The Cajun Cowboy

Book 2: Cajun

by Sandra Hill

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy; Western Romance

Synopsis

This New York Times bestselling author welcomes you to the bayou in this "hot and hilarious" (Publishers Weekly) second chance cowboy romance!

Talk about a bad hair day. Louisiana beauty salon owner Charmaine LeDeux has a loan shark on her tail, and Raoul Lanier, the six-foot-three hunk of testosterone she thought she divorced, has just delivered a bombshell: They're still married! At least the rundown ranch they've inherited together is the perfect hideout.

It's hard enough for Raoul to play cowboy to a bunch of scrawny steer, let alone suffer the exquisite torture of living with the delectable Charmaine, who's declared herself a born-again virgin. What's a man crazy with desire to do?

With the moon shining over the bayou, this Cajun cowboy must sweet-talk his way into his wife's arms again...before she unties the knot for good!

Release date: June 1, 2004

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 384

Sample

Chapter 1

“I’m a born-again virgin.”

Charmaine LeDeux made that pronouncement with a faint feminine belch after downing three of the six oyster shooters sitting on the table before her at The Swamp Tavern. She was halfway to meeting her goal of getting knee-walking buzzed.

The jukebox played a soft Jimmy Newman rendition of “Louisiana, the Key to My Soul.” The jambalaya cooking in the kitchen filled the air with pungent spices. Gater, the bald-headed, longtime bartender, washed glasses behind the bar.

Louise Rivard—better known as Tante Lulu—sat on the opposite side of the booth from Charmaine. She arched a brow at the potent drinks in front of Charmaine compared to her single glass of plain RC Cola and looked pointedly at Charmaine’s stretchy red T-shirt with its hairdresser logo I CAN BLOW YOU AWAY. Only then did the old lady declare, “And I’m Salome about to lose a few veils.” In fact, Tante Lulu, who had to be close to eighty, was wearing a harem-style outfit because of a belly dance class she planned to attend on the other side of Houma that afternoon. In the basement of Our Lady of the Bayou Church, no less! But first, she’d agreed to be Charmaine’s designated driver.

“I’m sher… I mean, serious.” Charmaine felt a little woozy already. “My life is a disaster. Twenty-nine years old, and I’ve been married and divorced four times. Haven’t had a date in six months. And I’ve got a loan shark on my tail.”

“A fish? Whass a fish have to do with anything?” Tante Lulu sputtered.

Sometimes Charmaine suspected that Tante Lulu was deliberately dense. But she was precious to Charmaine, who teared up just thinking about all the times the old lady’s cottage had been a refuge to her whenever she’d run away from unbearable home conditions. Being the illegitimate daughter of a stripper and the notorious womanizer Valcour LeDeux had made for a rocky childhood, with Tante Lulu being a little girl’s only anchor. She wasn’t even Charmaine’s blood relative; she was blood aunt only to Charmaine’s half brothers, Luc, René, and Remy.

So, it was with loving patience that Charmaine explained, “Not just any fish. A shark. Bobby Doucet wants fifty thousand dollars by next Friday or he’s gonna put a Mafia hit on me; I didn’t even know they had a Mafia in southern Loo-zee-anna. Or maybe they’ll just break my knees. Jeesh! Yep, I’d say it’s time for some new beginnings. I’m gonna be a born-again virgin.”

“What? You doan think the Sopranos kill virgins?” Tante Lulu remarked drolly. “And, yeah, there’s a Mafia in Louisiana. Ain’t you never heard of the Dixie Mafia?”

“The born-again-virgin thingee is a personal change. The loan-shark thingee would require a different kind of change… like fifty thousand dollars, and it’s going up a thousand dollars a day in interest. I gotta get out of Dodge fast.”

Tante Lulu did a few quick calculations in her head. “Charmaine! Thass 10 percent per day. What were you thinkin’?” Tante Lulu might talk a little dumb sometimes, but she was no dummy.

Charmaine shrugged. “I thought I’d be able to pay it off in a few days. It started out at twenty thousand, by the way.”

