“Well, you’re what? Twenty-six?” Ellie asked.
“Twenty-eight,” Tori told her.
“Ah, well, still I think we can fit in the highlights.” The older woman laughed. She pointed at a stool as she rounded the end of the bar and moved in behind it.
Ellie was about six inches shorter than Tori’s five-seven. She had bright white hair that was braided and wrapped into a bun on top of her head. Her skin was tan and wrinkled with lines that spoke of a life lived outdoors. She wore jeans, tennis shoes, and a T-shirt that said I put the SIN in Wisconsin. In spite of her white hair and wrinkles, she didn’t seem like the grandmother to four adult grandchildren. She was clearly feisty and had a sense of humor and she seemed to kind of…glow. She just seemed contented and happy and perpetually amused. Tori liked her already.
The stool Ellie had indicated was right in the middle of the long bar. There were three open seats. The rest were filled with men. All of whom watched every step Tori made. Three were about Ellie’s age, one was roughly Jeremiah’s age, and one was…somewhere in between. With her eye still adjusting to the darker room and with them all dressed in cotton and denim with hats on their heads, it was a little hard to judge ages, actually.
She slid up onto the stool. “You’re from Wisconsin?”
Ellie frowned, then looked down at her shirt. She laughed. “No. People who come in often send me T-shirts when they get back home.” She pulled the shirt away from her body. “Everybody thinks they’re better drinkers than us when they come in here.”
Everyone at the bar chuckled at that.
“They don’t leave here thinking that, of course,” she said with a wink.
Tori grinned.
Jeremiah and Leo came in just then and took the seats on either side of Tori. She felt stupidly comforted by that. They were also both strangers to her. She’d known them about twenty minutes longer than she’d known the other men in the bar. Still, it felt like they’d moved in to say she was one of them.
“Everybody, this is Tori,” Leo said to the gathering at the bar. “Tori is Josh’s. Mind your manners. At least for a few minutes.”
Her eyebrows went up. She was Josh’s? Wow, that sounded very possessive. And a ribbon of heat curled through her. Damn, since when had she been okay with belonging to someone?
Since Leo had said she was Josh’s, apparently.
She smiled at everyone as they greeted her with Heys. She felt the need to clarify the information being given. Josh wasn’t the one saying she was his. Leo was assuming a lot. “Um, actually, Josh and I don’t know each other that well. Yet. But he’s going to my friend’s wedding with me.”
“This is the one he’s been mooning over for the past year,” Ellie said, apparently to everyone, as she passed a glass of…something…to Tori.
“Ah,” one of the older men said.
“Makes sense,” another said.
“Finally,” a third added.
“Mooning over?” Tori asked Ellie, picking up the glass and sniffing. It looked and smelled like sweet tea.
Ellie gave her a wink. “Mooning over.”
“He told you that?” Josh had seemed very happy to see her a little bit ago, but he’d been talking about her? He was the one who had sent her back to her hotel room, alone, twice last year.
“Didn’t have to. It’s obvious,” Ellie said, leaning onto the bar.
Tori suspected Ellie had a stool or some kind of raised platform because the little woman shouldn’t have been able to rest her elbows on the bar.
Tori studied her. Ellie seemed sincere. “It was obvious that he was mooning over me? How?” She picked up the tea and took a little sip. It was delicious. And didn’t taste spiked. Though Tori had the impression that if Ellie wanted to spike something without you knowing, you wouldn’t realize it until you were falling flat on your face trying to walk back to the tour bus.
“I know him,” Ellie said. “I know all my kids. But Josh and Owen are easy. What you see is what you get. I always knew when they fell in love, it would be the most obvious thing in the world.”
Tori choked as the tea went down the wrong pipe. Jeremiah calmly patted her on the back as she coughed and dragged air into her lungs.
Ellie shook her head. “The in love part is a surprise to you?”
“We barely know each other. We spent only a few hours together almost a year ago.”
