Butterfly Bayou (Butterfly Bayou 1)

She pulled away and turned to Hallie, wiping her tears. “Thank you. And please thank everyone who helped. I can’t tell you what it means to me.”

Hallie hugged her. Lila didn’t hug patients. She didn’t do the get-close-to-people thing because people often let her down.

This wasn’t a high-powered ER where the patients would come and go and she would barely remember their names. She would know these people, come to care about these people, and that was so scary to her.

She’d come to this town to hide away, but it was going to force her to change. She’d gone into medicine because it had seemed like the best way out of the poverty of her childhood. It had made her feel smart and strong and powerful. It had been something to conquer.

She would have to be more here. She would have to continue for different reasons. She would be a primary care provider because these people were her neighbors, her community.

Her family.

She hugged Hallie and somehow despite everything that had happened, she felt larger than she’d been before.

Hallie and Mabel left a few minutes later, seeming to understand she needed some time to settle down. She was left alone with the man she was falling in love with. She hadn’t thought this would ever happen to her. She’d thought she wasn’t capable of feeling so much for anyone outside her family.

What would it feel like to make a child with this man? Another thing she’d never wanted before she’d met him. With Armie by her side, she might be able to do all the things she’d been too afraid to do.

He stared down at her. “I was coming over to take you out to dinner and try to convince you to come home with me.”

“You want me to spend the night?”

“I want you to move in.” He set his hat down on the counter and looked ready to plead his case. “I know it hasn’t been very long. I get that we’re probably moving faster than we should, but I also believe that things happen for a reason.”

“My house burned down so we could move in together?”

“No.” He was incredibly cute when he was flustered. “That didn’t come out right. I guess what I am trying to say is sometimes things happen and we have to react to them. And my first reaction was to hold you as close as I could and take you back home with me. Well, not my first reaction. My first reaction was to go and find Bobby Petrie and that brother of his, throttle both of them, and leave them for the gators. But I didn’t do that because I’m trying to be less violent. So I’m going with my second reaction.”

“Which is to haul me back to your lair.” God, she was crazy about him.

She seemed to stump him. “Not like that. It’s your choice . . . You’re screwing with me, aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“You’re coming home with me.”

Again, all she had to do was nod.

He moved into her space. “I want you home with me and so does Noelle. I want you in my life and my bed every single day.”

“Yes.” She was taking the leap. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t worked everything out. All that mattered was being with him.

His face split in the most beautiful smile. “Yes?”

“Yes.”

He crowded her and she found her back up against the reception desk, his hands on her hips. “I like it when you say yes to me.”

She let her hands move up to his broad shoulders. She was going to live with him. It made losing her house easier to take. She might have lost a house and gained a family. “I intend to say yes a lot.”

He lowered his head to hers and his lips were about to close in, when there was that chime again. And someone pounding on the glass doors.

“Doc! Doc! Stop kissing the sheriff and let me in.” Zep Guidry stood outside, his sister standing with him holding a small cooler.

“Lila, Zep is an idiot who thought he could trim the branches better than the local landscape guy,” Sera yelled through the door.

“I was trying to save Momma some money,” Zep argued.

“You were trying to charge her yourself, you ass.” Sera shook her head and held up the cooler. “He’s not so good at trimming branches, but he successfully trimmed off his pinkie finger. I’ve got it in here.”

Lila rushed toward the door because that was going to be a challenge. “Come on in. How clean was the cut?”

“Oh, he did a great job on it,” Sera said with a sigh, passing over the cooler. “It’s perfectly clean. Be careful, though. Momma freaked out and I think she and Miss Marcelle might show up to perform a ritual or something. You might have to work around that.”