“Going to a loan shark was dumb, yeah. Her pride probably got in the way. Thought she could borrow some money and pay it back quick without anyone knowing about it. And one more thing about Charmaine, she was Miss Louisiana a few years back. Someone must have thought she had the looks.”
Raoul suddenly realized just how much he had been expounding on Charmaine’s virtues. In the course of his speech, he had stood and was pacing in front of the picnic table. Amelie was looking at him as if he’d just laid an egg. Which he had.
Mon Dieu! What is wrong with me? “Don’t get me wrong, Charmaine has lots of faults, too,” he said defensively, but it was too late.
“You’re still in love with her,” Amelie accused him.
“No! Definitely not! I wouldn’t walk into that land mine again. Uh-uh!” His protests sounded hollow, even to his own ears. “Honestly, Amelie, I’ve been wondering lately if I ever was in love with her. Or her with me. We were really young, and we didn’t even know each other that well.”
“Okaaay,” Amelie said, obviously not convinced.
“I just don’t want you to think that any decision I make regarding your generous offer of a partnership has anything at all to do with Charmaine.”
She nodded. “And I want you to know that the offer stands, regardless of Charmaine. You’re a good vet, Rusty, and I would welcome your help.”
He pulled her to her feet and gave her a warm hug. “You are a great friend, Amelie,” he murmured against her hair.
He felt her stiffen against him. Finally, she relaxed and said, “I consider you a good friend, too, Rusty.”
After that, they decided to cut the evening short. “Do you want me to drop you off at the ranch or at the bar? I suspect you’ve been worried all night about Charmaine.”
Was I that obvious? I guess so. “Drive by the bar and we’ll see.”
When they got to The Horny Bull an hour later, the lot was half-full, but Clarence’s truck was still there. “You don’t have to come in, I’ll hitch a ride back with them,” he told her. He saw the disappointment on her face, but gave her a quick kiss on the mouth and added, “I’ll call you next week and give you an answer, if I can. Thanks for everything, Amelie.”
Despite the smoky dimness of the bar, Raoul was able to locate Linc and Clarence right off. They were sitting with two fortysomething cowgirls; at least they were wearing old-time movie version cowgirl outfits. No Charmaine in sight. Not even on the dance floor, where the crowd was doing a lively Cajun two-step to “Diggy Liggy Lo.”
Raoul’s heart sank. She must have gone off with some guy, was his first thought, but then he chastised himself for the unkindness of that assumption. She was probably in the ladies’ room jazzing up her makeup.
“Where’s Charmaine?” he barked in a more strident voice than he’d intended when he got to the table.
“Well, hello to you, too,” Clarence said.
“Home,” Linc said.
“Home?” His heart sank again. “Who took her home? Jesus H. Christ, what is she thinkin’, goin’ home with some stranger?”
“No one took her home.” Clarence glowered at him. “I swear, boy, when did you fall out of the dumb tree?”
“Huh?”
“She stayed home to begin with,” Linc explained. “Guess she took yer advice about it bein’ too dangerous to come out t’night.”
“Poor thing. She really wanted ta go dancin’, too,” Clarence added. “She was gonna teach me how ta do the shag.”
Oh, yeah? If Charmaine’s gonna shag anyone, it’s gonna be me. Oh, my God! I can’t believe I thought that. I do not want Charmaine to shag me. Well, I might want it, but I wouldn’t let her do it. I mean, I wouldn’t ask her to do it. Aaarrgh!
They both looked at him as if he were some kind of Simon Legree who had wielded a whip over Charmaine. Some image, that!
“I’ll go over to the bar and have a beer until you two are ready to go home. I need to hitch a ride with you.” He glanced pointedly at each of the women, who had been following the conversation with avid interest.
“Girls, I wantcha ta meet Rusty. Rusty, this here is Wanda,” Clarence said, nodding toward a blonde with teased hair and a bimbo cowgirl outfit that would do Charmaine proud. The fringed skirt showed a bit of neon pink thong. She weighed about two hundred pounds.
