Page 106 of The Cajun Doctor

“I don’t know. Two? Three? I need to stop by Starr Foods headquarters first.”

The FBI agents had warned her to allow at least two hours for them to wire her up and prepare her, but not to wait too long or nervousness would set in, and she’d blow the whole meeting. She probably would, anyhow. But they’d assured her that they would be a short distance away. Why was she not assured?

“See you then,” Nick said.

When she clicked off, Sonny told her, “Ya did great, darlin’.”

Brad was already on his cell phone advising the other agents or cops where they would be at “fourteen hundred hours” and to make sure there was plenty of backup.

Luc called her almost immediately when he got wind of the final plan. “Are you sure you’re up for this?” he asked.

“I have no idea.”

“You don’t have to do it. Legally, they have no grounds for forcing you to do anything.”

“No one is forcing me, I swear.”

“Okay. I’ll try to get over to Nick’s office once I’m done here with Angus.”

After she ended the call, Tante Lulu told them all, “I’ll stay here and hold down the fort. If any bad guys show up, I’ll shoot ’em first and ask questions later.”

“Someone needs to lock up that woman,” Brad told Samantha in a loud whisper.

“Better men than you have tried,” John LeDeux remarked, on overhearing. He’d come back to try and convince his aunt to go home. Fat chance of that happening now.

“Cain’t anyone take a joke?” Tante Lulu asked.

“Some joke!” Brad muttered.

“C’mon, auntie. I’ll drive you home and pick up your car later.”

“Not yet,” Tante Lulu said. “I jist started the roux fer the étouffée. Besides, someone needs ta look after the animals.”

“Well, I’ll come back fer ya later then,” John said, “but do not . . . I repeat, do not drive home yerself. The police are threatenin’ to put a boot on your vehicle ta prevent it from movin’.”

“Yer the police, Tee-John.”

He rolled his eyes. “The other police.”

“Whatever ya say, sweetie.”

“Yeah, right,” John said, rolling his eyes at the others in the room.

Brad and Sonny went out to the front driveway to get the wiring equipment from their vehicle, and John went with them. Which left Samantha alone with Tante Lulu.

Tante Lulu set two glasses of iced sweet tea on the table, along with two slices of her Peachy Praline Cobbler Cake that she’d thawed from her freezer. She motioned for Samantha to sit down across from her. You’d think this was her home, the way she took over.

“Now, let’s talk about the thunderbolt,” she said.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Love makes fools of men . . . and women, too . . .

Daniel was reclining beside Molly on her hospital bed, his one arm around her little shoulders, the other arm holding his iPhone in front of them both. Her face was pressed against his chest, and he could feel the heat of her fever even through the cloth of his shirt. He’d been shocked by the blueish shadows under her eyes and her labored breathing when he’d first arrived. What a change from yesterday!

He kissed the fuzz on her bald head, which she usually kept covered, and it was like the down of a dandelion. People, like Samantha, couldn’t understand his aversion to having children of his own. It wasn’t that he didn’t like children. Obviously, or he wouldn’t have specialized in pediatrics. But the attachment to them was just too strong, too devastating when it was broken. Molly was a case in point. He hardly knew her, and yet . . . and yet!

Molly hadn’t let him shut down his phone since he’d first shown her the present she would get when she got better. It was the picture of the seven kittens, and Molly couldn’t make up her mind between the pure white or the yellow-and-black striped one. Of course, their colors might be entirely different when they lost their birth hair, but she didn’t seem to care about that.