Golden Hour (Crescent City) Page 9

  She turns her head and looks at me, her face completely calm, those brown eyes wide and gentle. “You know firsthand.”

  It’s not a question, and it’s following hot on the heels of my asking her all kinds of shit I have no business poking around about, but I feel like she just took a crowbar to my blackest secret.

  “Something like that,” I say and drink more beer to avoid speaking.

  “Mike used to hate fishing,” she says, not making any attempt to get more out of me. Her lips curl into a smile. “He wanted to be tough, you know? Mike was tough. He played football in high school and college, wide receiver. He ran marathons like a crazy man. Before he died, he was training for an Ironman race. But he hated fishing, and that was this huge part of being a cop.”

  “Fishing?” I ask when she stops.

  I guess it would make sense if I was annoyed that she’s talking about another guy, even one who’s six feet under. But, weird as it is, Mike seems like someone I ought to get to know if I want to know Elise better.

  “Fishing for the force in this town is like what golf is to CEOs of big businesses.” She pulls her legs up onto the chair, tucking her knees tight to her chest and hugging. “You got major props for snaring a big one on the company trips. And he wanted to do it, but Mike hated everything about it. He hated how quiet it is. Hated having to bait his own line. He hated reeling, he hated touching the fish.” Her laugh jumps out, bright and sudden, like a wild animal sprung from a trap. “Holy mother of God, he was a riot when it came to touching a fish. This was a man who wrestled alligators. I’m not making that up.” Her smile pulls proud. “I mean, his uncle, who’s a pro, was there when he did it, but, yeah, alligator wrestling? No biggie. One squirming catfish? It was enough to make him toss his cookies.”

  “I guess he didn’t impress the boss much on the trip, then?” I ask, turning my body toward hers. It’s like I want to be right next to her, right in front of her so she can see me. So I can gauge if what rolls through her when she looks at me is anything near as powerful as what rolls through me.

  I can’t imagine that’s possible, but I don’t know. And I can hope.

  Her grin is sly and, damn, the sheer gorgeousness of it hits me like a sucker punch under the ribs.

  “Above all, Mike was competitive. He would do anything to win. So I used to take him out at night on my grandpa’s rickety old boat. It was more patches than it was actual boat. We rowed out on the water, so still and peaceful, a million stars poking out in the sky, and I thought, ‘Damn, he’s so handsome, but such a chicken shit.’”

  My laugh and hers tangle in the cool night air. “So, did you school him in fishing the way you just did with me and that fire?”

  Her voice is smooth and low and her eyes tease. “I didn’t school you at all, Warren. I showed your sorry ass up.” She runs a finger along the top of her beer can, pressing her skin a little too hard against the hole, where the metal is thin and sharp. “I did teach Mike. Enough to fake it at least. I made him practice holding a fish without squirming. And it was nice, that night, to have this powerful, smart man I loved sitting with me in my grandpa’s patched-up boat while I showed him something I loved to do.” She blinks too fast and squints up at the sky. “First star.”

  “You making a wish?” I ask, and it strikes me as a stupid thing to ask. I shift my rickety chair closer to hers.

  “Nah.” She takes a swig of beer and a tiny bit trails out of her mouth. She wipes it with the back of her wrist and giggles. “Things are pretty damn nice right this second. No sense mucking them up wishing for something else.”

  I’m not sure what she’s saying. That she’s happy enough here with me to forgo a wish for more? Or that there isn’t a damn thing worth wishing for now that Mike is good and gone.

  “Lopez was this guy…” I start and stop. She’s looking at me like she expects me to exchange stories, the way she just did. I want to. “Lopez was—”

  Her hand lands softly on the back of my neck. Her fingers run through my hair and she squeezes my neck. I didn’t realize how tense I was until she starts to massage the rock hard muscles.

  “You don’t have to,” she tells me. “This isn’t show and tell, Caleb. That story about Mike just came up in me. And I’m really glad you were here to let me...testify. I guess that’s what you’d call it.”

  “You miss him.” There’s no bigger understatement in the world. I know it. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be said.

