Tall, Dark, and Cajun

  “Sure. If you can do it, so can I. I’m no great shakes in the kitchen, but I have a few specialties.” She smiled at him tentatively, as if daring him to contradict her self-assessment.

  He would never do that. Hell, he already knew about some of her specialties and she sure-God excelled at them. “Okay, Martha, tomorrow night my kitchen is yours.” My bed could be yours, too, if you’d only ask. No, no, no! I don’t want that. Well, yes, I do, but it would not be a good idea. It would be a bad idea. The best bad idea I ever had. God, I feel as if I’ve got a fire in my groin that only she can put out.

  “Why don’t you go out and douse that fire, while I do the dishes?”

  “What?” he choked out. Was I thinking aloud again? Geesh, this is getting embarrassing.

  “The wood fire. Shouldn’t you put the embers out?” She cocked her head in question and looked at him as if he had a few screws loose.

  He did. And they were all rattling about right where his thighs met his, um, screwdriver. “Oh, yeah. Sure.” He pushed back the chair and was about to do just that when she asked shyly, “Are we going to dance tonight?”

  His screwdriver about went ballistic. Are you crazy? “Uh, not tonight. I’m a little tired and I need to work up to it.”

  “You need to work up to dancing?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “By practicing dance steps?”

  “That and a few other things.”

  “Like?”

  “Self-control.”

  She smiled then, finally understanding.

  “But tomorrow night, dancing, for sure,” he promised.

  I’m losin’ my friggin’ mind.

  The lull before the storm

  The next day, day three out of five of their enforced stay, it still hadn’t rained. Humidity hung at about ninety-nine percent.

  Remy handled the excess heat by busying himself with yard work and repairs about the cabin, alternating with lengthy conversations on his cell phone, presumably to DEA contacts, and frequent, cooling dips in the stream. This was Saturday. Supposedly some big deal with the DEA and the drug lords was supposed to go down on Monday. Then, she and Remy could go home on Tuesday. That was the plan, anyhow.

  She’d spent the early morning working on her lists. Actually, she’d been surprisingly productive, coming up with some new ideas.

  “What would you think of an aquarium window for Charmaine’s spa?” she asked Remy when he came in for a late breakfast of fried catfish sandwich, which proved to be just as delicious as he’d promised.

  “What’s an aquarium window?”

  “The whole window is actually a narrow aquarium, let’s say ten feet by ten feet, and about one foot in width. It creates an interesting dimensional aspect and obviously draws lots of attention. We could put fresh- or saltwater fish in the tank. Either would be beautiful.”

  “Sounds great. Not sure what it has to do with a beauty spa, but it would get my attention.”

  “Hey, even mermaids have to get prettified sometime.”

  To which he’d smiled, and her heart did flipflops.

  After he left, she started an even more complete cleaning of the cabin. Remy came in to get a hammer and nails to fix one of the shutters when he saw her on her hands and knees trying to get a dust mop under the couch. He said something like, “Lord have mercy!” while staring at her behind, but when she’d asked him what he said, he replied, “What are you doing down there?”

  “Cleaning.”

  “You don’t have to clean this place, not that well anyway. Hell—I mean, heck—I don’t think anyone’s been under that couch in ten years.”

  “I know I don’t have to. I want to. I need to keep busy, or I’ll go nuts in this heat. I used to hate cleaning with a passion, but now I kind of like it.”

  He raised an eyebrow in question at her.

  “One of the foster homes I stayed in when I was about ten years old insisted on obsessive cleaning. Toilets, tiles, and faucets had to be cleaned weekly with a toothbrush and Lysol. Dustballs under a bed were considered anathema. My bed had to be made dime perfect. The kitchen floor had to be swept with a broom, then a vacuum, then wet-scrubbed by hand twice. Three times a week!”

  “What happened if you didn’t do it all just right?”

  “A spanking,” she answered matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, Rachel.”

  “Don’t go getting maudlin on me. That was a long time ago, and I’m not anal about cleaning now.”

  “Maude who?” he teased. His words said humor, but sadness for her remained in his eyes.

