With a grunt of disgust, she picked up a notebook she’d found under the bottom shelf of the bookcase, rose to her feet, and went outside. Instead of being embarrassed at being caught singing and dancing by himself, Rene smiled at her and started to stretch out his arms and waggle his fingers in a beckoning fashion for her to join him in a dance. But then, his eyes latched onto her attire, and he stopped dead in his tracks.
“Mercy!” he exclaimed.
She was wearing a red-and-white striped tube top of Tante Lulu’s that was about two sizes too small with flame-red spandex shorts that were straining at the seams. Why the old lady would need or want such garments was beyond Valerie. “Hey, I’m here without any extra clothes, and you don’t have any more clean shorts or shirts, and it’s hotter than hell,” she said defensively.
“Honey, you’ve been spouting legal charges ever since you got here, but I’m telling you now, it’s a true-blue crime for you to go within a mile of any red-blooded male dressed like that And right now, my blood is pumping crimson red. Whoo-eee!” He was looking at her as if she were naked. The lout!
She could feel her face heat up, but she wasn’t about to tuck tail and run like an overly sensitive teenager. “Don’t get any ideas,” she warned.
“Hah! Ideas are popping up in my brain like erotic popcorn.” He grinned at his analogy, then waggled his eyebrows at her.
“I’ve got more clothes on than you do,” she countered. And that was the truth. Rene wore only a pair of cut-off jeans.
“Sweetheart, the only way we would be on equal footing in that department would be if I shucked my shorts.” He put both hands to the waistband of his cut-offs and unsnapped the button.
She shrieked, “No!” He was probably just teasing, as usual, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
He continued to grin and give her a head-to-toe scrutiny, over and over. Thankfully, he re-snapped himself.
“Listen, Mister Lech, I want to talk to you about something.” She waved the notebook in front of her and asked, “What is this?”
“My doctoral thesis.”
“What do you mean, doctoral thesis? Don’t tell me you hold a PhD.”
“Not yet. Probably never. I haven’t worked on it in two years.”
That made sense. The notebook was full of pencilled remarks in all the margins, indicative of a work-in-progress. “It reads like a futuristic novel,” she remarked. “Even the title, ‘Southern Louisiana 2075: Land of the Lost.’“
He shrugged. “That’s what it is, a prediction of what’s going to happen over the next seventy or so years. Southern Louisiana is eventually going to disappear into the sea, that’s a fact, unless something drastic happens to change things.”
She cocked her head at him. “I just can’t imagine you in a college classroom.”
“I’m insulted.”
“No, you’re not. You could care less what I think. Where did you get your master’s?”
“Tulane.”
“In what?”
“Biology.”
She nodded. “What would you do with a doctorate?”
“I don’t know. Teach at the college level. Maybe.”
A college professor? Lordy, Lordy! Indiana Jones had nothing on him.
“Hell, Val, I was bored for a couple of years so I decided to go to school. Big deal!”
She wasn’t buying that self-deprecating crap a bit. This man liked to portray himself as a simple fisherman and an accordion player in a low-down bar band. She had no trouble accepting his role as an environmental lobbyist, figuring his love of the bayou and a glib tongue had gotten him the job. It had never occurred to her that he had a college education—an advanced college education.
“Who are you?” she asked suddenly, kicking into jury analyst mode.
“Me, I am just a simple Cajun man.” He gave her another head-to-toe onceover. “A simple Cajun man who is enjoying the view immensely.”
As frustrating as he was, there was a small part of Valerie that delighted in her being able to turn on the bayou bad boy. I can’t believe I’m letting him get to me like this. Holding the notebook up to her chest, she spun on her heels to walk into the house and get some kind of covering. “Stay right there till I come back,” she ordered. “I have more questions to ask you.”
“Like I can go anywhere.”
Within minutes she was back outside, wearing one of Rene’s dress shirts she’d found hanging in a closet. The shirt was open in front, but she was reasonably covered... though hotter than Hades.
