Bayou Dreaming (Butterfly Bayou 3)

“It makes you less honest,” she said, an odd primness to her tone.

“Honesty? What about me telling Dixie she looks nice isn’t honest? She does look nice. Maybe your version of nice and mine are completely different.”

“You told Caroline that she should have Archie cover up or all the women would be on him. You cannot tell me that the women of Papillon would lose their minds if they saw Archie in his boxers.”

He grinned her way. “Nah, that was all about you. See, I happen to know that Caroline firmly believes all women want her husband. Especially younger women. She also thinks gold diggers will come after him for their spectacular farm. I don’t think Caroline sees the world the same way we do.”

“You think she’s crazy? Like she needs help?”

They definitely had two different definitions of crazy. Or maybe it was just that he didn’t think it was all that bad to be some kinds of crazy. “I think when you look at that old man, you see wrinkles and knobby knees, and she sees the man who carried her over the threshold more than fifty years ago. I think when you look at that farm, you see stinky goats and a barn that needs a coat of paint. Caroline sees everything they built together. She sees years of love and work, the place where she raised her boys. I don’t know there’s anything crazy about that. I hope my eyes work the same way when I’m her age.”

“I didn’t think about it like that.” She leaned against the door. “No, that’s not crazy at all. But this place is strange.”

“Strange can be good.”

“Or it can get you bitten by a snake.”

“Thank the Good Lord that Armie makes you wear proper boots. And don’t worry about gossip from Caroline. I promise no one is going to think you’re after Archie for his body or his goats. They’ll be far too busy asking you how you managed to survive the rougarou and if you think it will come after them next.”

She groaned. “You really think they’re going to ask me about this thing?”

“Oh, yeah. I think we live for drama like this.”

“And you think it’s going to be fun? You’re not the one who’s going to have to answer all those calls. Unless you took the job.”

He was kind of surprised she didn’t sound like that was a distasteful thing. When Armie had asked if he would do some contract work with the parish, he’d been shocked. He’d expected Armie was going to tell him to leave the clinic and let Roxie alone. Instead, the sheriff had thanked him profusely for taking care of her and offered him a job. A job he wanted. “Would you be upset if I did? I don’t have to.”

If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t like to work at the restaurant. Guidry’s was his brother’s dream, not his. His brother had left his job in Dallas to take over the family restaurant and he was happy now. This job with the sheriff’s office was the first work-related thing to excite Zep in a long time. But he couldn’t make her uncomfortable. If it had been anyone else, he would have told them to deal with it, but she was his weak spot.

“If Armie says you’re the best for the job, I believe him,” she replied. “I also believe you might be the only candidate. Are you really good with animals? I don’t mean making them like you. I’m talking about taking care of them, knowing how to deal with them.”

Sometimes he thought it was the only thing he was good at. “Yeah. I’ve been taking care of animals since I was a kid. My father learned from his father. Back when he was growing up, my father’s family kept livestock around and he took care of them. Since we didn’t have a vet in these parts, people would call him out and he would help. If it was something he couldn’t handle, he would call someone in. My dad learned from him, and he taught me since Remy had zero interest in anything beyond baseball and food, and Sera was not thrilled at the thought of getting bit or clawed up. The first time a chicken pecked her, she ran away and never came with us again when my daddy would do his rounds.”

“I used to walk around the neighborhood with my grandpa,” Roxie said, her eyes closing. “He was a street cop all his life. He walked the same beat for thirty years. They tried to promote him but he liked where he was. He knew the people who lived in the neighborhood. He lived there, too.”

“Your granddad took you to work?”

“No. He wasn’t uniformed when he took me. Although it was part of his work,” she said, not opening her eyes. “He would go and check on people. If someone was sick and he knew about it, he would check in. This was a long time ago, when Brooklyn wasn’t Manhattan lite. We were working class. We needed each other. That’s something I do understand, something we have in common.”