Sweet Home Louisiana Read online

  “She scare you off yet?” Josh came up behind Tori and wrapped his arms around her, kissing the side of her neck.

  Tori looked at Maddie. “Honestly? She’s just made me love it here more.”

  Maddie shook her head. She was definitely on her own here in the resistance. She opened her mouth to reply, but just then Cora came through the swinging door behind the bar, carrying a bowl. The smell of cheesy grits and shrimp hit Maddie and she swallowed hard.

  She had to keep her hormones, her temper, and her freaking taste buds under control.

  “Well, thank you for making her love it here even more,” Josh said to Maddie. He was watching her carefully over Tori’s shoulder.

  Almost as if he knew that had absolutely not been her intention.

  Just then Sawyer called, “Okay, let’s get going.”

  Maddie swiveled on her stool and took a deep breath. Yeah, let’s get going. She had to convince them to let her sell. The sooner the better. She was already feeling little swirls of nostalgia. She had to spend thirty days here, but if she could prove that her selling was best for everyone, then all of this would be settled, and she’d feel back in control of her plans. Her life.

  Maddie made her way to the table where the food had been laid out. Ellie was filling glasses with sweet tea and Maddie was already anticipating the taste.

  She wanted Boys of the Bayou to be okay. They had to believe that. She didn’t want them to fail or go broke. She just didn’t want anything to do with it all.

  That’s why she’d found them Bennett Baxter. She would never just sell her portion to a random stranger on the internet. She’d researched Bennett. She’d spoken to him on the phone. He knew the history of the business, knew the family, even knew their crazy stories. He’d, apparently, taken three swamp boat tours with the guys. He hadn’t let on who he was or that he was interested in the business, but he’d checked them out. He’d even agreed that Ellie’s boudin balls were the best he’d ever tasted. He was enthusiastic about the business and, as she’d told Owen, he had cash.

  He was a great fit.

  She took a seat and Cora slid the grits and shrimp in front of her.

  It occurred to Maddie that she should maybe try to resist all of this. She shouldn’t even risk falling in love with the shrimp. But she had to eat, right? And when in Rome…

  She scooped the first amazingly delicious bite into her mouth and at least managed to resist moaning.

  Josh and Owen both pulled out chairs across from her, while Kennedy dropped into the seat next to Maddie. Kennedy wasn’t technically a partner, but she was the most involved in the business besides the guys. And everyone else pulling up chairs on the outer perimeter around the table weren’t partners. They were just nosey. If anyone should be curious about this meeting and deserved to know what they were discussing, it was probably Kennedy.

  Sawyer stood at the head of the table and tucked his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “There’s no sense beatin’ around the bush. Maddie wants to sell and we don’t want her to. So we’ve got thirty days to figure this out.”

  Maddie swallowed and eyed her grits. How much more could she get down before her stomach knotted and she lost her appetite?

  See? That was what emotions did. They ruined perfectly good meals.

  Among other things.

  “Okay, why do you want to sell?” Josh asked her directly.

  Dammit, there was a little knot already. “I just don’t want to own part of a business that I have nothing to do with,” she said.

  “You want more of a say?” Josh asked. He glanced at Sawyer. “We could fill you in on plans. We could do a monthly Skype call or something. You can be more involved.”

  Maddie ran her spoon through the grits, watching it make a track through the cheese, between two shrimp, rather than meeting Josh’s eyes. “I don’t want to be more involved. It’s not that.”

  “Then what?” he pressed.

  She put her spoon down with a sigh. Dammit. One bite. She looked at Josh, then Sawyer. She couldn’t quite bring herself to look at Owen. She could feel his tension. He’d be pissed that she’d choose California over Autre. That she’d choose a life far from here without any family around to being here in the midst of them. That she’d choose to make a living in a pristine, air-conditioned, quiet building full of works of art—and rich people—over making a living out in the hot sun on the dirty bayou on airboats full of regular people.

  Rich people were really easy not to get attached to.

