by Lynn Shurr
“He left a blood trail, a big one,” Junior assured him. “I can go with you. Make sure we get him.”
“No, you won’t.” Xochi raised Nestor’s head and lovingly put a folded towel from the kitchen under it. She turned to the refrigerator, clattered around in there, filled a dishrag, and plopped it on Junior’s head.
“A magic potion?” he asked
“Ice,” she answered, “but I can whip up a poultice to take down the swelling if you want.”
“Uh, no. A kiss would make me feel better.”
Xochi removed the ice pack, cupped Junior’s face, and applied her lips to the lump on his forehead. Nothing amazing happened, at least externally, but Junior smiled. “That cleared my head.”
“Right. You just wanted a kiss the way you did in childhood.” Xo replaced the ice.
“I was canaille about getting you to kiss me even then.” His grin reassured her.
“Xochi,” Nestor said, feeble as a baby. She came to sit beside him. “Your gift is in your hands. I could feel you making my heart beat, praying for me.”
“Only mentally. What you heard was me keeping the count for the CPR. Here comes the gurney. I hope the medics can get it up the ramp.”
“Makes no never mind how you done it. You got da gift already. Anyt’ing you want to learn, I teach you once I come back here, but cher, you don’t need it. We each heal in our own way.”
The EMTs asked her to step aside, and she did after a quick squeeze of his hand, but Nestor’s fussed. “My tee’t. I can’t go to no hospital wit’out my tee’t.” Xochi placed his dentures in a zip lock bag and handed them over. Soon, he’d be in a sterile environment getting the help he needed and hating every minute of it.
Officer Chavin waited until the gurney passed to report in. “Found him. Bled out in a patch of palmettos not far from a rented boat. Minus an arm like you said.”
“Call in the coroner and another ambulance to take him away.” Tony shook his head. “Sorry, you have seniority, Chavin.”
“Mais, yeah, but you passed the dectective’s exam down in New Orleans. I’ll take care of it.”
Xochi beamed at her favorite cop. “You did? That’s wonderful, Tony.”
“For all the good it did me. After a review, the department cut me loose for my vigilante actions in Cozumel. Someone put in a good word for me with the sheriff here. Back in uniform. My former buddies are calling me Barney Fife now.”
“Probably Daddy Joe spoke to the sheriff. As for your old pals, ignore them. Your aura is already healing.”
“My what?”
“Never mind. You will be healthier now. I can feel it.”
“Whatever you say, Xo, but my heart is still broken.” He thumped a hand against his chest. “I see that fancy ring on your finger. So, you and Junior are…”
“Engaged. Yes. Actually, you are the very first to know. We didn’t even have time to tell Nestor or call the family before Diaz struck.”
“Looks like he won’t be bothering you again.”
“No, Big Ben took care of him for me, but I don’t want you to harm that gator trying to get the arm back. Let Diaz go to his grave without it. The next ambulance goes to Junior. The corpse can wait.”
“No arguments from me. Junior might feel differently.”
Junior shook his head. “Say, that didn’t hurt at all. No, Big Ben was only doing what gators do. We got in his space, and he grabbed what he could. Honestly, I don’t need an ambulance.” Xochi filled a basin with water and brought it bubbling to the table to fuss over his wounds. Junior winced. “What is that stuff?”
“Soap and water, only soap and water. You need stitches, antibiotics, and a tetanus booster.”
“Plus a special prayer?”
“I’ve been doing that all along.” Xochi kissed the clean skin of his upper arm, then wiped it away with a dab of her cloth.
“I swear I’m healing from the inside out right this minute.” No more chubby, smitten boy, but the man Xochi Billodeaux loved answered.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Junior sat in one of Joe’s oversized leather recliners in the vast den where most of the important decisions the Billodeaux family made took place. His parents and Xochi’s plus a good number of her siblings gathered around to listen to him explain to Coach Buck why he’d be late for training camp.
“No, sir, not holding out for more money. If you’d let me explain…”
Blistering and salty language shouted loud enough for the closest to hear issued from the phone Junior held away from his face. Mama Nell made little Edie and T-Rex cover their ears. Both kids rolled their eyes—as if they’d never heard curse words on the ranch.
