“I haven’t a clue what’s going on here.”
“You gave me the money. It’s a done deal.”
“What’s a done deal? I’ve been worried about you. It’s not safe for you back in Houma, or anywhere away from this ranch. Hell, not even on this ranch. Those Dixie Mafia thugs could show up at any time. This money will buy your safety.”
Tears were welling in her eyes again and there sure as hell wasn’t any smoke in this room . . . except for that steaming out of her nostrils. “Screw the money. Screw the Mafia. And screw you.”
“Is that an invitation?” he tried to joke.
“I swear, you could be a prime exhibit in the Clueless Hall of Fame.” That’s just what Luc said . . . except he mentioned the Dumb Man of the Year award. Same thing. With that, she opened the door and stomped out, leaving him standing there, stunned and . . . well, clueless.
Luc just happened to walk by then, on the way to the bathroom. Spying him standing there in the open doorway like a dummy, he backtracked a couple of steps. “Was that my sister I just saw flying out of here breathing fire, or was it Gypsy Rose Charmaine?”
“I haven’t a clue.” And that was the truth.
“You didn’t tell her that she’s like a lizard camouflaging herself, did you?”
“No! But I feel as if I was just hit by a two-by-four, and I have no idea why. Guess I just don’t understand women.”
“Join the club,” Luc said.
The pilgrims had nothing on the Cajuns . . .
Tante Lulu’s Thanksgiving feast was a resounding success, to no one’s surprise, least of all Charmaine, and they hadn’t even started.
By four o’clock, everyone was scurrying about with platters or seated on chairs and improvised benches around the backyard—all seventeen of them—waiting for the food to be served.
“Now, wait a minute, everyone. First, we gots to say thanks,” Tante Lulu announced after ringing a dinner bell to quiet everyone down. “Me, I’ll go first. Thank you God fer this fine food and fer our family and friends joined here today. This year I’m ’specially thankful fer Rusty to be here with us, out of the slammer, and that Charmaine’s got both her kneecaps. Yer next, Luc.”
“Why do I always have to go first?” Sylvie pinched him, and he said, “Ouch!” Then, “I’m thankful this year that I have three healthy little girls and that I got snipped so now Sylvie and I can make lo . . . ouch!” Sylvie pinched him again, and he sat down, smiling innocently at her.
“I’m thankful this year that Luc has retained his sense of humor,” Sylvie said, “despite his having been snipped.” It was Luc’s turn to pinch Sylvie, who sat down with a soft yelp.
“We better eat pretty soon, or the food will get cold,” René griped. To which, Tante Lulu just frowned. And he contributed, “I’m thankful to be back in the bayou I love.”
“Thass nice,” Tante Lulu said, patting him on the back.
“I’m thankful to have gained a wife this year,” Remy said, leaning down to buss Rachel on the lips.
“Hey, you stole what I was going to say,” Rachel complained. “Oh, well, I’m thankful, too, for having found Remy this year.”
“Found? Found? What? Like I was lying around like a log just waitin’ to be tripped over?”
Rachel kissed him to shut him up, which everyone thought was a good idea.
Tee-John stood to speak, and Tante Lulu yelped, “Whass that you have on? And you, too, Jimmy O’Brien? Fer shame!”
“Oops!” Tee-John said, looking guiltily over to Jimmy, who sat next to him. Tee-John wore a T-shirt with the crawfish logo SHUCK ME, SUCK ME, EAT ME RAW! and Jimmy wore one, probably a gift from Tee-John from one of his Bourbon Street excursions, that read, PINCH ME, PEEL ME, EAT ME! Charmaine wasn’t sure who was being the bad influence on whom in this picture.
“Tee-John,” Tante Lulu cautioned.
He stood up again and blurted out, “I’m thankful it’s Thanksgiving and Tante Lulu won’t whomp me.” He grinned mischievously at her.
Jimmy stood and said, “Me too.”
After that, it was Fleur’s turn. She and Dirk had finally emerged from their tin cave about an hour ago, beaming in the afterglow of their seemingly nonstop lovemaking. Fleur was dressed to the gills today in her version of a cowgirl outfit. It involved lots of fringe around a décolletage that defied gravity and tight, tight jeans. Charmaine had no idea how her mother was going to fit any food inside her body without all the seams giving way.
