“What do you drink?”
“Water’s fine.”
“I’ll take Jane’s beer,” Marie volunteered, bless her heart.
“As soon as you are twenty-one,” he said as he pulled a bottle of water out of a stainless steel refrigerator.
“I bet you drank before you turned twenty-one.”
“Yeah, and look how I turned out.” He shut the door with his foot and pointed the bottle at Jane. “Don’t say it.”
“I wasn’t going to say a thing.” She moved across the room and stepped between two chrome and gray leather barstools.
“Better not.” He tossed a few ice cubes in a glass and twisted the top off the bottle. He’d pushed up the sleeves of a plaster-colored ribbed sweater, and the edge of a white T-shirt showed beneath the crew neck. He wore his gold Rolex and a pair of olive cargo pants. “ ‘Cause I know stuff to blackmail you.”
He knew she melted when he kissed her and that she didn’t like to wear a bra. “You don’t know any of the really good stuff.”
A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “How good?”
Stuff that would blow his mind, and she just thanked God he would never figure it out. He would never know that she was Honey Pie.
“What stuff?” Marie wanted to know as she took a seat beside Jane.
“That I’m a Girl Scout,” Jane answered.
Luc lifted one dubious brow and set the glass on the bar.
“Well, I was,” she assured him.
“Me too,” Marie added. “I still have all my patches.”
“I was never a Boy Scout.”
Marie rolled her eyes. “Well, duh.”
Luc looked at his sister as if he meant to comment, but at the last second decided against it. Instead, he returned the water to the refrigerator and set a bowl of marinated chicken breasts on the counter.
“What can I do to help?” Jane asked.
Opening a drawer, he took out a fork and turned the chicken. “Just sit tight and relax.”
“I’ll help you,” his sister volunteered and slid off the barstool.
Luc glanced up and smiled, his blue eyes warm as he looked at Marie, and Jane’s heart squeezed in a way that had nothing to do with her lust for him. Nothing to do with infatuation, and everything to do with seeing the kinder, gentler side of Luc Martineau. “That’d be great. Thanks. Grab the pasta and get it boiling.”
Marie walked around the bar and joined Luc in the kitchen. She pulled down a red box from one glass-faced cabinet, then reached for a measuring cup. “Two cups of water,” she read out loud. “And a tablespoon of butter.”
“When Marie was little,” Luc said as she turned on the faucet, “she said ‘gotter’ instead of water.”
“How do you know?” Marie asked as she measured water into a cup.
“I heard you when I came to visit when Dad was still alive. You were probably two.”
“I was cute when I was a baby.”
“You were bald.”
She turned off the water and poured it into a pan. “So?”