Maddie gave a little smile that seemed slightly wistful before lifting her cup. She took that first swallow without so much as a wince.
Right. Kenny’s moonshine. Maddie’s grandpa’s moonshine.
Owen poured more into an empty, clean-ish plastic cup from the Stop It Now, the convenience store at the end of the road that led to Boys of the Bayou.
He was going to need this as much as she did.
They both needed to take the edge off of…everything.
He toasted her and she touched her cup to his. Then they both drank. Their eyes locked.
Owen swallowed the set-your-gut-on-fire liquor. Neither of them said anything for a long moment.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to talk to you at Tommy’s funeral,” he finally managed. Okay, not really small talk, but he had to say something and that was the first thing on his mind.
She nodded and held her cup out. “There wasn’t much to say.”
Yeah, maybe. But he’d still felt empty after she’d left. Much like the bottle of tequila he’d woken up with the next morning.
He poured another inch of moonshine into her cup.
If he thought too hard about everything she’d been through, it twisted his heart like someone wringing out a sponge. There was something about Madison Allain that had always made him want to fight dragons for her. When he was seventeen, he’d assumed it was the deeply ingrained protective streak that ran strong in the male side of the Landry clan.
But he’d only felt it for Maddie. Which had made him wonder if it was actually the voodoo curse Sarah Cutter had put on him when he’d left her on Valentine’s Day to go pick Maddie up from a date-gone-bad.
That was actually more believable than some genetic penchant for over-the-top romantic gestures. You didn’t grow up on the bayou without respecting voodoo. Even if you didn’t believe in it fully, you sure as hell knew not to mess with it.
And now the woman who made him bonkers was sitting a foot away from him. With her legs crossed and a whole lot of smooth, tanned skin showing.
Nah, this wasn’t genetics or a curse. This was just good old-fashioned attraction. He wanted to run his hand up her leg and under her skirt. He didn’t want to elope with her.
Anymore.
He cleared his throat and shifted on the edge of the desk. “How’s California?” he asked, lifting his cup.
She shrugged. “Good. Fine.”
“How’s the museum?”
“Art gallery,” she corrected.
He’d known that. She’d always been a big fan of museums of all kinds, so he just automatically put her there when thinking of her in a big building with lots of beautiful and interesting displays. “Right. How’s the art gallery?”
“Good. Fine.”
He took another swallow of moonshine. He talked to total strangers all day every day. He could surely make small talk with a woman he’d known since birth. Even if he had been in love with her at one time. And couldn’t quite manage to get his attention off her legs. “How was your trip today?”
She nodded. “Good.”
“And fine?” he asked dryly.
One corner of her mouth curled. “Yeah. Fine.”
He reached for the bottle again. He was going to end up smashed simply because his options here were polite conversation, grabbing her and kissing her, or drinking. The chit-chat was annoying him and kissing her was out of the question. So drinking it was.
“I had a great salad at the airport.” She swirled the liquor around in the coffee mug.
“Oh.” He honestly didn’t care about her salad. He wanted to ask if she had a boyfriend. That was stupid. “Glad to hear it.”
“And the woman next to me on the plane was very nice. She’s visiting her daughter and her new grandbaby.”
Uh-huh. He also didn’t care about the woman next to her on the plane at all. How long had she and the California douchebag been dating? Was it serious? “How nice.”
Maddie nodded. “They didn’t have any hazelnut coffee creamer, though, so I had to drink it with plain cream.”
“Huh.” Yeah, he really hated small talk. At least with the tourists he could tell them something weird about alligators. Maddie knew all about gators. Which actually made him smile when he thought about it. “I got a new thermos.”
She lifted a brow. He lifted one back at her.
“So how long are we going to do this?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Talk about stupid crap that doesn’t matter.”
He huffed out a laugh. “Just makin’ conversation.”
Both of her brows went up now. “And this is what comes up when you try to talk to me?”
“When I’m tryin’ to be…cordial,” he told her.
“You wouldn’t be cordial without trying?”
“Well…” Should he just be honest with her? She’d known him all his life, too. “To be honest, I’d probably be inappropriate. At some point. Not very far in.”
She looked startled for a moment. Then, if he wasn’t mistaken, she seemed relieved. She grinned. “Oh yeah?”
He laughed again. “That surprises you?”
Maddie shook her head. “No, not really.”
He appreciated that. He took another swallow of liquor.
“So what kind of inappropriate thing would you have said?”
He swallowed with a little difficulty, his eyes drawn to her heels and her legs before he could stop them.
She noticed and stretched her legs out, crossing her ankles, her shoes on full display.
She knew he loved heels.
Had she worn these just for him? Because she knew better than to wear those things on a boat dock. Or a dirt road. Or an uneven sidewalk and rickety front porch steps. They had a lot of all of those things down here and a distinct lack of smooth stone paths and meticulously manicured green spaces. It was wild and natural down here. Maybe even more so than it had been twelve years ago.
He looked up, meeting her gaze. “I would have said somethin’ like, damn girl, if you’re here, that means California just got a lot less hot.’”
She gave a soft snort. “Wow.”
He grinned.
