The Red-Hot Cajun (28 page)

About ten minutes and twenty kisses later, they went inside on wobbly knees to look over the film.

“Hey, Rene”,” Justin said.

“Hey, Justin.”

An hour later, Rene sat back on the leather sofa and just stared at the two of them. “You are amazing.

I can’t believe you pulled this all together... the scenery, the interviews, the facts, everything. You even made Tante Lulu look good. And Tee-John... hell, his head’s gonna get so big when the girls see this.”

“What did you think about the segments dealing with the Juju plant?” Val asked him tentatively.

“Well, you managed to shoot me without my shirt, which I didn’t want, but it was okay. And Tante Lulu with her
traiteur
talk made it all seem believable.”

“Let me show you something,” Justin said. He kept fast-forwarding and stopping, fast-forwarding and stopping, to highlight a number of scenes. All of them had Rene and Val together. Laughing. Looking at each other. On one, he’d put a hand on her butt, and it appeared as if she was chastizing him. On another one, he was leaning down to kiss her, and if she hadn’t known it was her, she would have wanted to be the woman who was the recipient of this hunk’s attentions.

“Very nice,” Rene said, “but what’s your point?”

“You two are hot together. Steam heat in the bayou, and then some. I think, if we manage to pull this off, it’s going to have to be a package deal.”

Rene grinned.

Valerie cringed. She had viewed herself as a behind-the-scenes person. “I don’t know about that.”

“Hey, if I’m gonna be the hunk of the month, you’re gonna be the hottie of the year,” Rene contended.

“Let me go one step further,” Justin continued. “I’m not so sure we couldn’t propose a series.

Something like ‘Bayou Travels’ but more provocative. You two would be in each of them.”

“Yeah, and each segment could be a different issue or location,” Val said enthusiastically. “Like Grand Isle and the other barrier islands. Like Tante Lulu and her swamp healing. Like the Vietnamese here, and what remains of the Indian tribes indigenous to the area. Even those videos you gave us of The Swamp Rats playing rowdy Cajun music. By the way, if I didn’t mention it before, you play a mean accordion, sweetie.”

He waggled his eyebrows at her.

“All of them would have to be lively and colorful and fun. And the Juju plant could be a thread through all of them, sort of a teasing joke,” Justin added, equally enthusiastic. “We’re not trying to be a
National
Geographic
copycat. More like
National Geographic
with humor and sex appeal.”

“You’re turning this into a ‘Sex and the Bayou’ version of
Sex and the City,”
Rene protested.

“No, we’re not, honey,” Valerie assured him. “I promise you everything will be done with good taste.

You liked what we did so far, didn’t you?”

He nodded.

“But where would all the environmental concerns come in?” Rene wanted to know.

“That’s the beauty of it,” Justin explained. “We don’t hit them over the head with it. We make them fall in love with the people and the area, and slip the environmental concerns in there like hidden messages. At the end of each program, we could put an address or Web site where people could go to learn how they can help. By contacting politicians. By contributing money. Whatever. Education is a powerful tool.”

“It could work,” Val said, looking to him for approval.

He hesitated for a long time. This wasn’t at all what he’d expected, obviously, but Val hoped he would realize that maybe it was better.
Maybe
being the key word. Finally, he shrugged. “You’re the experts. Go with it.”

She launched herself at him, settling herself on his lap. Hugging him warmly, she said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“One thing is for sure. This is going to be one special birthday for Tante Lulu,” Rend said. “We’re making her a TV star. She’ll be the Cajun Joan Collins.”

Everyone laughed, but it was probably true.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Happy wedding to you, happy wedding to you

“Tante Lulu! You can’t plan a surprise wedding for someone.”

Sylvie Breaux-LeDeux was shaking her head adamantly as she made that pronouncement to her great-aunt-by-marriage. They were sitting at the kitchen table of the old lady’s cottage, along with Rachel Fortier-LeDeux and Charmaine LeDeux-Lanier. Tante Lulu had just proposed that they organize a surprise wedding for Rene and Valerie in the middle of her eightieth birthday celebration.

“Why not? People have surprise birthday parties.”

“It’s not the same thing,” Rachel said. “Both parties have to agree ahead of time.”

“I don’t know about that,” Charmaine offered. “If the two parties are in love and just need a little nudge to tie the knot, why not?”

“A nudge. Yep, thass what this would be. A surprise nudge.” Tante Lulu beamed.

“I think you need to obtain a marriage certificate signed in person by both parties,” Sylvie said. “I don’t see any way around that.”

“Pfff,
I know someone in the county offices. Not to worry.” Tante Lulu probably did know people there. Heck, she knew everyone.

“Isn’t that illegal?” Sylvie asked.

No one paid any attention to her. LeDeuxs never did pay much attention to the law, except for Luc, who helped them get out of legal scrapes.

“There’s not enough time to plan a wedding,” Rachel complained.

“It could be really romantic,” Charmaine added.

“Or a disaster,” Sylvie countered. Sylvie always was the cautious one.

Charmaine, on the other hand, never learned the word
cautious.
“Why not make tentative plans, don’t tell anyone but us, and then play it by ear the day of the event?”

“Okey-dokey,” Tante Lulu said, rubbing her hands together with enthusiasm. It was always a bad sign when Tante Lulu said, “Okey-dokey”.

“What about the banns?” Sylvie inquired, smiling as if she’d just discovered a roadblock for the runaway truck that was Tante Lulu. “You’ll never get a priest to marry them without calling the vows in church ahead of time.”

“Hah! I got connections at Our Lady of the Bayou Church, too.” She had been a member there her entire life. But it was one thing to bend the civil law with a forged marriage certificate and quite another to bend Church law. That was kind of like defying God.

