Elli (A Second Chance Novel Book 1) Page 7

  She sighed, and he felt like he was hit in the gut again. What was it about her that got him so damn flustered and took him off task? This woman was hell-bent on messing up his life. Not that he needed any help in that department. The last time he was dealt such a crappy hand, he let a woman deal it. Live and learn. He didn’t intend to give Elli a chance to even shuffle the deck. He had to protect Joey.

  “We are at an impasse,” she began. “Yes, you could physically remove me, but it just wouldn’t be right. You know it. I don’t want to sleep in that not-so-very-private-bunkhouse when you know good and well that I’d have to move out tomorrow when those New Orleans firemen arrive to pick up their search dogs.”

  Ben could’ve asked her how in the hell she knew about his business with the NOFD, but he knew the answer to that. His foreman, Doug Leblanc, was loose-lipped and loose-hipped around the female sex. At fifty-four, he loved women and considered charming them a hobby. Rumor was that he had pretty much been that way since he was eleven. All Ben knew for sure was that women seemed to like him right back. It didn’t matter much to Doug if they were tall, short, thick, or narrow as long as they were willing and legal. Ben guessed that Doug rushed over to meet Elli when he saw her hauling her luggage into the cottage next to his. Bragging about their dogs would’ve been like foreplay to him. He’d talk to Doug about guarding his words around Elli, not that he really expected it to do any good.

  “I’m not moving into a hotel when we have five good bedrooms here.” She looked around the room. “Mostly good, anyway.”

  “Four bedrooms,” he corrected and wasn’t sure why he had. “You can’t count the storage room with the hole in the floor the size of a Great Dane.”

  “Well, I did.” She frowned.

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets. This conversation was going nowhere. “You can’t stay here.”

  Her shoulders dropped as she exhaled. “Technically, I can stay here, remember?”

  He knew she was right, but didn’t like it one bit. “You don’t actually believe it’s a good idea for you to stay here, do you?” He folded his arms across his chest. “Not when you’re not welcome and you don’t have a female companion to chaperone you around me.”

  “Ha-ha. Like you would come anywhere near me in that way,” she snorted, but when he stared at her with his best “I like sex” smirk, she looked as if she wanted to take her words back. She cleared her throat. “Your son is as good as a sentry guard.”

  Ben knew she was right on both points. He would never take a woman in his bed with his son in the house, and he certainly wasn’t interested in Elli in that way. If she had been anyone else with that tight body, long legs and big baby blues, he’d have her - just not in the house while Joey was there. Not that he didn’t think sex with Elli would be hot and satisfying. He shook his head. What a damn stupid thought to pop into his head. “Why do you want to stay here?”

  “It’s, it’s…” she stammered. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, Ben. Just know that I‘ve decided to stay.”

  He took a step closer and stared down at her. She looked pretty pathetic sitting on her suitcase. She looked both like a kid waiting for a scolding in the principal’s office and like a bitch ready to protect her litter. Damnedest thing he'd ever seen—vulnerability and courage.

  “Stay clear of the other three bedrooms, especially mine and Joey’s.” What the hell was wrong with him? How could he give in to her so easily? He was willing to concede this battle only because it might be better for him in winning the war. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. “Stay away from my son. Don’t eat my food. And stay the hell away from me.”

  He turned and walked out the room but not before he heard her say, “Thank you.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Elli finished hanging her clothes in the armoire serving as a closet. She squeezed next to Donna on the lumpy single bed covered by a faded wedding ring quilt to read her aunt’s will again. She was determined to discover a loophole or provision that she and her lawyer had missed. Maybe the will-fairy slipped in something that allowed her to sell her share of Sugar Mill and be free of her partnership with Ben Bienvenu. She absently petted Donna’s belly, but as she turned the page, she felt a low growl rumble in Donna’s tiny tummy.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, still looking at the document. Suddenly, the door swung open and three floppy-tongued dogs raced in. The door closed behind them. “Oh, no.”

  Donna started yapping so hard she jerked across the bed like a block with springs. The dogs stopped moving, cocked their heads to look at who was barking up a storm, and one by one, their tails started wagging.

