Wild Man's Curse (Wilds of the Bayou #1) (16 page)

Marie’s annoyance and impatience sounded through the phone’s little speaker. “Why does this matter, Gentry? That was an awful time. Lang had started running with a bad crowd and acting out, and Tommy Mason’s mother offered to let him stay with them a couple of weeks. I thought it would be good for him. I didn’t know until later that both boys went out to stay at that cabin on the bayou with LeRoy. Why dredge up all of this old history?”

“Marie, we believe that Langston killed Eva Savoie, and that visit is the only thing we’ve come up with that would link the two of them.” Warren tapped a pencil on a notebook he’d opened and on which, so far, he had written nothing.

“Eva Savoie? That voodoo woman who lived out in the bayou with LeRoy back then?” Marie’s voice quivered. “Why would Langston kill that old crazy woman?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out, Mom. Do you remember anything Lang might’ve said when he came home, or if he ever went back to visit LeRoy?”

“He certainly
did not
go back.” Marie said something to Louis in the background. “He came home talking about all that voodoo nonsense. He said LeRoy was about to come into a fortune and he wanted Lang and Tommy to help him get it. I told him loud and clear, no son of mine was going back to visit any voodoo practitioner.”

“Bet Lang took that well.” Gentry couldn’t help himself.

“Sarcasm is not called for, Gentry Broussard.”

Gentry slumped down in his seat. He was a thirty-two-year-old man with a college diploma and a commendation for champion marksmanship, and he had just been dressed down from three hundred miles away by his mama. Some things one just didn’t outgrow.

“Marie.” Warren came to the rescue. “Did Langston tell you any details about this fortune LeRoy Breaux was supposed to be on the verge of getting?”

“No. I refused to listen to such nonsense.” Her firm tone underscored her words, and Gentry had no doubt they were true. What Marie didn’t like or believe in, Marie didn’t want to hear. Never had. “And, as I recall, it was only a month or two later that I heard down at the church that LeRoy Breaux had left that voodoo woman and gone God only knows where. Maybe he got his fortune and took off. At least, that’s what everyone figured.”

Gentry couldn’t resist poking the bear. Something about talking to his mom brought out his inner tween. “You were gossiping about the voodoo queen at church?”

“I’ll have you know that woman was on our prayer list every single week. It wasn’t gossip.” Marie paused, then seemed to remember what had started this conversation. “Why would Langston kill her? Did he . . . did he shoot her? Was she robbed?”

Gentry had debated how much to tell his mother and had decided to tell her the truth, although not every gory detail. If he sugarcoated it too much, though, she’d hear worse on the news. So he told her that Eva had been stabbed, that he’d found the body, that he’d seen who he thought was Lang leaving the cabin.

He left Ceelie out of the equation. He doubted the sheriff would release information that the murderer was trying to scare off his first victim’s heir.

Warren asked her a few more questions, but Marie had told all she could. She promised to think some more about it and be cooperative with anyone who called her from the sheriff’s office.

Before he ended the call, Gentry had to add a warning in case the unthinkable happened. “Mom, if Lang calls you, you need to let me or Warren or the sheriff know, okay?”

“He’s not going to call me, Gentry.” Suddenly, Marie sounded tired and much older than her sixty-two years. “Your brother hasn’t called me since I left the parish. He stopped by the morning the moving van was pulling out. June 30, 2002. The day I moved to Shreveport.”

This was news to Gentry. “He wanted to talk you out of moving?”

Marie laughed. “We’re talking about Lang,” she said, bitterness creeping into her tone. “He wanted money.”

CHAPTER 19

Ceelie and Jena walked down the steep, grass-covered bank of the earthen levee toward Gentry’s house.

“Warren’s gone, so I guess the phone call is over.” Jena stopped to scrape some mud off her shoe by dragging it along the edge of a rock. “Bet that wasn’t an easy one.”

Ceelie couldn’t imagine the pain on all sides of the conversation. “I’m sure it was awful, but I hope they found out something. Nothing personal—I like you guys—but I want my life back.”

Jena glanced up from retying her shoelace, a slight smile on her face. “You like some of us more than others, though, right?”

Ceelie closed her eyes. “I plead the Fifth.”

They resumed their walk toward the house. “You think you’ll stay in Terrebonne Parish once this is done, or are you still determined to leave?”

Ceelie wasn’t sure how to respond, because she no longer knew the answer. “It’s starting to feel like home here, but I’m not sure if it’s where I’m meant to be or if it’s just familiar. Does that make any sense?”

“I don’t think familiarity makes a place feel like home. We just resonate with some places,” Jena said, stopping to look around at the scattering of small houses on stilts. “I grew up in the city, in New Orleans. Lived there my whole life. But I swear, the minute I set foot in Houma and started working in the parish, this felt like where I belonged.”

