by Sandra Hill
More nods.
“We’ll bring in more field agents and make all the arrests that day,” Pete said. “Plus, we’ll need to confiscate all the submerged drugs, simultaneously.”
“We’re talking a lot of freakin’ manpower,” Ellis noted.
“Yep, and a lot of synchronization. Timing is everything,” Pete concluded.
Another man named Frank Porter looked at Remy. “Will you be briefing our pilots this week?”
“Yes, six of them will be flying in on Wednesday,” Remy replied. “We’ll spend at least two days in the air, checking out all the sites in question. On D-Day, one of us will be assigned to each of the hiding spots. We’ll use ’copters for surveillance but hydroplanes to land in the bayou and unload the divers who will bring up the metal boxes.”
“Boats will come in as well, after the air power; boats small enough to maneuver these streams but big enough to handle the weight when carrying the lead coffins out,” Pete elaborated.
“You know, this operation is only the beginning,” Ellis pointed out. “The tip of the iceberg.”
Everyone agreed that the drug problem was more pervasive than this one operation.
“You’ve got to get a larger landing pad if you’re going to continue working with us,” Pete said to Remy. “I’ve bent all the rules in the book so far, but it can’t go on forever.”
“Why should the size of my pad matter so much? It’s illogical,” Remy argued.
Some of the men rolled their eyes.
“You don’t know Uncle Sam, boy,” Pete said with a laugh. “Logic is not a word recognized by the U.S. government, especially when it comes to rule making. I swear, there are some assholes in this nation’s capitol who must have Ph.D.s in busywork. If something can be said in five words, they use five hundred. Common sense is not part of their vocabulary.”
“Remember the time they made Baldwin fly from D.C. to Baltimore because his SUV didn’t have clearance?” Pete recalled.
“And how about Louis and the five thousand-dollar road map,” another guy, Matt Landeau, pointed out.
“Then there was the time some yahoo with his head up his ass decided it would be just swell if agents carried Mace, instead of pistols. That went over real big,” Pete said. “It took the threat of a thousand resignations before that effin’ rule was dumped.”
Remy threw his hands up in surrender. “I hear you, I hear you. I’ll do my best to expand the pad within the next month. I promise.” That means another encounter with the Wicked Witch of the South. On the other hand, it also means another encounter with the Wicked Witch’s yummy granddaughter.
“I’d love to know what that grin of yours means,” Ellis whispered to him.
“Never mind,” Remy said.
The meeting broke up after an hour. Pete called out, “Good luck, everyone.”
As Remy left, he checked his cell phone. There was only one call, and it was from Rachel. Yum-yum, he thought to himself.
Her message said, “Remy, call me. It’s important.”
She probably missed him. That was important, wasn’t it?
Or her grandmother had locked her in her gingerbread house and was firing up the ovens. That was important, too.
Giving himself a silent scold for standing in the middle of the parking lot daydreaming, Remy punched in the number for Gizelle’s place, praying that Rachel would be the one to answer.
No such luck.
“Hello!” the old witch squawked.
“Is Rachel there?”
“Who’s this?”
He hesitated for a long moment. “Remy LeDeux.”
“She’s not here.”
“She’s not there to me, or she’s not there in general?”
“Dumb cluck,” she said, not even bothering to say it under her breath. “That girl, she’s not here any which way. She went off with your great-aunt a long time ago.”
Uh-oh! “How long ago?”
“They left here ’bout ten o’clock, I reckon.”
“That was five hours ago.” What could his aunt have been doing with Rachel for five bloody hours? It boggled the mind and scared the hell out of him.
“Iffen you mus’ know, Beau took a change of clothes fer her over to Lulu’s house a bit ago. But, yeah, she’s been gone since ten o’clock.”
“Five hours ago!” he practically yelled.
“You doan hafta yell at me,” Gizelle said, and slammed down the receiver of the phone.
“The old bat hung up on me,” he said to himself, not really that surprised. Next, he tried his aunt, who told him that she had dropped Rachel off at Charmaine’s an hour ago. “Lordy, Lordy, that girl is a Nervous Nellie.”
