“In Chase’s defense,” Sawyer said, after swallowing his bite of rice, “I started the conversation about you and airboats and the water.”
“Oh?”
“I wanted to know why they hadn’t invited you along on the ride and Mitch said you’d declined. Adamantly.”
She nodded. “Definitely.”
He took a breath and set his fork down. “I’ve spent a lot of my life taking people out on the bayou. The tours have always been about giving people a little fun and an appreciation for this part of the world. I used to love the big grins and the people who wanted to learn more, come fishing and hunting, camp, hang out for the crawfish boils, get more immersed in everything here.” He sighed. “Over the past few months, I’ve been the opposite. I’ve been all about emphasizing how dangerous and dark the bayou can be. When people get that excited, wow-this-is-awesome look in their eyes, I try to…squash it. I haven’t taken a fishing or hunting group out in seven months. Ever since I freaked out on a guy who wandered off from the group.” He paused and swallowed. “I’ve stopped loving it. But now, with you, I want nothing more than to put you on an airboat and see the wind whipping your hair around and see you grinning and looking around with amazement.”
Juliet knew her eyes were big and round. She hadn’t been expecting any of that. “Nothing more?” she finally asked, trying for flirtatious. Because God help her if this man wanted her to get into the murky waters of the bayou, she might actually do it.
“Well…” He gave her a sexy little grin. “Maybe not nothing, but I’d love to see you on an airboat.”
“Why?” she asked quietly.
He shook his head. “Not totally sure. Maybe because I get the impression you don’t have a lot of fun and, no matter what’s happened, deep down that damned bayou and those boats are the epitome of fun for me.”
Juliet studied him. “I think it’s great that you love what you do for a living.”
He seemed to think about that for a second. “That fucking bayou,” he said. “It really does mean fun for me. Also, hard work. And family and friendship. It’s brought me closer to the people I love, given me a sense of who I am and where I come from. I’ve also wanted to get as far away from it as I can. It’s made me happy. And it’s broken my heart.”
God, she wanted him. The realization rocked through her.
Sawyer Landry was hot. Period. But he had this sexy, flirtatious side that was mixed with protectiveness. A loyalty and love for his family that was mixed with exasperation. A sense of humor that was mixed with self-deprecation. A strong work ethic that was mixed with a fun, charming side.
He was wounded. Not just his face but something else. She wanted to know everything.
And kiss it all better.
“I don’t know if I’d say I don’t have any fun,” she said. “But I don’t have a lot of physical fun.” She blushed almost instantly hearing that out loud and scrambled to correct her words. “I don’t have a lot of fun that requires my body to do…” She realized she wasn’t really making it better, “…things,” she finished weakly.
Sawyer was grinning widely now. “Yeah, I think your body is definitely part of my interest in all of this.”
She blushed even harder but smiled in spite of her embarrassment. “I don’t do strenuous things that require a lot of strength and stamina,” she said carefully. “So hiking and skiing and fishing and boating and stuff like that is out. And just water in general.”
“So basically, everything about the bayou,” he said.
“Kind of.”
There was a beat of silence. Then he said, “You were at least a little into the water idea with the skinny-dipping. Not in the bayou but in a pool.”
She nodded. “But that was pretty much all about you being naked.”
Heat flared in his eyes. “I guess you did mention there were lots of other ways to be naked.”
“There really are.”
“But skinny-dipping…” He blew out a breath. “See, you’re showing me that while I love a good hard hat and life jacket, being too careful means you miss out on some things.”
Juliet sobered a little at that. She couldn’t argue with that. She sat back in her chair and chewed on her bottom lip. They were talking about being naked and that could go in some really great directions. But, this was her chance to share. If she was going to. How much was she willing to tell him?
All of it, she realized quickly. She wasn’t embarrassed about her situation. It was what it was.
“I had a stroke when I was ten,” she said.
Sawyer’s gaze went from hot to concerned in a snap. “What?”
