Crazy Rich Cajuns

by Erin Nicholas

  Then Bennett had walked in with his stupid tie and shiny shoes and expensive cologne and the smile that said I-can-make-your-panties-wet-and-never-lift-a-wrench, and she hadn’t known what the hell to think.

  Kennedy tossed a pair of black boots into her suitcase and then crossed to her dresser. She opened her panty drawer and grinned. “Yeah, I want to go with him,” she told her friends.

  “I knew it,” Maddie said. “He’s gotten to you.”

  “Well, yeah,” Kennedy admitted, turning with a handful of panties and thongs in a variety of colors and prints. “He’s hot and funny and smart. And he seems to think that there’s something between us.” She tossed her panties into the suitcase in a silky pile and turned for her bra drawer.

  “And you agree and want to pursue it?” Juliet asked. Her tone suggested she didn’t think that’s what Kennedy was saying.

  She was right. That was not what Kennedy was saying. “I’m not pursuing anything except orgasms. It’s chemistry and a couple of people with enough sense of humor to find it entertaining that we’re attracted to one another when we have zero in common.” Kennedy turned back with her bras and tossed them in, too. They probably all matched up with some of the panties already in the suitcase, but she didn’t dress that way. She’d had more than her fill of matching things up and making everything perfect when she’d been doing beauty pageants as a kid. Now she just wore whatever she fucking felt like.

  “Your senses of humor are what this is all about?” Juliet asked.

  Kennedy nodded. “Sure. We like needling each other, seeing if we can make the other one blink—or get tongue-tied. It’s fun. But that’s really all it is.”

  Maddie didn’t look convinced. “You sure you’re on the same page there? Bennett’s been spending more and more time down here.”

  “Because he likes the fishing and the bromances he has going with Josh and Owen, plus Ellie’s cooking and Leo’s tall tales,” Kennedy said, waving that off. “I’m just a part of this bayou fantasy vacation package he’s got going on over the weekends.”

  Maddie laughed and Juliet grinned.

  Kennedy grinned, too. “Seriously though. It’s like the city boys who go to the dude ranches. He’s got some stupid fascination with all of this. The crawfish boils and the alligator hunts are so different from…” She searched her mind for something she knew about what rich people did, “…playing croquet on the front lawn of their mansion that he gets all excited and into it.”

  “Do people actually play croquet anymore?” Maddie asked.

  Hell if Kennedy knew. She barely knew what croquet was. “Well, they play something stupid and boring, I’m sure.”

  “I get it,” Juliet said. “You’re the Jack and he’s the Rose.”

  Maddie and Kennedy both looked at her.

  “Titanic?” Juliet asked when they just blinked at her without saying anything. “You’re Jack. The everyday, normal one. Bennett’s Rose, the rich, high-society one. And when Bennett comes down here to the bayou, it’s like when Rose meets Jack on the lower decks for the party and dancing.”

  Maddie and Kennedy looked at one another. Then shrugged.

  “Yeah, it’s like that,” Kennedy agreed.

  Juliet grinned.

  “Anyway, he’s enamored with the whole thing,” Kennedy said. “Which is fine. We’re cool. We’re fun. And he and I do have some definite sparks.”

  “And what happens after this weekend?” Maddie asked.

  Kennedy flipped the top of her suitcase shut and zipped the zipper. Then she tugged it off the bed and let it thunk to the floor. “We’ll have a great time until it burns out and then…” She shrugged. “It will burn out.” She looked at Juliet. “Fortunately, the chance of either of us freezing to death in the water while the other floats on a door are pretty slim down here.”

  “You’ll keep…doing this…even after Savannah?” Maddie pressed.

  Kennedy shrugged. “Maybe. For a little while.”

  Hell, she hadn’t even been able to keep a guy she did have things in common with going for more than six months. No way were she and Bennett going to keep this up for longer than that. But in the meantime, it could be fun.

  “But he owns part of the business,” Juliet pointed out. “He’ll keep coming down.”

