Sweet Home Louisiana

by Erin Nicholas

  Maddie didn’t think the girl had said “boats” with any innuendo, but Maddie heard it that way and curled her hand into a fist. She couldn’t slap a customer. That would be really bad.

  “Yeah, their boats are nice and big,” Natalie agreed with a giggle.

  Okay, so she had meant the innuendo. The strength of the jealousy that ripped through Maddie shocked her. But there was no denying it. The idea that one of these girls had even touched Owen made Maddie see red.

  In the back of her mind, it registered that maybe she should feel weird about their intimate knowledge of her brother as well, but really her desire to punch someone in the nose was all about Owen.

  Punching her would still be bad, but Maddie wasn’t going to be here in a couple more weeks, so maybe the harm wouldn’t be that great…

  “Well—” Kennedy looked at Maddie. “Do you want to tell them or should I?”

  Maddie saw the twinkle in Kennedy’s eye. Kennedy was going to keep these girls off of Josh and Owen’s boats, but she was giving Maddie the chance to be the one to come up with how. She really loved this girl.

  Okay, maybe she didn’t need to punch anyone.

  Maddie sighed and nodded, trying to look sorry. “We can definitely book you on one of their tours, but I think we should be honest with you—you know, between us girls.”

  Lacey looked at her. “Honest about what?”

  “Well, for one thing, Tommy isn’t here anymore,” Maddie said. Her heart clenched as she said it.

  “Oh, he quit?” Natalie asked, with a tiny frown.

  Maddie nodded. That was a lot better story for them. She wasn’t going to tell these girls what had really happened. “Yeah, he’s not with the company anymore.”

  Kennedy shifted on the tall stool and Maddie knew she was uncomfortable.

  “And Josh is married,” Maddie said, rushing to change the subject from Tommy’s absence.

  “He’s married?” Lacey asked. “Really?”

  Well, close enough. Maddie nodded. “Madly in love. Met her about two months after he met you and she just erased all other women from his heart and memory.”

  All completely true.

  Lacey frowned and looked at Natalie. “Sorry, Nat.”

  Ah, so Natalie was the one who’d been friendly with Josh. Which meant Lacey had been Owen’s “friend” for the weekend.

  Maddie hated her.

  It was sudden and an overreaction and kind of ridiculous. She had no claim on Owen. But…she didn’t want him to be with anyone else, either. At least until she went back to San Francisco and could pretend that he wasn’t with anyone else. And where she definitely didn’t have women requesting she make it easier for them to entice him back to their hotel rooms.

  “What about Owen?” Natalie asked.

  “Oh, Owen.” Maddie gave Kennedy a look and they both shook their heads sadly. “Well, you could hook up with Owen but I would definitely not go back to his place,” she said, thinking quickly.

  “Why not?” Lacey asked.

  “Rats,” Maddie said.

  Lacey’s eyes grew round. Maddie nodded. “Yeah, he’s got a rat problem. It’s probably because he never does dishes or anything. Total pig.”

  “Oh…wow.”

  “Thankfully he’s now symptom-free.”

  “Symptom-free?” Lacey asked. “What symptoms?”

  “From the typhoid fever.”

  Kennedy had just taken a drink of her soda and immediately started coughing.

  6

  “Typhoid fever?” Lacey repeated.

  Kennedy hit herself in the chest trying to stop coughing, and Maddie struggled to keep a straight face. She knew nothing about typhoid fever. For all she knew, it had been eradicated with small pox. But she was gambling on Lacey and Natalie not knowing anything about it, either.

  “Yeah. From the rats,” she said. “But he’s better now. He’d probably be up for some fun in New Orleans.”

  “Oh, wow, I don’t know,” Lacey said quickly. She straightened. “That’s all too bad. Him getting sick and stuff. He was a great guy.”

  He was. Still was, in fact. And Maddie knew she should feel guilty about all of this. But she didn’t.

