Bayou Baby

by Lexi Blake

  ***

  Harry stared as Sera walked away from him. It seemed to be the way they ended every interaction.

  The pretty woman with the halo of curly dark hair and perfect skin held out her hand. “She forgot to introduce us. I’m Sylvie Martine. I’m the mayor. Well, it’s honestly more like being a warden sometimes.”

  He shook her hand, his mind still on the woman slowly making her way up the steps as though she expected them to give way underfoot at any moment. “Harry Jefferys. Nice to meet you.”

  He was a fool because only this morning he’d made the decision to stay away from Seraphina Guidry, but here he was knowing he wasn’t about to continue with his run. He was going to follow her into that house and see how bad the situation was.

  He should put his earbuds right back in, crank the volume up, and try not to break his good leg as he ran across uneven ground.

  If he fell, would she help him up? Maybe offer him a water and sit with him while they waited for the ambulance. Could they get an ambulance out here?

  “Uhm, I don’t know that she should go through that place on her own.” The blonde with short hair started reluctantly walking toward the house. “I guess I should go in with her. After all, she did go with me that time when I snuck away to New Orleans to see the Jonas Brothers. I don’t know that it’s the same. We only got grounded, but she didn’t even like them and she went. We’ll be even then, right? Walking into a haunted house pays off the debt for getting grounded for a month because I was in love with Joe. I’m Hallie, by the way. Hallie Rayburn. I’ve been friends with Sera since we were kids. If I don’t come back out, tell my husband and daughter I loved them very much.”

  “Absolutely.” Well, now he couldn’t walk away. He never left a woman in danger. And he wouldn’t mind getting a look inside. The house itself was stunning. Or it could be. The porch did need some refortification, and the roof definitely needed work, but that house had been built with love. It was there in the details, in the vintage corbels and porch swing. He’d been wrong about the stairs. They were surprisingly solid, but it looked like someone had used a different wood in some spots. The whole thing needed to be sanded and repainted. He would bet the steps that were different had been “fixed” by nonprofessionals, likely Irene Guidry’s nephews, or maybe Irene herself.

  “I’m not worried about ghosts,” Sylvie said as she put her hand on the railing. It looked like it needed a coat of paint, too. “Critters are another story. I’m worried the rodent population got the message there is no longer an army of cats waiting to take them out and they’ve moved in. She didn’t merely keep those cats as pets, you know.”

  “Would you feel better if I took a look around with you? I’m pretty good with home repairs and Shep will scare off most critters.” The German shepherd was big enough he wasn’t even worried about gators. Shep had a decent sense of self-preservation. He knew when to run and he was fast. “I really could help her figure out what the place needs.”

  He’d made his living for the last few years working on houses. He’d always been good at building things, and he’d spent time with some experts learning plumbing and electrical. He’d discovered there was always a job in construction wherever he went.

  What would it be like to have a shop of his own? To build the furniture he saw in his head? He loved to work with reclaimed materials, to make something lasting out of what others considered trash.

  “Yes, that would make me feel so much better,” Hallie agreed. “Especially if there are serial killers hiding inside. Or clowns. Doesn’t this place look like a murder house?”

  No. It looked like a beautifully built Creole-style plantation home that needed a whole lot of TLC. It honestly wasn’t that different from Beaumont House. A bit smaller, but he would bet it still had a lot of the original amenities. Beaumont House had been modernized on the inside. “I think it’s got potential. It needs some attention, but this place was probably a jewel in its prime.”

  Shep bounded up the stairs.

  Hallie followed behind him. “I will be honest, I always thought it would be an excellent place for a bed-and-breakfast.”

  “Oh, that would be perfect,” Sylvie agreed. “We need more hotels, and I would love something nicer than that No Tell Motel outside town. That’s really its name. Someone wasn’t very creative. On the other hand, we have the Royal Garden Motel, which thinks way too much of itself. The health inspector finds violations all the time. A local B and B would be great. Especially around festival time.”

