Under the Autumn Sky

Mary was pissed. Oh, she wasn’t mad at Lou, but Bear might as well stretch out his palms because his ass was about to be handed to him. Mary Belle didn’t shoot marbles.

“Excuse me, guys,” Lou said, stepping past a man she vaguely recalled spraying her house for bugs once. Or was he the guy who cleaned their ancient chimney? She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t plan to find out. “Hey, Brit, find a table?”

“You can sit with us,” Lloyd Day said, jabbing a thick finger at a tiny table where two guys with huge beer bellies ate peanuts out of a bowl. “Plenty of room.”

“No, thank you, Mr. Day. I’m here with my girlfriends.”

Brenda waved her toward a table in the back where Brit had dropped her purse. Lou tried to shuffle through the men, but they didn’t want to move. She truly felt like she was in some crazy movie. She knew these guys. She’d worked with half of them and they’d never treated her this way before. Her grandmother’s words came back to her. A little powder, a little paint, will make you what you ain’t.

“You look mighty good tonight, Lou,” Bear drawled, his pretty hazel eyes moving over her body.

“Thanks, Bear. That means a lot coming from Mary Belle’s boyfriend.” Lou frowned at him as he tried to give her a seductive smile. Lord, help him. It wasn’t going to work. Was he dumb as a brick? Wait, she shouldn’t answer that. She’d gone to high school with him and knew the answer.

“Boyfriend? I don’t know if I’d go as far to—”

“Here he is!” Mary Belle interrupted, dragging a man behind her. As if Lou needed another one. “He was waiting at the bar just like I told him to.”

Eight pairs of eyes turned toward the man standing behind Mary Belle.

He was easily six foot two or three with light brown hair cut military short. His eyes were a bemused soft green and his jaw was nice and lean. He moved with a loose-limbed elegance, like her brother. Like an athlete. His white oxford shirt was open at the throat and rolled up at the sleeves, giving him a sort of Abercrombie-ish look. Breezy and totally gorgeous.

“Who was where?” Bear asked, stiffening like an old dog guarding a bone.

“My cousin Abram. He’s Louise’s date tonight, so all you fellas can just back it on up now. She’s taken for the evening.”

“Date?” Lou chirped, looking around for Brenda as if the older woman could save her. She couldn’t have been party to setting Lou up on a blind date, could she? That would be, well, plain mean.

“What cousin is this?” Bear demanded, crossing his arms across his broad chest and once-overing the guy Mary Belle clutched.

“From Baton Rouge. On her daddy’s side,” the stranger said, nodding at Mary Belle. “She sometimes forgets about us over there.”

Mary Belle punched his arm. “Oh, you know we love you guys. See? Here’s Louise. Didn’t I tell you she’s the prettiest thing this side of the Mississippi?” She gestured to Lou as if she were a prized heifer.

Lou felt her hackles rise. What in the hell was Mary Belle thinking? “I don’t need—”

“Of course, you do.” The man answered for her, sliding his hand to her elbow and pulling her to his side. He leaned down, dropping his voice into her ear. She felt a bit shivery when the warmth of his breath caressed her neck. “I’ve driven all this way to meet you, Cinderella. Mary Belle said you’d be perfect for me and we should never argue with Mary Belle. At least let me buy you a drink.”

His touch was firm. And hot on her skin. She watched as he lifted a hand, Moses-style, and parted the men standing between them and the bar on the far side of the room. They stacked up to either side of them like obedient soldiers. If they had saluted, Lou wouldn’t have been surprised.

Like an idiot, she let him escort her around the perimeter of the dance floor toward the bar.

He pulled out a stool and gestured. She folded her arms and stood. “I’m not prepared for a date. I don’t know what Mary told you but this is not—”

“—a date,” he finished, a twinkle in his eyes. “I know. Though I must say when I saw you come in I thought the idea had merit, but I can see now you’re a stubborn sort of girl.”

Lou narrowed her eyes. “Stubborn?”

He smiled and sank onto another stool. “I’m guessing, but I’m pretty good at reading people. And it’s not an insult. Stubborn people are some of my favorite people.”

She uncrossed her arms. “Who are you? Mary Belle doesn’t have people in Baton Rouge.”

“That you know of.”

