Sandra Hill - [Jinx] (22 page)

“What’s goin’ on here?” Samuel Peachey stepped into the kitchen. By the looks and smell of his clothes, he’d been out mucking the horse stalls. Tante Lulu was old enough to recall the smell of animal poop from the days when horsepower meant more than the size of a car’s engine.

“It’s nothin’, Samuel.” Rebekah was wiping her eyes with the edge of her apron. “Tante Lulu and Claire jist came ta visit.” Her eyes pleaded with them not to rile her husband.

Well, phooey to that!
“We came ta invite ya ta the party.”

Samuel ignored the invitation and glared at her and Claire. “You made my wife cry. I think ya should leave.”

“Dontcha even wanna know why we’re here?”

“No.”

Claire stood and took her elbow, trying to get her to stand, too. “Let’s go,” she murmured.

“Chicken,” she murmured back. “We’s here ta be mediators.”

Claire groaned and sat back down.

“We don’t need no mediators,” Samuel said, holding the screen door open for them.

Hah! He could glare all he wanted. She’d been glared at by meaner cusses than him. “Yesiree, ya do. Come on in and sit a spell.”

“Leave!” he said coldly.

Through the doorway, Tante Lulu saw a bunch of chickens scoot by, including one strange one that was bobbing its head and bouncing up and down like it was having a fit. Or maybe it was mad chicken disease. “Uh, I think yer chickens are flyin’ the coop,” she pointed out.

He turned and threw his arms out with dismay. “
Himmel!
I musta left it unlatched when I came runnin’ here.”

Rebekah, equally distressed, ran around the table and out the door to help her husband round up the chickens.

Tante Lulu stood and yelled out the door, “Doan fergit. Next Saturday. Seven o’clock. At the B & B. Dress casual.” She turned to Claire, then laughed. “How does an Amish person know casual from formal? Ha, ha, ha.”

Soon the only thing that could be heard was chickens squawking, and Samuel and Rebekah begging, “Here, chickee. Here, chickee.” As if any right-minded chicken would fall for that!

“Well, that went well, dontcha think?” she remarked to Claire then. “I gotta go pee before we leave.”

Chapter 14

Kissing a frog was never so much fun . . .

They were finishing up a late lunch when Caleb noticed Claire coming around the corner.

He didn’t know who looked stranger. Tante Lulu with pink hair topped with a blue-and-white polka-dotted bow, blue jeans, and a T-shirt that said, “I Love Richard Simmons.” Or Claire, who was wearing a red wet suit.

“New fashion statement?” he asked Claire when she got closer.

“Can I go down with you?”

“You want to go down on me?” He smirked. “Do you need to ask?”

She smacked him on the arm. “C’mon. I’m an experienced diver. I know I’m not certified for cave diving, but you would be there to help, and we wouldn’t be going into any tight passages. Besides, there’s not much that can be done in the cavern till you start pumping, so I wouldn’t be interfering with work. Take me down with you. Please.”

He nodded.

“Can I go down, too?” Tante Lulu came up behind them.

“No!” he said.

“Ya doan hafta yell.”

“Sorry. The idea of you cave diving just scared the snot out of me.”

“I doan see why. If Claire is gonna do it, why cain’t I?”

“Maybe because you’ve got about fifty years on her.”

“I do not! I’m only . . . sixty-five.”

“Tante Lulu!” her nephew said, having overheard the conversation. “That is a big fib.”

“Well, ya shouldn’t be commentin’ on a woman’s age iffen ya doan want her ta lie.” With that, she flounced away toward the house, her brain already jumping to another subject, as evidenced by her asking Abbie, “Hey, Abbie, is there any of that gumbo left from yesterday? I didn’t eat anythin’ since breakfast. Not even chow-chow.”

“What does she mean about chow-chow?” he asked Claire.

Claire’s face turned as red as her wet suit. “I have no idea.”

“Why are you grinning?” he asked LeDeux. “Is there something I should know?”

“I have no idea,” LeDeux repeated Claire’s words.

They both looked like they shared some secret.

“Will you spot us if I take Claire down for a quick look-see?” he asked the still-grinning Cajun.

“Sure. Let me go see if my aunt is okay. She forgets ta take her blood pressure pills. And by the way, ya better lock up the diving equipment tonight, or you might find a surprise down in the cavern tomorrow morning. And I don’t mean vandalism.”

“She wouldn’t!” Caleb exclaimed.

“Did I tell ya ’bout the time she went skydiving ta celebrate her eightieth birthday? She said if George Bush Sr. could do it, so could she. She about gave the Blue Angels instructor a heart attack when she showed up for his class.”

Caleb and Claire were both gaping at LeDeux.

He waved and started to walk away.

“And stay away from Lizzie,” Caleb yelled to his back.

