“Did you do it?”
“Do what?” Cash asked around the sharp fingernail that was seductively rimming his lips. Rhoda Gilbreath smiled at him. It was as bloodthirsty a smile as he’d ever seen. She needed only fangs to make the picture complete.
“Did you kill Jigger Flynn’s pit bull terriers?”
“They’re not really terriers, you know. That’s a misnomer.”
“Quit playing word games. Did you?”
“No.”
Cash pushed her aside and moved further into the room. She had barely let him in through the back door of her house before molding herself against him. After only one kiss she had posed her question.
“That’s what’s going around.”
“I can’t help what’s going around. I didn’t shoot his dogs.”
“Do you expect me to take your word for it?”
“Jigger did.”
Rhoda’s carefully made-up eyes registered surprise. “You’ve talked to Jigger?”
“Not more than an hour ago. Get me a beer.”
Once she had gotten the can of beer from the kitchen refrigerator, she followed Cash into the formal living room. He plopped down on her finest sofa and propped his boots on the smoked glass coffee table. He sipped at the cold can of beer.
Rhoda sat down beside him. Avid curiosity eked from her like resin out of a pine tree. “Where?”
“Where what?”
“Where did Jigger confront you?”
“He didn’t confront me. I was out on the edge of town and saw his pickup parked outside one of his beer joints. I stopped and went in.”
“What did he do when he saw you?”
Cash shrugged nonchalantly. “He threw out some fairly strong accusations. I denied them, told him I would have to be nuts to kill off his dogs when they frequently won me money.” He slurped at the beer while Rhoda sat hinging on every word. “He said he hadn’t thought of it that way. Then he asked me where I got that bullet hole in the side of my truck.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Some goddamn fool up in Allen Parish got it into his head that I’m humping his wife.”
“Are you?”
His grin neither admitted nor denied. He enjoyed tormenting Rhoda. It was rotten of him, granted, but no more rotten than she was for being an unfaithful wife. Cash never seduced a loving wife away from her husband. He took to bed only those he knew were on the make. Rhoda Gilbreath had hit on him one night at the country club. He was hardly a regular with that crowd and had only been there at a divorcée’s invitation.
During a break in the penny-ante poker tournament, the divorcée went into the ladies’ room. Cash went outside to smoke. Rhoda Gilbreath followed him.
“What do you think of the poker party?” she had asked.
“Boring.”
“What do you think of these?” She whipped her sweater over her head and stood before him topless.
While inhaling deeply on his cigarette, he gave her bra-less breasts a casual once-over. “The best money can buy.”
She slapped him. He slapped her back. She coolly replaced her sweater. Holding his hazel gaze, she said, “Tomorrow afternoon, three o’clock, the Evangeline Motel.”
He put his index and middle fingers together at his temple and gave her a quick and mocking salute. She went back inside. He finished his cigarette before rejoining the party.
The windows of room two eighteen of the Evangeline Motel steamed up the following afternoon. When Rhoda left, she felt bruised, battered, beautiful, and never better.
Since that afternoon, they had met in a variety of motels, but he liked coming to her house. He derived pleasure from violating the domicile she shared with Dale Gilbreath. He enjoyed putting his muddy boots on her expensive furniture. He could get by with mistreating her because she had more to lose than he did and both knew it.
She was attractive. When they split, she would find another lover, one who would appreciate her frosted blond hair and frosty blue eyes; one who would adore her implant-enhanced figure; one whose smile wasn’t always tinged with contempt.
Rhoda’s face was arresting, but there was a hard aspect to it that kept it from being pretty. There was a calculating glitter in her eyes that never went away, even in the throes of passion. Cash had detected it the night they met. That was part of her attraction. This woman couldn’t be wounded too deeply. He never took up with a woman who wasn’t tough enough to take the crap he dished out.
Rhoda was. He had her pegged correctly the instant she started sending him it-itches-and-I’d-like-you-to-scratch-it looks across the card table. Women like her castrated their husbands, making them feel inadequate to provide all they wanted in the bank and in the bedroom. They were socially rapacious, fanatical about their looks, money mad, and sexually dissatisfied. They were hungry, restless, selfish harpies. Rhoda Gilbreath led the pack. She deserved no respect.
She deserved no better than Cash Boudreaux.
He drained his beer and set the empty can on the coffee table. “Unless you’ve started drinking beer, don’t forget to throw that away before Dale gets home.”
She ran her finger down the placket of his shirt and dug beneath his belt in search of his navel. “Maybe I’ll let him discover that I have a lover.”
One of Cash’s eyebrows rose skeptically. “Don’t you imagine he already knows?”
“Probably.” She flashed a teasing smile. “Maybe I’ll let him worm it out of me who my lover is. That might be exciting. I’d like to see you square off with Dale the way you did with Jigger Flynn.”
“Such a thing would never happen.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“Because Jigger loved his dogs.”
Her coy smile went as flat as a punctured soufflé. She glared at him coldly. “You son of a bitch. You’d better tread lightly with me. I haven’t forgiven you for leaving me stranded the last time we met at that seedy motel.”
