In Dreams

by Patricia Rosemoor

  “Justin, my oldest, my most wonderful boy, is that—” she stopped dead in her tracks and gaped “—a young lady you have with you?”

  Though she was obviously surprised, Justin’s mother sounded pleased as punch, Lucy thought, amused at the way the woman addressed her son. There was great affection between the two of them, that was obvious from the big hug Justin gave his mother.

  “Mama, I have brought home a woman in distress,” he announced dramatically.

  “Oh, my. How can I help?”

  What in the world was he going to tell his mother? Surely he wouldn’t alarm her with the truth.

  As she stepped forward, hand held out, Lucy surreptitiously kicked Justin. “Lucy Ryan.”

  “Marie Guidry,” the woman returned with a firm handshake. “What kind of help do you need?”

  “All that rain…”

  She gave Justin a glance to make sure he wasn’t going to butt in with the part she didn’t want told. His arms were crossed over his chest and his expression nonchalant. He was letting her tell it, thankfully.

  “My car got stuck at the edge of the bayou and your son kindly brought me to town to get help. I need to have someone haul the car back onto the road and check it out to see that everything still works properly.”

  The last thing she needed was a breakdown on the way back to New Orleans.

  “Oh, you poor dear. The rain was terrible…last night.” Marie Guidry gave her son a look before adding, “That must have been a scare for you. Come in the kitchen and I’ll get you something to eat. Food always makes a body feel better.”

  Lucy said, “I’m not hungry. Justin already fed me.”

  His mother’s eyes rounded. “Oh, he did, did he?”

  “What could I do, Mama, but feed a woman in distress?”

  “So her car went into the bayou…at the fishing camp…how?”

  “Well, not right at the fishing camp. Of course that’s not possible.” Justin suddenly sounded nervous. “Say, how about we have some coffee. Mama makes the best chicory coffee this side of New Orleans.”

  Justin was doing his best to distract his mother.

  Though she turned back toward her kitchen, his mother asked, “And how would you know I make the best chicory? You taste every one in the parish?”

  “Pretty darn near.”

  The warmth between mother and son made Lucy feel right at home. Maybe more at home than at her own parents’ house. Not that her parents didn’t care for her and her sister or welcome them home. They simply weren’t as touchy-feely or as open with their emotions.

  In the kitchen, a smaller, fairer version of Marie Guidry sat at the kitchen table and chopped vegetables, throwing them into a big pot. Justin introduced her to Lucy as Tante Jeannette.

  “Nice to see that you have good taste in women, Justin. Your mother was beginning to worry that she was going to have to hire a matchmaker for you.”

  Startled by the woman’s inference that she and Justin were an item, Lucy was just about to set her straight when she was interrupted by the heavy clump-clump of a male tread down the back stairs toward them.

  “Ah, Stephen,” Justin called out. “Just the man I was looking for.”

  “What, you need someone to cut up your bait for you?” asked the younger, taller, softer version of Justin.

  “I need someone with a good strong truck and chain. I need to get a lady’s car unstuck. The lady being Ms. Lucy Ryan here.”

  No smile crossed Stephen’s lips as he gave Lucy the once-over, but he nodded in a friendly manner. “Should I round up Marcus, then?”

  Justin lowered his voice to ask, “You know whose bed he’s in?”

  “I heard that,” Marie Guidry said from across the room. She was at the stove pouring coffee in two mugs.

  “Well, do you know?” Justin asked her.

  “I try not to think about it.” She gave Lucy an exasperated expression. “Three sons over thirty and not one of them married or even seeming concerned about settling down. I’ll never have any grandbabies at this rate.”

  “Don’t worry, Mama,” Justin said, “there’s plenty of time for those.”

  “I mean before I’m too old to enjoy them.”

  “Watch what you wish for, Marie,” Tante Jeanette warned her. “For all you know, Marcus already has a brood spread over the parish.”

  Justin sighed the dramatic sigh of a man who had an unwanted weight on his shoulders. “So, does anyone know where Marcus is or not?”

