Chapter 3
Three
Louis couldn’t get out of the bar fast enough. He gave Erielle the briefest of instructions on what he wanted done before she closed up, but she’d worked in restaurants enough to know the basic expectations.
The bar wasn’t too crowded, and Erielle spotted Samson right away near the pool tables.
She wondered why he was back here this evening.
But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking.
She hadn’t thought of him much in the intervening years, but now that she was back in Phantom Bayou, her resentment of him resurfaced.
She didn’t get much conversation from the patrons other than, “You’re sure prettier than Louis,” or questions about Louis’s whereabouts, which she answered as succinctly as possible. They bestowed tips begrudgingly, but gave nonetheless, and she’d made enough to pay for some gas, at least.
“How’s it going?” Samson asked, approaching the bar for only his second beer of the night, after midnight.
“Easier than I thought. So far no one has asked for a drink with more than two ingredients.” She held up a bottle of whiskey and the soda dispenser.
He grunted. “We’re simple guys.”
She leaned forward, her gaze traveling over the dozen male customers.. “Maybe we need to have a ladies’ night or something.”
He laughed. “Not many ladies around here who would be caught dead in this place. Might want to give up that idea.”
Literally all she wanted was to give up having ideas, but she had to figure out a way to make a living. A few gallons of gas was a start, but not enough.
Because Rumrunners didn’t boast a big crowd, she completed a lot of the closing procedures before she shut down the register. Samson was still at the bar when she ushered the other men out the door.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, turning to face him.
“Just want to see you get home okay.”
She shouldn’t have a negative reaction to a kind gesture, but she’d been taking care of herself for a long time.
And the last time he’d been “looking out for her,” she got sent home to Arizona in disgrace.
So forgive her if she didn’t accept his offer in the spirit it was given.
“I’ll be fine, thanks,” she said through her teeth.
He frowned. “All the same, my mama wouldn’t be happy if I let a woman go home alone in a strange town this time of night, in a place she doesn’t know so well.”
“You know I lived in Manhattan, right? And would take the subway home alone much later than this.”
“The bayou is different, and you’re not familiar with it.”
“Anymore,” she corrected.
“Anymore,” he conceded. “I’m sticking around, so don’t even think about fighting me about it.”
The curiosity she’d buried all day raised its head as she gathered the trash to take to the dumpster out back.
“Are you staying with your parents?” She remembered the house, a sweet ranch house near the church.
She’d spent a few nights there each summer, but she found his father too stern.
He was a preacher, and she hadn’t been a churchgoer—still wasn’t—and he found fault in that.
Even then she hadn’t liked being judged.
“Not currently, no.”
Her brain filled with all manner of reasons why, but she wanted to get her chores done and get home.
She walked out back—it was pretty creepy here at night, one gloomy streetlight in the parking lot and another by the door, the croaks and cries from the bayou floating over the air—and opened the dumpster to toss the trash bag inside.
A shriek from inside the dumpster forced an answering shriek from her own throat, and she danced backward, the lid flapping behind the container to hit the metal with a clang.
“What is it?” Samson asked sharply from the back door of the bar.
“Someone’s in there!”
He grunted in disbelief, and marched past her to peer over the top into the trash bin, then jumped back with a nervous laugh.
“Raccoons.”
“Raccoons?” she echoed, stepping up beside him, but she wasn’t tall enough to see inside. “How did they get in there when the top was closed?”
“Who knows.” He stepped back, scanning the area. “Need to give them a way out.” He motioned to a wooden pallet behind the dumpster. “Help me with this?”
She wasn’t sure she could, but she also couldn’t just leave the creatures in the dumpster, even though they’d given her heart failure. And she wanted to prove to him that she was tougher than he thought.
As she helped him lift the bulky pallet, splinters dug into her palms. She bit her lower lip against the pain. But as they levered it up, they discovered it was too big to fit in the opening of the container.
He grumbled and let it fall against the ground, bumping the dumpster and sending up more chattering from the trapped animals.
He crossed the road and kicked a fallen log so it rolled. He stepped back, waited, then picked up the end of the log and dragged it over.
“The snakes did not appreciate their shelter being moved,” he said when she bent down to help by picking up the other end of the log.
“Snakes!” She danced back a few steps. Okay, maybe she wasn’t all that tough.
He jerked his head back the way he’d come. “They stayed over there, but they’re not happy with me.”
She shuddered, gingerly picked up the log. It was hard to see a safe place to hold it in the dim light. She braced herself against whatever creepy crawlies she might encounter. He lowered his end into the dumpster, angling it and leaving one end over the closed part of the bin.
Moments later, three furry creatures scampered up the log, chittering chidingly at the humans before climbing down the far side of the dumpster and heading into the woods.
“Well. They told us,” she said as Samson knocked on the side of the bin, then stretched up to knock the log down into it so they could close the lid.
“Good thing I stayed, huh?”
“I suppose,” she admitted grudgingly. She opened and closed her fists, which burned from the splinters in them.
He noticed. “Hurt your hands?”
“I’ll be okay.”
He motioned for her to precede him back into the bar. “Let’s get in there and I’ll take a look at them.”