“
Mais oui,
” LeDeux said. “Whatever you say.” And immediately took a detour toward Lizzie, who was arranging some bedding plants that Jonas had sent over from his nursery as a sort of thank-you. Lizzie was alternately staying with Jonas at his house and with him at the B & B, neither of which pleased their father. Big deal! In his present frame of mind, he was more inclined to do things that displeased his father. In fact, he might even help Lizzie get an audition for
American Idol,
just to piss off Dat. But not by getting LeDeux to help her. That boy was like Godivas to teenage girl chocoholics. Older girls, too, for that matter.

Soon he and Claire were geared up and standing on the ledge before the opening, waiting for LeDeux. She looked mighty fine in her red wet suit, which nicely molded the curves he had come to know and love intimately.

“What’s with you and Finley?” He could have bitten his tongue for blurting that out.

She smiled, and man oh man, he loved her smile. “Nothing. We date occasionally, but nothing serious.”

He wanted desperately to ask if they’d been lovers. After all, Famosa had first referred to Finley as Claire’s semi-fiancé, whatever that meant. Luckily, he managed to maintain a little bit of decorum. Instead he said something equally stupid: “I never kissed a female frogman before.”

She winked at him. And man oh man, he loved her winks, too.

“I’ve kissed a lot of frogs, but no frogmen of any kind.”

“Is Finley a frog?”

She tilted her face to the side. “Are you jealous of Del?”

“No! Maybe. Oh, hell! Damn straight I am.”

She cupped the side of his face and pulled him toward her. Something intense flared inside him just at being this close to Claire.

“Caleb.” She said his name against his mouth as if he were someone special. He liked it.

He made a rough sound in response, then angled his lips against her. As kisses went, it wasn’t anything unique, and yet its very gentleness marked something significant between them.

Claire took control of the kiss. Her lips moved against his in changing patterns till he was pliant and at her mercy. As if he weren’t already. His heart and another body part lurched. She put a hand on him
there
and smiled against his mouth at how aroused he was from a mere kiss.

He put a hand to her breast and moved his palm in a circular fashion till he imagined that he felt the nipple pearl, even through the neoprene, which was probably impossible. Caleb was the one to smile-kiss then.

“Holy sac-à-lait! You two’re gonna need a dunk in that cold water if ya keep it up,” LeDeux said behind them, causing them to jerk apart like teenagers caught necking on the front porch.

He and Claire had been so engrossed in each other that they hadn’t even realized LeDeux had come back to the cavern, let alone been climbing the ladder.

“Do you always have to sneak up, LeDeux?” he snapped.

“Oh, yeah. Ya see and hear the bes’ things that way. By the way, did I ever tell ya ’bout the time I had sex inside a coffin?”

What sex in a coffin had to do with near-sex on a ledge he had no idea. “Alone or with a partner?”

“Both.”

“Was she dead or alive?”

“Definitely alive. She was an undertaker from Biloxi. Nothin’ like satin on bare skin! We even did it on the hood of her hearse one time. Ya wouldn’t believe the things ya kin do with a hood ornament. Whoo-ee!”

He and Claire both laughed then.

“You are so full of it,” he said.

LeDeux leaned over their shoulders and glanced down. “At least I talked down your hard-on, buddy.”

Swimming with sharks . . . uh, SEALs . . . uh, one ex-SEAL . . .

Claire was an experienced scuba diver, but she’d never cave dived before. It was a remarkable experience, totally different than she’d expected.

First of all was the blackness of the water. The absence of light was blinding to the extreme. You couldn’t even see a finger in front of your face unless you shone a light on it.

It was cold in here, too. Colder than the main cavern, and that was colder than the outside temperature of eighty today. The water felt like ice, and divers had to regulate how much time they spent here or suffer hypothermia.

And then there was the depth. She’d scuba dived in the United States, the Bahamas, and the Mediterranean, but she’d never gone this deep before. The lower they went, the less they could see of the floodlights shining on the water’s surface. Then finally, the light disappeared totally.

She wasn’t frightened, though. A ten-foot safety line connected her to Caleb, and he stayed close, giving her constant hand signals and pats of encouragement from the minute they began rappelling down twenty feet to the water’s surface, bracing their legs against the sides for braking. They would abseil up the belaying rope in a little while with John’s help.

A white fish swam by, skimming her arm. She jumped, which caused her safety line to tug at Caleb.

“They’re blind,” Caleb said into the mouthpiece in his face mask, which had two-way communication with hers. “Every animal form in caverns is blind and colorless, adapted to the surroundings.”

Studying the surrounding walls as best she could, she tried to imagine what the drained chamber would look like with its thousands of years of limestone formations, each a creative work of art in itself. And if this chamber had been dry at one time as they suspected, there might very well be evidence of human habitation, even prehistoric . . . early Lenape from thousands of years ago, or older than that.

“Is that where you hope to pump?” she asked when Caleb stopped just a foot or so from the mud bottom.

