When Samantha’s alarm went off that morning, she realized that she’d been in the midst of yet another of the alarming sex dreams that had been plaguing her lately. Nightmares, really, because they starred that irritating, full-of-himself, condescending Daniel LeDeux, of all people.
Ever since she’d met the twins at John LeDeux’s wedding a few years back, she intermittently ran into the evil twin, Daniel. Hard to avoid anyone named LeDeux here in the South, but especially hard for Samantha, who had so many personal connections with Luc and with Tante Lulu through their joint efforts in the Hope Foundation.
Daniel wasn’t really evil, of course, but he was irritating to the point of madness. Usually, Samantha would avoid someone so toxic to her well-being, but she couldn’t avoid running into the man every couple months as he bee-bopped in and out of Louisiana . . . when he wasn’t holed up in that old fishing camp like a self-absorbed hermit. When it came to brooding, he gave Heathcliff a bad name.
Just being a doctor was bad enough in her book, of course, because of her experience with Nick and his buddies who obsessed over material things . . . biggest boat, most expensive car, higher income. Yes, she knew it was unfair to lump all physicians together. She couldn’t help herself, though.
As for Daniel, she hadn’t seen any evidence of greed . . . so far. But each time they met, like at the periodic meetings of the Hope Foundation board on which they both served, thanks to Tante Lulu’s bulldozer persuasion methods, he said or did something to annoy her, deliberately.
So why would she be having erotic dreams about such a man?
It was a puzzle.
Freud would have a field day analyzing the whys and wherefores of her apparently hidden attraction to the man.
The more likely scenario was that the meddling maniac of the bayou, Tante Lulu, had probably put some kind of curse on her. Not that Samantha believed in curses, or voodoo, or even the old lady’s faith in St. Jude miracles.
She was over thirty years old. No longer a slave to her hormones like she’d been when she’d gone brain dead and married Nick more than ten years ago while he’d still been in medical school. Hard to believe the gall of the jerk to demand alimony at their divorce trial seven years ago, but she’d thought that was all over two years ago when Judge Pitre, bless her heart, had denied his request for additional alimony and issued a temporary restraining order because of his harassment. Now, it was starting all over again. The man never gave up!
Last week he’d reached new lows by filing yet another court petition, this time a lawsuit, claiming she’d lied in initial hearings regarding her financial statements and demanding a million dollars in punitive damages.
“That guy must have balls the size of soccer balls,” Luc had remarked on relaying that latest news.
To which she had responded, “Yeah, but an itty bitty penis.”
“We should put that in an amended reply.” Luc had been half serious.
“Can we?” she’d asked.
“Unfortunately, no.” Luc had grinned at her. “But maybe you could accidentally blurt it out at our next hearing.”
She should have known better than to marry Nick. Really. What man with movie star good looks and enough charm to peel a grape would look twice at an overly tall, auburn-haired woman with splotchy freckles all over her body? He’d pointed out her shortcomings ad nauseam, but only after the wedding certificates had been signed, and then only in the slyest manner. Like, “Do you really think you should wear that red dress, darlin’? It makes your freckles look like zits.” Or, “Have you gained weight, honey?” Or, “A woman as big . . . um, as tall as you . . . really should avoid heels.”
So, why was she dreaming about another too good-looking man who clearly did not like her any more than she liked him? Shaking her head with disgust, she sat up and turned off the still shrilling alarm.
But then, cued by the alarm clock, her family began to awaken and come to say “hello.”
“Woof, woof!” said Axel, her German Shepherd the size of a pony, who’d been ancient when she adopted him two years ago and was even more ancient now. He would have jumped up onto the bed beside her if he was able. Axel had recovered from his broken hip; German Shepherds were genetically predisposed to hip problems anyway, but the wise ol’ guy knew his limitations and avoided jumping wherever possible. His bald patches had filled in. And she no longer noticed that half of one ear was gone. Despite being in better health, he would not be winning the Westminster dog show anytime soon.
“Yip, yip, yip, yip, yip!” Five orphaned, thankfully crate-trained, three-month-old puppies of indeterminate breed announced their presence from their downstairs cage. Adoptions had already been arranged for the cuties. So many abused and abandoned animals to be rescued! Her fostering efforts had started two years ago as a security measure, but she had discovered she was a soft touch for animals about to be put down for lack of adoptive owners. Who was she kidding? It probably fed some maternal yearning of hers for children.
Axel would miss this particular bunch of puppies. He’d taken over their care from the beginning, almost like a mother dog with its litter, which was a miracle considering Axel was a castrated male.
