Of course, it would be reciprocated. She’d have so much love she wouldn’t know what to do. But being willing to take that risk was exactly what they both needed.
They kissed, long and sweet, but couldn’t press too close together because of the kitten. Josh lifted his head, grinning. He desperately needed to press close to her. Very, very close. He took the kitten from her and moved to open the door. As expected, Kennedy, Owen, Sawyer, Ellie, Cora, Jerry, and Leo were outside, leaning on the railing, waiting.
He handed the cat to his sister, gave them a grin, and then shut the door again, locking it. He turned back to Tori, ignoring Kennedy’s, “Dammit, Josh!”
“Now about the Mardi Gras beads and naked breasts I heard about…”
“Well, it’s not really Mardi Gras anymore,” Tori teased, even as she pulled one of the strands of beads from her pocket and tossed it to him.
“Oh, darlin’.” He stripped off his shirt, flashing her in exchange for the beads. Then he tossed them back to her. “For us, every day is Mardi Gras from here on out.”
Epilogue
Three months later…
“Andrew called.”
Josh rolled his eyes. “Don’t care.”
Tori gave him a grin and handed him Chuck, the kitten that he’d brought in to have her check over. “Chuck is perfectly healthy.”
“Awesome.” Josh lifted the little cat and looked him in the eye. “Welcome to the family, bud.”
It was the third cat he’d brought home in two months, including Bernie, the kitten from the plantation, and Jax, the ten-year-old cat he’d found in the shed at the back of their new property. The farm had come with several outbuildings and they were still going through them all and finding all kinds of treasures—and junk. The cat had clearly been living out there for some time, but he’d taken to being in the house—and on Josh’s lap—quickly.
Josh and his new cat obsession was potentially going to be a problem.
But for now, Tori just grinned as she cleaned up the exam table.
“He said that he doesn’t think he and Paisley are going to get back together,” she said.
“Still don’t care.” Josh gave her a frown. “And no, he can’t come to the crawfish boil on Friday.”
The last time Andrew had come down, he’d drunk three mason jars full of moonshine and passed out in the Boys of the Bayou office. He’d slept through the first four tour groups of the next morning. Right there in the middle of the floor with tourists stepping over and around him.
“Oh, come on,” Tori teased. “You know you have nothing to worry about.”
Josh scoffed. “I’m not worried. I know exactly where your sweet ass is going to be every night. I just don’t like him.”
Tori loved when he said stuff like that. And yeah, there was no question where her ass, and the rest of her, was going to be. Right here. In Autre, Louisiana. With Josh Landry. She’d only been here for three months and she already felt like she was home.
She took Josh’s hand and they headed for the house. She already had a veterinary practice built up. That amazed her. But the nearest vet prior to her arrival had been thirty minutes away. And well, she was a Landry—kind of—and that meant that everyone in and around Autre trusted her implicitly.
They put Chuck in the house with Jax and Bernie and then headed into town and to the tour office. Which really only required them walking out their front door, turning left, and walking a few blocks. Their farm was on the edge of town with their property stretching back behind the house nearly to the county line, but their front yard was on the last street of Autre.
Josh had two tours later on, and Tori was going to stop by a couple of houses to check on patients. But first, Sawyer had wanted to meet with everyone.
Owen, Sawyer, and Kennedy were already there when Josh and Tori came through the door.
Tori didn’t have much to do with the tour company but she sometimes filled in for Kennedy at the desk if needed, and she still felt like a part of everything. There wasn’t much that went on in this family, this business, or even Ellie’s bar, that wasn’t common knowledge in the family.
“We have a situation,” Sawyer said without even waiting for Tori and Josh to find a seat.
“What’s goin’ on?” Owen asked, tossing a peanut into his mouth.
“We’re comin’ up short on money,” Sawyer said bluntly. “We’re barely making ends meet and that means that we have to put off some new purchases, and the expansion we talked about last year isn’t going to happen. At least not right now.”
Owen and Josh shared a look. An unhappy look.
“Are bookings down or something?” Tori asked. She’d owned her own business since graduating with her degree but hadn’t needed to advertise or seek out patients. Everyone just brought their animals in to her, and everyone in Elton could get her cell number from her mom or dad simply by stopping them at church or running into them at the café.
“Business is good,” Sawyer said. “But we’re down a man. That means more of my time spent on the business side and more time all of us have to spend on maintenance and repairs and that means less time on tours.”
Everyone was quiet for a long moment. That was the general reaction any time anyone mentioned Tommy, the fourth partner who had died eight months before, even indirectly.
Finally Josh said, “What do we need to do? Hire someone?”
“Maybe,” Sawyer said. He shoved a hand through his hair. “But there’s more.”
