Men Made in America Mega-Bundle

by Gayle Wilson, Marie Ferrarella, Jennifer Greene, Annette Broadrick, Judith Arnold, Rita Herron, Anne Stuart, Diana Palmer, Elizabeth Bevarly, Patricia Rosemoor, Emilie Richards

  He tugged the afghan from her fingers and it fell at their feet, a useless tumble of green and turquoise. “You can say anything you want, but I won’t guarantee you’ll always get the response you’d like.”

  “I’ve never wanted anyone to tell me lies.”

  His hands drifted over the slender curves of her body, a body that was now achingly familiar and even more provocative. “Thank you,” he said.

  She didn’t ask for what. She just let him pull her against him, and they stood as close together as two people can and watched the sun play over the water.

  Chapter 10

  Claude LeBeaud squatted at the end of the dock stretching into Bayou Midnight, his grizzled head bent as, with sparing, practiced movements, he worked over a large fish. Behind him the sky was an explosion of colors Antoinette was sure she had never seen before. She knew she would remember this moment always—the old man, the sky, the feeling that she was exactly where she was supposed to be.

  Sam’s uncle didn’t lift his head as their canoe glided through the black water to the dock, but as Sam turned the canoe toward a tiny landing on the shore, Claude nodded in satisfaction.

  “Don’ let nuthin’ stop you from eatin’ Didi’s cookin’, do you, Sam-son? Not even une belle femme?”

  “We could smell her cooking all the way across the bayou, Nonc Claude. Didn’t want to disappoint Didi.”

  “When M’sieu Gator, he learns to fly, that’s when Didi’d forgive you for missin’ dinner,” Claude agreed.

  Sam turned the canoe so that his portion slid into the landing. He got out to pull it onto land. When it was secure, he offered his hand to Antoinette. In a moment she was standing beside him. She followed him to the end of the dock to meet his uncle.

  Claude stood as they approached, wiping his hands on a rag. “I won’ shake. Lookit me, ma hands covered wit’ fish.”

  “That’s all right, Mr. LeBeaud,” Antoinette reassured him. “My hands are blistered from all the canoeing your nephew’s made me do anyway.”

  Sam’s laughter was warm, and for her alone. “Don’t let her fool you. She made me come back here the long way so she could see more of the bayou. Nonc Claude, this is Antoinette Deveraux. Antoinette, my uncle, Claude LeBeaud.”

  “Deveraux. Good French name. Not Cajun, but—” He shrugged.

  “Will I be forgiven?”

  “Mais yeah, chere. Las’ thing I knowed, not bein’ Cajun wasn’ no sin.”

  “Is everyone else inside?” Sam asked.

  “Everybody. Even Martin.”

  Antoinette and Sam followed his uncle off the dock and up onto the porch. Tootsie waited there to greet her, giving Antoinette a lick and a fond wiggle before disappearing once more in the company of Claude’s hound. Sniffing appreciatively, Antoinette decided that Sam was right. Some of the wonderful smells she had experienced paddling down Bayou Midnight were coming from the house. Her mouth began to water.

  The inside of Claude LeBeaud’s Acadian-style cottage proclaimed the fact that two bachelors lived there, bachelors who lived outdoors more than they lived in. Sam had explained that Leonce and Didi lived on a nearby inlet of Bayou Midnight, and Antoinette wondered how their house compared with this one.

  There was nothing inside this house that could be considered an adornment unless it was the fine set of deer antlers that were being used for a hat rack. One wall was decorated with tar paper to keep out the wind; the others were the same weathered gray of the exterior.

  To say that the furnishings were simple was an understatement. Antoinette was reminded of the proverb “waste not, want not,” and wondered silently if it had originated with the Acadians. There was something soothing about the simplicity, though. Everything was immaculately clean and in good repair. And the view from the front windows overlooking the bayou was all the beauty anyone would ever need.

  Two men who were stockier, dark-haired versions of Sam sat on straight-back chairs watching a small black-and-white television set. They stood when Antoinette entered the room, both thoroughly assessing her, although the shorter of the two let his eyes flicker back to the television screen once while the introductions were made.

