Galahad in Jeans (Louisiana Knights Book 2) (14 page)

They found a booth toward the back, rather than sitting at one of the wooden tables. It was somewhat quieter, but far from silent with the big jukebox in the front corner booming out a fast country song. The fake red leather of the bench seats was clammy from the damp weather, though the air was warm and moist. The single-sheet, shrink-wrapped menu could have used a good wiping, but Beau didn’t seem to notice.

“What would you like?”

“Coffee with cream, nothing to eat,” Carla answered as she worked her way out of the black cashmere cardigan she’d slipped on over her blouse before leaving rehearsal. It was damp from the dash they’d made through the rain, and unnecessary in the warm atmosphere.

“It will be faster if I bring it,” he said, and slid out of the booth to approach the counter.

Zeni, with her hair dyed burgundy and spring green today and hoop earrings large enough to be bracelets swinging from her earlobes, didn’t keep him waiting. That miracle might have annoyed Carla a week ago. Now she just shook her head at this perk of being such a good-looking guy known to all.

“So you wrote poetry in high school,” he said as he set a tray with two coffees and two pieces of chocolate meringue pie on the table.

She could either protest at having her request ignored and ruin the mood or eat the dratted pie. The decision was aided by the fact that the pie looked delicious. She picked up her fork in her left hand, though using it without winding up with meringue all over her face was going to be a challenge.

“I did,” she said in answer to his query. “What about you?”

“I needed a college scholarship. My time was spent studying.”

“I thought you enlisted in the Army.”

“That was after I got my degree. Well, and after ROTC.”

“ROTC for college financing help?”

“Right you are. And you?”

“Other than a couple of scholarships, I had a grant or two. But I’m still paying off student loans after six years.”

“Not fun. Your degree is in journalism?”

She nodded. “I always loved to read and somehow thought the two things were connected. Wrong.”

“But you got it anyway. That’s awesome.”

The sympathy edged with admiration in his eyes sent a shiver along her nerve endings. She thought he might have guessed she’d worked odd jobs to make it, since her mother hadn’t been able to cover the expense. Going into details was the last thing she wanted, which meant she really needed to direct his attention elsewhere. “You do what you have to do, I guess. Now what was this about a poem?”

He took the page she’d seen his cousin give him out of his pocket and passed it over. While she studied it, he made short work of his piece of pie, chasing it with a few swallows of coffee.

His gaze on the last swallow of coffee that he swirled in his cup, he said, “Before we get to that, there’s something I need to tell you.”

It sounded serious, so serious she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it. Still, she’d learned to meet problems head-on. “What’s that?”

“Seems I’ve had help for this business of looking like a gentleman.”

A hint of color sat on his cheekbones, and his lashes screened his eyes. He looked the picture of guilt. Carla hated it, also hated that something might be about to go wrong with this assignment when she’d decided it was going to be all right.

The knowledge that she cared one way or the other tied her stomach in knots. She pushed her barely-touched pie aside. “What do you mean?”

Beau told her what his cousin Trey had said, citing each person involved and every incident that had made him look the least heroic since she’d set foot in Chamelot. When he was done, she sat for a long moment, just staring at him.

She’d thought before that he was too good to be true. The tale he’d unfolded proved it.

Or did it?

Abruptly, she gave a low chuckle. “Is that all?”

“What do you mean, all?” he asked with a scowl. “The whole thing has been a put-up job. Nothing that happened was real.”

“Maybe not, but you didn’t know that.”

He set his cup aside. “That doesn’t make it right.”

“Granted. But since you had no knowledge of what was going on, your reactions were the same as if the situations were real. Whatever you did was simply in your nature.”

“You don’t get it. It was all a sham.”

“Oh, I understand, all right. People here in town wanted you to look like the perfect gentleman. As underhanded as it might have been to arrange things to make that happen, it worked. But I see something else that you’re missing.”

“And that would be?” Skepticism lay in the blue depths of his eyes, though he was too polite to put it into words.

“You didn’t have to tell me what has been going on. If you had kept quiet, I would probably never have learned about it.”

“Maybe not, but I would have known.”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what?”

“It offends you because it goes against your code of ethics. Don’t you see that shows you to be a man of honor, a true gentleman, as surely as any of the other things you’ve done?”

“What I see is that it’s not right for me to profit from what they did. If you want to disqualify me and shake the dust of Chamelot off your feet, I’ll understand.”

“What dust?” she asked, glancing up at the ceiling where the drone of constantly falling rain could be heard. “No, you won’t get out of this so easily. You’re it,
South of Normal Magazine’s
Perfect Southern Gentleman.” She gave him a satisfied smile. “In fact, I think the efforts of your friends and neighbors may actually make a better story than if the incidents had been real.”

“You don’t mean it.” His eyes narrowed as they met hers.

“But I do.”

“You can’t use that angle.”

She inhaled long and deep in her need for patience. “Why not?”

“If you write about what the folks here have done, they’ll wind up looking foolish. People all over will be laughing at them.”

“I’m supposed to ignore what you’ve told me?”

“I didn’t say that.” He picked up his napkin and began to shred it. “The deal is, I’d rather not be the cause of the town being held up to ridicule.”

“Not even if they deserve it.”

“But they don’t. Their hearts were in the right place.”

“So I’m to write only about you.”

“You can concentrate on the history of the town and its traditions, the pilgrimage and our medieval fair later in the fall, maybe how small communities like this are using these things to stay alive. I don’t care what you write as long as no one gets hurt.”

“Magnanimous of you, letting me do whatever I like,” she answered in conscious irony. “But if I’m back to you for the main subject, that means you’re stuck with me until I’m done.”