“Tsk-tsk-tsk!”

“I don’t suppose you could lend me the money?”

“Me, I ain’t got that kind of money. I thought yer bizness was goin’ good. What happened?”

“The business is great.” Charmaine owned two beauty shops, one in Lafayette and the other a spa here in Houma. Both of them prospered, even in a slow economy, or at least broke even. Apparently, women didn’t consider personal appearance a luxury. Nope, her spas were not the problem. “I made a lot of money in the stock market a few years back. That’s when I bought my second shop. But I got careless this year and bought some technology stocks on margin. I lost more money than I put in. It was a temporary problem, which spiraled out of control when I borrowed money from Bucks ’r Us. Who knew it was a loan-shark operation?”

“Well, it sure as shootin’ doan sound like a bank. Have you gone to the police?”

“Hell’s bells, no! I’d be deader’n a Dorchat duck within the hour if I did that.”

“How ’bout Luc?” Lucien LeDeux was Charmaine’s half brother and a well-known local lawyer.

She nodded. “He’s working on it. In the meantime, he suggested, maybe facetiously, that I hire a bodyguard.”

Tante Lulu brightened. “I could be yer bodyguard. Me, I got a rifle in the trunk of my T-bird outside. You want I should off Bobby Doucet? Bam-bam! I could do it. I think.”

Off? Where does she get this stuff? Charmaine groaned. That’s all I need… a senior-citizen, one-woman posse. “Uh, no thanks.” With those words, Charmaine tossed back another shot glass filled with a raw oyster drowning in Tabasco sauce, better known with good reason as Cajun Lightning, then followed it immediately with a chaser of pure one-hundred-proof bourbon. “Whoo-ee!” she said, accompanied by a full-body shiver.

“Back to that other thing,” Tante Lulu said. “Charmaine, honey, you caint jist decide to be a virgin again. It’s like tryin’ to put the egg back together once the shell’s been cracked. Like Humpty Dumpty.”

Hump me, dump me. That oughta be my slogan. Oughta have it branded on my forehead.

A more upbeat song, “Cajun Born,” came on the jukebox, and Charmaine jerked upright. Shaking her fifty-pound head slowly from side to side, she licked her lips, which were starting to get numb. “Can so,” she argued irrationally. Or was that rationally? Whatever. “Be a virgin again, I mean. It’s a big trend. Some lady even wrote a book about it. There’s websites all over the Internet where girls promise to be celibate till their wedding day. Born-again virgins.”

“Hmpfh!” was Tante Lulu’s only response as she sipped on her straw.

“Besides, I might even have my hymen surgically replaced.”

Tante Lulu was a noted traiteur, or healer, all along the bayou, and she was outrageous beyond belief in her antics and attire. For once, Charmaine had managed to shock her. “Is hey-man what I think it is?”

“It’s hi-man, and yes, it is what you think.”

“Hey, hi… big difference! You are goin’ off the deep end, girlie, iffen yer thinkin’ of havin’ some quack sew you up there.”

Deep end is right. “I didn’t say I was going to do it, for sure. Just considering it. But born-again virgin, that I am gonna do, for sure.”

“Hmmm. I really do doubt that, sweetie,” Tante Lulu said, peering off toward the front of the tavern, which was mostly empty in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday.

Frankly, I shouldn’t be here, either, Charmaine thought. She should be at one of her shops, but she was afraid Mafia thugs would catch up with her in advance of the deadline.

“Seems to me that all yer resolutions are ’bout to melt,” Tante Lulu chortled.

Charmaine turned to see what Tante Lulu was gawking at with that strange little smirk on her face. Then Charmaine did a double take.

It was Raoul Lanier, her first ex-husband. Some people called him Rusty, a nickname he’d gained as an adolescent when his changing voice had sounded like a creaking, rusty door. She’d preferred his real name in the past. He always said he liked the way it sounded on her tongue, slow and sexy, especially when…

She’d been a nineteen-year-old student at LSU and former Miss Louisiana when she’d married Rusty. He’d been twenty-one and a hotshot football player and premed student at the same school. As good as he’d been at football, which earned him a scholarship, his dream had always been to be a veterinarian. His last words to her before they’d parted had been, “Once a bimbo, always a bimbo.” She would never forgive or forget those words. Never.