  She definitely needed to keep hanging out with them.

  But Owen being annoyed was good. They could be emotional. As long as she wasn’t. The more pissed Owen was, the more he’d stay away from her and the easier it would be to avoid getting sucked into everything here.

  She lifted her chin and met Josh’s gaze. “I’m not going to own a business that’s a couple thousand miles away that I know nothing about. And more—” she said, as Josh opened his mouth to reply, “—one that I don’t want to be involved with. I don’t know anything about airboat motor parts or fishing lures or—”

  “You used to.”

  Owen’s muttered comment interrupted her for a moment.

  She’d helped him with car and truck engines but never the boats. Still, she didn’t need to correct him. He was just trying to make a point. So was she.

  Maddie took a deep breath. This was the hard part. Not wanting this business was a rational decision. It made sense for her. She loved stuff that made sense. She craved things that were controllable. This business was none of those things. It was too far away, it was too far out of her wheelhouse, and it was way too tangled up in her past and all of the emotions that went with that.

  But they would never get it. This business was a part of them. Part of the family.

  So she just had to be tough. Stubborn. Even a little bitchy if needed.

  Hell, if she was a bitch, that would only help with them not wanting her around.

  “Look,” she said, sitting tall on her chair. “I have control over the things in my life and I make choices that make sense. Owning a business I don’t care about in a place I never come to, doesn’t make sense.”

  “You could come visit more often,” Josh said tightly.

  She could tell he was offended. But she couldn’t care about that. She couldn’t care about any of this. It was going to be hard but it was self-preservation. Maybe even shed preservation.

  She didn’t think they’d appreciate the joke so she just pressed her lips together.

  “Hell, you could live here and be involved every damned day,” Josh said.

  There was the tight stomach knot she’d been expecting. They couldn’t really expect her to move back here to help them run a swamp boat tour company. She pushed her bowl back and took a deep breath. “I’m not going to do that,” she said. “I have a life in California that I really like. That I’m proud of.”

  She didn’t have to say that she wasn’t proud of her past here. That unspoken sentiment hung in the air over the table. It wasn’t that she was embarrassed of being from Autre exactly. But it wasn’t as if she told everyone she met that she’d grown up on the bayou in Louisiana or that her mom had been killed by a drunk driver or that her dad was in jail. When people asked, Maddie said she was from San Francisco. Because for the past twelve years that had been true and those twelve years mattered most. Those were the years when she’d gotten to know herself and become who she wanted to be. That was when she’d really started painting, when she’d gone to college, when she’d decided she wanted to work surrounded by beauty and to express her passions in safe ways—like with paintbrushes.

  “I’m…happy,” she said. She swallowed. She knew that mattered to them and that made the knot in her stomach tighter. “I just want to keep being happy.”

  No one said anything to that right away and she snuck a glance at Owen. His jaw was tight and he was staring at his sweet tea. His grip on the mug made her think that he
was seconds away from pitching it at the wall. That wouldn’t have surprised anyone.

  The stupid ribbon of heat she felt didn’t surprise her, either. Twelve years hadn’t made it any less hot when Owen got worked up about her. That was the biggest problem here of all.

  Sawyer finally broke the tense silence. “Well, the thing is, before we can change anything in the partnership agreement, there are a few things we have to do.”

  Yeah, the camping trip. She started to answer that—with a “that is not happening”—but he kept on.

  “You have to come to work every day,” Sawyer told her.

  She frowned. “Work?”

  “At the tour company,” Sawyer said. Judging by the look on his face, he was either trying hard to stay firm or he was sincerely annoyed with her.

  Working at the tour company? Yeah, right. “What am I going to do?”

  “Well, Tommy led tours, did repairs, balanced the books,” Owen said. He shifted, leaning back in his chair and finally looking directly at her. His entire demeanor had changed. Instead of looking like he was barely holding onto his temper, he now looked nonchalant.

  “I can’t lead tours or do repairs,” she said, also sitting back and crossing her arms.

