CHAPTER 3
Aurelie leaned into Robin Hood, letting him shoulder her burden, if even for a moment. After her father had lost his shit when she’d told him she’d wished she’d died instead of her mother, she hadn’t told anyone the same, not even the therapist her father had hired to help her through the trauma of the accident and the grief of losing her mother.
Yet, here she was, spilling her guts to a man whose name she didn’t know. A stranger who’d been there when she’d needed a hero to fish her out of the bayou. The man who’d sent her up the ladder before himself with an alligator within striking distance.
She let him hold her. And it wasn’t in a sexual, I-want-in-your-pants kind of way that was so often how men treated her. He held her like a friend comforting another friend with no expectation of her returning the favor. No obligation.
He held her like he understood her pain. Her guilt. The man didn’t try to make her feel better with platitudes or tell her she shouldn’t have those thoughts. He didn’t judge. He only held her.
And she let him.
A minute passed. Maybe two. Or five.
Aurelie lost track of time. All she knew was that she didn’t want it to end.
The frogs and crickets were once again singing at full throttle. Moonlight shimmered on the water.
“Magical,” she murmured.
“The moonlight on the water?” he whispered, his lips so close to her ear she could feel the warmth of his breath.
She nodded. “Magical from up here.”
“Otherwise, deadly,” he added.
“Yeah.” As much as she wanted the moment to go on, they were both wet. Her feet were probably shriveling in her water-logged boots. If she was feeling uncomfortable, she could imagine how he must be feeling in those tights.
“I should get back to the ballroom. My father will be worried.”
His arms tightened around her. “And he’ll be even more worried when he discovers you’ve been in the bayou.” He released her and took a step backward.
She turned to face him. “At this point, it might be good if I knew your name, other than Peter Pan.”
His eyes narrowed. “Robin Hood,” he corrected. “And I would like to know Amelia Earhart’s real name.”
She held out her hand. “Aurelie Anderson. But I’m guessing you already knew that since your discussion with my father, Senator Anderson.”
He dipped his head. “I did. Since you are the senator’s daughter, do you want me to call you Miss Anderson?”
She glanced down at her soaked clothing. “I think we’re beyond formalities. You can call me Aurelie or Auri.”
“Aurelie, it is.” He took her hand. “When I’m not Robin Hood, I’m Beau Boyette.”
“Beau Boyette,” she said, trying his name out on her tongue and liking it. “A very Cajun moniker.”
He nodded. “I come from a long line of Cajuns, born and raised in the bayou.” He continued to hold her hand. Not so tightly she couldn’t easily pull away.
She liked the way his big fingers curled around hers. A little too much. Aurelie let go and clasped her hands together, the warmth from his hand lingering. “Since you were born and raised in the bayou, swimming with the alligators is nothing new.”
“I prefer swimming in the daylight. It’s easier to spot them.” He glanced in the direction of the chateau. “Should we go break the news to your father that someone attacked you and threw you in the bayou?”
She was shaking her head before he finished the sentence. “Absolutely not. It’s a fundraiser. I don’t want people leaving early because someone attacked me.”
He tilted his head. “What if the attacker goes after other guests?”
Aurelie frowned and started walking back to the chateau. “You have a point. Although, so far, the attacks lately have only been targeting me. I’ll notify the security detail and ask them to keep an eye on people coming and going. They can place someone at the entrance to the boardwalk to keep anyone from wandering out in the dark.”
“Law enforcement should be made aware of the attempt on your life,” he said, falling in step beside her.
“I’ll contact the local sheriff and let him know what happened.”
“Before or after the event?” Beau asked. “The attacker could be one of the guests.”
Another good point. She tapped a finger to her chin, thinking. “I can hand over the guest list to the sheriff and let him check into the backgrounds of those who purchased tickets.”
“You really don’t want to let your father know?”
“No.”
“Then we’ll have to leave without checking in with him first,” Beau said.
“I’ll have the event coordinator pass the word onto my father that I had a migraine and went home to bed.”
“You get migraines often?” Beau asked.