  “Marcus is right here,” rumbled a voice as its owner came through the back door.

  His younger twin brothers were sort of identical in the way of stature and features. But while Stephen was neatly pressed and handsome in a quiet way, Marcus was unkempt and incredibly fetching with a day’s growth and hair that hadn’t yet been brushed.

  Lucy could well believe he’d just gotten out of some lucky woman’s bed….

  Okay, so she had bed on the brain thanks to Marcus’s captivating older brother.

  Justin introduced Lucy to the twins and then sketched out her plight, leaving out the details just as she had done with his mother.

  “We’ll have your car out in no time,” Stephen assured her. “You’ll be on the way back to New Orleans before supper.”

  “If that’s what the lady wants,” Marcus said, arching an eyebrow.

  Justin gave him a brotherly whack and said, “We’re on it, Lucille. Mama and Tante Jeanette, make sure the lady doesn’t pine for my company in the meantime.” He was about to follow the twins out the door, when he hesitated and looked back at Lucy, adding, “Perhaps you ought to stay in the kitchen, chère, away from interested eyes.”

  With that he left. Lucy felt the weight of curiosity aimed her way.

  Thanks a bunch, Justin, she thought, facing the two women waiting for her to explain that mysterious comment.

  “Is that my coffee?” she asked, taking the mug from Marie. Quickly, she drank it down. “Mmm, this is the best chicory. What’s your secret?”

  Lucy prayed Justin and his brothers would hurry, since she had no idea of how long she could keep his mother talking about her culinary prowess.

  “THIS ISN’T GOING to be too hard,” Stephen said, linking the chain under the back bumper of Lucy’s car. “Probably best if you get in and start it and put it in reverse. Then Marcus can pull easy-like while you give it a little gas.”

  As if he hadn’t gotten cars out of Louisiana bayou muck many times over the years, Justin thought.

  But that was Stephen. Precise. Always going over the details ad nauseam. He didn’t want to label his little brother obsessive-compulsive, but if the shoe fit… Even being an accountant reflected that part of his too-organized personality.

  “Okay, we’re set,” he said, sliding behind the wheel and starting Lucy’s car.

  Stephen signaled Marcus, who put the truck in gear. And when Justin slid Lucy’s transmission into in reverse, the car slid out of the sucky ground and back onto the gravel like a greased pig. When they both stopped, Stephen unhooked the chain and threw it in the back of the truck.

  Marcus slid out of the truck, yelling, “Stephen, you drive. I’m going to catch a ride in the lady’s car.”

  He settled into the passenger seat next to Justin, who waited until he’d backed up to the paved road and turned the car onto it before asking, “What’s up, Marcus?”

  “That’s what I was wondering, B.B.”

  B.B. standing for Big Brother. Only Marcus referred to him in that casual way. Stephen…well, Stephen was Stephen.

  “You’re referring to?” Justin asked.

  “Lucy Ryan. Lu-u-ci-i-ille.”

  Justin was annoyed by the way Marcus picked up on his nickname for Lucy. “Like I said, she’s a lady in distress.”

  On the way over here to rescue her car, he’d drawn a graphic picture about what had happened the night before. The danger part, anyway.

  His brothers had agreed to keep an eye out for the two men in
case they came looking for Lucy. If they came too close and pushed too far, they would be sorry, Justin knew. No one messed with the Guidry boys in these parts and got away with it. They were a force to be reckoned with, Stephen included.

  “So why do you think Lucille ended up out here?” Marcus probed.

  “Here’s where the pedal to the metal brought her. Simple as that.”

  “Maybe not so simple. Maybe it’s fate.”

  “What? You think I should get involved?”

  Marcus grinned at him. “Go for it, B.B.”

  “I meant as a private investigator.”

  “Well, not quite what I had in mind—”

  “I know what you had in mind, Marcus. Playtime is always what you have in mind,” Justin muttered, driving Lucy’s car around to the back of the house where it would be less conspicuous.