  “After he’s eaten his fill of crawfish and gumbo and gotten liquored up on moonshine and done the airboat thing enough, he’ll get tired of it,” Kennedy said. “That’s not really his thing. It’s just fun because it’s different right now. I’m guessing in a few months we start seeing less and less of him.”

  “He’ll still be an owner though,” Juliet pressed. “He’ll be here once in a while, right?”

  Kennedy shrugged. “Sure. Probably.”

  “It won’t be awkward that you had a fling and then broke up when he shows up from time to time?”

  Kennedy laughed as she rolled her suitcase into the hallway. “Oh, honey, this town is full of guys I’ve dated and broken up with and run into at the gas station and bar on a regular basis. Just because you’ve seen each other naked is no reason that you can’t talk about the weather while standing in the grocery store line.”

  Thank goodness. Or she’d never be able to go anywhere in Autre outside of her family’s businesses. She hadn’t slept with all of the guys she’d dated over the years. But she’d been hung up on a couple, had a couple pretty hung up on her, dated a couple at the same time—without them knowing that, at least for a month or so—and even had a pregnancy scare with one. She had a history in this town. What could she say? She’d spent twenty-five years here and she liked men. But she also realized that stuff happened. People got together and they broke up and, in a small town, you had to keep living beside each other without a whole lot of drama. When they ran into one another around town, they had to all try to be grown-ups. Some of them were better at that than others, of course.

  And speaking of grown-ups…

  “Besides,” Kennedy said, hoisting her suitcase up and starting down the stairs with Maddie and Juliet behind her. “A definite perk to having a fling with a mature, well-educated, sophisticated guy like Bennett Baxter is that I’m sure the breakup will also be mature. We’ll agree on all the reasons it won’t work and that it’s best for the business if we get along. He’ll still want to hang out with my family. I’ll still want to tease him. We’ll both still like and respect each other, we’ll just be able to acknowledge that great sex doesn’t mean the whole relationship will work out.” She stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked up. “I definitely want a little taste, but I’m not looking for seven courses here.”

  Maddie rolled her eyes. “You’re already thinking about the hors d’oeuvres at the party, aren’t you?”

  Kennedy waggled her eyebrows. “Maybe.”

  “Hors d’oeuvres?” Juliet asked.

  Maddie laughed. “Kennedy loves hors d’oeuvres. I guarantee that the first thing she thought of when Bennett asked her to go to this party was cocktail wieners wrapped in croissant dough.”

  Kennedy shook her head. “Not true.” She grinned at Juliet. “Stuffed mushrooms first. Then mini pigs in a blanket.”

  “You’re really into hors d’oeuvres?” Juliet asked.

  Kennedy grabbed her purse off the table by the door and pulled the front door open, rolling her suitcase out onto the porch. “Love them. Love everything about them,” she confessed.

  “Really?” Juliet seemed puzzled.

  Kennedy propped a hand on her hip. “Do you know how many different tastes and combinations and textures you can get before you ever get even close to full with hors d’oeuvres?” Kennedy asked. “Dozens. Tons. You can have crunchy, soft, salty, sweet, exotic, basic, saucy…” She sighed. “And then there are the dips. Oh my God, I could eat dip all night.”

  Juliet laughed. “I forget that you’re a cook. You definitely know good food being from here.”

  Kennedy straightened and frowned. “Yeah, well, around here, no
one would consider that food. It’s too small, doesn’t all have seafood in it, and isn’t covered in cayenne.”

  Juliet studied her and Kennedy shifted her weight. Juliet was surprisingly insightful. Kennedy loved how the other woman had brought Sawyer out of his shell over the past couple of weeks, but it made Kennedy jumpy.

  “I like them because you get little tastes of lots of different things without getting too full,” she said.

  “Or having to commit to one big thing,” Maddie said.

  Kennedy lifted an eyebrow. Maddie thought she knew Kennedy. And maybe she did. A little. But Kennedy wasn’t a commitment-phobe. Good lord, she came from a family of people who fell in love hard and fast and definitely forever. Even her grandparents had tried splitting up and it hadn’t stuck. “Well, it’s a lot easier to spit out a small mouthful of something you don’t like than dump an entire plate, you know?”

