by Virna DePaul
I frowned at the news that she was going to lose her place due to financial struggles. “Miss Cecily, I—”
“Here,” she said, interrupting me and jabbing the necklace in my direction. “You wear this, always.”
I eyed the pendant. “Does that turn me into a frog?” I joked.
“Don’ be disrespectful. No, this here is to help you see.” She placed it in my hands.
“I’ve never had a problem with my vision,” I said absently, noticing how the stone warmed in my palm.
“Silly boy. It’s not your eyes that need help. You need help seeing through the black veil of your past and into the future.”
I thought better of making a joke about seeing into the future and winning the PowerBall. Somehow I didn’t think Miss Cecily would take kindly to that response to her gesture of friendship. I wasn’t sure what she meant by seeing through the black veil of my past, exactly, but…
The last time I’d seen a black veil was at my parents’ funeral. Multiple veils, actually. Both my grans and all my great aunts wore them over their hats as they stood at the newly thawed earth, opened up to accept my parents’ graves in the family plot.
I realized Miss Cecily was still staring fixedly at me. Was she waiting for me to put it around my neck? I held up the pendant. “So, can I keep it in my pocket?”
She frowned. “It won’t do no good like that. To help you see, it needs to be close to the heart. I guarantee that.”
Shrugging, I took the pendant and slipped it around my neck. “Hope this works.”
“I do, too,” she muttered. “I do, too. Now, don’t you worry about what I said about losing this place. Life, it’s always changing. You’d better hurry on up if you’re gonna get on that boat of Aimee’s. You are gonna go sit in on her tour, aren’t you, young man?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Aimee
Spanish moss hung from the tupelo trees, where birds perched and squawked out their displeasure at the crowd of people boarding the tour boat, which rocked as a few latecomers clambered aboard. I’d arrived too late to go through the boarding process, but the boat’s captain had taken care of getting the consent forms filled and seating the tourists while I’d been in the employee break room putting on my uniform. I took my position at the front of the boat and grabbed the palm-sized microphone. “Welcome to Gator Ventures. Please keep all arms and legs inside the boat,” I said, starting the same spiel that I’d said a hundred times before as the boat captain revved up the motor and headed us up the bayou.
In front of me, little kids were already bouncing up and down in their seats, old women with bored expressions on their faces were fanning at themselves with the brochure, and guys already tipsy this early in the morning were betting on how big a gator they’d see. It was the usual set up, and I was the one charged with maintaining order in the middle of all of it. The boat captain had his job, but wrangling the humans was my job and was harder than steering around marshland and predators beneath the water.
A boy who looked no older than ten in a Digimon t-shirt tried to lean over the boat already, and I sighed and wiped at the sweat on the back of my neck. “Ma’am, please be careful with your son. Gators don’t jump into the boat, but you need to be very, very careful. You can’t stick your hands in the water. It won’t be safe, unless you want to bring back a stump.”
“Well, I don’t think I’ll worry too much about that,” a familiar voice drawled, and I immediately gaped, as big mouthed as the bass printed on the drunk tourist’s t-shirt. “I always follow the orders of a pretty lady.”
“Corbin.” His name came out a whisper, without me even knowing I’d said it into the microphone until I heard the echo in the speakers.
He looked good in jeans that hugged his lean, muscular thighs, and a t-shirt that accentuated his pecs. His eyes were still like liquid pulls of chocolate, still urging me to fall into them, to stare at them for as long as I could. Fifty minutes ago I’d been staring at him in the same mindless way, only then he’d been naked. My mouth went dry when the mental picture of Corbin’s insanely sexy and oh so naked body appeared in my mind’s eye.
Swallowing hard, I forced myself to look back at the annoyance of little David. “It’s very dangerous. Just because there’s nothing stirring right now doesn’t mean right below the water it’s not a whole new ball game.”
Corbin smirked at me, a look so inviting and sexy that it should be illegal. “But I’m feeling lucky and safe. I think if we have the best tour guide in the county with us, then nothing bad can happen.”
