by Tina DeSalvo
“Since when do you get involved with my dealings?” She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I’ve got this.”
Ben looked at Beau and shrugged. “Elli has a lot of experience with this sort of thing. She’s comfortable with it. Do you think there are reasons for her not to be?”
Before this got too heavy and her job was derailed by over lawyering, Jewell spoke up. “I’m willing to adjust the contract to expedite things if you want,” she said, looking at Elli. “As long as we keep my fee schedule in place.” She just wanted this deal to be sealed. She needed the paycheck and she needed access to the area to look for Twinnie.
The three Bienvenus began to discuss whether or not they needed to beef up the out-clause. It quickly became clear that Beau thought Elli and Ben needed to be better protected from Jewell. He didn’t say exactly why, but from what she could gather from the undercurrents, it was totally because he mistrusted her. She knew it was his job to mistrust and anticipate possible problems, but after her disappointing weekend, and after months of dealing with her own lawyers’ indirect legalese, she felt bruised by his strong position against her. That was silly of her. He was, after all, Elli and Ben’s advocate, not hers.
“Okay, just write in what you think needs to be in there,” Elli told Beau. She looked at Jewell and gave her a resigned smile. “This is all just academic. We’re going to have a great relationship.”
Jewell smiled but she felt like crying. It felt awful to have her integrity questioned, even in the name of good advocacy. Even if there was just cause with the theft charges levied against her. But, did they know about them? She hadn’t had a chance to discuss it with Elli. Was it fair to her to enter this agreement without her knowing? She would tell her. After the deal was made and not in front of Beau. If Elli wanted out of it, she would walk away.
Beau took the contract and added two additional sentences to it. He turned the page toward Elli to read. She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I agreed to stronger language, but don’t you think this is overkill, Beau?”
“Maybe. As your attorney I recommend you initial it, Elli.” She turned to speak to Ben quietly, then, on a sigh, initialed the contract.
Beau handed the document to Jewell. She read it. Her face heated, her temper simmered just below the surface. So this was what the legal allusions were all about? Did he really think he needed this to protect his clients from her?
“A morality clause?” she said, not knowing where she found the strength to keep her voice so calm. A freakin’ morality clause. It stated that Elli could sever the contract for any act by Jewell of misconduct including (but not limited to) an act of dishonesty, theft or misappropriation of property, moral turpitude, insubordination, or any act injuring, abusing or endangering others. And—for not following the standards of good citizenship.
She looked at Beau. He stared back at her. In his clear, peridot eyes she saw it. This Cajun hard-ass country lawyer knew about the theft charges against her. Did he know about her mother, too? Without showing him the emotion roiling and burning in her gut, she initialed the modification and signed the contract. What choice did she have?
Beau realized that Elli had adopted Mignon and Jewell just as easily as she had adopted the three misfit shelter dogs that Ben had tried to pass off as part of her inheritance when she first came to claim her inheritance of half of Sugar Mill Plantation. They were the dogs that lived in the house with them, their son, Joey and Ben’s old faithful mutt, Lucky. It was crazy to think that she would have added one more dog to the misfit pack if money and begging had worked with the movie-dog-handler she’d rented a designer dog from in hopes to impress Ben when she had first come to town.
No doubt about it, his cousin’s wife had a huge capacity to love. She also wore her heart on her sleeve, Beau thought as he watched her adjust a soft, comfy pillow behind Mignon’s head and tuck the blanket under her orthopedic shoes. Elli’s dogs seemed to adopt the old lady, too, he realized as they settled protectively on the floor around Ben’s recliner where Mignon slept. The dogs were a loyal lot, but they ran all over Elli when Ben wasn’t around.
Just like Jewell and her feisty grandmother would if he wasn’t there to stop them.