  Stephen pulled the truck up and parked it next to the car as additional camouflage.

  Truth be told, he could use some playtime. And he hadn’t missed a single one of Lucy Ryan’s many charms. But while he had a lot of faults, taking advantage of a woman who was skating on thin ice wasn’t one of them, so he might as well keep his libido in check.

  “She’s going to be flying back to her life in New Orleans as soon as I return her car keys,” he said more to himself than to his brother.

  “So don’t give them to her yet…for her own good, of course. Or stop hiding at the fishing camp and fly home after her. Whatever it takes.” Marcus slapped him on the back in a go get her manner.

  Justin was thinking about doing that very thing as they headed for the back steps.

  But was he really ready to face New Orleans?

  To face his failure?

  To face a ghost of his own making?

  Laughter spilled out of the house, the inviting sound lightening his mood. Lucy’s laughter. It sounded good. It sounded right.

  It melted something inside him.

  He hadn’t had much to smile about lately outside of family, but Justin felt his chest tighten as he opened the kitchen door and went inside.

  THE EDGINESS Lucy had felt on being left with the two women was completely gone by the time Justin and his brothers walked through the kitchen door. Marie and Tante Jeanette were delightful women who—though seeming to sense there was something wrong, that information was being kept from them—had done their best to put her at ease. After she’d made her call to Dana, assuring her that she was all right, Marie entertained her with stories of Justin’s boyhood bayou exploits.

  Laughter bubbled from Lucy as she listened to his mother relate how Justin at age ten had set out to feed the poor alligators because he thought that being so slow and all, they couldn’t get their own food. So he’d taken a raw chicken into the pirogue and had wheeled it out to feed the alligators. That’s when he’d learned how fast they could move when food was involved.

  “So which story is Mama telling you?” Justin asked as he entered the kitchen.

  “The one about the alligators,” she said, trying not to snort.

  He smiled, then gazed intently at her.

  Suddenly breathless, Lucy said, “So you got my car out and it’s okay, right?”

  “Drove it with no problems,” he said.

  “So I should probably go.”

  Not that the idea thrilled her. It made her feel as if she were tied up in knots inside.

  Going to the police with a slew of half truths wasn’t her idea of something to look forward to. And if they tracked down the murderer and his accomplices and brought them in on charges, she would be expected to testify. Then she would have to lie and say she witnessed something she’d only seen in a dream, not in reality, because who would believe her otherwise?

  How did she get around that?

  Justin eyed his mama and aunt and then indicated Lucy should follow him to the living room.

  Once there, he spoke in a lowered voice. “I think you should give it a day. Between the wound and those thugs looking for you—”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I’m okay, really.”

  The longer she waited, the colder her feet would get about reporting the crime. And the closer she would come to psychic dreams she had no intention of fulfilling despite the fact that the man central to those dreams was so tempting.

  “At least come back to the fishing camp so I can change the dressing.”

  “Why not just do it here?”

  “I don’t want to alarm Mama and Tante Jeanette.”

  “They already saw the bandage and asked me about it.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I didn’t tell them I’d been shot if that’s what you’re worried about. But I didn’t exactly lie, either. I just said that it happened when my car went off the road and you patched me up.”

  “Quick thinking, chère.”

  Without warning, Justin palmed her bare flesh between the crop top and pants and cupped the area around the bandage with his hand.

  Her body immediately responding, Lucy sucked in her breath. “What are you doing?”

  “Feeling for heat that would indicate the wound is infected.”

  His touch was making her flesh curl with anticipation that had nothing to do with the wound. Her mouth went dry and her pulse raced.

  She whispered, “I barely know the wound is there.”

  But touching her like that, Justin was making her hot, reminding her of the dreams. Every detail. She ought to step back, away from him, but somehow she couldn’t. The heat spread randomly from where he still touched her to every other part of her body.

  And he was feeling it, too. She could see it in his expression that went from relaxed to taut in a matter of seconds. And in the way he was looking at her….

