A Dixie Christmas (21 page)

“I noticed,” he choked out.

“They ache.”

He leaned upward.

She leaned downward.

And he took one nipple into his mouth right through her silk dress and began to suckle her with the hard rhythm he knew she liked.

She screamed. She actually screamed. And began to buck against his erection.

He moved to her other breast.

She was one continuous wail as she came and came and came against him.

Then she just folded like a rag doll, placed her face against his racing heart, and fell asleep.

He would have laughed if he weren’t so blistering hot and turned on. While she’d been coming apart, he still hadn’t got his rocks off.

But then his cell phone rang. He managed to pull it out of his pocket without disturbing Brenda, who was snoring softly now into his ear. “Yeah?” he barked into the phone.

“Where the hell are you?” John asked him. “We’re ready to go on.”

“Uh
 . . .
I’m in kind of an awkward situation here.”

“You aren’t going to bail on us, are you?”

“I’m not sure.”

John was swearing a blue streak and someone grabbed the phone from him. Tante Lulu. Great! That’s just what he needed.

“Get yet butt out here, boy. No time ta get shy now. There’s five hundred people, jist waitin’ ta see yer purty face. I’ll give ya five minutes, boy.”

He was about to explain why he couldn’t make it, especially not that fast, but there was a dial tone now.

It took him at least five minutes just to wake Brenda up. It took another five minutes for him to drag her into the bathroom and put wet towels on her face, trying to sober her up.

Once she was half-sober, she looked in the mirror and squealed. “Aaarrgh! What did you do to me?”

“Hey! It’s more a case of what you did to me,” he replied using the wet paper towel to wipe the lipstick off his face. “Frankly, sweetheart, I think you look real good.”

Her hairdo had come undone. She wore no lipstick, but she did sport lips that some Botox junkies would envy. And there were two wet spots in strategic places on her dress.

She tried to punch him and missed.

He laughed.

She hissed. “Help me,’ she demanded. “I can’t go back out there like this.”

So it was that when his cell phone rang again, fifteen minutes later—he’d ignored the last ten calls—he picked it up and heard a crowd chanting, “Caslow, Caslow, Caslow!”

“Do you hear that, you worthless loser?” Charmaine snarled. “That’s your fans about to storm the stage.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Why can’t you come now?”

Lance had had enough of the badgering. “If you must know, I’m blow drying Brenda’s boobs.”

There was a stunned silence, followed by laughter.

“And Tante Lulu thought you needed love advice!”

The things a guy will do for love . . .

Brenda, now stone cold sober, sat sipping black coffee at a table near the stage. Her daughter Patti and the two LeDeux girls sat with her. The other chairs at their table were empty for the moment because the LeDeuxs were about to present their Cajun Bad Boys show.

She was counting the minutes till she could escape back to her hotel room and hide her head under a pillow, pretending she hadn’t made the biggest fool of herself. Five years of hiding her feelings down the drain!

Lance was nowhere to be seen. Good thing, too. She would probably wallop him a good one for taking advantage of her.

No, that wasn’t true. She was the one who’d gotten herself drunk and put the moves on him. Her face heated up at the image of the two of them on the chaise. And her climaxing, while he did not. Pathetic, that’s what she was.

Let’s face it
, she told herself,
I still love the man. Never stopped. The booze just loosened my will to hide it.

“It’s starting, Mommy.” Patti reached over and squeezed her hand. Her daughter sensed her inner turmoil. Not for the first time, she saw that her little girl was way too mature for her age.

The canned music that had been playing stopped, and Tante Lulu wobbled out to center stage and pulled the microphone down to meet her height. “First off, lemme thank y’all fer comin’ ta support the homeless hereabouts. Since Hurricane Katrina
 . . .
well, y’all know how bad off some folks are, even after all these years. Ta show our thanks, we gots some top notch entertainment fer ya.”

The band began to play softly at first while Tante Lulu went on, “Ever’one knows that love is what makes the world go ’round, and iffen ya doan know that, then yer jist dumbclucks.”

A titter of laughter went through the crowd. Tante Lulu was known to most of the people here.

“Well, thass what we’re here ta celebrate tonight. Love. And Cajuns, of course.”

Tante Lulu stepped back, the lights dimmed, except for a spotlight, the music got louder, recognizable now as that old Supremes song “Stop! In the Name of Love.” Dancing out in a snakelike fashion were Charmaine, well-known to this crowd because of her chain of beauty salons; Sylvie LeDeux, a chemist and Luc’s wife; Rachel LeDeux, a Feng Shui decorator and Remy’s wife; and Valerie LeDeux, a lawyer and wife to René, an environmentalist, teacher, musician, and allegedly the biggest rascal in the world. They wore very short spandex dresses in bright colors with matching stiletto heels. They sang. They danced. They laughed and got the audience laughing, too. In fact, the audience stood, clapping and singing along when Tante Lulu joined the girls in a rousing rendition of Aretha Franklin’s “R. E. S. P. E. C. T.”

“Hey, ladies,” a male voice came through the speakers, overriding the tail end of their song. “That respect goes both ways.” It sounded like the slow Southern drawl of René, but it could have been any one of the Cajun gentlemen.

“Oh, yeah?” Charmaine said, putting her hands on her hips. The other ladies did the same.

“Do ya’ll think ya could do better?” Tante Lulu chirped in.