“She’ll be just fine,” Elli told Jewell who was standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. Elli sat on the sofa with Ben who had just come into the room. She picked up her iPad. “She’s nice and comfy and resting soundly.” The big bloodhound, Doe, jumped on the sofa next to and on top of Elli. Ben snapped his fingers; Doe groaned and jumped back on the floor. She settled near Mignon again. “I’m happy to stay here with your sweet grandmother and get a little work done. You won’t have to worry about anything while you get the camper set up.” Ben stretched his arm over the back of the sofa, resting his hand on Elli’s shoulder. She kissed him tenderly on the cheek, and then nodded for him to get up. “Ben and Beau will help you.”
Beau saw Jewell nod and swallow hard. She looked like she wanted to cry. But—points to her—not in the open, hugely dramatic, “Look at me, I’m a sad woman” kind of way. She held her emotions below the surface, like she was trying to hide it; only her eyes gave away her pain.
Man, she was good at playing this confidence scam, he thought. She could win an academy award for this performance.
She didn’t overact the sad emotional damsel role and she certainly didn’t miss an opportunity to play the victim. Even in this subtle way of pretending to hide her feelings. Like she’d be able to hide this kind of emotion if it was real. He remembered how he’d felt the first time someone genuinely offered to help him when he was down in the bowels of bad luck. It had felt like an anvil landed on his chest, crushing his lungs and squeezing his heart.
This act here really pissed him off.
“Thank you,” Jewell told Elli, her voice whisper soft. “I won’t be long.” Ben stood and she smiled at him. “Thanks.” Her eyes shifted to Beau. “Thank you, too, Beau.”
Beau saluted Elli as he walked out of the parlor with Ben, Jewell and four of the seven dogs.
“Look at that,” Ben held up his cell phone as soon as they reached his truck which was parked near Jewell’s camper. Jewell kept walking toward the camper and now was out of earshot of the men. “I’ve got to go to the kennel and check on a sick Lab. He needs his meds before bedtime.” He grinned a tight, fake smile, showing a lot of teeth and mischief.
“You have staff for that.” Beau folded his arms over his chest. “You’d rather shove a pill down an angry, slobbering dog’s throat than deal with this disaster your wife invited to camp in your yard, wouldn’t you?”
Ben shrugged. “You know where she needs to plug into the power. Water hose is right outside the barn near the western corner. It shouldn’t take y’all long. If you have any problems with it, just step aside pretty boy. Seems like the Professor can take care of herself.”
“Yeah, but who will take care of you two bat-shit blind people that let the thieving Professor Capable and her way-too-familiar grandmother homestead on your property?”
Ben laughed, opened the door for his dogs to jump into his old work truck and quickly took off down the road to the kennel.
Beau watched him drive away as Jewell returned, walking up behind him. He hadn’t heard her approach but he sure as hell smelled her sweet, distinctive sexy scent. It was stronger than it had been earlier. Why in the hell was that? Did she apply fragrance just to set up her camper, or to allure him and Ben?
”Let’s get this over with,” she said sounding angry. Not a tone for someone trying to allure another human being. “Before someone misconstrues our unchaperoned meeting in the twilight as moral turpitude, or an act of poor citizenship. Don’t want to violate my contract.”
He turned to face her. The dark orange and peach glow of the setting sun reached up from the distant horizon, through the thick, heavy branches of the nearby oak and cypress trees into the lavender and violet sky. Jewell stood in silhouette, with her back to the beautifu
l fall sunset, her arms folded over her full breasts. She was a beautiful woman who looked like she was standing exactly where she was supposed to be standing in the universe at that moment. Beau could appreciate the art of that scene, but it ticked him off that she looked so right in a place where she shouldn’t be.
He shook his head. “It really is a damn shame we didn’t meet in the Carousel Bar in New Orleans or in the blues tent at Jazz Fest,” he said, his voice deep, soft. Yeah, too bad he had concerns that this sultry woman was trying to scam his family. That put her off-limits.
