For some reason, from her, that meant a lot. This woman didn’t impress easily. “Thanks. I often felt a little like an afterthought in my family.” He frowned. Why had he just said that?
“Really? How so?” She didn’t look like she was teasing him. Or like she was really sympathizing exactly. She just looked interested.
Bailey Wilcox was very easy to talk to.
“I was a lot younger than my brothers so I didn’t have much to do with them. When it came to me and my sister, she needed a lot of extra attention and time. My mother insists I wasn’t an accident, but I have my suspicions.”
Bailey smiled. “Accidents can turn out way better than the things we intend sometimes.”
That was for sure.
“Well, then I kind of struggled to figure out where to fit as I got older. I didn’t want to go into business with my dad and brothers. I went into medicine with my mom and sister’s blessings and my dad’s general acceptance. But I wondered if that was where I should be or if it was something I chose because I didn’t have a better idea, or just because I was interested because of Juliet, and if it was just a way to rebel against my dad.”
“Do you still feel that way now that you’re there?”
He shook his head. That was a great question and one he was very happy to have an answer to. “No. I think I’m finally in the right place.”
She just looked at him for several heartbeats. “I’m glad.” It seemed that she wanted to say more. But in the end she just looked down at the wreath. “This stuff is pretty great.”
“I’m guessing there are stories that go with all this stuff.”
She nodded. “Why did they send it all out here? They don’t use it at home?”
Chase shrugged. “I stopped in at Ellie’s bar the other night and it was decorated. I’m sure their houses are, too.” He pulled a Santa statue out of the box. Except this Santa was sitting in a wooden boat that looked like a long canoe that was being pulled by eight alligators. “Maybe they have two of everything?”
“They probably have more than two of those,” she said with a grin. “That’s Papa Noel.”
“Papa Noel?”
“Well, kind of the French version of Santa Claus,” she said. “Though lots of cultures have some form of Santa Claus or Saint Nicholas. But in the Cajun culture here in Louisiana, he comes in a pirogue—that type of boat, which came from the French who settled here—that’s pulled by alligators.”
He looked at the statue. “You know a lot about the Cajun culture?”
“I’ve been down here for two years,” she said. “It’s hard to not pick up. I love it. And I looked up some stuff about Christmas since I was hoping…” She trailed off.
Chase lifted a brow. “You were hoping what?”
“Nothing.” She was now studying the ornament she held. An alligator dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and holding a candy cane.
“Bailey,” he said, low and firm. “What were you hoping?”
“To see you and have hot sex under the Christmas tree.”
He’d love to believe that. His body definitely liked the idea. A shaft a heat went through him. But it was bullshit. She still wasn’t looking at him.
“Bailey.”
She blew out a breath and looked up.
“What were you hoping?”
“To maybe get a Christmas dinner invite from the Landrys,” she confessed. “I know that’s a little pathetic.”
He sat up straighter. “Oh. That’s not pathetic at all.” That would be so easy to get. “I have no idea what Cajuns eat for Christmas, but I can tell you that if Ellie Landry and Cora Allain are making it, then it’s gonna be some of the best stuff you ever tasted and if you didn’t want a chance at it, you’d be crazy.” The Landrys loved only one thing more than food. Feeding people. Lots of people. Any people. But he narrowed his eyes. “Are you using my attraction to you to get Christmas dinner?” he teased.
“I didn’t know you were attracted to me.”
“Bullshit,” he chided.
Finally, she gave him a half-smile. “Okay, maybe I thought you were a little. But I think I thought that I was just the first girl who hadn’t fallen at your feet and you were determined to figure out what that was about.”
He nodded slowly. Interesting that she’d realized that about him. “That was part of it. At first.”
“I knew it.”
“But just at first,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about you for six months.” He thought about his next words and decided that this confession was important. “I haven’t been with anyone since that crazy night when I made a total ass of myself with you and we had the most awkward non-kiss ever.”
She blushed, but still looked intrigued. “You haven’t?” she asked softly. “Really?”
“Really. And, trust me, that’s unusual.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Oh, I trust you on that.”
He chuckled. “You’re not my type. I didn’t even kiss you. But I can’t stop thinking about you. So I’m pretty glad you’re here and pretty glad you were hoping to see me. Even if Christmas dinner was part of that.”
“You’re not my type either,” she said. But she sounded just puzzled by that. “But maybe that’s why I wanted to come and see if that feeling was still here.”
“What feeling?” His voice was a little gruff without him even trying.
“The feeling of I-want-more-of-that in spite of knowing that didn’t make any sense,” she said. “I’m a scientist. I like things to make sense. But I also like studying anomalies.”
Hell, he was a scientist too. He just studied humans instead of swamp creatures. “Sometimes anomalies are what make things survive, what helps them evolve from what was there before.”
She just blew out a little breath at that.
Yeah, maybe she was the anomaly that was going to make his love life evolve. That thought wasn’t as strange or disturbing as he would have expected.
“So, what kind of food is there at Cajun Christmas?” he asked, to lighten the suddenly serious, let’s-just-get-married tone.
“Um… well, tons of seafood, of course,” she said. “And lots of desserts. And lots of drinking. I’m not sure about families on the bayou. I know in New Orleans they do Reveillon dinners.”
He wanted to take her to a Reveillon dinner. He didn’t even know what that was. But she looked so excited about it. “Tell me about the Revillon dinners.”
“Oh, it’s an old tradition. Because New Orleans was originally almost entirely Catholic, everyone would go to midnight mass on Christmas Eve and then go home and have these huge feasts that lasted until dawn. They were kind of like breakfast with pastries and egg dishes, but there were also meats, and seafood, and wine. Slowly, the tradition went out of style, but then in the nineties the city brought it back, serving the dinners in some of the restaurants in the French Quarter.”
“Have you been?”
Bailey shook her head. “I wasn’t here last year, remember?”
“We’ll go next year.”