Remy found himself, involuntarily, taking a step forward. The fine hairs stood out all over his body and the air left his lungs. Time seemed to halt, then restart in slow motion as the woman took a step toward them. Toward him. It was as if only two people existed in the world .. . him and Redhot.
She was tall. . . about five-ten. And built fine—very fine. A wide Julia Roberts mouth. Big, brown eyes. Breasts that jutted out, high and round. A rump that filled her jeans very nicely.
The only intelligent thing Remy could think to say was, “Mon Dieu!”
But she was in no better shape. Her intelligent eyes gave him an equally thorough once-over, from head to toe and back again. He really feared, for the first time in twelve years, that a woman—she, in particular—would be repulsed by his disfigured face, but he had to know up front; so, he turned to give her a better view of himself, in all his non-glory. He saw the fact of his mangled face register with her, but she did not care. Instead, she stared at him hungrily, as if he were a Whitman’s Sampler and she was a chocoholic. Some inner, crude part of his testosterone-ridden body wanted to say, “Eat, baby, eat!” But, of course, he said nothing because his tongue was frozen to the roof of his mouth.
“ Holy Smoke!” she whispered.
He understood completely. He felt as if he’d been sucker-punched, then given a blast of blessed oxygen.
She asked the oddest thing then. “Do you own any exercise equipment?”
He shook his head slowly from side to side. I’ll go buy some if you want, though.
But, no, she just smiled her approval at him.
And he smiled back at her, the slowest, sexiest smile he could conjure up. There was a time, before the accident, when he could turn the heat on at will with a mere smile. It had been a dubious talent he’d perfected.
She whimpered.
He guessed his smile still generated some heat.
Something really strange was happening here. He wasn’t sure what this chemistry swirling about them was. He didn’t care. His life was changing before his very eyes, and he didn’t give a freakin’ damn. Who knew? Who knew?
In the background, he heard Luc laughing, and Gizelle muttering, and Beau sharpening his knife, and Bonnie Raitt still wailing, but the only thing that really made it through his fuzzy brain was Tante Lulu’s loudly expressed prayer: “Thank you, St. Jude.”
Chapter 4
And then her hormones began to polka
He looks good enough to eat.
Well, okay, that was crude and poorly expressed, Rachel chided herself. But, really, this guy standing before her in an honest-to-God cowboy outfit had to be the world’s best-kept secret—that they made male specimens like this below the Mason-Dixon line. Southern belles throughout the past century and a half had to have been chuckling at their Northern counterparts, knowing full well what they had tucked away back home on the plantation—or down on the bayou.
He was probably dumb as a doodad—a rodeo rider, or something equally brain-nonrequisite which required him to wear such attire. Maybe even one of those Angola Prison Death Row rodeo riders. Otherwise, he was still dumb as a door nail if he dressed like this for the fun of it.
Although, I’ve got to admit, he does look fine.
A further “although”: he said he doesn’t own any exercise equipment. A definite plus, that.
One last “although”: he is the first man to jump-start my motor, so to speak, in a long, long time. And that includes David. A jump-started “motor” is a very definite plus.
Bottom line: Yee-haw!
The right side of Rachel’s brain told her to slow down, that up until two days ago she had been engaged, that the last thing she needed right now was another man in her life.
But the left side of her brain—the side with a mind of its own—said, Whoo-ee! Off to the races! Rachel mentally fanned herself, especially when the man smiled at her— slow and easy and so damn sexy that she swore her toes began to curl. At the least, her engine was revving. Va-room!
She was no longer aware of the people around them, whether they were talking or moving. There was only this man and her.
He stood tall and muscular, but not pumped-up muscular—Thank you, God! His dark brown, almost black hair was not overly long, but he’d slicked it back off his face. That face was a sculptured work of art: chiseled, high cheekbones, a straight nose, lips so firm and full and sensual that they kept drawing her eyes back again and again.
One side of his face had been damaged badly, probably from a burn—which probably meant an accident, not birth. The skin itself was puckered and without pigment in places; even so, his eyes on that side and his mouth were untouched, with no apparent nerve damage. For some reason, the mangled skin did not repulse her. Instead, it complemented his beauty. Without it, he would have been godly handsome, too pretty to be masculine. And he was definitely masculine.
