Beauty and the Bayou: Boys of the Bayou Book 3

by Erin Nicholas

  Chase wasn’t his problem, he reminded himself. But seeing him like this would make Juliet happy.

  And yeah, Juliet being happy mattered to him. Just like it mattered a lot to him that she was scared of the water.

  So much for being nonchalant.

  Juliet was over at Cora’s, alone, sore and tired because she had been building a dock by herself, and battling her fear of the water. Which, by the way, was a very healthy fear down here. The bayou water was full of stuff she should be afraid of.

  But it bothered him that she was.

  He wanted people to be cautious around the bayou and to recognize its threats. Even before Tommy had died but definitely since then. Now there was a gorgeous, worry-wart here, and he was bothered because she was afraid of the water and didn’t want to go out on an airboat?

  He was going crazy. That was the only explanation.

  He turned on his heel and headed to the kitchen, grabbing to-go boxes and filling them with the night’s special. Yes, he was going over to Cora’s to check on Juliet. He was going to insist she eat something substantial, ask about her sore muscles, and tell her she didn’t need to finish the dock.

  He was going to do what he’d have expected all of these people to have already done.

  Ellie waved at him as he came out of the kitchen and Cora blew him a kiss. He gave them both a little wave, but he was annoyed with them. He wasn’t going to get into it, but…

  Wait, fuck that. Yes, he was.

  He crossed the room to his grandmother first.

  “Hey.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him as she slid two mugs of beer across the bar. “Hey.”

  “Why haven’t you been taking care of Juliet?”

  Ellie turned to face him fully, propping a hand on her hip. “Pardon me?”

  “She’s been working her ass off and then going back to Cora’s alone and you’re all fine with that?”

  Ellie narrowed her eyes at him. “What makes you think we’re fine with it?”

  “Well, she’s over there right now alone,” he said, sweeping his hand in the general direction of Cora’s house.

  “You wanted us to hog-tie her and bring her over here against her will?”

  He was aware that the nonchalant answer was not “yes.” Still he said, “Let’s just say that wouldn’t have surprised me.”

  Ellie studied him for a moment and then said, “Juliet is something we don’t see a lot of around here.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Fully independent.”

  Sawyer frowned. “Come on.”

  “She’s also a bit of an introvert. That’s a rare breed here,” Ellie said, lifting a shoulder.

  “Tori’s really quiet.” He cast a look at his brother’s girlfriend. Tori was sweet and much preferred animals to people.

  “She’s quiet, but she loves to be loved,” Ellie said, the look on her face as she looked at Tori full of affection. “She loves to be with all of us, surrounded by the noise and the crazy, even if she’s not as loud as the rest of us.” Ellie looked back to Sawyer. “Juliet takes care of herself. Not only does she not need to be taken care of, it makes her a little uncomfortable to be fussed over.”

  “Maddie is really independent and doesn’t need to be taken care of,” Sawyer pointed out. “She takes care of us more than we do of her.”

  Ellie again got a loving look in her eye when she glanced over to where Maddie was laughing with the group. “Madison was like a flower that hadn’t been watered in far too long when she got back down here to us. But how long did it take her to bloom? Two or three days?” Ellie asked. “She can survive without us, but she wasn’t really living. She needed to be loved our way, too.”

  “You don’t think Juliet needs to be loved?” Why was he having this conversation with his grandmother anyway? Juliet was leaving in a week and a half, and he was simply concerned that she wasn’t alone to face her fear of the water, not whether or not all of her emotional needs were being met.

  “Of course she needs to be loved,” Ellie said with an eye roll. “Everyone does. But she needs to be loved her way. Which is not exactly what we’re all used to.”

  “And what’s her way?” Sawyer didn’t doubt for a second that Ellie knew what she was talking about. Juliet had only been here for a couple of days but Ellie was amazing at reading people. She’d been around a lot of them over the course of her life and she seemed loud and like she was always commanding the room, but the truth was, she was an observer. She watched people and their interactions and reactions. She definitely tested those reactions with the things she said and did, too.