“Well, how long do you think it takes?” Leo asked her.
“To fall in love?” she asked, her eyes wide. “I…” She frowned. “I don’t know. But…longer than that.” She looked around. “Right?”
“Why?” Ellie asked. “I’m not saying it’s always fast, but it sure can be. Some things you can tell about someone right away.”
Tori opened her mouth, but then shut it again. What the hell did she know about it? These people were a lot older than her and had seen a lot more life than she had. “Did you fall in love quickly?” she asked Ellie.
Ellie gave Leo a big smile. “Took about fifteen minutes.”
Tori hadn’t known for sure that Leo and Ellie were together, but now she looked at Leo. “Wow.”
He nodded. “She was wearing short shorts and tryin’ to pull a big ol’ catfish outta the bayou. She was cussing like a sailor and standing up in her little boat and I knew she was about to tip over.”
“He came over and steadied the boat, but let me pull that catfish out by myself,” Ellie said. “That’s when I knew he was a good one. He didn’t try to help me or bust in there like he was a big man or say shit like girls shouldn’t be fishing out there by themselves.”
Leo nodded, rubbing his jaw as if remembering. “It was a big one too. Bigger than anything I’d caught that summer. That was impressive.”
“That was when you knew she was the one?” Tori asked, enchanted by the story.
“Nope,” he said with a grin. “That wasn’t until she laughed. Soaking wet from the bayou and with her catfish swimmin’ away.”
“What?” Tori asked, laughing without even knowing the details.
Ellie matched his grin. “I offered him a beer as thanks for holding on to the boat. Ironically, he let go of my boat to grab the bottle and the boat tipped and I ended up in the bayou anyway.”
“Oh no!” Tori said. “You weren’t mad?”
Ellie shook her head. “Nah. I’d ended up in the bayou before. But I’d never had such a good-lookin’ guy choking on beer while I did it.” She gave Leo a look. “But I did say, ‘you realize that you just passed up getting laid for a beer, right?’ He looked down at the bottle, then back up at me and, I shit you not, said, ‘well, it’s not every day you get a free beer.’”
Tori turned wide eyes to Leo. “But it was every day that you got a girl?”
Leo wiggled his eyebrows. “Where do you think my grandsons get all of that charm?”
Tori laughed. She was having more fun than she’d had in a long time. Maybe hanging out with people wasn’t all bad. She really liked dogs and cats and cows, but they didn’t have great falling-in-love stories to share. “So I didn’t stand a chance once I met Josh?”
Leo shook his head, chuckling. “Good you realize that. Just give in.”
“How long have you been married?” Tori asked Ellie and Leo.
“Oh, we’re not anymore,” Ellie said, pushing back and moving to refill a glass down the bar.
Tori frowned at her, then glanced at Leo. “What?”
Leo shook his head. “Lasted thirty years though.”
“Thirty-one,” Ellie corrected him.
Leo nodded. “Something like that.”
“No,” Ellie said. “Exactly that. One month past thirty-one, in fact.”
Leo rolled his eyes. “Been divorced for a while now.”
Tori felt stunned. And disappointed. “I’m…sorry.” She frowned. “But you’re obviously still good friends.”
Leo grinned at Ellie. “She’s still the feistiest girl with the biggest heart I know.”
“We still had—have—the chemistry,” Leo said.
“And the respect,” Ellie agreed.
“But we laugh more when we don’t live together,” Leo said. “So we just tried living apart. But then the taxes got complicated.”
“And I wanted to sleep with Trevor,” Ellie added.
“And that,” Leo said with a nod.
“Trevor?” Tori asked, her eyebrows nearly in her hairline.
“My boyfriend,” Ellie said.
Tori leaned in and looked down the bar, wondering if one of these men was Trevor.
“He’s not here right now,” Ellie said. “He’s at work. He’s a banker in New Orleans.”