  “Oh, no. She’s not a toy.” Elli cuddled Donna into her arms as the Marley and Me dog jumped on the bed and started barking. The small beagle and huge droopy-eared bloodhound started their odd howling. “Enough. Quiet.” Elli raced into the hall, closing the door behind her. “Ben,” she screamed.

  When he didn’t come to her aid, she went looking for him with Donna still yapping in her arms. She found him in the kitchen with his head in the refrigerator. Donna wiggled her way out of Elli’s arms and ran to him. He picked her up and scratched under her chin.

  “Those dogs,” she managed to say.

  “Your dogs,” he corrected.

  “Those dogs need to be on Valium.”

  He opened a cabinet next to the sink and pulled out a jar of dog biscuits. His dog, that she now knew was named Lucky from Ben’s foreman, came into the kitchen. He gave a biscuit to Lucky and to Donna, then put her on the floor. Lucky took his treat and left the room.

  “She doesn’t like dog biscuits unless it’s the brie and peanut butter biscotti from Chez Chienne’s,” Elli said as she watched Donna hold the biscuit between her paws and begin chewing it. “Whatever.” She plopped into the kitchen chair. “Those dogs want to eat Donna.”

  Ben looked at her over his shoulder as he put the container back into the cabinet. “Hardly.” He pulled out the fixings for a sandwich and lifted the refrigerator door closed. With his back to her, he began making himself a sandwich without offering her any. She wasn’t surprised by his lack of manners, but she was bothered by it.

  “You’re enjoying my discomfort with my aunt’s dogs, aren’t you?”

  He didn’t answer and continued to make his sandwich.

  “It’s not that I don’t like them,” she began, weighing each word and using as much sincerity as possible. “I think they are adorable.”

  He grunted, took a bite of his sandwich, and put the ham and mayo back in the refrigerator.

  “The thing is, I don’t know where to put them.” And I don’t know how to stop them from eating Donna, she thought. Standing, she walked to the back door and looked outside. “You don’t have a fenced-in yard here.”

  He hopped onto the small counter and sat, his eyes settling on her bare feet and red toenail polish. He frowned.

  “Okay.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “If you are going to stare at my feet and not offer any suggestions to help me, I’ll assume I can do what I want with them.”

  “They are your feet.” His lips twitched, obviously enjoying his silly little joke.

  “You know I’m talking about the dogs.” She walked over to stand in front of him, determined to make him pay attention to her. “Could you board them at the kennel for me?”

  His eyes slid up her body in a slow and deliberate way. She knew he was not interested in the way his eyes pretended he was. He was trying to unnerve her, plain and simple. In a deep, smooth voice, he said in a Cajun accent so grinding and sexy the Hollywood studios would have gotten into a bidding war to get him on the silver screen, “It’ll cost you.”

  Elli swallowed the sigh sliding in her throat. How in the world could he make a threat sound so hot? She could play that game, too. She batted her eyes in a heavy bedroom flutter as she looked at him with parted lips. He raised his sandwich to his mouth but didn’t take a bite. “You wouldn’t really charge me, w
ould you?” Her words weren’t sexy, but she made sure her voice was. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, and he stared into her eyes. Then in one quick move, he took a big, hungry bite out of his sandwich, ending their game.

  “Damn straight, I would,” he said with a full mouth.

  Whatever his fee was, she couldn’t afford it. Even if she paid him only his half of the fee. “I assume they’re housebroken.”

  “All but one,” he answered while he chewed.

  She folded her arms over her chest. “Which one?” When he didn’t answer right away, she rushed back upstairs to get the dogs. “Out,” she shouted to them when she opened the door. They raced out and down the stairs. She looked around the room at documents scattered and crumpled, but didn’t find any other unpleasant surprises.

  Ben watched from his perch on the counter as she herded the dogs with a great deal of effort and moved them outside. She rushed back into the kitchen to pick up Donna, who clung to the biscuit in her mouth, then returned outside to deal with her dogs. They weren’t in the backyard.