  Maddie laughed. “Got it.”

  Kennedy turned to Juliet. “And if you tell my grandma or Cora that I said not all food has to have Cajun spice, I’ll deny it…and I’ll make sure another bat gets caught up in your mosquito netting.”

  Juliet’s eyes widened. “You heard about that?”

  Kennedy narrowed her eyes. “We all hear about everything eventually.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  Maddie laughed. “Enjoy the time you’ve got until Juliet figures out you’re a big softie and stops being afraid of you,” she told Kennedy.

  Kennedy stuck her tongue out. She was a big softie and she had a suspicion that Juliet already had an inkling.

  Kennedy got that from her grandpa. Along with her foul language, her sense of humor, her no-bullshit attitude, and her fear of missing out. Leo always wanted to be in the thick of everything and Kennedy had definitely inherited that.

  Which was why she figured that she got her sense of relationships from him.

  Leo had a tendency to stick and stick hard to the things and people in his life. From his business to his family, Leo was all in, all the time. Even with the food he ate. He loved huge helpings of the same food he’d been eating for fifty years in the same restaurant from the same barstool. He didn’t sample. He didn’t try different tastes. He didn’t mix things up. He’d never spit anything out because he’d never try anything new. It was always the same thing. He’d found what he loved and he didn’t waver from it. Ever. If he gave you his allegiance, there wasn’t anything that was going to shake it. Even if you tried to push him away and didn’t treat him so good.

  Kennedy could just look at her grandmother and see that. She loved Ellie. She did. So much. But she’d hated everything about Ellie and Leo breaking up, and she’d hated when Ellie had dated Trevor—a much younger guy from New Orleans—for a while. Trevor had been great. Had fit right in. Everyone had loved him. Even Leo. Trevor had treated Ellie well. She’d been happy. In fact, she and Leo had both seemed happier when they hadn’t been living together. Jerry, their son and Kennedy’s dad, had explained to Kennedy that Ellie and Leo had met when they were very young and had gotten married within four months of knowing each other. That was par for the course with the Landry family—fall fast and do something over-the-top about it. But it seemed that Ellie and Leo had needed some time apart eventually.

  They were back together now and happier than ever, and Kennedy really tried to focus on that. But damn…she just couldn’t quite get past the idea that Leo had never faltered. What if Ellie hadn’t come back to him? He would have sat on that stool at her bar and been her friend and loved her in spite of her going on with her life without him.

  Kennedy was very afraid of falling too fast and hard and then not being able to un-stick.

  That’s why she liked hors d’oeuvres. You could sample a lot of things and toss the ones you didn’t like without guilt.

  And yeah, also the part about them not all having crawfish and cayenne in them.

  She loved her Cajun roots and the food and everything else that went along with it, but there was a whole big world out there full of…other stuff. Other food, other tastes, other music, other history and traditions. There was nothing wrong with sampling a little bit of all of that, too.

  Just then, a shiny silver BMW pulled up at the curb. Driven by a hot guy with a little stubble, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. And glasses.

  Kennedy sighed and looked at the girls. “Is it just me, or does he send very mixed messages?”

  “You mean smart and rich along with downhome and country?” Maddie asked.

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Is it the blue jeans and the BMW?” Juliet asked.

  “I think it’s just the whole attitude,” Maddie said.

  Bennett came to stand at the bottom of the porch steps. He looked up at the three women looking down at him. He looked apprehensive. That made sense.

  “Good morning, ladies.” Then he tucked a hand in the front pocket of his jeans.

  Kennedy grinned. Formal, polite greeting. He didn’t even drop his “g.” But when he put his hand in his pocket like that, he looked more small town. She had to remember that he was just playing dress-up when he was down here. He liked hanging out on the bayou, but he wasn’t a true bayou boy.

  “Hey, Bennett,” Maddie greeted, propping her shoulder against the porch column.