  Opening a B and B had been his mother’s dream. She’d always wanted to run one, but she’d never had the money to invest.

  “I worry Sera is looking to flip it, but she would be great at running a B and B,” Hallie said. “I think it would be the perfect job for her. She’s one of those jack-of-all-trades and master of none, if you know what I mean.”

  He knew. That old phrase pretty much summed him up. He wasn’t a plumber, but he could deal with a lot of plumbing issues. The same with electrical. More important, he could tell when someone else knew what they were doing. Sera was going to have to hire contractors, and there were contractors out there who would take one look at the sweet-faced blonde and see dollar signs. If she picked the wrong one, she could get taken for everything she had.

  He put a foot on the first of the steps, satisfied it held his weight without sagging. “How much does she know about rehabbing a house?”

  “I watch a whole lot of HGTV,” a prim voice said.

  He glanced up and Sera was standing in the doorway, that clipboard in her hand and Shep sitting at her side, tail thumping.

  “You’re serious about fixing this place up?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “I have to fix it up or I don’t get to keep it. It’s in the will. My aunt wanted me to take the money she left and turn it into a home again. I know it would make a great B and B, but I don’t have enough to take it to that level. I’ve got to make a profit off this place.”

  “You don’t want to live in it?” He’d seen the way she’d looked at the house. She’d definitely looked at it with love in her eyes. He wouldn’t be surprised to find out she’d spent time here when she was growing up. Childhood memories were powerful things.

  She stepped back on the porch and let Sylvie join her. “I don’t think I can afford to keep it. I have to put everything my aunt left me into the house. Maybe that gets it habitable, but I would have to pay taxes and insurance, and the upkeep on a place like this is pretty steep. I don’t think the pittance I bring in cutting hair would be enough. Besides, it’s a big old house for me and my son.”

  Yes, her son. She had a kid. That didn’t scare him off at all, but he found it interesting that she obviously wasn’t thinking past the next few months or years. She was a young woman. She was beautiful. She would get married and have more kids at some point. Unless she absolutely didn’t want to.

  He finally hit a stair that buckled. Yeah, it looked like they’d been replacing them as needed rather than redoing the whole staircase like he would have. Uniformity was very important in some cases. He bounced the step a bit. It held but it likely wouldn’t when they started bringing heavy equipment in. “This one needs to be replaced. And you’re going to have to paint the whole thing.”

  She frowned. “It seemed fine when I was on it.”

  “You don’t weigh what I do,” he pointed out. “And if you’re going to fix this place up, you’ll have a lot of big guys coming in and out. You want to make sure they can actually get inside the house to work.”

  She wrote something down in her book. “All right, then. Porch stairs.”

  “Those won’t be too hard.” Sylvie was walking around the big porch, taking it in. She glanced at the wood furniture and obviously decided not to try to sit. “We might need to update some of the décor.”

  Sera shook her head. “I don’t think I can aff
ord that. Maybe I could go to a garage sale.”

  “Nah, I can fix these.” He reached the top step and moved to the rocker. It was beautifully done, just a bit worn. “I can refinish and repaint. You can get some new cushions for cheap and it’ll look good as new.”

  “Really?” Sera asked, her eyes wide. “You can . . . I mean, that seems like a good idea. I will consider that. If I can sell the place furnished, that would be good. Well, except for the owls. I’ll probably lose the owls.”

  He liked when she got distracted. She forgot to put up her walls, and she let him see a hint of the woman under her protective gear. She didn’t like owls. It was good to know. Luckily he wasn’t partial to owls. He glanced up and saw that the ceiling was painted a soft bluish green. Or it had been at one point in time. It was a pretty color, but odd for exterior paint. “Huh. I’ve seen a couple of porch ceilings painted like that around here. Is it a tradition?”

  Sera looked up. “It’s called haint blue. It didn’t start here in Louisiana.”