  “Here, doggies,” she called, worried that they would run into mischief with the wild alligators she figured had to still be in the bayou. “Come. Now. Doggies.” She made the immediate decision to name the dogs, since “here doggies” wasn’t working. “Come here Jenny, BJ, Doe.” She hadn’t planned to name them after the three women who had helped through the toughest time of her life, but she could think of no other names. Her nurses were wonderful, caring and had a spark of mischief, too. She just hoped her aunt’s dogs proved as much fun. Right now, they weren’t.

  From a distance, she heard a faint shout. She couldn’t make out what was being said, but the angry tone was clear. A woman along the side of the house was not happy, and Elli had a good idea why. Two quick dog barks confirmed it. She took off running with Donna bouncing in her arms, still holding on to the biscuit in her mouth. As Elli rounded the house, she was blinded momentarily by the sun bouncing off of a vintage, Pepto-Bismol pink pickup truck parked in the driveway. No, maybe it wasn’t the sun blinding her, but the nearly fluorescent hue of the truck. Who drove something like that, she wondered for a second before the woman’s shouts and the dogs’ happy barks drew her to the side of the house.

  “Fout pas mal,” an eighty-something-year-old woman in a long-sleeved, pale pink cotton dress and a hot pink, old-fashioned prairie bonnet shouted from where she sat on a clump of camellia bushes. She was a tiny thing with deep wrinkles in her tanned face and fury in her small, dark brown eyes. Donna started to growl, biscuit in her mouth.

  “Oh, no,” Elli shouted, as she spotted the only non-pink item on the little old lady: white vinyl, Forrest Gump shrimp boots that two of her dogs were trying to yank off the poor woman’s right foot. “Stop, Jenny. BJ,” she called, deciding right there that the tan Marley and Me retriever was Jenny and the brown, black, and tan beagle was BJ. With these two animals tugging on the ancient woman’s boot, Elli didn’t stop to wonder where Doe was. “Heel,” she shouted. The dogs ignored her.

  “Moodee. Dem dogs for you?” She turned her anger on Elli, who was trying to pull the dogs off the shrimp boot they were fighting over. They thought it was a game and started tugging harder on the boot and shaking their heads. The old lady gripped the camellia bush tighter to keep from tumbling over.

  “I’m sorry,” Elli cried, grabbing Jenny’s collar. BJ took advantage of having Jenny out of the way and jerked on the white boot a final time, pulling it off the old lady’s narrow leg. Jenny tugged free from her collar and took off with BJ toward the front of the house with their prize. “Good riddance,” Elli mumbled, turning to help the old lady who was still holding on to the bush. “Are you hurt?” Her dress was bunched around her knees so Elli was able to assess the damage — first scanning her skinny, bootless leg, then her other leg, sticking out of her boot like a straight twig.

  “Nuttin broke,” she said, taking the hand Elli offered. She stood, but didn’t let go of Elli’s hand. She needed it for support. “Dem dogs should be shot.”

  Elli gasped. “What an awful thing to say.”

  “Betta yet, dere owner should be shot.” She glared hard at Elli, then let go of her hand and swayed to the side a little. Elli reached to grip her arm, but the old lady swatted her hand away and managed to center her weight. “Get my shotgun in da truck, Nephew.”

  Ben walked past Elli and picked a tiny leaf from the old lady’s short gray hair that curled out from her bonnet. He kissed her on her lined cheek, and she wiped it off with the back of her glove.

  “Moodee, rascal,” she said, then told him something in Cajun French that had him shaking his head and looking at Elli.

  “I’m so sorry, ma’am,” she began, but the old lady grunted and waved her glove at her.

  “Bring my boot back. I’ll be right here.” She bent over with her narrow bottom in the air and her adult-sized baby bonnet nearly touching the ground, then began pulling the weeds along the stone path. There weren’t many there. From a distance, she heard the howling bark that she recognized as Doe’s.

  “Now what?” She picked up Jenny’s collar from the ground and turned toward the front yard. “I’m really sorry, ma’am.”

  “Next time, I’ll have my gun,” she growled, but something softer flickered in her eyes when she looked at Donna and her pretty pink collar. As Elli took off running toward the howling BJ, she realized the collar was the exact same shade of pink as the old lady’s truck.

  Elli raced to the front of the house and saw the dogs immediately. It wasn’t hard to spot them along the bank since BJ and Doe were still fighting over the boot, and Jenny was swimming in the bayou. Elli slowed her pace and walked to the edge of the water.

