Kicks for a Sinner S3 (2 page)

“They can choose what religion they want when they get old enough,” Nell growled.

Joe slid his arms around his wife and held her tight. “Touchy, touchy. I thought you liked Father Ardoin.”

“I do. He’s a fine old man, but our babies—I mean embryos—are none of his business. I might add that none of your daughters have more than four children either.”

“Well, they don’t got to carry on the Billodeaux name. You have two daughters and Dean, but little Tommy ain’t Joe’s blood. Not like I don’t love him as much as the rest. Still, a few more sons wouldn’t hurt.”

“Tommy
is
a Billodeaux. His natural father is Joe’s rotten cousin, Bijou, remember? And I’m the one who will suffer having more babies.”

“Oh,
cher
, it went hard wit’ you las’ time, the babies coming in the accident the way they did. We gonna have another novena to make sure that don’t happen again. We’ll pray for three nice healthy babies and a normal birth.”

“There is nothing normal about in vitro or triplets. Look Nadine, thanks for the bread pudding, but you need to leave now.”

Over Nell’s head, Joe nodded and mouthed, “Leave it to me.”

“I understand. You need a tee-tiny bit more time. I’m going. Hug my grandbabies for me.” Nadine moved her interfering self out the door.

“Easy, easy,” Joe said as if he were gentling one of the horses. He turned Nell in his arms and held her against his broad chest. At least, his mama had taken her mind off Cassie.

“Say, I forgot to tell you I invited a guest for the weekend.”

“Just what I need right now, another houseguest.”

“It’s our rookie kicker, Howdy.”

“Are you still calling that poor kid Howdy?”

“Aw, come on. He walks into training camp wearing his cowboy boots and hat and greets all the guys with a big ole howdy like he’s some country hick. Plus, he looks exactly like that dummy from back in the fifties, the one who ran around with a clown and an Indian princess. Sort of reddish-brown hair flopping in his face over big blue eyes, freckles across his nose, all lanky and loose-jointed, a huge stupid grin on his face. And he’s a kicker. He just begged to be called that.”

“Come on. He’s a sweet, good looking boy, and he got the Sinners into the playoffs with his field goal. You should treat him with more respect. But must we have him over this weekend? I was looking forward to being alone with you and the children—and Cassie, I suppose.”

“Nell, the kid has no family. His grandparents raised him, and they’ve both passed on. I asked his plans for the off-season, and he said he’d just go back to Oklahoma and knock around the little ranch his grandpa left him, try to fix it up all alone.”

He watched the hard, angry line of Nell’s mouth soften and her brown eyes fill with sympathy. Nothing like a kid in need to melt her heart. “Fine, let him visit.”

“I got an idea. Since you’re so concerned about how Cassie might feel about me, why don’t we nudge the two together? He’s a real nice guy, Baptist, doesn’t drink hard liquor, smoke, or run around with bad women. Cassie comes from a huge family, and he needs a family. Not everyone is lucky enough to have lots of relatives, brothers and sisters. Having a big family is great.”

“Enough, Joe. Don’t push. We’ll introduce them, and I’d better not hear one more word about frozen babies today.”

“I swear you won’t.”

There, one problem solved, get Cassie fixated on another man. As for more babies, Joe did not remind Nell of the prediction made by the old
traiteur
, Madame Leleux, who had the sight. They would have twelve children and get them this way, that way, all ways. Madame Leleux, now dead and gone, had never gotten the future wrong. More Billodeaux babies were on the way for sure, and Nell couldn’t stop them from coming.

TWO

Cassie Thomas sat beneath one of the massive live oaks dotting Joe’s ranch and watched the redheaded boy she’d given birth to as a teenager six years ago circle the riding ring on a pinto pony named Boo. She could stand another typical Billodeaux family weekend with a smile on her face as long as she managed to be close to Joe.

Sure, as a kid recovering from leukemia, she’d had a crush on his former wide receiver, Connor Riley, a really good guy devoted to his wife, Stevie. Who could compete with tall, blonde Stevie Dodd, glamorous sports photographer? That couple didn’t want children interfering with their fabulous lives. At least, they had none so far. But Joe married Nell only so he could make a home for his illegitimate son, Dean, and then convinced Nell to adopt her Tommy.

