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  Was he for real? He was like something out of a nineteen thirties horror film. I don’t know what rock he was living under for the past hundred years, but he was so stuck in the ice age. What an ass.

  Chapter 5

  JET

  I held my laughter in as long as I could, until she’d cleared the room. I knew very well what she thought of me; she couldn’t hide it.

  I’d thought we’d moved past all that, but then the night of the social, I’d overheard her and her girlfriends having fun at my expense.

  Little did she know, that she was looking at a Harvard business grad, top one percent. Her and her high and mighty ways needed cutting down a peg or two.

  I knew she would react that way, and I had just the thing to handle her little ass. I did mean most of what I said; my family home is in a more remote part of the parish, and yes things are a little different out there.

  It would be for her own safety to listen to my direction in the beginning, until she gets the lay of the land.

  I could tell that she was a spoilt little girl, whose daddy let her get away with murder. As my wife, she wouldn’t have that kind of freedom, because I don’t believe in it.

  I don’t cotton to all this new age crap. A woman is a delicate flower and needs to be treated as such. She might think she wants to do the same things as a man, but she’ll learn different.

  I know she has a business degree from Loyola, I admire that about her, but as my wife she’ll have no need for such things.

  All she’ll have to do is see after me, and whatever kids we might have and I’m hoping for plenty. I’m not the back-woods hick she thinks I am.

  I just didn’t work my tail off so that my woman could work herself into the ground for someone else. If she wanted to start her own business, I was all for that.

  But she wasn’t working outside the home. If that made me a goober in her eyes, well so be it. Her daddy had already signed on the dotted line.

  When he’d first come to me for help, I had no idea if I was going to help him or not. But as time went by and I did my research, I found her.

  One look at her and I was hooked. And if a picture alone could do that, I couldn’t imagine what seeing her in the flesh would mean.

  It was better than I thought; she has a beauty that transcends time, a throwback to an earlier time, a better time.

  A time when men courted women with poetry, and sat out on the front porch, while some old lady sat off in the corner making sure there was no hanky panky going on.

  I guess I am old fashioned after all, in some ways. In this day of fast everything, I liked the idea of a sweet little southern belle in my home. It would be up to me to turn her into something else entirely in my bed. I can’t wait.

  I wanted her the first moment I saw her, and that first night at dinner just sealed it for me. She was beautiful and sassy, my favorite combination.

  I’m sure it was probably a chore for her that first night, to sit there, all prim and proper. But she couldn’t hide the daggers in her eyes when it became obvious that her parents were playing matchmaker.

  I had a hard time containing myself all those nights we went out driving, but I was resolved not to treat her like just any woman, but like the woman I was going to take to wife.

  I still had some old world values about me, though I’ve been around the block a time or two.

  I just left after a word with her father, instead of making a fuss; there was no need. She was mine from the first moment I clamped eyes on her.

  Chapter 6

  EMILY

  That had been the last time I’d seen him. I thought I’d made my position very clear that night.

  So why was mama trying to force the issue again? I know it couldn’t be because he still wanted me; I’d burned that bridge but good with my rudeness.

  I’d had a few bad moments after that. The thought of never seeing him made me feel ill, but I squashed those feelings as soon as they reared their ugly little heads.

  No way am I giving in, not unless I got some things my way; like a nice big place in the city. Maybe even New Orleans, the historic district has some lovely old mansions…

  JET

  I like women, I like sex; in fact I like lots of sex. And I could see myself spending plenty a long, hot night between her thighs. I’m not willing to overlook her penchant for being a brat though; that’s something we’ll have to work on.

  I wouldn’t want to break her spirit by no means; I like that sassy mouth of hers. But she’d have to learn that as my wife, her first loyalty belongs to me.

  Now her mom has called and said she’s refusing to marry me. What that little girl doesn’t know, is that Jet Durant doesn’t take no for an answer.

  “Let me speak with your husband ma’am.” For what I have in mind, it was best to let the head of the house know what I was up to.

  It was very unorthodox in this day and age, but back in the day, it’s the way the men in my family would’ve handled things.

  I stayed on the phone five minutes with the old man, laying out my plans. Then I had some things to take care of on my end.

  As CEO of my family’s oil business, I couldn’t just up and leave without making sure everything would be taken care of in my absence.

  My family made it rich back at the turn of the century, when my great grandfather lit a match over some bubbles out in the field and they ignited.

  It was one of the largest oilfields in the State to date. That first well produced for over fifty years, and is now what we call a seepage well, producing only twenty barrels a day.

  But with our luck, we found another well on the north side of our land, that promised to do even better than the first, and with today’s technology, we stood to make even more billions.

  It’s a well kept secret just how much we were actually worth. It was nobody’s business but our own after all; but the women who’ve married, or been born into the family over the generations, have branched off into other business arenas.

