My Best Friend’s Mardi Gras Wedding: Boys of the Bayou

by Erin Nicholas

Owen leaned back in his chair, tipping the front legs up, and lifting his mug of tea again as he looked over to where Tori and Andrew were talking. This was very likely the first time Owen had ever drunk something nonalcoholic inside this building. Trahan’s had become a regular spot for drinks and fun when they were all up from Autre. Gabe and Logan Trahan were great guys and poured awesome local beer and the best Pimm’s Cups in the city. But Owen was off liquor and beer while he was driving people around in their tour bus.

  “She doesn’t look at Andrew gaga,” Owen said.

  Josh watched Tori. No, she didn’t look at Andrew like she was gaga, but she did look like she was completely comfortable with him. It was clear that they’d sat that close and talked that easily many, many times before this. It had been juvenile to try to keep them apart today. Not just because it could only last so long, but because they were longtime friends. He’d thought it odd last night that Paisley clearly wanted Tori out of Andrew’s life. But now, watching them, it was hard not to wonder if there was something more there. Not because of how Tori was looking at Andrew, but because of how he was looking at her.

  Fucking Andrew.

  “Oh shit.” Owen leaned forward quickly, thunking the legs of his chair back on the floor. He quickly scooped the last couple of bites of redfish into his mouth, chewing fast.

  “What’s going on—”

  “Logan Trahan, I am here to be impressed. But I’m not holdin’ my breath.”

  Josh froze at the sound of that voice. Then groaned. “No.”

  Owen swallowed hard. “I can’t have her see me eatin’ someone else’s redfish. If she asks, I had the gumbo and it sucked.”

  “Eleanor Landry, what the hell are you doin’ in my bar?” Logan called to Josh and Owen’s grandmother from across the room. “Here to steal my secrets?”

  But he wore a big grin and when he met Ellie in the middle of the room, he grabbed her up in a big hug.

  “As if you’ve got anything I haven’t seen and done before,” Ellie told him with a huge wink when he set her back down.

  Josh sighed. Ellie got along with everyone. Logan got along with everyone. They were kind of the same person in many ways, and when they got together it was loud and the insults flew. Good-natured insults, but still.

  Of course, there was no way Ellie had come to New Orleans, to this bar, today, all by herself. Josh wondered how many family members he could expect through the door in the next few minutes.

  “It’s just not fair that you were born too soon for me to sweep you off your feet but in time for me to know you and see you gallivanting with that other young stud, rubbing my face in the chance I missed,” Logan told her.

  “Holy shit, boy,” Ellie said, laughing. “Does that pretty wife of yours know that you’re still out here letting all of that charm ooze out all over the place?”

  Logan laughed and nodded. “She does. She finds it hilarious. Claims she’s the only one dumb enough to fall for it.”

  Ellie cackled. “She doesn’t strike me as dumb.”

  “Well…” Logan lowered his voice but definitely not far enough to not be overheard by everyone. “I got lucky in the beginning. She was tipsy and then had pregnancy hormones raging and making her horny.”

  Ellie nodded as if that explained it all. “Yeah, knocking her up was a good move.”

  “I agree.” Logan grinned.

  Josh watched as Ellie looked across the room and gave a little wave and blew a kiss to someone. Josh didn’t have to look to see that it was Tori. His grandmother’s smile for Tori made his heart swell. But of course, he did look. He found Tori watching the whole exchange between Ellie and Logan. And smiling affectionately. That made him want to stalk across the bar and, not surprisingly, throw her over his shoulder.

  Then she looked at him and her smile grew and he actually started to stand. Then Andrew leaned in and said something that grabbed her attention and made her frown.

  Josh blew out a breath. Okay, he needed to just relax for a minute here.

  And then Kennedy walked in, joining the party.

  Huh. Just one other family member. A shockingly small number, really. For which he decided to just be grateful.

  But it meant that they’d shut the tour company down for the day. And possibly the bar. And, very likely, that Sawyer was pretty ticked off.

  “So,” Logan asked Ellie, his hands on his hips. “Business so bad down on the bayou you needed to come up here and see what a real bar looks like?”