It was crazy he was so attracted to her, he thought. Hell, he normally wouldn’t have even considered being with someone who by most accounts was guilty of the crime she was charged with, but his body seemed to be overruling his ethics. Hell, his hands heated at just the thought of how he wanted to slide them over her nice, firm, womanly body. And, damn it, she would’ve been fun for an intelligent conversation over dinner about history or something interesting, too. There wouldn’t be any of the usual fluffy dinner convo he had no interest in, like fashion faux-pas of the stars or some reality TV show couple’s breakup. Life sure wasn’t fair. He was just three feet away from the sexiest woman he’d ever seen and she was a flippin’ criminal. Yeah, he saw the humor in it and the damn frustration. He couldn’t remember a time he desired a woman, a stranger, like he did this one. She was the forbidden fruit.
Beau let the arousing thought of a hot liaison seep into his body, knowing it could never be, but enjoying how the impossible possibility felt.
“Cochon,” Jewell’s scolding voice cut through his nice little moment. “Snap out of it,” she said, staring hard into his eyes.
In French or Cajun French he knew what cochon meant. Yep, he probably deserved being called a pig for where his mind had gone. “No offense,” he offered with all sincerity. “I should’ve guarded my thoughts better.”
“You shouldn’t have those thoughts in the first place.”
“First of all, you have no idea what my private thoughts are, really.” He looked at her and cocked a brow. “You aren’t a mind reader are you?” She narrowed her gaze at him and frowned. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Secondly…”
“Secondly, I’m here to do a job and not to be concerned about what your thoughts are, how you do or don’t control them or how you have a God-given American right to have your thoughts.” She sighed. “Look, Beau, I suppose you’re a nice guy. I guess some women find you charming and want to be your girlfriend, but, me…not so much. Not interested. Frankly, I’m not sure I even like you. I certainly don’t appreciate the hostility you’ve shown me. So, let’s get on with finding the power outlet to plug my camper into. Do you know where it is?”
Beau looked at her a moment. He was dazed from the fact that he’d been put in his place, damn quick and rightly so. “Uh,” he managed, so unintelligently, that it made him laugh.
She dropped her hands to where she had a leather tool belt strapped around her nicely curved hips. He hadn’t noticed it before. It seemed excessive and over prepared to have it, considering they were just plugging in her camper. Beau smiled.
“You weren’t a Girl Scout by any chance?”
She cocked her head and looked at him like he was asking her to explain Cantor’s theorem, which he wouldn’t be surprised if she knew. He pointed to the huge, police-issued flash-riot control mag flashlight that was slipped into one of the belt’s loops. It was the kind the military used to knock a violent enemy into submission. “You don’t plan to whack me in the head with that, do you?”
“Not if I’m unprovoked.” She smiled a half smile, obviously finding humor in her own comment.
“Then I will try not to provoke you.” He pointed to the shed. “The power should be over there.” He smiled at her back as she walked toward her camper and away from where he’d directed her. She had called him a pig. Ha. He chuckled. That wasn’t the way he would’ve expected her to play out her confidence game. Shouldn’t she try to charm him in return?
He walked away, toward the shed, figuring she’d catch up with him eventually. He needed more evidence to figure out what was going on with her and her grandmother. Usually he was dead-on reading someone’s intent, a necessity he’d learned very young when dealing with his unpredictable biological parents and their drinking buddies. If he didn’t want to end up bruised and broken, he had to be able to look into their eyes and figure out quickly who was a happy drunk, who was a mean drunk, who looked like a happy drunk but wasn’t, and who was just a plain ol’ son of a bitch. You could read a lot in someone’s eyes. Especially pure evil and insincerity.
In the end, the best thing he'd learned for survival was to just stay the hell away from them all, take his younger brother and hide in the cypress woods until the booze left his parents and their party partners passed out and were rendered mostly harmless. That was another lesson he learned, you never walked within striking distance, even if the gator was sleeping.
Beau entered the barn, switched on the fluorescent light and immediately located the outlet Ben had mentioned earlier. Thirty seconds later Jewell walked into the barn carrying a long heavy-duty shore cord and an extra-long black water hose.
Beau extended his hand for her to give him the cord. “I’ll plug it in for you.”