  Martin was the taller of the pair. His hair was shiny black, and his features were even, with the aquiline nose of his blond cousin. There was something about the way he held himself that reminded Antoinette of Sam, and something about the guarded expression on his face that emphasized their similarities, too. Martin followed his gruff greeting in English with several staccato sentences of Cajun French that went right over her head. She could only nod, hoping she would catch on quickly.

  Leonce was all smiles. He had Sam’s nose and a similar cleft in his chin. His face was rounder and almost beatific, his potbelly a testament to his wife’s artistry in the kitchen. Although it was still tinged with music, his greeting was in English, without the extremities of accent as in his father’s speech.

  “Didya ever hear of such a thing? I’m doin’ all the work in somebody else’s kitchen, and nobody tells me she’s here!” A blond and blue-eyed dynamo marched in from the hallway, a spotless white apron covering her blue-checked dress. “Always the last to know!”

  Sam swooped the petite young woman off her feet and gave her a hearty kiss on the cheek, setting her down in the midst of them. “Antoinette, meet Didi. Didi, Antoinette.”

  “I’m just glad these bums they didn’t scare you off.”

  “I wouldn’t let them.” Antoinette got a definite feeling that she had an ally, whether she needed one or not. Didi was measuring her and Sam simultaneously, as if to figure out how to make the bond between them a permanent one.

  “Eh bien, I’ve got fish to fry. Make them give you the comfortable chair. That one there,” she said, pointing at her husband, “he’ll forget he’s breathin’ if the TV’s on.”

  “Spoils you, doesn’t she?” Sam asked Leonce.

  “Who?” Leonce asked, his eyes flickering back to the set.

  Didi threw her hands up in the air and marched out of the room.

  “I think I’m going to see if I can help,” Antoinette told Sam, turning to follow Didi through the hallway. She came to a halt in the kitchen, half a minute behind Didi, who seemed to do everything at the speed of light.

  If it was true that the kitchen was the heart of every home, this kitchen said everything about the LeBeauds. Simplicity did not reign here. The kitchen was huge. In the center was a table large enough to seat the inhabitants of a small town; along two walls were shelves filled to overflowing with food, pots and pans, dishes and a sizable collection of beautifully carved duck decoys. Strings of herbs hung from the curtain rod over the kitchen sink, and a thick length of braided onions and red peppers twined around another window. Like everything else in the house, the kitchen sparkled with cleanliness.

  “I’m gonna shoot that Claude. I tell him not to mess with my gumbo, and he pours in the peppers when he thinks I’m not watchin’.”

  Antoinette’s eyes watered just thinking about it. “What kind of gumbo is it?”

  “Every kind. Got everythin’ in it gumbo can have.”

  “Didi, the food smells delicious. Sam says you’re the best cook on the bayou.”

  “That Sam-son, he wants to eat, that’s why he say that. The man needs a woman to cook for him. Claude, now, he don’t need anyone to cook for him. Claude can cook circles around a fancy French chef if he want. Mais non, he never want if I’m here to do it.” Didi flicked some water into a cast-iron skillet filled with oil and listened to it pop. “We can eat, soon’s I fry the fish.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Git out the Evangeline Maid and put it on that plate for me,” Didi told her, gesturing to a blue willow platter.

  Antoinette discovered that Evangeline Maid was a Cajun version of Wonder Bread and began to take slices from the bag to stack them on the platter. “Why does everyone here call Sam Sam-son?”

  “Claude, he started it. S’got nuthin’ to do
with bein’ strong. Claude says Sam is as good a son as any he got naturally. So he calls him Sam-son. He’s just one of Claude’s boys.”

  Antoinette liked the history behind the nickname. It said a lot about the love in Sam’s family. “It’s beautiful here. I like to think of Sam growing up with his uncle and cousins in this place.”

  “Only thing not beautiful ‘bout it’s the lack of a woman. All those men livin’ here without a woman to make them behave. Leonce was almost beyond hope till I took him over.”

  Antoinette smiled at the thought of tiny Didi leading Leonce and the others around by their noses. “Sam said you were a cousin of his, too.”

  “Cousin way, way back.” Didi rolled tiny balls of fish in a mixture that looked like cornmeal and herbs. “You, you’re not Cajun, are you?”

  “No. My family was from a different part of France.”

  “Good. This family needs new blood. Even better if it’s new French blood.”