A little bit ago, Dirk had apparently tried to start Fleur on a jogging regimen, but she soon discovered that jogging caused perspiration, or glowing. Southern girls did not sweat, they glowed. That was apparently unacceptable to Fleur, who’d declared that Dirk must find her a cellulite-removing exercise that didn’t cause glowing. Geesh!
Dirk made Charmaine a bit uncomfortable. When he wasn’t holed up with her mother, he watched her intently all the time. And he hung around like a shadow at every opportunity. It wasn’t as if he was interested in her, sexually. But he was interested, for some reason.
Now, Fleur stood before the assembled family and said, “I’m thankful to be with my little girl today.” She looked over at Charmaine and smiled in the most needy way.
“I think I’m going to puke,” Charmaine said under her breath.
“Don’t be so hard on your mother,” Rusty advised. He’d insisted on sitting next to her on the bench, way too close, and kept harping on wanting to talk to her.
Hah! “Don’t preach to me, buster, not when you have so many unresolved issues with your own mother.” Besides, I’d rather not talk to you at all, you . . . you jerk! Don’t come sniffing around me, you hound dog, not after you signed those divorce papers.
“I don’t have any unresolved—”
“Shut up!” Before I cry.
“Don’t you think you’re being a little unfair to me?”
Unfair? she shrieked silently. Unfair is God putting temptation in my lap, then telling me not to touch because it is all over. That was what she thought. What she said was, “Shut up before I hit you.”
The fool grinned as if she’d said she would kiss him. I didn’t, did I? Really, Charmaine couldn’t wait till this whole feast was over so she could crawl into bed and cover her head with the sheets. She did not want to think about what she’d seen earlier. Rusty had been signing some papers when she’d walked into the living room. Divorce papers, she was sure. Especially when he’d capped it off by giving her all that money.
Rusty elbowed her. “You’re daydreamin’, darlin’.”
She was going to say something vulgar to him, but stopped herself when she figured he would probably take it as a compliment and continue with that silly grinning.
Dirk the Jerk, dressed to the nines—not!—in a white wife beater T-shirt and black jogging shorts, had the nerve to say, “I’m thankful for all the women in the world with cellulite so that my business is booming this year.”
His words were met with communal boos and hisses from all the ladies and laughter from the men.
Clarence was thankful for his home at the Triple L and the good honest work provided there.
Linc glanced over at his brother, then at Tante Lulu. In a choked voice, he said, “I am thankful this year to have been given back a piece of my past.”
Charmaine stood, without prompting, knowing she couldn’t escape. “I’m thankful, too, that I still have my kneecaps. And I’m thankful to have such a warm, though often irritating, family. That’s all.” She plopped down with a huge sigh.
Rusty stood and cleared his throat. She knew how hard this kind of thing was for him, but, really, he was the host of this shindig, even if Tante Lulu had engineered it all. “I’m thankful that you are all here today, sharing our food and goodwill. And this year I’m especially thankful for . . .” He paused, looked down at her as if unsure whether he should say what he was about to say, then shrugged his shoulders in a “What the hell!” manner and concluded, “. . . Charmai
ne.”
Thunderous applause greeted his statement as everyone hooted and cheered and food started to circulate around the tables.
Charmaine stared at him, and said, “Fool!”
He waggled his eyebrows at her.
And, God help her, her crazy heart did flip-flops.
Okay, that’s it. That’s my cue. No more Mr. Nice Guy . . . rather, no more Ms. Nice Girl. Time for the old Charmaine to take control.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” the Jerk-of-the-Month asked. Mr. I-can-divorce-you-twice without even blinking.
“Like what?” she inquired, giving him her ultra- innocent, eyelash-batting look, the one that had won her Miss Personality in the beauty pageant.
“Like your brain is churning with plans.”
She smiled then. “Oh, yeah, baby, I’ve got plans.”
He laughed. “Should I be scared?”
“Guar-an-teed!”
A man’s gotta do what man’s gotta do . . .