Despite the total package of attractiveness—the long, lean, meant-to-be-touched body and the glorious face—it was his dark, surely Cajun eyes that made her catch her breath. Such pain! If eyes were the windows to the soul, as the old cliché went, his soul had been to hell and cried for help to return to life.
She turned to look about the rural setting, and wondered why no one rushed to his aid. Why couldn’t anyone else see his distress? The answer soon became clear to her. His eyes spoke to her, and only her. What a glorious, frightening prospect!
“ Hello, I’m Remy LeDeux,” he said, extending a hand to her. “I’d be pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am.” His voice was low, and intelligent, and exceedingly polite.
She gave a silent prayer of gratitude for the intelligence. She might just have died if he’d said something dumb and dorky, like, “Yo, baby! What’s shakin’?” And, yes, she’d been addressed in that way on first meeting guys in the past.
“ Rachel Fortier,” she responded, though how she managed to speak above a whimper was a miracle.
His fingertips, then his calloused palm, touched hers. An electric current, or something equal to an erotic shock wave, traveled up her arms, out to the tips of her breasts, down to her toes, then lodged somewhere important between her legs.
She reminded herself of an old jalopy that hadn’t been driven in ages. You could put a key in the ignition—and didn’t that conjure up some carnal images?—but that didn’t guarantee an immediate response. Nope, the engine had to chug and chug and vibrate and vibrate until it finally turned on. She’d stalled in the chugging-vibrating stage, but the turn-on was sure to come.
He blinked. Then blinked again several times in rapid succession, the whole time looking down with amazement at the place where their hands were still joined.
“ Who are you?” they both asked at the same time.
Their reverie broke before they had a chance to respond because a female voice cried out, “Rachel!” Actually it sounded more like a cackle than a cry—a Southern cackle. A bizarre apparition in neck-to-toe, bleached linen fabric came flying down the steps of a raised log cabin.
Please God, don’t let this be my grandmother.
Out of her peripheral vision, she saw dozens of skinned animals, and a few that looked as if they’d been stuffed. A raunchy odor permeated the air, no doubt due to all the animals that had to have bitten the dust to produce all those skins. And, oh, no! Could that possibly be an outhouse over there?
This couldn’t possibly be the family plantation. Couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t.
But, deep inside, she knew. She’d followed the directions exactly as explained by the Houma gas station attendant. Her first clue should have been when he’d laughed at her question if it was a sugar plantation, and said, “More like a muskrat plantation.”
Yep, this is it. The Fortier version of Tara. I think I’m going to be sick.
“ Grandmother? Gizelle?” she finally choked out to the woman in long, stringy gray hair who approached her.
“ Thass me, but you kin call me Granny. Granny Gizelle. Ever’one
does,” the elderly woman declared. She put her hands on Rachel’s shoulders and studied her closely. “Look jist like yer Daddy, you do, ’ceptin’ fer that red hair. The spittin’ image, I vow. He was the bestest chile till he met. . . well, never mind.” With a little sniff, presumably at the memory of her long-dead son, the woman pulled Rachel into a warm hug. She was tall and bony but strong as an ox; there was no escape. The lady smelled faintly of lavender and tobacco, and Rachel soon discovered from whence the tobacco odor emanated; it was the plug in her cheek. My grandmother.. . “Granny” . . . chews tobacco. Can life get any worse than this?
Her grandmother, who matched her in height, wrapped an arm around her shoulders and began to draw her toward the house when the old lady noticed the man in cowboy gear still standing nearby. “Don’t you be gettin’ all hot and bothered by any of them LeDeuxs,” she warned Rachel.
“ Hot and bothered? Me?” Was I so transparent? He must think I’m some kind of slut. I feel like a slut. A Feng Shui slut. Ha, ha, ha! Aaaarrgh! My brain is melting here. Must be the humidity. Or my engine’s overheating.
