The Red-Hot Cajun by Sandra Hill Page A

about the size of a bee when they’re born. He’s probably about two months old.”
    “Chester?”
    “Remember that guy with a limp on those old Gunsmoke shows?”
    She shook her head at his hopelessness. “Why are you holding it? Please don’t tell me your aunt is going to cook it up for breakfast along with those fish.” She glanced pointedly at his morning catch on his other side.
    “We Cajuns do eat possum, but not baby possums,” he remarked with a grin. “I’m considering whether to put a splint on Chester’s leg and hope the mother takes him back. Or whether to just let him fend for himself.”
    “Which would mean that some alligator or snake or even a heron would gobble him up,” she concluded.
    He shrugged. “That’s the way of nature. Only the strong survive.”
    “I’m beginning to see the dilemma here. The environmentalist in you doesn’t want to interfere with the natural order of things. It would be breaking the code or something, right?”
    He grinned at her. “Yeah, but sometimes rules are made to be broken.” With those words, he tickled Chester behind the ears, then flipped him over on his back. The animal made a small squeaking noise and instinctively pretended to be dead, all four paws stuck comically up in the air, even the bent one. Sometimes possums, when cornered, pretend to be dead, as in “playing possum.”
    He reached over to get a broken piece of paint stick and tape. Once he got the leg straight and braced with the makeshift splint, he told her, “Wrap that tape around this, please.” Chester was beginning to struggle and Rene couldn’t hold him in place and tape at the same time.
    Val got up on her knees and did as he asked... without hesitation, to his surprise. When she was done and they both examined their work, he suddenly became aware of her closeness. And she became aware of him, too, in that moment when their eyes connected. He had to remind himself that she was not his kind of woman. Not even close. But two hot-damn years?
    There was an odd laughter in his head then. Maybe it was St. Jude getting his jollies over his sad attempts at self-delusion. Who was he kidding? He was attracted to Val, all right, and always had been.
    She blinked rapidly several times, stunned by the sizzle that had sparked between them. He was stunned, too. Then she frowned, as if blaming him for pulling that sexual current out of thin air, all by himself. “Don’t think you can catch me off guard and lure me in like one of your groupies.”
    “Groupies?” He hooted with laughter, the connection broken—thank you, God, or St. Jude, or whomever. He put Chester in the palm of his hand and stood.
    “Yeah, I’ve heard that you play in a rock band, and that women swarm all over you.” She stood, too, and dusted off her butt, which he was definitely not looking at. Definitely. Not. And he wasn’t thinking about two years, either.
    “The Swamp Rats are a far cry from a rock band. Frankly I can’t remember the last time I was approached by a groupie, unless you count Wanda, the waitress at The Last Chance Saloon in Biloxi. And she only wanted change for the jukebox.”
    “You are such a liar. I can tell by the way you blinked. People don’t realize that they give themselves away all the time by their body language. So don’t think you can fool me. Ever.”
    He better make sure he didn’t have any impure thoughts about her. Which of course caused him to immediately have impure thoughts about her. I am so screwed! “Come on. Let’s see if Chester can find his way home.”
    They walked to the edge of the clearing and set the possum down, aiming him toward the wooded area where Rene had found him whimpering earlier. Chester stumbled a few times, going down on his chubby tummy, but then he limped off slowly, hopefully toward home.
    He and Val smiled at each other, the first genuine smile they had exchanged in probably forever. His heart constricted in the oddest way.
    Tante Lulu came