Charmaine had been avoiding Rusty for weeks, ever since he got released from prison. And, yes, she was bound and determined to think of him as Rusty now. She thought about ducking under the table, but he’d already seen her. And he had a look in his dark Cajun eyes, unusually grim today, that said, “Here I come, baby. Batten down the hatches.”

Man-oh-man, her hatches had always been weak where Rusty was concerned. All he had to do was wink at her, and she melted. He wore faded Wrangler jeans with battered, low-heeled boots, a long-sleeved denim shirt, and a cowboy hat. He was six-foot-three of gorgeous, dark-skinned, dark-haired Cajun testosterone. Temptation on the hoof.

Good thing she was a born-again virgin.

Finally, after a month of off-and-on bird-dogging Charmaine, Raoul had finally caught up with her. She wasn’t going to escape.

“Ladies.” He took off his hat and nodded a greeting, first at Charmaine, then at Tante Lulu, who together made an odd couple, with Charmaine being so tall at five feet nine and the old lady such an itty-bitty thing at barely five feet. And Tante Lulu was wearing the most outlandish outfit. Looked like a belly dancer suit or something. But then, Charmaine wasn’t any better. She wore her usual suggestive attire designed to tease, which didn’t bear close scrutiny in his present mood. Not that he wasn’t teasable, especially after two years in the state pen.

But, no, he couldn’t blame his reaction to Charmaine on his two years of forced celibacy. She’d always had that hair-trigger arousal effect on him. When she’d dumped him ten years ago, he’d about died. Quit school for a semester. Lost his football scholarship. A nightmare. Every time he’d heard about her remarrying, he’d relived the pain. He couldn’t go through that again, especially not with all the current problems in his life.

Steel yourself, buddy. She’s only a woman, the logical side of his brain said.

Hah! the perverse side said.

He pulled up a chair and sat down, propping his long legs, and crossing them at the ankles on the edge of Charmaine’s side of the booth, barring any hasty departure on her part. He was no fool. He recognized the panic in her wide whiskey eyes.

After taking a swallow from the long neck he’d purchased at the bar, he set the bottle down, noticing for the first time the line of oyster shooters in front of Charmaine. Holy shit! Had she really drunk four of them already? In the middle of the afternoon?

“What are we celebrating, chère?” he asked.

“We aren’t celebrating anything,” Charmaine answered churlishly.

Hey, I’m the one who should be churlish here, Ms. Snotty.

“We’re celebrating Charmaine’s virginity,” Tante Lulu announced.

“Is that a fact?” Raoul said with a grin.

Charmaine groaned at Tante Lulu’s announcement and downed another oyster shooter, first the oyster, then the bourbon. Gulp-gulp! He watched with fascination the shiver that rippled over her body from her throat, across her mighty-fine breasts, her belly, and all her extremities, including her legs encased in skintight black jeans. Then his eyes moved back to her breasts, and her nipples bloomed under her sizzling red hooker T-shirt. Charmaine watched him watching her and groaned again.

Was it possible he still affected her the way she affected him? Don’t go there, Raoul, he advised himself.

Tante Lulu chuckled. “Yep, Charmaine’s a born-again virgin. She’s joinin’ a club and everything. Might even have her doo-hickey sewed back up.”

Raoul wasn’t about to ask Tante Lulu what doo-hickey she referred to. Instead, he commented to Charmaine, “Hot damn, you always manage to surprise me, darlin’.”

He immediately regretted his words when Charmaine batted her eyelashes at him and drawled, “That’s my goal in life, darlin’.”

He gritted his teeth. He was so damn mad at her, not because she was being sarcastic now, but because she’d made his life miserable the past few weeks… in fact, the past ten years.

Tante Lulu giggled. He glanced toward the old lady, not wanting to rehash old—or new—business in front of her. “Charmaine and I shouldn’t be squabbling in front of you.”

