Galahad in Jeans (Louisiana Knights Book 2)

by Jennifer Blake

  Beau touched her arm, his fingers soothing in their warmth. “It must have been a hard time.”

  “I missed him desperately, but also hated him for betraying us.” She’d cried herself to sleep endless nights, knowing her dad would never kiss her goodnight again, never hold her when she was hurt or tell her it would be all right. And then she’d been angry at herself for caring.

  “So what happened then?”

  “He had promised he would love my mother forever, that he’d always take care of her. Maybe he meant it. Maybe he didn’t expect to die so soon, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t trained for any kind of decent job, had met and married him right out of high school so had no idea how to live on her own. She was so hurt and ashamed and—” Carla shook her head. “I’m sorry. That’s more than you need to know.”

  “Not really. What did you do?”

  Her smile was strained, though she was grateful for his interest. “We squeezed everything that could be considered personal belongings into two big suitcases and spent most of the cash we could scrape together on bus fare. Our tickets took us as far away from Connecticut as we could ride on the money, which turned out to be Baltimore. I don’t remember how many nights we slept in the bus station, but a policeman finally took us to the nearest women’s shelter.”

  “Women’s shelter?”

  “And we were grateful to be there, though we didn’t stay long. Someone helped us find a cheap apartment. My mom applied for welfare, and we learned to shop at the thrift stores, make a pound of cheap hamburger last a week, and work the system so she could get free meds for her depression.”

  “Tough.”

  It had been, yes, the years of worrying the food in the cabinets might not last until the next paycheck, being whispered about at school because her clothes didn’t fit, never having a real birthday party or doing the fun things other teenage girls did with their mothers, such as shopping at the mall or going to music concerts. They’d survived, however, and she and her mother were closer for it. Yes, and maybe stronger.

  “How’s your mom now?”

  “She’s good.” A touch of pride strengthened her voice as she went on. “It wasn’t easy for her, but she finally got a decent job at a dress shop. She bought a small house, and saved enough to send me to college with the help of scholarships. After I got a job and left home, she finally remarried. Now she manages the dress shop.”

  Thinking of her mother made her wonder what she might think of Beau. No doubt she would be impressed, as she’d always prized manners in a man and wasn’t exactly immune to a handsome face. It was a moment before she could attend to what Beau was saying.

  “I suppose I can see why you’re not exactly fond of gentlemanly types.”

  She answered his rueful smile with one of her own. “I’m not making excuses, really I’m not. And I suppose there’s some doubt my dad was a bona fide gentleman. But I hope you can see why I jumped to conclusions.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Can’t say I blame you too much. The thing with Merry Lou looked bad, I know.”

  She met his gaze, while trying not to be too hopeful. “So we can go back to where we were before? I can still hang around here a few days for the article?”

  “I guess, if you’re sure you still want to do that after seeing how boring—”

  He broke off as his cell began to jingle in his pocket. He fished it out and looked at the display. “Sorry, but I have to take this. Rescue squad.”

  Carla recalled Eloise saying something about his volunteer work with the town’s rescue unit. If that’s what he meant, it was certainly more important. She moved away a few steps to give him privacy, though glanced back as she heard his voice rise.

  “A what?” he demanded, flashing a look heavenward through the rain-sluiced glass of the greenhouse roof. “You have got to be kidding!”

  The ringing of her cell in its turn was a powerful distraction. The dirge it played was dedicated to only one person, so she knew who it was without looking at the screen.

  She didn’t want to hear what Trevor had to say, had no wish whatever to discuss the retraction of her article, especially not in front of Beau. She hadn’t mentioned what she’d written to him, and didn’t intend to if she could help it, not when they were so close to agreement.

  She canceled the call. Turning off the phone, she slid it into her jeans pocket.

  Beau was stowing his phone, too. “How serious are you about sticking with me?” he asked with his trademark grin.