He’s all for it,
Tante Lulu swore a voice in her head said. Probably St. Jude.

“Rings?” Rachel threw that in, but not with much hope.

“Thass the best part. I still have my grandma’s and grandpa’s rings. They can use those.” Tante Lulu seemed to have an answer for everything.

“Your birthday bash is supposed to be a casual affair, auntie. How are we going to get Val and Rene to come in wedding attire?” Charmaine propped a forefinger under her chin as she pondered the problem.

“I’ll prod Val to spiffy up for the day ‘cause of all the pictures we’ll be taking, but iffen she doan...”

Tante Lulu shrugged. “Then we has us a casual weddin’.” She cocked her head as if a sudden thought occurred to her. “Mebbe Richard Simmons could be Rene’s best man iffen he comes.”

“Tante Lulu, I already told you that there isn’t a chance in hell that Richard Simmons will be there,”

Charmaine said.

“You never know. Val knows ‘im. Betcha she’ll talk him into comin’.”

“Val doesn’t exactly know...” Charmaine started to say and then gave up.

“Will you invite Val’s mother and her aunts?” Rachel asked.

Tante Lulu groaned. “Do we hafta?” Then she smiled widely. “Simone Breaux would have a diarrhea fit.”

“This will never work,” Sylvie concluded. “There are just too many complications that could screw it up.”

“It’ll work,” Tante Lulu assured them all. “I’m gonna say a novena to St. Jude. He’ll make it happen.”

It appeared that the four of them were actually going to be in cahoots to plan a surprise wedding for Val and Rene. Each of them put a right hand on the middle of the table and did a communal hand squeeze.

“Oh, God! Luc will kill me,” Sylvie said.

“Remy will say we’ve gone off the deep end,” Rachel added.

“Rusty won’t care,” Charmaine said with a laugh. “He’ll probably say I’ve gone off the deep end so many times, I’ve become a world-class swimmer.”

Tante Lulu clapped her hands together to get their attention, as if she didn’t already have that. “Here’s the plan...”

Shades of Joan Crawford

“I hope you’re not planning on marrying that... that swamp agitator.”

Simone Breaux practically spat the words out to Valerie as they sat at a Houma restaurant. Val had agreed to have dinner with her mother before heading to New York with Justin to present their proposal to Amos Anderson. She’d foolishly thought she could mend some fences.

“Where did that idea come from, Mother?”

“It’s no secret that you’ve been hanging around with that riff-raff.”

“Who exactly are you calling riff-raff?”

“Rene, the LeDeux clan, that whole low-down Cajun bunch.”

“Mother! One of our ancestors was Cajun. Breaux is a Cajun name. Are we low-down?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We only have a smidgeon of Cajun blood in our veins.” Simone breathed in and out several times as if to calm herself. Her mother’s motto had always been: never show emotions in public.

“I spoke hastily,” she conceded. “There are many good Cajun people. Of course there are. But not the LeDeuxs.”

“Your niece Sylvie, my cousin, is married to a LeDeux,” Valerie argued.

“And what a mistake that was! She crawled right down to their level.”

It was no use arguing with her.

“What are your career plans?” her mother asked, switching the subject.

“I’m leaving tomorrow for New York to present a proposal to a television executive for a bayou documentary. After that, I’m not sure. I could go back to Trial TV if I want. I just don’t know yet.”

“That documentary.
Pfff!
Do you have any concern for how it will affect me? Do you even care? I’m about to start phase two of the Bayou Paradise development. I have a great deal of money invested that could go down the drain if those environmental crazies start up again.”

“Mother, this documentary isn’t about you, or any one problem . . . like overdevelopment,” she explained tiredly. “It’s about the whole ecosystem and what man has done to change it for the worse.”

“Where are you staying?” Her mother was a master at changing the subject when the conversation wasn’t going in the direction she wanted.

“On Remy LeDeux’s houseboat.”

“Alone?”

She refused to answer.

“How do you think that looks? People will talk.”

She raised her chin haughtily in the manner her mother had taught her so well.

“You are just like your father. Stubborn to a fault.”

Valerie rolled her eyes. The same old song her mother had been singing for years. “Sometimes I wonder how my... our lives would have been different if he had stayed.”

“Well, he didn’t stay. He dumped the both of us and went off to Paris where he’s lived ever since. Got himself a new chippie of a wife, probably some floozie, and he probably had other children. He didn’t care, he doesn’t care, and he never will care. It’s about time you stopped wallowing in self-pity over that man.”

Her mother’s words cut deep, but she refused to let her see her pain. That would just give her mother another weapon to use against her.

“I loved him, Mother. I still love him. He’s my daddy.”

“Then you’re the fool.”

Things aren’t always as they appear

Tante Lulu cornered Val as she was leaving the restaurant.

Her mother had already left for another appointment, and she’d stayed to pay the bill. Tante Lulu, wearing a Hawaiian-style floral muumuu and flip-flops, was on her way to Charmaine’s beauty spa for an after-hours hair treatment.

“Whass the matter, honey?” Tante Lulu asked. “I kin see yer upset.”

“Just the usual reaction to my mother. She always manages to rattle my chain.”

Valerie sank down on a street bench. She was five-foot-eight and the old lady couldn’t be more than five-foot-nothing. It was awkward talking down to her.

“What was it this time?”

“My father.” She sighed, wondering why she bothered to explain.

“What about Henri?”

Valerie raised a brow at Tante Lulu’s use of his given name.

“He was about the age of Rene’s mama, bless her soul. I knew ‘im.”