  “It’s a tradition among the Gullah,” Sylvie explained. “When they were brought over as slaves, they brought their traditions, too. They believed this color would hold off the haints, or haunts as you would call them. Painting your porch a color like this would protect the whole house. It started in South Carolina and Georgia, and now it’s kind of a Southern tradition. You’ll see it all over town. My momma tells the story to anyone who moves in. Don’t believe her. She gets a kickback from Gil at the hardware store.”

  “Momma told me they stopped doing that,” Sera said with a frown.

  “They never stop,” Sylvie replied with a shake of her head. “Those two are going to be the terror of the nursing home one day. Sorry, Harry, Sera’s mom and mine are kind of the bane of the town. My mother runs a successful salon and Delphine’s family has the best restaurant in Papillon, but they’re not happy unless one of them is convincing a tourist she’s a voodoo priestess who put a whammy on him and the other is charging fifty bucks to take it off.”

  Sera had gone a nice shade of pink. “They like to think of themselves as entrepreneurs. Anyway, that’s why many started painting their porch ceilings blue. My aunt did it for the other reasons Southerners use this color. She swore it kept the wasps away. She said they would think it was more sky and not bother to stop here. They would keep flying.”

  “Wouldn’t they notice the overhang?” Hallie asked, looking up. “I would think they’d try to fly up into the ceiling and get confused as to why the sky stopped there. I would be.”

  He liked these women. They were fun. “Well, now they would think the sky is broken or maybe that the cracks in the paint are a wormhole or something,” he said. “But only if the wasp is good at astrophysics.”

  Sera laughed, the sound magical to his ears. “I wouldn’t want to confuse the wasps.”

  He stood beside her and looked up at the ceiling again. The color was quite beautiful, and he liked that there was tradition behind it. “I think I prefer the story about it keeping out ghosts. Maybe the ghost sees the color and thinks that’s the way to heaven. You know sometimes the sky isn’t as pretty as that color. It’s nice to have something beautiful to look at. Maybe it helps the ghosts find their way home.”

  She was quiet for a moment and then she looked to him, a sheen of tears in her eyes. “I like that, too.” She sobered and he missed the emotion on her face. “I should get inside and get to work.”

  He had to make a choice. His aunt wanted him to stay away from her, but she needed help. He wasn’t the type of man who refused to aid a person in need and he had the prosthesis to prove it. Just because he lent her some advice on a subject he was well versed in didn’t mean he would fall at her feet and beg her to date him. Even though his dog was already madly in love. “I’ll help you.”

  She had her hand on the door. “Oh, I can make a list. It’s easy. It’s pretty much everything that needs fixing.”

  Hallie clapped her hands as she made it to the top of the stairs. “Excellent. Oh, I feel so much better with Harry here.”

  Sera looked at her friend. “I’m glad you do.”

  “I don’t know, Sera, he might be useful,” Sylvie said. “And he said the dog would chase critters away. We have no idea what’s hiding in there.”

  Shep’s tail thumped as though he was ready to jump into action.

  Hallie’s hands went to her hips. “He’s an expert. I assure you Celeste Beaumont didn’t bring him in to touch that precious gazebo merely because he’s her nephew. He’s good and you need someone good.”

  She shook her head. “No, I need someone cheap.”

  He could help with that. “I’ll do it for free. I’m only consulting, after all.”

  And refinishing those rockers. And maybe fixing the porch steps.

  “I don’t need a consultant. I was going to call Herve down at the shop. He has a cousin who does home repairs,” Sera replied. “He can handle all the stuff I can’t. I’m making a list and then I’m going to fix all the stuff I can fix before I call him in.”

  “You’re going to need to prioritize,” he explained. “Unless you have an unlimited budget.”

  “That’s what I was saying. I’m going to figure out what I can fix myself and do all of that and then bring in the big guns.”

  “The big guns being Herve from the auto shop’s cousin.” He wasn’t sure she’d thought this through, but then she’d only found out she owned this place earlier today. Still, she should understand that a project this big needed an experienced manager. “Have you ever met him? Is he a licensed contractor?”