Raoul had plans. Big plans.
Sometime between his confrontation with a tearful Charmaine in her bedroom and the plethora of thanks by practically everyone in the universe at the feast, he had decided to take back control of his life. His wife had been holding the reins thus far with her “I am a born-again virgin” crap. Enough! He was the man. He was driving this wagon from now on. And no artificial hymen was going to barricade the road.
Unfortunately, her family wasn’t cooperating.
By six o’clock, the Thanksgiving party was still going strong, and people were talking about the musical entertainment about to begin. Holy stinkin’ cow patties! A regular Roman orgy of a food feast they’d just had! Talk till their tongues got tired! Now music! What next? The chicken dance? The Hokey Pokey? The River Dancers flown in to raise some dust? Why not truck in some Angola prisoners for an impromptu rodeo?
He looked around the backyard of his beloved ranch and relished the sweetness of having a home . . . no, this particular home. The ranch house might be in disrepair, but the setting was spectacular, in his opinion. There was the prairie, which was characteristic of this region of Louisiana, but there was a slow-meandering bayou, as well, with all its myriad birds and wildlife, even the occasional gator. It was not a lush, tropical paradise dotted with swamps, like Bayou Black, where most of the LeDeuxs lived, but it was marshy in spots, which didn’t seem to bother the steers.
And look there at that small raft of water hyacinths floating by. As beautiful as the lavender flowers were, they were the bane of all bayous in Louisiana. It had all started in the most innocent way at the 1884 International Cotton Exposition of New Orleans. Japanese exhibitors handed out samples of a flowering aquatic plant native to Latin America. Unfortunately one single plant could producing sixty-five thousand plants in a single season and thus had posed a problem for Louisiana ever since by clogging waterways and cutting off sunlight necessary to aquatic life. They were almost impossible to control.
He had to laugh when he saw René, ever the environmentalist, walk over with a rake and use the handle to lift the pesty plant mass out of the water. With a scowl of distaste, he carried it over to a nearby burn barrel.
As Raoul continued to scan his homestead, he began to wonder, belatedly, about all the electric Christmas lights that had been strung in the trees. Could it be possible . . . oh, Mon Dieu . . . they were going to be hanging around till it was dark! At this rate, the gang would be here not just when the cows came home, but when the cows went out again at dawn.
Raoul was, frankly, all partied out. It was past time for him to act a man and stop letting Charmaine run this show that had become their private life. Days ago, he’d made a silent decision about his relationship with Charmaine, without even realizing it. The capper had been Tante Lulu’s revelation about Charmaine’s other husbands, and then his shock and dismay when Luc had handed him the divorce papers, papers he knew he would not sign. Not unless Charmaine insisted he do so.
So, now he had plans—big plans—for another kind of party. A private one. And he wished everyone would just go home.
He yawned loudly.
He shuffled his feet.
He kept looking at his watch.
Did anyone take a hint?
Nope. Not one single person was budging. Not one single person said, “Well, I guess we better get going.” Not one single person said, “I didn’t realize how late it was. Gotta hit the road.” In fact, Tante Lulu came up and said, “Bide yer time, boy. There’s plenty of time fer hanky-panky.”
Oh, shit! Was I that obvious? “Was I that obvious?”
“Nah! I jist have a sense fer these things. And stop worryin’ so. Worryin’ never made the gumbo boil, and it ain’t gonna make the day go faster. Now prayin’, thass another matter entirely. Doan never hurt to pray.”
“Have you been reading my mind?”
She jiggled her eyebrows at him, then turned more serious. “Me, I have one regret today. That I dint get yer mother here.”
His brain practically exploded at that suggestion. He counted to three to prevent himself from yelling at the meddling broad. “You didn’t call my mother . . . please tell me that you didn’t call my mother.” What would be worse to Raoul than his mother showing up in his present mood would be his mother not showing up after having been invited.
“I dint, but I shoulda. Oh, doan get yer feathers all ruffled. I knows how angry you are right now, but she’s still yer mama, and you should make it up.”
“If and when I make it up with my mother, it should be my decision,” he asserted.