She nodded. “I was at the water park with my brothers and mom. I was at the top of one of the slides, and the next thing I knew, I’d fallen into the pool below. I don’t remember a lot of it, except the terrifying feeling of not being able to figure out how to move my arms and legs to swim back up. I couldn’t think clearly. I couldn’t make my mouth work to blow air out instead of sucking it in.”
Sawyer’s gaze was intense. He sat, not moving or even blinking.
“My brother, Rhett, pulled me out. If he hadn’t been right there and paying attention, I don’t know what would have happened.” She took a deep breath. “I was unconscious when he pulled me out and they rushed me to the hospital, assuming it was because of the near-drowning. Later they determined that I’d had a stroke and that was what had caused me to fall. The near-drowning was a symptom.”
“You had a stroke?” Sawyer clarified. “As a kid?”
“It’s more common than you think,” she said. “Mine was mild and, since I was young, I was able to recover more of my function than older people sometimes can. But I have a thirty-percent weakness on my right side and poor fine-motor coordination. I trip often, I knock things over and spill. Most people think I’m just a klutz, and that’s okay, but I have to be aware of those things and I’ve made adjustments.” She gestured to her cup. “I’m not great with fine motor on either side because I was right-handed before the stroke and had to relearn to do a lot with my left to compensate. So neither hand is perfectly coordinated. I have balance issues and feel weaker if I overdo, so…” She shrugged. “I have to be more careful and plan things out and take my time.” She gave him a little smile. “It makes adventurous, spontaneous fun a little difficult.”
“Wow.” He stared at her for a few long moments. Then he shifted, hanging an arm over the back of the chair, angling his body toward her. “Does all the protective gear make you feel safer?”
He seemed truly interested.
“It actually makes me safer,” she corrected.
“Okay,” he agreed.
That was it. No more questions about her stroke, no questions about should she really being messing around with power tools, no sudden excuses to get up and leave.
She tipped her head. “When I was turning eleven, about ten months after the stroke, I wanted a bike for my birthday. But I knew my mother would say no. For the first couple of months, I was unsteady and weak and scared and I didn’t want to do a lot of things like play at the playground or even run and play around the house. But I was ten. I got over all of that. I wanted to play. I wanted to go down slides and swing on swings. Except, I often fell because of my weakness and balance. It freaked my mom out. She got more and more careful with me and more and more restrictive in what she’d let me do. By the time that birthday rolled around, there was no way she was going to go for a bike. So, I decided I had to do something to reassure her.”
Sawyer was watching her with rapt fascination. She hadn’t talked about her stroke and physical deficits in a long time, and she didn’t think she’d ever shared the bike story with anyone.
“I asked Rhett to take me to the local bike shop. I got a helmet, elbow and knee pads, a bright orange shirt that would make it easier to be seen, a bell, and all kinds of reflectors for the bike. I even took a bike safety class online and got this pretty certificate that I printed out to sho
w her. I presented all of this to her when I asked for the bike. I figured if I took every safety precaution, it would make her feel better and more likely to go along with it.”
“Did it work?”
“It did. I got the bike.”
He smiled. “And that’s where the protective gear addiction comes in.”
She nodded. “It was always for other people. At least for a long time. The more I was conscious of the risks and worked to prevent them before they were even a problem, the more likely it was that people would trust me and let me do my thing.”
He gave her a look that was a mixture of admiration and affection. “Worked on me.”
She grinned. “Exactly.” Then she shrugged. “But—”
“There’s a but?”
“Yeah.”
He sighed. “Okay. Hang on.”
He seemed to actually want to know all of this. Juliet marveled at that a little as she watched him get up and cross to the bag he’d brought from Ellie’s. He dug for the final box and brought it to the table. Inside was a huge piece of cake. It had six layers of cake with alternating layers of custard.
“What is that?”
