“Dinner will be ready in about twenty minutes if y’all want to wash up first.”
His two Benedict Arnolds nodded eagerly and left for the bunkhouse to wash up. He just scowled. He knew he sounded ungracious, but Charmaine was hauling in his two workers like a couple of bayou catfish. He refused to be her catfish. Not again.
Still, she had gone to some trouble. And he was hungry. “Do you have enough food?” he asked.
“Tante Lulu insisted I load up the car,” she answered brightly.
“I wondered about her T-bird out there. Why didn’t you drive your own car?”
Pink color bloomed on her cheeks, and he could tell she didn’t want to tell him. But she did, finally, with a haughty lift to her chin. “I gave my BMW to Luc to sell. Hopefully, Bobby Doucet will accept that as part payment on my bill and set up a reasonable plan for repaying the rest. Luc is handling it all.”
“A BMW, huh?” He leaned against the archway, crossing his arms over his chest. He was dying for a glass of water, but he didn’t want to step on her clean floor with his muddy boots. “You always said that someday you’d own your own house, your own business, and a fancy car. It must’ve been hard for you to give up the car.” He wasn’t being sarcastic. They both knew what Charmaine’s childhood had been like, and her dreams had been understandable.
“I got all three, Rusty, and giving up the car wasn’t all that difficult. I can always buy another.”
“Well, I’ll go shower,” he said, awkward with the silence that enveloped them suddenly.
“Wait a minute.” She went out through the pantry, then returned with a pile of folded, sweet-smelling towels.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You did my laundry?” Holy shit! She probably did my underwear, too. “Charmaine…” he started to chastise her.
“Oh, don’t get in a snit. I did it for me as much as you. Your towels had mold on them, and there were boot prints on your sheets.”
“I haven’t had much time to—”
She waved a hand dismissively, then shoved the towels into his hands. He spun on his heels, about to go.
Just then Michael Bolton’s old ballad “When a Man Loves a Woman” came on the radio. He stopped dead in his tracks, still near the kitchen. It had to be the hokiest chick song ever made, but it was the song he’d always put on the tape deck when he was “in the mood” because he’d known Charmaine loved it, and, frankly, it got her “in the mood.” What a stupid thing to recall! She probably didn’t even remember. He turned slightly and cast a quick glance her way.
Yep, she remembers.
Charmaine had a fist to her mouth, and tears were welling in her eyes. Hell, he probably had tears in his eyes, too. He exhaled loudly. Less than ten minutes in the same house, and he was ready to take her in his arms.
He set the towels on the dining room table and was about to walk over to her and do just that, muddy boots be damned, but Charmaine put up both hands. “No!” She swiped at one eye, then the other with the back of a hand, smearing her mascara. Only Charmaine would scrub floors in full-battle, armed-to-the-teeth makeup. “I’m all right now. Just a little memory blip.”
More like a full power outage for me. “You better go home, Charmaine. Go while the gettin’ is good.”
She arched her eyebrows at him, back to her haughty ol’ self. “Why?”
“Because you are in way more danger here with me, chère, than you are from some measly mob.”
The way to a man’s heart…
Charmaine sat at the kitchen table with Rusty, Linc, and Jimmy, all of them sipping at thick Cajun coffee, even Jimmy. She was well satisfied with herself, with good reason.
Every bit of food was gone. Two loaves of the fresh-baked bread. A hot endive salad. A bowl of rice. The whole apple pie. A box of store donuts. And the crawfish étouffée? Well, suffice it to say, she could have quadrupled the recipe, and it still wouldn’t have been enough.