by Sandra Hill
Rachel blinked back tears, which surprised her. She would have thought she was long past tears about her childhood and the perpetual wish that someday her “family” would come rescue her. But her grandmother was telling her things about her father and mother—and herself, really—that she’d never known . . . not even when she’d located her birth mother a year ago in Chattanooga. Her mother, only forty-nine, had already been dying of uterine cancer, and she was a bitter woman, not overjoyful to be reunited with the daughter she’d given up thirty years before, or inclined to share details about the O’Brien or Fortier families.
Just then, a loud noise erupted overhead—an airplane or something, flying really low. Her grandmother’s face suffused with color as she raised a fist skyward. “Damn LeDeuxs! I oughta buy myself a machine gun and shoot the bugger down.”
“ Huh?”
“ Remy LeDeux is flyin’ his whirly bird overhead. Does it a half dozen times a day. My chickens don’t lay half as many eggs since he moved next door, and I swear the hogs are losin’ so much weight they’re downright scrawny.”
“ A whirly bird?”
“ Helicopter. He’s a pilot or sumpin’. Thass why he wants to steal some of my land. Soz he kin build a bigger landing space. Hah! He’ll have to kill me first.”
“ Remy LeDeux is a pilot?” Now, this was interesting. “I thought he was a cowboy or rodeo rider or something because of the clothes he was wearing.”
“ He usta run cattle up on some ranch in northern Loo-zee-anna, but, no, he wore the cowboy gear today to scare the bejeesus out of me soz I’ll sell my land lickedy split. Dint fool me one bit.”
“ Were you scared?”
“ Hell, no.” She stopped to spit her wad of tobacco over the porch rail and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “But I’m warnin’ ya, girlie, stay away from them LeDeuxs. They could charm the skivvies off a nun and think nothin’ of it. Bad blood, they got. Bad, bad blood.”
Rachel wanted to change the subject. “Didn’t you have any other children to take over your farm, or whatever you called it. . . the sugar fields . . . when your husband died?”
“ The babies never did catch well fer me. Lost a few through miscarriages. Only other living chile I had was Merle, Beau’s Daddy. He was eight years younger’n Clovis. He and his wife Josette had a little bait shop over in Lafayette, but they got a divorce a few years back, and Beau come live with me. Too difficult, they said. He was ten at the time. Difficult? Pfff! Talk about! He’s jist a little different, thass all. Merle died in a boat mishap five years ago.”
Rachel didn’t know about different, but he had not been happy when his grandmother had insisted, in order not to offend the nasal sensibilities of his newfound cousin, that he move all his drying racks to the back yard, over by an abandoned barn, just next to a—yeech!—pigpen.
“ There is one thing I need to say, Granny.” Rachel was having a difficult time calling her grandmother “Granny.” She preferred Gizelle, but every time she’d used that name, her grandmother had corrected her.
“ Whass that, dearie?” Her grandmother was tying off the ends of her rug, presumably ending her work for the day.
“ Just that I am very happy that you wrote to me. And that you’ve invited me to come visit for a while.”
Her grandmother shrugged. “ ’Twas nothin’. I must admit, it was a bit worrisome at first, inviting a city girl here. I half expected you’d be uppity, but we are what we are here on the bayou. Beau reminded me of that. If people can’t accept that, then I guess they’re the losers.”
“ Still,” Rachel insisted, “it was generous of you to issue a blanket invitation to a perfect stranger.”
Spinning around on her stool so that she faced Rachel directly, her grandmother made a tsking sound with her tongue. “Stranger? You? Talk about, girl! You’re no stranger here. You’re . . .” She sighed deeply, as if choked with emotion, which was odd because Gizelle Fortier was a tough old bird.
“ I’m what, Granny?” Her voice was soft with emotion, too.
“ . . . family.”
One word. That’s all. And the carefully erected defenses of almost thirty years crumbled. The lies she’d told herself. The dreams she’d hidden so well that even she didn’t know they lingered. Tears filled her eyes and she put a palm over her mouth to stifle a sob. Family. That’s all she had ever wanted.