  Her fingers move down under the cloth of my t-shirt, pressing against my shoulder muscles. “With every breath I take. With every beat of my heart, I miss him. I miss him like I think it might tear me into such tiny shreds, I’ll never get put back together again.” Her voice hitches for just a second. “It’s the worst when I try not to think about him. Try not to remember. But I do that because it’s too painful for most everyone in my life. Too uncomfortable to hear about him, you know?”

  I do.

  “When Lopez died,” I say, breathing slow and steady because I’ve never talked about him like this, “it was like his name was voodoo. It was like you’d catch his death if you said his name. One minute you got this guy, coolest guy there was, best damn soldier, helluva cook, smart enough to save your ass in a shit-storm, funny as all hell. But the minute he went cold, it was like no one wanted to admit he’d existed.”

  Fucking damnit. My voice shakes and catches, but Elise doesn’t take me in her arms or give me a condescending smile She doesn’t say the words that make me want to commit homicide: It’s going to be okay. It will get better.

  “It’s bullshit,” she says instead. And it’s music to my ears. “They deserve better. Braver. They deserve for the people who loved them to stop being such fucking cowards.”

  The sound of those big swears swaggering out of her polite little mouth makes me laugh past the panic that’s clawing up from my gut.

  “Truer words have never been spoken.” I lift my beer can and she lifts hers.

  “Here’s to being brave enough. To Mike and Lopez.” We tap our beer cans and try to sit in quiet. The swarms of bugs cut that attempt short, and she slaps me hard on the forehead. When I jump back, she shrugs, her eyes dancing.

  “Mosquito. I was afraid it would suck through to your brains.”

  “You’re a piece of work.” I rub my forehead, but I should be rubbing my face. It’s not used to the strain of this much smiling.

  Her eyes settle on the horizon, now a deep blue that’s not quite night. “I kept nursing for Mike. He said he’d pass over his own mother to have me nurse him when he got sick.” She gives me a quick smile. “Just one of the things that keeps me brave enough, I guess. Because Mike was a total mama’s boy, so that compliment meant a lot.”

  “Lopez left a kid,” I admit. It’s the one part of the whole thing that’s almost impossible for me to talk about. “He lives with Marie, Erik’s wife—Erik’s widow—out in Texas. I feel like...Lopez never asked me to do anything, but so what? I shouldn’t have to be told to take care of family, and Lopez was the closest to a brother I ever had. So that makes me some kind of unofficial uncle. Am I right?”

  “How old is he?” she asks, her voice sure like we’re gonna solve this together.

  “He’ll be eight this winter.” I rub my hands up and down the legs of my jeans to mop away some of the sweat and stop the shakes.

  “Just the right age for his first fishing pole.” She fumbles in the dark for my hand, linking it tight in hers. “There’s some killer fishing in the Gulf.”

  “I should take him.” It doesn’t exactly fit into my whole ‘drink myself into the ground’ life plan, but I can always go right back to that once I check ‘taking Luis fishing’ off my list. Of course, if I take him once, he might want to go again. Therein lies the problem of not being a self-centered dick. I look over at Elise and nod at her. “You wanna come along?”

  “If you’re as bad at fishing as you are at building a fire, I think it’s my duty. I don’
t need you passing your shoddy skills onto that innocent kid.” She squeezes my hand so hard she pops my knuckles, and we laugh.

  I brush my thumb along the back of her hand with slow strokes and hear her breath hitch when I switch the pattern up and make tiny circles. “I’m alright at fishing. I’ve got other skills. For instance, I can cook a mean steak.”

  “Really?” She narrows her eyes at me. “I’m intrigued. Go on.”

  “I can play the fiddle,” I confess.

  Her mouth drops open. “You need to play me something. Can I tell you a secret?”

  I drag my fingers along the underside of hers. “I’m amazing at keeping secrets.”

  Up close, I see how she gets the tiniest dimple on her left cheek when she smiles.

  “I think you’re just bragging now.” She leans close, and I catch a whiff of something sweet. Something like wildflowers or the smell of honey in a just-opened jar. Her voice purrs out of the back of her throat. “I had the biggest crush on Pa Ingalls when I was a little girl. A man playing the fiddle is my kryptonite.”