“Home. I’m not sure I even know what that means anymore,” Ceelie said. After finally admitting she’d left the parish to please her dad and not because it was what she wanted, Ceelie also had to admit the guilt over having pulled away from Tante Eva for the same reason. To follow her dad’s dream more than hers, to stay away from the woman who’d been more of a mother to her than Ceelie’s own mom had been, just to please him. “But I’m beginning to think I belong here too.”

Jena gave her a sidelong glance. “My partner got anything to do with that?”

“No.” Ceelie thought about it, reconsidered, but her initial reaction felt true. “Gentry’s not the reason. We don’t really know each other that well yet.” Yet. “Would it bother you if we got . . . I don’t know, involved?”

“Are you kidding?” Jena laughed. “No, once this mess gets resolved—and it will—maybe you’ll mellow him out a little. He can be a pain in the ass.”

“Somehow I don’t find that hard to believe.” They walked the rest of the way in silence. Hoss already sat in front of the door, waiting for them, his round eyes bugged out in what Ceelie interpreted as impatience. Long walks were not his cup of kibble.

“I’m gonna head back to the apartment and see if I can make up for some of the sleep I didn’t get last night. You want to come with me, or just get directions?”

“I’ll follow you.” Ceelie figured Gentry would want some alone time after talking to his mom.

They walked in the front door without knocking, but Ceelie saw no sign of Gentry. Jena stuck her head in the kitchen, but shrugged. “Not in there. I’ll check in back and tell him we’re leaving.”

Ceelie was having second thoughts about going. The expression on Gentry’s face as he got ready to call his mom had been one of absolute misery. It sounded like there had been so much damage to that relationship already, and now this. He needed support, whether he knew it or not.

Jena was gone less than a minute. She grabbed her keys and backpack. “Let’s go. He’s more ill-tempered than a gator with a treble hook in its gullet.”

Ceelie hesitated. She already had her suitcase here. Why not stay? “If he’s that upset, shouldn’t we hang around?”

“No way I’m subjecting myself to that.” Jena raised an eyebrow. “I told him we were leaving and his exact words were, and I quote, ‘Good. Get the hell out of here.’ He needs to stew in his own juices for a while.”

That did it. Ceelie threw her bag on the dining table and dug out her cell phone. “Give me your address. I think I’m going to stay here, at least until he throws me out.”

“Yeah, well, good luck with that.” Jena gave her a street address and apartment number in Houma. “Gentry goes in dark places sometimes, and in my admittedly brief experience, it’s best to let him work through it.”

“I’ll give him space if he needs it.” The sight of the bones she’d thrown yesterday at the cabin weighed on her. Ceelie wasn’t sure she could keep Gentry away from danger, but she could at least try to distract him.

That kiss weighed on her too. For a few minutes, they’d gotten lost in each other. Both of them. He might throw her out the front door and sic Hoss on her, but she was determined to either talk to him or distract him. Whatever he seemed to need.

First, she had to face down the gator, as Tante Eva used to say. She locked the door behind Jena, squared her shoulders, and walked into the center hallway that stretched the length of the house. From her earlier snooping, she knew her way around. A quick glance in Gentry’s empty bedroom told her he was in the spare room that held his workout equipment and his computer.

She stopped in the doorway, watching him. He’d changed into a pair of navy drawstring workout pants and was pounding the treadmill with his cell phone strapped to his right bicep and earbuds jammed in his ears.

She could wait. Besides, the view was good. The man had a fine body. It was a pity he ever had to wear a shirt.

After a few minutes, he cycled the treadmill down gradually and finally stepped off.

“Nice technique.”

He twisted to look at her briefly, then grabbed a towel off the side rail of the treadmill and scrubbed it over his face. “You need to leave.”

Fine, he would be abrupt and she’d be direct. “Jena’s gone, but I’m not leaving you like this, not after what you went through this morning.”

“You can’t help and it’s dangerous for you to be here. Go to Sinclair’s and I’ll talk to you later.”

The subject obviously over, he tossed the towel back on the treadmill and lay on his back on the weight bench. He lifted one heavy-looking stacked set of weights in his left hand, then a second set in his right, doing chest-presses with enough aggression that he had to be in serious danger of popping a hernia.

But damn. If she could video those abs and biceps during his workout, she could sell copies to every woman in Terrebonne Parish and make a fortune.

This was getting ridiculous. She either had to get his attention or get the hell out, not stand here like a voyeur. What was it Tante Eva used to say?
You see what you want, girl, you gotta take it. Ain’t nobody givin’ you nothin’.

