babies delivered to women too young and unprepared for motherhood, many of them illegitimate and unwanted.
“Oh, that’s not her child. It’s her niece. And she gives the girl plenty of attention,” Leon continued. “Too much, maybe. Nothin’ selfish there.”
Justin frowned, trying to recall if Louise had introduced the little girl that way, or if he’d just assumed. Yeah, now that he thought about it, the child had called her tante, or aunt. Tante Lulu. A dumb mistake. But, more than that, his assumptions about her appearance bothered him the most. He wasn’t usually so blind. As a doctor, he was trained to see beyond the obvious.
Even worse, he suspected that he’d been a mite rude. He might have shown his lack of interest in her, single man to single woman, in some inadvertent, but insulting way. Not to mention his questioning the validity of herbal medicine. What an opinionated ass he must have appeared.
Seeing Justin’s interest, Leon advised, “Forget about lookin’ Louise’s way, brother. You have as much chance with her as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. Better men have been shot down.”
Justin arched his brows at what he considered a challenge.“See you later,” he said and walked away from his brother.
“Whoa! Where you going?”
“To make amends.” His mama always said you couldn’t undo burnt roux, but Justin figured he could try to offer Louise a different dish, or rather a different version of himself, hopefully one a lot less opinionated.
“But…but aren’t you going to wait for Lily Rose and her friends?”
“Nope.” Find some other sap to occupy your girlfriend’s girlfriends.
Louise didn’t notice him at first because she’d walked over to the playing field where a children’s game involving balloons and bushel baskets was in full swing. A waist-high, portable fence had been arranged around the perimeter of the designated area. Laughing and cheering before the fence, Louise’s attention was focused on a dark-haired girl with pigtails, wearing a pink, ruffled blouse, pink dungarees, and pink sneakers. He could see why he’d mistakenly believed she was Louise’s daughter. The resemblance was remarkable, but then there was the family connection, according to Leon.
He was several yards away when he observed that she was taller than he remembered. But then he realized she wore high-heeled, wedge-type sandals that probably gave her a few inches. Even so, he towered over her at a modest five-eleven.
She was a small package, as he’d imagined in those baggy overalls she’d had on last week, but what he hadn’t imagined was the curves. Perfect breasts the size of halved baseballs, a tiny waist flaring out over rounded hips, and he was guessing an ass resembling an inverted heart, his favorite kind.
“Lou-ise, Lou-ise, Lou-ise,” he chided. Somehow, he couldn’t think of her by that silly nickname of Lulu when she looked like this.
Her head jerked to the side. Apparently, she hadn’t been aware of his approach. But she recognized him immediately. He could tell by the flare of her nostrils. Yep, he’d offended her on their previous meeting.
Not to be thwarted, he bulldozed ahead. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Hiding your light under a bushel basket ain’t the Cajun way, chère. Glad I am to see you turn a new leaf.” He gave her a deliberate, full-body appraisal. “Dare I hope I was responsible?”
It was the wrong thing to say, he grasped immediately.
But before he had a chance to backtrack, or apologize, she put a hand on one hip, cocked her head, and said, “Is there anything worse than a turkey who thinks it’s a peacock?” Then she turned back to look at the children’s game, dismissing him.
“Aw, c’mon, Louise, give me a break. You were looking like Farmer Jane after a day plowing the lower forty. Now…”
“Now?” she prodded.
“Now, you’re Hedy Lamar’s body double.”
He caught a brief flash of a smile twitch at her luscious lips, which he could see now, up close, were a slick Kiss-me-please crimson, but she managed to hold the smile back. “Save the fake compliments, Casanova.”
He made an X sign over his chest and said, “Cross my heart and hope to die. You are hotter than a goat’s behind in a pepper patch.”
She laughed out loud. “Such charm!”
“Oops. It was the best I could come up with on short notice. That’s an expression my grandfather used when teasing my grandmother out of the grumpies. She would tell him he was as crude as a farting horse.”
She gave him a quick survey that put him in the same farting horse category, but then