The chateau came into view, lights shining from the windows, the hum of music warring with nature’s symphony.
As she arrived on the platform where she’d started her walk that evening, she turned away from the door she’d used to exit the building and walked toward the front. She came to a stop at the second platform that marked the other end of the boardwalk. “My attacker had to have exited the boardwalk here.” She studied the side of the chateau, spotting what appeared to be a camera mounted near the eaves. “I wonder if the video camera caught him. If he was still wearing the ski mask, it wouldn’t do much good.”
“Unless he removed it so as not to draw attention from security or the guests,” Beau said.
“I’ll ask the event coordinator to let me see the footage tomorrow morning.”
“Have security guard that footage. You don’t know how sophisticated your attacker might be. He might be one step ahead of you and erase it.”
“True.” She looked at him through narrowed eyes. “What did you say you do for a living?”
“I didn’t,” he said and hooked her arm. “Come on. We can get the valet to bring your car around.”
She stopped, forcing him to stop as well. “Damn.”
“What?”
“I rode with my father.” She shook her head. “Not that I would get into his Porche as wet as I am. It might ruin the leather.” Her lips twisted. “I could call Uber.” She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and glanced down at the black screen. She tried to reboot it. Nothing.
“Dead, right?” he asked, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Mine, too.”
“God, I’m sorry. I’ll replace it.”
“No. It’s an older model. I intended to replace it soon.” He slipped the phone back into his pocket and checked his other pocket, pulling out a set of keys. “Thank goodness I didn’t lose them in the bayou.” Beau looked up. “I could give you a ride to your place in my truck. I don’t mind if you get my leather wet. It’s a work truck. It’s seen worse.”
Aurelie frowned. “Get into a truck with a virtual stranger?”
He raised his hands, palms upward. “I’d think saving your life would put us past the stranger category. If it helps, I could call my mother and let her vouch for me.”
“You can’t,” she said, her lips quirking. “Your phone is dead.”
Beau sighed. “We could borrow the coordinator’s phone. Although, my mother won’t answer a strange number, thinking it could be spam.”
“Or I could borrow his phone and call for a lift service to pick me up,” she suggested.
“You could. And how long would it take for someone to get here? Twenty or thirty minutes? I could get you home in that amount of time.”
“How do you know?” She lifted her chin in challenge. “You don’t know where I live.”
“You’re right, but it would be twenty or thirty minutes sooner than anyone having to drive out here in the middle of nowhere to pick you up first.” He shrugged. “Your call, but I’ll follow you anyway.”
Aurelie frowned. “Are you a stalker?”
“No,” he said. “But I saved your life. They say when you save a person’s life, you’re responsible for that person.”
She shook her head. “In perpetuity?”
He nodded, his face poker straight. “I take my responsibilities seriously. If someone attacked you here, he could be waiting at your place to finish what he started.”
“I’ve been getting threats in my text messages.” She snorted. “I guess I won’t be getting more of them anytime soon since my phone is toast.”
“What kind of threats?” he asked.
“Actually, death threats.” She held up her dead cell phone. “I’d show them to you, but?—”
“—you can’t.” He nodded at the defunct device. “You should get a new cell phone tomorrow, and you might consider changing the number.”
“I’d thought about that but haven’t had time. I was working on preparations for this event.” She sighed. “Okay. I guess since you did save my life, I can trust you to get me to my house.” She grimaced. “It’s just that you’ve already done so much for me by pulling me out of the bayou.”
“If I didn’t want to help, I wouldn’t have offered,” he said. “Alone, you’re too easy a target. Since you’re getting death threats, and now someone has acted on those threats, it might help to have someone around. Maybe even deter the attacker.”
“I thought the threats would go away,” she murmured. “My father wanted to hire a bodyguard for me. Maybe he’s right—at least until law enforcement figures out who’s behind the threats and the attack.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” he said.
She met his gaze. “What was it you said you do for a living?”
His lips turned upward on the corners. “I didn’t. The truth is, I recently separated from the military.”
