A Perfect Mess (8 page)

Boone?
Seriously?

He grinned at her and sidled into the house, Brax on his tail. Brax clapped me on the shoulder and grinned, too. Then nudged me. I nudged him back. “Way to go, bro,” he murmured.

I gave him a disgusted look and he just laughed. “Check out the area. Some perv is texting Aubree.”

Both my brothers stiffened and their eyes narrowed. “Seriously?” Boone asked. “Let’s go, Brax. Don’t worry, Aubree, we’ve got our ass-kicking boots on, right Brax?” He grinned an unholy grin, his eyes shining liked polished sapphires in the light.

Brax nodded.

“Ahhhh…thanks, Boone,” she said tentatively, looking from Brax to Boone and back again. “Did I get that right?”

He laughed, the bastard, “Yeah, that’s right.”

When she smiled at him, my jaw tightened and my fists clenched. They went out the back way, and I locked the door behind them.

“Holy cow, that’s a lot of testosterone in one room. You guys are…wow.”

“Maybe you’d prefer Boone stayed with you.” Man, could my voice sound any sulkier.

She frowned. “What? No. Why would you…” She eyed me, then she looked down at her phone, then back at me. “Oh, the text message. Hey, are you jealous?”

“No,” I snapped.

“Oh, okay. Boone and Braxton look so much like you it’s a bit daunting. Although Boone looks like he works out. Does he?”

“Yeah, we’re interchangeable, and yeah, the muscle goes all the way to his head.” My sarcasm was thick. I’d perfected it as a teenager.

“You are adorable when you’re jealous. Here.” She thrust the phone at me. “The whole conversation. So you can quit worrying your pretty lil’ ol’ head about it.”

I had been so into my possessiveness, I’d missed that she was teasing me. I didn’t want to take her phone, but I snatched it when she went to pull it away with a shrug. After reading, I said, “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. I was going to call you.”

I looked down into her face, reading vulnerability in her wide green eyes, and it tugged at my heart. So fiery, so sure of herself in other ways, but when it came to me…

“You were?” I smiled what felt like a loopy grin. I was such a besotted idiot.

“Yeah. Why did you show up here, anyway?” She set her hands on her hips.

“I have some fun planned for you. Let’s go.” I grabbed her hand and dragged her toward the hall.

She tried in vain to tug her hand away and scowled at me in disapproval, looking toward the backyard. “Your brothers are still out there.”

I gave them a dismissing wave. “They can handle anything. Don’t worry about them.”

“Not even about Boone?”

I stopped and met her snapping green eyes. “Now you’re pushing it, Aubree.”

She rubbed her temple as if she was trying to push pass the confusion I’d created. “You really don’t think this is an issue, do you?”

“No. First we’ll go by and check on your aunt, and then it’s fun time. It’s probably Langston that texted. Just ignore him. Like I said, if he gets a rise out of us, he’ll know something is up.”

“Nothing fazes you.”

Not true.
You do.

“Come on, sugar. You can’t statistic yourself to death. There’s more to life than math. And even math would tell you that the reason they made the universe is for you to get out and enjoy it.”

“That’s so surprising. I didn’t know you and math were on a first name basis.”

I grinned and shrugged. Then looked her up and down. “You’re going to need some boots and a pair of jeans. Those, ah…”

“Shorts.”

“Okay, if that’s what you want to call them.” They were as tight as she was
up
tight.

She raised her brows. “You’re serious about going out?”

“Yes. Believe me, Aubree. If I worried about every dumbass text or phone call or verbal in-my-face threat me and my brothers got, we’d never go anywhere. Learn from a master. If we cower inside from fear, we’ve just let the bastard win.”

“I guess words are not the only thing you’re a master at. You’re more adept at math than you let on. You’re much more interested in my angles, curves, and intersections, I think.”

I gave her a wicked grin. Stone cold busted. I studied her expression for a minute, reading something like fear. Fear of me? Or was it something deeper, more fundamental? Fear of intimacy, maybe. Fear that she might actually enjoy it.

“Yup,” I pointed to my shoulder. “
This
broad shoulder is a really good place to lean.”

She slipped past me up the stairs. I hoped she covered up that tantalizing pink bra strap, or what I had planned tonight would go much, much slower, and what I shouldn’t even be thinking about would happen much, much faster.

#

We visited with her still-unconscious Aunt Lottie, talking gently to her still form for a half hour or so, then we went on to our next stop.

Aubree was hanging on tight to the door when she asked, “A Jeep, too? How many cars do you have?”

“Three. A truck, the Mustang and this rattletrap.”

We rode down the bayou road, turning off on a narrow, overgrown path.

“Wow. What a beautiful house—all glass and wood. That is one lucky person who lives there. I love this spot on the bayou. I used to come here a lot when I was in high school just to watch the water move and the sun set. It’s so peaceful.”

“Yeah, someone built that house in the fall.”

“They did a great job. It complements the wild nature of this place rather than intrudes on it.”

Thick with trees, the rough and rutted road had me inching the Jeep along. Aubree hung on to the door as the Jeep bounced along, her attention on the scenery. “Do you know where we are?” I asked.

“Blue Bayou, like the song.”

“Yup. Named for the herons that fish and nest around here.”

It was a nice spot, with a narrow, shallow stream, low, muddy banks, and thick growth of water weeds and flowers. “It’s a perfect haven for crayfish.”

“Are you taking me crayfishing?”

“Nope.”

She thrust out her lip. “I love crayfish.”