  “Oh, Logan, fuck off,” Ellie said with a laugh. “Why don’t you put your tight ass back behind that bar and mix me a Sazerac while I talk to my grandsons?”

  “Okay, but you better ogle me all the way across the room,” Logan told her.

  “Count on it.” She definitely watched Logan walk away before turning and heading straight for Josh and Owen’s table. Kennedy was right behind her.

  Ellie didn’t take a seat since her drink was being mixed and she would much rather talk to Logan. Or Gabe, for that matter. It was impossible to make Logan blush. Gabe, on the other hand, was difficult, but not impossible, and Ellie took it as a personal challenge to do it whenever she was in here. She also usually put away two pieces of the brown butter pecan pie and then threatened to smother them in their sleep and put them in her gumbo if they ever told anyone how much she liked it. Real grandmotherly stuff, for sure.

  “What are you doing here?” Josh asked with a sigh as Kennedy did kick a chair out and take a seat at the table.

  “You didn’t really think we were going to just sit back and let you take a bus and order up morning grits without us wanting to see this up close and personal, did you?” Ellie asked.

  “See what?” he asked.

  Ellie grinned. “You goin’ all out for a girl.”

  Josh actually chuckled at that. “No matter how good your grits are, I’m not sure that’s going all out.”

  Which got him to thinking. What would going all out for Tori look like? And why hadn’t he already done it? Yeah, he’d fallen in love with her in basically one day. Well, a year and one day. But that was plenty of time for a Landry man to lose his heart. And mind.

  “It’s not the grits,” Ellie said. “It’s that you’re taking care of her. You want to make her happy. And you’re using things other than your wangadoodle to do it.”

  Owen choked on his tea and Kennedy rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, please never say wangadoodle ever again.”

  Ellie grinned. “I have other terms.”

  “Never mind,” Kennedy said. “Wangadoodle might be the least horrifying.”

  “Is love stick better?” Ellie asked.

  “No, it definitely is not.” Kennedy pushed back from the table and stood. “I’m going to the bar. To drink. You’re driving home so take it easy on the Sazerac.”

  “Oh, we’ve got a long day ahead of us,” Ellie said, waving that away. “Lots of time to sober up.”

  Kennedy groaned at that.

  “Why are you here?” Josh asked his sister.

  “Well, if y’all aren’t workin’, I’m not workin’,” Kennedy told him. “I’m not gonna sit down there and deal with tourists calling, pissed off about rescheduling.”

  “So we did cancel tours?” he asked. He felt a little bad about that. But a glance in Tori’s direction affirmed that he would do it all over again.

  “We did.” Kennedy shrugged. “But I don’t care. I get paid either way.”

  Josh frowned. “No you don’t.”

  “I do.” She reached over and grabbed a stray fry from Josh’s plate. “Read my contract.”

  “You have a contract?” Owen asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “You two just keep on being the swamp people. I’ll happily negotiate my terms with Sawyer. He’s a grump, but he’s fair and not a flake.”

  “We’re flakes?” Josh asked. But as Kennedy opened her mouth to remind him of all the trouble he and Owen had caused over the years—some unintentional, some…not—he held up
a hand. “Never mind.”

  He didn’t want to do any more of the business stuff than he had to. His job was pretty much to charm and inform and up their ratings on the travel review sites. Owen’s was all of that plus general maintenance of the boats and equipment. Sawyer, and previously Tommy, had handled the books and business. And apparently their employees. Which included their grandfather, cousin, and sister. Should have been a piece of cake. But negotiating with Kennedy was a no-win situation.

  She worked for them because it was a family business and Leo made them hire her. She had a job as long as she wanted it, no matter how badly she might do it. Fortunately, she had a lot of pride and wouldn’t do anything less than a great job. Within the very narrowly defined job description she’d agreed to. But she was a ball buster. Which was, of course, their own fault.

  She’d been the only girl in a family with two older brothers and about a dozen male cousins. She didn’t take any shit and she knew when a man was feeding her a line, probably before he did. She didn’t much care what humans of the male persuasion thought of her and she, generally, knew she was smarter than any she came across.

