Beauty and the Bayou

by Erin Nicholas

  Sawyer blinked at her. “I’ve never really thought about it.”

  She nodded. “They almost have to. And they probably do it in that water, too.” She shuddered again. “No, thank you. There are just places I do not need dirty bayou water.”

  “It’s the poop that’s keeping you from skinny-dippin’?” Sawyer asked, clearly trying not to laugh. “You are really thinking about the wrong thing when it comes to bein’ wet and naked, darlin’.”

  Okay, well, wet and naked sounded like a great idea, and when he called it “dippin’” with his Louisiana drawl and added the “darlin’,” dirty water sounded like a lot more fun, she had to admit.

  It was absolutely crazy how easily this man made her body heat and her pulse race. Had she packed her vibrator? Because she might need to get something delivered if not.

  “But there are so many other places to be naked,” she said. “Cleaner places. Where you don’t risk having important things bitten. And that don’t involve poop.”

  She was flirting. Kind of. Referring to poop might detract from the flirtatiousness, but it was closer than she’d been in a long time. Maybe that was why she hadn’t had sex in so long. Flirting would probably help with that. Also, not referring to poop would also probably help.

  But, seemingly undeterred by her use of the “p” word, Sawyer’s eyes darkened, even as he grinned, and he leaned in slightly. “You have a point. Though getting naked isn’t always the best way to cool off.”

  Maybe flirting with Sawyer would help with that no-sex thing she had going on.

  “Hey, Jules!”

  Chase broke into their…whatever it was.

  They both straightened as if they’d been caught telling each other secrets. Or about to kiss.

  She looked to where her brother was standing on the edge of the road at the top of the slight hill where they were working. “Yeah?”

  He was holding what looked like a sandwich. She hadn’t ever seen him eat this much. He looked…happy. She frowned. It wasn’t as if Chase wasn’t a happy guy. He definitely was. But she knew he was put out about being here. Mostly because he knew she intended this to be a couple of weeks of life lessons and he thought she was overreacting.

  “I’m going to go to New Orleans with Mitch,” Chase called. “He’s dropping a busload of people off at the hotels and then he needs to pick up a bunch of supplies for his grandma.”

  Juliet frowned and looked at the pile of wood he and Sawyer had cut that morning. “You’ve got work to do here.”

  “We got a lot done,” Chase said. “And I’m still helping out.”

  “But you—”

  “Let him go.”

  She looked up at Sawyer. “What?”

  “Let him go with Mitch,” Sawyer said. “You wanted Chase to come here to help us out. If Mitch needs to do a pickup for Ellie, he could use an extra hand and this will keep one of us from having to go along.”

  “But…” She looked at her brother again. “We have to finish the dock while we’re here and we don’t have a ton of time.”

  “Mitch is a good guy. You want a positive influence on Chase, Mitch can be one, too,” Sawyer told her.

  “Ellie said that he’s a troublemaker,” Juliet told him.

  Sawyer shrugged. “He is.”

  “Chase is already a troublemaker. I don’t think he needs more influence in that department.”

  “Yeah, well, Mitch has something Chase probably doesn’t.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A grandma that he’s afraid of.”

  Juliet gave a little surprised laugh. “Ellie can catch him?”

  Sawyer shook his head. “No, but she’s got a ton of people who would catch him and hold him down for her.”

  “She’d actually smack him?” Juliet asked.

  “Smack him? Nah. Not that she’s above that. But she’s found something that works better for disciplining us boys.”

  “I have to know,” Juliet said.

  “He’ll have to sit in a chair behind the bar for a full day and she’ll read Ralph Waldo Emerson to him, talk to him only in French—and will respond only if he speaks French.”

  Juliet stared at him. “She’ll read Emerson?”

  “Well, she’ll recite a lot of it. But yeah, as she works, she’ll have her book of his poems open on the bar top and she’ll read out loud.”

  “And will communicate only in French?”

  “Yep.”

  “To torture him.”