“I think you’re mistaking cheesy for inappropriate.”
“Okay, how about, ‘thank you?’”
“Thank you?” she repeated. “For what?”
“For bringing those heels and that sassy skirt down here. You’re risking sacrificing a lot of sweet skin to the bugs in that and I appreciate it.”
That tugged a little smile from her. “Flirtatious maybe, but not really inappropriate.”
Okay, challenge accepted. He looked down at her feet. “Those heels are gonna feel damned good digging into my ass later.”
Her eyes widened and she stared at him for a long moment. Then she nodded. “Yeah, okay, that would have been an inappropriate greeting after twelve years of not seeing each other.”
“I saw you just a few months ago.” At the funeral. Yeah, maybe he was still a little annoyed that he hadn’t had a chance to talk to her.
She held his gaze as she chewed her bottom lip. Then she tipped back another swallow of moonshine before saying, “Talking would have made it worse.”
“Worse? How could talking make Tommy dying any worse?”
She frowned and held out her cup.
He didn’t move to fill it. “Tell me.”
She gave an irritated sigh and reached out to grab the bottle from him. That gave him a quick glance down her shirt to the matching black bra and the gorgeous tits the black silk held. He let the bottle go. She splashed more in her cup, then set the bottle down with a thunk next to his thigh. “What would you have said?” she asked him.
“That I was sorry.”
“I knew that. Of course you were sorry. Everyone was sorry.”
He frowned. “That I was here for you.”
“And what would that have meant? That we could sit and reminisce about Tommy? My memories are twelve yea
rs old and the last ones here with him weren’t that pleasant. Or would that mean that you’d hold me while I cried? How would that have helped? Either we would have realized there was no way to actually make me feel better and you would have put a fist through a wall and I would have gotten in a huge fight with a TSA agent over the alligator skull I was trying to bring on the plane in my carry-on because I would have been wound up and looking for an outlet.” She took a deep breath. “Or I would have decided to distract myself from the pain and would have kissed you and we would have slept together and I would have driven out of town the next morning and then you would have put your fist through the wall and I would have gotten into a huge fight with a TSA agent over the alligator skull I was trying to bring on the plane in my carry-on. Either way, you would have ended up with a sore hand and I would have ended up in TSA jail for a few hours. What would have been the point?”
Owen stared at her as she finished her rant.
That was all…not completely impossible to imagine. They wound each other up. That was just a fact.
“We’re not past those kinds of reactions?” he asked. He’d like to think all of his overreactions had been a product of being a stupid kid who didn’t know how to handle the protectiveness and possessiveness Maddie stirred up in him. It probably wasn’t true, but he liked to think it.
She slumped back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I was in that room in the airport forever. Missed two flights back to California.”
Owen felt the grin slowly curve his mouth as what she said sunk in. “You did get into a fight with a TSA agent over an alligator skull?”
She nodded. “He was an asshole. I mean, it wasn’t like I was trying to bring a live alligator on board.”
“We could have shipped it to you.” He knew exactly which skull she was talking about. It had belonged to Tommy.
“I wasn’t thinking,” she said. “I just grabbed it and then when he started giving me a hard time, I lost my mind.” She looked up at Owen and took a breath. “But it wasn’t about the skull.”
He frowned. “What was it about?”
“Autre.”
“What do you mean?”
“This place makes me crazy. It’s…chaos. It’s loud and crazy and hot.” She plucked the front of her blouse away from her chest. “Good, Lord, it is so hot down here.”
“It’s hot in California.”
“No. It’s warm. It’s sunny. It’s pleasant. It’s not holy-crap-I’m-melting-hot. And we have wine.”
“We have wine.”
She snorted. “You don’t have wine.”
He fucking hated wine. “Well, I like the heat. You know that I’m always in favor of anything that encourages the removal of clothes.”
She gave him an unimpressed look. “And you’re not really the type to…let your alcohol breathe before shooting it back.”
He eyed the cup she held. “If that stuff breathes too much, it might get up and walk outta here on its own.”
She tipped the rest back.
“So you’re pissed about being here because it’s hot and there’s no wine?” he asked.
“That’s part of it.”
“What’s the rest?”
She sighed. “Everything.”
“Real nice, Mad,” he said, annoyed. He poured more liquor.
“It’s just…agitating and uncomfortable in every way. I just wanted to get the hell home. Back to where it was peaceful and quiet and…” She swallowed.
“And?” His tone was tight. Just like his chest. She didn’t like it here. She didn’t want to be here. Not for Tommy’s funeral and not now.
“Where I’m in control.” She blew out a breath. “Here, I never know what’s going to happen, or how I’m going to react. Though I do know it’s not going to be levelheaded and calm and cool.”
Owen had never met her grandparents from California, but Tommy had told them that his mom’s parents were wealthy. Sophisticated. Cultured. The type of people who would hang out in an art gallery rather than a broken-down shack/bar by the bayou. Levelheaded people. Calm and cool people. People who probably couldn’t even handle a little cayenne.
Nobody down here was calm and cool. Yeah, they could handle the heat.
