Crazy Rich Cajuns

by Erin Nicholas

  “That’s because we’re not stupid.”

  The front office for the company was a wooden building that sat smack dab in between all of the boat docks and had people tramping in and out all day long. They were either coming off the dirt path that led down from the road or were coming up the wooden ramp from the docks. The door opened and closed a million times a day. They swept the floor maybe every third day or when it got noticeable, but there was a constant layer of sand and dirt here. That would just always be true. There was no way she’d waste her time trying to keep it spotless, that was for sure.

  She washed the windows every once in a while, if she noticed the view was getting hazy. Every so often, she ran a dusting cloth over the shelves that held the various supplies they offered the tourists—sunscreen, bug repellent, and snacks like granola bars and candy along with cookies shaped like alligators and turtles. They also had a cooler with sports drinks, water, and soda for sale.

  On the other side of the room were shelves that held the aquariums full of fish, frogs, and smaller turtles that the kids could look at and ooh and ahh over while they waited for their tours. She wasn’t going to dust a turtle aquarium, either. That was dumb.

  The connected room was the gift shop full of the Boys of the Bayou merchandise they had for sale—T-shirts, travel mugs, tote bags, stuffed alligators, hats, kid-sized tackle boxes, swamp flashlights and more, along with fishing supplies for adults and Louisiana history books, books with swamp ghost stories, and Cajun cookbooks. Kennedy did actually keep that room well stocked, cleaned up, and yes, dusted. But she wasn’t going to admit that.

  “Well, sorry to surprise you,” Bennett said, clearly not sorry at all. “But I decided to come straight over to get my payment from you before I got distracted by anything else.”

  Oh, he thought he might get distracted from whatever it was he wanted from her? Not bloody likely. She leaned onto the counter. “I’m short on cash,” she said. “You willing to take something in trade?”

  Did she mean that to sound flirtatious and a little dirty? She sure did.

  She and Bennett teased and danced around this you-want-me-and-I-know-it thing, but she really did want to know how serious it was. She wasn’t sweet, she wasn’t shy, and she wasn’t naïve. She’d grown up surrounded by men in a place where every other critter she came across could poison or maim her. She was tough and she knew how men thought. With their dicks.

  Bennett Baxter was something new, she’d admit that. But she’d figured out very young that the easiest way to find out if something would bite was to poke it.

  She really wanted to know if Bennett would bite.

  “I’m very willing to take something in trade,” he told her. “In fact, I’m going to insist on it. I did something for you. Now you’re going to do something for me.”

  Kennedy lifted a brow. “I have lots of talents, Baxter. You’re gonna have to be specific.” Her heart was racing though. She was in for whatever this was.

  The truth was, Bennett had made the Boys of the Bayou way more fun. He was different. New. She worked with people that she was not only related to, but who she spent all of her time with. She lived on the second floor of her grandmother’s house. She ate at least two meals a day at her grandmother’s restaurant. Where her brothers, parents, cousins, and other relatives also ate most of their meals. She worked with her two brothers, two cousins, and her grandfather.

  Bennett was…just different. She liked it. Even if he did wear a tie.

  And she trusted him. Whatever this was, it was nothing to worry about. He was a good guy who loved her family and who wanted to keep all of his body parts intact and who knew that her family would separate him from those body parts if he messed with her.

  “I want you to go to Savannah with me this weekend.”

  She blinked at him. Oh yeah, he’d said something like that before. “Savannah? Seriously?”

  He was from Savannah. That’s where he lived and worked. In some stupid apartment that had been newly remodeled in the most modern style and that she hated just from the photos of the building she’d found online—not that she’d ever admit to anyone that she’d looked it up—and his fancy downtown office that was, at least, in an old—though huge and gorgeous—brick building.

  “Yes, seriously. It’s my father’s retirement party this weekend and my mom is throwing an enormous, ostentatious bash for it, and I want you to come with me.”

  Kennedy’s heart thumped. Go to Savannah with him to meet his family? What? She did not want to do that.

