“You and I have no close family ties,” she reminded him, pulling her hand out of his grasp and walking to the other end of the porch. He followed after her. “The LeDeuxs have family out the wazoo.”
“We can make our own family. I love you, honey. That’s what people in love do.”
“Where is all this coming from?” Her voice was shrill with panic. “You never mentioned love before.”
“It’s been there for a long time. I just haven’t had the nerve to say anything.”
“You? Lacking nerve?”
He nodded. “But I had to say something now. This Amber Project—Jinx’s next job—is going to take months, maybe even a year, and it’ll be mostly on-site in Germany. We’re searching for that famous Amber Room that the Nazis supposedly dismantled and hid. Definitely Jinx’s most ambitious treasure hunt yet, and I want you to be there with me. As my wife. Doesn’t a honeymoon in Europe sound great?” His heart was racing so fast it felt as if it might explode. Deep down, he sensed he was fighting a losing battle. How could he have misread her so badly?
“This is insane. You’ve never even kissed me… that way. You can’t ask someone to marry you without even a proper kiss.”
That was his cue. “I thought you’d never ask.”
When she saw his slow grin and his equally slow approach, she stuttered, “That’s not what—oh, good grief, what are you doing?”
“About to kiss you properly.” Before she could blink, or tell him to get lost, he backed her up against the log wall of the cottage, cupped her butt cheeks, raising her to just the right height on her tiptoes, spread her legs with his knees, anchored her with his belly against her belly, combed his fingers through her hair to hold her in place, then kissed her with all the love he’d been holding in for so long.
It should have been a gentle kiss, coaxing. An introduction. Something that said, “Hi! We’ve known each other forever, as friends, but this is how I really feel. I love you. Do you love me?”
Instead, his sex drive shot from zero to the speed of light in a nanosecond, and the gentle, coaxing kiss was anything but. It was hungry and demanding and said, “Oh, baby, I want you so bad. I can’t wait, I can’t wait, I can’t wait—”
Just then, a loud bellow echoed behind them.
“What was that?” he asked, his head jerking back.
“An alligator, I think. Probably Remy’s pet Useless. It’s harmless.”
An alligator? Close by? Harmless? He pressed his forehead against hers, both of them panting for breath.
“This is not the way I want to make love to you the first time, sweetheart. Come back to my motel room with me, and we can talk.”
She tried to laugh but it came out choked. “I think we’ve done enough talking.” Ducking under his arm, she stepped away.
Immediately, Angel sensed the tension in the air, and it wasn’t a good tension. She put up a halting hand when he moved a step closer.
“Angel, I am not going to marry you, and we are not going to have a family together. It is just not going to happen. Ever.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not in love with you.”
Angel had been playing poker for too many years not to read her “tells.” He’d like to think she was lying through her teeth. She wasn’t. How could he have interpreted her signals so wrong? “You don’t mean that, Gracie.” Please, God, don’t let her mean it.
“Angel! Come on. I’ve seen you puking your guts out when you’ve drunk too much. That’s a friend, not a lover.”
He shrugged. “I’ve gone out and bought you tampons when you had an accident in white slacks. Didn’t make me go ‘eew!’ ”
“I saw you clipping your gross toenails in the kitchen.”
He grinned. “You have funny-looking toes. The pinkies are crooked.”
“You told me my toes were cute.”
“They are cute. Crooked cute.”
All this was just blowing smoke, in his opinion. Of no importance. Once again, he tried to move closer.
Once again, she put up a halting hand. “You’ve been the best friend I’ve ever had, but I don’t feel that way about you. Really, I had no idea—”
“Your kiss,” he said, indicating with a wave of his hand the section of porch they’d just left, “your kiss said something else.”
There were tears in her eyes. “Sexual attraction fueled by too much alcohol.”
“I’m not buyin’ it.”
“You have to. Besides, there are things in my past… things you don’t know about me.”
“Hell, I have secrets in my past, too. Big deal!” He waited a moment, then asked, “What things?”
“I can’t say. Just know that I have good reasons for saying that you and I will never be a family, aside from my just thinking of you as a friend—my best friend.”