“Meow!” Sleeping at the foot of the bed, but now yawning awake, was Madeline, her gorgeous Savannah cat. Maddie, also one of her initial adoptees, had been a hard animal to adopt out, despite her beauty, because she resembled a small cheetah and scared families with children. Savannahs were hybrid cats with both domestic and wild blood. Although Savannahs could be sweet and affectionate, Maddie had been mistreated, causing her to have trust issues. Samantha liked to think she and Maddie, now a permanent member of her “family,” were soul sisters.
There were three other cats, Garfield, Felix, and Max, rambling around her large home, tough-as-nails, indoor/outdoor critters. They were a Maine coon breed, who came in when they chose, not when she directed. These were recent entries into her home which she’d thought would have been adopted by now. She wondered idly, the blasted dream still lingering in her mind, whether the LeDeux brothers might not need mousers at their new home on Bayou Black. A bleepin’ plantation, for heaven’s sake! Hadn’t Tante Lulu mentioned the possibility of the twins sheltering animals in some of their outbuildings?
Maybe, she thought with a grin, she ought to put bows on them, and take them for a housewarming gift to the brooding Daniel. He needed something to lighten him up.
Or maybe she ought to take others from her menagerie. A good choice would be Clarence, the foul-mouthed cockatoo whose lone vocabulary was “Holy shit!” usually said at the most inappropriate times. Or Emily, the small potbellied pig with a serious case of depression due to a broken heart. (Yes, a depressed pig. And small only compared to other pigs. Emily weighed in at about sixty pounds.) Or how about the goat? Oh, Lord, would she like to unload Grumpy! And, yes, he and Doctor Grumpy would get along just great. There were also a few ducks, one goose, and an honest-to-God miniature llama in the middle of the Big Easy. Thankfully, she’d been able to get rid of the two peacocks she’d gotten originally from the rescue farm. Her neighbors had complained, with good reason, about the peacocks’ screeching cries. She expected the same fate for the llama, ducks, goose, and goat, and she’d warned the rescue center, “No more outdoor animals!”
Over the past two years, she’d probably fostered two hundred different animals in her home. The worst had been a monkey named Eli. He’d thrown food and feces at her or anyone who got near his cage, and masturbated constantly. Eew! Never again! She’d also drawn the line at snakes and rodents.
Her family thought she was crazy and said she was compensating for lack of a real family.
Well, yeah!
The daughter of wealthy divorced parents, she’d never really had a normal family life, just boarding schools. Her father was on his fifth wife . . . six if you counted the brief five-day marriage to that Bourbon Street stripper. Her mother, a quintessential jet-setter, lived in the South of France, and supported one boy toy after another.
Neither parent had ever had much time for her. As a result, Samantha had always yearned for a large family of her own. A man who loved her, with at least three, maybe five children. And that’s exactly what Nick had promised her. Turns out, he’d never wanted children, despite his promises before their marriage. In fact, he’d had a vasectomy without telling her.
She could only imagine what Daniel would say if he knew her pathetic life story, or if he saw her current “family.” His sarcasm would be unavoidable.
Ah, well, Samantha thought, as she got out of bed and padded down the stairs and out to the kitchen where she opened the door for Axel to go out and do his business. She put on the coffeepot, and began the lengthy process of feeding her own personal zoo. It was a Sunday; so, she wouldn’t be going into the office, but she planned to do some work as the director of the Hope Foundation, a growing operation founded by Starr Foods after that horrible hurricane devastated her town, and which expanded a few years ago to take the LeDeux family’s Jude’s Angels under its umbrella, mostly at the instigation of Tante Lulu.
To her annoyance, the erotic dream stayed with her for a long time. While she drank her coffee. While she fed the animals. While she studied her budget and put together an agenda for the next board meeting. While she took a shower and dressed for the day.
Good thing she was the only one who knew about it.
It was her dirty little secret.
The Awakening, non-Kate Chopin style . . .
Daniel awakened in his garconniére bedroom, sunlight streaming through the open windows, more contented than he’d felt in years.
Hell! Who wouldn’t be contented after the wet dream of the century? And with stone-cold Samantha Starr, of all people, who wouldn’t touch his cock with a ten-foot pole. Man, he thought with a smile, wouldn’t he enjoy telling her about the dream? She’d probably faint with disgust.
With a wide yawn, he went into the bathroom up here on the third floor. In the past month, he, Aaron, and a small team of high-priced contractors, plumbers, and electricians . . . who knew plumbers earned more than doctors? . . . had done some basic restoration work. New plumbing and electricity in the big house and the garconniére, as well as replastering and painting one bedroom and one sitting room in each structure for Aaron and Daniel, and rudimentary kitchen appliances, like a coffeemaker. Just enough for them to live on-site.
