Chapter One
“You met Adam?” Sam Bell asked, leading Landon across the yard, the piles of bull-riders and their women just filling the place up. Shit, the ropers and the family hadn’t even made an appearance yet. By midnight, the booze and the music would be flowing, and the whole bayou would ring.
Landon did love it here at Beau and Sam’s farm, more than almost anywhere, and Sister was here, Cotton and his gal, Em. Even Adrian and Packer.
“No, sir. I mean, I knowed him good, oui? He rides and rides, but I ain’t never spoke to him, me.”
“Safety man. Like him. You.”
Landon nodded. Sam’s words got better every time they chatted together, and Landon was happy for it. Him and Sister, they prayed and lit candles for the man, spent hours on their knees with Maw-Maw’s rosary beads clicking. Sister’d even sacrificed a chicken for healing, pouring the blood out during the new moon to suck the sickness and hurting from Mr. Bell and into the dirt.
His sister was pure hoodoo, witchy as all get out, but he’d never met a better traiteur, or treater. Magical healer. Didn’t reckon he ever would.
“Adam. Cajun. Landon. Tag.”
Landon blinked up, the sun bright as a penny, and the glow surrounded a tall, tall cowboy, making the man shine. Landon caught his breath, the universe spinning.
His dream.
Shit fire and save matches.
Ever since he’d been a boy, he’d done dreamed of this very second. Right here. Right now. The cowboy would have a light-blue shirt on, a belt buckle from a 1999 roping championship. There’d be a tattoo on the inside of the man’s wrist when he went to shake—three blue circles in a row, touching. This was his cowboy. His family. The one meant to be his amant.
His.
“Hey, kid.”
Kid. Like he was some petit fils. “Comme ça?”
“C’est bon.” Oh, the man knew some Cajun, did Adam.
Landon held a hand out, and, sure as shit came from a goose’s ass, there was that ink on the man’s wrist, permanent. Three blue circles in a row. One. Two. Three.
This one was his, deep down. In his body cells. “Pleased. You want a beer?”
Adam smiled at him, eye lines wrinkling up like to catch the sunlight. “You legal to drink, boy?”
“Shee-it. I reckon.”
To drink. To fuck. To dance. To catch him the cowboy the bon Dieu offered to him.
He wasn’t no child. Not no more.
Adam looked him up and down, one eyebrow arching. “Well, then. C’mon. We’ll have us a couple three beers before things get crazy. These Cajuns, they’re nuts.”
“We is, us, for sure.” It wasn’t a bad thing, though. It was just a true thing.
You had to be crazy to love it here in the swamps.
