Batiste

by Victoria Danann

  Batiste

  Cajun Devils MC

  Book 1

  Victoria Danann

  Copyright 2018 Victoria Danann

  Published by 7th House Publishing

  Imprint of Andromeda LLC

  Read more about this author and upcoming works at VictoriaDanann.com

  This warning is included at the request of preview readers If you have a personal history that could be triggered by reading about sexual abuse, please do not go further.

  WARNING: This is not your usual romance. Please be prepared. This love story takes a turn toward dark, intense, and gritty subject matter and could test your emotional fortitude.

  HERE ARE SOME OF THE ADJECTIVES AMAZON READERS HAVE USED IN REVIEWS:

  Romantic. Heartfelt. Raw. Emotional. Relentless. Perfect. Painfully human. Tenderness. Horror. Hysterical. Soulful. Tearful. Awesome. Amazing. Real and flawed.

  READERS ARE SAYING…

  “Hands down the best book of the year!”

  “…fought sleep trying to keep reading into the night.”

  “Bravo, Victoria. On the edge of my seat the entire time.”

  “My favorite MC book. Ever.”

  “I didn't read this, it played out scene by scene in my mind.”

  “Absolutely loved this book. Immediately re-read it.”

  A note to Victoria about Batiste.

  See, that's what gets me the most about your writing. Physically I feel the impact of needing to be IN THE STORY. Soul deep, that is how I react. And yes, sappy as it is, I want it for myself, to be a heroine with a real man willing to do anything for me, just as I would be willing to do anything for him. That is your power. And that is why I snot and bawl during and after each of your books. I don't see this changing for me in the future because I ‘doan’ see your talent or vision ever fading. So there. All puffy, red, and salty faced. When's the next story?

  Cajun History

  Between 1765 and 1785 the Acadians were expelled from Nova Scotia because of distrust caused by the war between New France and the thirteen British colonies. Not to mention that the British wanted no impediment to the appropriation of land.

  All the Acadia population didn’t end up in Louisiana. Some were sent to other British colonies. Louisiana made sense in a way because there was already a large French-speaking population. The French had maintained a presence there from 1682 onward.

  Cajuns continued to speak French, most of them exclusively, until the late 1940s. A postwar directive was activated to make Cajuns English speakers. That was largely accomplished by populating the schools with English-speaking teachers and punishing students for speaking French. It was a shock to children who had never heard any language other than French, but gradually English took hold.

  Today few Cajuns speak actual French, but many speak a unique dialect that is a curious combination of English and French. An interest in restoring the heritage has gathered support enough to import French teachers to the region in an effort to revive the language.

  In this book the Cajun characters spice up the dialogue by occasionally switching to French, Cajun French, or Cajun.

  What will he do to get her back? Anything.

  New York Times bestselling author, Victoria Danann, begins a new MC romance series spinning off SSMC.

  Take a journey into the exotic culture of bayou country in Louisiana's Lafayette and Acadia parishes. Cajun beauty, Angelique Bellefeuille, has had enough of bikers and their bullshit. Being put in danger because of her father's motorcycle club makes that conclusion rock hard solid.

  When she's sent to an allied club for protection from a rival club, she's reunited with her childhood friend, Just Batiste. Only he's not the cute, fun, adventurous kid she remembers. He's large, in charge, and menacing.

  Fate has her own sense of timing. The last thing Batiste needs is a distraction from the new joint venture with the SSMC that could make his dreams come true. But there she is dividing his attention, partly as memory of her as a little girl and partly as grown woman walking around in the mind-numbingly curvy form of a blue-eyed mischief maker.

  Just when he thinks he can't get more frustrated with the little troublemaker, she's kidnapped by the very people he's supposed to be protecting her from. Distraction or not, he vows to personally initiate a facsimile of Armageddon on any man who would threaten, frighten, or touch Angel.

  CHAPTER ONE Just

  Just Batiste was the son of a biker who’d sired him later in life. He was born and raised in the Lafayette Parish part of the basin. He didn’t ask to be called upon to serve as president of the Cajun Devils when he wasn’t even thirty years old. But the club didn’t take no for an answer.

  He’d been lucky to have Brant Fornight of the SSMC as a kind of model mentor. Though much older, Brant had also been born into the life and had also achieved the dream of a prosperous, healthy, mostly legal, club by branching out into a network of legitimate business enterprises.

  Once he’d absorbed and committed to replicating that vision, Batiste never doubted that he was on the right track to give the Devils the leadership they’d entrusted him with. All he had to do was stay focused, keep his eye on the prize, and his dreams would lift the club out of getting-by status into the alien world of prosperity.

  That was his frame of mind the day he got the phone call from the president of the Devils’ sister club, Mandeville chapter. The prez, Rou Bellefeuille, had founded the Devils with Batiste’s father. The first chapter was located in the heart of Cajun country, Lafayette. The second set up shop in Mandeville on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

  In his early twenties, Bellefeuille had been given the road name “Rou”, short for rougaroo or swamp werewolf, because when angered he was scary enough to make seasoned bad asses quiver. People who’d never seen that side of him found it difficult to believe, because ninety-nine percent of the time he was charming and easy-going. The antithesis of scary. People only saw scary when things didn’t go his way.