This morning Daniel was going to paint the walls on the first floor, which very well might be a medical office at some point in the future. Oh, not an office open to the public. More a place he could set up his medical library and supplies. Do research. Maybe even ease back into part-time practice at some Louisiana facility. George Laroche had been begging him to join the staff of his oncology center in Houma, even promising him his own pediatric unit.
It was just something Daniel was thinking about at this point. He hadn’t even discussed it with Aaron. Face it, Daniel had been burned out by medicine, big-time. Working with terminally ill children did that to a body. But he could feel himself healing. Maybe he was ready to take back his life again. Maybe.
He’d begun the process of applying for a Louisiana medical license. Not because he had any immediate plans, but Tante Lulu kept nagging him about it, for some strange reason, probably because she wanted him “to get off his lazy ass.” There was no such thing as a national medical license. In the U.S., it was state by state, which sometimes posed a problem for physicians who practiced in multiple states. Although, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when there was such a dire need for trained medical personnel, the legislature had passed a law allowing doctors from other states to write prescriptions and order tests for treatment.
So, he’d filled out the cumbersome forms, just to shut her up, and soon he would take the exam. The question was what to do with the license once he obtained it . . . or whether he wanted to do anything with it.
For now, he would content himself with work around the plantation. After painting, he planned to go help Aaron with some sanding, of which there was enough work for an army. A landscaping firm would arrive this afternoon to begin clearing away more of the jungle.
A half hour later he walked down the narrow steps to the first floor, cup of coffee in hand, when he glanced out the window, then did a double take. There was a line of about fifteen people sitting on the ground outside the garconniére, as if they were waiting for something. Or someone.
He frowned. Me?
Setting his coffee cup down on a windowsill, he opened the door and said, “Can I help you?”
“Are you Doctor LeDeux?” a woman in front of the line, holding an infant, asked.
“Yeeees,” he answered hesitantly.
“We’re here to see you.”
And all the others piped in:
“My Sally has the whoopin’ cough.”
“I cut mah hand on a friggin’ chain saw an’ it won’t stop bleedin’.”
“The runs are runnin’ me ragged. Too much Cajun Lightning, I ’spect.”
“I need ta renew mah birth control prescription. Quick-like. Mah hubby Jack is horny as a jack rabbit these days. Ha, ha, ha.”
“Kin I get some of that viiii-ag-rah?”
“We heard the clinic was openin’ t’day.”
Clinic? Oh, my . . . ! Daniel put his face in his hands and counted to ten. He would bet his left nut that Tante Lulu had something to do with this.
In this day and age, people didn’t do this country doctor bullshit. Did they? Was he expected to be some kind of Little House on the Bayou kind of physician?
“Uh. The clinic isn’t open yet.”
Tante Lulu must have heard he’d received the provisional documents—God bless the bayou grapevine!—and figured he was open for business. In fact, the speed with which his application had been processed was amazing, now that he thought about it; more than a few steps must have been skipped. The interfering busybody!
“Cain’t ya help us?” the woman with the baby asked worriedly. The skin on her baby was yellow with jaundice, and the cough was alarming.
“There must be some other doctor or medical center where you can go.”
They shook their heads, one after the other. One man revealed, “My family, we doan take no charity. Tante Lulu sez yer cheaper than the average doctor. Plus, yer willin’ ta barter fer services.”
Tante Lulu is surely the Mouth of the South.
“I kin fix cars.”
Would that include Beemers?
“My Dora makes the best jambalaya and lazy bread this side of Nawleans.”
Is that my stomach growling?
“I got a bushel of tomatoes here, and baskets of cucumbers, potatoes, melons, and okra.”
Okra? What the hell would I do with okra? I hate the stuff.
“I’d like to have the baskets back, if ya doan mind.”
“During deer season, I kin send ya some venison.”
Bambi . . . they expect me to cook a dead Bambi? Well, Aaron knows more about that than I do. Or Aunt Mel, when . . . if . . . she ever moves here.
“Do ya like squirrel?”
“For a pet?”
The old guy cackled. “Hell, no. Ta eat, doc.”
To eat? Yeech!
“In a few weeks, I kin bring raspberries, huckleberries, and peaches.”
Okay, fruit, I like.
“I’m a plumber. Laid off since March.”
Glory days!
“I do electrical work.”
Glory, glory days!
So it was that Daniel helped most of the people, using a card table, several folding chairs, his basic medical kit, and a prescription pad. Others he referred to a doctor that he knew took on an occasional indigent patient.
And it felt damn good, to his surprise.
Even so, he put a sign outside proclaiming that the clinic would not be open for another month. Actually, never. If he was going back to medicine, it would be in the field he’d once flourished in. And he for damn sure wasn’t going into private practice requiring a gazillion dollars in malpractice insurance. As it was, he could be in big trouble just for the little bit of medicine he’d engaged in today. Even dispensing aspirin could result in him losing the license he didn’t really have yet.