  “Go play carpenter and leave me alone,” she advised, touched.

  She noticed that he waited ’til she was back on her hands and knees and he got another gander at her butt before leaving. This time she was certain that he muttered something about “mercy.”

  After that, Rachel started on her gift list. For Jill, who loved to cook, she was going to buy several Cajun cookbooks and a set of the spices they sold in gift shops throughout Louisiana. For Laura, it was a no-brainer: a Cajun quilt. Hank deserved something for lending her his truck; so, he would get a bottle of one hundred-proof bourbon with directions for making Oyster Shooters. For Beau, she would buy a video of that movie Joe Dirt, in which the comedian David Spade paid homage to the merits of the mullet hairdo. Finally, she thought and thought but could come up with nothing that her grandmother needed or would want. Then, she decided that a makeover at Charmaine’s spa would be just the thing—a new hairstyle, manicure and pedicure, a facial, and most definitely a mustache waxing.

  By early afternoon, she decided to go looking for wild blueberries and strawberries, to make a cobbler for desert. She donned jeans, socks, sneakers and a tank top. She was taking no chances with snakes biting her bare skin, assuming they couldn’t leap up and bite her arms or neck. Before she went out with her bucket in hand, she mixed a pitcher of dry milk with water and put it in the fridge so that it would be cold by dinnertime.

  Remy was talking on the phone again, an argument by the sound of his raised voice, and didn’t notice her leaving. To the far side of the house she noticed the cistern and generator, and had to smile at what stood between them: a weathered old plastic statue of St. Jude, which was a good five feet tall. She guessed that Tante Lulu must have placed it here years ago. God bless the old lady who felt the need to have the patron saint of hopeless causes looking after her nephews even out here in this remote bayou.

  There was also a rope hammock strung between two tupelo gum trees out front, which she planned to try out one of these days. She envisioned herself taking a nap out there. Snakes didn’t crawl up hammocks, did they?

  After a half-hour in the woods, she had half a bucket which she considered sufficient for the two of them. She’d been lucky to encounter no snakes or fierce animals, but she was so hot that perspiration poured off her. When she came back to the clearing before the house, she saw that Remy was still on the phone. He hadn’t even noticed her absence.

  Well, enough was enough. She put down her bucket of berries and stomped toward the stream. Snakes and eels and sharp-toothed fish be damned! She was going for a swim, or die of heat stroke.

  “Rachel! What are you doing?” she heard Remy call out, but she ignored him and walked fully clothed into the stream, shoes and all. A deliberate choice. Heck, she was hot but not insane. She wasn’t about to step on an eel-snake in her bare feet. She walked all the way to the middle, which was waist-deep, then sat down ’til she was fully submerged. The water was blessedly cool, almost orgasmic in the relief it provided her hot skin.

  When she came up, unable to hold her breath too long, Remy stood in the water next to her, also fully clothed, including his Tulane cap. “Rachel, are you okay?” He brushed some wet strands of hair off her face.

  The concern in his voice was endearing. He probably thought she was having a breakdown of sorts. She was, sort of. “I’m fine. Just hot beyond belief. Am I going to get bitten by a snake or someth
ing, even with these clothes on?”

  “Honey, you scared every snake or something away with all the splashing you did going in. They were probably afraid you were going to bite them.”

  “Very funny. Stop looking at my breasts.”

  He smiled.

  And butterflies the size of baseballs revved up their wings in her stomach, and lower. “Don’t smile, either,” she ordered irrationally.

  He continued to smile, of course.

  “Go ahead and swim for awhile. I’ll watch for snakes and ferocious somethings while you cool down,” he offered. “You can even take off your shoes and jeans and I won’t count it against ’The Rules.’ In fact, you can take off all your clothes and skinny dip, and I won’t even look.” The mischievous twinkle in his eye was priceless.

  “Hah! I’m in more danger from you than snakes, I think. Go away.” She gave him a shove in the chest to start him moving.

