“I’m not taking any chances. Turn around and start walking toward your Jeep out front.”
“Everybody is looking at us,” he said in a suffocated whisper.
“So what?” She pressed the weapon into his back, prodding him forward.
No one rushed forward to help him… not that he really needed help, but Charmaine might slip and his butt would be history. Behind him, the whole LeDeux clan and their guests hooted and laughed their encouragement at his “kidnapping” by his wife.
“Way to go, Charmaine!” Luc yelled. “Ouch! Why’d you jab me with your elbow, Sylvie?”
“Make him beg, Charmaine,” Rachel offered. “Ouch! Why’d you jab me with your elbow, Remy?”
“Doan you mess this one up, Rusty,” Tante Lulu advised.
“Crawfish! Think crawfish!” Tee-John and Jimmy shouted at the same time.
René had the “band” start playing another song while he belted out, “Love is better… the second time around…”
“Bowlegged, boy! Bowlegged,” Clarence called out.
Raoul knew they were all laughing at them, in the kindest way, but it was humiliating. He should have been the one in charge. As usual, Charmaine had surprised them all.
On second thought, I don’t freakin’ care. Charmaine is going to be in my arms tonight, come hell or high water or pistols. The night is young. And I am so hot and bothered I can’t see straight.
The first day of the rest of their lives was about to begin, albeit in a most bizarre fashion.
He hoped.
And bizarre could be good.
He hoped.
Chapter 16
The bed does WHAT?
Charmaine, still barefooted, forced Rusty to drive them down the road a bit to the nearest motel, a place called The Lucky Duck.
The motel looked reasonably clean to her, from the outside, which was all that mattered for what she had in mind. But she should have been alerted by the neon sign out front in the form of Daisy Duck in a thong bikini with blinking breasts and by the desk clerk who asked if she wanted the hourly or nightly rate, neither of which were cheap. Of course, Rusty’s barely suppressed laughter should have been a clue, too.
“Holy shit!” he said as he entered the room first with her pressing a pistol in his back. It was only when he stepped aside that she got her first view of the “Duck Pen,” as their room was called. Other rooms were called “Quack, Quack,” “Feather That,” “Waddle Room,” “I Like Mud,” and “Beak Me.”
Her response was, “Holy catfish!”
She took one look at the circular platform bed with the mirror on the ceiling, the picture on the wall of a naked couple cavorting on a swing, and the locked glass case sporting what had to be X-rated toys, then bolted for the still-open door. Rusty jumped in front of her and slammed the door shut, barring her escape.
“Let me go,” she said, tears of frustration welling in her eyes. Why did things always seem to go wrong for her? Even when she tried to be high-class—though kidnapping a man didn’t qualify—she ended up in low class situations. As far as dumb went, this ranked right up there with loan sharks. No wonder people called her a dumb bimbo. “Let me go,” she repeated.
“Not a chance,” he said. The grin on his face merited at least a punch in the stomach.
He didn’t even flinch.
“You knew what this place was, didn’t you?”
“I suspected.” He still grinned.
The louse! “And you didn’t tell me?”
“Why would I do that?” Grin, grin, grin!
“You’ve been here before?” she accused him.
“Never, but Clarence told me about it. He got Daffy’s Den one time.”
Charmaine did not want to think of Clarence in a porno motel. Or who the ducklet was that he’d brought here. On the other hand, he might have been with his wife, she supposed.
Rusty took the pistol out of her hand and laid it gently on a nearby dresser. “Dare I hope that thing is unloaded?”
“Of course it’s unloaded. I’m not that much of an idiot.” She narrowed her eyes at him then. “You knew it was unloaded… and came anyway?”