“I know a Josephine Arnaud up Houma way,” Tante Lulu announced out of the blue.
“That’s my sister,” Martin said.
“They dint get hurt none by the hurrycanes, did they?”
Martin shook his head. “No, but after Katrina, she had to take in our mother and father and two cousins.”
“How do you manage with so many people in one house?” Grace wanted to know.
“We do everything in shifts,” Eulalie said with a booming laugh. “Even the bathroom. Honest to God, I cain’t remember the las’ time I took a bubble bath.”
“You don’t need no bubble baths anyhow, Lallie. Uses too much water,” Martin complained.
“Oh, you!”
Samantha explained the Hope Foundation in general, and then Tante Lulu gave her spiel on Jude’s Angels and how they were working to keep families together.
Martin went all stiff. “We don’t need no charity. All you do-gooders are the same. Wanta come into our homes and neighborhoods, lookin’ down yer fancy noses at us poor folks.”
Eulalie was about to chew her husband out for his rudeness, but Tante Lulu raised a halting hand at her and instead addressed the man. “Doan be a horse’s ass, Martin. We all need a helpin’ hand sometimes. I ain’t allus been in high cotton, y’know. I been poor a time or two myself—mostly poor. So doan be takin’ that attitude with me.”
Martin ducked his head, but still he grumbled, “There are folks worse off than we are.”
“Yer prob’ly right.” Tante Lulu squeezed his forearm in forgiveness, even though he hadn’t apologized. “But all we kin do is take one step at a time. And frankly, we’d appreciate all the advice we kin get from folks like you.”
Just then a teenage girl stuck her head out of the sliding glass doors. “Gram, can you gimme five dollars for some ice cream? I aim ta take Billy for a walk.” Behind her was one of those reclining-type wheelchairs holding a boy, no more than seven, with severe disabilities, probably cerebral palsy.
Grace was shocked, and so were Tante Lulu, Charmaine, and Samantha. Not by the disability itself, but by the realization that this family had suffered and continued to suffer more than they let on. But the raised chins on the three Arnauds out here on the deck precluded any mention of their hardships regarding the boy.
Good heavens! How did they all manage in a house this size, with a wheelchair-bound boy, as well?
On the way to the car, Tante Lulu muttered, “This family is gonna get help, fer darn sure.”
The four of them had lots to talk about on the way back to Houma. Samantha, who had a home in the Garden District of New Orleans, was coming back to Houma with them to look over the progress on the Duval house and to have a meeting with Grace and Angel over final plans for the poker tournament.
“Well, that settles one thing, fer sure,” Tante Lulu said finally, with a long sigh.
“What’s that?” Charmaine asked her aunt.
“I’m gonna hafta live ta be a hundred ta take care of all the work ta be done.”
Grace could swear that infernal voice in her head said, Amen!
Chapter Ten
Did the angel have horns, or was he just a horny angel?…
Angel said hello to Tante Lulu, Charmaine, and Samantha, who went inside the Duval house, then turned to Grace, and winked.
Grace was wearing white jeans and sandals and a low-cut lime green tank top. Her breasts weren’t big, but they weren’t small, either. Her butt was tight for a thirty-five-year-old woman. Her red hair was piled on top of her head with one of those claw thingees, wisps of it straggling about her face, which was flushed with pink—probably from riding in the sun with the top down, not because she was excited to see him. Darn it!
She looked so good to him. In the best of all possible worlds, he would pick her up, lay her down over there in the shade, and fuck her brains out for about three hours. Then she would do the same to him. Whoa! Better think about something else before a part of my body starts to greet her in a way she might not appreciate.
“Hey, baby!” he reached out and picked a bug from her hair.
She swatted his hand aside. “Don’t you ‘baby’ me, you… you lech. Was that your girlfriend we passed on the lane coming in?”
“What girlfriend?”
“You have so many? The one in the green Volvo.”