But the old bat was already floating off to interfere in someone else’s business. Raoul decided to “float off,” too. He had much to do before his personal party, like end-of-the-day ranch work, and he wasn’t sticking around for all the niceties of excusing himself.
Before he left, though, Tee-John and Jimmy came up beside him. They caught him in the act of getting one last ogle in at Charmaine in her sexy gypsy outfit. He was speculating idly what she wore under that take-no- prisoners corset blouse. Probably nothing. And how about below?
“We have some advice for you,” Jimmy said.
Uh-oh! “What kind of advice?”
“Chick advice,” Tee-John said.
Double that uh-oh. “Can I assume that you mean male-female-type advice? If so, forget about it. If I didn’t listen to old codger advice from Clarence, I’m not about to listen to two wet-behind-the-ears, snot-nosed kids whose only knowledge of women comes from Playboy and clueless movies.”
“I’m not snot-nosed,” Jimmy said.
“You’d be surprised what I know,” Tee-John said. “Anyhow, this is what Jimmy and I wanted to tell you to do . . . if you want to win Charmaine back.”
“Who says I want to win Charmaine back?” Do cows crap? Do bulls fornicate?
“Are you kiddin’? Ever heard of ‘hot tongueing?’ You look at Charmaine like she’s an ice-cream cone and—”
“I get the picture,” he interrupted. Man, I am one pathetic SOB, if teenagers can tell what I’m thinking.
“You gotta treat Charmaine like a crawfish,” Jimmy hinted, winking at him in the most ridiculous fashion.
“Yeah, a crawfish,” Tee-John added, with a wide, mischievous grin.
“And that’s your great advice? Crawfish? I have important business to take care of, and . . .” He let his words trail off as he noticed the two of them standing with hands on hips, chests thrust out, and smirks on their faces. They looked down at the vulgar sayings on their shirts, then at Charmaine, then at him, and smirked some more.
Good thing the two of them darted away then, laughing their fool heads off. If he’d been able to reach them, he would have thrown the dirty-minded duo in the horse trough.
Raoul left then, discreetly, telling Clarence and Linc that he didn’t need their help. When he returned two hours later, he discovered, to his horror, that the band was revving up for its third musical set . . . if you could call René on th
e accordion, Linc on the guitar, and Clarence on the harmonica a band. Charmaine had apparently been chiming in occasionally as the singer with a sexy-as-sin voice that could melt the brass off a doorknob, or turn some knobby body parts to brass.
I wonder how many of those watermelon margaritas she’s downed.
I wonder if I should chug down one or two . . . or ten myself.
Nope, I need a clear head for my big plan . . . big being the operative word.
No one had even noticed his absence. That wasn’t quite true. Charmaine had her head tilted to the side in question, but maybe it was just the effect of the margaritas. She was on the dance floor—the open area of the backyard where the tables had been pushed back—and she was dancing alone. Well, not quite alone. Luc and Sylvie’s three little girls were dancing around her, all of them moving to the music in a way that caused their skirts to twirl about. Each time Charmaine twirled, a little more of her bare calves were exposed.
Man oh man, I really like to run my hands over those calves. The skin is so soft. Charmaine has really nice calves, trim and muscle toned. Her ankles aren’t too shabby either, and her thighs, and . . .
The girls looked up at her adoringly as she taught them some silly dance steps that involved shifting from foot to foot and moving their hands and shoulders in a swaying motion.
It was seductive as hell coming from Charmaine, and he didn’t need much seducing at this point.
Luc and Sylvie, Remy and Rachel, Dirk and Fleur, Tee-John and Tante Lulu were out there dancing, too, to “Cochan du Lait.” A semifast Cajun two-step that involved some fancy footwork and swinging of the women under the men’s arms. They were all smiling at each other and laughing and having a grand ol’ time. Family, he realized in that instant. This was how real families behaved when they were together. An experience he’d never known he’d missed . . . till that very moment.
He tried to remember any Thanksgiving celebration in his past. There had been some, but nothing like this. Plain turkey dinners with his dad and Clarence and Clarence’s late wife were the closest he could recall, but they had been preceded and followed by ranch work. No daylong hoopla. No family joy.