  This is Louisiana after all, there was always something you could stick your name on and make it sell.

  We have a food line, a spice line and a clothing line, all thought up by the women. My two little brothers were already married to some fine ladies, and had a few children under their belts already. I was the last holdout; after school I’d just not had time to see about finding me a suitable woman.

  I didn’t only run the company I liked to have a hand in every aspect of the business. That’s why I’d been working on the rigs since I was sixteen years old.

  If it had anything to do with oil wells, I knew how to do it. You need a wildcatter I’m your man, roughneck? You’ve got it.

  There isn’t anything I haven’t done out in those fields. The press says I have oil running through my veins instead of blood.

  But I wanted to spread my wings wider; my next project is a hotel chain, that’s where my head is at.

  We’ve already got the housing development and construction business here and in Beaumont, and we’ve pretty much cornered the market on everything else.

  The only thing my family hasn’t tried in the last hundred and ten years is hotels; that’s going to be my mark.

  Now that I’ve got that squared away in my mind, I can go ahead and get married. I’m bringing something new to the table, not just riding on my family’s coattails, as a man, that’s very important to me. I’ve found the filly, now I just have to go rope her in. Yee haw.

  Chapter 7

  EMILY

  I heard movement outside the door again. Good, she had come to her senses and was about to let me out.

  I heard what sounded like a drill and thought what the hell? I moved from the bed over to the door and tried the knob, nothing.

  “Who’s out there? Daddy is that you? Let me out daddy, mama’s having another one of her spells again and shut me in.”

  “You’ll be fine doll baby.” Huh?

  “What, daddy, what’re you doing?” I could h
ear his footsteps moving away swiftly, and his voice sounded like it was coming through wet paper.

  I pounded on the door, screaming my fool head off, but no one came to my rescue. Well spit, what was I supposed to do now?

  The connecting door was my best bet, but they’d already locked that one as well. I could always try kicking it in, but I knew that wouldn’t work.

  The doors in this old house were made of mahogany. I stood a better chance of breaking every bone in my foot than I did getting the stupid thing opened.

  When this was over, I have to remember to bring some tools in here and hide them under my bed, so the next time that old lady loses her mind, I could just take the door off the hinges.

  I can’t believe my own daddy would turn on me like this, and what for, that no count redneck hick? I was back to fuming again.

  I finally got some sense in my head and ran for my phone, why hadn’t I thought of it before? I’ll just call my brother to come rescue me, he was over to a friend’s for part of the summer vacation, but I know he’d come get me.

  My phone wasn’t on the charger. I’m gonna skin mama alive, see if I don’t, first chance I get.

  Fine, I’ll just use the antiquated phone she insisted we all kept in our rooms. Heaven forbid we should get a touchtone, like everybody else in the twenty-first century.

  No, according to her they just didn’t fit in with the natural décor and ambience of our home. She’s whacked in the head.

  I dialed the number after scrounging around in my old address book. I kept getting dead air and wasn’t surprised to find that the cord had been cut.

  She’d thought of everything hadn’t she? I wonder how happy she would be if I broke my fool neck trying to squeeze through the bathroom window to escape?

  Or maybe I should try shimmying down off the balcony. Too bad I was scared spit-less of heights.

  Chapter 8

  I spent the better part of the day trying to figure out how to get out of this pickle. Mama has done some hinky stuff in her time, but this takes the cake.

  It’s worse than when she showed up to my sweet sixteen, with that buck tooth heathen Tobias Treat, and declared that he was my beau for the evening.

  Took me damn near a year to live that down in front of my friends. She apparently hadn’t learned her lesson yet.

  And if she wanted old Jet to get some of what I gave old Tobias, to get that jackanapes off my butt, well then bring it on mama. I haven’t kicked a male in the gonads in a mighty long time.

  I started getting hungry just about sundown, or at least that’s when the hunger pains got so bad, that I was about to fall out.

  I’d heard Jessie Mae, our cook, talking about her fried chicken and grits earlier, before mama went blotso. If she made me miss that fine cooking she was gonna get it too.

  I don’t know how yet, after all I’m not a savage, I don’t go around beating up on my own mama, but maybe I can put shaving cream in Melissa’s shampoo, that’ll teach them.

  I know that doesn’t sound very much like a college graduate, from one of the finest families in the state. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

  I’ve been the reigning princess in these parts my whole life, on account of my daddy was the biggest man around.

  Our family’s been in the shipping business since cotton was king, and we never hit a snag yet as far as I can tell.

  Then again, they usually kept the women folk out of such matters, so we wouldn’t know. I went to school for business, though mama did her best to get me to change my major to something more ladylike, probably flower arranging. She was plum out of her mind.

  As the oldest of daddy’s children, I’m fixing to take over things when the time comes. That’s what we’ve always talked about, since I was knee high to a grasshopper.