“Oh.” For some reason that surprised Tori.
“He’s a big deal,” Leo said. “He ironed out my retirement account and helped us with transferring the business over to the boys. Good-looking guy too.”
If it was strange for a woman’s ex-husband to be complimenting her new boyfriend, no one else in the bar gave any sign they thought so. Tori nodded, as if she totally understood this.
“And he’s twenty years younger than me,” Ellie added with a sly smile. “We met five years ago. He was only forty-four when I seduced him.”
Tori swallowed hard. “Oh.” She had no idea what else to say.
Ellie seemed to realize it and laughed. “If it doesn’t make your heart pound, it’s not worth doing.”
Leo nodded. “No one around here is gonna die of boredom.”
“Or with any regrets,” Ellie said.
“Wow.” Tori took it all in. This was fascinating. And very different from her life. It seemed that most people she knew—her family, certainly—worked hard to keep things from getting too exciting. Pounding hearts meant you were scared or at least stressed. She knew for a fact that her father avoided things that made his heart pound. Steady and solid were Patrick Kramer’s favorite words. “The last time my heart pounded was when one of our cows had twins.”
She looked up from her glass of tea and realized they were all watching her.
“I’m a vet,” she said. “Twins are often a problem for cows. They almost always need help.” No one said anything. “Sheep and goats all have twins without much trouble, but cows are different.” She paused, and again no one said anything. “Delivering two heads and eight legs out of the same hole can get complicated.” She should probably stop talking. “Goats can also have triplets, by the way. I delivered a set last spring.”
Finally Ellie reached out and squeezed her hand. “I’m really hoping my grandson made your heart pound harder than birthing a set of twin calves.”
Tori managed a smile at that. “Yeah.” She nodded. “Yeah, he definitely did.”
“Great love stories run in our family,” Ellie said.
Tori felt her heart give at least one hard beat right then. They were already talking about a love story involving her and Josh? That was fast. And crazy. And…fun. They were blowing this all out of proportion, but it was making her smile. This felt like a train that she just had to board and hold on tight as long as it was running.
“Ahem.” Jeremiah cleared his throat. “You haven’t even told her the best one yet.”
Tori looked at him. “I’d love to hear it.”
“It’s about me and Josh’s mom,” he said. “It’s legend around here.”
Tori was instantly intrigued. “Legend, huh? This I have to hear.”
“I met Hannah at a dance over in—”
“Oh, you don’t tell it as good as Cora does,” Ellie interrupted. “Cora!” she shouted toward the swinging door behind the bar. “Cora! Get up here!”
“Good God, what the hell are you screeching about?” A woman with short salt-and-pepper curls and a round face came through the swinging door, wiping her hands on the red apron she wore.
“This is Tori,” Ellie said, pointing. “She’s Josh’s.”
Cora’s eyes got wide. “The one he’s been mooning over?”
Tori rolled her eyes but also smiled. Maybe he really had been.
“Yep,” Ellie said, happily. “She came to find him today. She’s takin’ him to a wedding at Buckworth.”
“Nice.” Cora studied Tori. “You’re a beauty.”
Tori blushed. “Um, thank you.”
“Gus liked her too,” Jeremiah added.
Cora nodded. “It’s official then. You’re a keeper.”
“Who’s Gus?” Tori asked, again glancing at the other men at the bar.
“The otter,” Jeremiah said. “He doesn’t come up to people often.”
“Oh.” Tori had been delighted to see the otter, and when he’d climbed up on the deck and then sat next to her feet, she’d felt downright giddy. Otters weren’t something she saw in Iowa.
“Animals are excellent judges of character,” Cora said.
Tori nodded. “I agree a hundred percent.”
“She’s a vet,” Ellie said, with a touch of pride if Tori wasn’t mistaken.
Cora finally smiled. “And people who love animals are the best kind of people.”
Tori returned her smile. “Thank you. And I agree again.”
