“I think the sweet, bubbly coffee shop owner might be a perk that makes that drive up the bayou a little easier,” Zander said.
Charlie looked at Zeke, waiting for a reaction. He just shrugged.
She laughed. “Actually, there were a couple of Bad girls…” She hesitated. The girls from Bad were known as Bad girls, but they didn’t live up to the name quite the way the boys did. Still, she knew some of the girls who had come to the parties down by the water were just as much fun as the guys—“came over for otter yoga the other day, and I’m pretty sure a couple of the moms in the crowd for the otter talk were from Bad.”
“Is this the otter talk that Fletcher did?” Zeke asked.
Charlie nodded. “He was great.”
“’Course I was.” Fletcher joined them. He was really at the bar for a refill on his beer, but he’d overheard his name.
“Oh yeah, really impressive to have a fan club full of five-year-olds and married women,” Zander said.
Fletcher leaned an elbow on the bar and looked at his younger brothers. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man who is good with little kids and animals can have his pick of women. And those kids don’t have to be that woman’s.”
Charlie wasn’t surprised by Fletcher’s adaptation of the first line of Pride and Prejudice. He was a teacher. He actually taught third grade at Autre Community School. And it was no secret that he was the most popular teacher at the school. Not only was he amazing with his third-graders, but the parents all loved him. It was true that many of the moms found him good-looking—he also wore his hair on the longer side and had a few tattoos—charming, and were attracted to how great he was with their kids, but the dads liked him just as much.
Fletcher becoming a teacher was as funny as Zander becoming a cop. But they were both very good at their jobs. And when Griffin had turned her down for doing the educational talk at the otter enclosure today, she immediately thought of Fletcher as a fill-in. It’d been a great call. There had been a bigger crowd than she expected, and several of the moms had been downright gushy about his presentation.
“So you’re telling me that you being sweet to some other lady’s kid makes you more attractive to everyone else?” Zeke asked.
Fletcher looked at Charlie, one eyebrow up. “Charlie?”
She nodded without hesitation. “Absolutely. There’s just something about a man and little kids.”
Even Griffin.
She took a moment to look around the room, wondering if he was here. He’d been avoiding her for five days. They worked together, of course. She saw him at the clinic. But he seemed to have a lot of calls outside of the clinic, and when he was in the office, they were busy with clients and animals. So they hadn’t had more than a few minutes alone, and whenever she got too close, he immediately widened the distance between them.
She found it amusing, if not frustrating. She liked the idea that if he was going to try to resist her, it would take an actual conscious effort and physical distance for him to do so.
Her gaze landed on where he was sitting at the bar. He was a few stools down and was bent over his plate of food, clearly trying to ignore everything going on around him.
She’d missed him.
The thought surprised her. She’d seen him every day. They’d spoken several times over the past few days. But she missed actually talking to him. And definitely flirting with him. And absolutely kissing him.
She hadn’t kissed him since she’d been back, and that felt like a travesty every time she thought about it.
He didn’t want things to be complicated. She understood that. She agreed with it. But she liked him, she was attracted to him, and vice versa. Yes, she thought he even actually liked her. In spite of the fact, she was kind of a pain in his ass.
“Well, speaking of people doing crazy things,” Zander said. “I need to hear the story about how you got fired, Charlie.”
She focused on her cousins again. “Were we talking about people doing crazy things? I thought we were talking about Zeke remodeling a coffee shop and Fletcher being adorable with little kids. And having several not-so-secret secret admirers.”
Zander nodded. “Those are both crazy. Zeke is making a ‘quaint little coffee shop’ out of some old rundown building in Bad. And Fletcher is being adorable with kids. Who would’ve thought?”
Charlie nodded and gave a little shrug. “You’ve got a point.”
“Yeah, but Charlie fucking up some guy’s Porsche and getting fired isn’t really that crazy,” Zeke said with a grin.
Fletcher nodded. “True. But I think we need to hear about why she did it. That might be the crazy part.”
“I’ll tell you the whole story,” Charlie said. It was amusing that her cousins on this side of the family considered her a crazy, fun bayou girl. That was completely the opposite of who she was in Shreveport. Or really anywhere that didn’t have swamp water running past it. She was sophisticated, classy, well mannered, and composed everywhere else. Autre brought out another side of her. But she loved the free feeling and being unfiltered, and that she had people who would love, respect, and back her up no matter what she did.
“Hang on now,” Fletcher said. He turned to the bar. “Hey, Ellie,” he called to their grandmother.
Ellie Landry had always been known to her grandkids as Ellie rather than Grandma or Maw-Maw or any other grandmotherly nicknames. Some people thought that was strange, but it was just how it had always been here.
“Charlie is about to tell us why she trashed that poor guy’s Porsche,” Fletcher said. “You need to come over and see if you win.”
“Win? What’s she win?” Charlie asked.
Fletcher laughed. “The family’s got bets on what made you go after that guy. But we should all hear it at once to see who wins. Cash money, of course.”
Charlie shook her head. She should have known that she had to share this story at some point, and it didn’t shock her at all that her family was making a game of it. She was curious, though, about what reasons they’d all guessed for her outburst against Alan.
She looked at her grandmother as Ellie joined them at the end of the bar and passed over beers to all of them.
“You put money down on what you think I did too?”
Ellie nodded. “Absolutely. Winning twenty bucks off any of these yahoos always makes my day better.”
Charlie wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Ellie winning bets with her grandkids happened a lot.
“You don’t know you’re going to win,” Zander told her. “We all know Charlie pretty well too.”
Ellie looked at Charlie. “Maybe. Guess we’ll see.”
Charlie knew that Ellie would definitely have the closest guess. She may not have nailed all of the details of what would lead Charlie to deface an expensive sports car, but she would get pretty close.
That was partly because, despite not living in Autre full-time growing up, Charlie was a lot like her grandmother. She’d been told so over and over again, but as she’d gotten to know Ellie as an adult, she understood what people meant by that.
Ellie was fiercely loyal and protective of the people and things that mattered to her. But she was also incredibly insightful and nearly magical when it came to reading people. She always had something to say and said it as bluntly and loudly as anyone else. But she was also an observer. She knew things about her family, especially her grandchildren, that they didn’t even know.