“The woman you passed was Sherry Romines, a student at Tulane. She’s waitressing over the summer at the diner where I eat most nights. She volunteered to help with the interior painting here.”
“I’ll bet she volunteered for a whole lot more than that.”
“Jealous, Grace?”
“Absolutely not! Just an observation.”
“I asked you for one night of sex, cupcake. I didn’t ask you to go steady.”
“Don’t be an ass. Just for the record, if you don’t put a shirt on, I’m not sitting in on this meeting.”
Huh? “Why?”
“It’s narcissistic of you.”
He laughed. “I can’t even say that word.”
“And it’s, well, indecent. I’ve told you that before.”
“Ah. The belly button. You know, Grace, despite your protests to the contrary, it just shows that even you can be turned on without being wildly in love.”
“Who says I’m turned on?”
He gazed pointedly at her nipples, which were now definitely, well, pointy.
“Jerk,” she said, folding her arms over her chest.
“By the way, have you ever been wildly in love?”
“No, unless you consider being an out-of-control teenager who had sex with every reasonably attractive boy with a hard-on being wildly in love.”
“What? You? I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it.”
“And then you took a vow of chastity to repent?”
“Something like that.”
“How come I couldn’t have been around then? Pre-repentance, I mean.” He pulled a fake pout.
“You wouldn’t have liked me then.”
He smiled widely, just to irritate her, but then he defended himself. “I’ve been working, Grace, installing the kitchen cabinets. Hot work. The air-conditioning isn’t set up yet.”
“I know that,” she conceded. With the other three women inside the house, Grace got the opportunity he’d been forestalling for days. “About that bet of ours—”
“Don’t even think of reneging. A bet is a bet.”
“It’s a silly bet.”
“Not to me. What do you say to a little dress rehearsal—or undress rehearsal?”
He stepped toward her.
She stepped back, hitting the wall. “Why me, Angel? I’m not a young chick. I’m not hot. You could have any woman you want.”
“Not true,” he said, even as he leaned closer and inhaled her scent. Lemons again. Must be her perfume, but I’m coming to consider lemons an aphrodisiac. Get a grip! Next I’ll be like Pavlov’s dog, drooling every time I drink a glass of lemonade.
She arched her brows in question.
“It’s not true that you’re not hot, or that I could have any woman I wanted.” I really, really want to lick her skin and see if she tastes like lemons.
“Puh-leeze!”
“I can’t have you.” Do I sound pitiful or what? Curb your enthusiasm, boy.
“You said you didn’t want me anymore.”
He shook his head. “I said I wasn’t in love with you anymore. I said I no longer had marriage in mind. I never said I didn’t want you.”
“Sex,” she concluded.
“Damn skippy!”
“This is all about you being horny.”
“More like sexually focused.”
“I’m disappointed in you, Angel.”
“Nice try, kiddo, but that tactic won’t work. The bet is still on.”
“Well then, I guess I’ll just have to beat you.” Her chin rose about two inches.
“Take your best shot, sweetheart.” For t
he coup de grâce, he added, just before sauntering by her into the house, “One more thing, Gracie. Wear that halter dress the night of the tournament. You know, the white one with the big-ass red flowers that you wore to Ronnie and Jake’s wedding. And, oh, did I mention… don’t wear any underwear. You just might be able to distract me.” Or blow my mind—and other body parts.
She was still sputtering behind him after he entered the house.
He could only hope that she was as turned on as he was.
C’mon, baby, light my fire… or else put the damn thing out…
As Angel walked the three women through the house, using a punch list to check off work done and work yet to be done, Grace seethed.
The question was whether her seething resulted from anger over the stupid bet and his suggestive teasing, or from the sexual heat raised at the prospect of losing the bet.
It was beyond Grace’s understanding how she could suddenly find the man so attractive. Well, that wasn’t quite true. She’d always known he was attractive; she’d have to have been blind not to see that. But he’d never been attractive to her in a sexual way before. He was now.
She fanned her face with a sheet of sandpaper.
