“All those years ago, when ya asked for Justin’s whereabouts… when ya wanted his address or phone number, I kept tellin’ ya that we was ordered not to give them to ya.”
“Oh, Miss MaeMae! There’s no need to rehash all that now. It’s long forgotten. I was a foolish girl harassing you folks so. Forgive me for being such a pest.”
Miss MaeMae shook her head sadly. “There is every reason, child, and I’m the one needin’ forgivin’… for lettin’ ya think Justin did the orderin’. I know I dint say that precisely, but I knew what ya were thinkin’ and I let ya.”
Emelie flinched. Of course Justin had done the ordering. He was the one who’d wanted to cut off ties with her. Yes, her father had pushed him to enlist in the Navy, but it was Justin who’d used that as an excuse to break up with her.
Wasn’t it?
“All these years, it’s been eatin’ away at me, knowin’ I cain’t go to my Maker with that on my conscience. Then, when Justin mentioned the other day that he’d been talkin’ to ya, well, I knew the time was now.”
“If Justin didn’t order…” Understanding began to seep into Emelie’s brain, along with a pain that was almost unbearable. “What did my father do?”
“The details doan matter. Jist know it weren’t Justin.”
“I need to know. What did my father do?”
Miss MaeMae inhaled sharply, then exhaled on a sigh of resignation. “Yer father came here with Mr. Thompson from the bank. The loan was overdue on my husband Rufus’s shrimp boat, and without the boat, we had no money comin’ in. ’Til the day he died, Rufus felt shamed that he’d chosen money over honesty.” Miss MaeMae raised her hands helplessly.
Again! Another of my father’s betrayals! How many more are there that I don’t know about? I forgave him for threatening Justin with statutory rape, but this… to do that to innocent folks?
Miss MaeMae reached across the table and took one of Emelie’s cold hands in hers. “Can ya forgive me?”
“Of course,” Emelie said without hesitation. “You did what anyone would. You were given no choice.”
“We had a choice,” Miss MaeMae insisted.
“A Solomon’s choice,” Emelie insisted.
“Do you still love my grandson?” Miss MaeMae asked of a sudden.
“What? Of course not. But that’s beside the point.”
“Ya gotta forgive yer father then.”
What her not loving Justin and forgiving her father had to do with each other was beyond Emelie’s understanding. “I don’t think I can.” Something occurred to her then. “Does Justin know about this?”
Miss MaeMae shook her head. “Not yet.”
“No, no! You can’t tell him. Justin doesn’t care about me after all this time,” if he ever did, “but it would crush him to find out how you’d been threatened. He’s under a lot of stress right now. Please don’t add to it to ease your conscience.” She took Miss MaeMae’s thin hands into hers. “Most important, don’t think for one minute that Justin won’t go after my father with fists or a gun. You don’t need to have Justin arrested at this stage.”
“Oh, dear one, how can I not tell him?”
“For him. You have to spare him.”
“You’re right. I’m being selfish, placing the burden of this secret on you, and him, to ease my conscience.”
Emelie squeezed the old lady’s bony hands gently. “No. You did the right thing in telling me. But not Justin.”
“Ya do care fer him,” Miss MaeMae concluded, not with happiness, but sadness, because she had to know as well as Emelie that things were even more hopeless than before.
Emelie stood suddenly and started for the door. “I’m sorry but I can’t stay. I’ll come back another day.”
“But ya haven’t finished yer coffee. Besides, there’s somethin’ else.”
Oh, God! How much more can I take? Emelie turned and saw the old lady walking slowly toward one of the bedrooms. “I’ll be right back.” When she returned, she handed Emelie a pile of letters tied together with butcher’s string. Emelie knew before she studied them what they were. All the letters she’d written to Justin during those first months after he’d left, letters she’d given to his grandparents, begging them to forward them to Justin. And she’d assumed he’d chosen not to respond.
“Now do ya see why I feel so bad? I doan wanna go to my Maker with my only grandson hatin’ me.” Tears filled Miss MaeMae’s rheumy eyes.