  “Didi, Sam and I are just getting to know each other. This is all very casual.”

  “Sa va bien. Things, they’re going well. He don’t take you to his cabin if he just want to get to know you. Sam-son never takes anybody there.” Didi began to fry the fish, pushing blond curls off her forehead with her forearm as if she was already hot from the work yet to do. “I’m the only woman’s ever been through the door, and I just git to clean it up.”

  Antoinette decided she’d better change the subject. “Tell me about you and the rest of Sam’s family. Have you always lived here?”

  “Me, I’m from Pierre Part. Claude and the boys, they live here in the summer and fall, down in the marshes from November to spring. I met Leonce at a fais-do-do the summer I was sixteen.”

  “Fais-do-do?”

  “A dance. Anyhow, my parents and Claude said we could git married, so we did.”

  Antoinette wondered if it had all been as simple as it sounded. “Sam says Leonce works for Omega Oil.”

  “Leonce loves the machines. Makes okay money for a boy from the swamps. Martin, now, he hates anything been built in the last two centuries. If le Bon Dieu didn’t put it here, Martin, he don’t want it messin’ up the place.”

  Antoinette began to wash the few dishes that Didi had allowed to accumulate as she’d cooked. “Sam told me that Martin was the one who taught him about the swamps.”

  Didi giggled, a sweet, tinkling sound that was very much at odds with her no-nonsense speech. “I hear he’d drag Sam into a pirogue and threaten to drop him somewhere if he didn’ shape up. Woulda done it, too. Talk about!”

  “Are you planning to feed us, Didi?” Sam stood in the doorway. Antoinette wondered how long he’d been there.

  “Lookit that! Sam-son’s almost in the kitchen. Come a step closer, Sam-son, and I’ll teach you to fry garfish balls.”

  “Didi’s been trying to take me in hand for the last eight years,” Sam said fondly.

  “I git you yet, Sam-son. You won’t die not knowin’ how to cook.” Didi bustled past him to inform the LeBeaud men it was time for dinner.

  “If you don’t know how to cook,” Antoinette said, wiping her hands on a dish towel, “how do you eat?”

  “I cook. Didi just doesn’t see it that way.”

  “He don’t cook, he turns on his oven, that one, and he warms up chicken no Cajun would feed a crawfish.” Didi passed Sam on the way back through the kitchen, stopping for a quick kiss on the cheek as she did. “Needs a good woman, that one.” She stopped in front of Antoinette. “You. Do you cook?”

  Antoinette met Sam’s eyes and smiled lazily. “I sure do,” she told Didi. “You and I’ll have to trade recipes.”

  Didi’s grin was wide enough to swallow Bayou Midnight.

  The meal surpassed anything Antoinette had believed possible about food. Everything was absolutely fresh and bursting with flavor. The raw oysters were plump with just the hint of saltwater that made them the most sought-after kind. The gumbo, which was more of a stew than a soup, was redolent with spices and every variety of seafood Antoinette could think of. The fried garfish balls were surprisingly good considering what the fish itself looked like, and there was a crawfish jambalaya made with rice and tomatoes that was a meal in itself. It was hard to believe that the men wanted dessert, but when all the plates had been cleared away, they sat expectantly while Didi brought them each a square of bread pudding so rich with eggs, cream and a potent whiskey sauce that inhaling the aroma would add pounds to a dieter.

  “You have to eat it,” Sam told Antoinette. “Didi will think you don’t like her cooking.”

  “I love the cooking. It’s the fact that I don’t have room for it that I don’t love.”

  “Don’ think nuthin’ about it,” Claude assured her. “Jus’ eat what you want. Didi feeds us all like we are gonna run outa food tomorrow. Leonce, he used to be skinny, like me.” Claude patted his lean waistline. “Now he looks like one of the rats I catch on a good day. Fat, sleek and full of sass.”

  “Nonc Claude traps for nutria and muskrat down in the marshes part of each year,” Sam explained. “He and Martin have a camp down there.”

  “Mink and otter, too,” Didi added, not at all offended by Claude’s teasing. Silently she passed him another square of pudding, which he accepted with a nod.

  Martin pushed his chair back from the table with a sharp scrape. “Won’t be goin’ this year.”

  Sam frowned. “Why not? You always go.”