  Of course, she had to hope that Owen wouldn’t find out about this. Which meant keeping Lacey and Natalie from seeing him until their tour with Sawyer left. The girls might just avoid him. But he might recognize them. If they’d spent the kind of time together Lacey and Natalie had implied, Maddie sure as hell hoped he’d recognize them. And what if he did? What if he invited them to stay or invited himself to New Orleans for a repeat? And then the girls would have to turn him down. Which would make no sense unless they told him why. Then not only would he want to know why Maddie had lied about the illness, but he might convince the girls it wasn’t true and still end up in one of their beds. Or in a bed with them both since Josh wasn’t an option. Or he might figure out why she’d lied. Because she wanted him.

  Maddie forced herself to take a deep breath. She was freaking out over nothing. Owen was out with another tour and should be back after these boats left. Then she’d either send him out on another before they got back, or she’d find something for him to do in the office. Or at Cora’s house. Yeah, he could…clean the gutters at Cora’s house. Gutters always needed cleaned out. And those gutters were several blocks from here.

  Was she actually coming up with ways to hide Owen from other women?

  Yes, yes she was.

  “Okay, so I guess we’re with Sawyer?” Natalie asked.

  “Oh, Sawyer,” Maddie said, putting a little gushing into her tone. It wasn’t hard. Sawyer was great, too. Of course, he was not really himself right now. He hadn’t been for almost nine months. But maybe a couple of pretty girls flirting with him would help. “Now he’s amazing.”

  “Yeah?” Lacey asked.

  Sawyer was a big guy. Bigger than the others. Taller, broader, bigger hands and feet. She could only assume the rest of him matched. “Talk about a big…boat,” Maddie said with a nod.

  Kennedy started choking again, whacking her chest.

  Oh yeah, he was her brother. Maddie grinned. Oops. “Sorry,” she muttered.

  “Is this Sawyer?” Natalie asked, pointing to a photo of the four guys, their arms around each other, that hung on the wall next to the computer.

  “Yep.”

  “Nice.” Natalie studied the photo for a moment, then turned back to face Lacey. “Yeah, very nice.”

  “Okay, then. We’ll go with Sawyer,” Lacey said.

  Maddie resisted rolling her eyes. Great, Sawyer had passed their test. “Great.” She held out the wristbands and the girls presented their arms. She clipped them on and pointed. “Right through there. You can wait out on the benches. Should just be a few more minutes.”

  They had just stepped through the doorway into the gift shop when Kennedy started laughing. “Oh my God, that was hilarious.”

  Maddie grimaced. “Pathetic is the word you’re looking for, I believe.” She covered her face with her hands. “Why did I do that?”

  “Because you were super jealous and wanted to stake your claim but couldn’t just come out and say ‘he’s mine’, so clearly you had to give him a communicable disease to keep the women away instead.” Kennedy nodded. “Makes total sense.”

  “Is typhoid communicable?” Maddie asked.

  Kennedy shrugged. “I mean…probably?”

  Maddie glanced toward the door the girls had gone through. “I guess as long as they think so.” Kennedy started laughing again and Maddie groaned. “Ugh, why does he make me crazy?”

  “Hey, there was no lighter fluid this time. I think you’re getting better.”

  Maddie shook her head. “Still.”

  Kennedy’s laughter faded but she was still grinning as she leaned in. “You’re not crazy, you know.”

  Maddie gave a short laugh. “Oh, I don’t know that at all.”

  “If I had the one and only bowl of Cora’s jam
balaya in the world and someone came walking in here and tried to take it away from me, I’d grab it out of their hands and yell ‘mine!’ too. That’s not crazy.”

  Maddie felt her heart flip but she teased, “You’re comparing Owen to a big bowl of jambalaya?”

  Kennedy widened her eyes. “Excuse me? I’m saying he’s like the only bowl of the best jambalaya in the world.”

  Maddie laughed. “Okay, I apologize.”

  “And,” Kennedy said, sitting back on the stool and propping her feet on the counter. “If I hadn’t had Cora’s jambalaya in twelve years? I’d be diving into it headfirst and not coming up for weeks.” She grabbed a magazine off the stack to her right and flipped it open. As if she hadn’t just essentially told Maddie that she should be diving into Owen.

  Maddie swallowed hard. “You’re making jambalaya a euphemism for sex?”