“Oh, sweetie, Justin could never hate you. Never! But you are not to worry. I’ll burn these when I get home. He’ll never know.”
She and Miss MaeMae exchanged sad looks. There was nothing more to be said.
Emelie staggered outside and down the steps. When she got to the driveway, she leaned against her van and bawled.
So many lies. So many misunderstandings. Choices made and paths taken that could never be reversed.
It took me years to recover from the pain seventeen years ago. How will I ever survive now?
One thing was for sure. She was not going to be singing “Happy Birthday” to her father today.
The best-laid plans of mice and tempting women…
Cage arrived back to the cottage earlier than expected, having avoided a trip to the hardware store, for the time being anyway.
When he’d gotten to Remy LeDeux’s house to borrow his pickup truck, Remy had also lent him a wheelbarrow, rakes, shovels, a lawn mower, a weed whacker, and a leaf blower. He’d even given him some heavy-duty landscaping bags he’d bought at a surplus store and never used.
Cage was surprised to see a van parked in the driveway. A van with the E & B Designs logo on it. Belle and her sons must have come earlier than they’d planned.
But then he saw a woman leaning against the van on the other side. A woman who was crying as if her heart were breaking. Emelie? What was she doing here? And why so upset?
His adrenaline kicked in. There could be only one reason why Em would be outside his grandmother’s house, crying hysterically. Something must have happened to MawMaw. Oh, God, please don’t let her be dead.
“Em? What’s wrong? Is it MawMaw?”
She shook her head, staring up at him with wet, leaking eyes; a red, dripping nose; and parted lips. Clutched to her chest was a packet of letters.
But he couldn’t question her about the letters… yet. She was in too fragile a state, sobbing once again, guttural words that made no sense between moans of dismay. “Again. He did it again. I didn’t know. Oh, God, I didn’t know! But I should have known.”
“Who? Who did it?” Not that he knew what “it” was, but if it made Em cry, he was going to knock out his lights.
“Nobody,” she cried.
Yeah, right. Nobody made her leak like a sieve. He acted instinctively and yanked her into his arms. At first she resisted, but then she spooned into his body and buried her face in his neck. For a moment, he felt light-headed with the pure joy of holding Em again. Didn’t matter if she came into his arms for comfort, or something else. It felt so damn good.
He rubbed his hands over her shoulders and back, relearning her shape, crooning soft words to her. “Shh. It’s okay. Just let it out, and then we’ll talk about it later. Okay, darlin’?”
She nodded into his neck and soon her sobs turned into whimpers.
Leaning back against the van and spreading his legs so she could fit into the cradle of his hips, Cage realized something in that moment. He had never stopped loving Emelie. He kissed the top of her head… she still used that lemon-scented shampoo… then he kissed her chin and the knuckles that continued to hold the packet of letters in a death grip. Pulling a handkerchief out of his back pocket, he used it to wipe the tears off her face and made her blow her nose hard.
Then he framed her head with trembling fingers that combed into both sides of her hair, and he really kissed her. With all the love and yearning he’d built up over the years. Suppressed emotions exploded in him, emotions he hadn’t even known he’d been suppre
ssing, not this late in the game anyhow. He was out of control.
Then, Thank you God, she was out of control, too. Somewhere along the way she’d dropped the letters to the ground and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him back with equal fervor.
There was a roaring in his ears, and his mind went blank. His body zapped into sensory overload with each of her soft caresses to his neck and shoulders, with the arching of her body against his, with the opening of her mouth to his deep kisses.
At one point his palms had landed on her butt and he raised her against his erection. Sweet! Sweet agony!
Women had two surefire weapons when it came to men. Sex and tears. Cage was being assaulted by both of them, and he welcomed the attack, even if he would be bullet-ridden in the end.
At this moment, as he feasted on the woman in his arms, there were no jagged splinters of past betrayals, no dark shadows of regret, no questions of what might have been, or could be. No anger. Not even a Toby Keith cynical message of “How Do You Like Me Now?” which he had to admit he’d harbored on occasion in the past. Just the now. And now was glorious.
