by Sandra Hill
She looks wonderful. Good enough to eat. Oops, I already did that. All this he thought with a smile on his face. At first.
It wasn’t her appearance that rained on his parade. Hey, if he had his way, he’d like nothing better than to jog on back to her bedroom with her and show her just what kind of exercise he could give those running pants. No, it was what she eventually said that caused a dark cloud to come over him.
“Hey, Rusty,” she drawled out, slow and sexy, looking back at him over her shoulder as she poured herself a cup of coffee. As only a born-to-tease seductress could do, Charmaine let him fill his eyes with her backside, which filled the stretch pants so nicely. In fact, she dropped a spoon—deliberately, he was sure—and took a nice long time bending over to pick it up.
Tante Lulu giggled, watching the direction of his stare.
Great! Caught in mid-ogle.
“Are you finished with breakfast?” Charmaine asked once she was standing again.
Huh? Hell, no! I barely started. But he nodded. Maybe she’s looking for some exercise, too.
“Can you bring your coffee into the office? I have some important things I need to discuss with you. Very important. I have good news and I have bad news.” She looked so serious that he felt his stomach drop. His parade suddenly slowed down. Could he take any more bad news on top of yesterday’s events?
They both walked into the small office, which was surprisingly tidy. Charmaine must have done a lot of work here the past two days. Closing the door behind him, he set his coffee cup on the desk, sat down in the swivel chair, then pulled Charmaine onto his lap. “If I kiss you, will I have red lipstick all over me?”
She looped her arms around his neck and smiled saucily. “Would it make any difference?”
“Hell, no!” he said even as he was lowering his head.
“It’s kiss-proof,” she said against his mouth.
“Wanna bet?” he countered, already nibbling at the edges of her bottom lip. “You taste so freakin’ good.”
“It’s just coffee,” she murmured.
“Uh-uh! It’s you.”
Charmaine was the one to break the kiss first. She pulled away—and hot damn, she was right; her lips were still hot-as-sin red—and told him, “There really is some serious business I need to discuss with you.”
“More serious than sex in a swivel chair.”
“I already told you I can’t have sex with you.”
The born-again virgin crap again! “It depends on your definition of sex.” If oral sex isn’t real sex in Clintonese, then swivel sex sure isn’t real sex in my language.
Get real, the voice in his head said.
“Tsk-tsk-tsk!” Shoving away, Charmaine stood about two feet away from him.
“Okay, I’ll behave. What’s the all-important business we have to discuss.”
“First, look at this file.”
Briefly skimming through the contents of a bulging manila folder, he saw numerous letters and jotted Post-it notes regarding phone calls from various Louisiana oil companies, including Valcour LeDeux’s own Cypress Oil. They dated back at least ten years but were heaviest the last year of his father’s life. All of them indicated a desire to purchase mineral rights or outright land from Charles Lanier.
“This is nothing new, Charmaine. I’ve been aware of their interest for a long time. Dieu, just since you’ve been here, there’s been phone calls and letters, directed at me this time. Apparently, they aren’t aware yet that you own half the ranch since the probate papers haven’t been filed.”
“Yes, but don’t you see? There’s a pattern here. Increasing pressure on your father to sell. Getting you out of the way. Your father conveniently dying. It’s worth investigating, don’t you think?”
“I suppose so. Actually, I’ve discussed this to some extent with Zerby . . . my suspicions about the oil pressures. But you’re right, sweetheart, he needs to see the file, as well.” He smiled at her. “Now, can we have sex?”
“No, that was the least of the business I have to discuss with you.” She handed him a boot box, her eyes misting with tears, which caused him to go on immediate alert. “Maybe now you’ll be a little less hard on your dad for all his years of neglect.”
Hesitantly, he took off the lid. Inside were dozens of letters. Maybe even a hundred of them. All still sealed. All with a return address for Charles Lanier, Triple L Ranch. All addressed to him. All of them stamped MAIL REFUSED, except for the most recent ones sent to the state pen, which were marked UNDELIVERABLE, whatever that meant. Some of the letters were more than twenty-five years old and some as recent as a year ago, according to the post office marks.