She tilted her head. “That I know of, but she talks about everyone in her family. Great-Aunt Velma who’s still canning tomatoes at age ninety-three. Her niece Kaley who won a twirling competition in Lafayette last week. And she’s never mentioned a hot cousin in Baton Rouge.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“For what?”

“The ‘hot’ compliment.”

Lou hadn’t realized she’d even loaned an adjective to him. Damn the mojitos. They’d made her fuzzy. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

He smirked in a pleasant way. “No take-backs.”

Lou shrugged, uncrossed her arms and used her foot to pull the empty stool to her. She sat down. “Seriously, who are you?”

He glanced at the bartender and lifted a finger. The man immediately appeared in front of him. “I need a drink for the lady.” He turned to her with a lifted eyebrow.

She shouldn’t have anything else. The clock over the bar read 10:15 p.m. She had maybe thirty more minutes before she could talk Brit into taking her back to Bonnet Creek and the patched-up ranch-style house on Turtle Bay Road. “Um, a rum and Coke.”

The bartender nodded and grabbed a highball and a bottle of Captain Morgan.

“My name truly is Abram and I actually live in Baton Rouge. However, I met Mary Belle about ten minutes ago. She slipped me a twenty to be your date.”

“She paid you?”

He laughed and something plinked in her tummy. He had a good laugh. Deep, rich and filling like a good piece of chocolate cake. “No. She twisted my arm a little, but I could see very plainly you needed rescuing.”

“I don’t need rescuing.” She nodded at the bartender and lifted the glass he’d set in front of her to her lips. He’d been generous with the spicy rum and it burned a hot trail down her throat. “I’ve been seeing after myself for quite a while. I certainly don’t need a man doing it for me.”

“Oh, you’re one of those women.” His eyes laughed at her and she saw he liked to tease.

“What women? Just because I don’t need a man—”

“I didn’t realize you were a feminist, but I’ll buy your drink anyway.”

She laughed. “I’m not a feminist. Much. And you’re a tease.”

At this he smiled again. She felt his smile. Like really felt his smile. “I’m not a tease. I like to deliver the goods, lady.”

She sobered. “I’m not taking deliveries.”

But even as she uttered the words, an idea formed in her mind. What if. What if.

He lifted his eyebrows. “Okay, no deliveries, but will you dance?”

She looked out at the dance floor, at the couples joining hands, wrapping arms around waists, swaying to the slower rhythm of a misty-eyed country song and a long-buried urge slammed her. “Sure.”

Lou downed the last of her drink, telling herself she needed liquid courage. She hadn’t been held in a man’s arms on the dance floor since her senior prom, and Ben Braud hadn’t qualified as a man at seventeen. She set the empty glass down and took Abram’s hand.

Ten steps later, he gathered her in his arms, leading her with a smooth glide around the worn boards. For a moment, Lou forgot to breathe. It was that wonderful.

“I don’t remember the last time I danced,” Abram murmured, meeting her gaze with a shadowed one of his own.

“I do,” she said. “April 16, 2003.”

He stiffened. “Seriously? You haven’t danced in almost ten years?”

“Well, I’ve danced around my kitchen. Does that count?”

He shook his head. “I’m feeling the pressure. We’ve got to make this count.”

He spun her away from him then reeled her back in, tugging her closer to his body, before sliding left then right. Her hair fanned out behind her as they whirled around the floor. She felt his hardness against the soft parts of her body, and all her good intentions for getting home early enough to watch the Iron Chef episode she’d DVR’d earlier in the week flew right out the front door of Rendezvous.

Then and there whirling around the dance floor in the arms of a mysterious stranger, Louise Kay Boyd thought about getting a little bit of what she’d not gotten the chance to do after her daddy crashed his plane into the Ouachita National Forest, leaving her and her siblings without parents. Her days of irresponsible, selfish, wanton behavior had disappeared before she’d had the chance to use even one of them. Gone was her freshman year at Ole Miss—cramming for tests, trying pot, drinking too much and going all the way with a Kappa Sig she’d met at a kegger. Gone were the days of little responsibility and lots of spare time. They’d vanished in a whirl of funeral preparation, a looming mortgage payment, and the tear-streaked faces of her six- and seven-year-old brother and sister.

So would it be wrong to grab a little bit back?

The drinks and this sexy stranger had unwittingly unleashed pinings no one could possibly know anything about.

She didn’t know him.

He didn’t know her.

So what would it hurt to pretend to be someone other than who she was?

