Patricia Rosemoor - In Dreams

“Ah, Stephen,” Justin called out. “Just the man I was looking for.”

“What, you need someone to cut up your bait for you?” asked the younger, taller, softer version of Justin.

“I need someone with a good strong truck and chain. I need to get a lady’s car unstuck. The lady being Ms. Lucy Ryan here.”

No smile crossed Stephen’s lips as he gave Lucy the once-over, but he nodded in a friendly manner. “Should I round up Marcus, then?”

Justin lowered his voice to ask, “You know whose bed he’s in?”

“I heard that,” Marie Guidry said from across the room. She was at the stove pouring coffee in two mugs.

“Well, do you know?” Justin asked her.

“I try not to think about it.” She gave Lucy an exasperated expression. “Three sons over thirty and not one of them married or even seeming concerned about settling down. I’ll never have any grandbabies at this rate.”

“Don’t worry, Mama,” Justin said, “there’s plenty of time for those.”

“I mean before I’m too old to enjoy them.”

“Watch what you wish for, Marie,” Tante Jeanette warned her. “For all you know, Marcus already has a brood spread over the parish.”

Justin sighed the dramatic sigh of a man who had an unwanted weight on his shoulders. “So, does anyone know where Marcus is or not?”

“Marcus is right here,” rumbled a voice as its owner came through the back door.

His younger twin brothers were sort of identical in the way of stature and features. But while Stephen was neatly pressed and handsome in a quiet way, Marcus was unkempt and incredibly fetching with a day’s growth and hair that hadn’t yet been brushed.

Lucy could well believe he’d just gotten out of some lucky woman’s bed….

Okay, so she had bed on the brain thanks to Marcus’s captivating older brother.

Justin introduced Lucy to the twins and then sketched out her plight, leaving out the details just as she had done with his mother.

“We’ll have your car out in no time,” Stephen assured her. “You’ll be on the way back to New Orleans before supper.”

“If that’s what the lady wants,” Marcus said, arching an eyebrow.

Justin gave him a brotherly whack and said, “We’re on it, Lucille. Mama and Tante Jeanette, make sure the lady doesn’t pine for my company in the meantime.” He was about to follow the twins out the door, when he hesitated and looked back at Lucy, adding, “Perhaps you ought to stay in the kitchen, chère, away from interested eyes.”

With that he left. Lucy felt the weight of curiosity aimed her way.

Thanks a bunch, Justin, she thought, facing the two women waiting for her to explain that mysterious comment.

“Is that my coffee?” she asked, taking the mug from Marie. Quickly, she drank it down. “Mmm, this is the best chicory. What’s your secret?”

Lucy prayed Justin and his brothers would hurry, since she had no idea of how long she could keep his mother talking about her culinary prowess.

“THIS ISN’T GOING to be too hard,” Stephen said, linking the chain under the back bumper of Lucy’s car. “Probably best if you get in and start it and put it in reverse. Then Marcus can pull easy-like while you give it a little gas.”

As if he hadn’t gotten cars out of Louisiana bayou muck many times over the years, Justin thought.

But that was Stephen. Precise. Always going over the details ad nauseam. He didn’t want to label his little brother obsessive-compulsive, but if the shoe fit… Even being an accountant reflected that part of his too-organized personality.

“Okay, we’re set,” he said, sliding behind the wheel and starting Lucy’s car.

Stephen signaled Marcus, who put the truck in gear. And when Justin slid Lucy’s transmission into in reverse, the car slid out of the sucky ground and back onto the gravel like a greased pig. When they both stopped, Stephen unhooked the chain and threw it in the back of the truck.

Marcus slid out of the truck, yelling, “Stephen, you drive. I’m going to catch a ride in the lady’s car.”

He settled into the passenger seat next to Justin, who waited until he’d backed up to the paved road and turned the car onto it before asking, “What’s up, Marcus?”

“That’s what I was wondering, B.B.”

B.B. standing for Big Brother. Only Marcus referred to him in that casual way. Stephen…well, Stephen was Stephen.

“You’re referring to?” Justin asked.

“Lucy Ryan. Lu-u-ci-i-ille.”

Justin was annoyed by the way Marcus picked up on his nickname for Lucy. “Like I said, she’s a lady in distress.”

On the way over here to rescue her car, he’d drawn a graphic picture about what had happened the night before. The danger part, anyway.

His brothers had agreed to keep an eye out for the two men in case they came looking for Lucy. If they came too close and pushed too far, they would be sorry, Justin knew. No one messed with the Guidry boys in these parts and got away with it. They were a force to be reckoned with, Stephen included.

“So why do you think Lucille ended up out here?” Marcus probed.

“Here’s where the pedal to the metal brought her. Simple as that.”

“Maybe not so simple. Maybe it’s fate.”

“What? You think I should get involved?”

Marcus grinned at him. “Go for it, B.B.”

“I meant as a private investigator.”

“Well, not quite what I had in mind—”

“I know what you had in mind, Marcus. Playtime is always what you have in mind,” Justin muttered, driving Lucy’s car around to the back of the house where it would be less conspicuous.

Stephen pulled the truck up and parked it next to the car as additional camouflage.

Truth be told, he could use some playtime. And he hadn’t missed a single one of Lucy Ryan’s many charms. But while he had a lot of faults, taking advantage of a woman who was skating on thin ice wasn’t one of them, so he might as well keep his libido in check.

“She’s going to be flying back to her life in New Orleans as soon as I return her car keys,” he said more to himself than to his brother.

“So don’t give them to her yet…for her own good, of course. Or stop hiding at the fishing camp and fly home after her. Whatever it takes.” Marcus slapped him on the back in a go get her manner.

Justin was thinking about doing that very thing as they headed for the back steps.

But was he really ready to face New Orleans?

To face his failure?

To face a ghost of his own making?

Laughter spilled out of the house, the inviting sound lightening his mood. Lucy’s laughter. It sounded good. It sounded right.

It melted something inside him.

He hadn’t had much to smile about lately outside of family, but Justin felt his chest tighten as he opened the kitchen door and went inside.

THE EDGINESS Lucy had felt on being left with the two women was completely gone by the time Justin and his brothers walked through the kitchen door. Marie and Tante Jeanette were delightful women who—though seeming to sense there was something wrong, that information was being kept from them—had done their best to put her at ease. After she’d made her call to Dana, assuring her that she was all right, Marie entertained her with stories of Justin’s boyhood bayou exploits.

Laughter bubbled from Lucy as she listened to his mother relate how Justin at age ten had set out to feed the poor alligators because he thought that being so slow and all, they couldn’t get their own food. So he’d taken a raw chicken into the pirogue and had wheeled it out to feed the alligators. That’s when he’d learned how fast they could move when food was involved.

“So which story is Mama telling you?” Justin asked as he entered the kitchen.