His heart suddenly started racing, and, yeah, his eyes were burning with unshed tears, too. It took all his self-control to get his emotions banked. Later, he would read the letters, every single one of them, and perhaps finally get some clue to his dad’s behavior.
But there were other things to consider regarding these undelivered letters. “That sorry bitch!” he said, referring to his mother, and “Those bastards!” referring to whatever miscreant at the prison had been paid off by the oil scumbags to deny him mail.
“There’s more, baby,” she said. “I’ve given you the bad news. Well, good and bad. Now, here’s the really good news.” She laid a yellow manila envelope in his lap.
He arched his eyebrows at her in question.
“Go on. You’ll be happy.”
He doubted that. Still, he opened the envelope and out spilled a pigload of savings bonds.
“There’s fifty thousand dollars there.” Charmaine was practically jumping up and down with glee.
Hell, he felt like jumping up and down with glee. “What does it mean?”
“It means yesterday wasn’t such a bad day after all.”
He looked at her and said huskily, “I already knew that last night.”
“Oh, you!” she said, blushing prettily.
Charmaine blushing? Man, I’d like to see that more often.
She plopped herself back on his lap, and he swiveled them around a few times.
“This is just the jump start I need to get this ranch back on its feet,” he said.
“Uh, hold the train, cowboy,” Charmaine said, putting a foot down to the floor to stop the swiveling. “Half of that bounty is mine. So I have a say in how it would be used.”
He had to admit it, he’d forgotten. But that didn’t matter. “It’s to your advantage, too, to have the ranch prosper. Oh, I see. You want your half to get the Mafia off your back.”
“Not necessarily.” She drew each of the words out slowly, while she batted her eyelashes at him.
Raoul knew from past experience to be wary when Charmaine batted her eyelashes.
She jumped off his lap, pulled over a straight-backed, wooden chair, and sat down facing him, knee to knee. “I have some ideas about how we can turn the ranch around.”
Whoa! There are a whole lot of red flags in that one little sentence. Like “ideas”, like “we” and like “turn the ranch around.” But he wasn’t all that concerned. This was Charmaine. She knew zippo about running a ranch. Hell, she barely knew a cow from a bull.
“Okay, I’m all ears, darlin’,” he said.
“You know that the price of cattle is volatile. There are very few ranchers anymore who make a profit from beef alone. So, I was thinking . . .” She paused in a ta-da fashion. “How about ostriches?”
“Huh?” He sat up straighter. She couldn’t possibly be suggesting . . . “What about ostriches?”
“Let’s buy a bunch and raise them here. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Rusty. I did some research yesterday on the Internet, and the city restaurants are buying up specialty meats like that for huge prices . . . maybe ten times the price per pound of beef.”
“Have you lost your friggin’ mind?” he practically shouted. “This is a cattle ranch. You don’t run cattle and ostriches together.”
“We could run a fence across the midd
le of your . . . uh, spread . . . is that what you call it?”
“A fence across the middle of my spread? I repeat, have you lost your friggin’ mind?”
“You won’t even think about it?”
He could see the hurt on her face, but dammit, why was she interfering in his business? Oh, he knew she owned half, but she should let him run the place. “No, I won’t even think about it.”
“Not even if it could save the ranch?”
“Charmaine,” he said with as much patience as he could garner, “if I were going to sell out what this ranch has always represented, I could just give it lock, stock, and barrel to the oil companies. Let them rip it all up, and I could retire in style. Is that what you want me to do?”
She lifted her chin haughtily, and, for sure, she was offended now. “You know how I feel about my father and what he did to the bayou by drilling on our lands. All my life I’ve fought the stigma of what he did. My brothers feel the same way. How could you even suggest that I would want such a thing?”
“I’m sorry. I knew that. You just surprised me with that ostrich nonsense.”