MawMaw was probably watching them through the kitchen window, but he didn’t care. This was the girl he loved and she was back in his arms. Nothing was going to stop him now.
Except something did.
The slamming of car doors.
“Yoo-hoo!” someone yelled, and it wasn’t Belle and her boys. It was that Cajun wackjob Tante Lulu, with pink hair that matched a pink T-shirt proclaiming I MAY BE OLD, BUT THERE ARE PARTS OF ME THAT STILL ZING. With her grinning niece Charmaine in a hoochie-mama, leopard print catsuit. Noticing the direction of his stare, Tante Lulu remarked, “I know. I tol’ her ta be careful. That getup’s so tight, folks will see the dimples in her butt.”
“I do not have dimples in my butt,” Charmaine insisted with a laugh.
Cage pressed his forehead against Em’s, praying that his hard-on wouldn’t be evident. Em moaned; she had a few things to hide, too, like her nipples under the thin silk shirt she wore, tucked into a pair of denims.
“We came to help,” Charmaine said, smacking him on the butt as she passed by, carrying a box overflowing with plastic containers of food.
“Jist in time, by the looks of things,” Tante Lulu remarked. She was also carrying food. Looked like one of those lidded cake carriers. “Best I hurry up with your hope chest, boy. Guar-an-teed!”
Tante Lulu had mentioned a hope chest to him back in Coronado. He hadn’t understood then any more than he did now, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
Charmaine’s husband, Rusty, pulled up then with a small horse trailer. Apparently, he was going to take the midget horse off their hands.
“Are you sure you can’t use a pig, a sheep, and a few chickens?” Cage asked him.
“Don’t push your luck, boy,” Rusty replied, a scowl on his face.
Apparently, a midget horse for the ranch hadn’t been his idea.
Two of Remy’s teenagers, a boy and a girl, were carrying a long folding table, along with a CD player.
With perfect timing, Belle and her boys arrived. The boys were carrying a huge cooler between them. For drinks? He hoped there was beer. Or whiskey. Belle grinned knowingly at them and said, “I thought you were going to Francine’s for your father’s birthday.”
“I changed my mind,” Em answered with more vehemence than the question warranted.
Belle just arched her brows. “Maybe you can make some sweet tea then. Yours is so much better than mine.” With those words, Belle was gone, and they were alone again.
Tante Lulu ambled by again, giving him a wink, and came back with another armload of food. This time a basket of breads and rolls. “We’s gonna have us a fais do do.”
“A party? A party down the bayou?” he translated incredulously.
“I thought Belle and the boys were going to help Justin clean the yard today,” Emelie remarked.
“The more the merrier! Yep. A work party.” Tante Lulu beamed at them and waddled to the back of the house.
A stunned Emelie looked up at him. Cage was surprised she hadn’t attempted to bolt. Or smacked him silly. He imagined she soon would if he didn’t take matters into his own hands. But actually, once company started to arrive, he’d taken one of Em’s hands in his, the one not clutching the letters again, and he held on tightly. She wasn’t going anywhere until he was ready.
“Em, please stay. We need to talk.”
At the same time, she said, “This was a mistake. My fault. I was feeling weepy, and… well, I wasn’t myself.”
He thought she was very much herself, unlike the cool woman he’d met in her shop days ago. “It was not a mistake. It was the first right thing that has happened in days. Why were you crying?”
She shook her head and tried to disentangle her hand, but he was having none of that. “I’m just stressed out over all the work I have to do for Mardi Gras, and then seeing Miss MaeMae like this, well… I imploded.”
Buuuullllll shit! He cocked his head to the side. “Why are you here?”
“Miss MaeMae asked me to… I mean, I was passing by and thought I’d stop by to visit.”
“Lots of passing by going on here lately,” he observed, thinking of Bernie. “Em, you always were a lousy liar. Your nose turns red.”
“That’s because I was crying, you fool.”
He leaned down to give her a quick kiss on the nose to show he didn’t care. She was here; that was all that mattered.
But then, even more visitors arrived. The most suprising visitors of all—Geek and JAM, two of his SEAL teammates—and they were driving Cage’s red Jeep Cherokee, which they honked repeatedly to announce their arrival.