He grinned and handed her a fork as he took his seat again. “Cora’s version of a Doberge cake.”
“Wow.”
“It tastes even better than it looks.”
Juliet took a bite and moaned. He was right.
Sawyer cleared his throat and shifted on his chair, and Juliet looked over at him. He was watching her and without thinking, she licked the frosting off her fork. Slowly. Her eyes on his.
“Fucking love this cake,” he muttered, almost to himself.
She smiled. He was so much fun to tease. She loved the flirtatious chemistry between them. He’d made her smile every single time they’d spoken. When he wasn’t making her aware of her nipples in a way she hadn’t been in a very long time. But even that was…fun. See, she could have fun. Just not airboat-on-the-bayou fun.
She’d missed seeing and talking to him over the past couple of days. That was weird. She didn’t know him well, and it wasn’t as if they’d established any kind of pattern or habit of seeing one another. But yeah, she’d missed him and had found herself looking for him throughout the day.
“Okay, so go on,” he said, after he’d taken a few bites. “You said all your safety gear and preparedness makes people more likely to leave you alone, but…”
She nodded and swiped one more bite of cake before going on. “But all of that takes a lot of the spontaneity out of things,” she said. “And it just takes time and effort. I learned that I could either be fully prepared and safe, or I could be fun-loving and adventurous. But it was hard to be both. If my brothers wanted to go on a bike ride, I couldn’t just plop on my helmet and go. I had to take time to get everything on, lace up my shoes with triple knots so they didn’t get caught, put on long sleeves and pants so I didn’t get scraped up if I fell, make sure I had my backpack with my first aid kit, flashlight, phone, mace—”
“Mace?” Sawyer broke in. “To go on a bike ride?”
She nodded. “The more stuff I had, the farther my mom would let me go and the longer I could stay out. I thought of every single What-If I possibly could.”
Understanding flickered in his eyes, along with a smile. “No wonder you’re a pro at that game. You’ve been playing it for a lot of years.”
“Exactly.”
“But it made your mom feel better about it all,” he said.
“But,” she said, “my brothers got really frustrated. Waiting for me to pack up, make sure I had everything, and get dressed with all my gear took forever. Plus, I think they worried. They didn’t really want to be out on a bike trail with me if something happened.”
Sawyer frowned. “They told you they were frustrated?”
“A couple of times. Then they stopped telling me about the bike rides all together,” she said. The little pang of hurt in her chest surprised her. It had been a long time. But that first time they’d left without her was still vivid in her mind.
“Wow,” Sawyer said sympathetically. He paused, then said, “They didn’t invite you to go skiing, did they?”
He really was paying attention. They’d talked about skiing that first day in regard to Chase and Ryan and Rhett, and Sawyer was putting it all together.
“No. Not skiing, or scuba diving, or hiking, or even on their trip to Italy.”
“Assholes,” Sawyer muttered.
Juliet smiled. But she shook her head. “And now you know that I’m kind of an asshole, too.”
He frowned. “How so?”
“I don’t want Chase going off with them and doing things they didn’t let me do with them.”
“Chase didn’t go on bike rides and stuff with them?”
“He was quite a bit younger. He ended up stuck with me a lot, especially after the stroke and everything.”
“That’s how you got so close.”
She nodded. “Like you and Josh and Owen. We did almost everything together.” She sighed. “But I should let him go. He’s way beyond needing to keep up with me and I shouldn’t make it hard on him to go with them.”
“But they’re assholes. He’s better off hanging out with the great guys down here.” He gave her a wink.
She couldn’t deny that she really liked Mitch, and that Owen and Josh and Kennedy and Maddie—for a little extra female influence—had been great to Chase. He was having a good time, smiling a lot and yes, working hard. And eating a lot. Eating a lot.
“Well, maybe they’re not completely assholes. Maybe I just felt left out.”
