Page 37 of Beauty and the Bayou

“And will communicate only in French?”

“Yep.”

“To torture him.”

“To—and this is a direct quote—instill some ever-lovin’ class and higher thinkin’ in him.”He grinned and both corners of his mouth went up slightly.“Apparently, if we got into trouble—especially at school—we were displaying a horriblelackof class and higher thinking.”

Juliet loved this.She narrowed her eyes.“How many poems do you know by heart?”

“Most of them.”

“You must have gotten into trouble a lot.”

He winked.“J’ai adoréchaque minute.”

Juliet stared at him.

Damn.

A big, rugged man with a scar and a panty-warming smile who could speakFrench?She was in big trouble here.“What’s that mean?”she asked after she’d swallowed hard.

“And I loved every minute.”

Oh, she bet he had.

“The thing about Ellie is,” Sawyer went on.“If wehadn’tgotten intosometrouble, she would have worried about us.”

“But you all got intoa lotof trouble,” Juliet pointed out.

“Yeah.But we were all straight-A French students.Plus,” he said, tucking a hand in his front pocket.“We liked hanging out with her.Cora slipped us samples of whatever she was making that day.We learned to swear.We heard stories from all the fishermen and everyone else who worked around here and developed a real appreciation for how hard they worked and how much they loved it.”

Wow.He spoke French and loved his grandmother.She really liked him.All of these people.But especially Sawyer.“So, Mitch’s troublemaking isn’ttroubletrouble.”

“All I can promise is if Chase ends up sitting behind Ellie’s bar as a punishment, it’ll make him a better guy.”

“Shestillmakes you guys sit back there?”

“She would,” Sawyer said.“But we’ve gotten a little better at hiding our troublemaking.”He leaned in.“The trick is to get in trouble all together…then there’s no one left to tell on ya.”

Juliet laughed.“You all are crazy, you know that?”

“Oh, for sure,” he said with a nod.

“Does it rub off?”

“If you’re lucky.”

She swallowed hard.She’d never had this kind of camaraderie.Her family was a lot less…all of this.

“Anyway,” Sawyer went on.“Could be good for Chase to see other parts of our business.What goes into everything here beyond just having docks for people to get on and off the boats.”

She thought about that.Itwouldbe good for Chase to realize that he’d impacted an entire business and a number of people, not just a boat dock.“But the dock…” she said, one more time.

“It’ll get done,” Sawyer said.“Somehow.It’s just one thing we’ve got going on though.”

Maybe he had a point.The better Chase knew these people and saw what their daily lives were like, the more it would sink in that a series of bad decisions by him and his idiot friends combined with a moment of stupidity had really affected other people.

She nodded.“Okay, fine.”She looked up at Chase.“See you later.”

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