“What the hell?” he said when they walked up with wide grins on their suntanned faces. Geek was sporting whitewalls—a high and tight—but JAM’s long hair was tied back at the neck with a leather thong. They both wore sunglasses, white T-shirts, cargo shorts, and flip-flops. They probably thought going to the bayou was like going to the beach.
The two men explained that they had a few days of liberty coming and decided to bring him his vehicle. Plus, Geek had an already secure computer for him.
Cage’s heart swelled with pride and a deep thankfulness for the friendship that would bring them all this way. And he knew what had prompted the trip. Forget cars and computers. They were here to offer support for him and his dying grandmother.
“F.U. wanted to come, too, but we figured the South wasn’t ready for such a shock,” JAM said with a grin, showing pure white teeth against his dark skin. Frank Uxley was the type of soldier you wanted at your back in combat, and really, he was a primo demolition/explosives expert, but he was the most obnoxious man Cage had ever met, and that was saying a lot in the military.
“Thanks for coming, guys,” he said in an emotion-husky voice. Then he belatedly introduced Em to the two men, who were eyeing her with way too much interest. “Guys, this is an Emelie Gaudet, an old… friend of mine. And, Em, this is Jacob Alvarez Mendozo, or JAM. And this other goofball is Darryl Good, better known as Geek.”
“JAM? Geek?”
“All the SEALs are given nicknames. Mine is Cage… for Cajun,” he explained.
Em was gawking at his friends like they were eye candy. SEALs had that effect on some women.
“So she’s the one, huh?” JAM said, looking pointedly at his hand, which was still entwined with Em’s.
“The one what?” He actually felt himself blush.
“True love, dumbbell,” Geek said. “The one that got away. The Cajun sweetheart. Soul mate. The bitch that ripped your heart out. Yada, yada, yada.”
“I never mentioned any woman,” he protested.
“You didn’t have to. We knew,” JAM replied and winked at Em. Cage did not like that wink. At all.
The two idiots waggled their eyebrows at him, then had the good sense to walk toward the backyard, where music was already playing, “Knock, Knock, Knock,” a rowd
y Cajun song about a man being in the doghouse again. And much laughter could be heard, along with the sound of a machine being powered up. Probably the weed whacker.
“I’ve got to go,” Em insisted, finally pulling her hand free.
But then she soon found out that she had to stay after all. Her van was blocked in by five other vehicles.
“Did you plan this?” she asked, hands on hips, eyeing Cage suspiciously.
“Of course not.” He glanced around and came up with the best answer he could under short notice. “St. Jude planned it all.”
That might even be true. Tante Lulu was “in the house,” after all.
Cajuns will use any excuse to have a party…
Despite herself, Emelie was having a good time. The best time she’d had in ages.
New Orleans was only sixty miles from bayou country, but it felt like six hundred sometimes. Emelie tended to forget her Cajun roots when living in the upscale Creole city. It was hard to forget them here today.
The camaraderie that filled the clearing behind the stilted cottage was pure Cajun. Friendly, teasing, openhearted, close-knit, fun-loving. Even the visiting Navy SEALs were made to feel welcome… honorary Cajuns, according to Tante Lulu, who had her eye on the one called JAM for one of her hope chest enterprises. He clearly had his eyes on Belle, who had her eye on him for an entirely different kind of enterprise. Of course, Justin was first in line for a hope chest, Tante Lulu was quick to assure him, much to his dismay.
Miss MaeMae was sitting on the back porch in a cushioned chair, enjoying the whole spectacle, clapping to the music, answering questions about where she wanted this or that placed. She’d only had to go inside once to take a short nap.
Emelie went up to sit with her for a while, as had just about everyone at one time or another during that day.
“Are you all right, sweetheart?” Miss MaeMae asked her, knowing the condition she’d been in when she fled earlier.
“Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever be all right. Well, that’s too dramatic. This, too, will pass, as they say, but it’s going to take a while for me to understand and forgive my father. It was evil, what he did to you.”