“ Them LeDeuxs are all a bunch of horny toads. Ain’t fit-tin’ to roll with pigs. Besides, that one,” she pointed directly at Remy, “wants to steal my land. What kinda man tries to bamboozle a senior citizen? Tsk-tsk!” They were out of hearing range, but still Rachel was embarrassed that her grandmother would speak so rudely.
A horny toad? A thief? Rachel glanced back at him over her shoulder as she was being led toward the house. He had his face in his hands. A man stepped up to his side—clearly his brother, or a relative, by his similar appearance—and was laughing so hard he bent over at the waist with his hands on his thighs. If that wasn’t bad enough, a tiny old lady in the most ridiculous cowgirl outfit gave Rachel a little wave and a big smile.
If this was Gone With the Wind, Rachel was hoping for a big wind.
And then they dined on Gator Gumbo. Yeech!
“ Was I pathetic?” Remy asked Luc (which in itself was a sign of how pathetic he was—that he would ask his brother such a wussy question).
Everyone had gone into the cabin, except the three of them. His aunt was sure to hightail it in soon, though, to gather all the gossip, and meddle in his affairs, no doubt.
“ Ab-so-lute-ly!” Luc took great pleasure in answering.
“ It was the thunderbolt,” Tante Lulu diagnosed. “Does that all the time. Makes the menfolks go all tongue-tied and wobble-kneed. All vine and no taters. Pathetic about sez it all.”
“ It was not the thunderbolt,” Remy insisted to his aunt. “I was just taken a bit unawares is all. You have to admit, she is the best-looking woman to hit the bayou in a century or so, even if she does have red hair.” Remy had never much favored women with red hair. He did now. The vanity plate on the front bumper of that pickup truck parked over there just added to the whole tantalizing image, RED-HOT! That’s for damn sure! Whoo-ee! Then, there was the bumper sticker, DECORATORS DO IT WITH STYLE. I’d like to see that—stylish screwing. In fact, I’d like to experience it. For sure!
Luc and his aunt stared at him, then shook their heads and clucked their tongues.
“ What?”
“ You’ve got it bad, bro. And so sudden.”
“ I better start sewing.”
He was afraid to ask, but never fear; Luc asked for him. “Sewing what, auntie?”
“ The bride quilt for Remy’s hope chest, thass what.”
Remy groaned.
Luc grinned.
And Beau came out on the porch to yell, “Hey, Miss Lulu, my cuzzin is pukin’ up her guts, jist cause she saw a gator snout in the gumbo. City folks! Sissies, all of ’em! Granny sez to ask if you got any stomach herbs in yer saddle bags.”
“ Sure thing,” their aunt said, already morphing into her traiteur mode as she rushed over to the horse, busy munching on carrots from Gizelle’s garden. If Gizelle got sight of the animal, they’d probably be serving horse gumbo here tomorrow.
“ And some Wild Turkey,” Beau added. “Granny needs some Wild Turkey to settle their innards.”
“ The only turkey you’re gonna see, boy, is the ones what nest in Atchafala Swamp,” Tante Lulu commented.
“ I better come in with you . . . to see if there’s anything I can do to help,” Remy offered.
Even as she was pulling tiny zip-locked plastic bags of herbs from her saddle bag—the days of hand-sewn burlap plackets being long gone, he supposed—Tante Lulu glared at him. “If you want to help, go home. And pray. I need to talk with this Rachel girl and see if she’s suitable for you.”
“ What do you mean suitable? Don’t you dare go matchmaking for me. I can handle my own affairs.”
“ Hmpfh! Affairs is right. You been havin’ too many affairs. Time for the big time, big boy.”
“ Big time?” he choked out.
“ No more hanky-panky,” she explained. “Lust out, love in. Well, lust is okay, as long as there’s love first. And wed-din’ bells.”
“ No meddling,” Remy insisted in as respectful a tone as he could muster. He did not want to be discourteous to his aunt, but he had to put his foot down. “No matchmaking. I mean it.” Mon Dieu, that’s all he needed in his life. A Cajun yenta.
“ Whatever you say,” Tante Lulu agreed too readily as she scurried toward the cabin with her stomach herbs.
