Four Weddings and a Swamp Boat Tour - Erin Nicholas Page 0,12

for a yoga-practicing, cat-crazy vegetarian from Iowa.

They believed in ghosts, they believed in bayou magic—to varying extents, but they all agreed the bayou was a special place that people didn’t fully understand—and they loved fiercely. Which meant taking care of each other and protecting each other, even when the other person didn’t want taking care of or protecting.

They also fought like crazy and could hold grudges that sometimes spanned lifetimes.

Paige really couldn’t be with him, even temporarily, without being with them all.

That was going to give this woman hives.

He was going to have to work this out somehow. Because he couldn’t let her go.

He heard a truck coming down the street and instantly snapped into action.

“We need to go,” he told her. “Come on.” He grabbed her hand and started for the front door.

The chance that the truck didn’t belong to a relative was about point two percent. This wasn’t a through street. It dead-ended three houses down from his. The only people driving by were his neighbors. And all three of his neighbors were cousins.

Sure, the truck could be one of those cousins going home with no idea that Paige was here and no intention of stopping at Mitch’s.

But the chances that it was a relative coming over to meet Paige were about ninety-nine percent.

They crossed the porch as the truck pulled up behind Paige’s car.

Yep, that was Owen. And Maddie. And Kennedy. And Ellie.

He was going to have to have a word with Owen later. He should know better than to enable this.

Then again, Owen would do anything for Maddie.

And then there was Kennedy, who had dirt and secrets on all of them. The brattiest of his Autre cousins, and one of the only girls, Kennedy had always been around. They learned when they’d gotten older, and it was too late, that she’d always been paying attention and keeping track of the things they hadn’t wanted their parents to find out about.

Maybe the worst of all, though, was Ellie. Their grandmother. The feisty matriarch of the family. She could get them all to do just about anything. In part, because they all loved her dearly. And in part, because they were all just a little bit scared of her.

Plus, she cooked for them all every day. You never wanted to piss off the woman who could keep the best gumbo in the state away from you.

“Paige?”

She was staring at the truck full of Landrys. “Yeah?”

“Run.”

They sprinted for his truck and scrambled inside as Owen’s truck doors opened.

“Hey!”

“Mitch!”

“Dammit!”

That was all he heard as he started the truck and pulled away from the curb.

He only slowed at the stop sign at the end of the street, not coming to a full stop. He looked over at Paige.

She grinned back at him. “That was close.”

“You have no idea. Those are just the scouts.”

“Just checking me out?”

“That and making sure you don’t get away before everyone else showed up.”

Her eyes widened. “There were more coming?”

“No doubt. Probably had to load up the food and beer and stuff.”

“They were bringing lunch over?”

“Well, there’s never not a good time for food and beer around here.”

She nodded. “Kennedy did tell me that I wasn’t going to get any grilled cheese while I’m here.”

He glanced over at her. “I’ll get you grilled cheese, Paige.”

She smiled. “Can I eat it at your house without your whole family?”

He hesitated. “That will be more difficult,” he said honestly.

“That’s what I figured.”

She definitely didn’t sound like she thought being included in the big family dinners, grilled cheese or not, was something to look forward to.

He turned the truck out onto a narrow dirt road that cut through the field behind his house. This would take them down to the bayou, a few miles from where the Boys of the Bayou docks were. This was a private road, and the spot where he was taking her was never visited by tourists or really anyone other than the family.

They would be able to get right up to the water’s edge, but it was a smaller branch of the bayou that was hard to get to even by boat because of the varying depths of the water. He and Owen and Chase had gotten an airboat stuck out here last summer and had needed Sawyer to come pull them out.

They bumped along the road for a few miles before he slowed. The swamp didn’t have specific set boundaries, and it wandered and spread as it liked, so it was a bit of a