  She shook her head. “Owen is the jambalaya. The idea of stuffing yourself full of it is the sex euphemism.”

  Maddie started choking and Kennedy started laughing.

  “Oh my God, that’s your cousin!” Maddie said, her eyes watering slightly.

  Kennedy nodded. “This is what happens when you grow up around all guys. I’m very inappropriate and slightly disgusting a lot of the time.”

  Maddie leaned over and hugged Kennedy around the neck. “You’re awesome and I missed you.”

  Kennedy actually sniffed slightly at that. “Ditto.”

  Maddie pulled back and took a breath. “I shouldn’t claim Owen is mine,” she finally said, seriously. “That’s not fair. I’m not staying and it’s been a long time.”

  “Well,” Kennedy said, laying the magazine on her legs. “The way I look at it is, if I can’t have that jambalaya all the time, then I’m sure as hell gonna enjoy it when I can. And…the jambalaya deserves to be appreciated by the person who truly loves it, right?”

  “Jambalaya probably doesn’t have feelings about the people eating it,” Maddie said. But she knew what Kennedy was saying.

  “Well, a comparison between a guy and jambalaya is bound to break down at some point,” Kennedy told her. “But you don’t really want me to go into a whole thing about putting it in your mouth and swallowing, do you?”

  Maddie instantly felt her cheeks heat. “Oh my God, Kennedy!” But a second later she was laughing.

  “I’m just sayin’, you do not spit jambalaya out, you know?” Kennedy’s grin was huge…and evil.

  “You are—”

  “It’s downright sinful to even think about spitting jambalaya out.”

  They both swung toward the door at the sound of the deep male voice.

  “Owen!” Maddie squeaked.

  Kennedy smirked. “I knew you’d feel that way,” she said to Owen.

  “Why the hell would someone think about spitting it out?” he asked as he came into the office.

  Kennedy looked at Maddie. “Oh, I’m not worried. She’d swallow for sure.”

  Owen lifted a brow because, well, yeah, that sounded like they were talking about something else entirely. Which they were.

  Maddie’s cheeks burned hotter, and she forced her eyes to stay on his face rather than travel over his body. Kennedy was a terrible person. Maddie’s head was filled with dirty thoughts now. And she was hungry. For Owen.

  That wasn’t new. Her thinking about it in so much detail was. She’d been resisting that. Ignoring it. Distracting herself from it.

  Now Kennedy had put it all front and center. Along with a reassurance that Maddie feeling very much like claiming him as hers was completely fine.

  She wasn’t sure about that. But now she couldn’t get it out of her head.

  “You okay?” Owen asked her.

  Maddie realized she’d been staring at him. She shook herself. Then she truly realized that he was here. Shit. “What are you doing here? I thought you were out on a tour?”

  “Nope, I was up at Cora’s.”

  Maddie’s eyes widened. “Doing what?”

  “Cleaning her gutters out.”

  No. Way.

  “Headin’ out to the dock now to check on some stuff.”

  He started for the door and Maddie panicked. He couldn’t go out there until Lacey and Natalie left. Her hand shot out and she grabbed his sleeve. “Wait.”

  He looked back. “Yeah?”

  “I, um…need you.” Well, that was true enough. But she needed to keep her mind off of jambalaya. At least until she’d really had a chance to think it through and make a decision. One of the things she now prided herself on was being able to make rational plans and not act on only instinct and what felt good at the moment.

  Owen turned around to face her. “You okay?”

  For a second she hesitated, realizing that instead of making the “need you” dirty, he actually looked concerned. She nodded. “Yeah, I just…need to talk to you. Privately. In the office.”

  He frowned slightly. “Okay, let’s go.” He took a step toward the door behind her that would lead out onto the dock and around the side to the office door.

  Maddie pulled on his sleeve and turned him in the opposite direction. They could get to the office through either door. This was the long way, but it was also the non-Lacey way. Owen didn’t resist. He just followed her toward the other door, but Maddie kept her hold on his sleeve for some reason. Maybe it was to keep him from veering off course once they stepped outside. Or maybe it was that she liked touching him and this was a fairly innocuous way to do that. The fact that just having his sleeve in her hand made her feel a little warm and think about the hard muscles underneath that sleeve—and underneath the rest of his clothes—was ridiculous, but undeniable all the same.