He stacked his hands behind his head and rested it on the back of the sofa. “You can’t threaten a man who has absolutely nothing to lose, Rhoda. I don’t even have a good reputation at stake.”
She angrily pondered his handsome profile for a moment, then laid her head on his chest in conciliation. “That’s the hell of it. The more like a bastard you behave, the more attractive you are. I read all about your type in this month’s Cosmo. They call it ‘heel appeal.’ ” He barked a short laugh.
She plucked at the buttons of his shirt, undoing them one by one. “But you might have something to lose. If the Crandalls lose Belle Terre, you’ll be evicted. I doubt if the next—”
He covered her roving hand with his, flattening it against his belly to keep it still. It was a sudden, reflexive move, lightning quick. “What the hell are you talking about? The Crandalls losing Belle Terre?”
She worked her hand free and started on the buttons again. “Dale said Cotton Crandall borrowed money from him last year. He’s been making interest payments on it, but the principal is coming due. Dale was worried about it because Ken Howell shut down the business, so he met with that girl, the oldest one, what’s her name?”
“Schyler.”
“Whatever. Anyway, she didn’t even know about the loan. He said she nearly had a caniption when she found out Cotton had used Belle Terre for collateral. Cool as a cucumber and real hoity-toity, you understand, but Dale said she went as pale as death. Right now, it looks like the bank might have to foreclose.”
That was one of the reasons Cash had kept meeting Rhoda Gilbreath. Every now and then she supplied him with a tidbit of valuable information. Apparently Dale had no qualms about discussing confidential banking matters with his wife, who in turn had no hesitancy in sharing them with her lover.
Cash stared sightlessly at the ceiling. Rhoda’s head moved over his chest, dropping light kisses on the thick carpet of hair. “What would the bank want with an old plantation house like Belle Terre?” he asked.
“Hmm? I don’t know.” She swirled her tongue around his nipple. “Sell it, I guess.”
“Wonder what it would take to buy it?” he mused aloud.
Rhoda lifted her head and looked at him with amusement. “Why? You interested, Cash?”
He knotted his fingers in her hair, drew her mouth up to his, and kissed every single cunning thought out of her head. His tongue swept each malicious idea from her mind and left her thinking of only one thing. Her brain was too fertile a field to sow a single seed of suspicion in. The most farfetched speculation mustn’t be given a chance to take root in Rhoda’s conniving mind.
“Why don’t you finish what you started?” He fished in the pocket of his jeans and tossed her the foil packet he was never without. No bastard kids for Cash Boudreaux. Never.
Holding his hot stare, Rhoda licked her lips. So adroit was she that she didn’t even have to look down to unfasten his belt buckle and undo his zipper. She did it all by feel. Palming his testicles, she lifted him free of his jeans, then lowered her face over his lap.
Cash’s head fell back against the sofa again. He stared up through the crystal teardrops of the ostentatious chandelier overhead. He became entranced, not by the rhythmic movements of Rhoda’s greedy mouth, but by the name that was chanted in his head like a call to vespers. Belle Terre. Belle Terre…
* * *
“Belle Terre,” Cotton Crandall proudly pronounced.
“It’s a beautiful name for a beautiful house.”
Monique Boudreaux smiled up at him, her eyes glowing. Cotton bent his tow head and kissed her lips softly. “You understand why I wanted it, why I married Macy?”
“I understand, Cotton.”
Cash, his bare toes curling in the warm earth, angled his head back and watched his mother’s smiling face turn sad, though she made sure Cotton couldn’t see her smile fade. Cash had hoped that when they moved from New Orleans to this new town where the tall man with the white hair lived that his mother wouldn’t be sad anymore. He had hoped that she wouldn’t cry and lie listlessly on her bed in the afternoons until it was time to get up and go to work in the barroom where she served bottles of beer to rough, boisterous merchant marines.
She had always told him that one day the man she called Cotton would send for them. Then they would be happy. And she was—happier, anyway. The day she’d gotten that letter from Cotton, she’d squeezed Cash so hard he could barely breathe.
“Look, mon cher, do you know what these are? Tickets. Train tickets. See, didn’t maman tell you? He wants us to come live with him in a wonderful place called Belle Terre.” Bubbling and animated with emotion, she had covered Cash’s face with eager, exuberant kisses.
Two days later, which was all it had taken to finalize their affairs and pack their meager belongings, they dressed in their best clothes and boarded the train. The ride hadn’t lasted long enough for Cash. He had loved it. When they arrived at their destination, he had stood warily against the belly of the steam-belching engine, suspiciously eyeing the man his mother ran to.
She flung herself into his arms. He lifted her up and swung her around. Cash had never seen a man so tall or so strong. Monique threw back her head, laughing more musically than Cash had ever heard. Her dancing, dark curls had glistened iridescently in the sunlight.