  “Very,” Carla said at once, while a curious, singing euphoria surged through her veins.

  “Ready for a daring rescue?”

  “You bet.”

  “You’re sure? It could get dangerous.”

  She didn’t quite trust the humor in his eyes or his challenging stance with his hands braced on his hips. “How dangerous?”

  “There could be trucks and ladders involved, maybe even flying.”

  “You don’t say.” She waited, her eyes narrowed, to see where he was headed.

  “You catch on too quick,” he complained, relaxing his stance. “Okay, fine. The call is for an escaped parakeet. Lizzie Masters dialed 911 because she’s afraid a hawk will get her pet or he will catch his death of cold. The bird has taken up a perch in an old oak and won’t come down. Lizzie’s only nine years old and Twitter is her best friend in the world. I’ve got to go.”

  “Of course you do. And so do I.”

  “This way.” He tipped his head in a half bow as he indicated the double doors at the greenhouse’s far end.

  His truck sat on the track outside. Carla took a deep breath, absurdly happy that she was included in this call and things were all right between the two of them. A second later, she joined Beau, striding at his side out into the rain.

  The Masters’ home was on the edge of town, an area of rundown frame houses and ramshackle trailers. The small yards were ill-kept and strewn with trash, and driveways were either broken concrete or rutted dirt lanes. Paint was peeling, doors and windows sagged, and the preferred porch seating seemed to be upholstered bench seats from old cars. Cheap curtains hung in most windows, those that weren’t plastered on the inside with aluminum foil.

  Lizzie Masters stood waiting for them in her front yard. Tears streaked her face, and she was soaking wet, in spite of the Hello Kitty umbrella she clutched in one hand.

  “Where’ve you been?” she shouted the minute Beau opened the truck door on his side. “I’ve been waiting forever!”

  “Sorry, honey,” he said. “I got here as quick as I could.”

  He had, too, as Carla could attest, driving at the same speed he might if it had been a child trapped in the tree. She watched with an odd quiver in her chest as he caught the small girl in a quick hug, then righted her umbrella above her and asked how her parakeet had escaped.

  “I let him out inside the house all the time,” she said with tears making rivulets down her face. “He never flies away because he loves me. But the washer broke, and the man that came to fix it left the door open.”

  “Got it,” Beau said. “Now show me which tree Twitter picked out to hide in.”

  Carla climbed out of the truck with a frown drawing her brows together. There was no sign of another rescue vehicle with flashing lights, no fire truck with its ladder that Beau had hinted at earlier. A terse message he’d phoned in on the way began to make sense, she thought, as she snapped open her umbrella. He had the call, he’d told the dispatcher, no equipment needed, and no bird trappers, either. He’d meant he intended to handle this alone, without ladders, vehicles with flashing lights or people with nets that might frighten the parakeet into flight so they lost sight of it. Yes, or scare Twitter’s young owner.

  Even as she followed after Beau, he took a running jump at a big live oak that spread its canopy over the littered backyard. Gripping the trunk with his knees, he shinnied up it until he could grab a limb maybe fifteen feet off the ground. He climbed then, swinging from one li
mb to the next with athletic grace while the branches shook, dark evergreen leaves rattled and heavy raindrops splattered the ground. In seconds, he’d disappeared.

  All that was left to tell he was in the tree was his quiet voice and musical whistles as he called to the bird.

  Chapter 7

  The live oak was rain-soaked. Every time Beau moved, droplets showered down from the leaves. The limbs, with their overgrowth of lichen and small ferns, were as slippery as greased glass. He’d be lucky if he didn’t break his neck before he got his hands on the wary parakeet.

  Twitter fluttered from branch to branch, always just a hair out of reach. Beau knew he should have armed himself with something to attract him, though what that might have been was a question. He had no idea what parakeets liked other than birdseed and cuttlebones.

