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SCARED
As they were drivingover the Mississippi River, Cruz asked Eden, “Did you want to see the city?”
“No, I’m good,” she told him. She didn’t really like cities. She worked in one, and that was enough for her. She didn’t like the congestion, the noise, or the smells.
“We’d planned on stopping somewhere outside of the city, but if you’d like a little adventure, I’ve got a place we could go that I think you’ll enjoy.”
“Where’s that?” she asked.
Just as she said that the pack pulled into a park and Cruz followed them in.
When they’d parked, and she’d stepped off the bike with wobbly legs, she held onto the sissy bar to steady herself.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said.
“I hope so. I think they’ve gone to sleep.” She rubbed her thighs and calves as Cruz stepped back and watched with a smile on his face.
When she looked up at him, he said, “I’m good at that.”
“Riding long distance?”
“Massage.” Her mouth was closed in a tight grin as she raised her eyebrows. “I’m really good. Really, really good,” he said.
I’m sure you are.She didn’t know what to say to that, so instead she asked, “What’s this adventure you were talking about?”
“Atchafalaya Basin and Marina in Lafayette. We’ve got enough time to do a swamp tour and still get to Lake Charles before the swamp witches get us.” She laughed. “You don’t believe in Julia Brown?”
“That’s about an hour and a half back thataway,” Eden said, referring to the town of Frenier where, legend had it, the voodoo priestess Julia Brown had warned she would take everyone with her when she died. On September 29, the New Orleans Hurricane of 1915 destroyed the community of Frenier and killed 275 people. “You can’t scare me.”But I’ll probably scare you.
He watched the smile fall from her face and be replaced by a look of sadness that tore at his heart. Her pretty eyes were swimming with tears, and he could tell she was fighting them back with everything she had in her.
“Hey, you’re not really scared, are you?” he said. He moved towards her and placed his hand on her back. He wasn’t sure how to react to such a dramatic change.
“No. No…it’s nothing,” she said.
“It’s not nothing. Do you want to talk about it?” Cruz said.
She smiled and said, “No, really I’d love to go.” He raised his eyebrows. “And I’m really not scared. I love that stuff…the voodoo stories. My dad used to tell me them instead of bedside stories.”
“Really? And you’d sleep after he told them?”
“Sure…I could tell it wasn’t real.”
She was smiling again, but he knew there was something hurting in this beautiful woman, and he thought it had a lot to do with her ex. Cruz didn’t even know his name, but he wanted to kill him already.
“Just so you know,” he said. “I’m real too. What you see is what you get, and if you need to talk…”
“No, really…I don’t need to talk about anything other than what we’re doing next. I don’t want to spoil any of this for us.”
“I doubt you could ever do that.”
She was struggling once again to maintain the smile, so she turned away and said, “What about the others?”
“They won’t come. We’ve all done it before, and besides…I don’t want them tagging along with us.” When she turned back to face him, he gave her an evil grin. She looked at his lips then and licked her own without thinking.
She felt a rush of heat that threatened to burn her alive. It was hotter than anything Louisiana could dish up…that was for sure.
* * *