  “We need to let her take care of herself.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “The life jacket,” Ellie said.

  “She’s afraid of the water.”

  “Huh.”

  Ellie didn’t look impressed—or concerned—by that.

  “She’s wearing a life jacket twenty-four-seven because she’s afraid of falling in the water,” Sawyer clarified.

  Ellie smiled. “I don’t think so.”

  “No?”

  “If she fell into the water down there, she knows there are always at least four people who would jump in and save her.”

  “Okay,” Sawyer said slowly.

  “The life jacket means that she can save herself.”

  That hit him directly in the chest.

  Juliet was afraid of the water, but she was making sure that if the worst happened, she could take care of it. Herself.

  Sawyer studied his grandmother. “Leavin’ people alone isn’t really what we do down here.” He’d been leaving her alone, but he’d assumed other people would be in her business.

  “No. It isn’t. But that girl spends a lot of time and energy being prepared for anything. She plans it all out. She makes sure she has everything she needs so she’s not reliant on anyone else.” Ellie frowned. “I don’t know who made her feel like she’s trouble, but we need to be sure she doesn’t feel that way here.”

  Sawyer felt a surge of protectiveness go through him. Exactly what he didn’t want to feel for anyone else.

  “So if we’re not helping her and taking care of her, what are we doing?”

  Ellie smiled at him. “Enjoying her.”

  Sawyer paused a second. If Ellie was a typical grandmother, or even anyone else’s grandmother, he’d know for sure that she did not mean that in all the not-so-innocent ways his mind took it. But she was not a typical grandmother and the chances that she’d meant that, at least a little dirty, were good.

  “What does that mean?” he asked carefully.

  “We show her that even if she doesn’t need our cooking or our power tools or even us hauling her out of the bayou if she falls in, that even if she’s scared of the water that we need to make a living, we like seeing her smile and we’d love to hear her stories and we want to have her around.”

  He’d already enjoyed her.

  Sawyer couldn’t deny that.

  And he hadn’t been all that helpful to her really. He’d made up the French braiding thing. Other than that, she’d been well prepared and he’d…yeah, enjoyed her. He’d love to play more of the What-If game with her. He’d love to see more of that sassy sense of humor she’d displayed when she’d told the wood delivery guy that she didn’t need anything bigger. He’d love to just watch her work through a plan, doing all the research and sorting things into her accordion files.

  Sawyer blew out a breath. If he was actually a laid-back kind of guy, he’d let this all lie. He’d just leave it alone.

  But he wasn’t going to let it lie.

  Because he was not actually a laid-back kind of guy.

  “She’s only here for another week and a half,” Sawyer told his grandmother. And himself. Saying it out loud helped remind him as well.

  Ellie shrugged. “I’ve found that a lot of times when people come down here, or come back down here”—she cast a glance in Tori and Maddie’s
direction again—“they often stay.”

  “She’s a lawyer in Alexandria.”

  “There are patients who need advocates in Louisiana, too.”

  Sawyer smiled and shook his head. “So you are tryin’ to set me and Juliet up.”

  “A beautiful safety-freak who will face her fears in order to help her brother and who doesn’t need anyone hovering over her and making sure she’s safe and sound every second? Nah, there’s nothing there that would be good for you at all.” She gave him a soft smile and then reached up and cupped his cheek. The one with the scar. “Be happy, Sawyer. For one minute, for one day, for one and a half weeks. Grab whatever you can get.”

  He took a deep breath, then leaned in and kissed Ellie’s cheek. “I love you, Jelly.”

  They never called her Grandma or Gram or anything like that. She had always been Ellie. Growing up in a town where they’d had two grandmas and two great-grandmas it had just become habit to call them all by their first names. But when he’d been little, he’d thought they called Ellie Jelly. The name had stuck until he was about five.