  The bird seemed to be enjoying the rain. He treated it like a bath, fluttering his wings and ruffling his feathers, letting the wetness slide down his back. Or maybe it was a female; it was all the same to Beau. He just wanted to get his hands on the feathered critter, return it to Lizzie safe and sound, and get home.

  He was tired of rain. He needed his fields to dry out so he could plow again. If the eternal drenching didn’t stop soon, the creeks would overrun their banks and the countryside would have major flooding. Rescue calls a lot more dangerous than this one would require the unit’s attention.

  He couldn’t believe Carla had come to him to apologize this morning. He’d been struck dumb, or close to it. She had so little to apologize about, since he had been in the wrong. Well, not on purpose, but the facts were clear. She’d seen him kissing a married woman. Simple enough.

  He’d been off the hook with the gentleman thing. With a little effort, he could have explained away even Merry Lou’s visit. All he’d had to do was say she was lying to protect him.

  He’d had his chance to convince Carla of how wrong he was for the deal, and he hadn’t taken it. No, not him.

  How crazy was that?

  The fact was, he didn’t want her to think that badly of him. He really didn’t want her to pack up and leave.

  He must be losing it.

  So here he was, doing his Tarzan imitation, swinging from limb to limb in pursuit of a dumb bird. Lizzie more or less expected his antics, but Carla apparently didn’t. He liked the concern that she tried to hide. Crazy, but there it was, in spite of everything. He wanted to save the day, to be the hero, and was risking his neck for the appearance of it.

  It wasn’t the same as being the perfect gentleman, but was probably as close as he was going to get.

  Damn, but he needed to get his head straight, to decide exactly what he did and didn’t want where the lady was concerned.

  “Come here, little birdy,” he crooned, “come to old Beau. You’re a handsome Twitter, yes, you are. If I get my hands on you, I may wring your scrawny little neck for scaring everybody like this. And why you couldn’t pick a nice, dry sunshiny day for your adventure beats the hell out of me.”

  The parakeet tilted its head to one side and whistled. Beau whistled back and eased closer.

  Twitter flew to a higher limb. Its perching choices were getting smaller and smaller. At some point, the bird would run out of options; he could only go so far. Trouble was, the same was true for his would-be rescuer.

  “Lizzie loves you, you ungrateful little beast. She’s crying because she’s afraid of what might happen to you. Do you really want to be lunch for a hawk or its nest full of babies? Do you? Think how she’d feel if that happened.”

  The parakeet cocked its head. Beau inched higher, made a quick grab.

  “Gotcha, you feathered fiend!”

  He tucked the bird into his T-shirt while he searched for the best way down. Easing along a wide limb, he reached for another.

  His foot slipped, losing purchase on wet bark, moss and fern. He grabbed for a side branch and missed.

  Abruptly he was plunging downward past thick branches that scraped him from hip bone to armpit, slapping at side limbs, grasping them a second before they broke away with his weight. It was a free fall then. Breathless seconds of emptiness passed before he caught a wide, lower limb with one hand while protecting poor Twitter with the other.

  He couldn’t hold on. His fingers slipped with slow inevitability. The ground came up to meet him with a wallop that made fireworks go off behind his eyes in gold and red sparkles.

  Lizzie screamed, a shrill sound of despair. Carla shouted his name; he heard that clearly. A moment later, both of them were kneeling over him; he could feel their warmth, though he hadn’t realized how cold he was until then. He could hear a tapping sound, too, and realized Carla must be holding her umbrella over him, protecting his head and shoulders from the endless rain as he had protected her not so long ago. Turnabout was fair play, it seemed.

  “Is he—is he dead?” Lizzie asked, her voice thick with tears.

  A hand, gentle yet firm, pressed down on his chest, directly above his thundering heart. “No,” he heard Carla say with precision. “He’ll live to do plenty of other stupid things.”

  He opened one eye to see her hovering over him. The frown of soft concern he read on her face didn’t quite go with the bite in her voice. It was swiftly banished as she saw he was conscious, which was a fine and timely reminder that it would be foolish to read too much into a twitch of facial muscles.