Angel glanced her way, then arched his brows in question.
Hah! Like she’d tell him that.
Even though he’d pulled on a long-sleeved denim shirt, he’d left it open. And her eyes kept straying down to that darn belly button. And lower. In addition to a buff body, he had a killer smile and dark chocolate eyes with incredibly long lashes. When he turned, his butt got her attention. From front or back, his long, muscled legs drew images that caused Grace’s face to heat up. Heck, she even thought his knees were sexy.
“Gracie, yer mind is wanderin’ again. Ya dint answer Angel’s question,” Tante Lulu said, a knowing smirk on her wrinkled face.
“Huh?” She deliberately avoided looking then at Angel, who chuckled, surely suspecting where her thoughts had been.
“We were discussing whether to bring the kids to see their new house yet,” Samantha recounted. “Charmaine and I think we should let them get involved in the painting project on Friday.”
“I wanna wait and have a big surprise fais do do, a party ta beat all parties, where they get to see the place when everything is done. Charmaine and me is goin’ furniture shoppin’ t’morrow. Charmaine has great taste.”
She and Samantha exchanged doubtful looks about the taste thing but said nothing. There would probably be zebra-print sofas and white furry rugs, not to mention lava lamps and velvet paintings.
“We’ve waited this long. Another week or two shouldn’t matter,” Grace said.
“We oughta call that TV show what gives people new houses jist ta show ’em what other folks can do,” Tante Lulu added.
“No, no, no!” Angel inserted. “We’re avoiding publicity, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” Tante Lulu agreed.
“All right, then, Tante Lulu, we’ll wait to give the kids their first walk-through on”—he consulted a calendar on the kitchen wall—“June twenty-fifth, a week from Saturday’s poker tournament.” Angel winked at Grace after mentioning the tournament.
“Will you be done by then?” Charmaine wanted to know.
He nodded. “As long as everyone helps with the painting. Starr Foods is sending over some ceiling lights and electricians to install them. Some of the ladies auxiliary at Tante Lulu’s church are making curtains. The wives of the LeDeux men are donating bed linens, towels, and kitchen supplies, like pots and pans. I’m going to finish the deck. That’s about it. There’s always something that comes up in the end, though.”
“I thought we’d be done by now,” Tante Lulu told Angel, “not that I’m complaining about you, bless yer heart.”
Not offended, Angel said, “We could have been if we’d launched a full-blown building project with everyone here every day to help out, but you wanted to keep it low-key.”
“Yer right.” Tante Lulu patted his hand, which was resting on the countertop, a cheerful red marbled granite someone had found at a builders’ surplus outlet. The curtains were going to be red and white checked, while the cabinets were a light oak with brass handles.
As an indication of the sad state Grace was in, she found herself staring at that hand. Long fingers with nails cut short. Calloused palm. What would it be like if those fingers—
“Whatsa matter, honey?”
Grace stared blankly at Tante Lulu.
“You groaned,” the old woman explained.
Everyone looked at Grace with concern, except Angel, who smiled.
“That wasn’t a groan—it was my stomach growling,” Grace lied. “I’m hungry.”
“I’m hungry, too,” Angel said, and by the way he ran the tip of his tongue over his lips, there wasn’t a person in the room who thought he was talking about food.
Dumb, dumb, dee dumb…
It was Friday night. Tomorrow was the most important day of his life—the poker game with Grace. And he was in the Swamp Tavern with four of the LeDeux men, sucking up suds and other good stuff, or bad stuff, depending on your definition. How dumb was that?
“I still say the answer is oyster shooters,” René told him, waving for the bartender to set up another round in front of them.
Forget about martinis and cosmos and other sophisticated cocktails, oyster shooters were a real man’s, or real woman’s, drink. A concoction of one raw oyster with its natural juices was put in a shot glass, covered with Tabasco Sauce, tossed back without chewing, and followed by a shot of hundred-proof bourbon. It was one of those stomp-your-foot, yell-“Yee-haw” kind of drinks that was popular here in Dixie land.