  “To—and this is a direct quote—instill some ever-lovin’ class and higher thinkin’ in him.” He grinned and both corners of his mouth went up slightly. “Apparently, if we got into trouble—especially at school—we were displaying a horrible lack of class and higher thinking.”

  Juliet loved this. She narrowed her eyes. “How many poems do you know by heart?”

  “Most of them.”

  “You must have gotten into trouble a lot.”

  He winked. “J’ai adoré chaque minute.”

  Juliet stared at him.

  Damn.

  A big, rugged man with a scar and a panty-warming smile who could speak French? She was in big trouble here. “What’s that mean?” she asked after she’d swallowed hard.

  “And I loved every minute.”

  Oh, she bet he had.

  “The thing about Ellie is,” Sawyer went on. “If we hadn’t gotten into some trouble, she would have worried about us.”

  “But you all got into a lot of trouble,” Juliet pointed out.

  “Yeah. But we were all straight-A French students. Plus,” he said, tucking a hand in his front pocket. “We liked hanging out with her. Cora slipped us samples of whatever she was making that day. We learned to swear. We heard stories from all the fishermen and everyone else who worked around here and developed a real appreciation for how hard they worked and how much they loved it.”

  Wow. He spoke French and loved his grandmother. She really liked him. All of these people. But especially Sawyer. “So, Mitch’s troublemaking isn’t trouble trouble.”

  “All I can promise is if Chase ends up sitting behind Ellie’s bar as a punishment, it’ll make him a better guy.”

  “She still makes you guys sit back there?”

  “She would,” Sawyer said. “But we’ve gotten a little better at hiding our troublemaking.” He leaned in. “The trick is to get in trouble all together…then there’s no one left to tell on ya.”

  Juliet laughed. “You all are crazy, you know that?”

  “Oh, for sure,” he said with a nod.

  “Does it rub off?”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  She swallowed hard. She’d never had this kind of camaraderie. Her family was a lot less…all of this.

  “Anyway,” Sawyer went on. “Could be good for Chase to see other parts of our business. What goes into everything here beyond just having docks for people to get on and off the boats.”

  She thought about that. It would be good for Chase to realize that he’d impacted an entire business and a number of people, not just a boat dock. “But the dock…” she said, one more time.

  “It’ll get done,” Sawyer said. “Somehow. It’s just one thing we’ve got going on though.”

  Maybe he had a point. The better Chase knew these people and saw what their daily lives were like, the more it would sink in that a series of bad decisions by him and his idiot friends combined with a moment of stupidity had really affected other people.

  She nodded. “Okay, fine.” She looked up at Chase. “See you later.”

  He gave her a grin and a wave and headed back for Ellie’s.

  “And now you can take a break,” Sawyer said to her.

  “I’ve still got wood to cut.”

  “But you’re here working with Chase, right? You didn’t bust up the dock. You don’t have to work when he’s not here.”

  She frowned. “Of course I do. We made a promise to rebuild the dock. If he can be helpful otherwise, th
at’s great, but there’s no reason I can’t keep going.”

  Sawyer opened his mouth to reply—or argue—but finally he just said, “Okay. Don’t overdo.”

  “I’m safe from sunburn, bug bites, my hair getting caught in a saw or blowing in my face so I hack off a finger,” she said with a smile. “I’m good.”

  He clearly wanted to say something more, but he nodded.

  She fired up the circular saw and tried to concentrate on cutting along the line she’d drawn. She could feel him standing there, just watching her for several long moments, but eventually he moved off, and she let out a little breath.

  Sawyer was damned distracting and she found herself thinking it would be fun to have him around. A lot. Talking in that low drawl, telling her about his family, teasing her about skinny-dipping.

  Maybe insisting she go skinny-dipping with him.

  Or at least insisting she do the first step of skinny-dipping—stripping down to nothing—with him.

  Juliet scowled at the board she was cutting. She needed to pay attention. If she got distracted, she could cut something crooked. Or cut something off after all.

