Butterfly Bayou (Butterfly Bayou 1)

Carrie. Maryanne was dead. Carrie was alive. Carrie was lying about how she’d gotten hurt and Lila had no idea what to do about it. She knew she’d been a bitch to the sheriff and he was right about his hands being tied, but she hadn’t been able to help herself. It was happening again and she felt as helpless as she had in the dream. Things were moving to a terrible place and the world kept spinning like there wasn’t anything anyone could do to stop it. Like she would be forced to watch the scenario play out again and again.

Damn it. She wasn’t getting back to sleep.

She threw off the covers and rolled out of bed. Along with her guilt and rage at a system that failed women over and over again, she’d brought chamomile tea and her trusty tea kettle. The wine hadn’t worked. She was willing to give tea a try.

The floorboards creaked under her feet as she made her way from the bedroom toward the small galley kitchen.

Tomorrow would be better. Tomorrow she had at least one patient, and if no one else came in she would spend her morning poring over all the records the clinic had on Noelle LaVigne. Paraplegics had unique issues and she wanted to be ready to deal with them. The young woman said she wanted to talk about lady stuff? They would spend the afternoon on it. She’d thought she would be incredibly busy, rushing from one patient to another. Well, maybe this would be better. Maybe she would lavish her patients with attention, getting to know each one and being able to be thoughtful about the approach she would use to each problem.

It was exactly what she and Maryanne had always said was wrong with the hospital they’d worked at. Everything moved at breakneck speed and the doctors had to go from one patient to another, often without ever learning their names or histories.

Their practice would be different, they’d promised themselves. Their practice would be about patients.

She shook off the memories. If she didn’t have any patients, she couldn’t practice at all, so she would follow Lisa’s plan.

She would make an appointment with Marcelle Martine, who was apparently also known as Miss Marcelle or Madame Marcelle, depending on whether she was doing nails or working a love spell. Lila would definitely be calling the woman Miss.

Because she didn’t need a love spell, though she might be able to use a get-that-man-out-of-her-head spell.

She filled the kettle. All afternoon she’d thought about him. His big manly arms. Those ridiculously blue eyes. That accent. That Cajun accent that rumbled out of his mouth and seemed to come from somewhere deep in his soul.

Why should she want Armie out of her head? It was nice to think about him. The other things in her head were pretty terrible. Armie was merely annoying. And attractive. That wasn’t the word. Attractive was a word to describe blandly handsome men. Armie was sexy. Armie was disconcerting and distracting.

He wasn’t for her.

Except Remy thought he was. Remy and Lisa had argued about her never-going-to-happen fake boyfriend. Lisa believed the well-educated super-rich Rene Darois was the only way to go, but Remy had said it was obvious that Armie was the only man in town who could handle another Daley sister.

She was the only Daley sister left. Laurel was a Bradford now. Lisa was a Guidry. It was funny that she’d once been desperate to not be a Daley because that name meant white trash and prison records. She’d prayed her father would realize she was alive and come get her, give her a name she could be proud of. None of them had the same fathers but they had the same name.

Daley was a good name. She’d made it that way. Or she had until that day. Did Daley now mean coward?

Tears blurred her vision and she tried to shove the thoughts from her head. It was easier during the day. She could busy herself and pretend it wasn’t always right there. At night when she was alone, it all crashed in on her.

She needed a hobby. Maybe she could take up electrician training since her damn stove didn’t seem to work. She turned the dial to get the burner heating up but got nothing. No heat at all coming from those old-school coils. She held her hand over it. Cold as ice even though the little red light had come on signaling the stove was on.

There was no microwave. Nope. That was apparently far too technologically advanced for this household. If she wanted to boil water, she would have to build a fire.

That was when she heard it. It was a faint sound coming from her left, from the back door, with its pretty window that let the light in and its yellow curtains that framed it. At first she thought it was nothing more than the wind. But there wasn’t any wind.