She seemed to have taken my words to heart. She was still a little tense, but the night air and the beauty of the bayou were already working their magic.

I parked the Jeep and gathered up a bag and a flashlight. When I hefted the gig, her eyes went big.

“Frogging? I’ve never been, and, I can tell you right now, I’m not hitting no cute bullfrog.”

I handed her the flashlight. “Cute? All I know, sugar, is them legs is good eatin’.”

“I can’t argue with that. Frog legs for your party?”

“Brax is going to use his special recipe to fry ‘em up. You game for holding the light?”

“One-third of the unholy trinity cooks?”

My heart jumped in my chest. Did she really buy into all that stuff that was said about us in high school? I turned to look at her, the flashlight frozen in midair.
Did my reputation really bother her?

She shifted. “That’s what we called you three in high school in my circle. But I never believed that about you specifically.”

“Some of it was true, but most of it was bullshit.”

She took the flashlight from my outstretched hand. “Yes, I’ll do that much. I love frog legs. Taste like chicken. So, you’re really serving them at your party?”

“Yup, along with a keg of Jax.”

“That sounds so good. I didn’t normally go to parties in high school, but they think you’re a troll in college if you don’t attend.”

I nodded. “Don’t tell me you loosened up enough to drink at parties?”

“Well, I don’t go that far, and I don’t do drugs. They’re bad for your body and mind, but a beer once in a while doesn’t hurt.”

“No, it doesn’t. That Jax goes down cold and smooth.”

She’d changed into a white long-sleeved top with—thankfully—not a pink bra strap in sight, along with a pair of tight jeans that cupped her backside as nicely as those shorts had. She slipped off her shoes and stepped into a pair of rubber knee-boots to wade in.

“So you’ve never been gigging?”

“Nope, but I’ve eaten my fair share of the legs.
So, I bet you and your brothers did this when you were kids?”

“Yeah, my old man taught us.” I couldn’t believe that came out of my mouth. I didn’t want to talk about my father. The silence lengthened. “This is tame to some of the gigging I’ve done.”

“Oh, really? Like what?”

“You’ll love this one. Bayou, middle of the night. Pitch black, and the shore is almost obscured. One of my dumbass brothers picks out frogs with his flashlight. Easy to see their bulging eyes reflecting back the bright beam.”

“Is this a true story or are you telling me a whopper?”

“It’s true. I see one and stick it and pop it into my bag. We’re gunning across the water at high speed while trying to lance the little noisy critters. Frogging that way can net you thirty or forty of the suckers in one night, if your aim is true.”

“It sounds like it.”

“One of my dumbass brothers is driving the boat, and he’s downed his third beer, handling this tiny little skiff with its big-ass engine and propeller. I realize I can’t see jack, and he’s blasting across the water at sixty miles an hour.”

“So, the dumbass couldn’t see any better than you could … right?”

I threw back my head and laughed. “So true. When I go gigging on an airboat, I try not to think of what would happen if we hit a tree root or even the shoreline. It’d flip the airboat and we’d be toast. And then there’s all the wildlife. But I’m thinking of a bigger predator…one with a scaly hide.”

She gasped and I laughed again. “Yup.”

“Oh, man.”

“Bullfrogs are not the only eyes reflecting back at you. ‘Gators like to hang on top of the water at night as well. See where I’m going with this?”

“Oh, shit. Really?”

“It’s easy to mistake them in the dark. That’s exactly why my frog-gigging pole is as long as I can make it, because if I spear a ‘gator while shooting across the water faster than the interstate speed limit, I want that sucker to be as far from me as possible as quickly as possible.”

“Has that ever happened to you?”

“This one time we’re hauling ass and I go for these eyes. There’s a tremendous jerk and I know, it ain’t no bullfrog. I immediately let it go.” She groaned. “Don’t feel sorry for the ‘gator;
Animal Planet
wants you to believe they’re endangered, but they’re almost indestructible. A little gigging pole ain’t going to faze ‘em. So imagine that scene. We’ve just ticked off a huge ‘gator that was heavier and longer than the airboat. He came after us, and he was one pissed-off monster. He attacked the side of the airboat. I thought he was going to overturn the fucking thing, leaving us all in the middle of the lake with blood in the water from our gigged frogs.”

“Geez. What did you do?”

“One of my retard brothers threw the whole fucking bag of frogs at him and my other fuckwit brother ran him over.”

When she covered her mouth and laughed, I was enchanted.

“It only stunned him. They’re pretty hard-headed.”

“Wait a minute. Who’s hard-headed? The ‘gator or your brothers?”

I laughed again.

Suddenly, we heard the deep, heartbreaking sound of a slow melody filtering through the dark night. It spoke of loss and sadness, like most Cajun songs.

“What is that?”

“It’s a fiddle. Someone’s playing, givin’ the bullfrogs something to romance the pretty ladies with.”

She laughed. “It’s so beautiful,” she sighed. “But back to your story. You know, it’s no wonder a lot of people from the rural South have a reputation for being a little crazy. That seems downright suicidal.”

“Right. That’s why I prefer to go out after dark with a beautiful woman rather than risk my life with my dumbass brothers.”

The light wobbled and I cursed my stupid tongue, but when I looked at her, the smile she gave me was dazzling. It went straight to my head and exploded into tiny white stars. Her eyes moved over my face and dropped to my mouth. My breath hitched. Our gazes caught, and my internal temperature upped several notches as my blood heated. The two levels of the invisible contact met, meshed, pushed together, rising into another plane altogether.