  Her eyes filled with tears—also something that rarely happened—but she grinned. “Get out of here. I’m not the one who’s off by herself.” She looked around the bar with a fake sigh. “God knows, I’m never the one off by herself.”

  Chuckling, Sawyer turned and headed for the kitchen—and the back door. He was heading over to Cora’s, but the fewer people who knew the smaller the chances that someone would come up with some reason to also stop over and see how things were going.

  He didn’t mind letting Juliet know they liked having her around.

  But he kind of wanted to do it alone.

  5

  Juliet went to answer the knock on the front door of Cora’s house.

  This was the first time anyone had stopped by when Cora wasn’t home. Juliet assumed that everyone in Autre knew the best place to find Cora, almost always, was at Ellie’s. Why would someone be stopping by when Cora wasn’t here?

  So Juliet took a knife with her.

  Sawyer Landry was on the other side of the screen when she pulled the heavy inner door open, however.

  A breath of relief rushed out of her lungs and she let the hand with the knife, that she’d been hiding behind her back, relax at her side.

  “Hi,” she said with a big smile.

  Damn, he looked good. He had his hands braced on either side of the doorframe. A plastic bag filled with what looked like take-out boxes dangled from one thumb, his T-shirt had a streak of grease on it, and the jeans he wore had clearly had the pleasure of being molded to his hard body many times before.

  “Hi.” He, of course, noticed the knife. “Everything okay?”

  “I’m not used to people knocking on this door while Cora’s gone.”

  “You could have just ignored it.”

  “What if the person decided that meant no one was home and broke in to steal something?” she asked.

  His mouth quirked up on one side. “What if it was Leo sneaking in to snag leftover food?”

  “I don’t know Leo well, but he doesn’t strike me as the type to sneak,” Juliet said, also letting her mouth turn up at one corner.

  Sawyer chuckled. “Fair point. What if it was Maddie coming over to get something she forgot to take to Owen’s and she’s trying not to disturb you? Trust me, she can sneak.”

  “Yeah, but she probably knows better than to sneak in here.”

  “Why’s that?” He seemed to be enjoying this.

  “Because she’s smart. And I’m clearly already a little…overreactive. A girl like me wouldn’t be in a house alone without a weapon nearby, right?”

  “Overreactive?” he repeated. “Is that what it is?”

  Juliet propped a hand on her hip. “Isn’t it?”

  “Wearing a life jacket when you’re afraid of water makes sense to me.”

  Oh. Juliet felt her mouth drop open. But she shut it, pressed her lips together, shook her head, then said, “Chase told you?” Of course he had. It was bound to come up.

  Sawyer nodded. He straightened, his arms going to his sides, but he didn’t step back. His eyes were still on hers when he said, “I can’t believe you’re here building a boat dock when you’re afraid of water.”

  Something in his voice made her pause. It was rough and a little softer and…sounded like admiration.

  Juliet wasn’t sure she wanted admiration. She was doing something she felt like she needed to do and she was…coping. She was doing the job in the way she needed to do it to get it done. She wasn’t being brave. She was just being her.

  But she did like that soft gruffness in his voice.

  The gruffness that also made her very aware of the fact that she was wearing only a tiny tank top and a pair of short cotton shorts. The less clothing the better around here. He’d said so himself. When it got hot, they took clothes off. She was fine with that when she was inside and out of the sun and away from bugs. Very fine. But she hadn’t been expecting a visitor. Especially one that made her all too aware of every inch of her skin whenever he was around, even when she was fully clothed and wearing a life jacket.

  She crossed her arms, trying to hide her nipples that seemed to want Sawyer to be especially aware of them. “It’s really hot tonight.”

  “It is,” he agreed. “But I gotta say, I’m on the side of no AC if that means you’ll keep dressing like that.”

  She gave him a little smile that felt shy and flirtatious at the same time. “I’m okay,” she told him. “If you’re here to check on me. I’m fine.”