  “You could fill the tanks, hose off the decks—”

  “I’m a majority owner,” she interrupted. She couldn’t hang out with these guys every single day. That was not the way to stay emotionally closed off. She looked up at Sawyer. “That means I get a majority vote in all of this stuff.”

  “You’re an even partner with me,” Sawyer said with a little nod.

  “But I have more vote than Owen. And Josh,” she added, so it didn’t seem like Owen was getting to her.

  Sawyer cast a glance at his brother and cousin. “We’ve never run things that way,” he said. “We’re all equally invested with our time and energy and commitment.”

  “Well, that’s very nice,” Maddie said, digging deep for some cold I-don’t-care-about-this. “But in reality, I have more say than they do.”

  Sawyer’s brows rose but Owen and Josh said nothing. “I guess that’s true,” Sawyer finally said.

  Maddie looked down at her nails, pretending to study her manicure. “So I’ll do the books this month and I can help with scheduling, inventory, things like that.”

  It wouldn’t be like doing the work at the art gallery, but it would be away from the guys. She couldn’t take watching them all do their thing with the tourists. She knew that they were enthusiastic and friendly and fun and charming. Nope, she had to stay away from all of that. She couldn’t watch them with the kids and the little old ladies or even the bachelorette parties. Okay, she couldn’t watch Owen with the bachelorette parties. She would have feelings about all of that and she needed to avoid those as much as possible.

  “But I won’t be working full-time. I have work to do remotely for my real job.” That was actually true. “And I won’t be doing any tours, or repairs, or really anything outside.” There, they could think she was a spoiled city girl who was afraid of sunburns and bugs rather than knowing she was afraid of liking all of them too much.

  “I don’t want her doin’ any repairs,” Owen finally spoke up. “God only knows what she’d mess up. The girl works with paintbrushes now, not wrenches.”

  Maddie looked at him in surprise. He was giving her an out?

  “She’d probably make everything too…tight, you know? Or we’d find a stick stuck up someplace it doesn’t belong.”

  Maddie rolled her eyes. Tight. As in uptight. Stick up her ass. Right. Real subtle.

  “Exactly,” she said. He was trying to bait her into an argument? Get her saying things like, “fine, I’ll do it,” just to prove she could? That had worked when she’d been a teenager. It didn’t anymore. She had a lot more self-control than that.

  And frankly, she didn’t want to be tightening things or sticking things anywhere down on that dock. He was actually giving her good excuses not to get too involved.

  “I could mess everything up,” she said.

  In fact…if she was really bad at the job, they wouldn’t have her keep doing it…

  “Don’t think that you’re gonna go in there and fuck everything up on purpose,” Owen said, leaning in, suddenly not as nonchalant. “You don’t want to be here. Fine. But you’re not gonna mess stuff up for us.”

  He still knew her. Her heart gave a little stutter. She shook her head. “Okay, I promise I won’t.” She looked around the table. “You guys, I really don’t want the business to have problems. In fact, the opposite is true. That’s why I want to bring Bennett in to meet you all.”

  Sawyer sighed. “We’re not ready to talk about all of that.”

  “He’s great,” Maddie insisted anyway. “He’s excited about the opportunity. He wants to learn to fish and hunt and drive the boats. He’s like a big kid—”

  “He doesn’t even fish?” Owen asked. He scoffed. “Yeah, sounds like a perfect fit.”

  “Anyone can learn to fish,” Maddie said. “Not just anyone can come in here with a quarter of a million dollars on day one.”

  “Holy shit.” That was the first time Kennedy had said anything. “Are you serious?”

  Maddie nodded. “I am. He’s willing to buy me out and make a substantial investment right away.”

  “Who is this guy?” Kennedy asked.

  “Bennett Baxter,” Maddie told her. “He’s from Savannah. Old money. His great-grandfather—”

  “Bennett Baxter?” Kennedy repeated, wrinkling her nose. “He sounds like a dick.”