“Like what?” Owen asked.
“Maddie.”
Owen froze with his hand partway through the motion of tossing more peanuts into his mouth. “What?”
Sawyer nodded. “Maddie. She wants to sell her portion.”
Owen set the jar of peanuts down hard and crossed his arms. “Why?”
“She doesn’t want it,” Sawyer said.
“She doesn’t want it?”
Sawyer blew out a breath. “Why would she want it?” he asked flatly.
“What’s that mean?” Owen asked, clearly annoyed. “Her brother gave it to her.”
Owen was the laid-back Landry. The fun guy. The flirt. The charmer. Tori wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him scowl like he was now, and she’d definitely never seen him agitated like this.
Oh, she so wanted to know who Maddie was and what was going on. She settled in to watch.
“The last time she lived here she was sixteen,” Sawyer said. “She doesn’t feel connected to the town or the business.”
“You mean she doesn’t feel connected to us,” Owen said.
“Well, how the hell would she?” Sawyer asked, clearly exasperated. “She’s been living in California for the past twelve years.”
“Fine,” Owen said. “Then she can give it to us. Whatever.”
“Yeah, well, she isn’t going to give it to us,” Sawyer said. “We have to buy her out.”
“What’s going on?” Tori whispered to Josh.
“Maddie is Tommy’s little sister,” Josh told her. “He left her his portion of the business when he died. She owns thirty-five percent of Boys of the Bayou.”
“Oh.” Well, yeah, damn. “And she doesn’t want it?”
“Guess not.” Josh didn’t look happy. “But damn, this isn’t a good time for us to be trying to buy someone out.”
“Son of a bitch.” Owen paced to the door and stood staring at it, his hands on his hips.
Tori gave Josh a puzzled look. She’d never seen Owen act like that.
“Owen and Maddie are…” Josh said, “…complicated.”
“There’s a history there?” Tori guessed.
“You could say that. There’s, um…” Josh lowered his voice. “There’s a chance that Maddie might be hesitant to come back to Autre, in part, because of Owen.”
Tori looked over at Owen and wiggled. She wanted to know all of this history.
“So you need to get your head on straight,” Sawyer said to Owen. “She’s coming to town.�
�
Owen swung around. “When?”
“Should be here next week. She’s stayin’ for thirty days. That’s how long we have to come up with a solution per the partnership agreement.”
“We have a partnership agreement?” Josh asked.
“Well…” Sawyer shoved a hand through his hair. “There’s a couple of notebook pages that Leo and Kenny wrote up when they first started the business.”
“But that doesn’t apply to us, does it?” Josh asked.
“According to Jack, it’s legally binding,” Sawyer said of their lawyer. “He was, apparently, there when they wrote it up.”
“Let me guess,” Josh said. “They wrote it up at the bar over jars of whiskey after being out fishin’ all day.”
“Almost,” Sawyer nodded. ‘They were at the hunting cabin. But there was definitely whiskey and fishing involved.”
Everyone chuckled at that. Except Owen. He was frowning at the floor, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.
Maddie was more than Tommy’s little sister, it seemed.
“What’s it got in it?” Josh asked.
“What to do if one of the partners steals money from the business. How to settle disputes that arise between the partners. That kind of thing,” Sawyer said. “It’s a bunch of stuff they agreed to do before either of them could dissolve the partnership or sell off their portion.” He rolled his eyes. “Apparently Leo and Kenny acknowledged they were both hotheaded, stubborn asses and put some contingency plans in place in case one of them got pissed off over something stupid and thought about messing with the business.”
Josh grinned. “What would they do if one of them stole money from the business?”
“The other one got full ownership of the baseball card,” Sawyer said.
Josh laughed.
“Baseball card?” Tori asked. “Did they write that up when they were twelve?”
Josh nodded, grinning. “Leo and Kenny, especially together, did act like they were twelve a lot of the time. But they both had some really valuable cards. Stuff they’d actually hung on to since they were kids. They were constantly trying to win one away or trick the other guy into giving something up. But they had a Willie Mays rookie card that they bought together back in 1952. They’ve always co-owned it even though over the years they each tried everything to get the other to let it go. It’s worth thousands now. They’d even talked about selling it to start the business, but in the end they just couldn’t do it.”
Tori grinned at the story. That sounded just like Leo. A little crusty on the outside, but with a heart of gold underneath.
“Does this agreement give you a good way to settle the idea of Maddie selling?” Kennedy asked.
“Well, I’m not sure how good it is,” Sawyer said. “But it does say that whoever wants out has to give the other partner thirty days’ notice. And that during those thirty days, the partners have to keep working together.”
“Maddie doesn’t work here,” Owen said shortly.
“Not at the moment, no,” Sawyer agreed.