Rene half-sat on the porch rail, with a longneck bottle of Dixie beer dangling from his fingertips, watching the rain begin to come down. The drops were light at first, like a fine mist, but the precipitation soon came down in blinding sheets, turning the parched earth into muddy pools. The stream would no doubt overflow if this kept up much longer, and the flooding might even reach the cabin. No reason for alarm, though, since the cabin was on stilts.
It was a moment out of time. The pelting rain, which had a unique, pure scent, created a cocoon around them—as if they were separate from the rest of the world. Just the two of them. Not even Tante Lulu, still inside, could intrude on this sense of intimacy.
She coughed to break the spell.
He turned and took a long swig from the bottle while staring at her. She watched his throat move as he drank and was amazed. Who knew a man’s neck could be so sexy?
His gaze was hot and raw.
She felt naked, even with the shirt.
Those two years must be catching up with me. Sinking down into the Adirondack chair, she tapped the notebook in her lap and said, “Tell me about this.”
Her voice betrayed her and came out in a choked whisper.
He smiled at her as if he understood. “Why? Are you suddenly converted to our cause? Sort of a Stockholm syndrome kind of thing?”
“You mean, where the prisoner falls in love with her captor?”
“Yeah.” He smiled even wider. The jerk.
“Get real. The day I fall in love with you will be a cold day in the bayou. And, no, I am not converted to your cause. I don’t even know what your cause is. But at least you’re finally admitting that I’m a captive here.”
“I had nothing to do—”
She waved a hand dismissively. “Enough with the excuses. Tell me about your research,” she said, patting the notebook.
“In a way, I’ve been studying the bayou since I was a three-year-old toddling after Luc. He protected me and my younger brother Remy from our father most of the time, taking the majority of the lickings. The way he protected us was to take us down to the bayou for what he called a campout. It was his way of alleviating our fears.”
“My childhood wasn’t so hot, either,” she confessed.
He raised his eyebrows skeptically.
“But I never became a bayou scientist as a result.”
He shrugged. “From an early age I loved the bayou, but I recognized that some things were wrong.
The biggest wake-up call came when my dad sold the family land, poor as it was, to an oil company.
Almost immediately, the landscape changed. We could no longer drink the water. They dug canals. Pipes burst. Hell, our rusted-out trailer soon sat in a foot of water.” He shrugged again. “But that was only one nail in the coffin. The biggest culprit by far is the levees.”
“The levees?” She frowned with confusion. “Levees prevent massive flooding. Levees are a good thing, aren’t they?”
“Not in Southern Louisiana. The annual flooding of the Mississippi over thousands of years is what put the rich alluvial deposits here that make up the bayous. The levees have straitjacketed that process. Taming the river has sparked a chain reaction of devastating proportions. Now mud deposited by flooding, which would normally have settled into swamps of Atchafalaya or Barataria Bay, is just carried out to the Gulf.
Do you know that we are losing land the size of a football field every twenty minutes or so? In a year’s time, we lose a landmas
s equal to Manhattan.”
“No way!”
“Absolutely.”
“Why isn’t anybody doing anything about it?”
He laughed.
“Okay, I get it. That’s what you’ve been trying to do as a lobbyist and getting knocked on your patoot at every turn.”
“Yep.”
“How can you just give up?”
He shrugged as color filled his face.
She realized something then. “You’re not giving up, are you?”
“Of course not. How can I?” He looked at her and said, “Maybe I’m being overly pessimistic. There was a commission formed a few years ago and it came up with a proposal called ‘Coast 2050: Toward a Sustainable Louisiana.’ It’s a coalition of eleven state and federal agencies that are going to try to rebuild the wetlands, but it would cost a whopping fourteen billion dollars.”
“What will you do?”
“I’m not sure yet. That’s why I came down the bayou, to think and regroup. I’ll never give up, though.
I’m kind of offended that you thought I would. That would be like knowing a family member is dying and doing nothing about it.”
Just then, something happened that surprised them both. The radio announcer interrupted Toby Keith’s “Whiskey Girl” and said, “We have a news bulletin regarding missing Trial TV analyst Valerie Breaux.”