The crowd nodded and gave me a weak but polite round of applause, the kind you had to give the guests your principal announced at school assemblies. It wasn’t overwhelming appreciation, but at least everyone seemed settled and ready to listen to me. That was a plus. It could have been an unrulier group, Corbin aside. The hardest days were those when school groups came. I practically had coronaries hoping that two dozen fifth graders or high school kids or whoever didn’t come back from a tour missing a few limbs. Talk about anxiety-inducing.
As soon as I opened my bake shop and was bringing in a profit, I could quit. Earl would have no problem finding a replacement.
As we chugged down the narrow channel and I droned on about Latin names and the difference between caimans, crocodiles, and alligators, I couldn’t help but eye Corbin. His short cropped brown hair looked imminently touchable and his brown eyes were soft and inviting and his scruff of a beard looked like it would be oh so fun to shave. Suddenly, I noticed the cord around his neck, and the crystal hanging from it. That belonged to Miss Cecily—I knew because she’d show it to me sometimes. Each time she’d tell a story about how her husband, who’d passed long ago, had worn it before they were married. She’d said it helped him to see.
Had she gifted it to Corbin? I frowned. Had to be, but that was so weird. She’d never given me a gift, or given one to Lisa as far as I knew. If she was letting Corbin rent from her and was giving him gifts, then clearly she saw something in the man.
I knew what I saw—a sexy stranger who could play the hell out of the bass guitar, someone who could tell right away about my dreams and desires with baking, a man who it seemed was kind and caring to Miss Cecily…a guy who’d given his own towel to make me comfortable. I wanted to know more. I wanted to know why on earth he would want to spend time in Pontmaison, which at the moment was stifling hot. Corbin, however, seemed as cool as a cucumber in a creek. Humph. Pulling my hair back as best I could with a barrette, I wished I’d cut it shorter for the summer. The thick swamp air was suffocating me, the sun was beating down on my back, and the sweat was dripping under my t-shirt and down the skin of my back.
“Anyway,” I said, as we continued. “Who here knows that alligators are ancient predators? We’re talking about animals that predate some of your favorite dinosaurs,” I added, nodding toward David.
The kid had been playing with his mom’s phone until that moment. Then he gaped back at me with eyes as big as saucers. Grinning, I nodded again. I loved that. Those moments where kids, especially, were tuned in were few and far between, but David seemed like he was watching a tennis match as he craned his head between me and the dark recesses of the swamp.
“Are you serious?” An older woman in a t-shirt decorated by a bald eagle glared at me. “Now I don’t want to hear none of that evolution nonsense here. I signed on for this tour to see me some gators and not to hear about that ridiculousness about us and monkeys.”
“Ma’am,” I said, searching around for something to say to respond respectfully to her views and yet still keeping with the scientific information the tour guides were supposed to repeat. “I’m sorry if I’ve—”
“I don’t want to hear any argument,” she argued, seemingly not to notice the irony. Suddenly she started to stand. The boat shook from the redistribution of weight. She wasn’t heavy, but it was hard to stand in a boat and moving things around even a little could set our whole balance off.
“You really need to sit,” I insisted. “If you recall, part of the safety rules you agreed to before getting on the boat is to avoid standing. You could get pitched—”
Too late. Off she went, over the side.
I rushed to the side as the older woman floundered in the dark water. The captain cut the motor. The rest of the boat started to get up from their seats, but I held up my hands. “Nobody get up. We can’t have everyone trying to stand or we’ll capsize,” I said, moving to the front of the boat. The instructions for the tour guides in case anyone ever was daft enough to fall out of the boat was to throw the person a life saver and haul them back in the boat. I wasn’t all that sure I had the strength to get her back over the lip, though.
“He’s going in!” the kid, David, hollered.
Confused, I turned around and watched, horrified, as Corbin jumped into the water.
No way. He’s nuts!