Junior tried again. “No, sir, it’s not the bullet I took in Cozumel. That’s all healed up. An alligator bit me and…”
“Dumbest excuse I ever heard,” blasted from the phone for the listening audience.
“But true. I have a bunch of stitches in my upper left arm. No, I wasn’t alligator wrestling, though I guess I did accidentally. I was trying to save Xochi, yes, again, and fell into a gator pit.”
Simmering, Joe Billodeaux ripped the phone from Junior’s hand. “You listen to me, you. If my future son-in-law says he was bitten by an alligator saving Xochi, den he was. Sure, I’ll tell him dat. Coach says he’s putting a no alligator wrestling clause into your contract. Dumb, no?”
Mama Nell pried the phone from her husband’s fingers before he made matters worse, and gave it to Xochi who perched on the side of the recliner. “Nestor said you could probably heal over the phone. Have a go.”
“Coach Buck, I promise you, Junior won’t do anything more dangerous than get married next offseason. Why, thank you. Of course, you are invited. Probably May here in Chapelle at the church of Ste. Jeanne d’Arc with a reception at the ranch. Good, now I want you to close your eyes and let your blood pressure go down. Listen to this little prayer for your health.” Xochi whispered into the phone so quietly not even Junior overheard. “Feel better? Good. Here’s Junior.”
“I’ll fly up tomorrow and accept any fines levied. The trainers can take a look at my arm and decide how much I can do. I don’t want to fail you or the Sinners. Great, thanks. No, I won’t use that excuse again.” Junior disconnected. “He sure calmed down.”
“Age must be catching up with him,” Joe said. “Glad you are off his shit list.”
T-Rex mouthed shit list at his sister, and Mama Nell said, “I do not want those words to come out of your mouths ever!”
Corazon interrupted. “But you do not see the month is set for the wedding, and we have the reception here. We must start to plan today!”
Chapter Thirty
Xochi Billodeaux’s wedding wasn’t perfect, and she didn’t care at all. So what if her wedding gown very much resembled a quinceanera dress with its many flounces gathered in places by red silk roses. Corazon had made it with love over many months. A white lace mantilla sent by Junior’s family in Mexico crowned her dark hair.
Elderly Fr. Ardoin performed the nuptial Mass as Xo requested. She’d hoped Nestor would attend if he didn’t have to confront the young priest. He had, accompanied by his niece Rosemarie. He lived in her white cottage now. Better for his gators if they stopped coming around his place, he said. Rosemarie said better for him, too. Xochi sent her mentor a special smile as she walked down the aisle on Daddy Joe’s arm and a consoling one to Connor Bullock who sat with his family and still appeared disapproving.
Choice of bridesmaids is no problem when a girl has five sisters and a sister-in-law. Edie as the youngest proclaimed herself too old to be a flower girl anymore. Wynn filled in admirably strewing flower petals with abandon. Xochi handed her bouquet of roses over to Stacy who looked uncomfortable in the much more tailored scarlet dresses the bridesmaids wore. Xo suspected she worried her breasts might leak because her baby, Dean Joseph Billodeaux, Jr. securely held in Mawmaw Nadine’s arms, fretted in the first row. Mawmaw corked his cries with a bottle. Cris
is averted.
When Ilsa showed up late leading with her pregnant belly and dragging Beck and her daughter, Princess, down the aisle to push into the second row—not Xochi’s problem. She pitied the woman Prince Dobbs now said he’d never marry unless she gave him a son of own, and this one was another girl.
Junior stood, a big handsome man first in the row of handsome men that made up the six Billodeaux brothers. He couldn’t seem to wipe the grin off his face despite the solemnity of the occasion, and Xochi loved him all the more for that. Tom, acting as best man, held the ring box containing a gold circlet of flowers with diamond centers to match her engagement ring despite Stacy saying it clashed with all the red. Hey, she’d let Stacy talk her out of bouquets of yellow daisies for the bridesmaids and allowed them to carry a single long-stemmed rose, but no way would she give up wearing the ring Junior had made only for her. Tom seemed more nervous about dropping the wedding band than Junior did about marriage. As her groom said, he’d wanted this for a long, long time.