  “No kidding.” I try to joke, but my voice jumps like I’m a middle schooler asking a girl to jump on the pegs of my bike and go to get ice cream. “If you get enough beer in me, I just might play you something.”

  “I’ll bring a case by next time, then,” she says, sighing as she leans back into the chair. “Mike’s brother can play the guitar.”

  “Is that so?” I let my fingers trail to the inside of her wrist, there they barely pick up on the stutter of her pulse. Her hand jumps as I brush the delicate skin. “With you being able to sing, maybe the three of us could get a band started.”

  She looks down when she laughs. “I wish Lawson would get back into music.”

  “Lawson?” The night suddenly quiets. I drop her hand and back up a little, like I need to give her some space, take some breath.

  “That’s right. Lawson Bazanac. Do you know him?” She asks in a generally inquisitive way that lets me know she isn’t making the connections that would make her write me off and kick me out of her life now.

  I stare at her, holding back the string of curses I want to utter when I wonder if we know the same Lawson. But maybe I’m remembering wrong. Maybe it there’s more than one Lawson. And I’m not dead sure about the kid’s last name, anyway. It was a few years back, and my memory was never top notch to begin with.

  What I do know, without a doubt, is that her Lawson is to her what Luis Lopez is to me. And that’s sacred as all hell.

  “Just sounded familiar. No reason,” I lie.

  She’s been good at letting things drop without my having to give a hint, but I get the feeling this isn’t going to be one of those lost conversations unless I do something major.

  She’s opening her mouth to ask more, but I hold a finger up, telling her to wait. I head back to my bedroom and reach under the bed. The case is beat to hell, worse than when my grandpa handed it to me, all of seven, maybe, and barely able to hold it under my chin. I stand by the theory that the only reason I learned to play was because the old guy was deaf in one ear. I think he turned the bad one my way for about two years while I scratched my way through.

  I flip it open and run my fingers over the smooth wood. Nothing in my life makes less sense than the way I feel when I play this damn thing. Like I belong to something bigger. Like I’m worth something more. Like I have it in me to do what no one expects.

  Probably the very reasons I don’t take the damn thing out of the case all that often. I try to act like I don’t give a shit, but it’s not in me to handle the instrument roughly. I grab two beers from the fridge on the way out and hand one to her.

  “Is that your fiddle?” she asks, all questions about Lawson Bazanac and how I might know him put on hold.

  “It is.” I hesitate before I roll my shoulders and set it under my chin, reminding myself that its play or talk shit about a man she cares for who just might be a scumbag from my past. “How ‘bout the Cajun national anthem, just for fun?”

  “Will you sing?” she asks as I test the strings. They’re still tight.

  I groan. “Do I have to?”

  “Do you know them?” She looks into my face with rapt attention. “I mean the original. Not the English stand in.”

  “Honey, you’re not seriously asking me that, are you?” I clear my throat. “How bout you? You know them?”

  “I do,” she says. “I minored in French in college.”

  I chuckle. “You don’t need to minor in French to know the words to ‘Jolie Blonde’ ‘round here. You just need to have ears attached to your head and sit around a few Cajuns kicking a round back on a Friday night.” I point the bow at her. “You sure you’re ready for this?”

  “Are you better or worse at playing than you are at fire starting?” she asks.

  “Oh, I can start a fire with this fiddle,” I joke, and she claps her hands with excitement.

  “Bring it, Warren.”

  I take a deep breath, hell bent on impressing her. The first notes are a little rusty, but I find a groove. I wait to hear her voice before I join in. Her singing voice is purer than I imagined, but just as throaty and sexy. It reaches deep into my gut, pulls hard and twists as it carries over the water and echoes back to us.

  The fiddle slides over the notes and she gets up from her chair, holding her arms out like she’s imaginary waltzing. She dances around the fire, graceful like a little pixie, her head tilted back, her mouth open with laughter and this song—the one my mother used to sing with a moaning slur when she was halfway through a bottle of Mamie’s muscadine wine—is suddenly beautiful in a way I never imagined it being before.