“Because they left you out,” Sawyer said with a frown. “That’s an asshole thing to do to someone. Especially their little sister.” His frown deepened. “They basically made you pick between keeping your mom happy and being safe and having fun with them.”
They had. That was true. “But should they have to give stuff up because their little sister had a stroke?”
“Yes,” he said, without hesitation.
Yeah, she wanted him. For sure. “Of course, I’m talking to a guy who knows how to French braid because his little sister was into pageants and couldn’t do that herself.”
He winked. “Fake eyelashes, too. For the record.”
“Your family is so great,” she said, with a happy sigh.
His smile died but he nodded. “They really fucking are.”
Something in his tone grabbed her by the heart.
“I really want them to know I’m okay,” he said after a moment.
Juliet frowned. “Are you not okay?”
“I’m…” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “No. Not really.” He met her gaze. “I think…” He stopped, then started again. “I think I’m scared of the bayou, too.”
She sat up a little straighter. “Really? How is that possible?”
Juliet realized, at the back of her mind, that she should not like that Sawyer had some kind of trauma or something in his past. She didn’t, exactly. But it made her feel like they were bonding. He hadn’t freaked out about her having a stroke. Maybe that was because he had something, too.
“Has anyone told you about my scar?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t asked.”
He gave her a little smile. “I should have known.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You wouldn’t pry into someone else’s stuff.”
She shrugged. “I’ve mostly just been hit by how hot it is. I haven’t thought about asking anyone else how you got it.”
He leaned in slightly. “You think it’s hot?”
She nodded. “Very.”
“How’s that work?”
“Hell if I know,” she said honestly. “Why does having a day’s worth of stubble and callouses on your hands and grease on your shirt work? I’m not sure, but it does.”
He lifted a hand and ran it over his jaw, almost absentmindedly. “No kidding.”
Juliet laughe
d. “I am not the first woman to tell you that she finds you attractive.”
“No,” he said, again almost as if he was thinking out loud. “But you’re the first to lay it out like that. And the first with the scar.”
“I’m not,” she said, with absolute confidence. “I might be the first to say it, but no, Sawyer, other women have found that hot, too. I promise you.”
“Huh.”
She smiled. “Not sure I should have told you that about the other women.”
He reached out and snagged her hand, surprising her but spreading warm tingles up her arm as he ran his thumb over her knuckles. “All I heard was that you find me hot.”
Juliet laughed. “Good recovery.”
“I’ve never been turned on by hip waders. Until I found you on my dock.”
Those warm tingles danced up her arm again and then down to her we-love-Sawyer-so-much nipples, and lower. “Oh yeah?”
“And the life jacket and the safety goggles and the bright neon green safety vest and the fucking steel-toed boots.”
“Aw,” she said teasingly. “I knew we’d get along the second you jumped in on the What-If game.”
He nodded, still stroking her knuckles. “I haven’t always been like that.”
“What happened?”
“My best friend, Tommy, died out on the bayou about nine months ago.”
Subconsciously, Juliet’s fingers tightened on his. She hadn’t been expecting an answer like that. “What?”
“He was out checking traps alone, wading in the waters like he’d done a million times, but this time he pissed off a bull shark.”
Juliet felt her mouth drop open. “A shark? In the bayou?”
He nodded. “It’s rare, but bull sharks can swim up from the gulf. They’ve been found in the Mississippi, Lake Ponchartrain, and down here in the deeper waters.”
“Holy crap,” Juliet breathed. “I had no idea.”
“A lot of people don’t,” he agreed. He was staring at their hands. “But Tommy did.”
“He was attacked?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah. They can be aggressive if they feel threatened, like most things down here. They’re hard to see in the murky waters. They blend in, look like logs.” He swallowed hard. “The bigger ones don’t usually end up down here. But the babies can since they’re smaller. This one shouldn’t have done much damage, but it hit his femoral artery. He lost a shit ton of blood pretty quickly.”
Beauty and the Bayou Page 13
