by Sandra Hill
“Yippee!” she said.
They came away with several bags of leftover dinner sandwiches from last night—still fresh, the proprietor assured them—and warm sugar-crusted beignets right from the oven. Simone was already at the car waiting for them. She was wearing a baseball cap, too—Chicago PD—with her ponytail pulled through the hole in back, a black tank top tucked into a pair of red, belted Bermuda shorts, and flip-flops. She carried a huge canvas shoulder carryall that probably served as a gym bag.
Maisie ran up and hugged Simone around the waist, saying, “I’m glad yer comin’ with us, Miss See-mone.”
This was just the kind of thing he’d always been fearful of regarding his daughter and his “women.” His daughter was so needy, and she latched on to people too easily.
So, it was surprising, even to him, when he looked at Simone and said, “Me, too.”
Gone fishin’ . . . and other stuff . . .
Adam hadn’t had so much fun in years.
Maisie had insisted she sit in the backseat of the truck with Simone, so Adam drove them like a redneck chauffeur in a pickup truck. They all laughed at the image they presented.
They stopped at Boudreaux’s General Store for bait, where they covered all their bases with a selection of catalpa worms, night crawlers, minnows, chicken livers, and canned corn. Not surprising to him at this point was the fact that Simone didn’t shrink back or go all “Oooh, oooh!” at sight of the slimy critters. Either it was the cop in her who’d seen slimier things, or it was the Cajun who had, indeed, done her share of fishing, or it was just Simone, who was different than the average girl . . . thank God!
The old-timey store also sold tackle, crushed shells for driveways, and Avon beauty products. Simone bought a fishing license, just to be legal. And Adam bought some chips and a jar of Mrs. Boudreaux’s homemade spicy pickles to go with their sandwiches. He also got paper plates and napkins as well as several bags of ice and a Styrofoam cooler for any fish or crabs they might catch.
It was a good thing Adam had borrowed his father’s truck because his Lexus never would have made it over the rough roads that led to the remote fishing hole he’d chosen, far enough away from town or oil company contamination that might spoil the fish for eating. It was a lovely spot showcasing the best of what the bayou had to offer. Bald cypress trees in the water with their knobby knees protruding upward here and there. Age-old live oaks dripping gray moss. Myriad floral bushes exuding beautiful scents, in contrast to the swampy smells of mud and decaying vegetation. And, of course, the slow-moving, coffee-colored stream that was hopefully teeming with fish.
While he cased the area for danger—snakes, gators, red ants, and the like—Simone spread out a large, tightly woven mat from her carryall, which was probably intended to be a beach blanket, but served well as their picnic tablecloth. On it, she arranged the carryout bags and other items, making several trips back and forth to the bed of the truck. He was pleased to see that she involved Maisie in her “work.” Meanwhile, he arranged the rods and reels and long-handled nets and bait at what he deemed a good spot by the stream.
It was the kind of spot where a man, or woman, liked to just sit and enjoy the peaceful sounds of the bayou—the rush of the current, the various bird calls, the rustle of leaves in the slight breeze—which was impossible with Maisie. In her excitement, she just couldn’t stop talking and laughing. Which, of course, was a good sound to him.
“Betcha I catch a gazillion fish t’day,” she told Simone as they smoothed out the edges of the blanket.
“At least,” Simone agreed. “When I was your age, my father took me noodling for catfish up the bayou, and I got one so big we ate catfish for a month. Noodling is when you stand in the muddy water and tickle the fish with your fingers until you latch on and pull the critter to the surface.”
Adam wondered idly if she meant her birth father, Valcour LeDeux, or her stepfather, Ernest Daigle. It had to be the latter, of course, since Valcour had never had much to do with any of his kids as far as Adam knew.
“I know, I know,” Maisie said, jumping up and down. “Me and PawPaw saw it on Animal Planet.” She turned toward Adam, assuming he’d overheard, “Kin we noodle t’day, Daddy? Kin we, kin we?”
“Not today, sweetie. The waters here aren’t conducive to noodling.”