  “That’s not totally why I’m here,” he said. “But yeah, I’m glad to hear that.” He frowned. “Actually, that is why I’m here.”

  “To be sure I’m okay?”

  “Yeah.” He looked puzzled.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, a little amused.

  “Me coming over here to be sure you’re okay is ridiculous. As ridiculous as it would be for me to hang out and supervise you with the tools. You don’t need any of that at all, do you?”

  Juliet lifted her shoulder. “Not really.”

  “Damn,” he said quietly. “She was right.”

  “Who was?”

  “Ellie.”

  Juliet smiled. She loved Sawyer’s grandmother. Ellie let Juliet just do her thing but also definitely gave the impression that she was there if Juliet needed anything at all. Juliet had been looking for someone like that for a long time without even consciously realizing it.

  “What was she right about?”

  “That we don’t need to help you or take care of you,” Sawyer said. “That we should just…enjoy you.”

  Juliet felt her heart trip in her chest and warmth flood through her. It was partly because that was a nice thing to say. She liked the idea that they might enjoy having her around.

  But again, the way Sawyer said the words made it sound like something else. Something more.

  Something a lot dirtier. Her nipples thought so, too.

  She swallowed. “Oh.” She really didn’t know what else to add to that. Other than “get in here and take your clothes off.”

  “You don’t have to build the dock, you know,” he said. Almost as if he couldn’t help saying it. “Not if you’re scared.”

  “I’m good if I have my life jacket on.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Just like anyone with a disability, I need to do what I can the way I need to do it.”

  “Fear isn’t really a disability, is it?” he asked with a frown.

  “Isn’t it?” she asked. “If it keeps you from doing things you want to do. Things that other people do without trouble.”

  Sawyer just stood, looking at her for a long moment. Then he said, “Yeah, maybe it is.”

  He looked like there was a lot swirling through his mind.

  And he looked really good standing there just being him.

  And the bag he was holding was clearly full of food and it smelle
d amazing.

  “Do you want to come in for some iced tea?” she asked.

  He nodded slowly. “I really do.”

  She smiled and moved back, giving him space to step into the house.

  He headed straight for the kitchen, clearly comfortable in Cora’s house. He got plates and forks out while she retrieved a glass for him and filled it, along with her spill-proof cup, with iced tea.

  They set everything on the table and Juliet took her seat, pulling in a deep breath. “That smells amazing.”

  Sawyer pushed a plate toward her. There was shrimp, sausage, rice, and a savory sauce. She didn’t even care what this was specifically called. Her stomach rumbled.

  “You haven’t eaten?” he asked, picking up his fork.

  When was the last time someone cared if she’d eaten? Maybe when she was six. She grinned. “I did, actually. But I think Cora uses voodoo or something to make you hungry even if you were completely full five minutes ago.”

  He grinned and picked up his tea. “There is very little I’d put past the women in my family.” He took a drink and grimaced.

  Juliet laughed. “Oh yeah, regular iced tea. No sugar.”

  “That just isn’t right.” He got up, returning with Cora’s sugar container and proceeded to dump three spoonfuls into his glass before stirring.

  Juliet lifted her completely non-sweet tea and took a long drink. “We’re going to have to agree to disagree on this.”

  He took a long draw of his as well and then said, “It’s actually a relief to know there’s one imperfection.”

  “In what?”

  He gave her a steady look. “You.”

  She snorted at that. “Oh, sure, safety-obsessed, water-fearing, addicted to accordion files.” She lifted her spill-proof cup. “Klutzy. Total picture of perfection.”

  He was still looking at her, almost studying her. “Klutzy?”

  “I knock cups and glasses over all the time,” she said. “I use accordion files because they make it easy to organize things but also because I love the elastic band that goes around the outside. When I drop them, everything stays together.”

  He nodded, then took a bite of food. As if all of that made total sense.

  Which it did, of course. If you spilled a lot, it made sense to use a spill-proof cup.