She was already halfway there, looking like some honky-tonk angel. No, he’d called her Cinderella. A honky-tonk Cinderella. What would it hurt to pretend herself into a fantasy for a few hours? Maybe this was her time to cut loose. Maybe this was her time to lose the monkey riding on her back.

The song ended and the band launched into a rendition of an old Kenny Chesney song mixed with something that sounded like reggae. Abram stopped and looked down at her. “You wanna go again?”

She shook her head. “Let’s get another drink.”

He nodded and curved an arm around her waist, making her feel gooey inside. Like melting caramel. She sank a little bit into him And he tightened his hand on her hip, an almost caress. Her mind said Don’t. Do. This.

But her bratty, whiny, life’s-not-fair voice said, Get jiggy with it, sister. You’ve missed out on too much. You need this.

Abram slid a hand under her elbow as she dropped onto the scarred wooden stool. Definitely a caress. Definitely revving something in her blood she’d locked away ever since her last boyfriend had unhooked her bra and slid one hand down her panties the night before he told her he was seeing someone else. She decided to give whiny, not-fair inner voice some headway.

She smiled at him and felt his reaction. He didn’t flare his nostrils or anything like some of the heroes did in those novels she kept stacked by the bed, but he got the message in her smile.

Abram beckoned the bartender again. And again the man flew to do his bidding. A rum and Coke sat before her not two minutes later joined by an ice water for Abram. “He’s bustin’ his hump for you.”

“I’m tipping him more than twenty percent. I learned long ago to treat bartenders well.” He watched her as she raised the glass to her lips. She returned his measure. He really was too good-looking. Sweet temptation swirled around her and she wondered about what it would be like to taste him. Was he good at kissing? She stared at his lips as he lifted the glass of water and drank. Was drinking supposed to be sexy?

“Hey, how’s the date going?” Mary Belle poked at her back.

“Huh?”

“The date with my cousin here,” Mary Belle said, a devilish twinkle in her eye. Lou swung around. Brenda and Brit stood behind her.

“He’s not your cousin,” Lou said, sipping the cool drink, keeping one eye on her pretend date. “And our date is going fine.”

“Yeah, we saw you dancin’,” Mary Belle said, taking the drink from Lou’s hand and taking a sip. “Brenda thinks she has food poisoning or something, so she needs to go home.”

Lou looked at Brenda who bit her lip. She did look a little pale and sweaty. “Oh, no. Sure. Let’s go.”

Mary Belle pressed her back onto the stool. “No, you stay. I’ll come back for you in an hour or so.”

“You can’t. You’ve been drinking. A lot. So I’m going with Brit.”

“I’m good, I tell ya,” Mary Belle slurred.

“Uh, no. I don’t have a death wish.” Lou slid from the stool.

“I’ll be glad to give her a ride home. I’m fine to drive,” Abram said, winking at her friends. “I am, after all, her date.”

“Perfect!” Mary Belle said, glowing in a liquor-haze.

“That’s not necessary,” Lou said, giving Brenda a concerned look. “You think it was the fajita meat, Brenda? We all had that.”

Brenda made a face. “I don’t know, but I can’t stay. I’m so sorry, baby, ruining your birthday like this. I was going to teach you that new line dance.”

“We’ll live,” Brit said, giving Brenda a smile before looking hard at Abram. “How do we know we can trust you with our friend? You could be a serial killer for all we know.”

“I’m not a serial killer.”

“Like a serial killer would admit to being one.” Brit crossed her arms and studied him. “You’re good-looking, but one of those guys was good-looking, too. Which one? Um, Gacy?”

“Ted Bundy,” Abram said, taking another sip of water. He looked so cool, like nothing would faze him. Like he dealt with all kinds of crazy all day long. Maybe he was a psychiatrist. Or a postal worker.

“See? He knows his serial killers,” Brit said.

“I’m going with y’all,” Lou said, sliding from the stool. Time to end this charade. The dance was fun. The flirting even better. But reality always intruded, no matter what Lou wished. She’d left fairy tales behind long ago. “No worries.”

Mary Belle frowned. “You’re having fun, though. Just because Bear is a shit and Brenda’s faking, shouldn’t affect you. Stay with Abram. He looks like a stand-up guy. Dance. Drink. And don’t think about anything else.”

