She blinked at him, then raised her chin. “I’m here to visit. On my lawyer’s advice.”
Don’t you dare blink those puppy-dog eyes at me, Charmaine. I am immune. “Luc told you to come here?”
She nodded. And hitched one hip, leaning against her mop.
I am not ogling her hips. Not, not, not! I am a man with a mission. I am immune. “For how long?” he finally managed to inquire.
“A couple of weeks.”
He groaned. He couldn’t help himself. Immunity only lasts so long.
“Are y’all hungry?” she asked, changing the subject.
“For what?” he blurted out. Did I really say that?
“You betcha,” Linc and Jimmy—the traitors—said on either side of him.
She means food.
I knew that.
“No,” he said, though his stomach was grumbling at the succulent smells that filled the kitchen. Is that crawfish étouffée I smell? My favorite. What a coincidence! Hah! I better be on guard. Charmaine is pulling out all the stops. For what purpose? Hmmm.
Charmaine smiled.
He hated it when she smiled. Well, he hated how it made him feel.
She arched an eyebrow at the two men flanking him.
He realized how rude he was being, not introducing them.
“Charmaine, this is Abel Lincoln, better known as Linc.” He jerked his head to the black cowboy on his right. Linc had been a fellow inmate of Raoul’s who had become a good friend. Raoul was tall at six-foot-three; Linc had a good three inches on him.
“Linc is a musician, Charmaine. You should hear his music sometime,” Raoul said.
“Really? I look forward to it.”
He told Linc, “Charmaine loves all kind of music… as you probably noticed with her mop dancing routine.”
Charmaine sliced him with a glower.
Then Raoul motioned with his head to his other side. “And this is Jimmy O’Brien. He’s helping out on the ranch till he goes back to school.” Jimmy was a fifteen-year-old high school dropout, but he would get his high school diploma, come hell or high water, if Raoul had anything to do with it. Actually, he wasn’t so much a drop-out as a kick-out. He wasn’t a bad kid, but he’d been hanging with a bad crowd and had been involved in a serious incident of vandalism resulting in thousands of dollars in fines and restitution. His father, a widower at his wit’s end, had appealed to his good friend Clarence for help. As a result, Jimmy was working about five hours a day at the ranch to help pay off his fines and completing correspondence courses the rest of the time to keep up to date with his schoolwork. He hoped to return to his father’s home in January at the beginning of a new semester, or next summer at the latest.
“Jimmy is our mathematician cowboy,” Raoul told Charmaine. “I swear he’s a regular Bill Gates when it comes to numbers.”
Jimmy appeared about to protest, then shut his mouth with a click.
Raoul looked at Charmaine, sighed, and announced to the two guys, “And this is Charmaine.” His heart twisted as he added, “My wife.”
“Wife?” Linc exclaimed. “I thought you were divorced.”
So did I. “So did I.”
“You lucky dog!” Jimmy muttered under his breath, barely loud enough for him to hear.
I don’t know about lucky, but I am a dog, for sure, to be looking at her and thinking what I’m thinking.
“Pleased to meet you.” Charmaine flashed a big ol’ beauty pageant smile at Linc and Jimmy, which wouldn’t gain her any crowns but probably their lifelong devotion. Charmaine always did have the smile-thing down pat. In fact, she had a repertoire of smiles for different occasions. Amazing, the things he still remembered about her. Especially the smiles she’d reserved just for him on special occasions.
“My pleasure,” Linc said with a courtly bow.
Yep, lifelong devotion.
“Likewise, ma’am,” Jimmy said.
Raoul got a perverted satisfaction at Charmaine’s face flushing up over being referred to as “ma’am.” Raoul was old enough to know that women had a thing about age, and “ma’am” was definitely an age-defining word. For a former beauty queen, he imagined it would be even more offensive.