  4

  He hadn’t hovered at all. Over anyone. For three days.

  That was…fucking amazing.

  Sawyer stepped back from the workbench, wiping his hands on the rag he pulled from his back pocket.

  Owen had asked him to look at the motor on their backup airboat and Sawyer had jumped at the chance.

  He’d been working on paperwork and running errands for the last two days, but he hadn’t had as much to do as he’d hoped. That was all Maddie’s fault. Since she’d come home, things had been running much smoother. Files were organized, invoicing was caught up, and their vendors—the guys who delivered bottled drinks, snacks, and T-shirts, and who spent inordinate amounts of time shooting the shit with Josh and Owen and flirting with Kennedy—were suddenly a lot more efficient with Maddie around. Which was helpful from a business standpoint but made things difficult when Sawyer was trying to stay busy and act nonchalant about the dock building going on.

  Truthfully, he was trying to act nonchalant about the woman who was doing that dock building.

  He’d walked down to the dock yesterday morning, seen Juliet running a circular saw underneath a blue nylon canopy, and been glad that she’d had her hard hat on—if the wind caught the flimsy tent, it could have collapsed right on her. And turned on. Turned on by the hat and the fact that he was sure she’d thought of the danger of the tent whacking her in the head. Thankfully, also by how gorgeous she looked in the morning sun in her long-sleeved blue shirt and the blue jeans that made her ass look amazing when she bent over to measure a board. Because wanting her because of that ass in those jeans was normal. Wanting her to wear a hard hat in bed wasn’t.

  Juliet was quirky, but that shouldn’t even be a blip on his radar. Quirky was par for the course around here. In fact, it was a polite term for what the people around here really were. But he’d had a hell of a time walking past her and into the office.

  After he’d decided her hair needed to be French braided so it wouldn’t get caught in the saw—for fuck’s sake—and had then flirted with her over skinny-dipping and fish poop—for fuck’s sake—he’d realized that he also wanted to be sure she was completely covered in sunscreen and that the area was fully cottonmouth-free.

  Sunburn and snake bites were real threats.

  For a woman without long sleeves and pants and steel-toed boots.

  That was not Juliet.

  He and Chase had been working a few feet away from her for a little over three hours, and it had been clear from the first minute that Juliet had everything handled. A plan. The right tools. Protective wear from head to toe. Literally. Then, instead of just being impressed and happy to have someone so well prepared around, he had made up a stupid excuse to What-If about her circular saw and had French braided her hair.

  He’d quickly realized that the only way to be nonchalant about her and to try to break his new attraction to neon green and yellow plastic was to avoid her.

  The old Sawyer would have never come up with that bit about her hair. Of course, the old Sawyer wouldn’t have been turned on by her steel-toed boots, either.

  He was determined to remember old Sawyer. To show his family that he remembered him. Among other things, old Sawyer knew how to take time off. So that’s what he’d done.

  Kind of.

  He’d taken his crazy, steel-toed-boots-are-hot, can-I-play-with-your-hair self away from Juliet, at least.

  Which had turned out fine. The dock building itself was going great. He’d swung by every day after hours and checked things over. Not because he’d been concerned about how things were going, but just because the stacks of wood were on his way home.

  Okay, maybe he’d been a little curious about how things were going.

  Juliet really did seem to have it all covered though. The boards were cut and treated. There weren’t as many boards ready to go as he would have expected after three days of all-day work, and they didn’t seem to be preparing to frame it up any time soon, but Juliet and Chase were amateurs. Sawyer, Owen, and Josh could have had it half done by now. Skip and Tanner definitely would have been framing it by now. But what was done, had been done well.

  Bottom line, him hanging out around Juliet’s work site would have been a complete overreaction and he was done doing that.

  It really was nice to walk away from it knowing that Juliet was being cautious, keeping an eye on Chase, and doing a good job even without Sawyer being on top of her. Things. On top of things.