At her downcast expression, he added, “We’ll catch the old-fashioned way. Probably two gazillion.”
By then, Maisie was off on another subject. “I lak yer nail polish, Miss See-mone.” She was looking at Simone’s bright red toenails. Her fingernails were short and unadorned, though nicely trimmed. Another remnant of her police days, he assumed. Hard to gather blood evidence with two-inch nails.
“I like your polish, too,” Simone was saying. “That color of pink is my fav. Did you do your nails yourself?”
Both her tiny fingernails and toenails were neon pink, even though Adam had encouraged her to go for clear, or at least pale pink. Try being a grown man in the cosmetics aisle at the drugstore picking out nail enamel, arguing with a five-year-old girl with a taste for pizz-azz.
“Nope. Mah daddy did them fer me. I’m too little ta get inside the cute-culls.” She gave her face a little moue of disappointment.
Simone glanced up and met his gaze, with raised eyebrows.
He just shrugged.
And Maisie was off on another subject. “Do ya have any children?”
She shook her head.
“Doan ya lak children?”
“I love children.”
“Are ya gonna have children some day?”
“Maybe. Why do you ask, honey?”
“’Cause I’d lak ta have a brother or sister ta play with. I was gonna ask Santa fer one las’ Christmas, but I wanted another American Girl doll more.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa! This was the first he’d heard about her wanting a sibling. And why was she looking to Simone for a brother or sister?
Simone was laughing, not at Maisie’s words, but at the dismay that must have been apparent on his face.
“You could always ask next Christmas,” she encouraged Maisie, just to tease him, he could tell.
Maisie bit her bottom lip, a habit she’d developed when deep in thought. “Maybe. I’m almost six years old, y’know. Pretty soon I’ll be too old fer dolls. I think I would be a good babysitter, though, don’t you, Miss See-mone.”
“I’m sure of it. All that doll baby practice!”
“Enough dawdling, you two,” he said then.
“First we need to put on plenty of sunscreen and insect repellant,” she cautioned.
“Right,” he agreed. He wouldn’t have forgotten if he wasn’t so distracted by talk about babies, or by Simone herself. He was further distracted over and over again as she expertly wielded her rod and line over the bayou waters or helped him net a fish, or when she showed him an old Cajun method for catching crawfish by skimming a leafy limb over the water near the muddy banks till the mudbugs climbed on and they were able to scoop them up.
By noon, they’d caught two large catfish and a one-pound catfish, which was small by bayou standards but a keeper because a wildly ecstatic Maisie had been the winner of that bout and she wanted to show it off to her grandfather. They also had an impressive bushel of crawfish. They’d released a lot of smaller fish they’d caught—trout, bass, and crappies.
It would have been enough fishing for Adam for the day, especially since they’d depleted all the food and most of the drinks, but Maisie had been a die-hard angler, claiming there were lots more fish to be caught. Right now, the die-hard was fast asleep on the blanket, her face resting on her folded arms, her little butt in the air.
“Should we wake her?” Simone asked as she packed up some of the empty food containers and put them in a bag for trash to be carried back home.
“Not yet,” he said, sitting against a tree, his long legs stretched out before him. Thank God Simone had remembered the bug repellant. Insects could be seen buzzing ov
er the water in hordes. He patted a spot beside him, indicating she should come sit beside him.
She hesitated but then plopped down next to him.
He put an arm around her shoulders, tucking her closer. She didn’t resist, which he took as a good sign.
“This is fun,” she said then. “Thanks for inviting me. Will you be cooking all this fish when you get home?”
“I won’t. We will.”
“I don’t have a pot big enough for a crab boil,” she told him.
“I do. We can stop at my house and cook them. Maybe stop for some fresh corn on the way. If I call my dad, he’ll have some sides prepared before we get there.”
“That sounds an awful lot like a relationship.”
He didn’t say anything.
But then she asked, “Scared?’
“More like resigned.”
“Thanks a bunch.”
