Page 86 of My Best Friend's Mardi Gras Wedding

“See what?”he asked.

Ellie grinned.“You goin’ all out for a girl.”

Josh actually chuckled at that.“No matter how good your grits are, I’m not sure that’s goingall out.”

Which got him to thinking.What would going all out for Tori look like?And why hadn’t he already done it?Yeah, he’d fallen in love with her in basically one day.Well, a year and one day.But that was plenty of time for a Landry man to lose his heart.And mind.

“It’s not the grits,” Ellie said.“It’s that you’re taking care of her.You want to make her happy.And you’re using things other than your wangadoodle to do it.”

Owen choked on his tea and Kennedy rolled her eyes.“Oh my God,pleasenever say wangadoodle ever again.”

Ellie grinned.“I have other terms.”

“Never mind,” Kennedy said.“Wangadoodle might be the least horrifying.”

“Is love stick better?”Ellie asked.

“No, it definitely is not.”Kennedy pushed back from the table and stood.“I’m going to the bar.To drink.You’re driving home so take it easy on the Sazerac.”

“Oh, we’ve got a long day ahead of us,” Ellie said, waving that away.“Lots of time to sober up.”

Kennedy groaned at that.

“Why are you here?”Josh asked his sister.

“Well, if y’all aren’t workin’, I’m not workin’,” Kennedy told him.“I’m not gonna sit down there and deal with tourists calling, pissed off about rescheduling.”

“So we did cancel tours?”he asked.He felt a little bad about that.But a glance in Tori’s direction affirmed that he would do it all over again.

“We did.”Kennedy shrugged.“But I don’t care.I get paid either way.”

Josh frowned.“No you don’t.”

“I do.”She reached over and grabbed a stray fry from Josh’s plate.“Read my contract.”

“You have acontract?”Owen asked.

She rolled her eyes.“You two just keep on being the swamp people.I’ll happily negotiate my terms with Sawyer.He’s a grump, but he’s fair and not a flake.”

“We’re flakes?”Josh asked.But as Kennedy opened her mouth to remind him of all the trouble he and Owen had caused over the years—some unintentional, some…not—he held up a hand.“Never mind.”

He didn’t want to do any more of the business stuff than he had to.His job was pretty much to charm and inform and up their ratings on the travel review sites.Owen’s was all of that plus general maintenance of the boats and equipment.Sawyer, and previously Tommy, had handled the books and business.And apparently their employees.Which included their grandfather, cousin, and sister.Should have been a piece of cake.But negotiating with Kennedy was a no-win situation.

She worked for them because it was a family business and Leo made them hire her.She had a job as long as she wanted it, no matter how badly she might do it.Fortunately, she had a lot of pride and wouldn’t do anything less than a great job.Within the very narrowly defined job description she’d agreed to.But she was a ball buster.Which was, of course, their own fault.

She’d been the only girl in a family with two older brothers and about a dozen male cousins.She didn’t take any shit and she knew when a man was feeding her a line, probably before he did.She didn’t much care what humans of the male persuasion thought of her and she, generally, knew she was smarter than any she came across.

But Kennedy was also beautiful and sharp and confident and pretty interesting.Even to her brothers.She’d gone from a beauty queen trained to look just right and to say and do all the right things, to a goth feminist in rebellion against everything superficial and repressive to girls and women.Needless to say, the guys in her life loved to push her buttons and they wereso damned easyfor her brothers to push.

“Plus, Trevor texted me that he’d pay me one hundred dollars if Ellie didn’t kiss anyone, stayed fully clothed, and didn’t end up in jail,” Kennedy said of Ellie’s boyfriend.She gave her grandmother an affectionate-if-put-upon look.“It’s a tough gig, but I could use the money.”She looked at Josh and Owen.“My ‘bosses’ are kinda cheap.”She even put “bosses” in air quotes.

She moved off to the bar and took a seat next to the single groomsman from Iowa.The guy had been pretty quiet most of the day, but seemed nice enough.He looked over, gave Kennedy a friendly smile, took in her black hair with the red tips, her dark eye makeup and lipstick, her pierced ears and nose, her black tank that showed off a few of her tattoos, black shorts, and short black boots and his smile widened.And Josh was pretty sure Kennedy was about to drink her next couple of cocktails for free.

“So, as I was saying, you’re trying to make a girl happy with something other than your…”

Josh saw Owen wince as he himself braced for Ellie’s next term for penis.

“…dinglethumper,” Ellie said.

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