  Except, she kind of wanted to do that.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You know, I start thinking about sleeping with you and then you throw out a word like ostentatious and the urge completely disappears.”

  Bennett gave her a slow, you’re-full-of-shit smile and leaned in, resting his forearms on the countertop and bringing his face within inches of hers. “Completely, huh?”

  “Totally.”

  He reached out and ran the pad of his finger over the backs of her knuckles. “Ostentatious.”

  She suppressed her shiver. “Nothin’.”

  He turned his hand, slipping his finger under her hand to run his finger over her palm, making tingles dance up her arm. “Ostentatious.”

  Kennedy swallowed. “Nope.”

  He leaned in until she could feel his breath on her lips. “Ostentatious.”

  She couldn’t remember ever wanting to kiss a guy as much as she wanted to kiss Bennett Baxter. Which was messing with her head. He got his shoes shined, for fuck’s sake. She knew for a fact because she’d asked him. He was wearing a pair of those shoes right now. She hung out with guys who wore work boots and tennis shoes. Dirty ones. Old ones.

  But she wanted to kiss Bennett even when he was wearing shiny shoes and glasses. Maybe especially when he was wearing glasses.

  He smelled good, too.

  It wasn’t hard to smell good on the bayou. At least compared to the bayou. But he smelled good in that expensive-fabric-and-cologne way that, again, she wasn’t used to.

  “Not doing anything for me,” she lied.

  She knew that he knew that she was lying. She was glad. Because he leaned in one more inch, putting his jaw against hers and rubbing slightly, his slight five-o-clock shadow scuffing her skin.

  “Ostentatious,” he said gruffly near her ear.

  Her nipples tightened and her breath caught. She had to take a second that time before she could say, “Just not a good word, Baxter.”

  He chuckled, low and deep. The sound rumbled over her skin and made her squeeze her thighs together. She barely resisted reaching up to grab his tie to hold him in place while she finally kissed him the way she’d wanted to ever since he’d first walked into the Boys of the Bayou. When she’d realized that he wasn’t the pompous old man she’d envisioned from the few phone conversations they’d had.

  Oh, he was a little pompous. But he wasn’t old.

  And for the first time in her life, she’d been tempted to answer someone with, “Yes, sir.”

  “I can make you like that word, Kennedy,” he said, still with his mouth against her ear.

  That was just fine. It was like when they talked on the phone. He had a great voice. But this was better because there was body heat, and her nose had a first-row seat for how great his neck smelled.

  “You think?” she asked.

  “For sure.”

  “You are free to give it your best shot,” she told him.

  “I would love to put you up on this counter, hike up that cute little black skirt, pull your thong to the side, and ostentatiously lick your pussy until you scream.”

  Her world tilted.

  That was the only way to describe what happened to Kennedy as Bennett Baxter said the dirtiest thing any man had ever said to her. While wearing glasses. And shiny shoes.

  Her world had wobbled when the guy had first showed up, it had rocked when he’d said they were going to Savannah, but when he said
the phrase “lick your pussy” to her while also using the word ostentatiously, her world freaking tipped over.

  She was into Bennett Baxter.

  Completely. Fully. Unabashedly.

  Ostentatiously.

  She pulled back to look into his eyes. She stared at him for five long, quiet seconds. Then she asked, “You really think my skirt is cute?”

  For one brief moment, something flickered in his eyes. But before she could put a name to it, he leaned back and smiled a knowing smile that she wanted to hate but that she couldn’t quite.

  “We’re leaving in the morning. Bright and early. Be ready.”

  Oh, she was ready. They were going to Savannah for the weekend. To his father’s retirement party. Her family was so going to tease her about this. And she so didn’t care.

  Bennett shook his head as he headed up the path toward Ellie’s, the bar that sat across the dirt road from the Boys of the Bayou docks.

  He was never sure who had actually won the battle of the wills between him and Kennedy.