“And this is Jolene,” Linc said, squeezing the shoulder of a mocha-skinned, similarly attired cowgirl with cornrows in her long black hair and a ring in her one nostril. She was skinny as a fence rail.
Dale Evans must be turning over in her grave.
“Unless you want me to call Charmaine and ask her to come pick me up,” he offered as an afterthought. Maybe Clarence and Linc had big plans for these babes. It boggled the mind, but stranger things happened, he supposed.
“Nope, we’ll be ready in ’bout fifteen minutes,” Clarence said. “Wanda and Jolene was about to leave anyways. They’s gotta get up early t’morrow fer the Gumbo Queen contest over in Natchitoches.”
As Raoul walked away, he heard the women giggle.
Everything’s just peachy, chère . . .
The place reeked of peaches when Raoul got home.
He followed the peach scent, first to the bathroom, then out through the kitchen to the porch, where Charmaine rocked back and forth with big fuzzy cow-clad feet propped on the back porch rail, listening to Fiddlin’ Frenchie Bourke belt out “Let’s Go to Big Mamou.” She wore the most hideous, adorable cow pajamas. The St. Jude statue sat in the other rocker, where he’d put it yesterday. Her date for the night.
“Holy crawfish! The whole house smells like peaches. And out here, too.” Way to go, cowboy! Is that the best greeting you can come up with?
Charmaine almost tipped over her rocker as she jumped to her feet. “Rusty! What are you doing home so early? Oh, please, don’t tell me you brought your date back here for a little cowboy delight.”
“No, Amelie dropped me off at The Horny Bull an hour ago. Clarence and Linc brought me home. But really, sugar, cowboy delight?” He laughed, then went still. “What happened to your face?”
Charmaine put a hand to her face and shrieked, “You jerk! You cracked it.”
“I cracked what?” He quickly glanced about the porch floor to see if he’d stepped on something.
“My peach mud mask. You scared me, and my face moved. It took me a half hour to get it this hard, and now look.”
Oh, she means her face. I cracked her face. “I’ve been hard ever since you got here, and I haven’t cracked yet,” he murmured.
“What?”
Oops. Didn’t mean to say that out loud. “Nothing.” He leaned down and sniffed. Yep, her face smelled like peaches. In fact, all of her did. And, man, did he like peaches!
She shoved a half-empty bottle of beer into his hand and stomped past him into the house. Was there anything in the world cuter than cows swinging back and forth on Charmaine’s ass?
He followed Charmaine to the bathroom, where she left the door open. Leaning against the jamb, he watched as she looked into the mirror over the sink and began to peel off the mud gunk. Her hair was drawn back off her face with a stretchy headband. Little by little she pulled off all the crap, then rinsed her face over and over with handfuls of cold water.
“The things women do to get beautiful!” he remarked. And wasn’t it amazing how he could get turned on by a facial peel? But then he recalled one time observing to Linc in prison that he got turned on by Charmaine’s kneecaps, and the back of her neck, and the way she ate crawfish, and . . .
Linc had laughed and said, “In other words, everything about Charmaine turns you on.”
She shrugged, still staring at herself in the mirror. “What? The wonderful Am-el-ie has so much natural beauty she doesn’t need any help? Pfff!”
I wonder if she’s wearing anything under those jammies. “What does that stuff do anyway?”
“Cleanses the skin and tightens pores.”
“What’s wrong with soap?” Like I
care. What I really want to know is whether every part of Charmaine smells like peaches, and what she would say if I asked to eat her.
“Too drying.”
Not if I . . . oh, she means the soap. Whew! That was a close one. “Yep, that’s what I think when I’m in the shower. Will my soap dry out my skin?”
She gave him a dirty look for making fun of her. Imagine the dirty look she’d give him if she knew what he was really thinking. “You should be concerned, being out in the sun as much as you are. I could give you a facial, if you’re willing.”
He scrunched up his nose with distaste.
“It would feel really good.”
