“Hey, there are a lot of ups and downs with you, too. One minute you’re breathing-smoke mad at me, and the next you’re looking at me like a little boy with his nose pressed to the window of the candy store.”
“Mais oui!” he said and she heard the smile in his voice. “But then your candy, she is mighty sweet.”
She pushed away from his embrace but held on to his hands. They were arms length away from each other now. “Okay, I’ll back off then. What do you want me to do?”
“What I want and what I consider best are two different things.” His dark Cajun eyes were hot and needy as he spoke. She knew what he wanted without the words being spoken. “Take your half of the bond money and go home. Pay off the loan shark. Be happy.”
There were so many mistaken notions in his words that Charmaine didn’t know where to begin. When did home start to feel like the ranch instead of her cottage on Bayou Black? When did not paying off the loan shark lickety-split stop scaring the daylights out of her? When would she ever be happy again if he wasn’t around? Foolish as it might be, she was about to tell him just that, but someone entered the barn behind her.
“Yoohoo,” the feminine voice yelled. “Charmaine? You in there?”
It was Tante Lulu.
She let loose of Rusty’s hands.
He gave them an extra squeeze before he let go.
Standing next to him, they waited for the old lady to approach.
She’d changed from her shopping outfit to house slippers and a loose, flowered housedress—sort of a muumuu-type garment. Her red curls were confined under a scarf. This attire could represent either a frenzy of cleaning or a frenzy of cooking. Probably the latter.
Huffing for breath after her trek from the house, Tante Lulu said, “Charmaine, you gots to get yer be-hind back to the house. Yer mother wants you to blow-dry her. She and her boyfriend jist used up all the hot water takin’ a shower… together, I think. Turns out Dirk the Jerk won’t be eatin’ our turkey and other vittles tomorrow. He doan eat nothin’ but organic crap. ‘Scuse my language, Rusty, but sometimes a lady’s jist got to use dirty words to express herself. Anyways, Dirk brought his blender into the kitchen and he’s whippin’ up carrots and celery fer his own dinner. Talk about! And Fleur wants ta know if I can make her up a special diet version of the leftover jambalaya we’re havin’ tonight. I tol’ her, ‘Yeah, right When old strippers shimmy through the pearly gates, thass when I’m gonna make diet jambalaya.’ Then she said a dirty word to me. Suck is a dirty word, ain’t it?”
After that lengthy tirade, Charmaine looked at Rusty, and he looked at her. Even though they were both accustomed to Tante Lulu’s outrageous personality, she’d turned them speechless this time.
Finally, Rusty whispered in her ear, “See what I mean? Chaos.”
That was so unfair. Blaming her because her mother stirred up trouble wherever she went, or that Tante Lulu wouldn’t stand still for any of it. “What do you expect me to do?” she asked Tante Lulu.
“Go back ta the house and give Fleur what-for.” She sank down onto a low bench and crooked her finger toward Rusty. “Besides, I gots to have a talk with yer husband.”
Uh-oh, she thought.
“Uh-oh,” he said, and sat down next to the old lady, who had a determined gleam in her eyes.
Charmaine left the two of them alone, but she decided to skirt around the back porch on her return to the house. It was time to visit the patron saint of hopeless causes, M’sieur Jude.
Chapter 14
I’m trapped, and I can’t get away.
How could a six-foot-three, 210-pound guy who’d been in prison for chrissake be trapped by a senior citizen half his size wearing a flour sack? But Raoul was, and he didn’t know how to escape without offending the basically kindhearted old lady.
Sitting on the bench next to her, feeling a bit like Mutt and Jeff with their contrasting heights, he braced himself stoically for whatever she had to tell him. It wasn’t going to be good, he could tell.