  She cast Kennedy a glance as they passed the counter and got a thumbs-up in response.

  Yeah, she wasn’t sure it was a thumbs-up situation. But she didn’t want Owen to see his fling. Period. She wasn’t going to analyze it or worry about it. She was just going to keep him distracted until Sawyer’s boat left.

  “Dammit, Owen!”

  Speak of the devil. Sawyer banged into the office, clearly pissed.

  Owen sighed. He didn’t seem surprised. He turned. “What’s up?”

  “You were fishing on the north bank last night?”

  “I…was,” Owen said slowly. “How did you know?”

  Sawyer crossed his arms, his biceps bulging. “I found the poles and tackle down under the far dock.”

  The far dock was the least used one. The boats tied up there were mostly those that friends and family used personally.

  “Oh, shit, sorry,” Owen said.

  “What the fuck? At night?” Sawyer demanded. “There are cottonmouths down there.”

  Owen nodded again. “You’re right.”

  “Who was with you?”

  “No one. Just me.”

  “With three poles?” Sawyer asked.

  “Yeah,” Owen said. “But slow night. Didn’t catch much.”

  “Well, you’re lucky you’re not in the hospital with a snake bite or that you didn’t drown. Tell me the empty tequila bottle I found wasn’t full when you took it down there.”

  Owen took a deep breath. “Nope. ’Course not. Just had a couple of shots.”

  “Well, for fuck’s sake, use your head,” Sawyer said.

  “Yep. You got it. Sorry.”

  Sawyer stomped back out, slamming the door behind him.

  Kennedy gave a low whistle. “Damn. Good thing you’ve got those broad shoulders.”

  “Don’t know what you mean,” Owen said as he started for the door again.

  “The Benson kid and his two buddies were down there last night,” Kennedy said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m guessing, but I found his hoodie on one of the benches outside.”

  Owen frowned. “Well, when he comes in to get it, tell him that getting drunk in the dark where a bunch of cottonmouths live is pretty fucking stupid.”

  Kennedy nodded. “Will do.”
>
  Maddie was still frowning over the exchange as she pulled Owen out the door, around the far corner of the building, and into the office before she asked about it. She nudged him inside and shut the door behind them. Then, after only a second’s hesitation, she turned the lock. She didn’t want Lacey or Natalie getting lost and thinking this was the restroom or something.

  “Why do you do that?” she asked Owen, turning to face him.

  “Do what?”

  “Take the blame with Sawyer for stuff you didn’t do? That’s the third time I’ve seen it.”

  She hadn’t thought that much about it the first time. Sawyer had found one of the boats had half the amount of gas in it that it should have. Meaning someone had taken it out after hours. Owen had said it was him, and Sawyer had bitched about it, then they’d both gone on their way.

  The next time, she’d taken more of a note. Sawyer had been pissed about someone using the cabin and not cleaning it up—as evidenced by the empty beer cans and the trash that hadn’t been taken out when he’d gone out there to grab some boots or something. She hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the details, but she’d definitely noticed that Owen had again apologized for it, and Sawyer had again lectured him about safety and reminded him that he didn’t like the guys going off by themselves without anyone knowing where they were.

  Owen sighed. “How do you know it’s all stuff I didn’t do?”

  “You weren’t at the cabin the night he blamed you for leaving beer cans all over,” she said. “You were at Ellie’s when I went in there to get stuff from the kitchen.”

  “I could have gone out after that,” he said, tucking his hands in his pockets. And not making direct eye contact.

  Maddie crossed her arms. “Did you?”

  Owen blew out a breath. “No.”

  “So why did you tell Sawyer you did?”

  “Because it lets him bitch at someone, but keeps everyone else from being bitched at.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Ever since Tommy,” Owen said slowly. “Sawyer needs to…take care of people. He gets all knotted up when someone might be doing something that could be dangerous.”