“Really?” She looked at him with new interest. She knew so very little about this man, and she wanted to know so much more. “What branch?”
“Army,” he answered.
“You’re too young to retire,” she said. “Why did you leave?”
He looked away. “Medically retired.”
“I’m sorry. And here I’ve been all about me. That must’ve been hard to be processed out.” Her brow dipped. “Were you injured on a mission?”
He nodded.
She waited a moment for him to expand on his injury. When he didn’t, she let it go. Clearly, he didn’t want to talk about it. “Well, I hope rescuing me didn’t aggravate your injuries.”
“It didn’t,” he said. “Are you ready to get out of here?”
She nodded. “After we get with security and the event coordinator.” After one last glance at her attire, she shook her head. “Let’s get it over with.”
Together, they walked around to the front of the building, where two security guards stood talking to the event coordinator.
The three men were shocked to learn she’d been attacked on the boardwalk.
Aurelie didn’t want to tell them, but they needed to know to keep the guests safe.
“I’ll cordon off the access to the boardwalk to keep anyone else from wandering out there,” the event coordinator said.
“After you inform my father of my departure,” she said with a pointed stare. “Tell him I had a migraine and went home to sleep it off.”
The man nodded.
“Oh,” she added, “and that I caught a ride with one of the guests. Since he will ask, tell him it was with Beau Boyette.”
The event coordinator entered the chateau to tell her father of her departure. One of the security guards got on his radio and informed the other guards of what had happened on the boardwalk and told them to keep an eye on all exits and people coming and going. He had one of the guards position himself in the room with the security cameras until the sheriff’s department could get there to review the footage.
When Aurelie had done all she could do without actually going back into the chateau, she turned to Beau. “I’d like to stop at the sheriff’s office in the nearby town to report the assault before you take me home.”
“We can do that.” He held out his arm like a gentleman offering to escort a lady dressed in the type of ball gown her father had wanted her to wear.
Aurelie was wet, uncomfortable and too tired to argue. She hooked her hand in the crook of his elbow and allowed him to lead her to a big black pickup on the far end of the parking lot. She figured that if he was going to kill her, he wouldn’t have rescued her from drowning or being eaten alive by the alligators in the bayou.
He opened the passenger door, helped her up into the seat and then closed the door.
As she buckled the seatbelt, her gaze followed him around the front of the truck.
His face was ruggedly handsome. Broad shoulders strained the seams of the Robin Hood costume. And the tights...they emphasized his thickly toned thighs and calves. Men like him should wear tights more often.
Her pulse quickened as he tossed the quiver of arrows into the back seat and climbed into the driver’s seat, his thigh that much closer to her. His legs looked amazing in the tights. She wondered how amazing they would look out of them.
Heat coiled low in her belly at the thought of him removing not only the stretchy garment but the jacket and anything else he might have underneath them.
Aurelie tore her gaze away from him and stared at her side window, only to realize it reflected the people in the cab of the truck. She could look at him in the reflection without being so obvious.
He turned to her and winked at her reflection.
Heat filled her cheeks. She faced the front windshield, trying to appear as if she hadn’t seen the wink and he hadn’t caught her looking at his reflection.
Beau chuckled as he started the engine and shifted into reverse, backing out of the parking space. He drove out of the lot onto the highway, heading toward the nearest town.
For the first couple of minutes, neither of them spoke, giving Aurelie too much time to think of how lucky she was that he’d come to the event that night and that he’d been there to rescue her—which had her wondering why he’d come to the ball that night to begin with.
She turned to him, her eyes narrowing. “Tonight’s ball was a fundraiser for my father’s reelection.”
He nodded. “That’s what I understand.”
“The guests paid a lot of money for their tickets, with the money going toward the campaign.”
He glanced her way. “Are you going somewhere with this?”
“You don’t strike me as someone who’d pay a lot of money to go to a masquerade party.”
“And yet, I was there, in costume.”
“How did you end up with a ticket?”
He gave her a brief smile. “It was given to me.”