  “Are you hurt? Can you move your legs? What about your arms?

  “I’m okay all over, I think, except for my ego.” He paused, then asked because he couldn’t help it, “Stupid things?”

  “Canceling the rescue equipment that would have made this job easier. Climbing a tree in the rain.” She gave a quick shake of her head. “You could have broken your neck.”

  “But I didn’t,” he said quietly, answering the concern behind the scolding instead of the accusation.

  “What about Twitter?” Lizzie asked in an agony of doubt. “Did you see him? Could you get him?”

  Beau turned his gaze to the girl, more than a little glad of the diversion. “I did, and I could,” he said, as he pushed up to a sitting position and released his hold on the parakeet. Small claws scratched his breastbone, scrabbling for purchase. Seconds later, a blue head came poking up at the hollow of his throat, struggling from under the neck of his wet T-shirt.

  “Twitter!” Lizzie sobbed, and launched herself into Beau’s arms, catching his neck in a stranglehold. “You saved him! I knew you would.”

  “Hey, no more of this crying stuff,” he said, rocking her a second in his arms while making certain Twitter wasn’t flattened between them. “Everything is all right.”

  “I thought he was gone and I’d never see him again!”

  At the sound of a screen door slamming, Beau looked past the girl to where her mother was coming toward them with a cigarette in one hand and a bird cage in the other. “Here’s your mom now. You’d better take Twitter inside where it’s warm and dry. He’s a house bird, not used to being out in the rain.”

  That wasn’t the end of it, of course.

  Lizzie’s mother thanked him over and over, saying how much she appreciated him coming out for nothing but a bird, running on about how upset Lizzie had been when it got away, and how over the moon she was now to have Twitter returned to her. She also had to be introduced to the lady from the magazine, as she called Carla, though it was obvious she knew who she was already. She couldn’t get over having the two of them standing in her front yard, tried to insist they come inside for coffee.

  Beau was as polite as he knew how to be while standing there without a dry stitch on his body and his scrapes and bruises beginning to sting as rainwater seeped over them. Thankfully, Carla took things in hand.

  “I believe Beau needs to get home and get cleaned up,” she said. “I’m seeing blood on his shirt. He must have hurt himself when he fell.”

  She was right, he saw as he lifted his arm to look. There wasn’t a lot of the red stuff, it was true, but it
made a good excuse for leaving. When Carla took his arm and turned him toward his truck, he let her get away with it.

  No one was around when they reached Windwood. Eloise had left early to run errands. The field hands that helped out this time year were off, and had been since it started raining. They had the place to themselves.

  “I’ll make fresh coffee while you shower,” Carla said as they entered the house through the kitchen. “That’s unless you’d rather have something else hot to drink?”

  “You’re wet, too. I can make it.” He had been more than a little aware, all the way home, of the way her damp shirt clung to the curves of her breasts. It wasn’t exactly a wet-T-shirt-contest view, but was hard to ignore.

  “Not as wet as you, or as muddy. I didn’t land flat on my back on the wet ground.”

  She had a point. Besides, his white T-shirt really was nearly transparent, so his bloody scrapes were shining through. With a grudging nod, he headed toward the stairs.

  Beau stood under a hot shower for a good five minutes, trying to thaw out. Dragging on a pair of sweat pants then, he turned this way and that in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to check out the damage. He had a bruise on his ribs, but the main scrape was along his side a few inches above his waist.

  “Here,” Carla said from the open doorway, “I found this in the kitchen.”

  He turned to see her holding Eloise’s first aid kit. He felt the tips of his ears turn hot as he took it from her with a quick word of thanks and set it on the vanity counter. Though he wasn’t particularly bashful, neither was he accustomed to entertaining females in his bathroom.

  “Coffee ready?” It was the first thought to enter his head.