“I didn’t mean that as an insult.” He kissed the top of her head to demonstrate his sincerity. There were a few bits of duckweed in the dark strands. Her baseball cap had fallen off when she and Maisie had been in the stream trying to noodle. To no avail, of course, as he’d warned them. In any case, the cap was probably out in the Gulf by now.
“Well, I’m scared, too. A little. I’m way too scarred by past heartaches to open myself up again.”
“Scared, scarred, whatever! Wanna make out a little while the kiddo is asleep?”
She laughed. “You do have a way with words.”
“I have a better way with other things,” he said and lowered his mouth to hers.
She resisted at first, leaning away from him, which caused his lips to just skim hers. But he cupped her face in his hands and held her firmly in place so he could kiss her properly, which he did.
Not to brag, but he was a good kisser.
The problem with many men was that they considered sex a mad rush of a trip from start to finish, with finish being the “good stuff.” He, on the other hand, considered every spot along the road to be “good stuff.” The kissing, definitely. Caresses, all kinds, all places. Looking—just looking—at the scenery . . . the breasts, the belly, the butt, the knees, the toes, the small of a woman’s back, and the mysterious valley between the highways. Intercourse. The final climax. And then the afterglow.
Some men boasted about the number of times they’d taken a woman in one night. He much preferred one time, all night long. Or two.
He wet her lips with his tongue. He moved his mouth back and forth across hers until he got the perfect fit (yes, a perfect fit of lips, not that other perfect fit), and then he kissed her deep and openmouthed. Tongues. Teeth. Hungry, hungry kisses. Then slower and gentler, seeking. Back to wet and demanding.
She moaned against his open mouth, and he no longer had to cradle her head because she had her arms around him, kissing him back, with as much hunger, and, yes, expertise, as he wielded. There was something to be said for a woman who knew what she wanted and went for it, especially when she was with a man who knew what he wanted (everything) and went for it.
“You taste like Mrs. Boudreaux’s pickles,” he said.
“That is just great.”
“I like pickles.”
“Well, good, then.”
Somehow, she was half-lying across his lap with his one arm under her shoulders holding her up. How had that happened? Had he tugged her across, or had she shimmied over herself? No matter.
Ooh, this was dangerous . . . a temptation not to be fulfilled with his daughter sleeping several feet away and likely to awaken at any inopportune moment. He wanted to tug both her tank top and bra straps down enough to expose her breasts so that he could look and touch and taste. He wanted to use the heel of his hand against the vee of her legs and bring her to a small, pre-orgasm, an appetizer, so to speak. He wanted to be inside her and feel her welcome.
And his daughter was awake.
He sensed her presence, hovering over them, before she spoke. “Whatcha doin’, Daddy?”
Little Maisie was becoming his safety valve against unwise decisions. Because apparently he was incapable of being wise anymore when it came to Simone.
Simone jumped up and off his lap.
He put a paper plate over his crotch. “Um, just talking, sweetheart. Are you ready to go home?”
She nodded. “I hafta pee first.”
“Okay, but you’ll have to go in the bushes. I’ll take you.”
“No. I will,” Simone said. “Us girls have to stick together.” She grabbed a couple napkins and an empty plastic grocery bag for trash, along with her carryall, then led his daughter away.
“Be careful of snakes,” he warned.
“Not to worry,” Simone yelled over her shoulder. “I have a pistol in my carryall.”
What?
Did she really?
Probably.
Shaking his head in wonder, he reaffirmed in his mind what he’d already thought before. Simone was different from all the women he’d known before.
And he was pretty sure that was a good thing.
Planning a party . . . a sex party, that was . . .
Simone met with Gabe on Monday morning to discuss strategy for the Marcus Pitot case.
“First of all, we have to set up a temporary home in the Nawleans area,” she told him. “Even if we’re claiming to be newcomers to the area, we should at least have an apartment.”
“I know the perfect place,” Gabe said. “My parents go north for the summer months. We can use their place. It’s not big, but it’s in an exclusive, gated community outside the city.”
“Will they mind?”