  She snorted, a sound that shouldn’t have been so cute. “It’s Southern Louisiana. We’re a town of six hundred people. No one is licensed.”

  “You are,” Hallie pointed out. “You had to go through all sorts of hoops to be able to cut hair. Shouldn’t Herve’s cousin do the same to be able to fix your roof and make sure the house doesn’t fall down?”

  “And no, he’s not a licensed contractor,” Sylvie added. “He’s not even really a contractor at all. Not like what you need. He’s a handyman. He does odd jobs when he needs beer money. You have a real contractor right in front of you.”

  Sera pointed Harry’s way. “Well, he’s not even from Louisiana. I bet he doesn’t have a license, either.”

  “I am a licensed contractor in Texas and Louisiana.” He didn’t mention he’d only gotten the one in Louisiana because his aunt had insisted and paved the way a little. He rather thought it was because she wanted to give him a reason to stay.

  That seemed to stump her. She was quiet for a moment and then nodded as though coming to a decision. “That is a kind offer, Mr. Jefferys.”

  “It’s Harry, please.” He knew it was a mistake, but something inside him flared to life when he realized he was going to spend time with her. Something about Seraphina Guidry made him feel. He hadn’t realized how numb he’d been. This was a big job. It could take months to get this house rehabbed. He would be around her constantly. He could figure out what it was about this woman that got to him.

  “Harry, it’s kind of you to offer, but I have to turn you down.” Her jaw had gone tight. “I have to do this myself. I hope you have a nice day.” She turned and started for the inside but stopped and put a hand on Shep’s head. “You, too.”

  She disappeared behind the door.

  That hurt more than it should.

  Sylvie had an apologetic frown on her face as she opened the door Sera had closed. “I should follow her.”

  Someone should. It apparently wouldn’t be him.

  “Shep, come on, boy.” He knew when to retreat.

  The dog looked back at where Sera had disappeared before he whined and moved down the stairs.

  He knew the feeling. She’d wanted to say yes to him. It had been there in her eyes. She’d wanted to invite him in and get his a
dvice, but she’d turned him down even when it was to her own detriment.

  Something was going on and he didn’t entirely understand it. He understood why his aunt was upset. Why was Seraphina? Was she afraid of his aunt?

  Hallie was staring down at him. “I’m going to get her to change her mind. She needs help. She’s not thinking. She’s had a long week, and a funeral is always exhausting. I hope the offer will still be open because she’s going to realize how much she needs you. She’s being stubborn is all. She’s got it in her head she needs to be independent.”

  He rather thought he was the problem. He would bet if someone else had offered to help her for free, she would have been all over that deal. As he’d never done anything she could have found offensive, this had to be about his family. It had to be about his aunt or maybe even Wes. Was she carrying a torch for the boy she’d rejected? Or guilt because she’d rejected him in the first place?

  He wanted to tell himself it was a mystery he didn’t need to solve, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to leave it alone.

  “I’m around if she changes her mind.” He reached and got his earbuds. “Even if she only wants to talk. I’ll send her some resources. Come on, Shep. This run isn’t going to finish itself.”

  He took off, jogging slowly, but his mind was back on that house and the woman inside it.

  * * *

  ***

  Not even the air-conditioning and breeze of the fan in Quaid Havery’s elegantly appointed office could cool down the fire Celeste felt licking along her every nerve ending. “What do you mean Irene left the house to her niece? Which niece are we talking about, because it better be someone from out of town. Some long-lost niece no one in the Guidry family talked about? One who never chased after my son and clawed his heart out? It better be that niece.”

  Angela was seated beside her, and her daughter shook her head. “Quaid didn’t have anything to do with who Irene Guidry left the house to. You don’t have to breathe fire his way.”

  The man who’d been the family lawyer since he’d taken over for his father four years before actually looked intimidated, and that wasn’t an expression she normally saw on the thirty-two-year-old’s face. “I absolutely didn’t tell Ms. Guidry who to leave her house to. I merely served my function and wrote the will.”