“Who gave it to you, and why?” she asked, suspicion blossoming.
His gaze went to the road ahead. “Your father gave me the ticket.”
“My father?” Aurelie frowned. “Why? Having just left the military, I’d think you wouldn’t have large sums of money to contribute to my father’s campaign.”
“As a matter of fact, since I was deployed often and had nowhere to spend my paychecks, I’ve saved a considerable amount.” His lips pressed into a tight line. “As to why your father invited me, maybe I was the obligatory veteran invited to show his support of the men and women who have served. You’ll have to ask him why he invited me.”
She studied him, looking for any body language that would tell her that she shouldn’t believe him. Either he had a really good poker face, or he was telling the truth. Still, it didn’t make sense that her father had invited the man without telling Aurelie.
She’d ask him the next time she saw him. For the moment, she had no reason to think Beau was lying. Why would he?
The man drove to the sheriff’s office and parked out front. She didn’t wait for him to open her door but got out on her own and met him at the front of the truck. They entered the office together.
Aurelie gave a deputy a brief description of the attack, the approximate time and what she could convey about the man’s appearance.
Beau reported what he’d witnessed.
The deputy recorded the information and their contact information and promised to look into the situation and any video footage that might be obtained from the chateau.
Satisfied that they’d done their due diligence by reporting the crime, they left the sheriff’s office.
Again, Beau opened the passenger door for Aurelie and handed her up into the vehicle.
When he slipped into the driver’s seat, he started the engine and turned to her. “Where to from here? New Orleans?”
She shook her head. “My father lives in Baton Rouge. He’d prefer if I lived with him, but I moved out when I went to college and only stay with him when I’m working on a special project for him. Mostly, I live in a little house in a small town, close enough to commute to Baton Rouge or New Orleans when the need arises.” She grimaced. “The good news is that you don’t have to take me to the cities. I live in Bayou Miste,” she said.
Beau’s eyes widened. “Bayou Miste? Seriously?”
Her frowned. “You say that like it’s a bad thing?”
“Not at all. It’s just that I have relatives in Bayou Miste.”
Her frown deepened. “The same last name? Boyette?”
He nodded.
Her eyes widened. “As in Ben and Alex Boyette?”
He grinned. “Cousins. All nineteen of them.”
“Your uncle, the overachiever?” She laughed. “I should’ve put the names together, but Boyette is a common name.”
“My extended family made it a common name by adding to the numbers.” He shifted into gear and pulled out of the parking lot.
“Do you know how to get there?”
He nodded. “I could get there with my eyes closed.”
“Please,” she said. “I’d prefer if you kept them open.” She leaned back in her seat, feeling better about getting into a strange man’s truck. He was a Boyette, related to the Bayou Miste Boyettes. “I like your cousins,” she said. “At least those two. I met them at the Raccoon Saloon with their spouses. I run into them in town or at festivals.” She shook her head. “I knew there were a lot of them, but nineteen? Wow.”
“The Boyettes believe in big families. My parents drew the line at ten. My mother made my father get snipped after her tenth baby. She only had one set of twins, which meant nine pregnancies.”
“You’d think her body would give out by then.” Aurelie shook her head again. “I can’t imagine how she held up, not to mention your poor aunt.”
Beau grinned. “My aunt is in as good or better shape than most of her children. She has to be to keep up with all of them. And she’s bound and determined to get them all married off. Ben and Alex were the first two. I think she’s working on finding matches for the twins, Dolley and Madison, now.”
Aurelie’s widened. “Dolley and Madison?”
“My aunt named her children after important historical figures like past presidents, inventors and founding fathers.” He glanced toward her. “Ben and Alex are Benjamin Franklin Boyette and Alexandra Belle Boyette.”
Aurelie laughed. “I didn’t know that. How clever. What about your family? Did your parents do that as well? I mean, Beau isn’t a name I recognize as a historical figure.”
He shook his head. “No, my mother is a Cajun through and through. She gave all her children good old Cajun-French names.” He turned off the main highway onto the road that would take them to the small town of Bayou Miste as if he’d done it a hundred times. “I haven’t been back here since I was on leave for Ben’s wedding. That’s been a few years.”