So could Maddie, dammit. Of all kinds. Maybe she was used to air-conditioning and ocean breezes keeping her cool. Maybe she hadn’t burned anything down in San Francisco. But she was a bayou girl deep down and that meant spice was in her blood.
Suddenly, he had an intense—possibly even crazy—need to make sure she wasn’t calm and cool.
That was bad. Dangerous. He knew that. But hell, she was already expecting to be agitated and…hot. And Sawyer wanted them to remind her what it was like to be here. Well, here it was hot. In many ways.
“You’re not your father, Madison,” Owen said, low and firm. That had been what had driven her away. She’d gotten on that airplane to California happily. She’d seen her father lose his mind and land in jail, likely for the rest of his life, and her family fall apart, and after the month she’d spent with Owen just prior to that—sneaking out at night, having sex for the first time, burning people’s sheds down—she’d been convinced she was going to end up out-of-control and in trouble. The permanent, life-altering kind of trouble.
She’d gone to California to escape all of that.
She hadn’t been back since.
She was shaking her head now. “You don’t know that I’m not just like him.” She sat up straighter. “I ended up in jail after only a couple of hours in this town.”
“Airport jail,” he said. “Come on.”
“I have flown literally a hundred times and never ended up in airport jail, Owen.”
Maybe she had a point. “So you’ve been staying away from Autre because—”
“It makes me crazy,” she filled in. “And now I’m stuck here for thirty days because of a partnership agreement our grandfathers wrote up, in ink on notebook paper, while drinking”—she held up her cup—“this. This agreement should not be legally binding.”
Suddenly, for a reason he couldn’t name exactly, Owen felt a rush of satisfaction go through him. As if things were working out quite nicely. Even though there was actually not a bit of proof of that. “Mark Maillard says it is. Signed and dated. Even had witnesses.”
When Sawyer had told him and Josh about the partnership agreement Leo had given him, Owen had thought for sure it was going to be a huge pain in the ass.
He’d been right. But it was also going to be fun.
“See? Crazy. Everything about this place is crazy.”
Owen could see that she was getting a little worked up. She was breathing faster and her cheeks were pink and…she looked gorgeous.
She looked like the Maddie he’d always known. And loved.
“It’s been twelve years. Surely you’ve gained a little self-control,” he said. He sincerely hoped not.
She frowned at him. “I don’t need self-control in California. I have crazy urges that need to be controlled when I’m here. Hence why I love it there.”
“So not just the wine then,” he said.
Maddie took another sip of her grandfather’s recipe. “Not just the wine, no.”
He’d bet his last twenty bucks that she didn’t even really like wine.
Maddie was a moonshine kind of girl. Bold and down-home with deep roots and a long history in the area. As a kid, she’d thrown herself into everything they all did. Running, climbing, swimming. When she’d gotten older, she’d insisted that her father teach her to ride a motorcycle when he was teaching Tommy. She swore. She drank cheap beer. She’d gotten a fake ID so she could get a tattoo. She could shoot a gun. She could take apart a transmission. She loved to dance and laugh and play pranks and sneak cookies from the kitchen and cigarettes from Leo’s truck, all just for the thrill of maybe getting caught. Just as Cora would have happily given her cookies if she’d asked, Leo would have probably given her the hand-rolled cigarettes that he smoked. H
ell, he would have just handed over the tobacco and paper and let her roll her own. She knew how. They’d all watched Leo do it enough times.
Maddie had always been right there, having fun, living large, taking risks, pushing boundaries. And he’d known by the time he was twelve that he was going to date her someday. Then she’d started wearing a bra and shaving her legs, and he’d figured he was going to marry her someday. Marrying a girl who could help him rebuild an engine, clean a catfish, and smelled as good as she did seemed like a very good idea.
“Have you gained some self-control?” she asked.
He’d really like to think so. Truth be told, his control wasn’t tested very often. He had a laid-back lifestyle, a laid-back job, a laid-back attitude about pretty much everything.
“I haven’t broken a nose or any china for…about twelve years.”
He let that sink in. He watched her as it did. She took a little breath but didn’t say anything about the fact that he hadn’t lost his cool since she’d left town. Then her eyes drifted to the scar that came out of the bottom of his right shirt sleeve and traveled to his elbow.
That scar was because of her. And looking at her, now he knew he would still do anything for her. Even if it meant twenty-nine stitches and risking not being able to throw a football that fall, a police record, almost losing a lifelong friendship, and threatening the future of the business that meant the world to his entire family.
“We should probably go to Ellie’s,” she finally said.
He nodded. He was feeling lighter than he had when he’d first seen her and had felt that familiar, scary mix of affection and adrenaline. “Okay.” He pivoted to put the bottle of booze back in the bottom file cabinet drawer.
She glanced at the cups they’d been using. “Don’t we need to wash those?”
He looked down at the cups. He didn’t even know how long they’d been in here. “Most people who need a shot of bayou whiskey aren’t picky about what they drink it from.”
She held out a hand. “I’m going to not think about just drinking out of cups that you don’t feel strongly about washing.”
“Probably for the best.” He handed the cups over.
Sweet Home Louisiana: Boys of the Bayou Book 2 Page 2