“
Mais, oui, chère.
”

The ladies stepped to the side and the band launched into a rowdy version of the Village People’s “Macho Man,” except they were singing different lyrics with the words changed to “Cajun Man.” They shimmied out onto the stage, strutting, winking at the crowd, letting out an occasional Rebel yell, singing and dancing in the expert, enthusiastic way only Cajun men could. And their attire! Luc in a day-old beard wore a business suit sans shirt and looked sexier than if he wore nothing at all. Remy wore a bomber jacket, Aviator sunglasses and also had no shirt on. René, the most outrageous, wore a vest and no shirt, carried a frottir, a Cajun washboard instrument, and unbuttoned jeans that rode low on his hips. His wife, the lawyer, gaped at his attire. Rusty Lanier, Charmaine’s husband, clearly unhappy to be there, wore his usual cowboy attire . . . hat, boots with spurs, tight jeans and no shirt. He looked at Charmaine as if he’d like to kill her; she looked as if she’d like to do something entirely different to him. Last came the youngest LeDeux, John or Tee-John. He was a cop, with unbuttoned shirt, cop hat and billy club. The most uninhibited of the bunch, he was the best dancer, with sexy moves, and he teased the crowd by continually shrugging his shirt off his shoulders like a stripper.

There were others, as well. Some athletes, a fire fighter, and the most godawful Richard Simmons impersonator.

After their rendition of “Cajun Man” they segued into their version of “In the Navy,” except of course they made it “In the Bayou.” Some of the lyrics were more than suggestive.

At one point, René pulled his resisting wife back onto center stage with him and made her dance with him, a sensual kind of dirty dance where he spooned her from behind. She was embarrassed, at first, but then got into the dance, too. They were good together.

Brenda was really enjoying herself, and so was everyone else. No wonder people paid a hundred dollars for this charity event. The show was worth that and much more.

Her heart constricted, though, to see these Cajun men and their wives together. They clearly loved each other, and had fun together. Mismatched, and still able to keep their marriages together.

Unlike her and Lance.

Which made her wonder
 . . .
where was he? After all, this event was supposed to be about him.

But then
 . . .
oh, my goodness!
 . . .
then she found out exactly where he was.

“VAROOM! VAROOM! VAROOM!” The sound of a loud racing motor was heard before the car moved onto the stage, and everyone moved to the side. It was the car Lance had driven in his first Indy win eight years ago.

The crowd went wild. Standing, clapping, screaming out his name even before Lance flipped the switch that caused the roof to rise. Then he stepped out.

He wore black slacks, low heeled boots, his NASCAR jacket with all the sponsor badges, as well as some of his winning commemoratives. His face was lowered and hidden by dark sunglasses and a NASCAR baseball cap.

But then the music started to play again
 . . .
the “Macho Man” melody, but now the lyrics were “NASCAR Man.” He raised his head, took off his sunglasses and seemed to look right at her. He was unsmiling and serious. Little alarm bells began to go off in her head. She’d heard stories about some of these Cajun Bad Boy events, which she’d disregarded
 . . .
till now. Something about their whole purpose being some Tante Lulu matchmaking exercise.

“This is for you, babe.” He pointed a finger her way, and a spotlight was suddenly on her. “But if I’m gonna make a fool of myself, you are, too.” Two security men appeared at her side. Then, mimicking the NASCAR phrase, “Gentlemen, start your engines,” he said, “Gentlemen, start her engine.”

With great fanfare, she was escorted to the stage, where Lance put an arm around her shoulder and tucked her into his side. She muttered under her breath, “I’m gonna kill you.” To which he replied, also in an undertone, “You’ve been killing me for the past five years. What else is new?”

“Since this whole show tonight is about love, according to Tante Lulu, let me tell you a little story,” Lance said into the mike. “I have loved this woman here,” he kissed the top of her head, “for thirty years. How is that possible, you ask, since I’m thirty-five? Well, Brendie and I have known each other since we were practically toddlers. I think I fell in love with her the day her diaper drooped and I got my first gander at her very fine behind.”

She snorted her opinion, and leaned into the microphone. “That is a lie. He fell in love with me when I let him win our first tricycle race.”

He squeezed her shoulders. “That, too.”

“Then how come you’re divorced?” a male in the back of the room shouted out.

“Good question. You want to take that one, or should I, Brendie?”

“Oh, by all means, you take it,
Lancie
. This is your show.” Then she put her face in her free hand, wondering how to extricate herself from this situation.

“I screwed up. For a blip of a second, I forgot what was important. And I’ve been trying ever since then to make it up. I love her, never stopped.” He tipped her chin up so she would look at him and said in a softer voice, “I love you.”

“How ’bout you, Brenda. Do you love him?” It was someone behind them on the stage asking that question. Possibly Charmaine.

Brenda was going to refuse to answer that question, but then she noticed Patti staring up at her with such hope in her eyes. “I never stopped loving him, but—” She put up a halting hand before anyone got the wrong impression, “I’ve learned that love is not enough.”

“Says who?” a woman in audience yelled out.

“Okay, baby, here’s the deal,” Lance said, turning her with a hand on each shoulder so she faced him. “I can get down on one knee and ask you to marry me, again, or—” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

“Or
 . . .”
He unzipped his jacket, down, then back up again, letting her know he wore nothing under the jacket.