She blew out a small sigh. "Okay," she said again, giving a resolute nod as though to convince herself it was all going to work out in the end.
As she turned back to the sink to finish washing the dishes, Amelie piped up from her seat at the table. "Everything all right back up in Boston with my sister and her man?"
"Yes, ma'am," Hunter replied. "Savannah and Gideon are both well."
"That's good," she said. "Those two deserve their happiness more than most anyone I know. I suspect you and Corinne do too."
Mortified at the turn in the conversation, Corinne kept her head down, scrubbing at a stubborn bit of dried rice that clung to one of the plates. She tried to concentrate on the music playing quietly over the stereo - a tune she immediately recognized - casting about for anything to focus on but the gaping silence that seemed to emanate from Hunter's direction. She rinsed the suds off the plate and set it into the wire drainer on the counter, feeling her skin prickle with a current of awareness that rippled in the air behind her. It drew closer, and when she glanced to her right, she found Hunter standing beside her, a red-and-white checkered dish towel in his large hands.
Corinne couldn't take his silence, or the meaningful look he fixed on her as he stood there, letting Amelie's assumption hang between them like a question.
"It's not like that for us," she blurted. "Hunter and I, we're not ..."
Amelie's answering chuckle was as warm and rich as butter. "Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that, child. I wouldn't be so sure about that at all."
"We're not," Corinne said, infinitely quieter this time, surprised she was able to speak at all for the way Hunter watched her, standing so close she could feel the heat of his body reaching out to her as surely as she did his gaze. His golden eyes rooted on her, hot and unflinching, sweeping her back in an instant to the hours of passion they'd shared just down the hallway from this very spot.
"I know this music," he murmured, his head cocked toward the jazz song that floated in from the living room speakers but his gaze still holding her in its heated grasp.
"Ah, yes," Amelie interjected. "That's the one and only Bessie Smith."
Not that Hunter or Corinne needed the confirmation. It was the same song that had played in the jazz club that first night they'd arrived in New Orleans. Just looking at Hunter now made that moment come back to vivid life in Corinne's mind. She felt his hard body against hers as she'd danced with him, remembered so well the tender instant when he'd kissed her that first time.
"You like Bessie too?" Amelie asked, humming softly to the lyrics.
"She's my favorite," Hunter said, his voice low, mouth quirked into a sensual curve that made Corinne's pulse thump hard in her veins. He moved closer, coming around the front of her and caging her between his arms. He bent his head toward her ear and whispered for her alone,
"And this song has nothing to do with coffee grinders."
Corinne's face flamed, but it was a heat coiling lower on her anatomy that made her shudder against him as he let his mouth travel from beneath her earlobe to the sensitive hollow of her collarbone. She was vaguely aware of Amelie rising from her chair at the table. Hunter drew back only then, and Corinne took the chance to wrangle back her breath.
Chapter Twenty-seven
"Amelie, where are you going?"
"I'm old, child, and life here is simple. After dinner, I like to watch my game shows and take a nap." Her cloudy eyes wandered very close to where Corinne and Hunter stood. "Besides, you two don't need me hanging around eavesdropping when you'd rather be alone. I may be blind, but I ain't blind. "
Before Corinne could protest, Amelie gave them a little wave and shuffled out of the kitchen toward the hallway. "Don't pay me any mind at all," she called, her singsong voice full of amusement. "I'll be watching my programs with the volume up so loud, I wouldn't hear a hurricane."
Corinne's smile broke into a soft laugh. "Good night, Amelie."
From down the hall, the sound of a door closing echoed up into the kitchen. Hunter took Corinne's hands into his, drying one then the other with the dish towel. He set it down on the counter, then wrapped his fingers around hers and led her to the center of the little kitchen. While Bessie Smith crooned about bad love and good sex, they held each other close and swayed together slowly. The moment felt utterly pure, unrushed, and peaceful ... perfect. So much so, it put an ache in Corinne's heart.
And although neither of them had to say it, she saw her own thoughts reflected in Hunter's hooded, haunted golden eyes.
How long could a perfect moment - a happiness as innocent as this simple slice of time they'd found together, right here and now - truly be expected to last?
Hunter stood with his back to the wall of the bedroom he shared with Corinne in Amelie's house, watching the moonlight play over her naked body from the open window. The sounds of swamp animals echoed in the distance, deadly night predators like him, called by the darkness and primed to search out fresh prey. They would hunt, and, if successful, they would kill. Tomorrow evening, the cycle would begin again.>Amelie took off her gloves, humming to one of the soft jazz songs that played on the stereo in the adjacent living room. Rounded hips swaying in time with the music, she reached for a spatula in the squatty earthenware jug next to the stove.
"I hope you like catfish," she said, pivoting to place the filets onto the pair of plates that waited on the countertop at her right elbow. Still humming and swaying to the high-pitched male voice pleading for someone to tell it like it is, she found her marks on the plates with hardly a falter. "I'll let you serve up some of that dirty rice and steamed vegetables, if you like. You can put the hot corn bread in that basket right over there."
"Of course," Corinne replied. She put some of each onto their plates, then carried both plates and the corn bread to the table and took her seat across from Amelie.
"Did any of those clothes I set out work for your man?" she asked.
Corinne started to correct her about Hunter being her anything, but the words took too long arriving on her tongue. Besides, after everything that had happened between them under Amelie's roof in the past roughly twenty-four hours, it would feel even more awkward for her to attempt to deny that there was something between them. "Yes, they did," she said, simply answering the question. "Thank you for letting Hunter have them."
Amelie nodded as she cut into her fish. "My son's always leaving his things here in his old room when he visits. He's a big boy, rather like your man in there. I'm glad something fit him."