“Nah. In fact, they’d get a kick out of being associated in any way with a sex ring. My mother used to be a preacher.”
She arched her brows at that. “Must have been a pretty progressive church.”
“Not really. She just has a great sense of humor.”
“Okay, so we have a base of operation. Who are we?”
“I’m thinking that I’ll be a doctor.”
“Isn’t that a little risky? You could be caught in a mistake if someone asks a question about your work.”
“Again, I rely on my parents. My dad was a proctologist before he retired. You do not want to know everything I know about hemorrhoids.”
She had to laugh. “Some family!”
“Yeah, and my sister Faye is a forensics scientist in Los Angeles, and my little brother Eli is studying sports medicine at UCLA.”
“Why aren’t you on the West Coast if you want a career in acting?”
“I was, but my girlfriend, Livia, is finishing her PhD at Tulane. I’ll stay while she’s here, one more year. Then, we’ll probably go back.”
Wow! Gabe was proving to be lots more interesting than she’d realized. Maybe that was true of all people, delve a little deeper and you’d be surprised at what you discovered.
Like Adam.
She had to smile, just thinking about him and the day she’d spent with him Saturday. They ended up at his house, cooking the crawfish and catfish they’d caught, along with the corn on the cob they’d picked up on the way home. Adam’s father, Frank Lanier, sliced an assortment of some wonderful tomatoes fresh from his garden and drizzled olive oil over them with salt and pepper. Yum! In addition, his dad had whipped up a super broccoli and cauliflower pasta salad, the vegetables also from his garden.
They’d eaten out by the pool on a screened-in patio. The bugs got vicious by evening, or in the daytime when attracted by food or water.
Maisie had talked nonstop and shown Simone her American Girl collection up in her pretty lavender bedroom. “It’s not pink and it’s not purple. Lavender is mah favorite color,” she told Simone. The cutie! She also talked about the dog, or cat, she was going to get for her birthday. Unless she changed her mind and wanted another doll.
Simone had also talked a lot with Adam’s father who was a retired New Orleans policeman, comparing notes of the jobs they’d covered. She had seen Adam ra
ise his brows a time or two when she mentioned some of her edgier cases, like the time she’d rappelled out of a three-story building when being chased by a drug dealer, or when she’d infiltrated a female biker gang in Chicago for two months. Maisie had her repeat the story of how she’d gotten a medal for saving a drowning girl.
Frank was an old-fashioned guy, priding himself on having been a beat cop his entire career, never aspiring to be a detective or in a supervisory position. “We got to know the people in those days. You can bet there wasn’t so much crime then, that’s for damn sure. Forget I used a bad word, Maisie. If I saw any drug dealing in my neighborhood, I just whomped the boy on the side of the head and sent him home to his mother, who would whomp him twice as hard.”
They had all laughed at his tactics, which would be deemed police brutality in today’s politically correct society.
“You never whomped me,” Maisie had pointed out.
Her grandfather had touseled her curly head. “That’s because you’re an angel who never deserves whomping.”
At the end of the evening, Adam had driven her back to her apartment, his father having offered to put Maisie to bed. It was a sign of how tired they all were that neither Maisie or Simone complained . . . Maisie about having to go to bed so early, Simone about being alone with Mr. Temptation.
Adam had surprised her by not asking to come inside when he dropped her off. Oh, he kissed her. A lot. Till her knees turned to jelly and she was moaning into his open mouth. He’d explained, “The first time we get together, and I mean that in the Biblical sense, I want to take my time. I want us both to be wide awake and know what we’re doing. I figure I will need at least three hours to do the job properly.”
Three hours? “You are so full of it.”
“No. Delayed gratification, darlin’. It makes the meal all the more satisfying.”
She wouldn’t let him get the last word, though. As she’d given him one last peck on the lips, she’d told him, with an exaggerated moue of disappointment, “I guess I went without panties today for nothing. Oh, well!” And she’d shut her door on his gawping face. She’d heard his laughter on the other side of the door, though.