Tossing his mangled napkin aside, he reached to pull her pie plate toward him, and then picked up her fork. Cutting off a nice-sized bite, he held it out to her. “I guess,” he said, as he nudged her bottom lip with a fork tine in obvious appeal for her to open, “I’ll just have to live with that.”

She absorbed the promise that shimmered in the brilliant blue of his eyes, also the anticipation. A small thrill spiraled up inside her, and it was all she could do not to smile in return. In defense against that urge, she asked, “What are you doing? Are you so determined I’ll eat what you brought that you intend to force feed it to me?”

“Are you so stubborn that you won’t accept help when eating left-handed is obviously awkward for you?”

She studied his face, but he didn’t blink, didn’t seem to mind her annoyance. He just sat waiting for her answer or her decision, whichever came first.

What could you do with a man like that?

“Fine,” she said, and opened her mouth.

“Fine.”

His grin was slow magic. She swallowed, and then frowned at him. “What’s so funny?”

He forked up another bite and fed it to her. “I had the last word because your mouth was full.”

And it was full again so she still couldn’t answer, she realized. She gave him a narrow-eyed look, but couldn’t help the chuckle that shook her.

It was then that Beau’s cousin stepped into the coffee shop, letting in the sounds of wind and pouring rain. Trey’s face was serious, almost stern, as he surveyed his customers.

“Quick announcement, folks,” he called out as he raked back his hair that was wet with rain. “The river is rising, and so are the creeks that feed into it. Water is about over the road at the old iron bridge out toward the river road plantations. Sheriff Benedict says anybody who wants to get home tonight had better head out now.”

“That means us,” Beau said, reaching for his billfold, dropping money on the table and rising to his feet.

Carla wasn’t about to argue with him, not about whose turn it was to pay and certainly not about getting on the road.

The rain had slowed to a steady drizzle by the time they picked up her car back at the gym and headed out of town. Carla was in the lead, with the headlights of Beau’s big crew cab dually shining a safe distance behind her.

She would much rather have followed him. He wouldn’t hear of that. That was, incredibly, another example of southern manners. He had to follow her because he would see, and be on hand to help, if she ran into trouble.

Not that he said that in so many words, of course. Carla had to read between the lines. The weird thing was that she was beginning to do that now.

She stewed silently about it as she watched her wipers clear the rain speckling her windshield. The pigheaded man knew the road much better than she did. Though she’d driven it three or four times now, it looked different in the rain-swept darkness. Water filled the potholes and channels in the blacktop, reflecting back the gleam of her headlights. The ditches were full of it, too, as was the canal that paralleled the road for the last couple of miles. It all rippled in the wind, so her only real guide was the white line along the highway’s edge.

At least there was little oncoming traffic. It was getting late, for one thing, but most people had better sense than to be out on a night like this. Her vehicle and Beau’s were the only ones heading out of town. Others from the Watering Hole who lived in this direction must have made their homeward runs while she and Beau were picking up her car.

Ahead of her, something moved on the side of the road, a small gray shape in the headlight glare. She touched her brakes, thinking it was a cat. The animal dashed out in front of her, a long shape with a hairless tail. She swerved a good foot and braked harder. The car hydroplaned for a sickening instant before it caught again.

An opossum, that was all.

Carla whispered an imprecation, breathing again as her car straightened on the road. Looking back she saw the creature scamper into the ditch behind her, its fur glinting in Beau’s oncoming headlights.

If he had seen what happened and dared to say a word about it, she might brain him. It should have been him up here, dodging the wildlife while trying to stay on the road.

Another mile, two more. The rain came down harder. She flipped her wipers to a frantic pace, but they did little good. The water fell out of the night sky as if poured from a giant bucket. She leaned forward, squinting into the night.

Was that the old iron bridge up ahead? Its silver-painted struts and narrow width rose like a ghost from the darkness, but there was no sign of a center line. She remembered a fairly long, steep-sided embankment that was a part of the approach. She thought she was on that already, but couldn’t be sure. Even the highway’s white edge had disappeared.

Her front wheels hit water with such force that geyser-like waves were flung up either side of the car. She felt its weight, the instant drag on her speed. To hit the brake pedal was purest reflex action, even before she saw the wide, rippling flow crossing the highway.

Traction ceased. The engine whined then stopped. The steering wheel under Carla’s hands lost function. Her car was sliding sideways, rocking, bucking as it began to float. It turned slowly in the water’s current, heading away from the bridge and out over the drop off for the embankment.

Beau slammed on the brakes as he saw the water covering the road, heard the gurgling hiss of it under his wheels. Horror crawled up the back of his neck as he saw Carla’s car, maybe fifty yards ahead of him, plow into the flow and then start to drift across the road. Cursing under his breath, he shoved the truck into park and bailed out of it.

He plunged into water that was well over a foot in depth. The soaking cold of it took his breath. It was rising fast, would be up to his knees in minutes. He could wade into it, maybe swim once it got too deep, but how far and how long?

He couldn’t take the chance, not with Carla’s life at stake.

Swinging to the toolbox that spanned the bed of the dually, he popped it open and grabbed a hammer. Leaping back into the truck seat, he gunned the engine and sent it rumbling toward the bridge in spreading waves of river water. He came to a halt on the submerged road as close as possible to where Carla’s car floated, braking with care so the truck’s heavy dual wheels grabbed the tarmac under the water.

This time he was ready for the cold as he jumped down into the flood. The level was halfway between his knees and his backside, but he could stand all right for now. Leaving the truck door wide open and with hammer in hand, he surged toward the car that bobbed like a cork in the water.