Page 89 of The Cajun Doctor

Lily Beth accepted the offer, gladly, and waddled off.

To Angus, Samantha said, “Be careful what you say or do on that damned computer of yours. Maybe the mob could put a trace or something on it. I saw them do that on NCIS one time.”

Angus poo-poohed the idea. “My laptop is secure, believe me. As for Jimmy Guenot and his mob, they don’t know a computer cache from money cash. I once told Jimmy that I had five gigabytes on my flash, and he asked me how the hell I got pig bites on my ass.”

“Still, be careful.”

It was nine o’clock before Daniel returned, and he didn’t have any ice cream. Darn it! He didn’t have any animals with him, either, which she supposed was a good thing. She would ask him for details later.

He looked beyond exhausted. The white T-shirt he’d donned this morning was plastered to his chest and back with sweat and covered with animal hair. He had scratch marks on his forearms. A nighttime stubble covered his face.

She met him in the front hallway, where she noticed that everyone, people and animals, seemed to have settled down for the night. The pocket doors to the front parlor were closed, but the low sound of a movie streamed from Angus’s laptop. She thought she could hear Lily Beth snoring.

From the second parlor, where the pocket doors were also closed, Clarence was calling out his usual expletives, but the other animals must be sleeping. Someone needed to teach the bird something new. It was amazing to her that the animals who had insisted on sleeping with her at home were content together here behind closed doors.

Aaron had returned a few hours ago, ate, and went back out again, no explanation for where he was going, or when he’d be back. Not that she’d asked.

“You found homes for all the animals?” she asked Daniel.

He nodded.

“Everything okay at the cancer center.”

“I decided to wait until tomorrow.”

“Do you want to shower before you eat dinner?”

“Oh, God! Yes, please.”

He trudged tiredly up the steps, and she went back to the kitchen to reheat the gumbo and rice. Everything was set out on the table when he came down fifteen minutes later.

“Feel better?” she asked.

He hadn’t shaved, but he’d put on a clean white T-shirt, a pair of cargo shorts and rubber thongs. He smelled like Irish Spring. “A thousand times better,” he said, sitting down on the bench at the table.

She sat down on the opposing bench and poured them both iced sweet tea in large Solo cups.

He ate ravenously, a big bowl of gumbo and rice, with four slices of the baguette, then asked for a second helping. “My mother prided herself on her gumbo. Even though she lived most of her life in Alaska, she remembered her Cajun roots,” he told her conversationally. “This is almost as good.”

Daniel had never talked about his mother, or his notoriously lecherous father, Valcour LeDeux, but now was not the time for questions. “Almost?”

“Equal, maybe,” he said with a smile.

Increasingly today, she’d realized that his smile was a killer. The kind that made a woman think of things she probably shouldn’t. Maybe she’d always known, but didn’t want to admit her attraction.

“Anything new here?”

“Not much.” She told him about all her unanswered phone calls. “I think Nick is starting to connect my sudden inaccessibility with Angus’s disappearance.”

“As long as he doesn’t make a connection with me, or this plantation, you should be safe.”

“I feel really guilty about getting you involved in all this.”

“I can take it. My shoulders are wide.”

“I noticed,” she said, before she could bite her tongue.

He smiled again, and this time the impossibly sexy dimple emerged.