“I’m sure it would, babe.” He actually gave her offer some consideration, that was how pitiful he was. The prospect of Charmaine laying her hands on him held great appeal, but, nah. When—or if—Charmaine ever put her hands on him again, he was holding out for something better than a slathering of mud. “Maybe some other time.” Then he said something really stupid as he sniffed the air some more, “I love peaches.”
She arched her eyebrows at him and smiled sardonically. “I know.”
“Remember the time we drank all those peach margaritas?” Dumb, dumb, dumb. Have you lost your mind, Lanier, bringing that up? He gave himself a mental thwap upside the head.
She studied him, as if questioning whether he was serious or not. “How could I forget? It was our honeymoon.”
“Our wonderful two-day honeymoon at the Holiday Inn.” That was all they’d been able to afford, and all the time they’d been able to take off from school.
He thought she would laugh and make a sarcastic remark, but instead, she said softly, “It was wonderful to me.”
“Me too,” he said after a long pause. This was dangerous, dangerous territory. “I’m going out on the porch to finish this beer with Jude.”
She nodded.
Whether that meant she would join him once her pores closed up or not, he wasn’t sure. If she was smart, she’d skedaddle off to bed. Her bed. If he was smart, he’d skedaddle off to bed, too. Alone.
When was either of us that smart?
Raoul sat on the rocker for quite a while, listening to BeauSoleil sing that classic “Jolé Blon.” No Charmaine. But that was all right. It was nice to have this quiet time.
He really did love this ranch. Ever since his mother brought him here when he was four, the Triple L had entranced him. A younger Clarence had been around then, and he’d taken him out to the barn to show him some new calves. Actually, he’d probably wanted to protect him from the shouting that was going on in the ranch house. Apparently, his mother had never bothered to inform his father until then that their weekend affair five years earlier had resulted in a son, although she’d made sure Charles Lanier’s name was on the birth certificate as father.
The only reason she’d been dropping the Daddy bomb then had been that she needed some place to dump her kid while she went off to Acadia, a French province in Canada, for three months to do research for a masters degree in the history of Cajun culture. She’d needed a babysitter, pure and simple.
His mother had managed to drop him off for three months on that first occasion and periodically for short visits over the years, but only when it had been convenient for her. When his father had tried to gain custody, she’d dug in her heels and stopped the visits altogether for years.
“Why so grim, cowboy?” Charmaine asked, perching herself on the porch rail off to his right. Even with the dim light coming from the kitchen, he could see that her face glowed from her recent ministrations.
Maybe I should let her give me one of those facials, after all. Then again, maybe not.
“Just thinkin’ about my dad and my mom.”
“Whoo-ee! An explosive combination, those two.”
“Yep.”
“Do you see your mother very often?”
He shook his head. “Haven’t seen her for more than two years.”
“Really? I saw her on a local TV station last month. She’s making quite a name for herself in academic circles, isn’t she?”
He nodded. His mother was the well-known Dr. Josette Pitre. Born and raised on Bayou Teche, she had been and still was a free spirit, a hippie at a time when hippies were already out of style. “She fancies herself the premier expert on Cajun culture, I hear,” he said.
“She has done a lot to gain respect for Cajuns, not just the language but in art and history and all that stuff.”
“Hey, sweetheart, since when did you become a cheerleader for my mother? As I recall, she didn’t like you from the get-go and didn’t mind telling you so.”
Charmaine shrugged with a “who cares” attitude. “Lots of people don’t like me.”
Like Amelie.
“She couldn’t quite get over her son marrying a hair dresser wannabe. Talk about! My only saving grace in her eyes was that I was Cajun. No offense, baby, but your mother is a bitch. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the good work she’s done, though.”
There had been a period a few decades back when the public schools of southern Louisiana had tried to wipe out the Cajun dialect and customs from all its native students, considering it inferior to the French language and culture. Eventually, that misguided movement had been reversed, thank God, because of lots of dedicated individuals, including his mother. He’d grown up being fluent in classic French, Cajun French, and good old Southern English under his mother’s tutelage. Lot of good that did him when he was sticking his arm up to the elbow in a pregnant cow’s ass.