Tante Lulu just waved a hand in front of her face, and said, “Doan you nevermind me, boy. Squabble all you want. Jist pretend I’m not here.”

Right. Like everything we say isn’t going to be broadcast on the bayou grapevine by nightfall.

“Was you framed?” Tante Lulu asked him all of a sudden.

He hesitated. Getting sent to Angola for drug dealing was a sore subject with him and not one he was ready to discuss. “Yes,” was all he disclosed in the end.

“I knew it!” Tante Lulu whooped, slapping her knee with a hand, which set her bells to jingling. “This is yer lucky day, boy, ’cause I been thinkin’ ’bout becomin’ a dick.”

That pronouncement boggled his mind till he realized that the old lady meant private eye and that she was offering to help clear his name.

He heard Charmaine giggle at his discomfort.

“Uh, thanks for the offer, but no thanks.”

“Are you still an animal doctor?”

Raoul’s heart wrenched with pain, and he couldn’t breathe for a second. This was definitely a subject he did not want to discuss. Finally, after unclenching his fists, he said tersely, “I lost my veterinary license when I went to prison.”

“Oh, Raoul.” That was Charmaine speaking. Her eyes were filled with sympathy.

Yep, that’s what I want from you, babe. Pity. And now you call me Raoul. Talk about bad timing!

“Being a vet was always the most important thing in the world to you.”

Not the most important thing. “I’ll get it back.”

“I hope so,” she replied softly.

Before Tante Lulu had a chance to voice her opinion, he steered the conversation in another direction. “What’s the reason for the binge, Charmaine?”

“None of your business.” She licked her flame red lips, which were probably desensitized from all the booze.

He’d like a shot at sensitizing them up.

No, no, no! I would not. That would be a bad idea. I am not going to fall for Charmaine again. No way!

Still, if she doesn’t stop licking those kiss-me-quick lips, I might just leap over the table and do it for her.

Back at the beginning of time—probably post–Garden of Eden since Adam was a dunce, for sure, when it came to Eve—men had learned an important lesson that even today hadn’t sunk in with women. The female of the species should never lick anything in front of the male. Licking gave men ideas. Raoul would bet his boots good ol’ Eve had licked that apple first before offering it to Adam. So, keep on lickin’, Charmaine, and you might just see what’s tickin’.

“The Mafia is after her,” Tante Lulu said. “And her life’s in the outhouse.”

“The toilet,” Charmaine corrected her aunt, with another lick.

“Huh?” Raoul had lost his train of thought somewhere between Charmaine’s new virginity and her licking exercise.

“You asked why Charmaine’s on a binge. And I said the Mafia is after her,” Tante Lulu explained. “You thick or sumpin’, boy?”

Raoul should have been insulted, but it was hard to get angry with the old lady, who didn’t really mean any offense. Tante Lulu just smiled at him. Every time she moved, the bells on her belly dancer outfit chimed.

“Great outfit, by the way,” he remarked. It was always smart to stay on Tante Lulu’s good side.

“It’s a bedleh,” she informed him.

He said, “How interesting!” Then he addressed Charmaine. “What’s this about the Mafia, darlin’?”

“Don’t call me darlin’. I am not your darlin’.” How like Charmaine to home in on the most irrelevant thing he’d said.

“They’s gonna kill her, or break her knees,” Tante Lulu interjected.

“How about her doo-hickey?” he teased.

But Tante Lulu took him seriously. “They doan know ’bout that yet.”

“Tante Lulu! I can speak for myself,” Charmaine said. She turned to him, slowly, as if aware she might topple over—which seemed a real possibility. “I just have a little money problem to settle with Bucks ’r Us.”

Her words were slurred a bit, but he got the message. “A loan shark? You borrowed money from a loan shark?”

“Doan s’pose you have fifty thousand dollars to spare?” Tante Lulu inquired of him.

“Fifty thou?” he mouthed to Charmaine, who just nodded. “No, I can’t say that I do.”