  Martin’s face showed his disgust. “Omega Oil.”

  Sam was instantly alert. “What does Omega have to do with your going down to the marshes?”

  Claude answered, his voice more philosophical than his son’s. “Our camp’s on Omega land. The company, she don’ wanna lease her marsh no more. C’est tout.”

  “That’s one I haven’t heard.” Sam pushed his chair back, too. “Omega seems to be in business to make enemies.”

  “Swampers don’ like Omega, I kin tell you that. The other companies, they messin’ up the swamp, too. But not so fast as Omega. Omega, she goes in and chug chugs. Nex’ thing you know, no more swamp. Jus’ a big trainasse where there used a be trees.” Claude shook his head. “Omega don’ care about the swamp, she don’ care about the swampers.”

  “Trainasse?” Antoinette asked.

  “An artificial channel. What do you think, Martin?” Sam asked his cousin, who was still scowling.

  “I been trappin’ that land since I was eight years old. It’s my land, not Omega’s.”

  “When the rats run over the marsh an’ eat it down to nuthin’, then the company, she’ll let us back in,” Claude said, more to Martin than anyone else. “Meantime, we stay here and fish. Fish’ll keep us jumpin’.”

  Martin’s answer was unintelligible to Antoinette, but obviously not to everyone else at the table. She had realized as the meal progressed that the family was conversing in English when normally they would probably fall back into the peculiar mixture of English and French that was so typically Cajun. Now Martin’s answer, whatever it was, was totally French and totally—she was certain—profane.

  “How many people down here feel this way about Omega?” Sam asked.

  Didi was the first to answer. “You git in that canoe of yours, Sam-son, and you paddle up and down Bayou Midnight. Then paddle anywhere else in this basin. You stop and talk to anyone you see and ask how they like Omega Oil. My man, he’s an Omega man. Their men, they’ll be Omega men, too. Ask anybody about Omega. They’ll tell you, them, that Omega oughta be shot for what they do down here. An’ that’s the truth.”

  Sam shook his head wearily, watching as Leonce got up and left the room silently. “If it’s any consolation, there are people all over the state who feel the same way.”

  Martin stood, jamming his hands in his pockets, and left the room, too.

  Claude watched his sons’ departures, his eyes sorrowful. “Martin and the swamp and marsh, they’re one. He don’ know nuthin’ else. He’d a been better born a
hundred years afore this. This world’s got no place for Martin in it. No place at all.”

  The trip back to Sam’s cabin was made in silence. The canoe glided through the moonlit water without making a sound, and neither Antoinette nor Sam felt like interrupting the croaking concerto provided by the bullfrogs. Once, she saw movement in the water and watched as the majestic head of an alligator broke the surface before disappearing once again into the ebony water of the bayou. The night had turned cool, and as soon as they had gotten out into the water, even the mosquitoes had ignored them. Antoinette had never felt more filled with peace.

  At the cabin Sam set her suitcase on the deck before Antoinette helped him pull the canoe up for the night. Inside the cabin he lit a kerosene lantern to supplement the moonlight pouring through the windows. Together they filled a basin with water from the pump on the counter. Sam wandered out to the porch as Antoinette used the water for a lick-and-a-promise bath and for brushing her teeth. She changed into the ivory silk nightgown she had bought herself the day he’d asked her to go to the bayou.

  “Your turn.” Antoinette joined Sam at the porch windows. He put his arms around her, resting his cheek against her head.

  “The best thing about that nightgown is that it’s going to be off you soon.”

  “Think so?”

  “As soon as I get back.” He pulled away and disappeared into the cabin.

  Antoinette stretched out on the bed and waited for Sam to join her. A light breeze blew through the windows, and although she doubted it was really possible, she imagined she could feel the gentle rise and fall of the barge beneath them. The unaccustomed physical activity of the day took its toll. She was asleep before Sam had finished bathing.

  Much later she awoke to find herself naked in his arms. Sam was asleep, and she listened to the quiet rhythm of his breathing, sorry that they’d missed an opportunity to make love. During the day she had successfully put the complexities of their relationship out of her mind, but with half the weekend behind them now, it was hard to forget that, when they returned to the city early Monday morning, Sam might erect new barriers that she’d never be able to get past.