She nodded her acceptance of his apology, though he could tell she didn’t like the “nonsense” reference.
“Actually, I was pretty sure you would say no to the ostriches, and it was my second-best idea, anyway. My first idea is really good. Wanna hear?”
What could he say? “Sure.”
“A dude ranch,” she said bluntly.
He closed his eyes and counted to ten.
“To be more specific, a beauty spa dude ranch.”
He decided to count to twenty.
“Oh, Rusty, have an open mind about this. We could hire some real hunky cowboys . . . you know, cover model types, but they would have to be ranch hands, too. Well, they would have to at least be able to ride a horse.”
“Hunky cowboys?” he sputtered.
“Women would flock here in droves.”
“Yep, I really want a flock of females running amongst the cattle. They’d spook ’em for sure.”
“They could ride horses. Once they’ve taken riding lessons, of course.”
“Who would be giving riding lessons?”
“And we could turn that big shed into a spa, complete with whirlpools and saunas and massage tables. Not to mention hairstyling stations.”
“And where would we be parking the tractors and hay wagons, once you take over the shed?”
She waved a hand dismissively as if that were a minor point. “Rachel could come up and design the whole thing, Feng Shui style. Wouldn’t that be great?”
She wants to Feng Shui a shed. Have I died and gone to Bayou Bedlam? What he said was, “Just great!”
Charmaine missed the sarcasm, though, because she barreled ahead, “I researched dude ranches on the Internet, too. Guess what some of these places charge per person for one week? Five thousand dollars. And I figure we could handle a dozen guests at one time, especially if we put an addition on the bunkhouse.”
Five thousand dollars! That got his attention. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Really. And this fifty thousand dollars could be the seed money we need for starting such a project.” She pointed to the pile of bonds on the desk.
“Charmaine,” he started to say, prepared to let her down easy.
“Don’t decide now. Think about it.”
He took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. He couldn’t let her get her hopes up. “It’s not going to happen, Charmaine.”
“It’s a good idea,” she argued.
“It’s a dumb idea.”
Her nostrils flared and she practically breathed fire. “Dumb? Why? Because it came from me?”
“Yeah. Maybe. You don’t know anything about running a ranch, whether it’s cattle or sheep or freakin’ dude cowgirls.” He tried to calm himself down, to refrain from saying the things he would have said to a man standing before him.
“Oh, yeah! Well, I know a hell of a lot more than you do about running a business. And don’t you dare bring up the loan shark. That was a blip on my success radar. I have built and expanded two businesses from scratch. And they’re successful, you thickheaded idiot.”
“They’re beauty parlors, Charmaine. There’s a big difference between teasing hair and castrating a cow.”
He stood.
She stood, too.
Nose to nose now, she seethed at him. “They are both businesses. And if there’s one thing I know in this world, it’s how to run a business.”
He pulled at his own hair and yelled, “They’re not the same!”
“You know what? You don’t respect my talents at all, do you? You think a woman like me couldn’t have a bleepin’ intelligent idea in her empty head if she tried. You think I was a bimbo, am a bimbo, and will always be a bimbo.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to,” she said on a sob. Then, pivoting on her heels, she stormed out of the office. They probably heard the door slam all the way to Lafayette.
Raoul sank down to the chair with a long sigh. I came in here thinking I might get lucky and nab a little swivel chair sex. What just happened?
You-know-who had the answer, of course. You ever seen that movie Dumb and Dumber? Yoo-hoo, Academy Awards! I have a nomination for Dumbest.
Chapter 12
And that’s no bull . . .
Midmorning, they delivered the seven prime bulls he’d bought on credit yesterday. The only difference was that yesterday he hadn’t been sure how he would pay for the necessary additions to his herd; today he knew he had a little leeway in his financial morass.