Charmaine probably hadn’t expected him to help her, and the question hadn’t even come from her. Still, her shoulders drooped with disappointment.

In that moment, despite everything the flaky Charmaine had ever done to him, he wished he could help.

“So, you can see why Charmaine’s a bit depressed,” Tante Lulu said. “That, on top of her pushin’ thirty, not havin’ a date fer six months, and being married and divorced four times. Who wouldn’t be depressed by that?” Tante Lulu stood then, her bells ting-a-linging, and said, “I’m outta here. Gotta go to belly dance class. Will you take Charmaine home, Rusty?”

“No!” Charmaine said.

“Yes,” he said.

After the old lady left, he moved beside Charmaine in the booth, which required a little forceful pushing of his hips against hers. He put one arm over the back of the booth, just above her shoulders, and relished just for a brief moment the memory of how good Charmaine felt against him. Same perfume. Same big “Texas” hair as her beauty pageant days. Same sleek brunette color. Same soft-as-sin curves. “So, you haven’t had a date in six months, huh? Poor baby!”

She lifted her chin with that stubborn pride of hers. “It’s not because I haven’t been asked.”

“I don’t doubt that for a minute, chère. And, hey, I haven’t had a date in two years, so we’re sort of even.”

“Go away, Rusty. I want to get plastered in private.”

He didn’t mind people calling him Rusty, except for Charmaine. He wanted her to call him Raoul, in that slow, breathy way she had of saying Raaa-oool. No, it was better that she called him Rusty. Besides, it was an apt description of his equipment these days—out of use and rusty as hell.

“I have a bit of good news for you, baby.” He could tell she didn’t like his calling her baby by the way her body stiffened up like a steer on branding day. That was probably why he added, “Real good news, baby.”

Her upper lip curled with disgust. She probably would have belted him one if she weren’t half-drunk. “There isn’t any news you could impart that I would be interested in hearing.”

Wanna bet? “You know how Tante Lulu said you were depressed over being married and divorced four times?”

“Yeah?” she said hesitantly.

“Well, no need to be depressed over that anymore. Guess what? You’re not.”

She blinked several times with confusion. “Not what?”

“Divorced four times.” He took a long swallow of his beer and waited.

It didn’t take Charmaine long to figure it out, even in her fuzzy state. Her big brown eyes went wider, and her flushed face got redder. “You mean… ?”

He nodded. “You’re not even a one-time divorcée, darlin’. You’ve never been divorced.” How do you like them apples, Mrs. Lanier?

She sat up straighter, turned slowly in her seat to look at him directly, and asked with unflattering horror, “Rusty, are you saying that you and I are still married?”

“Yep, and you can start callin’ me Raoul again anytime you want.” Dumb, dumb, dumb.

That was when Charmaine leaned against his chest and swooned. Okay, she passed out, but he was taking it as a good sign.

Charmaine Lanier was still his wife, and it was gonna be payback time at the Triple L Ranch. Guar-an-teed!

Chapter 2

Charmaine awakened slowly.

She felt as if her body were cemented to the mattress, and her head pounded mercilessly, but she was in the bedroom of her own little house out on Bayou Black. Good news, that.

But then she glanced downward and saw that she was wearing the same red T-shirt over black thong panties. And that was all.

Uh-oh! She turned her head slowly on the pillow, noticing the bright explosion of orange, yellow, and blue outside her window—the light show of a bayou dawn—meaning she must have slept a full twelve hours since the previous afternoon when she’d started out at Swampy’s. She moaned then in remembrance. It all came back to her, even before the current bane of her existence walked in carrying a tray of strong-smelling Cajun coffee and whistling. Whistling when her head was about to explode!

“Hi, wifey,” he said with way too much cheeriness. “Did you know you snore?”

I do not snore. Do I? Well, maybe when I’m sleeping off a drunk, but I can’t remember the last time I did that. “Go away,” she groaned, pulling the sheet over her head. Under the linens, she swiped a hand across her mouth, just to make sure she hadn’t been drooling.

“Not till we talk,” he insisted, “and you sign some papers.”