  But Kennedy was also beautiful and sharp and confident and pretty interesting. Even to her brothers. She’d gone from a beauty queen trained to look just right and to say and do all the right things, to a goth feminist in rebellion against everything superficial and repressive to girls and women. Needless to say, the guys in her life loved to push her buttons and they were so damned easy for her brothers to push.

  “Plus, Trevor texted me that he’d pay me one hundred dollars if Ellie didn’t kiss anyone, stayed fully clothed, and didn’t end up in jail,” Kennedy said of Ellie’s boyfriend. She gave her grandmother an affectionate-if-put-upon look. “It’s a tough gig, but I could use the money.” She looked at Josh and Owen. “My ‘bosses’ are kinda cheap.” She even put “bosses” in air quotes.

  She moved off to the bar and took a seat next to the single groomsman from Iowa. The guy had been pretty quiet most of the day, but seemed nice enough. He looked over, gave Kennedy a friendly smile, took in her black hair with the red tips, her dark eye makeup and lipstick, her pierced ears and nose, her black tank that showed off a few of her tattoos, black shorts, and short black boots and his smile widened. And Josh was pretty sure Kennedy was about to drink her next couple of cocktails for free.

  “So, as I was saying, you’re trying to make a girl happy with something other than your…”

  Josh saw Owen wince as he himself braced for Ellie’s next term for penis.

  “…dinglethumper,” Ellie said.

  Both of her grandsons groaned, which clearly made her happy.

  “And I think that’s great,” she said.

  Okay, she had a point. Underneath the cringe-worthy terminology. “Well, thanks,” he told her. “Tori is…special.”

  Ellie gave him a soft, sincere smile. “Finally,” she said.

  He couldn’t help but smile back at that. Ellie wanted everyone she loved to be madly in love. Even her ex-husband.

  “Y’all are coming home after the wedding, yeah?” Ellie asked.

  That made a knot in Josh’s gut tighten. “I don’t know how long she’s staying.”

  “Well, then ask her. And then talk her into staying longer,” Ellie said. As if it was as easy as ordering a burger.

  Josh sighed. It had been just over twenty-four hours since Tori had walked onto his dock. How could Ellie expect that he and Tori would be talking about her staying? But if he asked her that, she’d ask him why it was taking him twenty-three hours longer than it had the other men in his family.

  “Maybe a day or two,” Owen said. “You can ease her into…everything. You can’t just drop that sweet girl into the middle of our craziness.”

  “Well, she’s gonna have to be okay with it,” Ellie said lifting her shoulder. “I don’t see any of that changing.” She looked at Josh. “You’ve given her a good taste of crazy by now, haven’t you?”

  If Museums of Death and throwing her over his shoulder in a ballroom full of the rich and sort of famous counted, then yeah.

  But his hesitation made his grandmother shake her head. “Oh, boy, you gotta get on that.”

  “Just blurt out how I feel?”

  She laughed. “Show her how you feel.”

  Right. Big gesture. A spectacle. All of that. It didn’t count if it wasn’t a story everyone in town wanted to tell. Repeatedly.

  Damn. What big gesture could he do for Tori? He’d have to come up with something good.

  “And what if you scare her off?” Owen asked.

  “If you think that’s gonna happen, she’s not the one,” Ellie said resolutely.

  But Josh wasn’t so sure she’d be scared off. At all. Tori had her own brand of over-the-top. And she’d sure liked being kissed in the middle of the ballroom last night, and spun around the dance floor, and thrown over his shoulder. Just like those animals that needed extra love and attention and someone willing to go a little bat-shit—or cow-shit, as the case may be—crazy for them, didn’t Tori deserve that same thing?

  The idea of Tori being immersed in his world—and loving it—made his heart pound.

  Yes, he needed to get her to Autre, on his turf, away from the plantation and sequins, away from the murder museum and his stand-up-tour-guide routine, to the heart of…him. He wanted to show her everything and show her that he was willing and able to be crazy about her.