  Daddy promised, and if he went back on his word and made me marry that…person I’ll do to the Durant plantation what Sherman did to Georgia.

  That’s just the way I am. I’m set in my ways and daddy knows this. He thinks I’m too young to help him out of this bind he’s found himself in.

  Yet it doesn’t appear that he thinks I’m too young to get married to some hick from the sticks and bred like a breeding sow to carry on his family name. Hah

  I threw myself back down on the bed, and I guess I fell asleep, because the next thing I knew, I was smelling that chicken, and it was mighty close.

  I sat up on the edge of the bed and looked around. There was a tray of food on the bedside table. There was chicken and cheese grits with gravy and nice fluffy biscuits, with honey in a pot next to it.

  It couldn’t have been there long, because there was steam still rising from it. I was too hungry to think about who brought it in and how, so I just up and dug in.

  I ate like a JD hog, until I was about to make myself sick. Now I’m not one of those city girls I eat, the only thing is, something’s a little off about my metabolism, because no matter how I eat I don’t gain an ounce.

  In fact, the only thing that grows on me, is my chest, it’s embarrassing. Southern men for all their talk about wanting a woman with meat on her bones, sure do a lot of salivating over my chest.

  By the time I was sixteen it got so I couldn’t have a conversation with one of them without turning red in the face, because they couldn’t keep their eyes in the right place.

  Chapter 9

  I pushed the tray away and went to see about my bath. I might as well make myself comfortable, because there was no telling when mama would come to her senses; and with daddy joining the enemy camp, I was in for a long haul.

  I ran my bath and chose my favorite lavender scented bath salts to add to the water.

  Usually at bath time, I have a whole routine; I check myself over in the mirror, to make sure I didn’t have a pimple on my butt at the very least.

  See that I wasn’t getting one of those mustaches like aunt Vi had. I was deathly afraid of that one, and have been checking for years now.

  Tonight I wasn’t in the mood for my primping though. I had too much on my plate just at the moment.

  Like how I was going to deal with whatever nonsense mama had in store for me next. One thing was for sure, if they brought that Jet Durant up to me again, I’m gonna drive over to his swamp hut and blast him to kingdom come with my granddaddy’s old Remington special.

  I heard movement through the closed door, and just about broke my neck hopping out of the tub.

  “Mama…” I came up short in the bedroom when I saw Jet Durant, sitting in my bedside chair, looking right at home.

  I’d only had enough time to grab a hand towel, which barely covered my front, my hair was wet from my bath and I was dripping wet.

  I screamed like a panther in the Louisiana bayou and jumped back a good ten feet.

  “You, what are you doing in here?” He stood from the chair and moved towards me with a slow gait.

  I stepped back one, not risking a look back to see where I was going. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, living on the outskirts of a small town in these parts, it’s that you never turn your back on a wild animal.

  “Don’t come any closer or I’ll scream.” I held my hand out in front of me while trying to stay decent with the other one holding up the miniscule towel.

  I didn’t miss the way his eyes travelled up and down my body before coming to rest on my face.

  “You’ve already done that.” I didn’t trust that look he had on his face one bit. He had sort of a lazy smirk type thing going on, and his eyes looked like they could see more than was proper.

  “Daddy…” I started screaming my head off. No matter who he was, I know for sure my daddy would blow his fool head off if he caught him in here.

  “Your daddy ain’t here little girl, neither is your mama.”

  “What, what in the Sam hill are you talking about?” I tried sliding along the wall to my escape, if I could just make it to the bathroom…

  “He dangled keys in my face, keys th
at looked like my room keys.

  “Where’d you get those?” I was starting to get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I had to deal with the issue in front of me first and foremost. He dropped the keys back beneath his shirt and I wanted to kick him in the shins.

  I was backed up to the wall behind me as he advanced, his eyes never left mine, as he came to a stop in front of me.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “You’re not the first little girl to reject a Durant male, out where I come from, we have our own way of taking care of such things.

  Your daddy has sense enough to agree with me, so he and your mama took your little sister off for a few days.

  It’s just you, me, and the servants here now; but they can’t hear you, and they have strict orders to stay away from that door, except for meal times.”

  He now had his hands spread on either side of my head and was sniffing my neck. My heart started thumping away in my chest, but I wasn’t sure if it was fear or the effect of his nearness.

  When his tongue licked me there I felt a strange tingle in my body and tried to get away. I’ll be damned if I was going to be treated like some eighteenth century runaway bride.

  “Are you mad? You can’t do this, we have laws against this kind of thing.” Now he was nibbling the skin of my neck and making me go all weak in the knees.

  I had to keep a cool head here, unless I wanted to end up barefoot and pregnant out in the boondocks for the rest of my natural life.

  “Those laws don’t amount o a hill of beans in this equation. Your daddy and me got us a deal, you don’t want to do as you’re told the right way, well then we’ll see that you do.