After that she scoured the bathroom sink, toilet, and tub, even the tub surround and floor tiles. The bedrooms got a cursory whisk of a dust cloth on heavy old furniture dark with age. She used a dry mop to remove the curly dirt, or dust balls, under the beds. She would do a more thorough cleaning tomorrow.
Charlie’s bedroom door was closed, and she didn’t bother to open it. The bedroom Rusty had been using was the one he had used as a boy when visiting his father, as evidenced by a few rodeo posters on the cypress plank walls and Zane Grey novels and a half-deflated football in a bookcase. More recent additions were the myriad animal medicine books, veterinary and ranching magazines, and what appeared to be a large, leather doctor’s bag. Besides that, the room contained a single bed against one wall, a large dresser, and a bedside table. She’d been to the ranch a number of times alone, and she had slept in that bed with Rusty on the one occasion when they’d visited his father together. Somehow it hadn’t seemed so small then.
Quickly, she pushed those memories aside.
By 6:00 P.M., the kitchen sparkled from her cleaning efforts. The smaller wood table in the kitchen had six chairs; so she’d set place settings for six with the old Fiesta dinnerware and bone-handled cutlery. The wonderful smells of her crawfish casserole and baking bread and a frozen apple pie of Tante Lulu’s filled the air.
She was putting the finishing touches on the linoleum floor with an old rag mop when one her favorite songs came on the local Golden Oldies rock station on the radio sitting on the windowsill. While the music blared out, Charmaine danced with her mop. Every time the Beatles sang, “Well, shake it up, baby,” Charmaine shimmied around, up and down her mop handle; she wasn’t the daughter of a stripper for nothing. Every time the Beatles called out, “Twist and Shout,” she did that, too, with her own sexy version of that dance move.
Why she would be in such a good mood, she had no idea. Perhaps a day of hard work with visible effects. Perhaps relief that her money problems were at least in someone else’s hands. Perhaps just because it was a good song.
That’s when she heard a choking sound behind her and a muttered, “Lord have mercy!”
She came to a screeching halt, midtwist, and turned to see Rusty standing in the archway, staring at her as if she were an alien landed in his kitchen. He wore dusty Wrangler jeans, a black Bite Me Bayou Bait Co. T-shirt, boots, and a cowboy hat. His hands and arms and face were filthy. Days-old whiskers gave him an outlaw look.
Flanking him on either side were a middle-aged black cowboy the size of a tupelo tree, similarly attired and covered with dust, who grinned at Rusty and remarked, “I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” and on the other side a young man of about fifteen with auburn hair and freckles, also similarly attired and equally dirty, who just grinned.
Aerosmith was singing one of their old songs now, “Sweet Emotion.” Ironic, really, because when she looked at Rusty, despite all their history, she was filled with such sweet emotion she could barely breathe.
Rusty’s dark Cajun eyes were welcoming at first, before he scowled, taking in her cleaning efforts with ever-widening lids. Then he sniffed the air, gave her another sweeping head-to-toe scrutiny, and repeated his initial comment, “Lord have mercy!”
Chapter 3
Dirty dancing, for sure…
Raoul felt as if he’d been sucker punched to the floor. At the same time, he felt light as a feather, floating up to the sky.
Never in a million years had he expected to walk into the ranch house kitchen and see his ex-wife—no, his wife—in her bare feet, wearing a pair of cutoff jeans that showed off her butt to perfection, and a white, short-sleeved T-shirt with let me shag you emblazoned across the prettiest breasts this side of the Mason-Dixon line. Even worse—or better—Charmaine was pole-dancing… with a mop, for chrissake.
And she looked good. Damned good! So good, in fact, that his teeth ached and his knees felt wobbly. Before he did something foolish, like jump her bones, or say, “Welcome home, baby,” he snarled, “What the hell are you doing here?”