A Dixie Christmas (17 page)

She knew he spoke from pride and disappointment. That didn’t excuse his crudity. “You jerk!”

“I love you, too, baby.”

She grabbed hold of her own short curls and tugged with frustration. “Aaarrgh! You’re driving me crazy.”

“I take that as a good sign.”

“You’re delusional.”

“I’m not giving up, Brendie. And you know why?”

She was probably going to regret this, but she asked, “Why?”

“Because of this.” He pulled her into his arms and wouldn’t let go, even when she smacked him on his shoulders and the side of his head. Then he lowered his mouth to hers, open-mouthed and hungry. He devoured her with his never-ending kiss till she softened with a moan of surrender and opened her mouth to his, kissing him back with a traitorous fervor. When he finally released her, she had to hold onto the grocery cart or risk melting to the floor in an erotic puddle.

To give him credit, he didn’t smirk or make a gloating remark. Instead, he used his thumb to caress her bottom lip and said in a raw voice, “That’s why I’m not giving up, babe.”

With those words, he walked off.

And she wondered how she was going to withstand his next assault, never doubting he would try again. And again. And again.

Me and WHO? . . .

Lance was walking away from Brenda with a mixture of elation and bone-deep disappointment.

Elation because she still loved him. He knew she did.

And disappointment because she was grinding him down with all the rejections. Nothing he did seemed to work. Nothing. Five years of cajoling, apologizing, teasing, and begging. What did he get for his efforts? Nada.

He was passing by the checkout lines, heading toward the crowd outside when he stopped and did a double take. Holy shit! He saw himself staring out from one of the tabloids
 . . .
with a freakin’ half-dressed starlet with enormous breasts. It looked as if she had her hand on his crotch.

He had no idea if he’d been at the same party that the starlet had—you’d think he would remember that—or if some enterprising editor had done a cut and paste job. All he knew was that he’d never been with that particular goddess of silicone, in any way. But if Brenda saw this picture, it would be five years ago, all over again.

So, he did what any half-brained guy would do. He bought every issue of the tabloid before he left the store.

Desperate men do desperate things . . .

“I’m desperate,” Lance Caslow said later that night, and almost fell off his chair at the Loosey Goosey Bar, somewhere in California
 . . .
he wasn’t exactly sure where.

“Nah. Yer jist drunk, thass what you are,” his best friend and fellow NASCAR driver Easy Eddie Morgan slurred out, even as he tried to wink, but just grimaced at a buxom blonde waitress who should own stock in a push-up bra company.

“We’re both drunk,” Lance concluded. “Knee-walking, shit-faced, we-oughta-go-home blitzed. Can you remember why?”

“I think we mighta won the Brickhouse, or placed, or somethin’. No, no, no. That was last summer. We were doin’ a commercial. In L.A.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

“So, why are ya desperate, good buddy?”

“I’m so in love with my ex-wife it hurts, right here.” He pressed a forefinger to his abdomen, though he’d been aiming at his heart. “But she won’t take me back.”

Easy shrugged. “Ex-wives are a dime a dozen. Find another one.” Easy should know, he had three of them and was paying alimony out the wazoo.

Lance shook his head. “I don’t want anyone else and haven’t for a long, long time. Brenda and I go way back, to elementary school. I thought we would be together forever.” He didn’t even care how corny that sounded.

“And?”

He sighed. “I screwed up. Bigtime.”

“Didja say yer sorry?”

He nodded.

“Didja buy her jewelry to make up fer it?”

“Yes. She threw the damn necklace in my face.”

“Flowers?”

“A pigload. She gave them to the old folks’ home.”

“Well, that leaves only one thing. Beg.”

“I tried that, too.”

Easy looped an arm over his shoulder. “I hate ta break it to ya but she might not love ya anymore.”

Lance shook his head slowly, and then he shook it harder from side to side till a headache began to jackhammer right behind his eyes. “She loves me, all right. She just doesn’t trust me any farther than she can throw me.”

“Ya need a plan. Ya need outside help.”

“Where’s a matchmaker when you need one? Ha, ha, ha!”

“Yeah, hire yerself a yenta. Ha, ha, ha!” Easy sometimes lapsed into his Jewish heritage; so, he knew words like that.

A tiny little idea burrowed into his pathetic brain. A matchmaker? “Hmmmm.”

“What?”

“Remember that wedding I went to?”

“The one with the ex-Amish Navy SEAL?”

“That would be the one. Anyhow, there was this crazy old Cajun lady there. She was spoutin’ stuff ’bout St. Jude and hope chests and thunderbolts of love.”

“Man, yer really drunk,” Easy slurred out.

“I’m goin’ to Loo-zee-anna,” he announced. “Southern Loo-zee-anna. Bayou Black, to be precise.”

“Yer big plan is to get a matchmaker?”

“Yep! Her name is Tante Lulu.”

Shopping . . . the cure for every girl’s woes . . .

“Are you sure you don’t want to sit on Santa’s lap?”

“Mom!” Brenda’s daughter Patti said, gazing at her with horror. Patti—seven, going on seventeen—quickly glanced around her at the mall to see if anyone had heard her mother’s embarrassing remark. “That is so uncool!”

