Thunderous applause greeted his statement as everyone hooted and cheered and food started to circulate around the tables.
Charmaine stared at him, and said, “Fool!”
He waggled his eyebrows at her.
And, God help her, her crazy heart did flip-flops.
Okay, that’s it. That’s my cue. No more Mr. Nice Guy… rather, no more Ms. Nice Girl. Time for the old Charmaine to take control.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” the Jerk-of-the-Month asked. Mr. I-can-divorce-you-twice without even blinking.
“Like what?” she inquired, giving him her ultra-innocent, eyelash-batting look, the one that had won her Miss Personality in the beauty pageant.
“Like your brain is churning with plans.”
She smiled then. “Oh, yeah, baby, I’ve got plans.”
He laughed. “Should I be scared?”
“Guar-an-teed!”
A man’s gotta do what man’s gotta do…
Raoul had plans. Big plans.
Sometime between his confrontation with a tearful Charmaine in her bedroom and the plethora of thanks by practically everyone in the universe at the feast, he had decided to take back control of his life. His wife had been holding the reins thus far with her “I am a born-again virgin” crap. Enough! He was the man. He was driving this wagon from now on. And no artificial hymen was going to barricade the road.
Unfortunately, her family wasn’t cooperating.
By six o’clock, the Thanksgiving party was still going strong, and people were talking about the musical entertainment about to begin. Holy stinkin’ cow patties! A regular Roman orgy of a food feast they’d just had! Talk till their tongues got tired! Now music! What next? The chicken dance? The Hokey Pokey? The River Dancers flown in to raise some dust? Why not truck in some Angola prisoners for an impromptu rodeo?
He looked around the backyard of his beloved ranch and relished the sweetness of having a home… no, this particular home. The ranch house might be in disrepair, but the setting was spectacular, in his opinion. There was the prairie, which was characteristic of this region of Louisiana, but there was a slow-meandering bayou, as well, with all its myriad birds and wildlife, even the occasional gator. It was not a lush, tropical paradise dotted with swamps, like Bayou Black, where most of the LeDeuxs lived, but it was marshy in spots, which didn’t seem to bother the steers.
And look there at that small raft of water hyacinths floating by. As beautiful as the lavender flowers were, they were the bane of all bayous in Louisiana. It had all started in the most innocent way at the 1884 International Cotton Exposition of New Orleans. Japanese exhibitors handed out samples of a flowering aquatic plant native to Latin America. Unfortunately one single plant could producing sixty-five thousand plants in a single season and thus had posed a problem for Louisiana ever since by clogging waterways and cutting off sunlight necessary to aquatic life. They were almost impossible to control.
He had to laugh when he saw René, ever the environmentalist, walk over with a rake and use the handle to lift the pesty plant mass out of the water. With a scowl of distaste, he carried it over to a nearby burn barrel.
As Raoul continued to scan his homestead, he began to wonder, belatedly, about all the electric Christmas lights that had been strung in the trees. Could it be possible… oh, Mon Dieu… they were going to be hanging around till it was dark! At this rate, the gang would be here not just when the cows came home, but when the cows went out again at dawn.
Raoul was, frankly, all parried out. It was past time for him to act a man and stop letting Charmaine run this show that had become their private life. Days ago, he’d made a silent decision about his relationship with Charmaine, without even realizing it. The capper had been Tante Lulu’s revelation about Charmaine’s other husbands, and then his shock and dismay when Luc had handed him the divorce papers, papers he knew he would not sign. Not unless Charmaine insisted he do so.
So, now he had plans—big plans—for another kind of party. A private one. And he wished everyone would just go home.