  “So where is she?” Ellie asked, looking pointedly at the empty chairs at Josh and Owen’s table.

  “Over there with Andrew,” Josh said. “The groom. Her best friend from back home.”

  Ellie found Tori at the end of the bar. “They look cozy.”

  Yeah, they really frickin’ did.

  “So, you want me to leave them alone?” Ellie asked.

  Josh sighed. Not really, but he should say yes. “Probably.” Then again, he maybe couldn’t interrupt them without being a bit of an asshole, but Ellie could get away with almost anything. “Well…I mean…maybe.”

  11

  “Come on, Tori. You don’t really know him.”

  “I’m getting to know him.” Tori glanced from Andrew to where Josh sat across the bar.

  Somehow they’d gotten separated when they’d come into Trahan’s. There were a lot of people in here who were happy to see him and wanted to talk. Which didn’t surprise her a bit. Josh was a people person. She’d realized it early on, watching him behind the bar last year, but it had been on full display during the tour of New Orleans today. He’d loved every bit of the storytelling, all the questions, the oohs and ahhs from the group. He’d clearly been in his element and if she’d been attracted to him before, it had multiplied tenfold today. It was clearly a case of opposites attract. He had that natural charisma that she was drawn to because she didn’t have a bit.

  Of course, the night before had been a part of the increased attraction too. She’d obviously thought he was very good-looking before they’d gotten naked together, but all day she’d been finding it hard not to get hot and tingly looking at his mouth and his hands and his ass. Even his voice had been making her panties wet, remembering the things he’d said last night with that hot, gruff tone as he’d made love to her, the deep groans and growls…

  “Tori?”

  She snapped her attention back to Andrew. Dang. She was incredibly distracted today. The tour had been fun and she’d loved all the weirdness, but she’d also been wondering when she and Josh would be alone again and looking forward to that night. Even in the middle of the Museum of Death she’d been thinking about how awesome he was and how much she wanted to kiss him.

  “Yeah?” she asked Andrew.

  “Are you okay?”

  Horny. But okay. She smiled. “Yes.”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “You said that you think I barely know Josh.” She understood why he’d think that. They hadn’t known each other long. Even less time than Andr
ew thought, actually. But she believed she did know Josh. He was a what-you-see-is-what-you-get guy. She loved that about him. She didn’t have to figure him out. She could easily tell what he was feeling. Very much like a dog. In a very good way.

  “I was saying that I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to think about moving down here.”

  Tori frowned. She’d confessed to her best friend that things were going well with Josh and that he was the first guy in a very long time that she could see having a long-term relationship with. And how hard that would be if one of them was in Iowa and one was in Louisiana.

  “You don’t think I should go for something that makes me this happy?”

  “You have a business.”

  “So does he. And it’s a lot harder to move a bayou than it is to move a barn.” Of course, she wouldn’t move her barn. But she could move everything inside it to a new barn. Outside of Autre, possibly. Her heart flipped at that thought.

  “I guess this is just…hard for me,” Andrew said.

  “Hard for you? Why would it be hard for you?”

  “I didn’t know anything about this guy. You’ve told me nothing. Then suddenly you show up here, supposedly in this serious relationship, with this guy you’re thinking about uprooting your life for. It’s just taking me by surprise and it’s tough to adjust quickly.”

  Tori frowned. “You don’t have to adjust to it, Andrew. It’s not about you.”

  The flash of hurt that crossed his face was obvious and Tori felt bad. She sighed. “I just mean, this doesn’t change your life. And if I’m here, you can get to know Josh and get used to all of this faster. We could go out, the four of us.” She did not want to go out with Paisley. Mostly because of Paisley and her obvious dislike for Tori even with Josh in the picture. There was a still a jealous vibe coming from the other woman that Tori couldn’t understand. But Tori also thought that she and Josh would want to hang out at places like Trahan’s and Ellie’s, while Paisley would want something more lavish.

  “Yeah, maybe we could do that,” Andrew said, though he didn’t seem enthusiastic. “You know I just want to take care of you.”