Her grandmother seemed to understand, instinctively, and she did the one thing grandmothers are supposed to do. She stood and walked over to Rachel, pulling her to her feet. She hugged her and patted her back and said soothing nonsensical words into her ear. “Hush now, sweet thing. Doan fret, chère. Everythin’ gonna be all right. Shhhhh!”
It didn’t matter that she was a crazy old coot living in the farthest thing from a Southern plantation. It didn’t matter that she smelled faintly of tobacco. It didn’t matter that her hair needed a major overhaul and her clothing a visit to Goodwill, if they would accept it. It didn’t matter that she was no Waltonesque Grandma.
Her grandmother, Gizelle Fortier, said exactly the right thing to her. “Welcome home, baby. We been waiting fer you a long, long time.”
Feng what?
“ She’s not the one for you.”
It was seven o’clock, and Remy had just come out of the shower in his houseboat. Fortunately, he had a towel wrapped around his middle.
“ Auntie, what are you doing here tonight? I thought you went home from the Fortiers. Please don’t tell me you rode that glue-factory reject over here.”
“ I did go home. Cantcha tell?”
Yep, she wore a little pleated skirt with a matching sleeveless blouse, tennis shoes and a headband around her still-curly gray hair. Pour l’amour de Dieu! Venus Williams she was not. He glanced out the window and sure enough her baby blue classic T-bird convertible was parked there.
“ Beau Fortier put the horse in his barn. He’ll take it back to the stable in Houma tomorrow.” Under her breath, she muttered, as an afterthought, “If he doesn’t skin it first.”
Quickly, Remy ducked back in the tiny bathroom and pulled on a pair of running shorts. When he emerged, she had set out two large styrofoam cups of Boudreaux’s strong Cajun coffee and a plateful of sugared beignets, which looked delicious. After his fiasco of a meeting with Gizelle Fortier, he’d spent the rest of the day meeting with DEA officials, including giving them a ’copter tour of the bayou region from the gulf inward, getting estimates from contractors to install a larger landing pad, in the event he managed to purchase a few more acres from that freakin’ bayou version of Elvira, then coming home an hour ago. He was tired and hungry, he realized suddenly. After he’d devoured three of the sweet donuts and his coffee, plus half of his aunt’s, he remembered her initial comment when he’d come out of the shower. “Who’s not right for me?”
“ Gizelle Fortier’s granddaughter. Rachel Fortier. Thass who. Forget about her, buddy boy.”
Uh-oh! I smell some interference here. Auntie’s been meddling again. He should have known better, but still he asked, “Why?”
“ Been seeing the same man for five years, she has. Livin’ with him for three years, without marriage. Talk about! Tsk-tsk-tsk! Engaged, they were, but there musta been some hanky-panky, without marriage. She’s not good enough for you, no, she is not.” His aunt gave him a knowing look as if he should share her assessment of this woman’s morals.
Remy homed in on one word. “Engaged? She has a fiancé?” It was downright ridiculous the way his heart sank over that news concerning a woman he had just met. Besides, in the past five hours he had convinced himself that the timing was all wrong for him. He’d even made a mental list: 1) If he got the government contract, it could be dangerous to involve someone in his life. 2) If he didn’t get the government contract, he was off to Alaska, and it would be unfair to start something, then hightail it out of town. 3) He was not going to turn into a walking penis like his father who jumped the bones of the first female—actually, e
very female—that lit his flame. In fact, he and his brothers often joked that their Dad must have a perpetual pilot light burning in his groin.
A niggling voice inside Remy’s head made a snorting sound of disbelief at the idea of his No-hit list. Probably St. Jude.
“ Not anymore.”
“ Huh?”
“ She’s not engaged anymore.”
Remy released the breath he hadn’t realized he held. She’s not engaged. Praise God and pass the gumbo! That still didn’t mean he was interested . . . much.
“ She ended it before she came here. Dumped the man— a doctor—then hit the road in that devil red pickup truck. Mus’ be she’s a tease on top of everything else.”
“ Tante Lulu, you shouldn’t make judgements about women just because they live with a guy before they make it legal. How would you feel if people said I wasn’t good enough because I’d engaged in a little bachelor hanky-panky?”