“What the hell does booze have to do with getting Grace to fall in love with me?” Angel wasn’t tickled pink that everyone in the world, or at least Houma, Louisiana, knew that he was mooning over Grace. He had Tante Lulu, the bigmouth of the South, to thank for spreading that news hither and yon. Hither and yon? Crap! I’m even beginning to sound like the old biddy. Next I’ll be developing one of those hokey southern drawls and saying “y’all.”
“You’d be surprised what liquor can do for a woman’s inhibitions. The ultimate thigh opener.” This from Luc LeDeux, who should be the last person to give advice, since rumor was he’d gone practically kicking and screaming to the altar after imbibing some kind of crazy love potion jelly beans. Okay, Luc had been crazy in love by the time they got him to the church, but he was definitely not the one to give advice.
“Once Grace sobered up, she would feel the same way as she does now,” Angel pointed out. He hated the pitiful tone of his own voice, so he downed another oyster shooter. He wasn’t sure if this was his fourth or fifth, but he was pretty sure his eyes were starting to bulge. His tongue was for damn sure numb.
“See, here’s the thing.”
Oh, no! John LeDeux, the wildest thing to hit woman-kind before his recent marriage, was about to impart his own brand of wisdom.
“I think Grace is already halfway in love with you, cher, but she just doesn’t realize it yet. It’s up to you to jump-start her love engine.”
“I can’t believe you just said that,” Remy LeDeux said. Remy was a really good-looking guy—or so women said—but on only one side of his face. The other side had been deeply scarred from burns suffered in an explosion of his plane in the first Gulf War. “Love engine, ferchris-sake! Where do you get this bullshit?”
“From Tante Lulu,” the rest of them answered as one.
Which called for another round of oyster shooters.
“What makes you think she’s, uh, halfway in love?” Pathetic. I am beyond pathetic.
“The way she avoids you,” John replied.
“Oh, that’s a clue. Not!”
“Seriously, if she wasn’t falling, she would have no trouble being around you. In fact, she’d be cozying up to you, trying to persuade you to be buddy-buddy again.”
“Well, all I know is that if I don’t win
tomorrow, it’s over. No more fallback positions. I’m not going to continue beating my head against her brick wall.”
“And if you do win?” René inquired with raised eyebrows.
Angel tried to raise his eyebrows back at René, but for some reason he couldn’t make them move.
“I mean, do you have a plan?” René elaborated.
“Sort of.”
“What the hell does ‘sort of’ mean? You can’t seduce a woman without a plan.”
“You can’t?” Luc and Remy asked.
“My only plan is to win the poker game and get Grace into my bed. I’ll play it by ear after that.”
“Or by cock.” This from Remy, who usually wasn’t that crude. He must be as blitzed as the rest of them.
“Sex doesn’t necessarily lead to love,” John declared, “but take it from the love doctor”—
Four sets of eyes rolled at that one.
—“good sex can lay the road to love, and I mean that pun intentionally.”
More rolled eyes.
“Listen up, Sabato, you’re gonna lose your key to hunkdom if you don’t develop some Rhett ‘Frankly, Scarlett, blah, blah, blah’ talents. Southern men, like good ol’ Rhett, might not subscribe to GQ, but we know how to be cool, believe you me.”
“Hunkdom?” the rest of them exclaimed.
“Yeah. We’re all hunks, right? Therefore, hunkdom.”
“You are full of shit,” Angel told John.
“I was reading this article in Cosmo—” John started to say.
“You read Cosmo?” With a hoot of laughter, Remy slapped his knee and almost fell off his barstool.
John’s face didn’t even get red, that’s how confident the bozo was of his masculinity. “I was in Charmaine’s beauty shop to get a haircut, and I read this article. Did you know you can make a woman have multiple orgasms, one after another, bam bam bam, just by doing this one little thing.” And he proceeded to tell them what that one little thing was.