  Justin’s face seemed to draw closer and closer. Unless she was mistaken, he was thinking of kissing her. And then he seemed to think better, caught himself and pulled away.

  Lucy felt her body sag with the relief of tension. She wrapped her arms around herself as if by doing so, she could protect herself against a renewal of sensation.

  He was saying, “I don’t think you ought to head back to New Orleans, just yet,” when Stephen appeared in the doorway.

  “Out front,” he said.

  Justin rushed to the front window, but held out a hand indicating Lucy should stay where she was. “Two strangers on foot casing the area. It might be them.”

  “The men who tried to kill me last night?”

  He nodded. “What did they look like?”

  “Stocky. Expensively dressed. One had thinning light hair, the other salt-and-pepper.”

  “That’s them. Stephen, take Lucy upstairs and away from the windows.”

  As if someone had to tell her to stay out of sight! Lucy bit back a retort and told herself to be grateful that Justin was trying to help her. Obviously, his brothers, too. She guessed he’d gotten them up to speed when they went to fetch her car.

  “What’s going on?” Marie asked from the kitchen as Stephen guided her to the stairs.

  “We’re taking care of it, Mama,” Stephen told her. “Just remember you don’t know anything about any Lucy Ryan.”

  Marie’s expression darkened and she murmured, “Oh, dear,” as she shooed them up the stairs.

  4

  STEPHEN OPENED a door to a room that faced the street and said, “Justin’s room, when he visits.”

  In spite of the danger lurking outside, Lucy felt a distinct tingle when she stepped into the room filled with memorabilia of Justin’s youth. She shook the feeling away, and wondering what was going on outside, trying not to let her imagination get the best of her.

  In a lowered voice so no one outside could hear, she said, “I thought the boat was simply the family fishing camp.”

  “It is. We all use it.”

  “So Justin lives…?”

  “In New Orleans,” Stephen said.

  Which came as a knee-weakening surprise. The idea that Justin lived in the city—her city�
��where she could run into him at any time shot a thrill of anticipation through Lucy.

  “What about you, Stephen?” she asked. “Do you live here? In this house, I mean.”

  He was standing in the doorway. Filling it actually. The Guidry boys were not small men.

  “Across the hall,” he said. “Well, most of the time. I make a lot of trips to New Orleans for work. I hate hotels, so I keep a small apartment there, too.”

  “You never wanted to live in New Orleans full-time?”

  “I never took to it, but that might be my fault for taking responsibility so seriously. It makes change difficult.”

  Lucy wondered what he meant by that. Did he mean taking care of his mother? Somehow she didn’t think Marie needed anyone to take of her, and she certainly didn’t seem to be the type to ask even if she did. Besides, Marie Guidry was probably only in her early fifties—the prime of life according to women’s magazines.

  It must be a Stephen thing, she decided.

  “So does Marcus live here, too?”

  Stephen laughed. “Nope. Too confining. In case you didn’t guess, Marcus is the free-wheeling type. He has a shack down the road a piece, though he’s here visiting often enough. At least a couple of times a week, actually. Nothing like home cooking, and Marcus takes advantage.”

  The small talk kept Lucy’s nerves from stretching taut. What was going on downstairs? Though she heard muffled male voices, she couldn’t make out what was being said.

  She drifted closer to the window.

  “Hey, stop,” Stephen ordered.

  She put a finger to her lips, pressed against the wall so that she wouldn’t be seen through the glass. Then she managed to curl a finger under the sash and lift it slowly but surely until the voices drifted into the room.

  “I told you, we haven’t seen her.”

  “And if you had, you probably wouldn’t say, right?”

  Lucy recognized the voice as belonging to the guy who’d lost a shoe in the swamp.

  “What is it you want with this…Lucy is it?” Marcus asked.

  “That ain’t none of your business.”

  Then Justin said, “You boys don’t have any business here in LeBaux, so I suggest you take yourself back to New Orleans where you belong.”