“ You’re good enough fer anyone,” she snapped in her usual feisty defense of him and his brothers. “But thass not the only reason I say you gotta look elsewhere. Think about it, boy, she’s a Fortier. Bad blood there, and thass all I’ll say on the subject. . . ’ceptin’, do you really wanna be callin’ Gizelle your Grandma?”
He shivered at the prospect. Morticia the Mother-in-Law.
“ Of course, there’s that matter of her fiancé havin’ his pecker bobbed. I doan blame the girl for leavin’ him over that.”
Did Tante Lulu really say the word “pecker”? Does she mean what I think she means? “Rachel—Gizelle’s granddaughter—pulled a Bobbit on some guy?”
His aunt gaped at him for a moment, not understanding. Then she smacked his arm. “When did you turn so thick- headed? No, she didn’t whack his too-too off. He had one of those operations—you know, the kind Luc is considerin’—without telling her.”
Whew!
“ One last thing,” his aunt said.
Oh, man, not the “one last thing” thing!
“ She’s a home decorator.” She looked at him pointedly, as if that should have some particular meaning.
“ And?” he prodded.
“ She practices fungus-way in her bizness.” She nodded her head at him vigorously, as if that eliminated this broad from the bride race, without a doubt. “Sounds like voodoo or sumpin’ to me. I knew a Damballa once who put fungus in her old lover’s house and he died next day, yes, he did. All they found was mildew and rust ever’wheres—and poison mushrooms.”
Okay, he decided to bite. “What the hell’s fungus-way? I mean, sorry for swearing, auntie, but what is fungus-way?”
“ Me, how should I know? But it sounds weird. You do not want a weird woman—especially one who leads men on and lives with them in sin and all that. . . stuff, then drops them.”
He had to laugh, especially when he realized that his aunt referred to Feng Shui. “Tante Lulu, it’s pronounced fung-schway, and it has nothing to do with fungus.” He had no idea exactly what it was, just that it wasn’t related to dirtying up a house, or killing someone off with mold. “It’s some kind of Chinese philosophy crap—I mean, principle—related to how furniture and plants and colors should be used harmoniously in a space.” I think. That’s what a real-estate chick he’d known a while back had told him.
“Hmpfh!” was his aunt’s only response to that. As a last-ditch effort, she tried, “She’s only half-Cajun.”
“ That’s not important.”
“ Is so,” she insisted.
“ Besides, you are not to worry about me or this Rachel person. My attraction to her was only a temporary blip on the remote bride radar screen. I have regained my sanity now.”
“ Good,” his aunt said.
But when she left a short time later, his insanity returned. Why else would he be hopping on his Harley at ten P.M. and driving down a black bayou road with a sudden yearning to learn more about Feng Shui?
Chapter 5
In the still of the night
It was ten o’clock, early by D.C. standards, but already everyone slept soundly at the Fortier house—except Rachel.
Her grandmother and cousin had turned in an hour ago, their bedrooms being on the first level. Rachel had gone upstairs to the loft a short time later, after taking a quick shower in the downstairs bathroom. Turns out that, despite having an outhouse, there was indeed indoor plumbing and electricity furnished by gas and battery-operated pumps and generators. Thank God!
Exhausted by the long day, Rachel tried to fall asleep on the feather tick, a fluffy homemade mattress which had been overstuffed with soft goose feathers, all surrounded by swathes of mosquito netting. But her mind kept working with all she’d seen and heard on meeting her “family.” So, she had crept downstairs and made herself a Cajun version of Sleepytime tea, with a dollop of honey. At least, that’s what she figured was in the Mason jar she’d found in the cupboard bearing the label, “For Sleep.” Others of the homemade herbal tea remedies read, “For Cramps,” “For
Coughing,” “For Loose Bowels,” “For Congestion,” “For Constipation,” “For Hot Flashes,” “For Depresssion,” “For Tummy Ache,” and “For Seduction.” Rachel vowed to ask her grandmother about that last one, and she wondered idly if these concoctions came from the senior-citizen cowgirl Lulu who had stormed onto the scene today. She was supposedly a noted folk healer in the area.