They reached the point in the ceremony where Stacy plucked a rose from the bouquet for Xochi to lay at the feet of the statue of the Virgin Mary tucked into her own special grotto. As Xo completed the veneration, she murmured another prayer for her long dead mother, for the good mother she had now, and for the mother she hoped to become. Vows and communion completed, she and Junior burst from the sanctuary running the length of spectators who couldn’t fit in the church and showered them with more flower petals. A few paparazzi pushed to the front. She ignored them. Her day, not theirs. They piled into Dean’s black Mustang convertible and peeled out with a police escort, the rest of the wedding party following in limousines. Yes, she’d asked for Tony to provide security.
Plenty of time to take pictures once through the secure gates at the ranch where a reception, half-formal, half-casual awaited: linen-covered tables under white tents, a bouncy house and pony rides for the kids, a buffet full of catered delicacies and pans of Mawmaw’s tender brisket and Corazon’s taquitos, lots of champagne and even more beer. A lot like the Billodeaux family, this way, that way, all ways, Xo thought, loving being a part of it all.
The music started out formal with nimble Daddy Joe twirling her around a dance floor laid for the occasion. Knox Polk, Sr. steered her stiffly, clearly worrying about the security placed in Tony’s hands. She worked her way through brothers, whirling with Teddy in his wheelchair, and half the Sinners team, eventually getting back to where she wanted to be—in Junior’s arms.
Xochi disappeared into the house after a while and returned wearing the inexpensive coral dress she’d bought at the mall a year ago, back in the days when she’d tried so hard to throw away true love. She and Junior, Stacy and Dean showed the guests what salsa dancing was all about to huge applause. Rachelle pulled Joe into the mix. Tom danced with his wife the way he always did—with enthusiasm but not well, and Xochi adored him for it. They ended with Cajun two-steps and chank-a-chank the older relatives appreciated. Nestor requested the honor of a dance with the bride and did another with Mawmaw Nadine. All so perfectly imperfect.
They left the land of Louisiana where a one-eyed gator still waited for the swamp tour guides to throw him a chicken for a honeymoon anywhere but Cozumel, Junior’s choice. She did not care because she would be with him. Long before Junior made the pro bowl numerous times and brought home injured players for her healing touch and those with psychological problems in need of a gris-gris bag earning Xochi the title of the Sinners’ Traiteur, before the birth of Pilar Corazon Polk and their other children, before a house of their own in Chapelle and Junior’s restaurant, Xochi knew one thing for sure: when Junior entered their bedroom, they made magic together.
A word about the author…
Once a librarian, now a writer of romance, Lynn Shurr grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch country. She attended a state college and earned a very impractical B.A. in English Literature. Her first job out of school really was working as a cashier in a burger joint. Moving from one humble job to another, she traveled to North Carolina, then Germany, then California where she buckled down and studied for an M.A. in Librarianship.
New degree in hand, she found her first reference job in the Heart of Cajun Country, Lafayette, Louisiana. For her, the old saying, “Once you’ve tasted bayou water, you will always stay here” came true. She raised three children not far from the Bayou Teche and lives there still with her astronomer husband.
When not writing, Lynn likes to paint, cheer for the New Orleans Saints and LSU Tigers, and take long road trips nearly anywhere. Her love of the bayou country, its history and customs, often shows in the background for her books.
You may contact Lynn at www.lynnshurr.com or visit her blog—lynnshurr.blogspot.com.
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Don’t miss:
The Sinners Series: Goals for a Sinner, Wish for a Sinner, Kicks for a Sinner, Paradise for a Sinner, Love Letter for a Sinner
A Sinner’s Legacy Series: Son of a Sinner, She’s a Sinner
The Mardi Gras Series: Queen of the Mardi Gras Ball, Mardi Gras Madness, Courir de Mardi Gras
The Roses Series: The Convent Rose, A Wild Red Rose, Always Yellow Roses
Single Titles: A Trashy Affair, An Ashy Affair, A Will of her Own
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