I noticed my captain was leaning out the window, staring at the commotion instead of helping, and shouted, “Call it in! We have two overboard!” as I grabbed the life saver on a rope and rushed for the back of the boat, ready to throw it to whomever was closest. Looking down, I watched as Corbin slid up behind the woman and dragged her back to the boat. She was coughing so hard I was worried she’d hack up a lung or, worse, swallowed swamp water. That was dangerous. All sorts of parasites lived in it. Bald eagle lady could be sick for weeks.
Tossing the rope into the water, I waited until she had her hands situated over it. Then Corbin pushed while treading water as two guys from the tour and I yanked as hard as we could. As a team, we were able to help get her back onboard. I threw out the life saver again and wanted to scream when I noticed a distinct ripple slithering through the water.
“Hurry! Corbin grab it!”
Frowning, he looked behind himself and gripped the rope hard. Together, the two guys and I tugged hard. Corbin came up over the lip. “Pull hard!” I shouted, seeing the snout of what had to be a twelve-foot gator break the surface a few yards behind Corbin.
The guys pulled, Corbin hefted himself up so his torso was over the lip of the boat, and I gave one last hard tug. Like the night before, Corbin and I ended up in a heap on the bottom of the boat. This time, instead of tangled up in chairs and with a bar full of people gaping at us, we were tangled up in rope and had the full and riveted attention of an entire boat of tourists.
But Corbin was alive.
Gazing at him, his face close to mine and dripping wet, I felt my body start to shake. He’d had a close call—that gator had been a big one. The source of last night’s fantasies could have been a gator snack in an instant. And that bothered me more than it should.
“Hey, you,” he said softly, not making a move to get up.
I couldn’t help it. I smiled. “Hey, you,” I whispered back. Then I frowned and sat straight up, glaring at Corbin. “Why would you do something so foolish? You could have been killed!”
“He saved me!” the woman shrieked happily. The boat burst into applause. Cell phones were pointed in his direction, but Corbin had an arm up to cover his face.
“No pictures, please,” he said a little gruffly as he came to standing. “I’d rather not have all the fuss. Anyone would have done the same thing.”
No. Not anyone. No one else had made a move to help the woman, in fact. But Corbin had. Now he didn’t even want the accolades. Or maybe…I cocked my head and watched him for a moment. The captain had brought out a few beach towels, and I noticed Corbin was using his towel to shield himself from one of the tourists who was still trying to take his picture.
I’d had a lot of unanswered questions about Corbin last night, and now I had two additional questions to ponder: what was he hiding, and who was he that he’d risk life and limb for a complete stranger?
CHAPTER NINE
Aimee
Diving into the bayou had done a number on Corbin’s clothes and hot body. The man needed a shower, and bad. And to have his clothes washed, if not downright burned. At least Earl had let me off work early, shutting down the tours for the day after the accident. Corbin had followed me in his car back to Miss Cecily’s. We’d get that boy cleaned up, but good.
And after that?
My body practically hummed at the thought of him. Even smelling like a swamp, he could set me on fire.
“See,” I said, turning on the overhead light and easing my way down the steep steps. “You have to really know where you’re going in Miss Cecily’s basement. I have this theory it hasn’t been cleaned out since the Civil War.” I emphasized my point by stepping around a set of shelves stuffed high with jars of a variety of herbs.
Whistling, Corbin kept following me, barely avoiding a collision with her supply shelf in the dim, flickering light. “She has quite the supply set, doesn’t she?” Before I could reply, he added, “That voodoo stuff, it’s not real, right?”
“Now that I can’t answer,” I said. “But I’ve always tried to be respectful of Miss Cecily’s beliefs, whatever they may be. You can’t know her and not love her. But she is a powerful force, that’s for sure. She commands respect.”
I continued down the hall and came to the far corner where an ancient washer and dryer lay. The outside of the dryer was rusted on the bottom and, frankly, I had an idea they were older than I was. They got the job done, but sometimes I had to run my laundry over again in order to make sure it got dry. I’d once lost a load of whites assuming they’d been fully dried. A late shift and a twenty-four-hour delay revealed otherwise. By the time I retrieved them, they had smelled like mildew even after two additional runs through the washer. I’d had to throw in a half-bottle of vinegar to kill the smell, finally.