Cup in hand, she went out on the porch, then down to the bottom step, to sit and think. She wouldn’t be able to stay out long thanks to the numerous mosquitoes and flies that came out at night. The air remained warm and humid, despite a quick shower this evening, followed immediately by drying sunshine, all of which seemed to be the norm here in this region. A soft breeze tonight made it all palatable. The breeze brought with it the not-unpleasant metallic scent of the stream and its fish, the rank odor of dying vegetation, mixed with the pungent odors of evergreen trees and lush flowers: magnolias, bougainvillea, wild roses, verbena. All around the packed dirt yard, lightning bugs darted here and there, like sparkling jewels on black velvet.
A deceptive silence cloaked the bayou at night. At first, it appeared deathly quiet, but then she noticed the soft lapping of the slow current against the banks, the clicking sound of crickets, the mournful cry of a dove for its mate. Harder to detect was the rustling of leaves, whether from the breeze or an animal, she couldn’t say for sure. And far in the distance could be heard the crack of Indian summer thunder.
This swampland frightened and repelled her. But at the same time, it tempted her with its outrageous beauty. What would it have been like to grow up here as a child? Would she have run barefoot and uneducated? Would she have developed into an artist of sorts, like her grandmother? Would she have been a happy child, instead of lonely, neglected, never good enough? Had she been better off given up by her young mother, shuffled around from one foster family to another until she was fourteen and finally adopted by a nice older couple . . . too late to ever feel like she had a real family?
“I wish . . . ,” she murmured aloud, unsure just what she would wish for.
“You wish. . .? For what?” a voice asked out of the darkness.
Rachel jumped and set her thankfully empty cup beside her on the wood step. “Who’s there? What do you want?” She stood shakily and held onto the porch rail for support.
“It’s just Prince Charming, come to grant your wish,” he said with a chuckle as he came closer. “Don’t get excited, darlin’. Nothing to be jittery about.”
“I have a gun.” Actually, the only guns she was aware of were Granny’s in the kitchen and Beau’s over the living room mantle, not that she would know how to use them, but this trespasser didn’t know that.
He laughed. Apparently, he did know that. “So do I. Back on my fair steed.”
“Steed?” she squeaked out.
“Harley.” Even before the stranger walked out of the semi-darkness, Rachel recognized him by his sexy-as-sin, husky voice. Remy LeDeux.
&nbs
p; He’d ditched his cowboy gear and instead wore jeans which hugged his mile-long muscular legs and cute ol’ butt. A long-sleeved plaid shirt covered him on top, with the two top buttons undone. The smell of some minty fragrance drifted to her .. . probably his bath soap. He’d slicked his dark hair wetly off his face. In this half-light, his disfigurements faded to nothing, and he was beyond handsome.
Her heart, which had already been beating rapidly at the perceived threat, kicked up a notch. Ker-thump, ker-thump, ker-thump! She wasn’t scared anymore . . . okay, a little bit scared, but for an entirely different reason. Years ago, Rachel had read a book about a female college professor who’d left her seemingly rational life behind for a not-so-rational road trip on which she searched for “love with a warm cowboy.” Forget about cowboys. Rachel was beginning to see much more appeal in Cajun men—well, one particular Cajun man. And as for “warm,” no way! This Cajun was a scorcher.
“Why are you fanning your face?” he asked.
Good Lord! Did I really do that? “Because of the humidity.”
“It’s not that bad tonight. There’s a breeze. But I guess you’re not used to the weather here yet. Hell—I mean, heck—the humidity here usually hovers about eighty to ninety percent and the temperature close to ninety. So, a night like this is downright balmy and actually. . .” His words trailed off as he realized that he’d been rambling. The man was nervous.
Rachel had lost her virginity a long time ago, but she possessed virtually no experience with the flirty games of seduction men and women played. As Remy stared at her hotly, she recognized that she swam way beyond her depth here, dog paddling in the middle of a testosterone ocean.
“My grandmother is asleep.” Well, that was certainly intelligent.
“I didn’t come to see her.” His voice was low and raspy.
His stare was direct and unrelenting. His intent was obvious.
She might claim inexperience in sex play, but her body—the traitor—proved to be quite another thing. Her nipples came to immediate attention, and a fiery liquid pooled in her groin.