spandex dress. I could pull it out, easy peasy.”
René make a choking sound which he tried to hide as a cough. Then he told Etienne and his son, “The Village People were not strippers. They just had moves that some people considered…um, suggestive. They only had a couple of hits before they broke up. ‘YMCA’ and ‘Macho Man’, as I recall.”
All of a sudden, “‘Macho Man’ blared out of Etienne’s phone, and he went bug-eyed at whatever he was seeing on the screen before remarking, “Cool! I could do that. Mebbe I could be Steve the Surfer Dude.” Then he yelled out to one of his cousins, “Hey, Mike, wanna be in the new Cajun Village People?”
Male heads around the yard shot up with alarm at those words and the music.
But then Mary Lou showed up, finally. She had been off on a trail ride with her cousin Andy and a new hotshot recruit for the New Orleans Saints, Bobby Jones, affectionately known as “Happy Legs” because of his fast strides on the football field. After the introduction, while she and Mary Lou watched the two men walk off to get a beer, Louise remarked to Mary Lou, “Looks to me lak he’s got a Happy Hiney, too.”
“Tante Lulu!” Mary Lou chided her with a laugh. “But, yeah, that is one very fine butt.”
“Shh! It’s okay if an old lady lak me sez that, but it’s sexual harassment if you do.”
Mary Lou pretended to zip her mouth.
Louise stepped away from Mary Lou then to give her a better look. Head to toe and back up again.
Mary Lou did a little spin to show off her new look, grinning like a cabbage-eating skunk. “What do you think, auntie?”
“Seems ta me, mah work is done. You got Cajun Sass down jist right.”
Mary Lou wore jeans, but they were white and tight and hung low on her hips, leaving a good six inches of skin exposed up to the cropped top of a blue spandex top, under which she had to be wearing one of them push-up or pump-me-up type bras because she sure wasn’t that buxom last week. Good for her! And wait…was that a tiny gold ring winking in her belly button? If Louise was younger, she thought she might try one of those. But that wasn’t everything. The girl must have gotten a haircut from her mother because it was shoulder-length now and curly, too short for one of her usual ponytails. She didn’t wear much make-up, but there was a hint of rosy lip gloss.
“And it feels good, too,” Mary Lou said, still grinning.
The two of them dropped down to a bench and continued talking.
“That dumb Derek won’t be callin’ you boring now, thass fer sure.”
“I already know that.”
Louise arched her brows at the girl.
“He was here earlier. Yeah, I know, he has some nerve showing up at the ranch. It was obvious he was still wanting to run into Andy. But he took one look at me and about swallowed his tongue. Tried to take back what he’d said about me being boring and denied that he’d dumped me.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Hit the road, Derek. Yer much too boring fer a sexy girl like me.’”
“Good!” Louise said, clapping a hand on her knee.
“Also, he about turned green when I mentioned that the new Saints player, Happy Legs Jones, asked me for a date. Horseback riding!”
Louise laughed. “I almost forgot. I have somethin’ fer you. C’mon.” She got up and started to walk around the house, headed toward the pasture where all the cars were parked by now.
Hurrying to catch up, Mary Lou said, “Let me carry that for you.”
Louise still had her purse in hand. She’d been about to go inside to the bathroom and touch up her make-up. It was probably worn off from all that cheek kissing she’d been doing since she arrived.
She handed the bag to Mary Lou, who pretended to stagger. “What do you have in here?”
“Everything. You know me, I’m allus prepared.”
When they got to the pasture, which wasn’t very far away, Louise finally saw where Lillian had been parked. Not hard to locate since it was the only lavender convertible in a sea of Ess-You-Vees and pick-up trucks.
Mary Lou frowned at her. “What’s up? Do you want to go home? Oh, my God! Are you sick?”
“No, no. I’m okay.” She put her purse on the back trunk area of the car and searched for the car keys, which, like always