Close Cover (Masters and Mercenaries #16)(63)

“You say potato,” she began.

“Don’t patronize me.”

She looked down at her hands. “I’m sorry. I get sarcastic when I’m…well, everything. I’m sure a shrink would tell you it’s a coping mechanism. Anyway, I think we should be civil. My first instinct was to find a room and hide in it, but that’s going to last a whole day maybe and then I’ll want to do something. Can I work at your bar?”

“Yes. I would like that.” He’d known he would take her with him, but he wasn’t going to force her to work. The fact that she wanted to was a huge plus. “I would love it if you would give me advice on the strength of the business. I would pay you. Well, when I can.”

“I’m a captive audience,” she said, her lips curling slightly. “Looking through your books and making a study of the business could take my mind off things.”

Things like the fact that an assassin was after her. Things like him. It killed him that she was lumping him in with all the bad things in her life.

She looked up in the distance. “What’s that?”

He squinted to see what she was talking about. Up ahead there seemed to be a bunch of cars parked on the sides of the main street running into town. “I don’t know. It looks like something’s going on in the square. It’s not carnival season or shrimp fest. We party a lot down here. Once we get past the square we’re only a few miles from the house.”

“Uh, I don’t think you’re exactly the most hated man in town, Remy,” she said, pointing at a huge banner that someone had draped across Main Street.

Welcome Home, Our Hero

Papillon’s Favorite Son, Remy Guidry

He stopped the truck in the middle of the road.

Now that was something he hadn’t expected.





It had been the single hardest day of her life.

Okay, that was total hyperbole and insanely untrue, but sitting in Remy’s big old truck as they drove all day with weird shit right outside the window and about a million places she would have loved to stop and explore along the way but hadn’t been able to because she had been proving she could brood had been pure hell.

She hadn’t even gotten to run around the massive Buc-ee’s when they stopped for gas and to use the restroom. She had to pretend she wasn’t interested in its thousands of weird candy choices and hadn’t wanted to ask how they sold both barbecue ribs and garden gnomes, and a surprisingly large selection of socks.

No. She’d frowned and gone to the bathroom and hadn’t bought that CD that promised all the country classics sung in chipmunk voices.

She hadn’t gotten a waffle at the Waffle House they’d stopped at for breakfast. She’d gotten adult food, food that didn’t require maple syrup, and it had sucked.

As they’d crossed the border from Texas to Louisiana, she’d had to conclude that she wasn’t the girl who could hold a grudge. Not when there were places to buy daiquiris from. She’d actually managed to pass by a bunch of drive-in daiquiri places and not buy one. Or four. New Orleans had gone by and she’d still held her tongue.

And then she’d looked up from the book she’d been staring at and seen a magical place. It was like something out of a fairy tale, the trees rising from the water as though they floated there. Once she’d seen Chompy, it was over.

She couldn’t help it that she thought the world was pretty cool. Maybe that made her a nerd, and it definitely made her a bad brooder, but she couldn’t help it.

Besides, the whole time she was brooding, all she could think about was the look on Remy’s handsome face when he’d said those words to her in the hospital.

Please don’t give up on me.

She stared out the window of the truck. He’d stopped in the middle of the road. Not at a stop sign or a red light. Just stopped and looked up at that sign. For at least a solid minute.

Someone honked behind them.

“I think we’re blocking the lane,” she pointed out.

He sat there, staring at the sign.

She heard the peeling of wheels and an SUV drove around them, a fist shaking their way.

And there appeared to be a Ferris wheel. It lit up and started moving in the distance. Ferris wheel. Did that mean carnival food? Because again, she’d eaten like an actual adult all day and that meant she was super hungry.

There was a knock on the window and she nearly jumped out of her seat. There was a man in khakis and a greenish hat that proclaimed him Sheriff of Papillon Parish. He was a big guy who looked like he should be on a football field. Broad shoulders, piercing blue eyes, and a jaw cut from granite.

“You all right in there?” The sheriff stood up a little taller. “Remy Guidry. Remy, my friend, you get your butt out of that truck and go and see what your family and friends have done to welcome you home. What are you doing sitting there when we’ve got beer to drink and women to dance with?”

Lisa leaned forward. “Is there cotton candy? Wait, funnel cakes. I would rather have funnel cakes.” She winced. She had to at least pretend to be something of an adult. “Okay, corn dog first because I skipped dinner and it has some protein.”

Remy frowned her way. “You said you weren’t hungry.”

“I lied. I was all broody. Now I’m hangry and you should find a place where I can shove fried food into my mouth.” And she was suddenly curious about his family.