But first she would tell him what she really thought. “You were amazing. I think my family is kind of in love with you. Please tell me my mother didn’t hit on you more when I wasn’t looking. She doesn’t actually mean it. She likes to flirt. I think it makes her feel young.”
“Your mother was fine.” He moved up to the couch and sat back. “She talks real fast, though. I had to pay attention to keep up. Your brother and father seem nice. I couldn’t tell much about the fiancée. She just seemed scared of alligators. And pretty much everything else. She didn’t eat much.”
“Shawna doesn’t eat at all.” Her brother and Shawna had been dating off and on for five years and not once had she seen that woman eat a full meal. She knew there were women out there who were naturally on the slender side, but Shawna worked hard to keep skinny. It looked good on her and she seemed perfectly content to push her food around. It would likely save her brother a ton of money, and he was always concerned with that. Roxie sank down on the couch with him. “She missed out. The étouffée was delicious tonight. I’m sorry my parents were fussy about the food.”
They’d looked over the menu and found something wrong with every single thing, from the fact that the chicken was fried to not understanding what a grit was and what it had to do with shrimp. Remy had offered to grill some chicken and shrimp for them. He’d made some baked potatoes and rice that wasn’t dirty since her mother couldn’t handle that.
Zep’s brows rose. “Oh, I seem to remember a newcomer from the city a while back who didn’t know what jambalaya was.”
She hadn’t been as bad as her mom, but in the beginning she hadn’t been familiar with most of the dishes here. “I grew up mostly eating white food. Like literally white food, and really bland, too. My mom was good with chicken breasts and white rice and mashed potatoes. Canned green beans. She wasn’t the most imaginative cook.”
“Sometimes you have to be open to new experiences.” There it was again, that deep tone that made her breath catch because he wasn’t merely talking about rice and beans or a muffuletta. “You love jambalaya now.”
She loved a lot of things about Papillon now. She shook off that word because she wasn’t going to even come close to associating it with Zep Guidry. It would be dangerous to love someone like him, and she didn’t do that kind of danger anymore. “It’s good. I like it a lot. I like it at Guidry’s.”
She could like him, too. But only for a little while.
“I know,” he replied with a slow, sexy smile. “You like it so much, I even started giving you the local heat.”
She gasped because she hadn’t changed the way she ordered. She hadn’t known there was more than one. “There’s only one on the menu. I thought I was already on the local heat. Is that why I had the blandest bowl last Tuesday?”
“I wasn’t in that day. I left a note, but if your server wasn’t Lisa, then they probably ignored it,” he explained, his hand stroking down Daisy’s body. The puppy looked perfectly content to be sitting between the two of them. “And I would like to point out that bowl you had on Tuesday was the same recipe you started out on.”
She shook her head. “No. It was so bland. Have you been sneaking cayenne pepper in?”
“No. I would go into the kitchen and mix the tourist jambalaya with the one Remy makes for locals. It wasn’t much at first. Just half a scoop. You seemed to like it. You’re now eating the local stuff exclusively.”
It was weird but she was kind of proud of that since she’d always been told she wouldn’t like spicy food. Her father talked about how it gave him heartburn and her mother wouldn’t touch it. “Why would you do that? Were you trying to see if you could get me to lose my cool?”
He frowned as though the idea had never occurred to him. “No. I thought you would like it, but I would never give the local stuff to an out-of-towner unless I knew for a fact they could handle it. Remy believes firmly in an amount of cayenne it takes a while to build up to. I got the idea because when Lila first came to town, Lisa started cutting her normal coffee with chicory, and Lila eventually came to love it. Sometimes it’s all that’s available in some homes. I know it seems sneaky, and if you hadn’t liked it the first time, I would have told you what I did and had you try it without any pepper.”