Owen blew out a breath. “She’s coming here, for a month, and will be working here with us every day?”
Sawyer gave a short nod. “Pretty much.”
“And then? What happens at the end of thirty days?” Owen asked.
“Well, then either she keeps her portion because we’ve convinced her she wants to be a part of it all. Or…” He sighed. “She sells.”
“To a stranger?” Kennedy asked. “We can’t bring a stranger into the business.”
“No fucking way,” Owen said.
Tori could see the tension in all of them. The idea of someone who wasn’t part of this tight-knit clan coming into the business seemed strange even to her. Tommy and Maddie weren’t blood relation to the Landrys, but because of the lifelong friendship between the Landrys and Allains, they were one big family in all the ways that counted.
“I fell in love with your family and this town in about ten minutes,” Tori said, encouragingly. “I can’t imagine how she could spend thirty days here and not want to be a part of it.”
Sawyer, Josh, and Kennedy all looked at Owen.
Owen frowned. “What?”
“You have to behave,” Sawyer told him.
“What do you think is going to happen, exactly?”
“What I know is going to happen is that you’re going to be nothing more and nothing less than the charming good-old-boy you are to every tourist with tits,” Sawyer said firmly.
Owen was charming and sweet with every female Tori had ever seen him with. Well, maybe not Ellie all the time. But she usually started it. So why the warning from Sawyer?
“You will not fight with her,” Sawyer said. “You will not fight anyone over her. And you will not kiss her.”
Tori’s eyes were wide by the time Sawyer was done with his list. Oh, yes, there was a gooood story here.
Owen opened his mouth to reply, but seemed to think better of it and snapped it shut. He blew out a breath. Finally he said, “Fine.”
“You sure?” Sawyer asked.
“It’s been twelve years,” Owen told him. “I’d like to think that I have more self-control than I did when I was seventeen.”
“I’d like to think that too,” Sawyer said. “But I seem to remember patching a hole in the wall of this very office that was about the size of your fist after she was here for Tommy’s funeral.”
Tori looked at Josh. He just sighed.
“Look, we don’t need her to move down here or anything,” Sawyer said to the group as a whole. “She can own it from San Francisco. But we need to be sure she sees and feels everything Tommy loved about this place. And—” Sawyer paused and took a deep breath. “Everything he loved about us. We have to make it too hard for her to let go of this.”
Kennedy nodded. “Yeah, okay.” She looked at the rest of them worriedly. “We can do that. Right?”
“Sure,” Josh said. He didn’t seem convinced.
“Of course,” Tori added. She had fallen in love with Autre, the Landry family, and the Boys of the Bayou easily.
“I sincerely doubt it,” Owen said bluntly. “She’s a city girl now.”
“Well, we’ve got thirty days to remind her that she’s really a bayou girl deep down,” Sawyer said. He looked at Owen. “Pull yourself together.”
Owen flipped him off.
Tori grinned. Whatever this was, it was going to be very interesting.
Thank you for reading My Best Friend’s Mardi Gras Wedding! I hope you loved Josh and Tori’s story!
* * *
There’s lots more to come from the bayou!
Up next is Owen and Maddie’s story in Sweet Home Louisiana!
* * *
Grab it now!
* * *
Learn more at www.ErinNicholas.com
under the BOOKS menu!
* * *
And if you loved the Boys of the Bayou, you’ll also love the Boys of the Big Easy! Sexy New Orleans guys who are also single dads!
* * *
Check them out HERE!
More from Erin Nicholas
The Boys of the Bayou
* * *
My Best Friend’s Mardi Gras Wedding
Sweet Home Louisiana
Beauty and the Bayou
Crazy Rich Cajuns
The Boys of the Big Easy
* * *
Easy Going (prequel novella)
Going Down Easy
Taking It Easy
Nice and Easy
Eggnog Makes Her Easy (Christmas novella)
And if you loved Erin’s Boys of the Bayou and Boys of the Big Easy
check out the Billionaires in Blue Jeans series!
* * *
Diamonds and Dirt Roads
High Heels and Haystacks
Cashmere and Camo
About the Author
Erin Nicholas is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over thirty sexy contemporary roman
ces. Her stories have been described as toe-curling, enchanting, steamy and fun. She loves to write about reluctant heroes, imperfect heroines and happily ever afters. She lives in the Midwest with her husband who only wants to read the sex scenes in her books, her kids who will never read the sex scenes in her books, and family and friends who say they’re shocked by the sex scenes in her books (yeah, right!).
* * *
Find her and all her books at
www.ErinNicholas.com
* * *
And find her on Facebook, BookBub, and Instagram!
My Best Friend's Mardi Gras Wedding Page 26