  Because being on top of her was a whole other thing.

  It was also something he’d been thinking about more and more, even without having so much as a conversation with her over the past two days.

  He seemed to be thinking about her almost constantly.

  Talk about getting back to old Sawyer.

  As he tossed the wrench into the toolbox, Sawyer thought about his “normal” state. In particular, how women had figured into that.

  He loved women. He’d had his share of dates and overnight guests—maybe more than his share. He’d never been the playboy Josh and Owen had been before Tori and Maddie, but he enjoyed flirting with the tourists and entertaining the ones that decided to hang out in Autre for the weekend crawfish boil that happened at Ellie’s every Friday and Saturday.

  But he hadn’t been to a crawfish boil, not to mention making nice with the out-of-towners there, in months. He just hadn’t been able to pull up a sense of fun or a desire to drink and dance. Both of which was required at Ellie’s crawfish boils. He hadn’t wanted to pull anyone else’s mood down, so he’d just stayed away. Of course, he’d been able to hear the zydeco music and laughter from his house just a couple of blocks over from Ellie’s. It had made him miss Tommy even more at first. Then, slowly, he’d started opening his windows on purpose to hear it. That sound was as much a part of his life as the sound of his mother’s voice or the crickets and frogs out on the bayou. It was home. It was part of him.

  It was time to get back to it.

  He still needed a part for the motor and he’d have to head over to Mountville in the morning to get it, but his stomach was growling and, honestly, he wanted to see what Juliet was up to. Maybe even flirt with her a little. Not enough to find out anything too personal, but just enough to get a blush and a smile. Harmless fun.

  Just like old Sawyer would have.

  When he stepped out of the workshop, however, there was no one around. It was nearing dusk, and they didn’t have any bayou tours booked tonight. He looked around. Huh. He’d been inside working longer than he’d thought. He never lost track of time like that.

  The light in the front office was on though.

  “Oh, of course, Mr. Baxter, I’ll get those right over to you.”

  As he stepped through the door, Sawyer saw Kennedy nearly roll her eyes right out of their sockets as she listened to Bennett Baxter’
s response.

  “Would you like those color-coded?” Kennedy asked Bennett with feigned sweetness. Very feigned. “Or should I just put them in the same folders from last week. You know, the ones labeled You’re A Grown Man and Can Do This Yourself for Fuck’s Sake and Fishing, Frogs, and other F words and I’m Not Your Secretary But My Ass Does Look Amazing in a Pencil Skirt.”

  Sawyer rolled his eyes. Those were actually the file folder names she’d sent Bennett. Sawyer had seen them.

  Bennett Baxter was the fourth partner in Boys of the Bayou. The very new fourth partner. He’d just bought in a little over a week ago. Apparently, Kennedy had decided to be offended that she was attracted to a guy who wore a tie and had manners. According to Maddie, it irked Kennedy immensely that she had chemistry with a stuck-up suit. It amused everyone else. Sawyer tried very hard to ignore it.

  Bennett was a good guy, and it was always kind of fun to see Kennedy not have the upper hand, but she was his little sister.

  “Be nice, Ken,” Sawyer told her. For all the good it would do.

  “It’s amazing to me,” she said to Sawyer, though clearly Bennett could hear every word, “that a man with a law degree and a master’s degree in conservation and biodiversity, can’t figure out how to put things into an Excel spreadsheet.”

  So, Kennedy had kept track of Bennett’s specific advanced degrees. Sawyer wasn’t sure Kennedy even knew that he had a biology degree.

  “You agreed to send him whatever reports he needs,” Sawyer reminded her. “He’s just trying to get caught up on things.”

  “I don’t remember agreeing to that,” Kennedy told him.

  “I told you five days ago.”

  “I remember you telling me to do it. But I don’t remember saying yes.”

  “You don’t have to say yes. You just have to do it.” Sawyer gave her a knock-it-off look. “That’s what employees do when their bosses tell them to do things.”