“I don’t think you’ll be able to see much better in there,” she said, gesturing to the dim lights of the bar, delaying. How was she going to convince him she could take care of herself if she continued allowing him to take care of her?
“It’ll be okay. Let’s get them cleaned up.” He pointed to the big sink to the left of the taps, and waited as she hesitated. “You don’t want it to get infected.”
True. She didn’t need to add a doctor visit to her expenses, and who knew what had been on that pallet?
She trudged to the deep sink and washed up obediently while he located the first aid kit stored under the bar.
“How did you know that was there?” she asked. Louis hadn’t even told her about it.
“Used it before.”
She lifted a questioning eyebrow, but he did not elaborate. How long had he been back in town to need to know where the first aid kit in the local bar was?
He pulled out a large lantern flashlight that he set on the bar, turned on and aimed downward, then he took her hand in his.
She hid her shiver of awareness at the warmth of his callused hand beneath hers.
She didn’t know why she was surprised at the calluses.
He’d said he’d been doing handyman work.
His fingers were large, but he wielded the tweezers gently.
She flinched at the pinch of pain, and he made a soothing noise, like she was a spooked horse.
His grip beneath her hand tightened, and he smoothed her hand open gently with the edge of his.
She held herself statue-still, her gaze focused on the top of his head, the dark walnut hair with just a few shots of—silver?
Surely not. He was only a couple of years older than her—threaded through.
She practically held her breath, not wanting to inhale his warm, woodsy scent as he carefully removed sliver after sliver.
He had to look close, and his breath brushed across her fingers as he lifted her hand closer to the light. She looked at his mouth, the one she’d had so many teenage fantasies about. His lips were still beautiful, but now surrounded by scruff that her teenage self would have found repulsive.
Her adult self did not have the same reaction.
He made a gruff noise in his throat, and she jolted to see his gaze on her, watching her watch him.
She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t.
He sat back, stretching his shoulders, which pulled his shirt across his broad chest. Finally, finally she dragged her gaze away, following his movement when he reached into the kit and pulled out a mangled tube of ointment.
“Are you sure that’s not going to cause more harm than good?” she teased.
He held the dimpled tube up between them. Seriously, when was the last time a company made an ointment in a metal tube?
“Want to chance it?”
She arched her head to look past him into the box. “There isn’t a more recent addition in there?”
He angled the flashlight over the kit, and came up with a small single-use foil packet that made her feel marginally better. He tore it open with his teeth, which made her grin.
“Your mama would not like you using your teeth like that.”
His gaze shot to hers. “She always did get after me for that, didn’t she? Said my braces cost too much for me to use my teeth as scissors.”
She barely remembered his braces phase. She didn’t remember him ever having an awkward phase, and she had met his sister when they were both nine. “And I see it didn’t deter you.”
“Old habits,” he muttered, and spread the ointment across her palm.
She was so transfixed by his gentle movements, she didn’t realize until he was done that she could have done that herself.
“You don’t need to wrap it,” she said when he pulled out the gauze.
“Just to keep you from smearing the ointment on everything,” he said. “You can take it off when you get home.”
He put the kit away while she finished up her chores, then he held the door for her on the way out.
She crossed the lot and opened her car door.
She should say something. She didn’t want to thank him, because she didn’t want to think she couldn’t have done this on her own, but, well, she probably would have bolted when she heard the raccoons.
Louis would not have loved her bailing on her responsibilities like that on her first night.
“Thanks for saving the local wildlife with me.”
“You bet.” He stood by his truck until she got into her car and locked up, adjusted her mirror even though nothing had changed since she got out of the car.
She thought, just for a second, she caught the glint of his headlights in her rearview mirror, but he hadn’t even gotten into the truck yet.
Weird.
She pulled away with a wave, leaving him standing beside his truck.
Her exhaustion hit on the way home, and she dreaded even walking up the steps of the porch to the front door before walking upstairs.
She could have sworn she left the porch light on, but maybe the lightbulb burned out. She sighed. That would figure, of course. She’d take care of it in the morning. Well, afternoon, the way she felt right now.
For now, she used her phone flashlight to make her way up the steps that also needed replacing—her grandpa was lucky he hadn’t gone through the wood—and unlocked the front door.
Once inside, she checked the light switch because none of the lights she’d left burning were on, and they’d been shut off.
Strange. Had someone come into the house and turned off the lights?
Why would they? Maybe not many people knew she lived here yet, and like Samson, thought they had free rein of the place.
When she switched the lights on, the first thing she saw was that the picture of the swamp, the one she’d been ready to brain Samson with, was hanging up on the wall by the entrance.
Wait. She knew she’d left it in the kitchen, intending to get rid of it at some point. But here it was, back on the wall.
Fine, whatever. She lifted the heavy frame off the nail and set it against the wainscoting, facing the wall.
Tomorrow she’d see about getting the locks changed.
She really needed to go over finances first, because she didn’t think her measly tips would help much, but if she had rent money coming in from the shops in town, that would get her through until she could figure out what her next step was.
But she was too tired to think now. She went upstairs, showered in the feeble stream in the ancient bathroom, and collapsed on her air mattress.
When she staggered downstairs the next morning, driven by hunger, she stopped short at the bottom of the stairs.
The picture was back in its place on the wall.