  “Hi, Bennett,” Juliet said.

  Kennedy started down the porch steps with her suitcase, trying to hide the way her heart was suddenly thumping. She was going away for the weekend with this guy. This guy who she hadn’t quite figured out. Yes, he was enamored with her because she came with a bunch of crazy Cajuns he really liked and pots full of amazing food he probably didn’t get in Savannah, but she was more fascinated with him than she had been by a guy in…ever. She hadn’t thought that through. Why was he so damned intriguing to her? He didn’t have a charming bunch of characters that were always around when he was, making things more colorful and entertaining. He’d never shown up with any kind of food, amazing or otherwise.

  He’d shown up with a checkbook and a head full of legal knowledge that had helped save her family’s business. He’d helped smooth over some online reviews that had been a little problematic for the business, too. That wasn’t nothing.

  She could only chalk her fascination up to him being different than what she was used to, and her having a curious streak that was almost as wide as her mischievous streak. He was a new taste that she wanted to sample. It was that simple.

  Bennett met her halfway up the steps to grab her bag from her. He gave her a big grin and took the bag the rest of the way down the steps and to the trunk of the car.

  He seemed happy to see her and excited about the trip. That was trouble. She wasn’t getting stuck to Bennett Baxter and she needed to be sure he didn’t get stuck on her, either.

  Bennett started for the passenger side of the car and Kennedy realized that he intended to open the door for her. Oh no. He wasn’t going to be chivalrous and boyfriend-like. She took the few steps hurriedly and reached for the handle at the same time he did. With their hands both on the car door, they looked at each other. He only had about two inches on her when she wore her boots, and she realized that put their lips on the perfect level for kissing.

  They hadn’t kissed.

  Why did she feel like they had? That was weird. She swore that she felt like she and Bennett had made out prior to this. It was all the banter. All the blatant acknowledgement of their attraction. All of the at-night-in-bed-alone fantasies, too. She hadn’t thought of another man while using her favorite vibrator since meeting Bennett Baxter. That was also trouble.

  She definitely needed to get this all out of her system.

  On impulse—which was one of her favorite ways to do things—she dropped her purse, ran her hand over his shoulder and into his hair, and put her lips to his.

  To his credit, and her delight, Bennett didn’t hesitate a second. He shifted, put both hands on her hips, and leaned into the kiss. In fact, he basically too
k it over.

  He opened his mouth, deepening the contact, and brought her up against him more fully. She’d seen him without his shirt on when he’d been helping her brothers get the new dock into the water, so she’d had an inkling he was hard in all the right places. But feeling it was something altogether different.

  Kennedy felt herself lift onto tiptoe and fist the front of his shirt, in an attempt to get even closer.

  Bennett, being the gentlemanly type of guy who would carry her bags and open doors for her, decided to help her out with that, too, and he turned her, putting her back against the car. Then he pressed close. All of his hardness against her was exactly what she wanted. She gave a little moan that she realized she might be embarrassed about…later…and met his tongue with hers, kissing him deeply, relishing the heat that rose quickly between them.

  If she could just keep him doing this kind of stuff for the next two days, then there was very little risk of either of them mistaking this for anything but a hot affair.

  She wasn’t going to have two brain cells to rub together.

  He better feel the same way. If he thought chivalrous thoughts about her after Kennedy had rubbed against him like Tori’s pet piglet rubbed against the barn door, then she was really doing something wrong.

  “Ahem.”

  Maddie clearing her throat was the only thing that caused Kennedy to pull back and open her eyes.

  Bennett didn’t pull back. He didn’t let her get too far, either. He stood with one hand on her hip, one braced on the top of the car behind her, looking at her like he’d just figured a whole bunch of stuff out.

  How to spend most of the weekend in bed with her better be what he’d just puzzled out. Kennedy let her gaze drop to his mouth, then go back to his eyes.

  He gave her a slow smile that seemed almost knowing. Which made her itchy. “I’m excited about the trip, too,” he finally said, his voice a little gruff.