“Well, we’re sure as hell not gonna continue being friends with this between us now.”
“Oh, Angel.”
“I’m leaving, Gracie. Are you coming with me?”
She shook her head, unable to speak.
“So be it. I doubt we’ll be seeing each other again. I don’t do begging very well.” He stared at her, then added, “I love you, babe. I really do.”
Two weeks later, and the news heard ’round the world, or at least, down the bayou…
Grace was in the pantry, using a mortar and pestle to grind dried herbs for Tante Lulu’s amazing medicinal potions.
Pennyroyal, horehound, sassafras, and catnip, which could be brewed into a tea and used for coughs.
Yarrow and jimsonweed to go in poultices.
Sumac for arthritis.
So many healing uses for nature’s bounty. And any one of them could have varying uses, depending on the stage of development—seed, flower, or full-grown plant.
Dust motes danced on the stream of sunlight coming from the lone window. Through the screen she could hear a hundred bayou birds join together, celebrating their unique habitat. As she worked, she glanced over at the floor-to-ceiling shelves, neatly lined with dozens of glass bottles. Some of them were baby food jars. Some jelly jars. Even old green mason jars with lead lids. Each had its own label. Each followed specific ingredients for one of the noted traiteur’s remedies—983, at last count—that were outlined, longhand, in numerous journals that had their own shelf. No computer software for her boss. Nosiree, as Tante Lulu would say.
The pungent odors in the room, the feeling of history, the warmth of Tante Lulu’s essence: all these things contributed to Grace’s sense of well-being. She was at peace. Not happy, precisely, but finally she was where she belonged.
A psychiatrist would have a field day with her history. From promiscuous teenager to nun. Nun to poker player. Poker player to treasure hunter. Treasure hunter to folk healer. Still, she’d found a place that felt safe and promising to her.
The only thing interfering with her happiness was Angel. Her heart grieved at the hole her former friend had created in her life by his absence. The louse hadn’t called her. Probably his pride had kicked in. And she wasn’t going to call him. That would give him false expectations. Even if she was in love—and she wasn’t—there were other reasons why a future with him would be out of the question.
“Yoo-hoo!”
Tante Lulu must be back from her trip to Boudreaux’s General Store. Her nephew John LeDeux had picked her up an hour ago.
Grace finished bottling her concoction, dusted her hands off, and walked into the kitchen, where Tante Lulu and John were unloading armfuls of overflowing paper bags. Both of them glanced at her. And said nothing.
“What?” It was obvious by the way they avoided direct eye contact that something was wrong.
“Ah, Gracie, bless yer heart,” Tante Lulu said, reaching up to pat her cheek.
Now Grace was really frightened. “Tell me.”
“Tee-John was talkin’ ta Ronnie this mornin’,” Tante Lulu started to explain, then stopped, turning to her nephew for help.
>
Ronnie was Veronica Jinkowsky, owner of Jinx, Inc., the treasure hunting company.
“Oh, my God! Is it Angel? Has something happened to him?”
“You could say that,” John drawled out. The sympathy in his dark Cajun eyes caused alarm bells to go off in her head and her heart rate to accelerate alarmingly.
“He got married yesterday,” John told her. “To an airline stewardess he met on the way to Germany. Talk about!”
Grace plopped down into the kitchen chair, stunned. So much for true love! She tried her best not to be hurt. After all, she was the one who’d sent him away, but the tears came anyway.
They would never renew their friendship now.
She tried to tell herself it was best this way.
Chapter Two
One year later, on the road to Munchkinville…
Grace O’Brien drove her eight-year-old BMW, a gift to herself after placing first in the 2000 World Poker Tour, down the rutted dirt road near the other end of Bayou Black.
She was doing her best not to run over any snakes or armadillos, which were in abundance. A difficult task when she was also trying to tune out the ancient Cajun lady riding shotgun, giving her advice on every blessed thing in the universe.
Grace had been working with Tante Lulu for the past year and had grown to love the old lady, who had become like a mother to her, as well as a teacher. But there was no question she was an unabashed interfering busybody.