  I don’t want it to end, and when it does, I’m half tempted to raise my bow back up and keep playing. But the fiddle demands your full attention, and I want to give it to the girl in front of me instead. So I put the instrument down and walk to her, circling my arms around her waist. Her cheeks are bright and her smile is so wide, I feel like I could fall into it.

  “Did you have your heart broken by a pretty blonde, Caleb?” she asks, putting one hand up to the side of my face and moving her fingers along my jaw, her thumb brushing my bottom lip.

  The fire pops and crackles behind her. “No girl ever got close enough to break it.” I pull her closer. “Plus that, blondes aren’t what I go for. I like dark hair.”

  She puts a hand up to her own hair. “Really?” She tilts her head. “Are you sure you’re not just being opportunistic?”

  “Nope.” I cup her face in my hands and tilt it back. “I like dark hair. Dark eyes. A little dimple—”

  “I don’t have a dimple,” she objects as I run my thumb along her bottom lip and follow it through to the shallow dip in her cheek.

  “Really, Nurse Dupuis? Then what’s my thumb falling into?”

  “Are you flirting with me, Caleb Warren?” she asks. “Because I’m in your backyard dancing around the fire. Clearly, I’m under your spell already. All this pretty talk is just a waste of your time.”

  “Alright.” I wrap my arms tighter around her waist, feel the solid jump of her heart against my chest. “You’re saying you want to go straight to the part where I kiss you?”

  “Yes, please,” she whispers.

  Her mouth opens and my tongue licks at her. I still my hands because if I let them wander, I’ll strip her naked and take her right here on the grass of my back lawn. She nuzzles against me and makes a sweet, needy sound in the back of her throat that I answer by deepening the kiss.

  I keep my hands still to keep from going crazy, but she’s not abiding by any rules. Her hands travel from my jaw, press hard against my chest, reach down to grab at the bottom of my shirt and drag it up in one tight fist.

  “Caleb,” she sighs when her hands touch my skin.

  Her voice lights me on fire. The appreciation in her words is crystal clear, and I want to show her that’s there’s a whole hell of a lot more to appreciate about me than just my abs, but I
take a deep breath and pull back.

  She’s still clutching the fabric of my shirt in her fists and dragging deep breaths in and out of her lungs. “Elise. We need to slow down unless we don’t plan on stopping at all.”

  I don’t honestly expect her to throw caution to the wind and keep going, but I can’t lie; part of me is disappointed when she stops gripping onto me and steps back.

  “Why is it so hard for us to just make out like a couple of horny teenagers?” she jokes, and it takes all my willpower not to scoop her back into my arms.

  Anything I might say will be leading us right back down the path we just stepped off of. “You have a shift tomorrow?” I ask.

  She nods. “Not till noon.”

  “Cops in this area tend to be swarming once you hit the main road. I don’t know if either one of us would pass a sobriety test at this point. You wanna stay here the night?” I watch her face pull tight with internal panic. “Or how bout we make some strong coffee and wait an hour or two? Fire’s dying down, so we could go back in for a bit.”

  “Okay.” She nods, relief flooding her face, and I don’t read into it. I have a feeling Elise and I are gonna have a hell of a time figuring out how to navigate whatever it is we’re doing together. I get a bucket of water and put the fire out, then lead her back in.

  What felt intimate in the moonlight with the flicker of a fire feels more distant under the shoddy light of the fluorescent bulbs in my kitchen. I make a pot of coffee that’s too strong, not even sure if the milk I have in the fridge is any good.

  Elise eyes the date on the carton and says, “Black is fine.”

  “Sugar?” I pass her the bowl and she drops two cubes in, stirring slowly.

  “What...happens next?” she asks into her mug.

  I stretch back in the chair and shrug. “One good thing about living through getting the rug pulled out from under me? I stopped thinking about what was gonna happen next.” I take a sip and grimace at the bitter taste.

  “That’s a really good point.” She sips again and shakes her head, laughing softly. “You’re a terrible coffee maker.”