Oddly, he caught himself whistling as he painted later that morning. And it wasn’t just due to the instant gratification of hard labor. He felt as if he was awakening from a deep painful sleep.
Of course, it helped that he had awakened this morning with another kind of instant gratification.
Bewitched, Bothered and Doggone Bewildered . . .
Samantha approached Bayou Rose Plantation that afternoon with trepidation. After her embarrassing dream, she didn’t want to be within a mile of Doctor Dreamy, but she’d promised Tante Lulu she would come to discuss some ideas for abandoned animals to be relocated here, assuming Daniel and Aaron were on board. Of course it would be a long time before they would be in a position to offer any services on a large scale; work would be needed on the facilities to meet health code specs and zoning regulations for the kennels. If, in fact, that would be the ultimate use made of the plantation. So, plenty of time for convincing. On Tante Lulu’s part, not hers.
As she drove up, she saw that the arched entry sign for Bayou Rose had been repaired and repainted. Farther on, she could see that the old lady had turned this into a party, as usual. The landscaping people were already hard at work, clearing away the jungle, with the help of every LeDeux in the world, it seemed. Dozens of them, of all ages. And was that . . . yes, it was that notorious snake catcher Stinky Hawkins. The Times-Picayune ran feature articles on him every other year.
Of course the first person she ran into was Daniel. As she approached, they glared at each other. He didn’t like her any more than she liked him. He seemed to think she was a spoiled rich girl who’d never struggled a day in her life. She didn’t have much use for doctors per se, especially good-looking ones, after her experience with Nick, but if he was going to have the credentials, she thought it was self-indulgent, even selfish, of him not to use those talents. Egotism, either way.
Then, at the same time, they both started to say, “I had a dream . . .”
She slapped a hand over her mouth with horror at her inadvertent admission.
“Oh, crap!” he said. “We had dreams about each other, didn’t we? The same dream.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He snorted his disbelief.
“Bite me!”
“Seems I already did.”
“Did you do something to plant those . . . those perverted ideas in my head?”
“You thought they were perverted? Even the suck and tuck move?”
She ignored his question and continued, “You’re supposedly a doctor. Bet you slipped me a pill or something.” It’s the kind of thing Nick would have done in a heartbeat, if he’d thought of it. But probably not with her. He’d want to play out his fantasies with one of his many mistresses.
“No supposed about it. I am a doctor, even if I don’t practice anymore. What you’re suggesting is criminal behavior, which I would never participate in. Nor would I need to.” He raised his chin defiantly.
“Oh, jeez. No need to get bent out of shape. I didn’t really think you gave me anything.”
He visibly tamped down his temper. “Let’s return to that ‘perversions’ discussion—”
“Please don’t.”
“I’ve never heard about that new erogenous zone . . . you know, the one you showed me in the dream. They certainly never taught that in medical school. I figured it was some Cosmo kind of thing.”
“I don’t read Cosmo. It wasn’t me who . . . never mind.”
His lips twitched with humor.
Samantha was embarrassed. Every single time she met Daniel their conversations seemed to spiral out of control. They threw sparks off each other, and she was at least partly to blame, she knew that.
Time to change the subject. Samantha inhaled and exhaled. Once again, Daniel had managed to bring out this bitchy side of her personality. Yeah, he was a doctor, but she should be able to judge people on their own merits, not by their professions. It was Nick’s fault, she decided. That was her story, and she was sticking to it. For now.
“I brought you a housewarming gift,” she said, in a forced tone of politeness.
He grinned, sensing how hard it was for her to be nice to him.
“This is Max. A kitty just for you.”
He stopped grinning.
Out shot a golden-haired Maine Coon cat with a lopsided red bow tied around its neck. The cat immediately went over to Daniel and hissed up at him.
“That’s not a kitty. It’s a pony. How much do you feed this animal? Do they have Weight Watchers for cats?”
“Max likes to snack on mice.”
“Eeew! I hate cats.”
“I think Max likes you.” The cat was clawing at his pant leg with one paw. “Oh, isn’t that cute? Max wants a hug.”
Carefully, he lifted the animal as if it might attack at any minute. Which it might. “I hate cats,” he repeated.
Max licked his face, and he cringed, then hid a smile. Samantha could tell that he didn’t hate cats as much as he claimed. Bored with licking, Max jumped down and rushed over to sniff at the snake barrel.
“Max could probably catch snakes, too. In addition to mice.”
“Oh, that’s just wonderful.”
Just then Tante Lulu noticed them from over at the buffet table set out on the ground floor verandah. “Yoo hoo! Over here.”