And eccentric. Like today: she was wearing a black Dorothy Hamill–style wedge-cut wig, a denim miniskirt that came down to the knees on her five-foot frame, a red T-shirt with the slogan “Proud to be a Cajun,” and neon pink flip-flops that exposed red-painted toenails. Sex kitten for the over-eighty crowd.
It had probably been a mistake to buy the little house on Bayou Black next door to Tante Lulu’s, even though the proximity made her apprenticeship to the noted healer so much easier. Privacy was no longer an option.
“We need ta stop by Lester Sonnier’s place on the way home t’day. He’s got poison oak on his privates. Prob’ly from doin’ the hanky-panky with Maybelle Foucet in her back yard. Ever’one knows ya shouldn’t shuck yer britches in a poison oak patch, but not that Lester. Dumb as duck-weed, I do declare. Didja remember ta bring the aloe and gator-snot salve?”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts, sweetie. Sometimes the icky stuff works best, thass what I allus say. And if it burns Lester’s noodle a bit, well, mebbe he’ll learn a lesson. Lawdy, Lawdy, it’s hotter’n a two-dollar whore on the Fourth of July.” She waved an accordion- pleated fan in front of her face… a fan sporting a collage of Richard Simmons pictures; Tante Lulu had a longtime crush on the exercise guru—thought he was, in her words, hotter than a goat’s behind in a pepper garden. “This heat mus’ be why yer hair is curly as a pig’s tail, bless yer heart. No oomph. Why dontcha make an appointment with Charmaine? She has some new goop what kin take out the frizzies.”
Charmaine, Tante Lulu’s niece and a self-proclaimed “bimbo with class,” owned several beauty salons, along with a spa on her husband’s ranch. With Grace’s red, naturally curly hair, Charmaine would probably turn her into a sexy Howdy Doody–ette.
“Uh, thanks, but I really don’t have the time.”
“Okeydokey. Ya kin use my special conditioner, then. And I ain’t gonna tell ya what’s in it, either.” She grinned impishly.
“Maybe I have time for an appointment, after all.”
The wily old hen’s grin was now one of satisfaction. Goal accomplished. “Aaron and Daniel are comin’ fer dinner on Sunday,” Tante Lulu informed her, jumping to yet another subject without warning. Her conversations were like verbal popcorn. All over the place.
Grace groaned inwardly. These twin LeDeux nephews were on Tante Lulu’s thunderbolt-of-love list. The fact that she was telling Grace about her plans did not bode well… for them, or for Grace.
“I’m thinkin’ it’s ’bout time I made them boys hope chests.”
Them boys are about thirty years old. This time Grace’s groan was out loud.
Tante Lulu had this convoluted theory on love. It involved thunderbolts of love, hope chests for men, and St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes. Usually, people ran for the hills, or just avoided her, when she started eyeing them in a particular way.
But there were no hills in sight now, and Grace had to work with Tante Lulu. “I’m not interested. I’ve told you that a hundred times.”
“Ain’t ya got yearnin’s? Lawd’s sake, I’m ninety-three, and my wild oats turned ta bran flakes long ago, but I still got yearnin’s.”
Way too much information.
“Mebbe you could go on one of them singles cruises. I heard ’bout this gal from over Baton Rouge way who met a rich feller on the way ta Bermuda. They married up, right on the ship.”
“I can’t afford any cruises right now.” And I’m not looking for a “rich feller.”
“Huh? Ya mus’ be loaded, what with yer poker and treasure huntin’ loot.”
Grace felt her face heat up. “I’ve had… expenses.”
“Oh, ya mean all those charities ya donate to? Teenage Crisis Pregnancy Centers of America. Birthright. Babies in Peril. National Adoption Hotline.”
“Tante Lulu! How would you know that?”
The old lady shrugged. “I was lookin’ fer a pen one day at yer cottage and went into yer desk. Yer checkbook flipped open, and I jist happened ta notice all those charities, and, whoo-boy, yer sure generous.”
“I can’t believe you invaded my privacy like that.”