  He slipped and grabbed for her. They both went under and came up laughing. His cap was floating downstream; he swam after it and tossed it on the bank. Since they were both wet, and reasonably well-covered as per “The Rules,” they continued to swim together, floating on their backs and treading water, splashing, laughing. If she hadn’t thought it before, she did now. I like this man.

  Finally, both stood and headed toward the bank. Without thinking, Remy draped an arm over her shoulder and tugged her close. He jumped out of the water first, then held a hand to pull her up. When he did, he pulled extra hard so that she landed against him. With her standing on tippy-toes, they were chest to breast, stomach to stomach, genitals to genitals. And it didn’t matter a bit that they were soaked to the bone, she felt his heat. . . and threw off plenty of her own.

  She looked up at his dark eyes with their water-spiked lashes which gazed down at her, as if conveying some hidden message. For several long moments, they simply stood, not speaking.

  Finally, he asked, “If I were to kiss you now, would I be violating ’The Rules’?”

  Reluctantly, she nodded.

  “If I were to kiss you now, would I be making a big mistake?”

  Reluctantly, she nodded.

  “Then go, before I do something we’ll both regret.”

  She went, but she was regretful anyway.

  Make her an offer she can’t refuse

  That night, the rain still hadn’t come, and the tension in the air was so thick it could be sliced with a knife. Of course, some of that tension could be attributed to the coil springs of sexual yearning he and Rachel contributed to by the hour.

  If that wasn’t bad enough, all hell was breaking loose back in Houma. He’d been on the phone most of the day with Pete and Larry. It appeared that the drug operation was bigger than they’d expected and more sites needed to be surveyed and manned in preparation for Monday’s shakedown. And here he sat, twiddling his thumbs with make-work yard projects, babysitting the sexiest woman alive.

  Which was a ridiculous assessment regarding Rachel, considering the fact that she wore a big Houma High School football jersey, Number 33, and a pair of black-and-white polka-dot boxer shorts which had been popular outer attire back when Charmaine was a teenager. She was barefooted. Dieu, I love her feet. How pathetic is that? Speaking of teenagers, he didn’t want to think about how Charmaine had gotten Jake Doucet’s Number 33 football jersey back then when Jake, known as Lucky Jake for obvious reasons, had been four years older than her at fourteen.

  With a sigh of surrender, he sat down to the dinner Rachel had prepared from the potluck ingredients they had laying around. What he should have done is hit the sack early and pray for a three-day sleep ’til they left this place on Tuesday. Instead, he asked brightly, “So, what have we got here, Ms. Crocker?”

  Not that she resembled Betty Crocker by a Loo-zee-anna mile. Who knew a loose football jersey and non-revealing boxers could be so damn tempting? Who knew a centerpiece arrangement of pink and white roses in a Mason jar could turn an everyday meal into a romantic event?

  “Hamburger Surprise, vinegar and oil endive salad, fried green tomatoes, beaten biscuits, and mixed fruit cobbler.”

  “Hamburger Surprise? That’s not like Hamburger Helper, is it? With all that sawdust filler kind of stuff?”

  “No. It’s ground beef. At least, I hope that’s what was in the white freezer paper Tante Lulu sent. It better not be ground-up alligator or ground woodchuck, or worse, ground snake! Anyhow, ground beef, fried onions, elbow macaroni and canned tomato sauce, topped with melted Swiss cheese. It’s good. Really. I learned to make it in college when cheap dishes were the haute cuisine.” She smiled at him expectantly, waiting for him to take a first bite.

  It was good, really good. But he wasn’t surprised by that. Everything Rachel did was good, from her Feng Shui decorating to her cooking, to, well, everything.

  “And the beaten biscuits. That’s a Cajun thang, honey. Bet you didn’t learn how to make those in college.”

  “No, my grandmother taught me last week. Hers were light as air. Mine are probably like lead sinkers.”

  He took a bite, slathered with butter. It wasn’t bad. He told her, “Great.

  “Did good ol’ Gizelle teach you how to make fried green tomatoes, too? It hardly seems proper for a Yankee to be making such a Southern dish.”

  “No, my grandmother didn’t teach me that.” She gave him a playful whack on the forearm with a spatula. “There are some things Southern I learned myself.”

