Kennedy stood watching her for a few minutes, but all she could think about was Bennett. And how to let him know that she was doing this Baton Rouge and politics thing, but that she still wanted him.
“I have to go,” she told her grandmother, pushing away from the counter.
Ellie smiled. “Kick some ass.”
Kennedy didn’t ask if she meant figuratively in Baton Rouge, or literally—with Bennett Baxter.
Kennedy pushed through the door and stepped out into the main area of the restaurant. She knew Bennett was there with her brothers, Owen, and Leo. She figured it was about time that they started leaning on him so that their gumbo and coffee would improve.
She took a deep breath and headed straight for their table. When she stopped behind Leo, they all stopped talking and looked at her.
The only one she cared about hearing this was just to Leo’s right.
“I’m going to Baton Rouge,” were her first words to Bennett in four days.
He nodded. “I know.”
“I think I’m going to be great at this. But I’m not sure. Still, I want to try.”
“I know.”
“And… I want to date you.”
His gaze flickered with recognition. He’d said the same words to her in Savannah. “Okay.”
“In Autre,” she added.
“Okay.”
“And in Baton Rouge.”
He looked a little relieved. “Okay.”
“And no one else.”
“Okay.”
She looked at him for a long moment. Then she nodded. “Okay.” She turned on her heel, determined to go home, get some sleep, go to Baton Rouge tomorrow, and deal with everything else after that.
“Kennedy.”
She stopped at the sound of Bennett’s voice. Slowly she turned back.
He was standing and holding something out to her. She took the few steps back.
“Are those…my combat boots?” she asked.
“They are.”
She looked from the boots to meet his gaze. “Did you shine my boots, Baxter?”
“I did.”
It took a second for that to sink in, but when it did, she covered her mouth to keep from laughing. Or crying. She wasn’t sure which.
“They don’t shine as well as my shoes,” he said. “The leather is treated differently or something. We can get you some good leather boots.”
“If you replace my combat boots with some high-end, hoity-toity brand, you better just never eat the gumbo around here again. It won’t be safe for you.”
He grinned at her answer. He looked relieved and, if she wasn’t mistaken, in love with her.
She swallowed and then said, her voice softer, “I wasn’t going to wear combat boots to my meetings.”
“But you should. They’re you.”
And they were shiny. Very fucking shiny.
She felt her heart flip over in her chest. She might not be a Leo, but she was stuck hard to this guy.
Finally she nodded and reached out, taking the boots from him. “Okay. I’ll wear them. Thanks.”
“And if you need to re-shine them, I remember there was a guy who set up in front of the capitol building—”
“I won’t,” she cut him off. But she gave him a little grin. “They can wait until you get there.”
Bennett gave her a single nod. “Sounds good.”
She didn’t confirm that he would come or ask when. She didn’t ask how this was going to work.
He would be there. She knew that. That was all that mattered.
Two days later, Kennedy stood up from the conference table in the Louisiana State Capitol building, having never felt more tired in her life.
She’d scrubbed airboats—once, before refusing to do it ever again. She’d helped repair air-conditioning units. She’d refinished her grandmother’s dining room table. She knew how to work.
And she’d never been more fatigued than she was after sitting all day long in meetings.
All. Day. Long.
Inside.
With a fucking sweater on.
She loved air-conditioning as much as the next girl, but damn, she was almost missing the humidity. They kept things cold in those rooms and hallways. Plus, she was barely moving around, and the only sunlight that hit her skin was in the morning on the way from her hotel to her car and her car to the building and then again when she left to go back to the hotel.
The hotel. The lonely, boring, empty hotel.
She’d so far resisted calling Bennett. She wasn’t sure why. They were together. They’d agreed to date. In Baton Rouge.
But she was waiting for him to make the next move. She’d admit it. That wasn’t really her style. When she wanted something, she went for it.
But the last couple of days in these meetings had been a little tough on her confidence. She was interested in everything they were talking about and she’d contributed a few ideas. Charles had been encouraging and told her more than once how happy he was to have her there. But she was used to ruling the roost and bossing everyone around. The tour schedule was in her control. How Josh, Owen, Sawyer, and Maddie spent their days was up to her.
Here, she was in way over her head.
“You’re doing great.” Charles caught up with her as they waited for the elevator. “I know it’s a lot to take in at first.”
She nodded. “It’s a lot. But I’m excited to be here.” Scared and feeling like a fraud, too, but she didn’t mention that part.
“I promise, in a month or two, this will all feel routine.”
A month or two. Right. She was going to be coming back. “I’m sure it will.” She gave him her beauty pageant smile. At least she had that to get her through until she felt like she knew what the hell she was doing.
They stepped onto the elevator with a small group. Kennedy was the only one in combat boots. But rather than feeling self-conscious, looking down at the shiny-ish toes of her boots reminded her that she was here because the regular people, the ones who lived on the bayou and in the small towns and who wore boots to go to work needed representation, on the tourism task force and in bigger ways.
The elevator dinged and Kennedy stepped off first.
So when she came up short, everyone else did as well.
