In Shining Whatever (Three Magic Words Trilogy #2)(45)

"He going to be at the party tonight?"

"Of course. He's a good friend of Minnette's husband, Claud. Bubba is a fisherman and loves the bayou," she offered.

"In other words, you two have more in common than we do," Hart said through clenched teeth.

"Probably. What are you going to do about that?" she asked, as she started driving.

"Fish some more at the bayou."

She jerked her head around to stare at him. That was absolutely the last answer she would have expected.

"That's what you've been doing all these weeks, and you don't know yet what you're going to do about all that. So I guess I'd better fish some more and try to figure out what I'm going to do about Bubba the fisherman and Kate the detective."

She finally smiled. "You sure are keeping your cards close to your chest. I bet you are a heck of a poker player."

He grinned back at her. "Yes, I am. I could whip you solid, lady."

"You are on. One night before you leave we'll have a game. I learned to play poker at my dad's knee and won a fortune from my partner when we were on stakeouts."

He chuckled. "I learned to play at my grandpa's knee, and, honey, it's a long way in a travel trailer from one bull ride to the next."

"What does that mean?"

He laughed aloud.

"Hart Ducaine, were there women in that trailer?"

"Like you said, darlin', I keep my cards pretty close to my heart. You want to tell me anything about the men you kept company with?"

"No," she said, loud enough that the words echoed off the truck's windshield.

"What's good for the goose is good for the gander," he said, intoning his grandmother's favorite adage.

"Well, gander Ducaine, you can get ready to lose when we play poker, because I won't let you win and I won't let you cheat"

"I won't need to cheat," he said.

"We'll see about that. I'm changing the subject before we fight. This is LeJeune's bakery, and we're going in here to get some bread and ginger cakes for tonight. Party in these parts isn't a real one without good bread to sop up the juices."

"So you don't want to fight?"

"I do not. I'm thinking about having a couple of ginger cakes and a Coke down by the bayou before we do any more sightseeing," she answered.

"But we just had lunch."

"And I worked up an appetite kissing you."

Hart reached across the console and ran a thumb down her jawline to the tender part of her neck. "I'd like to help you work up another appetite. I'd like to send you a class-five emotional tornado"

"You already did. That's why I'm in Louisiana."





The people began to gather at six o'clock. Women toted covered dishes and desserts. Men carried lawn chairs, and kids brought fishing poles and bait. The party tables were set up halfway between the house and the bayou in a clearing among the cypress and oak trees. Vinyl cloths covered two eight-foot folding tables, which had seen so many cochons de lait that if they could talk, the stories they would tell would be scandalous. Desserts went on one table. Food on the other. A smaller table was set up at the end of the food table to hold paper plates, napkins, plastic cutlery, and cups for tea or coffee. A child's swimming pool had been inflated and filled with ice early in the day, and canned soda pop and beer were chilled in it.

Maw Maw had already set her Crock-Pot full of gumbo on the table and claimed a chair half an hour before Kate and Hart made it home. She and Vincent nursed a cold soda pop and visited while he took care of mopping his own recipe for barbecue sauce on the hog turning slowly in the pit.

Kate and Hart hurriedly changed clothes and joined the party. The tables were full, chairs were everywhere with people in them talking, the band was setting up in a corner under the shade of an ancient live oak, and kids were running back and forth to the bayou. Kate had introduced Hart to a dozen cousins when Zac drug the bow across his fiddle for the first time and picked up the microphone.

"I understand we're celebrating something or other tonight. Could it be that Kate has found a fellow?"

Everyone laughed and looked at Hart, who did his best not to blush. Settling down on the biggest, meanest bull in the rodeo wasn't as intimidating as meeting all these people. Could Kate truly be related to all of them?

"So, since this is a party because she's come home where she belongs and should have never left, we'll let her and that cowboy who's come to visit have the first dance. This one is for you, chere," Zac said.

The band went straight into a Cajun song, and Kate led Hart to the floor. It was a fast song that didn't call for the two of them to melt together, and he did his best to follow her every footstep. Zac's fiddle whined, and the singer sang in what Hart supposed was French.

"What are they saying?" he asked Kate, when they got close enough to each other to talk.

"It's called `La femme que j'ai jamais ublie."'

"And that is?"

"It translates to `The Woman I Never Forgot."'

"It's nice of him to play something like that, because I didn't ever forget you," Hart said.

Kate laughed. "He's not playing it for you, believe me."