  She smiled then, and his stomach did this odd little churning thing, like butterflies were doing the rhumba inside.

  As they did the dishes together—he washed, she dried— thunder rumbled in the distance. Rain, finally. “Pete told me this afternoon that a big storm is heading in off the gulf, probably tonight. I better batten down the plane, just in case.”

  “You go now. I’ll finish up here.”

  It took him more than an hour to secure the aircraft, which floated downstream a bit from the cabin, using an extra heavy anchor, bungee cords, and industrial-strength ropes. He tied the cords and ropes around trees on both banks. Now, if only the trees weren’t uprooted, he’d be okay.

  As the thunder increased in volume and seemed to be coming closer, Remy punched in Luc’s cell phone number, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to get a more up-to-date weather forecast. All he got was static. Apparently, the weather was screwing up the airwaves, which could happen in a small storm, too. Even so, he decided to lock the shutters closed and tie down the loose items in the cellar on the first floor. Just a precaution, he kept telling himself.

  When he stepped back outside the cellar, the hair stood out on the back of his neck, and he understood why his bayou intuition had kicked in without warning. An eerie si- lence pervaded. No birdsong. No frogs. No breeze. The skies were gray with a glaring underlight. Leaves on the trees were turned up. All signs of a pending storm.

  “Remy, what’s wrong?” Rachel asked. She’d come out on the porch. “Why is it so quiet?”

  “Storm’s comin’.”

  “Why do you look so funny?”

  He shrugged and smiled at her as he came up the steps. “Guess I’m just a funny guy.”

  “Don’t patronize me. I’m not a little kid.”

  He patted her on the shoulder.

  She shoved his hand aside. “Tell me.”

  “I told you, a storm is coming.” He paused, then added, “A big storm.”

  “How big?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Almost immediately, he regretted taking out his concern on her. “I’m sorry. It could be a hurricane. Hopefully, just a tropical storm, but hurricanes are a fact of life here. Gotta be prepared.”

  A great blue heron flew overhead, as if in a rush to get home and hide. They both watched until it was out of sight.

  “Can’t you call someone, your aunt or your brother, and find out for sure?”

  “Phone’s dead.”

  “What should we do?”

  He looked at her, all
nervous and scared, and said something really stupid. “How ’bout that dance you promised me?”

  Someone once said dancing is just a form of foreplay. Yep !

  Once the dishes were done and the tables pushed to the side, Rachel asked Remy, “Should I put shoes on?”

  “Nah, I won’t step on your feet,” he answered with absolute confidence. He was flicking through some cassettes next to the tape player. “By the way, what’s with the no nail polish look?”

  “Huh?” She looked down at her bare feet.

  “You always wear nail polish on your toes. Pink, peach, you know. Not your fingernails, just your feet.”

  “You noticed my toenail polish?”

  He looked up at her and winked. “Oh, yeah!”

  Unbelievable! We haven’t even begun to dance and already he’s turned me on with talk of toes, and a wink!

  Thunder roared in the distance and a flash of heat lightning brightened the clearing where the cabin stood for a few seconds. The humidity was close to one hundred percent. Outside, she could hear the wind start, just a slight, refreshing breeze. Nothing to be frightened of, yet.

  Remy continued to examine the cassettes, searching for just the right song for their dance. Little did he know that she could care less about the music. She just wanted to feel his hands on her and the rhythm of his body.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” she asked, still standing on the other side of the room, suddenly shy.

  “You wouldn’t believe these tapes. They belong to René from about a decade ago. He used to bring his girlfriends up here for little weekend flings. These are his idea of mood music.”

  Rachel barely registered his words. She was more inter- ested in looking at Remy, while she had the chance and he didn’t notice her scrutiny. He wore an ancient pair of acid-washed jeans with holes in the knees and a black T-shirt with the logo, TALK DIRTY TO ME on front and POISON on the back. She’d been a fan of that music group in the late eighties, too, but the song’s title seemed oddly appropriate, or inappropriate, in this setting. The clothes had been left in one of the drawers here since he was a teenager.