They looked at each other and froze.
Rene shoved away from the porch rail and went over to turn the volume up on the radio.
“Houma Realtor Simone Breaux, Valerie Breaux’s mother, held a news conference today, along with her aunts, Congresswoman Inez Breaux, and herbal tea moguls Madeline and Margo Breaux, and her grandmother, oil lobbyist Dixie Breaux, along with FBI agents and local law enforcement officials, declaring Valerie Breaux a missing person.”
Well, at least, they know I’m missing. And care.
“Oh, shit!” Rene said.
The FBI agent spoke up on the radio. “Ms Breaux is officially missing under suspicious circumstances. Her car was discovered at the airport with her handbag and all her luggage. However, there has been no ransom note or other indication of a kidnapping. Not yet.”
How about two days without contact? How about any woman leaving without her purse, you idiots?
“Oh, shit!” Rene said again.
“Please let my darling daughter come home,” Simone Breaux said tearfully.
Darling daughter? That’s a laugh. Her mother, and all the other relatives, would find a way to profit from this disaster.
“This is a friggin’ nightmare!” Rene shouted.
She started to tell him that she had told him so, but decided he already knew that.
“Trial TV president, Amos Goodman, announced today that they are offering a hundred thousand dollar reward for information on Ms Breaux’s whereabouts that leads to her return.”
“Now that is interesting,” Valerie said. Mr Goodman must have found out about her firing. The fact that he’d put up a reward must mean he wanted her back. She smiled with self-satisfaction. Some small-dick producer must be squirming big-time about now.
“But wait a minute, we have some breaking news here,” the radio announcer continued. “The environmental organization Bayou Unite has just announced that Ms Breaux is safe and in hiding as she prepares a TV documentary that will crack this state wide open once it airs.
Here is Joe Bob Doucet, a spokesman for that organization.”
“I am going to kill him,” Rene said.
“That’s two of us,” she agreed.
“Bayou Unite is proud to announce that Valerie Breaux, famous Houma lawyer and successful Trial TV analyst, will be doing a documentary about the destruction of the Southern Louisiana ecosystem.”
“What!?” she screeched.
Rene just shook his head at the nerve of his good buddy.
“This documentary will be a wake-up call to all Americans,” J.B. continued, “and a warning to oil companies, developers, and sport fishermen that their free ride is over. Further questions should be directed to our company headquarters in Baton Rouge.”
“They have company headquarters in Baton Rouge?” she asked Rene.
“My garage,” he said.
“You told me this was your only home.”
“I lied.”
She made a low growling sound of outrage—outrage at him and the nutcases who had kidnapped her, then used her for their own publicity purposes, the Trial TV bigwigs who would also make hay out of this debacle, and her mother and other relatives who no doubt saw dollar signs waving in the wind. Not one person worried about her safety or what she wanted.
Then another amazing thing happened.
Brrrrr-ing. A phone rang.
Inside the cabin it could clearly be heard.
She and Rene locked glances and simultaneously asked, voices shrill with surprise, “We have a phone?” They both dove for the screen door.
A lady’s purse: mirror to her soul. . .
Tante Lulu’s pocketbook was ringing like crazy.
Rene was thoroughly disappointed in himself. They’d had a phone all along, and he hadn’t even known it. He should have guessed Tante Lulu wouldn’t stay here without some means of communicating with the outside world.
Val was leaning over, about to lunge for the purse, which he couldn’t allow to happen. Not till they’d had a chance to decide who she would contact and what she would say. So he tackled her from behind, landing them both on the floor, barely having time to register how much that hurt, before wrestling her for the bag. In the course of their tussle, the phone stopped, and so did Rene”.
He was staring, wide-eyed, at Val’s breasts, which had come loose from her tube top. Holy crawfish!
Son of a gun! Lordy, Lordy! It’s Christmas in friggin’ July! Merry Christmas to me! Turns out Valerie Breaux had two of the sweetest breasts he’d ever seen—full and uplifted and pink-tipped. Needless to say, he was imprinting them on his brain forever.