“Uh, Tante Lulu, what were you doing that Rachel would have been nervous?”
“Me? Why does everyone blame me? Wasn’t me. Was all them bad guys down in the swamp. Cou! Beatinest thing I ever did see! Did you know Rachel has a hickey? Tsk-tsk. Best you brush off yer go-to-weddin’ suit real quick, boy. Dum-dum-dee-dum! Oops! Can’t talk now. Here comes Luc, and he’s mad as a bull with his hiney caught in barbed wire, jist ’cause I got another speeding ticket. ’Bye.”
Remy stared blankly at his cell phone. Another old lady had just hung up on him.
Then some other worries assailed him.
Bad guys? What bad guys?
Another speeding ticket! They’re gonna take her license for sure this time.
I wonder if Tante Lulu has talked about weddings to Rachel.
Hah! I know Tante Lulu has been talking to Rachel about weddings. She wouldn’t miss an opportunity like this if her life depended on it.
Bad guys? What could she have meant by that?
Remy exhaled with disgust. Can my day get any worse?
Yep, you-know-who said in his head.
Once is not enough. For sure, baby
Rachel literally shook as she entered Charmaine’s spa in mid-afternoon.
She would kill Tante Lulu if she spent one more minute in her company, and she’d told her so, too. She would walk all the way to Bayou Black before she’d get in a car with that dingbat again. Even the cop who stopped the T-bird for speeding had looked at Rachel and said, “Do you have a death wish, lady, getting in a moving vehicle with Louise Rivard?” That was Tante Lulu’s full name. “She’s a living legend with the highway patrol.” The trooper had been laughing as he spoke. Rachel had not.
The front door of the spa displayed a CLOSED sign, but Rachel found Charmaine in a back office, doing payroll. Charmaine’s gee-whiz hairdo stood out as bouffanty as usual today, even on a day of rest. The big hair went perfect with her black capri pants and a cropped T-shirt that said, I DO BANGS. The ultimate bimbo! She took one look at Rachel and said, “You’ve been with Tante Lulu. Come sit down, chère, and let me pour you a cup of chamomile tea. If you want, I can give you a Prozac, too.”
After Rachel told Charmaine about her harrowing experiences of the day, Charmaine regaled her with her own stories about the outrageous Tante Lulu, including the time when she was seventy-five and Charmaine was twenty-eight, right after her last divorce, and the daffy bird entered both of them in a belly-dancing contest in Opoulousa—and Tante Lulu won.
“In her defense, I will say that Tante Lulu was very impressive today in dealing with her patients.” On the first patient visit, Rachel had learned what it meant to “smoke the baby.” There had been a little baby outside Houma who was suffering from a severe case of colic. Tante Lulu had cut up some scraps of the mother’s pregnancy clothing and a piece of the baby’s cloth diaper. She’d placed those on a foil plate, along with several snips of the mother and child’s hair. After they’d been set afire and started smoking, Tante Lulu kept passing the smoky concoction over and around the baby’s head, forcing him to breathe in some smoke. To Rachel’s amazement, the baby immediately calmed and fell asleep, the colic presumably cured.
Then, too, Tante Lulu had given out herbal remedies in a very professional manner to other patients
for fever, nausea and diarrhea. She’d even used a remedy Rachel had heard of as a young girl for curing warts. The little Cajun boy had shown them warts all over his one hand. Tante Lulu had rubbed a raw potato over all of them, then told the mother to bury it in the yard where the water spout ran off the roof. When the potato finally rotted, the warts would be gone, Tante Lulu promised. In every case, Tante Lulu had made the sign of the cross and said a short prayer before she started.
When Rachel had expressed astonishment at some of her work, Tante Lulu had told her, “Sometimes the old ways are still best.”
Now, after drinking two cups of tea and passing on the Prozac, Rachel prepared to discuss the spa remodeling project. Charmaine pulled out some of the wallpaper books that Rachel had left with her. They spent the next hour deciding on paint and floor colors, and some wallpaper. Rachel was excited about the cloud paper they would be putting on the massage-room ceiling with murals of a bayou stream on all four of the walls.