“I’m not faking,” Brenda huffed, but Lou wasn’t paying attention to any of her friends. Abram’s finger stroked her inner wrist. It caused loopy loops in her stomach.

“Stay with me, Cinderella. I’ll make sure you get home from the ball.” He gave her a Prince Charming grin, kind of lopsided like the one a small boy gives when he’s got a frog behind his back. The one where a girl knows she should run, but can’t possibly pick up her feet. That exact grin.

“Okay, as long as you don’t turn into a pumpkin at midnight.”

And that settled it.

For a few more hours, Lou was going to play the part of maid-turned-princess. And she wasn’t going to have regrets.

She looked back at her friends. “Thanks, friends, for making my birthday so much fun.”

She gave hugs all around and the ladies she worked with at the construction company took their leave. She spun toward her prince for the night. “So, what shall we do first?”

Abram didn’t say anything. Just looked at her for a few moments, his eyes bright but guarded. Then his eyes slid down to the red stilettos she’d hooked on the bottom of the stool. “Those don’t look like glass slippers.”

She pulled one free and wiggled it. “No, and they’re not too comfortable. I think I’d rather go barefoot.”

“A barefoot Cinderella?”

She laughed. “Suits me better.”

“Well, in that case, follow me.”

Lou watched him rise from the stool, all six foot whatever of chiseled, handsome male, and grabbed her half-finished drink. She needed courage because tonight she was Louise, Cinderella, whoever, as long as she was a girl who threw caution to the wind and grabbed fantasy tight to her.

And because she’d made up her mind. Tonight on her twenty-seventh birthday, she would lose her virginity to the handsome stranger with the green eyes and magic touch.

CHAPTER THREE

ABRAM TOOK LOUISE’S hand and led her through the throng of people carousing in the bar. He didn’t fail to miss the curious glances, and occasionally envious stares, tossed their way. He also didn’t fail to hear the voice in his head saying, Don’t do anything stupid, Coach.

It sounded like Coach Holt’s voice and should have stopped him cold, but, for once, he didn’t want to listen to anyone who would talk him out of something more with Louise.

So he’d taken the wrong exit and ended up with a cold beer and a hot woman? How was that anything other than incredibly lucky?

No harm. No foul. No problem.

“Where are we going?” she asked, as he pushed open the front door, whisking them into the cool night air.

“Just somewhere a bit more private.”

She stopped and looked around. “But we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

He glanced around. “I don’t plan well.”

She laughed and his balls tightened. He could suggest going back to the motel, but it didn’t seem right. Too fast. Too obvious. And she didn’t seem like that kind of girl. Even if she had a body made for sin and a face made for salvation.

She pointed behind him. “If I remember correctly, there’s a pier over there. It goes out to the lake. We could take a moonlit walk. That’s date-appropriate, right?”

“It’s perfect.”

They linked hands and started through the high grass toward the nearly hidden pier. Thick, tangled brush grew unchecked and he wondered how she knew the pier sat nearby. He pulled at some vines, clearing the path. The vines gave and he caught his breath. The length of the old wood jutted out onto Lake Chicot, opening to a brilliant star-studded velvet sky.

“It looks like it’s steady enough,” Louise said, testing the wooden stairs with one red high heel.

He placed his weight on the wood. “Yeah, it’s fine.”

Louise bent down, slid her shoes off and set them on the bottom step. Her unpolished toes wiggled as she flexed them. “Ah, feels good. Besides, I don’t want to end up in the water. Too cold tonight.”

For the first time since they’d slipped out of Rendezvous, he noticed the chill in the air. “It is cool. Are you okay with being out here?”

Louise gave him what he thought was an unpracticed siren’s smile. “As long as you keep me warm.”

His body tightened and he grew erect. Hell. It had been a while since he’d been with a woman. His on-again, off-again playmate Alison was currently in off mode and he rarely went to bars looking for temporary comfort. He spent most of his time in the athletic facility surrounded by men. And he never picked up chicks on the road. This was a first for him.

“I can handle that,” he heard himself say. Which surprised him because his body had obviously gone into auto sex pilot.

“Good.”

He curved an arm around her shoulders, dropping his hand to her waist, which he stroked lightly. She sank into him as they climbed the steps leading to a sky of stars. The lake smelled earthy and primal, and the sound of cicadas along with the gentle lap of the water struggled to be heard over the music spilling from the honky-tonk they’d left moments ago. Altogether, Abram couldn’t have designed a more romantic spot.

