Page 8 of Crazy Rich Cajuns

Andthatwas why she’d been resisting him.She didn’t need her family giving her any shit about how she lost her train of thought when Bennett was around and how he was the only guy who’d ever struck her speechless or made her blush.

Blushfor fuck’s sake.A girl who grew up around fishermen and roughnecks, with all male siblings and cousins, in a family that didn’t believe in filters of any kind, didn’t blush.

Worse, if she dated a rich guy like Bennett, she’d have to listen to her family tease her about trading airboats for yachts and asking if she thought she could get through an entire conversation without using the word fuck.

She didn’t need the teasing.And she wasn’t, actually, entirely certain she could make it through a conversation without saying fuck.So there was that reason to maybe not date Bennett, too.

Oh, and he was kind of her boss.

Well, he was actually very much her boss.One of them.She had five.Which was four too many.Or maybe five too many, honestly.But he was definitely one of them.

Still, she was beginning to care less and less about all of that.She could take her family’s teasing.If it wasn’t about Bennett, it would be about something else anyway.And Bennett was fun to flirt with.He had a great sense of humor.He was very smart, quick on his feet, and had fallen easily under the spell of her family.A lot of people did.

The Landrys were fun and over-the-top and made everyone feel like long-lost friends when they walked into the family bar or onto the Boys of the Bayou dock.But Bennett had gotten to know them beyond what most of the tourists did, and he understood them.He regarded them with the mix of exasperation and affection that was required.He seemed to know when to take them seriously and when to absolutelynot, and that was a skill that took many people years to hone.

Bennett had caught on quickly and Kennedy gave him points for that.

She also loved—no,appreciated(that was a much safer word) —that he had their backs.Like today.Sheappreciatedknowing that she could call him and he would jump in to help even without knowing the entire story.He’d take their side and then figure it all out later.

He was sharp.She liked that about him.

And she liked the way he made her feel like he’d had some very dirty thoughts about her.The way he looked at her and talked to her often sent sizzles of heat buzzing through her bloodstream and she loved that feeling.

Sure, she knew that a lot of his attraction to her was that she was a part of this completely-different-from-his-usual-life bayou package that he was so enamored with.She had jet-black hair with dark red tips, multiple piercings, and tattoos, and she dressed in black ninety-nine percent of the time.She wore shorts and skirts and tank tops—it was Louisiana, for fuck’s sake—but she paired them with her black combat boots or her black Converse.She also loved her goth makeup.Oh, and she could deal with her own wasps and be her own handyman.She wasn’t great with engines, but she could do other airboat repairs, if needed, and she knew everything about their computer system.

She had to be as different from the women that Bennett usually dated as he could get, and she realized that was a lot of her appeal to the guy.

Didn’t matter.She still liked flirting with him and she wanted to sleep with him.Definitely.

It wasn’t like they were ever going to actuallydateor anything.

“I want you to go to Savannah with me this weekend.”

Kennedy whirled around on her stool so fast she had to grab the counter to keep from ending up on her ass beside it.

“Holy shit, Baxter!”she bitched when she saw him standing on the other side of the counter.“What the hell?”

He gave her a grin.“What?I told you I was coming today.”

“That wasn’t even an hour ago!”Kennedy glanced at the clock.

“I was in New Orleans.”

She frowned.He’d been that close?What had he been doing?Why did it bug her a little that she hadn’t known where he was and what he’d been doing?“You didn’t tell me that.”

“Do I need to tell you where I’m at?”He looked amused.

He also looked hot.Not sweaty-working-outside hot like the other guys she’d seen in and out of the office today, but brainy-in-charge hot.He was wearing a button-down dress shirt, open at the collar with his tie still on and tied, but loose, and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows.He was in dress slacks with a leather belt and scuff-less leather shoes.And glasses.Damn.Those always got to her.It was this whole picture of a guy who was totally opposite of what she was used to but still made her stomach flip that completely threw her off.Because he looked like a nerd.The kid who studied on Saturday night.The guy who sat in the front row and asked questions of the professor.The guy….No.Fuck.He looked like hewasthe professor.And like he had some creative ideas about his extra credit opportunities for her.

That was what it was.It wasn’t how helooked.It was how he lookedat her.He was confident, clearly perfectly comfortable being the smartest guy in the room, and completely at ease with who he was, knowing that he could give her exactly what she needed and wanted.Even while wearing glasses.

Those damned things should not be hot.

“If it means that you’re going to be sneaking up on me, yes, you need to tell me where you’re at,” she said, trying to sound huffy.

“You needed time to get ready for me, Kennedy?”

His voice got that deeper rumble in it and she worked on not reacting.He had this way of talking to her sometimes that made her react as if he’d stroked his finger up and down her spine—setting off goose bumps and tingles.

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