Tommy could not have better parents, she granted. Once Joe Dean Billodeaux settled down, he’d done so with the same kind of concentration and joy he brought to the game of football. His teammates often called him Daddy Joe, but barely over thirty and hardly an old man Cassie still found him so very attractive. His love of children made him even more desirable in her eyes.

Nell, being a child psychologist unable to have children in the normal way, did love her Tommy as well as Dean and the twin girls produced from her sister’s eggs and Joe’s sperm, but she had to be the organizer and the disciplinarian because Joe preferred to have fun with the kids whenever he spent time at home. And Nell had been beyond kind to her, always allowing Cassie to be part of Tommy’s life.

She did feel some qualms about trying to lure Joe away from Nell, but she could offer the quarterback so much more. Coming from a family with eleven offspring and outstanding fertility, she could give him as many children as he wanted. She’d overheard Nell again today tell Joe she thought they had a big enough family and to shut up about those little frozen babies. The dispute had been going on for some time, the first wedge in their marriage. As a Catholic exactly like Joe, Cassie understood how he felt while Nell obviously did not.

When she first decided to follow in Nell’s footsteps and become a child psychologist, she gave her reasons as a desire to be closer to Tommy and to help other foolish girls lured into sex with older men, then abandoned as Bijou had done to her in Arizona. Okay, Nell had saved her and lost one of her newly implanted babies in the process, but she’d given Nell her son in reparation. That made them even.

As she grew up, Joe became the attraction, a perfect match for her with their mutual love of horses. Nell could barely ride no matter how often her husband took her out on long excursions. Sometimes, Cassie watched the children for them until they returned with Nell always looking disheveled as if she’d fallen from her mount a few times. Joe said Cassie sat a horse tighter than a cocklebur.

Since Bijou and all through college, she’d given herself to no other man, saving herself for Joe, she believed. Nell, she knew from a few frank conversations between only the two of them, had been with at least four men before marrying Joe, maybe more. Of course, Joe probably had been with hundreds of bed partners back when he prided himself on womanizing, but that’s the way God created young men. He’d settled down now and deserved someone younger and fresher than Nell. Once Joe divorced his wife, she and he could take Tommy and Dean, leaving Nell with the girls so she wouldn’t be all alone. They’d all remain friends like Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and Bruce Willis. She did love reading about situations like that in the tabloids, her secret guilty pleasure.

“Lookit, Mama Nell! Lookit, Mama Cassie!”

Tommy dropped his knotted reins over the horn, stood up in his saddle, and raised his arms toward a chilly blue January sky. The patient Boo continued on around the ring at a steady pace. Dean shot by Tom riding his chestnut half-Arabian, Drummer Boy, and obscuring his brother’s feat in a cloud of dust.

The twins on older ponies cried out, “Mom, make Deanie stop that!” Despite being very young, all the Billodeaux children rode better than their mother.

“Dean, you come over here at once,” Nell commanded from her seat on a fence rail.

Cassie uncurled her long legs. Foolishly, she’d worn heels high enough to make Nell seem like a dwarf beside her and skinny jeans so tight the word “comfort” could not have squeezed into them. Now, she hobbled across the rough lawn to the ring where Dean’s chewing out progressed.

“You saw Tommy showing us his trick. How unkind and dangerous to try to upstage him. What if he had fallen and gotten hurt? Then how would you feel? I think you owe your brother an apology,” Nell chastised.

Dean hung his head a little and glanced sideways at Tommy who had come to a stop beside him. “Sorry, bro. It’s just Drummer Boy is so much faster and bigger than Boo. He likes to run.”

“S’okay, Dean. I’m glad I don’t have to ride a girlie horse anymore since you let me have Boo. Besides, I didn’t fall off. Daddy says I’m like a tick on a long-eared dog when it comes to riding.” Tommy’s happy grin squinched all his freckles together and crinkled the corners of his dark brown Billodeaux eyes. Cassie preferred to think his ability to stay on a horse came from her, not Bijou, the former bull rider.

“Poor Buttercup, you learned your lessons on her,” Nell said with some disapproval.

“Cowboys don’t ride horses with names like Buttercup, Mama Nell. Do they, Mama Cassie?”

Cassie’s heart filled with warmth as she answered her natural-born son. “No, they don’t.”

“Come on, Deanie. Let’s race.” Tommy took an illegal head start on his short-legged pony. Dish-faced Drummer Boy caught up in one stride.