  “He’s not. He’s very—”

  “He’s from Georgia?” Owen asked. “He’s not even a Louisiana boy?”

  Maddie sighed.

  “Oh, fuck,” Josh groaned. “Is he a Bulldog?”

  Yeah, like who the guy rooted for in college football mattered.

  But Maddie had asked him the same thing.

  She was still a closet LSU fan. Not that she’d admit that to these guys. They’d think that meant she was nostalgic about home and football Saturdays. She ate nachos and drank beer every Saturday in the fall and was perfectly happy. On her couch. At home. Alone. But it was good. There was no yelling and cussing—except her own—and no risks of things like coffee tables, lamps, or big screen televisions getting broken. All of those things had been victims of LSU football losses in the past.

  “He doesn’t even like football,” Maddie told them as a reassurance.

  “Shit, that’s even worse,” Kennedy said. “What kind of person doesn’t like football?”

  It was a fair question, but Maddie gave her a look, pretending that being a grown-up meant realizing that there were more important things about a potential business partner than him caring about a college sporting event.

  “One who thinks snapping turtles are cool and can’t wait for his first crawfish boil.”

  Kennedy tipped her head back with a loud groan. “He doesn’t even eat crawfish? Jesus.”

  Bennett Baxter had been raised in the lap of luxury and on the phone had been enthusiastic, almost kid-like, about all of the things he imagined were waiting for him on the bayou.

  Of course, he wasn’t wrong. Not only could he attend a crawfish boil nearly any weekend, if Leo found out about his turtle fascination, Leo would cook one of those up for him, too.

  “He’s got money,” Maddie said. “And he wants to buy in. That’s really the important part here.”

  “I’m not babysitting some rich asshole who’s bored golfing and traveling the world and has decided to come slum in Autre,” Kennedy announced.

  “Calm down,” Sawyer told his sister. “That’s not going to happen.”

  Maddie hoped he meant the babysitting thing and not the entire Bennett thing. Kennedy spending time with the rich guy who didn’t know anything about airboats and alligators would probably not go well. She was clever and, having grown up as the only girl in the Landry family, she’d developed a taste for pranks and o
ne-upmanship. There was very little that intimidated Kennedy Landry.

  Bennett wouldn’t stand a chance.

  “Look,” Sawyer said, pinning Maddie with a look. “Our grandfathers started this business and passed it down. They wrote up this partnership agreement to ensure that if anyone walked away, it wasn’t without a lot of thought and examining all options and angles.”

  Maddie nodded, squeezing her hands together. Saying no to the idea of hosing bayou scum off of airboats was easy. Listening to these people talk about their family roots and history and how much this—bayou scum and all—meant to them was way harder to be callous about.

  “I said I’d put some time in at the office,” she said, coolly.

  “Fine,” Sawyer said. “But you also do the camping trip with us.”

  The camping trip.

  It meant sleeping in a cabin that had been built sixty years ago, had no running water, no air-conditioning, no WiFi…and held a ton of memories for her.

  Like losing her virginity to Owen Landry.

  She did not look in his direction, but she could feel his gaze on her.

  She was absolutely going to pretend that her resistance was about the WiFi. “I will do almost anything else,” she told Sawyer.

  “You can choose from the ten-year-old’s birthday party or the bachelorette party tomorrow,” Sawyer said. “One is going to squeal and want alligator souvenir cups and will probably puke over the edge of the boat. The other is a bunch of little boys. You’re going to have to let both groups touch a gator.”

  Maddie shivered. She hated alligators. She thought fast. “Okay, I will make green swamp slime and a batch of swamp water for the kids. And I’ll put together little hangover packs for the girls. They’ll need water, ibuprofen, eyedrops, sunglasses, and iced coffees. But I’m not touching an alligator.”

  There was a beat of silence. All of the guys were staring at her.

  “What?”

  “Swamp slime and swamp water?” Josh asked.

  She nodded. “That slimly play stuff that you make with glue and water and Borax,” she said. “And swamp water is a green punch with gummy alligators in it.”