“Bennett?”
He was sitting in the middle of the main area just inside the front doors. On a stool.
Not just any stool, either. It was Leo’s stool from Ellie’s. The bright yellow seat and multicolored legs made her heart thump and her eyes immediately fill with tears.
“Hi, darlin’.”
Oh, lord, he’d dropped his “g” for her. And he was grinning at her like he’d never been happier to see someone.
She headed straight for him and right into his arms.
She pressed against him, feeling her tears fall. The feeling of home was so intense when he gathered her close that she couldn’t breathe for a moment.
“Did you have any trouble getting everything in?” Charles asked.
Kennedy pulled back, looking at Bennett for a long, happy moment. Then she looked over at Charles. “Everything?”
The majority of the people who had been on the elevator, many of whom had been in the meeting with her today, had also stopped to see what was going on.
“I brought you something,” Bennett told her.
He set her back as he stood and then went over to a silver cart she hadn’t noticed sitting a few feet away. As he wheeled it over to her, she saw that it had a gas burner in the middle of it and a pan on top.
Her heart started racing and her eyes widened. “What’s this?”
“This is my attempt at doing something big and out of my comfort zone and crazy like a Landry.”
Oh boy. Crazy like a Landry could be downright dangerous. There had been feuds with neighboring towns, pseudo-kidnapping, and sheds burned to the ground when Landrys had been crazy in love in the past. Kennedy’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about?�
��
He lifted the lid off of the pan to reveal bananas in the rum sauce that made Bananas Foster.
“Bennett…” She had no idea what else she was going to say.
He pulled a bowl from under the cart and set it on top. There was a scoop of slightly melted ice cream in it. Then he turned the dial on the burner, picked up a glass of clear liquid, and toasted her. “I love you, Kennedy. And I want to be your Leo. I want to be there for you, to encourage you and listen to you and push you. And since you’re going to be way too busy to be making the desserts, I’m going to learn to make them.”
Before she could say a word, he dumped what was clearly rum into the pan. Flames shot up.
The people around them ooh-ed, but the security guard who came running was not impressed.
“Hey!”
Kennedy lunged forward, covering the pan and putting the flames out while turning the burner off.
“You can’t do that in here,” the guard said. His hand was on the gun in his holster.
“Whoa!” Kennedy said, stepping between the guard and Bennett. “Calm down. It’s okay.”
“You can’t just come in here and set shit on fire!” the guy said.
“I cleared this with security ahead of time,” Bennett said, moving next to Kennedy. “It’s just a little rum.”
“And fire.”
“Matt, he’s with me,” Charles spoke up.
The guard looked from Bennett to Charles. He frowned. “Governor Arnaud.”
“I promise this is fine,” Charles said. “I take full responsibility.”
Matt nodded. “Okay.” But he gave Bennett one last glare. “No more fire.”
“You got it,” Bennett said, holding up his hands in surrender.
Kennedy frowned and looked closer at Bennett’s palms. “What’s wrong with your hands?” There were red splotches all over.
Bennett looked down, then turned his hands over. Then sighed. “Hives.”
“Hives? From what?”
“The bananas.”
She stared at him. “Oh my God. You’re allergic to bananas!”
How had she not realized what all of this meant immediately? Maybe because she was still so damned happy to see him. And maybe a little stunned that he’d set something on fire for her. That was very Leo-like.
“Yeah,” he said with a shrug.
“But you still decided to make Bananas Foster for me?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I thought maybe it was Landry-like to risk having my throat close up to tell you I love you and want to be with you, no matter how many trips between Autre and Baton Rouge we have to take. And to tell you that I rented us an apartment here so that there’s a place we can stay when we’re in town rather than a hotel.”
All Kennedy really heard was “my throat close up.” “You’re that allergic to bananas?” she demanded. “Your throat could seriously close up?”
He swallowed hard. And she noticed some hives start to appear on his neck.
“I was cutting the bananas quickly and I might have touched my face or something.”
She stepped close and unbuttoned his top three buttons. Sure enough, hives were spreading over his chest as well. “Did you sample the bananas?” she asked.
“Just the sauce.”
“The sauce that’s been in contact with the bananas?”
He nodded.
“Bennett, this wasn’t crazy,” she told him. “This was stupid.”
“Yeah…maybe it was.”
“Are you okay?” He didn’t look okay.
“I don’t usually handle them this much. I stay away. Worst case, I accidentally get a piece of banana in something I didn’t know had it. I—” He swallowed hard again. “I don’t normally handle them—peeling and cutting them up and stuff.”
“Oh, my God.” She took his arm and started for the door. She glanced back at Charles. “Closest ER?”
Bennett tugged on her arm, stopping her. “Hey, you didn’t say you love me too.”
She frowned at him. “Now? You’re about to die!”
“Don’t let me die without hearing it.”
Her eyes went wide. “You’re supposed to say you’re not going to die!”
He swallowed hard again. “The longer it takes for you to say it, the bigger the risk, Ken.”