“I suppose you’re right, but when I was a kid all I saw was a mother who cared more about research and a career than me, except when she could show me off to her friends by having me recite ‘Evangeline’ in French.” Longfellow had detailed the plight of the Acadians’, or Cajuns’, historical exile in that well-loved poem. He’d come to hate it.
“Remember when they pulled ‘Evangeline’ from the English curriculum in high school? Some people need to get a life and leave other people’s alone.”
He nodded.
“Now I understand. Your mother relishes highbrow stuff. Me, I’m lowbrow, for sure.” Charmaine smiled after she spoke. It was obvious she could care less what his mother thought of her. Bless her self-confident soul!
“I kind of like lowbrow,” he said. Way too much!
“I know,” she said, and smiled again.
Does she have any idea how my heart races when she smiles like that?
No, someone replied.
His head jerked to the right. St. Jude just stared straight ahead.
“Back to my mother. You can’t be offended by my mother disliking you, chère. She’s pretty good at spreading her dislikes around.”
“Personally, I think she abused you as a child . . . with neglect.”
They’d had this conversation before, and he wasn’t in the mood for rehashing the old argument. “Some women—rather, some people—sacrifice their personal lives for a greater good.” Son of a bitch! Am I really defending my mother? Wonders never cease.
“Unlike my mother who sacrificed me for her own good?” Charmaine asked.
“Well, they both did, in the end. But the fact that we were both neglected, in different ways, doesn’t constitute child abuse.” I need a psychiatrist.
“Would you ever do that to your own child?”
“Never.”
His mother, now a full professor at Tulane and a well-known feminist, had never married. “Maybe my mother would have acted differently if I’d been a girl.” Yep, a good psychiatrist.
“Puh-leeze!”
“Really. Sometimes I wonder if my mother likes men at all. Her rage is so bitter about the male species . . . including me.” I had three beers tonight. Could they be causing this running of the tongue?
“She was rather cool to you when we were married,” Charmaine mused. “I mean, when we were married and living together.”
Raoul felt an odd pleasure at Charmaine’s remembering
that they were still married. “Well, cool turned to ice eventually. She totally cut me off when I was arrested for drug dealing. She never once questioned that I was guilty.”
“It’s amazing the impact mothers can have on their children,” she said, a wistful expression on her face.
“Not just on children. My mother’s twisting it to my dad on numerous occasions over the years turned him into a hard, resentful man.”
“You never understood your father,” she claimed.
He ignored her claim, one she’d made before with no explanations. “I suspect there were a number of affairs but never a marriage for him, either.”
Charmaine’s eyes suddenly went wide, as if she’d just thought of something. “Rusty! You said you hadn’t seen your mother in over two years. Don’t tell me. She didn’t come to your trial . . . or visit you in jail?”
He shrugged. “I was an embarrassment. She was about to get her professorship, and she couldn’t risk the association.” Not that I would have allowed her on my visitor list.
“Bull crap!”
He smiled at Charmaine’s vehemence. “Hey, sweetheart, you didn’t come either,” he pointed out gently. Not that I would have allowed you to come to that sordid place, either.
“That’s the second time you’ve said that to me. I don’t recall you asking me to come.”
“Would you have come if I’d asked?” Pointless question.
“Probably not,” she confessed. “I had just gotten married again.”
He winced, not wanting to be reminded.
“Oh, don’t make that face at me. I imagine you had just as many women in your life these past ten years. You just didn’t marry them.”
“Were you in love with all of them?” I do not want to know. Don’t tell me. Dumb question. One of many in a long line of dumb questions tonight.
“No,” she said flatly, without hesitation.
Maybe it wasn’t such a dumb question. “Any of them?”
This time she did hesitate. “Only one.”
Me? Raoul did a mental high five but zipped his lips. Never in a million years would he step into that mortar field.
But Charmaine saved him a response by asking her own loaded question. “Were you in love with any woman during all those years?”