempsey and Adelaide, who'd been drooling over the food from a spot on the pavement nearby.
"I don't know what made you think I would eat a raw mudbug." She shivered. "Sometimes I still can't believe I eat them when they're cooked."
"A hungry kid doesn't turn his nose up at much," he observed. "And I figured it was only polite to offer them to you before I helped myself."
Adelaide had never gone hungry the way Dempsey sometimes had. His mother could be kind when she was drug-free, but even then the woman had never had any extra money thanks to her habit. When she'd been using more, she'd even forgotten about Dempsey for days on end.
"You were very good to me." When Adelaide looked back on those days, she could almost forget about how much he'd shut her out of his personal life since then.
He stared into the flames dancing in the fire pit.
"I still try to be good to you, Addy."
She bit back the sharp retort that came to mind, purposely focusing on the friendship they used to have so as not to bad-mouth the turn things had taken over the past five years.
"I take it you don't agree?" he asked.
"We've had a strict work-only relationship for years." She traced patterns in the condensation on her iced tea glass. "You convinced me to take this job that furthered your career while delaying mine. You've ignored our friendship for years at a time, going so far as referring to me as a ‘tool for greater productivity.'" She wanted to stop there. But now that the brakes were off, she found it difficult to put them back on. "Or maybe you think it's kind of you to toy with the chemistry between us, pretending to feel the same heat that I do and using it to your own ends to convince me to stay?"
She knew she'd admitted too much, but sitting in the dark under the bayou stars seemed to coax the truth from her. Besides, if she didn't put herself on the line with him now when he'd admitted to being "distracted" by her, she might never have another chance to find out where all that simmering attraction could lead.
"Damn, Addy." He whistled low and sat up straighter in his chair, his elbows on his knees. Firelight cast stark shadows on his face. "You must think I'm some kind of arrogant, selfish ass. Do you really think that's how I perceive things? That I created a position for you just to benefit me?"
"You're putting words in my mouth."
"Nothing you didn't imply." He rose to his feet, his agitation apparent as he paced a circle around his vacated chair. "And I can assure you that you were not the most obvious choice to work with me in this capacity. There aren't many assistant coaches who bring an administrative aide with them when they take a new job, but I did it just the same because you needed a job at the time. And I'm the only coach in the league with a female personal assistant, so I'm breaking all kinds of ground there."
"You can't honestly suggest that you created the job for me to further my career. I wanted to be an artist."
"Yes. An artist. And your work led you to a studio in an even worse part of town than where we grew up. A place I warned you not to take. I offered to rent another space for you. But then-"
"The break-in." She didn't want to think about that night when gang members, high on heaven knew what, had broken into the studio and threatened her.
They'd destroyed her paintings when they'd realized there was nothing of value in the place to steal. Then they'd casually discussed the merits of physically assaulting her before one of them got a text that they needed to be elsewhere. The three of them had disappeared into the night while she'd remained paralyzed with fear long afterward.
"Those bastards threatened you. And I suggested every plan under the sun to help you, Addy, but you were too stubborn and proud to let me do anything."
Crickets chirped in the silence that followed. A log shifted in the fire pit, sending sparks flying.
"You wanted to build me a studio in the country." She recalled a fax from an architect with the plans for such a building, including a state-of-the-art security system. "How on earth could I have ever repaid you for such a thing? I was barely out of college."
"Like I said. Too stubborn." He spread his hands wide. "I was just a few years out of college myself and I was dealing with a lot of family expectations. The studio would have been easy for me to give you and I was happy to do it, but you wouldn't hear of it."
"I'd never take something for nothing. And don't you blame me for that, because you wouldn't either if our positions were reversed." Maybe she hadn't let herself remember that time in detail because it had taken a long time to recover from the emotional trauma of that night.
Seeing her canvases hacked to bits had been different than having her computer stolen or her phone smashed. Her art was an extension of her, a place where she poured her heart.
"So I gave you a job. That, you would accept."
"And now, years after the fact, I'm still supposed to kiss your feet for the opportunity?" She shot out of her chair, a restless energy taking hold as she closed the distance between them.
"Absolutely not."
His quick agreement didn't come close to satisfying her.
"I worked hard in an industry I knew nothing about," she pressed. "I left my home and everything I knew to go to Atlanta with you." Her first task had been finding housing for them.
Relocating to a new city had been so simple with Dempsey's seemingly limitless resources and connections.
Unlike starting over in New Orleans, which had seemed impossible after her sense of safety had been shredded and her body of work reduced to scraps.
"Yes. And you proved yourself invaluable almost right away. My work was easier with your help. You never needed direction and understood me even on days I was so terse and exhausted I could only snap out a few words of instructions for you."
"I had a long history of interpreting you." A wry grin tugged at her lips, but she wasn't going to let nostalgia cloud her vision of him. Of them.
"But we'd scarcely seen each other for a decade." He reached toward her, as if to stroke her cheek, but he must have thought better of it when his hand fell to his side. "I was surprised how well we got back into sync."
"You might be more surprised to know how much more in sync we could be." The words leaped from her mouth.
One moment they were in her head. The next they were in the air, with no way to recapture them.
She saw the instant that full understanding hit him. The instant he heard the proposition underlying those words. His gaze shifted to her mouth, the heat in his eyes like a laser in its intensity.
"Of course it would not surprise me. That's exactly what I've been trying to tell you." He focused all his attention on her. "You've occupied every second of my thoughts today. You've got me so damn distracted, I can hardly think about football."
Still he didn't move toward her. Didn't give in to the current that leaped back and forth between them. Her cells practically strained toward the sound of his voice.
"Then, maybe you ought to call off this engagement charade before you tank a season that means everything to you." She wouldn't make the first move again. Being impulsive with him the night before had only complicated things between them.
"I don't think so." He reached behind her and tugged a pin from the knot at the back of her head. Then, sifting through the half-fallen mass, he found two more and pulled them free.
Her hair tumbled to her bare shoulders and covered her arms. She shivered despite the warmth of the night, awareness flooding through her like high tide.