When they finished, Charmaine whisked her hands together, gave Rachel an assessing look, then announced, “Now, let’s concentrate on you, girl.”
“Oh, no! You are not going to pouf my hair.”
Charmaine laughed. “No. But, after the day you’ve had, a little tender loving care is in order.”
And Charmaine was right. A half hour later, after a hot conditioning of her hair, a warm waxing of her hands and feet for relaxation, and a honey facial peel, Rachel was loose as a goose. She was lying on her stomach, clad only in a thick towel, on one of the planks in the spa’s sauna to “cleanse the pores.” Another towel was wrapped turban style around her damp hair. Afterward, Charmaine was going to give her a full-body massage.
“I don’t think I’m going to need the massage, after all, Charmaine,” she said, on hearing the door click open. “I’m so relaxed now my bones are about to melt.”
“Oh, you definitely need a massage,” a husky voice said.
Definitely not Charmaine.
Rachel’s eyes flew open to see Remy standing inside the now-closed door. And he wasn’t wearing a towel.
Oooh, boy! He gives new meaning to “Tall, Dark, and Cajun.” More like, “Ragin’ Cajun.”
Remy watched with amusement as Rachel assessed his body and his already raging erection, then sat up, tugging the towel tighter around her breasts. How could she be so modest after her behavior last night? But that’s how women tended to be, in his experience. Madonna at night, Mother Teresa in the daylight.
He took her hand and pulled her up to a standing position, making sure both towels dropped in the process. It was about two hundred degrees inside this sweat box, and towels were an un-necessity. “I missed you,” he said, just before he kissed her deeply. If she wasn’t already boneless, as she’d mentioned, he planned to make her that way—or die trying.
Remy ran his palms down her perspiration-slick back, from shoulders to buttocks, which he cupped in his hands. He pulled her close up against his body. She stood on tiptoe to align them just right. Accommodating woman, Rachel is. I like that in a woman.
“I’m sweaty,” she said.
“I will be, too, in a minute . . . but not from the sauna.”
She laughed against his mouth.
He liked that, too.
“Did you really miss me?” she asked, teasingly.
“How can you ask, darlin’?” he teased right back as he sat down smoothly on one of the benches, forcing her to sit on his lap, astraddle. He could be smooth when he wanted to be.
“That much, huh?” She wiggled her hips against that part of his anatomy which was showing her just how much he’d missed her.
He about saw stars, so intense was the pleasure of her brushing over his penis. And, hot damn, she knew the effect she had on him. . . because the witch did it again, and smiled.
He laid back and stretched out his legs on the long bench with her still straddling his middle.
“Aren’t you afraid Charmaine will walk in?”
He shook his head. “I told her to get lost.”
“And she listened to you? That doesn’t sound like Charmaine.” She arched her eyebrows at him, disbelieving.
“Well, I did tell her I saw Rusty headed this way, and he was wearing a cowboy hat, boots and tight jeans. Charmaine never could resist a cowboy, no way. She was out of here faster’n a hog on market day.”
Propped on straightened arms, she smiled down at him. “I like cowboys, too, cowboy. And cowgirls, too. I’ve never ridden a horse before, though. Could you give me a lesson?”
“Guar-an-teed!” He lifted her hips, up, then down, so that she impaled herself on him. Her eyes went wide as saucers as she rippled around him. And he grew to about ten inches long and six inches around, give or take an inch or two . . . male exaggeration being a God-given right at a time like this.
“Oh!”
“Is that all you can say, darlin’?” He was pretty damned impressed with himself. She better be, too. He was impressed with her, as well, of course. All that rippling and flexing—he’d have to be a freakin’ saint not to appreciate that.
But then, she really, really impressed him with her perfect answer. “Giddyup!”
And he did.
And so did she.
Define perverted, please
Rachel lay flat out on the spa massage table, buck naked, with a gel mask over her eyes, and, no doubt, a pair of dark Cajun eyes perusing her from head to toe.