  But he was feeling pretty confident this time, to be honest. Her nipples had been hard and she’d been breathing fast when he’d pulled back. Not that he hadn’t seen physical reactions from her in the past, but this time had been…more. Bennett shoved a hand through his hair. Damn. He’d said the word pussy to Kennedy today. He’d said “lick your pussy until you scream,” to be specific. He wasn’t worried about shocking or embarrassing her. Shocking and embarrassing Kennedy Landry was nearly impossible. He was just surprised that his self-control had snapped so easily. He’d been bottling up similar things for a while now. Today, it had taken just a little needling and a whiff of her shampoo, and his control had crumbled.

  Taking her to Savannah might be a really big mistake.

  It also might be the best thing he’d ever done.

  He needed his family to see he was serious about the bayou. About his new life. About Kennedy.

  Marie and Preston Baxter were not going to come to the bayou. No matter how much he loved it, no matter how many times he told them that this was his new life plan. So he was going to take some of the bayou to them. The most hard-to-ignore, impossible-to-resist part.

  Kennedy was going to make his point.

  Ostentatiously.

  Grinning, he pulled the door to Ellie’s open and stepped inside the gathering place for the entire Landry family and most of the town of Autre. Sure, it looked like a shed on the outside—and on the inside—but on the inside, at least the walls were covered with New Orleans Saints posters, a slow pitch soft ball tournament champions banner, a mishmash of photos, and a variety of drawings done in crayons of alligators, turtles, and airboats. It was also full of amazing smells, awesome people, and strong alcohol.

  Talk about ostentatious. He wondered if Kennedy realized that the word applied to her own family and their lifestyle and get-togethers as well. It didn’t always mean lavish. It also meant brazen and flamboyant. Two words that definitely described the Landrys.

  Then he grinned. Yeah, she knew.

  “Bennett!”

  He was greeted by a friendly voice that immediately made him smile. Ellie Landry, Kennedy’s grandmother, owned the place and manned the bar, greeting regulars and tourists alike.

  “Hey, Ellie.”

  “Leo said you were headin’ our direction today,” she said.

  Leo was perched on “his” stool in the middle of the bar. The stool had a bright yellow seat and each leg was painted a different color. It was where he could always be found if he wasn’t driving a Boys of the Bayou bus to and from New Orleans, gathering and delivering tourists. He gave Bennett a wave in greeting.

  It was midafternoon, so there weren’t nearly as many people as would be filling the place after work. Even so, half of the barstools were occupied. As Bennett approached the bar, a stool next to Leo was suddenly empty. Bennett settled in across the scarred wooden top from the smiling face of the Landry family matriarch.

  “Hello, darlin’,” Ellie greeted, sliding him a sweet tea. “So happy to see you.”

  He leaned over for the kiss on the cheek she always gave him, then settled onto his stool with a familiar warmth in his chest. He loved these people so much. They’d welcomed him—as they did everyone—with open arms, even though he’d come in as a stranger, an outsider, to buy into the company that had been in the Landry family since Ellie’s husband, Leo, had started it with his best friend Kenny.

  The current owners—Leo’s grandsons, Sawyer, Owen and Josh—hadn’t been as sure of Bennett. But Maddie, who had inherited her share of the business after her brother, Tommy, had died, had brought Bennett in to help them turn the business around.

  “Why were you so quick to be my friend?” Bennett asked Ellie. “You were never suspicious of me?”

  She wiped up a wet spot on the bar then leaned for Cora, her business partner and best friend, to set a basket of fried pickles in front of him. One of his favorite things. He’d never had them until he’d come to Autre, and now his mouth would sometimes water even when he was in Savannah just thinking about them. He gave Cora a smile and she gave him a wink.

  “Well, honey,” Ellie said. “Every single person who’s important to me started out as a stranger. Figure I might as well start off nice with new people. There’s always time to think they’re assholes later.”

  Bennett smiled at that and dipped a pickle into the Cajun sauce on the side. Ellie always had something like that to say.

  “How am I doing so far in the asshole department?” he asked.

  Kennedy wasn’t exactly the kind of woman who needed her family’s blessing to date a guy. Or to go to Savannah with him for the weekend. Bennett wasn’t exactly the kind of guy to worry about things like other people’s blessings when it came to getting what he wanted, either. But the Landry family was a family that you wanted to be blessed by.