She walked up to the weight bench, straddled his waist, and sat. He dropped one set of weights on the floor and had to catch the other to keep it from landing on his head. His expression teetered between outrage and shock. “What the hell are you doing?”

Ceelie grinned. “Getting your attention.”

“Well, stop it.”

“No, I don’t think I will.” She wriggled a little farther down his body until both his sharp intake of breath and the pressure on her core told her she’d hit the sweet spot.

The fierceness in his dark-brown eyes softened, and he closed them when she gently rocked against him. “You can’t . . . We can’t . . . Warren said . . .”

“I don’t care what Warren said.” Well, she cared, but not right now. “Later, I’ll care. Right now, I don’t want to care about anything. I don’t want to think. I just want to feel.”

She moved in exaggerated slowness, taking hold of the bottom of her tank top and pulling it over her head. Gentry was getting harder; that, she could feel. And he was distracted, judging by the glazed look in his eyes and the rise and fall of his chest, as if he were still working out.

“God, you’re amazing.” His voice was hoarse, breathy. “Take your hair down. I’ve never seen you with your hair down.”

With languid movements, she removed the bands at the bottom and top of her braid, then reached up and ran her fingers through her hair to work out the thick strands that wound around each other.

He sat up so abruptly she had to grab his shoulders to avoid falling off his lap. “Let me do that.”

Ceelie smiled and dropped her hands, closing her eyes as he wove his fingers through her hair. “That feels good.”

“Feel this.” He grasped her hips and pulled her more tightly against the hard length his workout pants did a poor job of disguising.

Then, just as suddenly, he turned it off. “We can’t do this, Ceelie. Not while he’s still out there and you’re a target.”

“I’m not a target; my cabin is a target.” She shifted slowly in his lap, earning a soft groan. “So you’re telling me that I’ll have to go in your bedroom alone and relieve my own needs, all by myself? Don’t think I won’t do it either, and if you aren’t going to participate, then you can’t watch either.”

His eyes narrowed a fraction of a second before the dimples appeared and held. “You wouldn’t.”

She shrugged, removed his hands from her hips, and eased herself off his lap. She looked pointedly at his misshapen pants as she slipped down the straps of her bra and pulled it off slowly.

“God.” His eyes lost focus. She hung her bra around his neck, unzipped her jeans, and eased her hips out of them with a slow shimmy to exaggerate her curves. He cursed under his breath in unintelligible syllables.

Finally, she stepped out of the jeans and kicked them aside. “See you later.”

She turned and headed down the hallway, clapping her fingers over her eyes as soon as she was out of his sight. What the hell had she just done? Obviously channeling her inner stripper, for God’s sake. Knowing he wanted her had turned her into an insta-trollop.

She walked into his bedroom, at a loss. Okay,
Fifi La Celestine, what’s next, eh, chère?
If she had—

She gave a startled gasp as strong hands gripped her waist and turned her. Gentry was on her before she could react. His hands slid through her hair, tilting her head to move in for a kiss. Not just demanding, but devouring. Forceful.

His hands slipped down her body, moving, restless, stroking until she couldn’t breathe, using fingers that dealt authority and violence to pluck her like the strings of her old Gibson.

“Make me forget,” she said. “Make me forget everything.”

They made quick work of the few clothes remaining, and he was as beautiful as she suspected, heavy and hard, every cut of muscle defined.

“We’ve gotta slow down or I’m not going to touch you the way I want to, slow and sweet, until you’re begging me to be inside you.” His voice was low and hot against her throat.

“We can do slow and sweet later. I want you fast and rough, and I’ve been begging for a while now.” She hooked a leg around his, bringing their bodies together as close as possible. “If you missed the memo, buddy, I’ve been trying to get you inside me half the day.”

With a low groan, he picked her up and lowered her to the bed, his mouth and tongue setting up a rhythm to match the fingers he slid inside her. “Not that,” she said. “You. Now.”

“Bossy Cajun woman.” He gave her a tousle-haired, lopsided grin as he rolled into the cradle of her thighs, positioning himself at her entrance.

“Is this what you want, Ceelie?”

He slammed into her with one long stroke, then set up a hard, frantic rhythm that erased all thoughts from her mind. She could only feel. This was not a sweet lovemaking but a claiming, a marking, as he filled her and brought her to the edge, and then took her over the cliff with him.

Then they lay together, still connected, foreheads touching. “Hold me,” she whispered. Neither of them had slept, and her muscles felt so warm and loose that she didn’t think she could stand up if she tried. She just needed to touch him.

“Bossy Cajun woman,” he whispered, kissing her, sweet and deep. Then he shifted to lie beside her and pulled her to him.

She tucked her head between his shoulder and neck and, for the first time in longer than she could remember, slid into sleep feeling both satisfied and safe.