Jimmy was off working on his correspondence school exams. It took every bit of strength and a lot of cursing for him, Clarence, Linc, the delivery driver, and his helper to get the bulls out of the truck and into the pens set aside for them. Bulls were a stubborn breed, by nature. The only thing more stubborn in his opinion was Charmaine in a snit, which she was now as she strolled by on the way to the henhouse with Tante Lulu, both of them carrying egg baskets.
“Hubba hubba!” the driver said.
“Sonofagun!” the other guy said.
He wasn’t sure if they were exclaiming over Tante Lulu in her cat suit with her bright red curls, or Charmaine still wearing her so-tight-I-can’t-breathe stretch pants and the DON’T TANGLE WITH ME shirt. They were both equally outrageous and loving every bit of it. There was a time when Raoul would have been outraged over some guy drooling over Charmaine. Not anymore. He supposed he had mellowed over the years.
Or maybe I just don’t care.
Nah! I care.
He assumed he wasn’t getting a repeat of last night’s action anytime soon, though.
Well, so be it. If it took a dude ranch to get back in Charmaine’s good graces, he was S.O.L.
They finally got the seven bulls settled in their new surrounding, separated from the females of the species for now. No sense starting a stampede on the first day. Especially that one bull. With the size of his . . . uh, wee-wee, girl cows were going to take one gander, yell, “How’s it hanging, big boy?” and hot foot it off to Texas.
He was leaning against the fence rail smiling at his own joke when Charmaine and Tante Lulu passed by on their return trip, both baskets half-full of eggs. He decided to be a nice guy and ignore Charmaine’s snotty attitude. “Hey, Charmaine. Wanna name one of the bulls for me?”
She gave him a haughty once over without stopping and said, “Up yours.”
He laughed. “Uh, I don’t think that’s a good bull’s name.”
“Bullshit!”
“Lots better.”
Linc and Clarence whooped it up with laughter on either side of him. Tante Lulu chirped in with, “Definitely lost his mojo! Name my bull! Is that the best you can do? Talk about!”
Once Charmaine and Tante Lulu were back in the house, he turned to Clarence and said, “She wants to turn the Triple L into a dude ranch.”
Clarence’s jaw dr
opped open, and he almost lost the wad in his cheek.
“She wants me to hire hunky cowboys to take the female guests out riding and roping cattle and stuff.”
“I’m kind of hunky,” Linc said. The amazing thing was, he wasn’t even smiling as he said it. When Raoul and Clarence just gawked at him, Linc added defensively, “Some women have called me a hunk.”
“How long ago was that?” Raoul asked with a laugh.
“Not that long ago,” Linc proclaimed.
“Well, I doan think I’ve ever been hunky,” Clarence said dolefully. “Doan get me wrong. I got plenty of action in the bedsheets in my day, unlike some folks I know.” He looked pointedly at Raoul. “But I doan recall any wimmen callin’ me a hunk. Does that mean I’m gonna get fired?”
“No one’s getting fired. I just thought you’d like to know why Charmaine’s having a hissy fit. We better get back to work now.”
As they walked away, Linc asked Clarence, “How does my butt look from back there? I did lots of squats when I was in prison. That helps a lot.”
“I doan give a squat how many squats you did,” Clarence said. “You are not a hunk.”
“I don’t know about that,” Linc persisted. “Having a good butt is the first requirement for a hunk. I think.”
“Hah! If thass the case, I might as well give up now. I lost my butt about 1982. Jist started saggin’ one day, and before I knew it, kaplooey! It was gone.”
“You can buy underwear with padding in the ass area,” Linc told Clarence.
“Really?” Unbelievably, Clarence appeared interested.
Maybe men are really as dumb as women claim we are. “I only said that Charmaine suggested a dude ranch,” Raoul tried to explain, “not that it would ever happen.”
But nobody listened to him. Clarence and Linc had moved on to discussing the pros and cons of putting a sock in the crotch of their jockey shorts. A bulge was apparently a definite hunk requirement.
Aaarrgh! He and St. Jude both thought that at the same time. Scary, huh?
And then the big boys arrived . . .