When had she stopped being inhibited about her body’s imperfections? When had she decided to give wanton behavior a try? When had she turned into a sexpot? She’d never been this way with David, or any of the other few men with whom she’d been involved. It was probably the mask which gave her courage, she decided. Or a mutant gene that suddenly came to the forefront—a slut gene.
“Is this the most perverted thing you’ve ever done?” she asked, not sure exactly where Remy stood. How she’d let him talk her into this, she had no idea. Well, yes, she did. He’d smooth-talked her into this “experiment” when she’d been in the afterglow of a mindless orgasm.
“Define perverted,” he replied with a chuckle. He was standing at her side. “Man, you have the most beautiful breasts in the world.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“It bears repeating, sweetheart. Believe me, it bears repeating.”
“I don’t know about this, Remy. It feels really odd.”
“Good odd or bad odd?”
“I don’t know. Tingly in the bottom of my tummy odd.”
“That’s good odd,” he concluded.
“How about you being the one lying here, vision-impaired, while I’m the Dr. Feel-Good character?”
“Later, babe. Later.” His voice came from another direction now.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking out Charmaine’s stash of body oils. Geesh, who would want to slather themselves in snake oil?”
“Whaaaat?”
“Just teasing. Which scent do you prefer, lavender, rose or lemon? Oooh, oooh, oooh, hold the train. I just spied something better. Edible oils.”
She had to laugh at that. “Who gets to pick the flavor? Me or you?”
“Definitely me. At first. You get dibs second time around. Hmmm. I think I like banana. No, I changed my mind. Coconut.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Yes, it is. The licker gets to pick what he or she is going to lick.”
Lick? Oh, my goodness, I can feel my nipples getting harder. I hope he doesn’t notice.
“Have I told you how much I like your breasts?”
Yep, he noticed.
“I thought this was going to be a massage, not a . . . licking thing.”
He chuckled. “Honey, we Cajuns do things our way. There’s nothing wrong with mixing the two. A licking massage sounds mighty good to me.”
It did to her, too.
She jerked suddenly as she felt a cool liquid drizzling on her pubic hair.
“It loo
ks like dew melting on flames there, Rachel. Did you know that?”
“Of course, I don’t know that. Do you think I put edible oil on myself and look in a mirror?”
“Some women might,” he replied. “Which gives me an idea. I don’t suppose .. .”
“What?” she prodded when he never finished.
“Would you be willing to do something for me that is a little, um . . . ”
“Perverted?”
“Different.”
“Like what?” As if this isn’t perverted or different enough!
He drizzled the oil all over her breasts. “Lift them, and touch them. Yourself.”
“Remy, I can’t.”
“Please.”
“This is far beyond the pale of anything I’ve ever done.”
“Me, too.”
“Liar.”
“Honest.”
She inhaled and exhaled deeply, then asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“Touch them the way you would want me to. Make love to yourself, but pretend it’s me.”
And Rachel did. God help her, but she did. And not just her breasts either. At the end of fifteen minutes, which seemed like fifteen hours, Rachel was completely sated, by her own hand and Remy’s husky, wicked words of encouragement. And she smelled like a piña colada.
Bringing herself to orgasm while a drop-dead sexy man watched was a mind-blowing experience for Rachel, one that a mere two weeks ago she never would have expected she would agree to. Now, she would never smell coconuts again without remembering—and probably blushing.
Then it was Remy’s turn—buck naked, masked, and on the massage table, at her insistence.
“You can do anything you want, babe,” he offered with typical male magnanimousness.
“A massage,” she decided, opting for the more tame of all the possibilities that anything encompassed. She wasn’t sure she could watch Remy touch himself without bursting aflame with embarrassment, or just bursting aflame, period.
“Coward,” Remy hooted. “Go for it, darlin’.”
She gave him a massage, every blessed inch of him, with chocolate oil. The chocolate “fudgesicle” she saved for the final entree. She massaged, she licked, she caused Remy to moan one long, “Oooooooooohhh!” When she finished, and he was sated, too, she said, laughing, “The two of us smell like a Mounds bar, chocolate and coconut. The only thing missing is the nuts. Then, we would be an Almond Joy.”