  When Batiste was still a teenager, Rou told him with a wink that he’d settled the club in Mandeville because it was a wildlife refuge. Batiste had caught the joke and laughed, but in spite of his youthful carousing ways, he had his eyes open and could discern the truth; that Mandeville was a motorcycle club dream from the standpoint of strategic location. Situated where the Pontchartrain causeway ended, they could jump on and be in New Orleans in fifteen minutes. Or they could take I12 east and make Baton Rouge in an hour and a half. Another hour on I10 and they’d be in Lafayette.

  Batiste answered his phone with a tease when he saw who was calling. “Old man.”

  “Careful, boy. That little clock on your arm is tickin’ for you jus’ like the rest of us.”

  Batiste chuckled. “Maybe.”

  “No maybe ‘bout it. Got somethin’ you need to do for me.”

  Batiste sat up straight. In all the years he’d known Rou Bellefeuille, which was all his years, the man had never asked for anything. It went without saying that, whatever the favor was, the answer was yes.

  “Seems Manatee is still nursin’ a grudge about losin’ that bounty. Tried to grab Angelique when she left work down in the Quarter.”

  Batiste felt his heart give a little tug when Bellefeuille said the name ‘Angelique’. He hadn’t thought of her for a while, unless it was in dreams. Hearing her name he suddenly felt a vague, almost intuitive awareness that he did dream about her when he went to sleep.

  Mention of the ‘Quarter’ activated his imagination and not in a good way. He was dying to ask Rou what Angelique was doing working in the French Quarter, but controlled himself. Barely.

  Rou went on. “She got away before they pulled her into a van, but she saw Stars and Bars on their cuts.”

  Batiste felt
his teeth clench together like a vice. Angelique had been targeted by those vile cretins. “Merde,” he said tightly. “Mandeville wasn’t even there. Just us. Why would he target you?”

  “Doan make no difference to him. So you can guess what I’m askin’.”

  “Um, no. I doan know.”

  “I need you to take Angelique under protection. Bring her in.”

  “Okay. When?”

  “Today. She’ll be there in three hours or so.”

  “Alright.”

  “Somethin’ else.”

  “Yeah?”

  “When was the last time you saw her? I doan remember.”

  “Ten years or so. I think.”

  “Well, she’s a handful. Got her own mind. And…”

  “And?”

  “She’s not happy about this decision.”

  “Okay. Doan worry.”

  How much trouble could a girl be? He hadn’t had any trouble with her when they were kids. On the other hand, if she got away from Stars and Bars bikers intent on kidnapping, it was saying something.

  Batiste’s mind took him back to a day when they’d snuck away from a gathering and set off into the swamp in a canoe. Batiste was eager to give her a tour and be the authority on the ins and out of Chocolate Bayou. They glided silently over water covered in duckweed and water lilies, with fakahatchee grass, horsetails, and soft rush flanking the marshy banks. The water was murky, forest green in filtered light, black in shade. The only sounds they heard were the paddle skimming water, the splash of an alligator, birdsong, or each other’s voices.

  In his mind he could see her turn back to him with a smile and laughter in her blue eyes when they passed close by a tall blue heron standing on a fallen log. He’d felt on top of the world. The accomplished explorer showing off the mysteries of places where humans don’t often go. To the prettiest girl in the world. It was frozen in time, encapsulated in his memory like a video he could stream on demand.

  “Just? You still there?”

  “Hmmm? Yeah. You think we need lockdown?”

  “No. It’s only part ‘bout the bounty. He picked Angelique ‘cause she’s mine. My only child. Truth is, it’s not our first run-in. He wants a payoff, but he wants it to cost me precious in a personal way. Maybe wants that more than money.”

  Batiste grunted. “What you doin’ ‘bout this?”

  “Sendin’ him a message ‘bout consequences. You know we gotta draw a hard line at threatenin’ family.”

  “A message? You think that’s enough?”

  “Gotta be. We can’t start payin’ these imbeciles for not takin’ our women.”

  “For true.”

  “Okay.”

  Batiste knew Rou was about to hang up. “Uh, one more thing. When she asks when she can go, what should I tell her?”

  “That I’ll let you know when she can go back to work.”

  Batiste had been hoping for some kind of timeline even though he already knew that would be impossible to give.

  He put his phone back in his pants pocket and turned to Scar, his vice president and all around right hand guy. “Got company comin’. Where’s Saycie?”

  “Should be in the kitchen. Who’s comin’?”

  “Rou’s girl. Stars and Bars tried to grab her over in N’Orlanz.”

  “Merde.”

  “We’re gonna keep her safe till Rou gets this sorted out.”

  Saycie kept the clubhouse reasonably clean, did some laundry, and cooked for the unmarried members. She was delighted to hear that Angelique would be in residence for a while.

  “I remember that girl from way back. Sweet little thing.” Saycie looked at Batiste. “She still pretty? All that black hair and big blue eyes?”

