Close Cover (Masters and Mercenaries #16)(60)

“We’re only two hours from New Orleans,” he said quietly.

She looked up from the e-reader she’d had in her hands the whole day. “Somehow I doubt I’ll be partying in New Orleans anytime soon.”

“We could drive in for the day,” he offered. “I’ll have to go into the city often to pick things up.”

She turned away from him and seemed to realize there was a world outside the cab. She hadn’t looked up as they’d moved from the flat prairie land of North Texas into the Piney Woods that connected the state to Louisiana. She’d ignored the world outside as they’d driven across the long stretch of highway that bridged the Atchafalaya Basin, and he was fairly certain she’d napped as they’d passed around New Orleans.

But she looked up now. They were crossing the long bridge that connected Papillon to the mainland. The one-lane highway was one of two ways to get into his hometown. The other involved an airboat and a certain tolerance for the swamp.

“That’s the bayou the town’s named after.” He kept his words quiet, academic. He didn’t want to scare her back into her book.

She turned and stared out the window. The sun was starting to set, the sky lit with pinks and oranges and yellows. Massive cypress trees leaned over as though dipping branches into the slow-flowing waters, Spanish moss dripping from the limbs like a gothic shawl. This time of year the place was green and lush, the water seemingly blanketed in bright green lily pads.

He’d grown up here, but even he knew the bayou was a different world, alien and beautiful. Like nothing on the planet.

God, he’d crossed the globe and nothing, nothing in the world had ever been as beautiful as this stretch of road taking him home.

Nothing except her.

She gasped and sat up a bit straighter, as though trying to see. “That’s an alligator. It snapped at something. That was a real live alligator.”

There she was. “Don’t get too impressed. You’ll get used to them. They’re kind of part of life around here. We name them.”

She turned to him, her jaw going stubborn again. “I won’t be here long enough to name one.” She pressed her lips together as though holding something in. “Except that one. He’s Chompy.”

Yeah, there was no way she’d be able to hole up in her room. That’s what he had to count on. Her natural, vibrant curiosity.

God, he’d forgotten how beautiful it was here. He’d forgotten how it felt to be home. It was an actual ache in his chest. He was home.

“How long has it been?” The question came out of her mouth as though she didn’t want to ask but couldn’t stop herself.

“Three years since I came back, but I’ve been gone for almost seven. I went into the Navy, took the hardest assignments I could possibly find for as much pay as I could make. That’s why I immediately told the recruiter I wanted to be a SEAL.”

“You must have been in your mid-twenties when you enlisted. Why did you wait so late? Most kids I knew went in straight from high school.”

At least she was talking. He wished they were talking about something pleasant, but he would take anything he could get. And maybe it would help her understand. “I was eighteen when my grandfather died. Pop-Pop ran the business Papillon is built around, had for fifty years. In his will he left everything to my grandmother, of course, but with the provision that after she was gone, the wharf would be split between the grandkids who worked it while she was alive. There were four of us. Me, my sister, Seraphina, my brother, Zéphirin, and our cousin, Jean-Claude.”

“So it was divided between the four of you?”

“Oh, no, ma cre…Lisa.” He had to can the sweet names. She’d already told him she would smack him if he called her a shrimp again. He believed her. He was fairly certain she thought he was making fun of her. “Zep was far too busy drinking and getting into trouble to work. He dropped out of high school and ran off for a while with some girl he met at a concert. I didn’t know where he was until I found him in prison for writing hot checks off the girl’s mom’s account. Sera was always wild. She tried college but dropped out and came home. She went to cosmetology school for a while. Finally ended up pregnant and never would tell me who the father was. So it was me and Jean-Claude. Two dumbass twenty-year-olds running a business before we were able to legally drink.”

“How did you lose it?”

“The same way people lose most things. Someone took it away from me. I thought it was time to settle down. I was kind of the head of my family from the time my father passed. Like your brother, I had to hold things together. I thought I was ready to have a wife at the age of twenty-one. Josette was the prettiest girl in town and she said yes. I wasn’t in love with her. I was just ready to start my life. I had steady work. It made sense I would have a family. She thought because I was going to own half of the biggest business in town her life was going to be easy.”

Lisa chuckled but it wasn’t a happy sound. “Businesses like that require an enormous amount of work. The upkeep alone is incredible, and you would have to constantly put money into it. You do work like that because you love it, not to get rich. Especially if you don’t have a business degree. You would have no idea how to grow the place.” She frowned. “I’m sorry. That was pretentious of me.”

“Nope, you’re one-hundred percent right,” he admitted. “Pop-Pop was excellent at running the place. He could fix a boat, stock up on bait, run the bar. He had no idea how to invest money or how to negotiate the best deal.”