Nell shouted to the little girls to pull to the side. “Watch out for your brothers!”

Cassie stayed back from the rails and the dust. She smoothed the pastel blue cashmere sweater over her chest and took a quick peek toward the barbecue pavilion—where Joe manned the grill—to see if he noticed how great she looked in her latest purchase guaranteed to draw the male eye. It fit snugly over a seamless Victoria’s Secret bra that made her breasts look like perfect globes and shoved all she had into a deep cleavage in the v-neck of the garment. A small gold crucifix dangling exactly the right amount above this display pointed the way.

As a grad student and teaching assistant her income really did not stretch to include such luxuries. Their cost swelled her credit card bills, swamping her with growing interest payments. Oh well, Joe would take care of that someday—if he ever noticed she’d grown up. His eyes stayed on the burgers, hotdogs, and steaks he supervised on the grill. But that guy standing next to Joe, that Howdy they were trying to push on her, did see and went all wide-eyed, a wonder he didn’t have to blot the drool from his lips with a napkin. How could Nell possibly think she would ever go for another cowboy type after Bijou?

Cassie twisted a strawberry blonde curl around her finger. Toning down her bright red hair at a fancy salon had cost, but the results did please men. Many had told her so, but they didn’t count. She’d let her hair grow long and trained it into smooth curls. She might have been a mixed-up kid when she first met Joe, but she did remember that before Nell he’d preferred busty blondes and redheads who flipped their hair over their shoulders to show off their breasts. The tabloids once featured plenty of pictures of the quarterback with exactly that kind of woman. She kept an album of them. Even without the miracle bra, her boobs were way bigger than Nell’s round little tits. Cassie flipped her hair over her shoulders and inhaled to expand her chest. Joe flipped the hamburgers. Howdy smiled so broadly he could have caught the flies trying to get into the screened pavilion with his grin.

Freckles gone, hidden under carefully applied makeup, her blue eyes enhanced with long, darkened lashes and dramatic liner, her lips all pouty and glossy, but did Joe Dean Billodeaux notice? Apparently not. He stuck a finger into his special steak sauce, tasted, then added a few more drops of hot sauce. Being too spicy for the children, Nell always made him serve it on the side. Cassie planned to show her appreciation of his culinary skills by slathering the concoction on her meat as soon as they sat down to eat. Joe said something to the new guy who loped from the pavilion and headed her way. He pulled up in front of her nervous as a shying horse.

“Joe says dinner is about ready, ma’am.”

She scowled at him. “Ma’am? We’re exactly the same age.”

He lowered his blue eyes, but his glance skimmed across her tight sweater on the way. “My grandparents raised me, and they were kind of old-timey. They taught me to address all grown women as ma’am until told otherwise.”

True, when Nell introduced them with such a hopeful look on her pixie face, Cassie had barely given him a once over, let alone told him to call her by her first name. Instead, she’d flounced off to sit under the oaks even though in January, fair-skinned or not, she hardly needed to sit in the shade to watch the children ride. This guy, Howdy, introduced by his real and not much better name of Howard McCoy, took the hint and tamely followed Joe to the grill. So not an alpha male, the Sinners’ rookie kicker lacked any aggressive attitude at all, it seemed. Cassie wondered how he survived on the football field, but then, all he did there was boot field goals and try to stay out of the way of the real players.

“Fine! Call me Cassie,” she snapped.

“Yes, ma’am, I mean Cassie. Dinner is served.” In a boyish gesture, he swiped away the hair hanging in his eyes and reset the baseball cap on his head.

Having done his butler duty by her, he ambled over to the others to deliver his message again. She would say one thing for Howdy, he did fill out his dark blue jeans very nicely under that ugly shirt—but not any better than Joe. Nell directed the children to tie up their ponies and wash their hands.

In the pavilion, the twins asked for someone to boost them up to sink level. Howdy tucked one under each arm and raised them to the faucet. The curly-headed little girls took advantage to engage in a splashing game that left him with wet splotches on the front of his red Sinners T-shirt worn under an open green plaid flannel shirt. He looked like a Christmas tree, a wet and dripping Christmas tree. Joe always wore the black version of the Sinners’ shirt and covered it today with a gray hoodie that stretched across his broad shoulders.