“What? Is it a big secret or sumpin’? Coo! Ain’t nothin’ wrong with helpin’ babies and teenage mothers. But gol-ly, I’m sorry if I upset you.”
An apology from Tante Lulu was something unusual, and really, no harm had been done.
“That’s okay.” She smiled at the old lady, whose brow was furrowed even more than usual. “Tell me again, where are we going?” she asked, changing the subject. She hoped.
“I ain’t zackly sure.”
“It’s a young girl we’re looking for, right?”
“Yep, Lena Duval. She’s a waitress at the diner where one of my great-great-nephews works as a busboy on the weekends.”
“And all we know is that she’s tired all the time?”
Tante Lulu nodded. “Tired as a one-legged nun in a butt-kickin’ contest, all day long.” She put her gnarled fingertips to her mouth in an oops fashion and gave Grace an apologetic look for the mention of nuns. People just couldn’t seem to disassociate Grace from the good sisters. “And sickly. Chugs down them energy drinks like crazy durin’ the day and that nighttime cold medicine at night. They ain’t helpin’ none. The girl’s only nineteen years old, bless her heart, but she feels rotten all the time. Leastways, thass what I heard.”
“Isn’t this the kind of thing she should see a doctor about?”
“Mebbe. But word is she won’t go ta no doctor.”
“Why? It can’t be lack of medical insurance. There’s always the free clinic.”
“Fer some reason, she refuses ta go. Thass why I’m fixin’ ta look inta matters. Turn left, up ahead. That mus’ be it.”
Grace went down what was little more than a wide dirt path off the road, then stopped in a clearing before a rusted-out structure that was falling down on itself. It had probably started out as a small single-wide trailer, like fifty years ago, with haphazard additions made as needed. Grass hadn’t grown within thirty yards of this place in ages, if ever. It must be a mud hazard when it rained. Surely no one lived here.
But wait, a young, dark-skinned boy was on the roof pounding on some shingles. A roof that was a mismatch of different-colored roofing materials, including black tar paper. Out back, a scowling young black girl was hanging clothes on a line. If Grace hadn’t already guessed she was a tween, she would have figured it out, because the girl wore flip-flops, a Hannah Montana long-sleeved T-shirt proclaiming “Girls Rock,” and cr
opped denim pants with a hanging chain belt, a Hannah Montana fashion accessory. She wouldn’t have been surprised if her underwear had Hannah Montana printed on the butt.
Before they had a chance to register all this Hannah Montana paraphernalia, a handpainted red bike careened around the side of their car and came to a screeching halt by the trailer’s front door. On its handlebars was an empty newspaper delivery bag. On its seat was a startled African-American kid of about ten, gazing at them with alarm.
“How many munchkins are there in this place?” Grace asked. “So far, I’ve seen three kids, not counting the young woman we’re coming to see.”
“Somethin’s not right here,” Tante Lulu said.
“No kidding.”
“I gots the creepy-crawlies and heebie-jeebies all t’gether. And I swear, St. Jude’s tappin’ me on the shoulder.”
Grace didn’t know about saints, but hairs were standing out on the back of her neck, too. “I think I’ll stay in the car.”
“Huh?”
“I signed on to learn alternative medicine. This looks like way more than folk healing to me.”
“Girl—” Tante Lulu said with disgust.
Girl. I’m thirty-five years old and she calls me girl.
“Haven’t you learned yet? Healin’ is fer more than the body. Sometimes we need ta work on the heart… or the soul.”
I wish someone would heal me.
“I’m workin’ on it, sweetie.”
Grace’s head shot up. Had she spoken aloud, or was the old lady reading minds now, too?
Tante Lulu just smiled at her. “First things first, chère. Yer right at the top of my list.”
Grace bit her tongue to restrain herself from telling the Cajun fruitcake to butt out. But she wanted to.
When trouble comes knock, knock, knocking on your door…
With a deep sigh of exhaustion, and it only ten a.m., Lena Duval finished tying the apron of her waitress uniform and left the trailer bedroom she shared with her younger sister Ella. Lionel and Miles shared the other, even smaller bedroom.