“I got it, thank you.” Jewell walked around him and plugged it in herself. Beau didn’t think she sounded like she really was thankful. She seemed like a woman who also believed in staying out of striking distance. But damn, she was adorable in her red plastic ladybug boots and that fierce scowl on her face. Both were better suited to a five-year-old, and yet somehow both made her look sexy as hell.
He really needed to get laid.
“Where's the water spigot?” She dropped the extension cord on the ground in a neat circle with the female end of the cord resting on top.
“Outside the barn somewhere.” He said, annoyed at her frustratingly hostile attitude. “Watch for snakes while you look for it.” Yeah, she might act like she knew about the human kind of snakes, but let’s see what she thought of the slithering, reptilian kind. He hadn’t seen any snakes around the house or barn since he was a child, but she didn’t need to know that.
He saw the tiniest bit of a hesitation, a flinch. It was hardly noticeable, and he would have missed it had he not been waiting for it. Oh, the woman was quick witted. She caught her involuntary reaction before it manifested into a full girly scream or leap onto a chair. Beau smiled.
He let his Cajun accent thicken, his delivery slow to almost an easy promenade. “Chère, want me to come and chase away those nasty venomous water moccasins and those nocturnal snaggle-tooth coons and possums? They start hunting about this time of night.”
She turned on her cute ladybug boots and reached with deliberate, slow, very purposeful movements for that damn black 24-inch heavy-duty mag flashlight. Hell, she could have been a gunslinger going for her six-shooter. She slapped it into the palm of her opposite hand, and the light flashed on.
“Maybe I should just tag along to protect the creatures you may happen on with that thing there, chère. Yes, indeed.”
She looked at him and smiled a contained smile. “What makes you think you’re so safe around me, cher. Yes, indeed.”
“Because I have an app, darlin’.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He touched the screen and a light illuminated the darkness, then started to spin in tiny prisms into the darkening night like a disco ball. Music started to play, “Night Fever” by the Bee Gees. “People fled the ’70s as fast as they could because of this stuff and because of white polyester leisure suits. I’m guessing an antiques lover and historian will run from it, too, like it was poison sumac.”
Jewell started to laugh a full-on genuine laugh. “Okay. Okay. You win. Just turn that off. I’ll have nightmares of an army of men and women wearing white patent leather platform shoes, deep-V plunging stretch jumpsuits and gold chains line dancing in the sugarcane fields.�
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Beau found himself laughing along with her and really enjoying it. It bothered the hell out of him that he was. It had sneaked up on him, too. He usually was more guarded with his feelings and able to joke, tease and navigate a conversation without actually being affected by it when he needed to. He needed to now. Still, her humor and infectious laugh managed to get to him on some visceral level. Not good. He’d be in big trouble if he wasn’t careful and didn’t step up his “A” game.
He tapped the screen to turn off the app. “Yeah, I see an end to crime, wars and mass destruction. All we need are the right apps to control the world.”
“So you’re all about world domination, huh?” Jewell turned and started to walk out of the barn to look for the water spigot.
“Isn’t everyone?”
“Nah. I just want clean water, cool air and a good night’s sleep.”
“I bet you are about more than that, Dr. Jewell Duet.” Beau followed her to where she’d stopped in front of a water spigot. She didn’t look at him, wince, or change her expression one iota as he half-expected she’d do when he used her title for the first time. He had no doubt she heard him and realized why he dropped it in. She’d know he was telling her that he knew more about her than she had shared. “I bet you don’t do much without a purpose. I bet you…”
“I think you should call the 1-800-gambling helpline for compulsive betters…I bet, I bet, I bet.” She bent to connect the water hose and her jeans strained nice and tight in all of the right places. Beau didn’t mind taking a moment to appreciate the fact that Dr. Jewell Duet had a real nice derrière. The kind men wanted to fill their hands with and women always worried looked too big. She turned and started to head toward the camper, uncoiling the hose as she walked. Beau leaned against the wood siding of the barn and watched her purposeful, yet sexy-as-hell stride. She had an innate, natural sensuality that came from her knowing that she was so damn hot. Or did she?