“ Your goose is cooked,” Luc commented to him when they were left alone in the yard. The cowboy and the undercover lawyer—them and about seventy stinkin’ animal skins and a stuffed cougar and two lifelike alligators from Gizelle’s taxidermy days.
“ Oh, yeah.”
Being blue on Bayou Black
“ You’re a taxidermist, Granny?” Rachel asked with more than a little alarm.
“ Was. Ain’t no more,” her grandmother said. “The work’s too hard, and the pay’s too small. Not much call for stuffed critters these days, I reckon.”
Rachel had asked the question because the creatures she’d seen about the place looked eerily alive. She would have expected such an occupation from her cousin Beau who trapped animals for a living, selling their pelts to local furriers. When she’d asked him why he trapped animals for a living, he’d replied, “Beats pickin’ cotton.” She couldn’t argue with that. Still, a lady doing taxidermy work surprised Rachel. Not that her grandmother was ladylike. Far from it! Even as her slender fingers gracefully worked the spindles of a loom with soothingly rhythmic sounds— clunk, clunk, clunk—she would occasionally spit a stream of tobacco juice over the porch rail into the bougainvillea bushes. And that post-menopausal fuzz above her upper lip would never cut it in city society.
It was early evening of the day of their arrival, and Rachel sat on a glider on the front porch while Granny worked away, making a rag rug, on a large wooden loom situated at the far end of the wide front porch. Rag rugs were traditionally crafted by poor women of many cultures as a practical way of using worn-out clothing or curtains or other fabrics. But Granny’s rug was something more than that: fine art at its folksy best. Working on a pattern that must be imbedded in her brain, passed on through generations of Fortier women, the old lady’s bony fingers wove yellows with pale blues and deep greens and the occasional reds in a floral pattern that pleased the eye, like a springtime garden. In truth, the colors were as vivid as David’s prized Roseville pottery. For sure, Rachel planned to write to Laura, who worked for the folk art museum in Washington. She would be interested in knowing about this craft still being practiced on the bayous with a Cajun twist.
“ Tell me about the Fortier family,” Rachel invited her aunt.
“ Ain’t much to tell,” her grandmother said, her nimble fingers working as she spoke. “We Fortiers arrived with the first Acadians from Canada back in the seventeen-hundreds. We been workin’ the land ever since. Ain’t never a one of us been on Relief, I kin say that much. Dint have two pennies to rub together at times, but our fam’ly never took charity. We Cajuns are a prideful bunch, if
you ain’t noticed yet.”
“ Were you farmers?”
“ Nope. Well, yes, of a sort, I s’pose. I got fifty acres here what we had planted in sugar fer generations up till Justin died fifteen years back when he had a heart attack, right in the middle of cane harvest. Justin was yer gran’pappy.”
“ Sugar cane? It’s hard to picture that. Everything is so overgrown here, except for this spot where your cabin is located.”
“ Don’t take long fer the swamp to take over a cleared field along the bayous. One season, two at most, and the work of a century is gone.”
“ Weren’t there other family members who could have taken over when my grandfather died?”
Her grandmother shook her head. “Yer father, Clovis, died when he were only eighteen. Racin’ that motorcycle of his down the highway to Nawleans past midnight. He and yer mother had jist got hitched, her breedin’ with you and all, but they weren’t livin’ together. Don’t abide no woods colt in the family, we Fortiers don’t, but Clovis weren’t in love with yer mother, either. I doan mean to be disrespectful but Fiona O’Brien was a wild one, and she were only fifteen then. Lordy, Lordy! The things that girl did to get attention. They still talkin’ ’bout her dancin’ buck nekkid on Bourbon Street durin’ Mardi Gras, but thass neither here nor there now. When Clovis died, she took the little bitty insurance money he had and hightailed it off to Memphis. We dint hear nothin’ about her or you fer many a year. Everyone suspicioned that she had one of them abortions. I never knew Fiona had adopted you out. I swear I dint. Shameful, that. A sinning shame! Wasn’t till I saw her obituary in the Times-Picayune that I knew where to find you.”