That sounded reasonable. He must want her to sign the divorce papers, though she had done just that ten years ago when his father, the late Charlie Lanier, had brought them to her. She’d assumed that the divorce was formalized after that. She could swear she’d received documents to that effect, but maybe not. She had not been in a logical frame of mind, more like brain-splintering devastated.

She sat up straighter and let the sheet fall to her waist. Taking the mug of black coffee from him, she sipped slowly, eyeing him warily as he walked about the bedroom checking out photographs and knick-knacks, including a few St. Jude statues that Tante Lulu had gifted her. St. Jude was the patron saint of hopeless causes, and if ever there was a hopeless cause, she was it, apparently. At the foot of her bed rested the “Good Luck” quilt Tante Lulu had given her after her marriage to Rusty. Lot of good it had done her. She saw the look Rusty gave the hand-crafted heirloom; he probably recognized it since it had been in their apartment. He must also recognize it as a mark of her failure—well, their failure—and of hopes dashed.

There were no pictures of Rusty in her room, if that was what he was searching for. Too painful a reminder of a short, blissful period in her life. They’d been married for only six months… or so she’d thought till yesterday.

Are we really still married?

How awful! the logical side of her brain exclaimed.

How interesting! another part of her brain countered.

Charmaine was honest, if nothing else, and she had to admit to being a tiny bit thrilled at the prospect of Rusty Lanier still being her husband. Not that she was going to hop in the sack with him. Uh-uh!

Still…

And there was definitely exhilaration in knowing that she was no longer a four-time divorcée. Maybe she wasn’t so inadequate, after all.

Rusty seemed to fill the room as he prowled about, poking in her stuff, but not just because of his six-foot-three height and her low ceilings. There had always been something compelling about him. People’s heads turned when he walked down the street. Men, as well as women. No wonder she’d been sucked in before. Well, never again!

Still…

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said, once her head stopped spinning and her stomach settled down and she’d pulled her ogling eyes off Rusty’s tantalizing figure. Cowboy charisma, that’s all it was. There was something about women and cowboys, sort of like women and men in military uniforms. That’s all it is, she told herself.

“So, go,” he replied, settling his tight butt—which she was not noticing—into a low rocking chair. Rock, rock, rock, he went, just watching her in a most infuriating way.

“I’m not dressed and I’m not parading my bare behind in front of you.”

He grinned. “Who do you think undressed you, chère? Besides, there ain’t nothin’ you’ve got that I haven’t seen a hundred times… maybe a thousand.”

She bared her teeth at him. The schmuck! Flipping the sheet aside, she stood and walked past him, pretending not to care that she presented a full-monty posterior. No doubt he was comparing her twenty-nine-year-old butt to her nineteen-year-old one and finding her lacking or, worse, exceeding what she’d had before. She wasn’t about to look and see his reaction, but she thought she heard him mutter, “Mercy!”

Once she was done in the bathroom, she brushed her teeth and hair, skinning the whole mess back into a high ponytail. She scrubbed her face clean, and considered putting makeup on—she never went out in public without makeup—but Rusty would probably think she did it for him; so she put that aside. Then, after pulling on a pair of capri pants, she went into the kitchen and turned on the radio. BeauSoleil was singing “C’est un Péché de Dire un Menterie,” their own rendition of that 1930s Fats Waller song “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie.”

Rusty soon followed after her, leaning against the doorframe with a casualness belied by the grim expression on his face. He wore the same boots and jeans as yesterday, but somewhere he’d come up with a black T-shirt. And he’d shaved… probably with her razor and, yep—she sniffed the air—with her lilac shaving gel. He looked good enough to eat, and Charmaine was hungry.

“You look about nineteen and innocent as a kitten,” he remarked, taking in her hairdo, scrubbed face, capri pants… in fact, all of her.

Rusty is hungry, too, she realized. But any pathetic notions Charmaine entertained in the feed-the-Cajun category, and she didn’t mean food, soon evaporated with his next words.

“Charmaine, exactly how close were you to my father over the y. . .