“It was very nice to meet you,” Cora said. “How about some crawfish pie?”
Ah, the crawfish pie. Was she willing to risk eating something that would make her forget about home and want to stay here forever? “I’d love to try it,” she said, feeling her stomach flip.
It was lunch. It wasn’t a major life decision. But…it felt important.
“I called you up here to tell her Jerry and Hannah’s story,” Ellie said. “I’ll get the pie.”
“Oh, Jerry and Hannah’s story,” Cora said, her eyes twinkling. “It’s legendary.”
Tori laughed. “So I hear.”
Cora moved to the bar and leaned in, much like Ellie had. “It all started at the street dance over in Sutton,” she said. “I was over there with my husband, Danny, and Jerry and my son, Luke, came over. We were just sittin’ there, listening to the music and drinking lemonade.”
Leo snorted at that and Cora shot him a look. “What?”
“Lemonade?” Leo asked. “Last time you told this story, it was root beer.”
Cora glared at him. “I had lemonade and Danny had root beer.”
Leo outright laughed at that. “I knew Danny all my life. No fuckin’ way was he drinkin’ root beer.”
Cora waved that away. “Anyway, we were just sittin’ there, drinking things, and chatting, and all of a sudden Jerry sits up straight and his mouth drops open and it’s like he’s gone into this trance.”
Jerry—Jeremiah—just smiled as Cora told his story, lifting a glass of sweet tea and taking a sip.
“So we all look over and we see this girl. She’s really pretty and she’s wearing this cute little sundress and she’s talking to a group of friends. And then she turns around and bam, she looks at Jerry and she does the same thing—her mouth drops open and she just stares.” Cora shook her head. “It was the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Tori looked at Jeremiah. He gave her a wink.
“So Luke nudges him,” Cora continued. “Then when that doesn’t work, Luke slaps him upside the head, and finally Jerry snaps out of it. But he doesn’t say anything to any of us. He just stands up and heads straight for that girl. They danced and talked, just the two of them, the rest of the night.”
“Wow,” Tori said. “This is like a scene from a movie.”
Cora nodded. “It gets better. He starts seeing her every single night. Until this one night, about two weeks later, he comes home, with her in his truck and her suitcases in the back.”
Tori looked at Jeremiah again. “You eloped?” she guess
ed.
He shook his head. He wasn’t grinning now.
“He’d gone to see her and found her and her dad out in the front yard. Her dad was drunk and screaming at her. He had her by the arm and was shaking her.” Cora’s expression had hardened too. “Jerry jumped out of the truck and stomped over there. He shoved her dad away and when the dumbass came at him, Jerry hit him so hard he put him on his ass. He told Hannah she had two minutes to grab whatever stuff she wanted to take but that she wasn’t going back to that house. He stood over her sniveling asshole of a father while she packed her bags. Then he put her in the truck and drove her straight to Autre.”
Tori knew her eyes were round. Her heart was racing just hearing the story. It was awful and romantic at the same time. “Wow,” she said quietly.
Jeremiah gave her a little smile and nod. “Would have done anything for her. Still would.”
“So, anyway,” Cora said, clearly with more story to tell. “Her dad came after her. With a bunch of their relatives. They came tearing over here in pickups with their shotguns and shit, wanting to start some kind of war.”
Now Tori’s mouth dropped open. “Really?”
“Oh yeah,” Leo said. “Dumbasses.” The other guys at the bar nodded.
“What happened?” Tori asked. In that moment, she didn’t care about anything more than hearing the rest of this story.
“The sheriff called Leo to tell him they were on their way. He didn’t want trouble, but he couldn’t do anything until something happened. So Leo called a few people and they called a few people, and pretty soon we had all the men in Autre between the ages of sixteen and sixty out on the road right outside the city limits just waitin’ for them,” Cora said.
My Best Friend’s Mardi Gras Wedding: Boys of the Bayou Page 9