“I’ve met his wife. She’s a beauty and really nice. She gave me a charm to ward off evil.”
Beau’s eyebrows rose. “She did? Are you sure that’s what it’s for?”
“That’s what she said. Why?”
“You know she’s the granddaughter of Bayou Miste’s Voodoo Queen, don’t you?”
“I might have heard that,” she said, trying to remember who might have told her. “So?” She stared at him. “You don’t believe in Voodoo, do you?”
He shrugged. “I’m not going to say I don’t. All I’m saying is there’ve been some things that have happened in the bayou that can’t be explained away with science.”
“Well, I don’t believe in magic.”
“Do you still have the gris-gris Lucie gave you?”
“Yes. It was a gift. I couldn’t just throw it away.”
He slowed as he passed the battered shack, with a sign hanging over the door proclaiming it the Raccoon Saloon.
“Some things never change,” he murmured. “I’m surprised that building hasn’t fallen down.”
Aurelie chuckled. “Me, too. But that doesn’t scare people away. The parking lot is always full on the weekends.”
When he drove into Bayou Miste, he pointed at his aunt’s house.
Aurelie told him where to turn, and soon, he pulled into the gravel driveway of the little cottage she’d painted robin’s egg blue with a pastel yellow door.
She sighed as he shifted into park. This was her home, the very first and only house she’d ever signed a mortgage on. “Thank you for bringing me home.” Aurelie pushed open her door.
He opened his door as well.
“You don’t have to walk me to the door,” she said.
He ignored her statement and met her at the front of his truck with his hand held out. “The key?”
“I left my purse in my father’s car.” Despite her admission, she climbed the stairs. “But I keep a spare under the flowerpot next to the—” she stopped short of the door, her brow furrowing.
The flowerpot she’d planted full of petunias lay in pieces, dirt scattered across the porch, flowers uprooted and dying. The key was gone, and the front door stood slightly ajar.
Beau stepped in front of her. “Get in the truck.”
When she didn’t move immediately, he spoke louder, “Get in the truck. Now!”
Aurelie jerked to attention and started down the porch stairs.
Beau moved with her, backing down the porch steps without turning his back on the semi-opened door.
Aurelie hurried toward the truck, climbed into the passenger seat and waited for Beau to get into the other side.
He didn’t get into the driver’s seat. Instead, he reached beneath the seat and pulled out a very lethal-looking handgun.
Beau met her gaze across the console. “I want you to get into the driver’s seat as soon as I close the door. If I’m not back in three minutes, drive to the sheriff’s office in town for help.”
“You’re scaring me,” Aurelie said, her voice shaking. “If you think someone might be inside my house, come with me to the sheriff’s office. Let them handle it.”
“Driver’s seat.” He closed the door and waited for a second before saying loud enough she could hear through the glass. “Now.”
Aurelie scrambled across the console, banged her knee on the steering wheel and let out a string of curses as she watched Beau circle around to the back of the house.
Her pulse hammered through her veins as she counted the seconds for the first minute. Then, the second minute. She’d made it halfway through the third minute when Beau emerged from the front door and waved for her to join him.
She flung open the door and dropped to the ground. Her knees shook so much she nearly collapsed. Then, she was running toward Beau. When she reached him, she hurled herself into his arms. “That was the longest two and a half minutes of my life. What took you so long?”
He held her for a moment, his cheek pressed to her temple. “You can’t stay here tonight.”
She leaned back and stared up into his face. “Why?”
He stepped back and pushed the door wide with the barrel of his handgun.
She stepped across the threshold, and her heart plunged to the pit of her belly.
Every piece of furniture she’d so lovingly selected for her little house was either shredded or broken, undeniably destroyed beyond any chance of fixing.
But worse...the red spray-painted letters on the walls made Aurelie shake with a combination of residual fear after being thrown in the bayou and white-hot, blinding rage.
DIE BITCH.