She and the man kissed for so long that Cash thought his mother had forgotten him. The man’s large hands moved over her, touching her in ways that she wouldn’t let the customers of the barroom touch her. Many kisses later, she disengaged herself and eagerly gestured him forward. Taking reluctant baby steps, he moved toward the towering man. He smiled down at Cash and ruffled his hair.
“I don’t think he remembers me.”
“He was just a baby when you left, mon cher,” Monique said softly. Her eyes brimmed with shiny tears, but her mouth was wide and smiling. Cash’s young heart lifted. His maman was happy. He had never seen her so happy. Their lives had taken a new direction. Things were going to be just as she had said—wonderful. They would no longer live down a dark, dingy hallway in a roach-infested apartment. They were going to live in a house in the country surrounded by grass and trees and fresh air. They were finally at Belle Terre.
But the house Cotton had driven them to wasn’t quite as wonderful as Monique had expected. It was a small gray house sitting on the banks of a bayou that he called Laurent. The sunny atmosphere had turned stormy. Monique and Cotton had had a shouting match. Cash had been sent outside to play. He grudgingly obeyed but went no further away than the porch, still distrustful of this man he’d just met.
“It’s a shack!” Monique said in a raised voice.
“It’s sturdy. A family of moss harvesters used to live here, but it has stood vacant for years.”
“It smells like the swamp.”
“I can help you fix it up. See, I’ve already started. I added a bathroom.”
Monique’s voice had cracked. “You won’t live here with us, will you?”
After a short pause, Cotton sighed. “No, I won’t. But this is the best I can do.”
Cotton had married a lady named Macy and Monique didn’t like it. She yelled at him and called him names Cash had overheard in the barroom, but had been forbidden to repeat. She lapsed into her native “Frenglish” and spoke it with such heated emphasis that even her son, who was accustomed to hearing it, could barely translate.
As darkness fell, he gave up trying and concentrated on catching lightning bugs. His mother and Cotton went upstairs to the bedroom and stayed a long time. He fell asleep curled up on the rough board of the porch. When they finally came downstairs, they had their arms around each other’s waists. They were smiling. The tall man bent down and touched Cash’s cheek, then kissed Monique good-bye and left in his car.
They watched it disappear into the dark tunnel of trees. Monique draped her arm around Cash’s narrow shoulders. “This is our home now, Cash.” And if she didn’t sound very happy about it, at least she sounded content.
Monique worked wonders on the house. In the months that followed, she turned it from an empty, dreary place into a home full of color and light. Flowers bloomed in window boxes. There were rugs on the floor and curtains on the windows. Just as she kept her secret heartache hidden, she disguised the shortcomings of the shanty.
It seemed they had lived there for a long time before Cotton finally gave in to Monique’s pestering and walked them through the forest to see the plantation house.
The day would forever stand out in Cash’s memory because, up to that point, he’d never seen a house so large. It was even grander than the estates on St. Charles Avenue that Monique had pointed out to him from the streetcar. He was awed by how clean and white Belle Terre was. In his wildest imagination, he couldn’t have fathomed a house like Belle Terre.
Standing in the shadows of the trees, with moss serving as a screen, Monique rested her cheek against Cotton’s chest as she stared at the large house. “Tell me about it. What does it look like on the inside?”
“Ah, it’s beautiful, Monique. The halls have floors that are polished as smooth and shiny as mirrors. In the dining room, the walls are covered with yellow silk.”
“Silk?” she had repeated in a reverent whisper. “I wish I could see that.”
“That’s impossible.” Cotton set her away from him and sternly looked down into her face. “Never, Monique, do you understand? The house is Macy’s domain. You and Cash can never go beyond this point right here.”
Monique’s glossy head bowed. “I understand, Cotton. I was just wishing I could see something so fine.”
Cotton’s face changed. He clasped her to him fiercely. He hugged her tight, lowering his head to cover hers. Cash gazed back at the house, wondering what it would hurt if he and his maman went inside to see the yellow silk walls and why they couldn’t because of this Macy woman. It was probably because she was married to Cotton.
“Does she dress up for supper?” Monique wanted to know.
“Yes.”
“In fancy clothes?”
“Sometimes.” Monique inched closer to Cotton, as though to prevent him from seeing her plain cotton dress. He lovingly stroked her riotously curly hair. After a moment, he placed his finger beneath her chin and tilted it up. “Speaking of supper, didn’t you tell me you had cooked jambalaya for me?”
She gave him a brilliant smile. “Oui.”
“Then let’s go back. I’m starving.” They turned as one and headed back toward the bayou. “Cash, you comin’, boy?” Cotton called back when he realized that Cash wasn’t following them.
“I’m comin’.”
But he remained where he was, transfixed by the beautiful house. Belle Terre…
* * *
Rhoda’s mouth was avid. She was unaware that Cash’s mind wasn’t on her, only on the sensations she coaxed from his body. When he swelled to the fullest proportion, when everything went dark around him, when he squeezed his eyes shut and focused only on release, when he bared his teeth in a gripping climax, it wasn’t Rhoda’s name, but another, that rang in his head.