17. Daisy #2
“Don’t worry, Daisy,” He pulled me closer so my hip pressed against his. “I’ll protect you from the big bad alligators.”
We both laughed at that.
“Oh, I’d like to see you try,” I teased, then thought better of it. “Actually, you know what? I don’t want to see you do anything with an alligator.”
“Damn, you’re cute.” He kissed the side of my head before straightening up and focusing on the wheel.
“So, back to your grandfathers. Have they always liked fishing?”
“Yes. But I think after retiring, they made a conscious decision to seriously dedicate themselves to the sport, mostly so they wouldn’t be tempted to get involved with the conglomerate.”
“That would be bad?” I was confused.
“There’s an agreement in my family that once the next generation takes over, the previous one steps back —all the way back. They did that decades ago so my father could take the reins. And my father completely stepped away when my brothers and I started working.”
“That’s smart.” It made sense to allow the next group to take the reins. Markets changed, and a new outlook on things was important.
He nodded. “But also incredibly hard. The thought of one day stepping away from everything is scary. But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Handing over the key, so to speak, of the whole music branch to my kids would be a very proud moment indeed.”
“So, you have thought about having kids,” I said, as at the jazz festival, Anthony made it sound as though he wasn’t interested.
“Not really.” He glanced at me, winking. “I’ve never felt pressured to think about it too much. I figure it’ll probably happen, but honestly, there are enough of us LeBlancs for The Orleans Conglomerate to have heirs who aren’t mine.”
“Would you be disappointed if you had kids and they didn’t want to work in the company?” I always wondered if my parents were put out that I didn’t want to be on the farm. I’d asked them a few times, and they didn’t seem to mind, but you never knew.
“Not at all. I’d be curious to see what else they’d want to do.” He smiled, then shook his head, as if he was having a silent conversation with himself.
He pulled me in front of him, putting my hands on the steering wheel and kissing my neck from behind.
“Until today, I didn’t even give any thought to having a family,” he murmured against my skin, and everything inside me went soft.
“You didn’t?” I whispered.
“No. This is the first time I’ve considered it. I’m a happy guy, doing… what I do best.” He smiled devilishly.
“Man-whoring?” I guessed .
He groaned. “I don’t like the sound of that, but yeah, I guess. Now here we are, talking about?—”
The sound of a phone buzzing interrupted us.
“That’s me,” he said, taking the phone out of his pocket, “It’s Grandpa David,” he told me, then put it to his ear with a frown. “Hey, Grandpa.”
I couldn’t hear what was being said on the other end, but Anthony started to laugh. “No one stole the boat. I’m out on it. I didn’t know you were planning to use it. You said you were doing something else this weekend.” He paused to listen. “Sure, I’ll be on the shore in about half an hour.”
My stomach lurched. I was going to meet his grandfathers. Oh man, what were they going to think?
After pocketing the phone, Anthony glanced at me.
“Sorry, we need to cut this short. My grandfathers changed their mind about fishing.”
“Are they going to be mad that I’m on their boat?”
“Daisy, relax. No one in my family would get mad about that. Besides, you’ve met my grandmothers. You really think they’d marry men who got upset over something like that?”
I bit the inside of my cheek. “You’re right. They wouldn’t. But how are we going back in half an hour if it took us two hours to get here?”
“I’ll take a shortcut. You can’t tell unless you know the area well, but I’ve taken several detours to make our trip longer.”
A sense of sadness washed over me because I didn’t want our date to be over.
We reached the shore quickly enough. Anthony’s grandfathers grinned as we stepped off the boat.
“Hello, Daisy,” one of them said. I’d seen them both that day at LeBlanc-Broussard but didn’t know who was who.
“Hi. Nice to see you again…”
“I’m David,” he said.
“And I’m Felix,” his other grandfather added. “We’ve heard a lot about you from Isabeau and Celine. ”
I was very tempted to ask how they could’ve possibly heard much of anything considering I’d only spoken to their wives twice, but I didn’t.
“You should’ve told me you were coming today,” Anthony said.
“You could’ve told us you’d need the boat to woo this beautiful young lady. Then our old asses would’ve stayed home,” David said in jest.
I really wasn’t prone to blushing, but my face burned like never before.
“Don’t put Daisy on the spot like that,” Anthony retorted, but his voice was full of amusement.
“It’s true, though,” David replied. “We just didn’t want to be in the wives’ way, so we thought we’d trawl about the bayou.”
“Your boat is amazing. We had a very nice afternoon out there, thank you. But we have to get back to the city, don’t we, Anthony?” I said.
David smiled, speaking to no one in particular. “You know, I can’t believe my wife was right again.”
Felix groaned. “The girls are always right.” He was calling Isabeau and Celine girls? Aww, that was endearing. He glanced at Anthony. “Don’t tell them that we actually said it out loud. It’ll only encourage them more.”
“Celine and Isabeau don’t need any encouragement or approval in order to believe they’re always right,” David said.
“And don’t worry. We won’t tell them anything,” Felix added.
“Much appreciated. We do need to be heading back, however.” Anthony put an arm around my shoulders.
I was feeling a bit weird. He was comfortable showing signs of affection in front of his grandfathers, yet he didn’t want his grandmothers to know anything. Why?
“Well, don’t let us keep you youngsters from having fun for the rest of the day,” Felix said. He took the keys from Anthony, and then they both headed onto the boat .
“How come it’s only the two of you going out?” Anthony asked. Was that a bit of concern in his voice?
David waved his hand. “It was too short of notice to have anyone join us.”
Anthony narrowed his eyes, clearly not buying it.
“We’ll be fine,” Felix said in a deadpan voice.
Clearly they didn’t enjoy being “chaperoned,” as Anthony had put it.
“If you need anything, let me know.” Anthony shook his head, taking my hand and leading me to the car.
Once home later that afternoon, I took a nap and then binged some movies. Anthony had plans with his family the rest of the day, which was fine by me. I was falling for this man hard, and I wasn’t sure that was wise. I had a lot to think about before Monday arrived.