“Yes.” He placed her hand over the crack. There was definite movement of the water.

“It’s not very wide. Are you sure you can run tubing through there?”

“Positive.”

“And you think there might be a chamber on the other side?”

“Could be. This little crack here seems to open in a funnel shape to another chamber.”

“It’s exciting, isn’t it? Not knowing what’s on the other side? Or even what’s at the bottom here?” She watched him and learned as he led her around, never quite touching the bottom.

At certain points, he took out a gauge to measure the cracks, the diameter of the pit, the location of certain protruding stalagmites from the sides. He also remeasured the depth of the muddy silt bottom in various spots. All of the numbers were relayed up above to John, who would be transferring the data to a tape recorder.

There were several limestone columns formed by stalactites and stalagmites meeting. They had to be careful to swim around them, not wanting to break the delicate formations. “Another indication that the chamber was dry at one time,” he noted, taking measurements of each of them.

It wasn’t that measurements hadn’t been taken before, but each time a diver went down, he noticed different things and refined the data previously noted.

A short time later, they were talking excitedly in the entrance area. Mostly, Claire was doing the talking. He was searching for Sparky to give him a high five for biting Knepp, but the snake was nowhere to be seen.

“And I remember the time we went diving in the Bahamas. The water was so clear that day. You could see forever. But that was nowhere near as exciting as going to my first Lenape powwow in Delaware, where . . . what?”

“You’re nervous,” he said, leaning down and giving her a quick kiss. “You’re talking a mile a minute, even more than you usually do.” He dodged a slap from her for that comment. “What’s up, honey?”

She gave him a skittish glance, then walked outside. He followed after her.

“Claire?”

“You’re going to be really mad at me.”

Uh-oh!
“Why?”

“I went to see your parents today.”

He stopped and stared at her with disbelief.

“With Tante Lulu.”

Oh, that makes it better! Not!
“Why?” He would have said more, but he was barely restraining his anger.

“We . . . I thought it was unfair, the way they were treating you. Tante Lulu agreed. And we decided to go over to the farm and confront them about it. Except I lost my cool and made your mother cry. And your dad kicked us out. But then the chickens escaped and there was this psycho chicken. And we helped make chow-chow, even Cajun chow-chow, but we never got to eat any. Tante Lulu gave your mother lingerie from Victoria’s Secret; can you believe that? And then there was the bride quilt. Oh, God, I think I made things worse.”

Chow-chow? Psycho chicken? Victoria’s Secret? Bride quilt?
“Who’s the bride?”

When she didn’t answer, he stood stock still. The anger inside him that he’d thought melted away was back in spades. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“Tante Lulu talked me into it.”

“Oh, great! Blame a dingbat as old as time. Next you’ll be telling me that meddling is contagious.”

She raised her chin haughtily . . . at his tone of voice, no doubt. “I was trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“My intentions were good.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what your intentions were. I don’t need help, especially from some crazy do-gooder Indian-loving fanatic.”

“Everyone needs help sometimes, even stubborn pain-in-the-ass militants who build glass walls around themselves and pretend to be macho when they’re really marshmallow inside.”

“I am not a marshmallow.”

“Marshmallow, marshmallow, marshmallow!”

“Are you deliberately trying to annoy me?”

“Tante Lulu and I were just trying to be mediators.”

“If I want mediation, I’ll call on the United Nations, not two crazies.”

“Oh, this is immature, exchanging insults.”

“You started it.” He gritted his teeth and counted to five . . . ten would take too long. “You had no right to interfere in my life. You’re not my wife. Even if you were, I’d be just as friggin’ angry.”

She gasped as if he’d hit her. “Just let me explain.”

“No! I should have known better. Let a woman get close and she takes over your life. Why is it that women always think men need to be fixed? Why do they think it’s necessary to pussy whip a guy till he becomes their puppet?”

“Now you’ve gone too far. I never asked to take over your life or be your wife. All I did was care about you.”

“Care? You said you loved me.”

“Oh, you heard that, did you? And you didn’t hightail it out of Dodge? Lucky me!”

“I heard, all right.”

“And you thought if you didn’t mention it, it would just go away, right?”

She was right about that. His tight jaw twitched, negating any possibility of a denial.

“I know that it’s hokey to talk about love at first sight, but I think that’s what happened to me . . . from the first moment I saw you. I’m not a kid, and I’m intelligent, a PhD for heaven’s sake, so I know how foolish I sound. But there it is.”

“Claire—”

“Wait. One more thing. I expect absolutely nothing in return. Not words. And definitely not actions. It was just a statement of fact. No response necessary.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong, Claire. Once you say those three words, it changes things. That bell can’t be unrung. And you’re wrong about no response being necessary, because even silence is a response.”

She paused, then said in a small voice, “I know.”

“Do you want to take them back?”