  “Haven’t seen her in years. Wouldn’t know her if she was standin’ right here”

  As if on cue, she walked in the door and made a liar of him. If it had been a thousand years and he’d been on the streets of Marrakesh he would have known Angelique Bellefeuille the second he laid eyes on her.

  He also knew, instantly, that the last thing he needed at that moment in time was the mind-numbing distraction of grown-up curves and flashing blue eyes that had been his undoing even as a boy. She was trouble walking.

  He heard Rooster mutter, “Merde,” from behind him and knew he wasn’t the only one aware that Angelique was traffic-stopping stunning.

  CHAPTER TWO The Visitor

  When the SUV pulled up to the gate of the Lafayette Chapter compound, a flood of memories rushed Angelique’s mind. Once or twice a year her family had come to Lafayette for joint club family events when she was growing up. She’d spent the rest of the year looking forward to the next one.

  As the gate opened and they were waved through, she could see that not much had changed. As the story went, Batiste’s father had come into some sort of windfall shortly after the birth of his son, probably from ill-gotten gain, but that wasn’t part of the history that had been shared with her. He’d used that money to buy a defunct summer camp that sat on the very edge of swamp country, just inside the Atchafalaya Basin.

  The concept was a case study in camp perfection and the setting was beautiful, away from the incessant mechanical roar of cities and the intensified heat caused by thousands of air conditioning compressors. Even so, it seemed that families weren’t eager to send their children to country wild enough to be a habitat for all sorts of dangerous creatures.

  The camp languished and died. And, because there’s not much demand for bankrupt summer camps ten miles outside of town, Brer Batiste had been able to make a deal.

  All the buildings were log cabin style. A main lodge and ten cabins spaced in a horseshoe shape around a center grass courtyard. There was a gravel and shell parking lot for four-wheeled vehicles and a metal barn, added later, for motorcycles.

  The president lived on the property with his motherless son. One of the cabins was designated for the woman who was, essentially, Batiste’s nanny. She knew to stay in her cabin at night and to keep her mouth shut about anything she might see or hear. Some of the club members protested that it was risky having an outsider live there, but Batiste’s father was determined to keep his son close by.

  There were a couple of guest rooms at the main lodge that had originally been quarters for the camp director and camp nurse. They were reserved for guests of the club. One of those rooms was currently occupied by Dev Merit visiting from the SSMC in Austin.

  The other cabins were divided in half and remodeled so that every member could have his own onsite quarters. Whether a member resided at the club or used his space now and then was up to him.

  Batiste had literally grown up in the life and it was a boy’s dream. Wild and free and living at a summer camp.

  When his father died, he was twenty-eight years old, divorced, and more interested in riding bikes and women than heading up a ragtag club that didn’t amount to much. But he quickly learned that the crown came with some unexpected side effects.

  Purpose.

  Dreams.

  Dreams of more. Security even.

  Then while he was dreaming, he decided security wasn’t enough. He wanted prosperity.

  He thought he’d been tapped because the club was founded by his father, but that wasn’t it. The members chose him because he’d proven himself to be smart as a whip with business, quick as a snake in a fight, and mean as a javelina if he thought somebody meant harm to something or someone within the circle of influence he’d claimed as his.

  The Lafayette Chapter of the Devils were a young club. Most of the older generation had retired to other interests. A few went into construction. A couple managed to get ahold of small bars. One had a last resort repair shop that more or less specialized in keeping beaters running for cheap.

  Angelique stood in front of Batiste with an eyebrow cocked in challenge, waiting for him to speak first.

  He dragged his eyes away from hers long enough to address the three guys from the Mandeville Chapter who�
��d delivered her. “You boys go get somethin’ to drink. If you’re hungry, Saycie will find somethin’.”

  Rooster greeted his club brothers once removed and ushered them toward the bar while Batiste turned back to Angie.

  Seeing her standing there, looking just the same in one way and not at all the same in another, he recalled a time when they’d been fishing together as kids. Just the two of them running wild and on their own. She was never afraid when she was with Batiste even if they were in the bayou and it was getting dark, and she didn’t know the way back. Even when he growled from behind and scared her by claiming it was a loupgarou, a swamp werewolf. He’d laughed and said, “No worry, cher. I’ll save you from monsters for true. Keep you safe, me.”

  Keep you safe, me. Maybe it was a coincidence, but Angie was remembering the same scene at the same time and wondering if Batiste remembered speaking those words.

  He’d dumped her in the water as a joke and then summoned almost superhuman strength to jerk her out of the water as a cottonmouth swam by taking a good hard look. She hadn’t screamed but he’d seen terror in her eyes. He’d forgotten that he’d made a silent promise to himself to see to it that Angelique Bellefeuille never had that look in her eyes again. He’d forgotten all about that until she was standing in front of him, almost twenty years later.

  Once the memories were triggered they didn’t seem to want to stop. He suppressed a smile remembering that he’d later seen her at a joint club event as a teenager. His père had said, “You will not cast eyes on that girl back there. She’s not for you. Unless you want to make this an engagement party.”