“She did say something about this, uh…necklace, I guess you’d call it, when she gave it to me,” Corbin said. “Claimed it would help me see beyond old black veils, or something like that. That sounded a bit, you know, woo-woo.”
I laughed. “Woo-woo? Who says that? And it’s a talisman, not a necklace. No, I promise you, no matter what some of the people in Pontmaison say, she doesn’t do stuff like make potions or poke dolls with needles. Although I think she gets a kick out of it when any of the Lamell family crosses the street to walk on the other side when they see her coming down the walk. Superstitious lot, them.” Even Tallulah, bless her heart, shivered when Miss Cecily came along.
An idea struck me—if Brad asked me to Tallulah’s wedding again, I’d tell him I’d go with him so long as I could bring Miss Cecily. He’d retract his invitation in a second.
Corbin pointed to a row of neatly stacked jars, filled to the brim with a variety of dried herbs. “So what’s all that for? I know,” he added quickly, “no woo-woo stuff.”
“She has an extensive herb garden she still maintains. She harvests and dries the herbs, and sells them online to gourmet markets. Packages them up and either Lisa or I ship them out for her. I use quite a few of her products for my baking, too. Dried lavender for my lavender cupcakes, sage for my bacon and sage biscuits, and anise when I make my own licorice. I love using her ingredients.”
“Of course you would,” he said gently. “Because she cared for the plants with love. And you only put love into your cooking.”
Again, Corbin had shocked me with his observation, both of me and of Miss Cecily. “I guess you’re right.”
Shrugging, he pulled off his soaked t-shirt and shoved it into the washer. Before I could regain my breath at seeing him shirtless, he said, “And you love Miss Cecily, too. That’s pretty clear.”
“True,” I said absently as he stripped off his jeans. Focus, Aimee, I reminded myself. Focus. “That’s probably another reason I live out here. She makes me feel…” I wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence, not even sure where I was going with the thought. She makes me feel safe? Loved? Wanted? Did Miss Cecily, even in her distinctly old age, somehow provide a mother figure that I’d yearned for when my own mother couldn’t give it to me? I twisted my lips to the side, letting t
he thought sink into me, then noticed Corbin was staring at me intently, jeans still in his hand, boxer-briefs molded around his—
I jerked my gaze upright. “Sorry,” I muttered. “Got a little lost in thought, there.”
“I got the impression from Miss Cecily that you were living out here because you needed your space from the town. Something about people judging you about some sort of a secret.”
I blanched. This flirtation with a near stranger was fun, and I was becoming more and more open to the idea of a harmless summer fling with Corbin, but I didn’t much want him knowing my family’s dirty laundry. Corbin would be in town for two months and then gone. During that time, I wanted to be just Aimee, the girl from the bar, his housemate, and maybe his bedmate. I didn’t want to be Aimee Bodine, daughter of the town’s drunken floozy who abandoned her daughter every time she found a new musician to let use her up and toss her aside.
“Hey,” he said quickly, tossing the jeans in the washer, “no worries. She didn’t say anything other than that. And I’m all for not digging into secrets. I won’t ask. Not my business.” He held up both hands in front of him, palms out, a placating gesture. “And about that judgment thing? You’re incredibly hardworking, passionate about your cooking, and you look out for an elderly woman whom you obviously love. If anyone judges you, they’d be stupid.”
What he said touched me, maybe more than it should. But I didn’t respond. How could I? What would I say?
Corbin let my silence settle as he pulled off his socks. I handed him a towel I’d found in the dryer. I should have turned my back, given the man some decency as he tugged off his boxer-briefs, but instead I watched, admiring his muscled thighs, tight abs leading to a v, right above his cock, which I’d already seen this morning and wanted desperately to see again.