“You jerk!” she said, shoving him off her and pulling up her top.
“It was your fault for not handing over the purse.”
“I want that damn phone.” She advanced on him, claws raised.
He held the purse behind his back, and, man, was it heavy! What did his aunt carry in this thing—bricks? “Not yet. We have to talk first.”
“I am all talked out. Listen, big boy, you might have had a chance up till now, because you hadn’t actually been involved in my kidnapping. But from this moment forward, denying me that phone makes you an accessory to a felony.”
Several things happened at once then. Val got up close and personal to his body as he tried to hold the phone out of reach; it rang again; toilet flushed; and water ran in the bathroom. Then Tante Lulu came out and exclaimed, “Oops!” as if she was hearing the phone for the first time.
“Oops? That’s all you can say?” Val snarled at his aunt.
“Tante Lulu, you should have told us you had a phone.” Rene chastised her with a little more finesse.
The phone stopped ringing. The rain had stopped, too, which meant the heat would be rising again.
“What? I’m almos’ eighty years old. I could have a heart attack any minute and fall over deader ‘n a June bug. Ya thought I wouldn’t want a phone to call Remy to take me to a hospital or morgue or somethin’? Jeesh! Talk about!”
“You are an accessory to a felony, too,” Val told her. “I don’t care if you’re a hundred years old, you old biddy. You are going to the slammer.”
Tante Lulu cocked her head to the side and seemed to be thinking on Val’s threat. “Hmmm. Do you think one of those lifers will make me her bitch?” She shivered then, whether with fear or enthusiasm, it was hard to tell.
Val held out her hand to Rene for the phone.
Not a chance!
Instead he set Tante Lulu’s bag on the table and began to empty it, item by item. A wallet that weighed about five pounds, stuffed to overflowing with
cash, credit cards, and coupons. Several little Baggies that probably contained medicinal herbs for her traiteur practice; either that, or his aunt was smoking weed.
Tissues. A see-through makeup case. Condoms, which made Val blush. KY Jelly, which made him blush.
A blow-dryer. A box of Blonde Bomb hair dye. Three Richard Simmons CDs. Six parking and one speeding ticket, all overdue. A romance novel entitled The Very Virile Viking. A bag of rice and three Snickers bars. A bottle of My Sin perfume. A miniature vibrator, which he hoped was for some muscle problem. A Star magazine with a banner reading, “Headless Elvis Spotted in Bayou Swamp, Blue Suede Shoes Gave Him Away.” An address book. A calendar. A palm-sized statue of St. Jude. A pair of shocking pink, velvet handcuffs, for chrissake. A bottle of Avon Skin-So-Soft bath oil, which was often used by hunters and fishermen as a mosquito repellent. And, finally, at the bottom, his phone.
He had to ask, “Tante Lulu, what are you doing with condoms, KY Jelly, and a vibrator?” He refused to mention the handcuffs.
“Took ‘em away from Tee-John las’ time he was at my house,” she answered matter-of-factly. “Found ‘em in his book bag.”
Tee-John was his sixteen-year-old half-brother and a wilder rascal there never was. Not even he and his two brothers could beat the boy with his antics at that age.
“You people are all nuts,” Val opined.
“Join the club,” he said.
“Doan tell me ya thought they was for me,” Tante Lulu said, making taking sounds at the two of them.
“I din’t even know that thingamajig was a vibrator. Looks like red lips to me. How do ya use that thing?”
The last question she addressed to Val, who looked as if her flushed face might explode.
“Yeah, Val, how do you use that thingamajig?” he asked, batting his eyelashes with innocence.
“You stick it where the sun doesn’t shine,” she replied.
“Where is that?” Tante Lulu wanted to know.
Val very succinctly said, “Aaarrgh!”
Rene flipped open his phone and checked the queue. “Twenty-seven messages!” Talk about vibrations! His phone must have been set to vibrate underneath all the clutter in her handbag.
He was about to put the phone to his ear when Val said, “I want to hear the messages, too. They probably concern me.”