The Red-Hot Cajun by Sandra Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

charges. No publicity. Nada.”
    “Hah!”
    He shrugged. “Then, welcome to Club Med Bayou, chère.”
    She bared her teeth at him.
    “I just don’t understand you two,” Tante Lulu said, lifting the netting and coming back to the table for more dishes. “Where did all this hostility come from?”
    “It goes way back,” Val told her.
    Please don’t tell Tante Lulu about the incident. “Are you still fixating on the pantie incident?” he asked.
    “What pantie incident?” Tante Lulu wanted to know.
    “Your precious nephew talked me into showing him my Barbie panties.” Val folded her arms over her chest and glared at him.
    Not the incident! Thank you, God!
    You could thank me, too, said St. Jude, or his overactive conscience. Whatever. At least he’d dodged another bullet.
    “Rene!” Tante Lulu chided him.
    “I was only seven years old,” he said defensively. “And how about the time you told Sister Clothilde that I put itching powder on the toilet seats in the teachers’ bathroom?”
    “Well, you did.”
    “Rene!” his aunt said again, although a little smile quirked at her lips.
    “But you didn’t have to tell,” he complained to Val. “I got ten smacks across the knuckles with Sister’s ruler that day.”
    “Then there was the time you pinched my butt in the coat room,” Val added to her list of grievances.
    “You pinched me back. How about the time you told the other kids that I had cooties?”
    “How about the time you mooned me?”
    “I was mooning the whole Girl Scout troop, not just you.”
    “Lord-a-mercy!” Tante Lulu exclaimed.
    “You were always teasing me.”
    “Mebbe he teased you ‘cause he liked you,” Tante Lulu said. “And maybe you retaliated because you liked him.”
    He and Val both ignored those remarks.
    “You called me an asshole more than once,” he reminded Val.
    “Tsk-tsk!” Tante Lulu opined at his language.
    “You were,” Val contended.
    “Was not.”
    “Enough!” Tante Lulu yelled out. They both looked at her. With fists propped on both of her tiny hips, she looked like an over aged, midget Rambo. “All that is old history.”
    “Obviously not,” Rene said. You don’t know the whole of it, Auntie.
    “A snake doesn’t change its spots,” Val said.
    “That’s supposed to be a leopard, not a snake,” he corrected her.
    She stuck her tongue out at him.
    “That’s the second time today you’ve given me tongue, cupcake. Are you trying to send me a message?”
    She snarled something under her breath that sounded a lot like “Asshole!”
    “You wanna know what I think?” Tante Lulu asked.
    “No!” he and Val said at the same time.
    “I think you two been sniping at each other since you were youngins. I think it’s past time you two...”
    She paused for dramatic effect.
    Rene groaned.
    Val, who could be such a fool sometimes, asked, “What?”
    “Kiss and make up,” his aunt declared, beaming.
    “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said. “Not in this lifetime,” Val said. “I wouldn’t bet on that,” Tante Lulu said, glancing pointedly at the St. Jude statue.
    Rene could swear the old guy grinned at them.
     

CHAPTER FOUR
    Just girl talk . . .
    “Whass that tickin’ noise?”
    “It must be some insect. Or a woodpecker.”
    “Oh. I thought it might be yer hormone clock tickin’. Ya are gettin’ to that age, dearie.”
    Val gritted her teeth and restrained herself from strangling the old lady, who shared a bed with her.
    Two years without sex, and what do I get? Me and Grandma Moses in the sack together! An AARP sleepover! Can life get any better than this?
    Rene was outside on a sleeping bag under the mosquito tent. Smart guy! Putting some distance between himself and the Matchmaker from Hell. Or even worse, the Match-breaker from Hell.
    Every mosquito and flying bug in Louisiana appeared to be here tonight, drawn by their exceedingly warm human blood. The temperature felt like 110, and sleep was proving impossible. Thus,