  “Bad dogs,” she scolded as Donna wiggled to get out of her arms. She took her time scanning the area for alligators and when she was confident none were around, she put Donna down. Donna immediately charged into the battle for the white shrimp boot, although the biscuit in her mouth complicated things. Elli stood on the bank, hands on her hips, and Jenny’s collar looped around her wrist. She was at a complete loss as to how to restrain this out-of-control bunch. “I’m an intelligent woman who could finesse, negotiate, and navigate dozens of temperamental actors and directors, so why can’t I deal with four furry creatures?”

  “They don’t seem to have any problem finessing, negotiating, and navigating around you,” Ben said, standing next to her. “I’d get Tante Izzy’s boot back soon or she’s going to make a trip to her truck for her shotgun. She won’t have any trouble negotiating with your dogs.”

  Elli looked at him. She could see a contained smile now replaced his usual scowl. “I defer to your expertise in this matter.”

  “You’re not going to dump this on me so easily.”

  Jenny came out of the bayou with a stick in her mouth and dropped it at Elli’s feet. Elli braced for the expected wet dog shake, but it didn’t come. She picked up the stick, looked for alligators, and then threw it into the bayou. Jenny dove into the water after it.

  “Believe me, there isn’t anything easy about any of this.”

  He looked at her, then at the dogs fighting with the white shrimp boot. “I’ll get the boot, only because I hate to see a good dog get shot because of its owner’s stupidity.”

  “Actually, she said she would shoot me.” He looked at her as if reconsidering helping her, then went over to the growling pack of dogs and took the boot from them. They bounced around him and looked at him with hope and excitement in their eyes, but not one of them challenged him.

  He handed the boot to Elli. It was full of dog slobber. “Eww.” Jenny raced out of the water and dropped the stick at Elli’s feet. Elli looked down at it and as she was about to pick it up, Doe and BJ gave up on the boot and darted after the stick, knocking her on the ground. Ben began to laugh.

  “These dogs have a serious problem with upending women,” she said, watching Ben snatch the boot she’d dropped on the ground from Doe
as the dog tried to steal it. Donna walked up to him and tapped his calf gently with her tiny paw. He picked her up and scratched her under her chin as she rested her head against his chest.

  “My aunt called you the Cajun Dog-Whisperer,” Elli said as she stood and wiped the dirt off her jeans. “What’s the deal?”

  “They just know they have to listen to me.” He paused long enough to lock gazes with her. “They know I’ll do whatever it takes to get what I want.”

  “Whatever it takes?” She considered his statement a direct challenge on so many levels. She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”

  He looked at her with clear, determined eyes before walking away, whistling with the boot and Donna in his hands.

  “Hey, you’ve got my dog.” Well, he could keep her. She had enough to handle with the other three—Jenny sitting expectantly with the stick in her mouth, Doe sniffing the edge of the bayou with her ears dragging the ground, and BJ pushing her nose into a moist pile of leaves.

  Elli watched for a while, considering various ways to corral them when an idea struck her. They seemed keen on sniffing and retrieving things, so she raced into the house, through the front door, not wanting to run into Tante Izzy and her gun at the side of the house. She trotted into the kitchen, past Ben at the sink filling a glass with water, and opened the kitchen cabinet that held the dog biscuits. She grabbed two handfuls and raced back outside where Jenny, Doe, and BJ were doing dog things around the yard.

  “Here girls,” she called, tossing a few pieces of biscuits into the yard near them. They sniffed the ground and found the prize. She continued tossing the morsels to them as she took steps backward until they were on the front porch. “Good girls. Good, hungry, girls.” She opened the front door and tossed the remaining four biscuits into the house. “Go get it.” With what looked like smiles on their muddy faces, the dogs bounded into the house, and Elli slammed the door behind them. “There.” She wiped her crumby hands on her pants and walked off the porch toward the kennel. She was going to have a chat with Doug. Ben could deal with whatever mayhem her dogs created. She was going to get some expert advice from the kennel forum on dealing with the girls, and, maybe, some advice on dealing with the big guy, too.