“Well, excuse me, for not being cool.” Brenda squeezed her daughter’s thin shoulders to show she wasn’t offended. “In the past
 . . .
last year, for heaven’s sake
 . . .
you gave Santa your Christmas wish list.”

“I was a child then,” Patti said. “Besides,
Santa
already knows what I want for Christmas.” She gave Brenda a pointed look to let her know who the Santa in question was.

Brenda wasn’t even going to react to that wish remark and spoil their post-Thanksgiving trip to the massive Woodbridge Mall, a virtual city of stores, restaurants, and entertainment. Patti’s wish was the same every year anyhow. “Dear Santa: Please let Mommy and Daddy make up so we can be a family again.”

Brenda hated it, that Patti no longer believed in Santa Claus, that she was growing up so fast, and that she still hoped for a reconciliation between her and Lance. With each year, Patti looked more like her Daddy. Dark blonde hair, perfect features, a beauty in the making. She shared Lance’s sense of style, too. The outfit she’d chosen for the day: a twirly red and green plaid skirt, a red turtle neck, a short pink fake fur jacket, white knee-highs, black patent leather shoes and a sparkly hair clip. She’d inherited her father’s gift of charm, as well, as indicated by her next observation.

“You know, Mom, you are so beautiful. It’s no wonder Daddy loves you so much.”

“Give me a break!”

“Really, he does love you. He tells everyone.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yep, he told me again before he went
 . . .
uh, I mean
 . . .
uh, before he went on his trip.”

Brenda recognized a slip of the tongue when she heard it, especially from her too-transparent daughter. “What trip?”

“I don’t know.” Patti’s cute little pixie face bloomed pink.

“Patti?”

“It’s a secret trip, and that’s all I can say. Okay?”

“A secret trip? He better not be buying you another outrageously expensive Christmas gift.” Last year he’d given her an electric mini-sports car that exactly matched the vehicle he’d used when he won the Daytona the year before. It probably cost ten thousand dollars.

“The trip has nothing to do with me. And that’s all I’m gonna say. You wanna get a soft pretzel and a drink, or
 . . . ?
” Patti’s eyes twinkled with mischief.

“Or what?”

“Or we could go into Victoria’s Secret and buy you one of those see-through nighties. Betcha Dad would like that.”

Yep, her daughter was growing up way too fast.

Chapter Two

Even desperate men draw the line at . . .

Lance was cruising along U.S. 90 out of Houma, Louisiana. He passed a few sugar plantations on the way, some decrepit shacks and houseboats, and modest bayou-side homes. Some of them still showed damage from Hurricane Katrina, even after all these years.

He was heading for a cottage on Bayou Black that he had pinpointed on his GPS system. It was the home of Louise Rivard, better known as Tante Lulu, matchmaker extraordinaire.

This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve done some really dumb things.

Like losing Brenda?
a voice in his head said.

Yep, the dumbest.

The weather was a balmy seventy degrees
 . . .
balmy, considering that this was December. But then, this was the Southland. Despite the weather, he wasn’t about to put the top down on his Lexus convertible, the least flashy of his fifteen automobiles. Even wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, he’d been recognized occasionally when he stopped for gas on the three hundred mile trip from his home in Texas. Publicity was the last thing he needed on this desperate mission.

“This must be it,” he murmured, pulling into the driveway of a small cottage covered with logs accented by white-washed chinking. A wide porch, with several wooden rockers, faced a stretch of stream
 . . .
well, a bayou, actually. That’s what they called alligator-infested creeks here in Louisiana.

“Son of a bitch!” he said aloud. There
was
a real live gator sunning itself right in the old lady’s yard.

Swamps and thick jungle-like vegetation ruled in this region, but the cottage had neatly trimmed grass and colorful flowerbeds in cleared areas on all four sides. He smiled when he recognized the plastic and plaster statues placed in various spots among the flowers. St. Jude. Tante Lulu’s favorite saint, he recalled. In fact, last time he’d seen her at Caleb Peachy’s wedding in Central Pennsylvania a few months back, she’d shoved a miniature statue into his hand and told him, “It’s fer hopeless cases
 . . .
like yours.”

He gave the gator another wary look and shivered with distaste. Lance had a pistol under his front seat that he kept for security reasons.
Should I shoot the bugger? Nah! I’ll just run like hell if the beast comes after me.

No sooner did he step out of his car
 . . .
carefully, with an eye on the walking pocketbook
 . . .
than Tante Lulu stepped out onto her porch. “Welcome,
cher
, welcome! Come make yerself at home, you. I gots gumbo on the simmer and a strong cup of Cajun coffee hot enough ta burn yer tongue.”

“Uh
 . . .
what about that alligator over there.” At the moment said gator was ambling towards them.

“Oh, thass jist Useless.”

“He might be useless, but he has sharp teeth.”

“Useless is his name, honey. He usta be Remy’s pet gator, but then Remy moved off his houseboat and Useless moved down the bayou to live by me. He likes ta eat cheese doodles. Ya gots any cheese doodles in yer car?”

“No, I’m fresh out of cheese doodles.”
An alligator named Useless who eats snack food. Okay.