“Oh for God’s sake!” She turned to face him, gripping both his hands. “Yes, I love you. I love you so fucking much. Please don’t die. I’m not even close to done with you.”
He grinned, even as the red blotches seemed to grow. “That’s better.” Then he swallowed. “We should probably head to the ER now.”
Ten minutes later, Bennett had been given a shot and was resting in one of the bays in the emergency room.
Kennedy stood next to the bed. “Wow.”
He gave her a grin. “I know Maddie went to jail for Owen, but the hospital is pretty good, right?”
“Maddie went and had coffee with the local cop for about an hour one day for Owen,” Kennedy said with an eye-roll.
“But she had a close encounter with a gator, too, right?”
“Who is telling you these stories?” Kennedy asked, leaning onto the railing of his bed. “She shot near an alligator that was absolutely no threat whatsoever.”
“Juliet almost drowned for Sawyer, right?”
Kennedy shook her head. “Leo’s telling these, isn’t he? You should know by now to take whatever Leo tells you and dial it back thirty to fifty percent.”
“So ending up in the ER really is a big deal.”
Kennedy leveled him a serious look. “Don’t you ever put yourself at risk like that again.”
“But—”
“I like Bananas Foster,” she cut in. “But I love crème brûlée. And pecan pie. And hell, a great chocolate chip cookie even more.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“I can make chocolate chip cookies.”
She smiled and leaned over, kissing him softly. Then deeper. When she leaned back, she looked into his eyes. “This was all very ostentatious of you.”
He chuckled. “You know, I start thinking about sleeping with you and then you throw out a word like ostentatious…and the urge gets so much stronger.”
Epilogue
Almost Christmas time…
* * *
“I wanted to wait until everyone was here and now that Bennett and Kennedy made it back, this is the perfect time.”
Josh stood on a chair in the middle of Ellie’s and had just shouted for the place to quiet the fuck down. The bar was full tonight, as it always was on a Friday. Kennedy had finished up her meetings early so that they could make it back to Autre for the crawfish boil, but they’d still barely made it on time. She didn’t know what exactly was going on, but Josh had texted her three times and Bennett twice, making sure they’d make it back. It was something big.
“If I hadn’t had to swing by the governor’s office and promise to bring him gumbo in exchange for not arresting you for ignoring his request to wait three days before taking another ship out to Sauveuse Island, we’d have been here in plenty of time,” she said softly to Bennett from behind the first ring of people gathered around Josh.
Bennett pinched her ass in reply. “You would have taken him Cora’s gumbo anyway. Don’t blame me because you always have ‘just one more thing’ to tell him. The poor guy is probably relieved you were spending the weekend down here.”
Kennedy laughed. Charles was quickly becoming one of her best friends. He was the one that had talked her into her next political step. “You might be right. He’s really excited about me running for mayor down here. That will keep me away from Baton Rouge more.”
Josh, Owen and Sawyer thought the idea of her as mayor was hilarious, of course, and were already talking about all of the ways they could blackmail and bribe her.
She couldn’t wait for them to try.
Bennett hugged her against his side wit
h a chuckle and kissed the top of her head. “I’m not saying this is why he’s behind it, but he does like me a lot and I did mention to him that I thought calling you Madam Mayor would be really hot.”
She looked up at him with a sly smile. “Yeah, that would be really hot. We should practice that tonight.”
His eyes darkened. “Oh, Mayor Landry-Baxter, we can definitely do that.”
Landry-Baxter, she liked that. “And you can play being my assistant. And every ten minutes I’ll be asking you for files that you don’t actually need.”
He squeezed her ass again. “Yeah, I’ll put my files anyplace you want them.”
She reached around and pinched his ass. “Keep up that attitude and you might just earn yourself a raise.”
“But,” he added in that slightly condescending tone that always made her want to kiss him until he forgot how to do anything but say, yes, fuck, Kennedy. “I do feel the need to point out that if I’m the assistant, I won’t be using my silk necktie to tie your wrists while bending you over my big mahogany desk.” He gave a little shrug.
Heat arrowed through her. Yeah, the day that Bennett’s desk had been delivered to the office space he’d rented in Autre for his foundation had been a really fun day.
“Your dress code for the job will require a silk necktie every day,” she told him, wondering if they could sneak out and go to his office right now.
“But assistants don’t have offices to put big mahogany desks in. Or big mahogany desks.”
“Huh. Does it work if you’re calling me Madam Mayor but it’s your desk?” she teased. “Seems like I’m in the position of power. Maybe I should just take that desk for my own.”
He nodded, seeming thoughtful. “I guess you would be in the position of power. Unless…”
She arched a brow. “Unless?”
“I guess unless you’re calling me… I don’t know…Senator. Or something.”
Kennedy pulled back slightly, her eyes went wide. “What? Wait…really?”
He grinned. “It would be okay to practice Senator Baxter, I suppose.”
Kennedy stared at him and shook her head slowly. “Yeah, that would definitely be okay.” He still had to live in Louisiana for almost two years before he could run for Senate, but the things this man was going to be doing in those two years were going to be impressive as hell. People were definitely going to know him. And love him.
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