a stunner by any standard, North or South. A pageant princess from a young age, she’d recently graduated from beauty school and was about to open a little shop in the annex to Boudreaux’s General Store, right next to the live bait ice box and the motor oil rack. Justin was the only one who saw anything odd, or amusing, about that juxtaposition. Everyone else thought it was perfectly normal. One thing was for sure, Leon didn’t know whether to check his watch or scratch his ass when Lily Rose was around. If that was love, Justin wasn’t interested.
Maybe Justin had been up north too long, as more than one person had pointed out. Despite Lily Rose’s obvious physical assets, she held no attraction for a man who liked his women a little more intelligent. If that girl had an idea, it would die of loneliness. Which is mean, Justin immediately chastised himself. It was just that five minutes in Lily Rose’s company, and his eyes started to roll back in his head at the talk of make-up, giggling, the latest fashions, giggling, and who was cheating on whom. Not that his opinion mattered. Lily Rose and Leon were scheduled to get hitched at the end of the month, before Justin returned to Massachusetts for graduation and to get his medical license.
“There she is now,” Leon said, pointing toward the parking lot, then giving a wave to show where they were standing.
The first thing Justin noticed wasn’t Lily Rose, even though she stood out in the crowd in a one-piece, white shorts outfit that left about a mile of her tanned legs exposed, a scooped neckline that drew attention to an impressive bosom, a red belt that accentuated her waist, and golden blonde hair that had been teased high and full in that Southern Belle tradition, the higher the hair, the closer to heaven. No, what struck Justin was that Lily Rose was traveling with a posse of two similarly dressed slick chicks, both of them smiling his way, giggling, and he knew he’d been set up.
“You didn’t!” he accused his brother. “Since when do you play Cupid?”
Leon waggled his eyebrows, unrepentant. “Those ashes are piling up.”
“Pfff!” But then, Justin exclaimed, “Hubba hubba!” and he wasn’t remarking on Lily Rose or her whistle-bait friends. No, it was a new arrival on the scene. Walking out of the church activity center was a woman in a knee-length, haltered sundress, white polka dots on a red background. A petite but sensational figure was outlined by the fitted bodice that flared out from the waist over curvy hips. Long, dark brown, almost black hair hung in waves about her bare shoulders. Even from this distance, he could see that red lipstick matched the red in her dress, drawing the eye like an erotic magnet.
And he wasn’t the only one caught by her allure. As she walked down the steps, a man going up did a double take, and smiled.
Louise didn’t smile back, if she even noticed the attention.
“Mon Dieu! Who…is…that?” Justin asked.
“Who…oh…that’s Louise Rivard. Lulu,” his brother said, finishing his beer and tossing the can into a waste receptacle.
“No. No, no, no!” Justin declared, shaking his head emphatically. He got rid of his beer can, too. “I’ve met Louise, and that is not her.”
“She’s let herself go lately,” Leon admitted, “but this is the way she used to look before her Big Grief. In fact, I remember her decked out in that very dress, cutting a rug at the USO in Nawleans during the war.”
“Big Grief?” Justin had to laugh. Sometimes he forgot the way Southerners came up with such wacky concepts for every little thing. The War of Northern Aggression (referring to the Civil War), the Big Lazies, Blue Devils, Hissy Fits, and his grandmother’s old standby excuse for why bayou women behaved the way they did, Cajun Sass.
One time he’d asked gran’mère how come girls got to blame all their bad deeds on Cajun Sass, and she’d told him it was because they needed that defense against the Cajun Brass of bayou bad boys. He hadn’t understood what she’d meant at the time. He did now.
“Yep. Lost her fiancé in the war and been wallowin’ in her mourning ever since then.”
“Kind of selfish of her, considering her having a bun in the oven back then. A child needs a mother’s undivided attention.” Justin did volunteer work in a low-income clinic in Boston where he saw numerous examples of neglected children…the war