  That was the only way he could describe it. He wanted them to want him and Kennedy together.

  “So far, you’re an eleven on a ten scale,” Ellie told him.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Is the ten a really great guy or a roaring asshole?”

  She laughed. “A really great guy.” She reached out and patted his hand. “But don’t worry. If you wanted to be a roaring asshole, I know you would do it well.”

  He chuckled. “Thanks. I think.”

  “Heard you saved me from having to have conjugal visits with Leo down at the jail,” Ellie said, pulling two bottles of beer from under the counter and flipping the tops off before passing them down the bar to two of the older guys who had been perched at the end of the bar every time Bennett had been in here.

  Bennett cast a glance at Leo. “Well, that might be exaggerating a little. He, Tori, and Kennedy were messing with the gal from Wildlife and Fisheries, but I don’t think she really had any intention of taking anyone to jail.”

  Ellie snorted. “Exaggerating a little? The guy who once told me that he almost got hit by a meteor when he was out night fishin’?”

  Bennett turned his stool slightly toward Leo. “A meteor?”

  Leo lifted a shoulder, a small smile on his lips. “Thought so.”

  “What was it really?”

  “Some stupid kids throwing rocks from a dock at one of the fishing cabins.”

  “Rocks the size of meteors?” Bennett asked.

  It didn’t take long to figure out that Ellie, Leo, Cora, and most of their friends were a little crazy. But they were funny and loving and always there for their friends and family, and a little crazy just kept it all more interesting.

  “Well, it seemed like the size of a meteor,” Leo said. “At the time.”

  “You mean, when you were two jars of moonshine in,” Ellie said. “When you and Kenny went out night fishin’, there was very little fishin’ going on.”

  “Yeah, well, at least we baited hooks and dropped them in the water,” Leo said. “When you and me went out night fishin’, we didn’t even unpack the poles.”


  “Not the fishing poles, no,” Ellie said with a sly smile.

  Leo chuckled. “I guess you could say that we—”

  “Nope,” Bennett cut in, interrupting whatever the older man was about to say. “That’s enough of that.”

  It also didn’t take long around Ellie and Leo to know that there were no off-limits topics, and that included their own sex life. They were crazy about each other, even fifty-some years later, and they had no filter when it came to inappropriate humor and sexual innuendo. Or up-front sexual conversation. Like flat out admitting they had make-out sessions in the restaurant’s kitchen or why the bottle of chocolate syrup Kennedy had up at the house for her ice cream was suddenly empty.

  “Anyway, the risk of anyone getting arrested today was pretty small,” Bennett told them.

  “Was still a great reason for Kennedy to call you,” Leo said.

  “She doesn’t need a reason to call him,” Ellie said. She gave Bennett a side-eye. “Does she?”

  “Of course not.” Bennett lifted his glass to try to obscure his expression. Ellie’s ability to read people was well-known.

  He and Kennedy were still at a place where they made up reasons to call one another. He’d say he didn’t get a report she had already sent. She’d say that she thought he should know that the order of stuffed alligators for the gift shop was going to be delayed three days. She didn’t always send the reports on time, but she always sent them eventually and he definitely didn’t need to know about the stuffed alligators, but they both liked to flirt on the phone and they weren’t to the point of admitting that they just wanted to talk yet.

  “That girl really was givin’ us a hard time about the wolf and her pups though,” Leo said.

  “You had it handled,” Bennett told him. “Hell, Bailey left thinkin’ she was the one in the wrong after ten minutes with you all.”

  Leo chuckled. “What we lack in actual know-how, we make up for with pure, very believable, heartfelt bullshit.”

  “Amen,” Ellie said, lifting her own glass of sweet tea.

  Bennett dipped another fried pickle and glanced around the bar. It was early enough in the afternoon that none of the other Landrys were in yet. Kennedy’s brothers and cousins were still out on the bayou with tours and her parents were still at work.