They didn’t speak. Merely strolled to the end of the pier and stared out at the black water.

Louise glanced up. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

He looked at her. “Yeah, you are.”

She jerked her gaze to him. Her eyes were a stormy blue, deep like the glittering stones his mother sometimes wore. He forgot the name of them, but they were just the color of Louise’s eyes.

He wanted to kiss her.

So he did.

Dipped his head and caught her pretty pink lips.

She sighed before turning into him. He felt her breasts rise as she pressed her soft flesh into his chest. Something struck inside him, flaring, heating. He slid a hand to cup her cheek, noting how smooth her skin was, tilting his head so he could deepen the kiss.

She accommodated him, opening her mouth, giving him a taste of the spicy rum she’d had earlier. She tasted like sheer heaven, sheer molten heaven.

He pulled back and studied her. “You taste good.”

She pressed a hand to her lips. “Do I?”

He pulled her down so they sat on the edge of the pier. She snuggled next to him, dropping her legs so they dangled next to his.

“This is like a fairy tale,” she said, glancing at him. The shadows had pulled back into the night, leaving her face luminescent in the moonlight. Her skin glowed against the ripeness of her lips, against the depths of her eyes. Her blond hair shone like a curtain on either side of her face. He was fairly certain he’d never seen a woman so delicate and lovely. “I feel like a fairy princess. It’s strange.”

“It probably sounds like a cheesy pickup line, but I think this is some crazy fate thing.”

“Fate disguised as magic,” she said.

“I took the wrong exit, you know.”

“What?”

“I missed my turn and took the exit for Chicot State Park thinking to wind my way back to Ville Platte. But I saw Rendezvous and decided to stop for a beer.”

“So fate brought me a Prince Charming. For one night only.”

“For one night only,” he repeated.

She took a breath, almost like a steadying breath. “Can we dance?”

“Out here?”

She nodded. “It’s been so long, and it was so nice to be held in your arms. We can hear the music from Cooter’s. Listen. It’s George Strait.”

He cocked an ear in the direction of the honky-tonk. “So it is.” He held out a hand with a questioning crook of an eyebrow.

She took his hand. Her reflective smile looked slightly sheepish, as if she knew they were acting silly. Okay, they were. But so the hell what?

She melted into his arms and under the night sky, he held her close, drawing in the silky scent of something flowery, and swayed to the faint sounds of the steel guitar. She fit him well, her head tucking under his chin, her breasts hitting him right at his solar plexus, her hips brushing the rising result of being so close.

She hummed along to the music, stroking her hands over his back, as if she knew that drove him crazy, taking him to the place he wanted to go, but was afraid to say aloud.

The song ended but still they swayed, their footfalls barely rising as they shuffled over the worn boards.

“My feet are cold,” she murmured into his shoulder.

He raised his head from where he’d been contemplating the delicateness of her ear. “We should go.”

“No,” she breathed. “I don’t want this to end. Not yet. It’s not midnight.”

He laughed. “Fine, but let’s go back. We can sit in my truck and I’ll put the heater on your toes.”

She shook her head. “I’d rather have cold toes. It’s too perfect here.”

He pulled her down, crossing his legs and settling her into his lap. She curled into him and he wrapped his arms around her. “I was right. You’re stubborn.”

Her laugh was light, but she didn’t respond to his comment. Just tucked her cold toes beneath the hem of her too-long jeans and settled against him. He could feel the beat of her heart, the rise of her breath, and was struck at how absolutely strange this moment was.

Who was this man cradling a woman he’d met an hour ago on an old rickety pier in the cool Louisiana night in a place he neither knew nor intended to find?

Not the man most would recognize as the unyielding Abram Dufrene.

She linked her arms behind his head and looked up at him. “Kiss me again?”

Why had he gone so long with his lips away from hers? Really. Should she have to ask?

He lowered his head and gave her what she asked for.

And did it so well, it left them both breathless.

“You are a good kisser,” she breathed, dotting small kisses on the scruff of his jaw. Each tiny brush of her lips inflamed him.

“Not bad yourself,” he muttered, running his hands down her back to her hip, stroking the curve through the denim. He really wanted to see her breasts. They were likely works of art, rounded, pink-tipped with angel kisses, so he started kissing his way down her neck, knowing his thoughts were absurdly poetic. This was what the night had created in him.