Page 32 of Ace (The Deuces Wild #4)

He believed her. He did. Keller just couldn’t give Savannah what she wanted. Hell, it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since he’d met her, and love just did not—could not—work that way or this fast. Not for him. Could it?

He set her back on her feet and like one of her hound dogs, he followed her to a one-car garage behind the cat barn.

Keller stopped short when Savannah flipped the garage door up and revealed, of all things, an airboat.

I’ll be damned. He stifled the urge to swing her back into his arms and shout ‘Hallelujah!’ This woman and her remarkable gift of independence and self-reliance would be the death of him.

“Surprised?” she asked coyly.

Thrilled was more like it, yet he offered a mere, “It’ll work. Is it gassed and ready to go? Does it even run?” The craft was inside dry storage after all, cradled on a trailer that rested on some kind of track. Not docked in water like a respectable boat should’ve been.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” she murmured as—of course—she smacked a pad similar to the one that locked her gates, this one on the wall inside the garage.

Gears moved, simultaneously flattening the garage door up to the ceiling while moving the trailer forward.

Out the door. Momentum took over from there, and for the first time, Keller noticed the gentle swell in the land that no doubt led to the bayou.

The trailer had four wheels instead of two.

No hitch. Over a barely concealed gravel path it moved, straight for the line of brush Keller now understood was most likely just a blind disguising the swamp. Probably a dock. This lady was smart.

“You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”

Her shoulders lifted as if she were used to being minimized. “Have to, living out here. No one else to rely on.”

Not even him. Chagrined, Keller ran a hand up the back of his stiff neck as the trailer plowed through the thin line of brush.

He’d made Savannah sound like an inexperienced fool, when the real fool was him.

He should’ve known better, yet he’d discounted her merely because of her gender.

Sure enough, the trailer’s wheels jolted to a stop at a strategically placed log in its path.

Alongside a wooden dock jutting into the swamp. Just like she’d intended.

The garage door eased shut behind them. With one hand, Savannah released the straps securing her boat to the trailer, while Keller cranked the lever that released the craft into the water.

It was a good boat. Flat- bottomed with a caged three-blade propeller aft, one molded plastic bench sat forward and low to the deck, while two captain seats sat behind with the tiller and instrument panel between them.

It sat high in the water but it was clean and well-cared for.

Very few scrapes or scratches marred its wide aluminum hull.

Savannah’s baby had been a fishing boat in a previous life, since the instrument panel boasted a Garmin depth finder.

But Keller had to wonder just how often she went to town or if she did.

Sanctuary seemed to offer everything she needed to survive, and if it didn’t, the swamp did.

Yet he’d treated her like a helpless female when she was anything but.

“What horsepower?” he asked to redeem himself.

“Five-fifty,” she answered without blinking. “There’s bigger boats out there, but I don’t need big. Just good.”

Ouch. He’d been anything but good. Or decent. He’d been patronizing. “Where do you want me?” he asked, not assuming anything from here on out. Savannah was captain of this craft. He was just a knucklehead at her disposal.

“Not with the boys,” she answered distantly as she grunted and shifted several gear boxes out of the aisle and under the front bench seat. The boys being Red and Galahad, the other knuckleheads, who were now side by side on the front bench like a couple kids ready for a ride.

Keller boarded, carefully distributing his weight while he took stock of the gear strapped below deck.

Spotlights. Oars. Two long-handled nets.

A couple cane fishing poles. That made him smile.

He hadn’t seen bamboo cane poles since he was a kid.

A couple empty plastic buckets, the tall kind with wire handles.

An ice chest. A rifle and what he hoped was a real ammo box with real ammo in it instead of stored junk.

“You carry?” he asked, still trying to make solid eye contact.

But Captain Savannah had grown remote while she readied her boat for travel.

He tried again. “How do you trailer this little baby of yours when you’re done? How do you get it back in storage all by yourself?”

“Elbow grease and willpower.” Another shrug like what he thought of her didn’t matter. Damn, she must get treated like an idiot all the time, and she’d come to accept it. How sad. Keller had just joined the last group on earth he wanted to be aligned with—the closed-minded male assholes club.

“Will you need to stop for fuel?”

“Nope. I never dock without filling up first. Get in. It’ll be dark soon. We’ve got to get going.”

“Are you sure your dogs will be okay?” Red and Galahad had no problem leaving Sanctuary, yet Keller hesitated.

The rest of Savannah’s dogs now lined the bank, some barking, some already standing in the water like they meant to go with her.

She seemed to have taken Gran Mere’s dying and the mayhem of the day in stride.

Or had she? Was she just finally so numb that she had to get away?

Or was it him? Was she upset that he hadn’t returned her endearments or that declaration of love?

Keller sat behind the dogs in the right captain seat.

That’d put the stick at Savannah’s right when she sat with him.

It’d work if she were right-handed, but Keller had no idea if she was or wasn’t.

Which also proved why he couldn’t profess emotions he didn’t feel.

He didn’t know Savannah well enough yet, and oh yeah.

He was leaving in a couple days, maybe sooner.

He had an important life and a job to get back to. Well, a job anyway.

Seemingly preoccupied or at least, ignoring him, she handed him a heavy-duty headset. “Here. Put this on.”

Keller promptly snapped the set over his head, adjusting the muffs to protect his hearing.

Airplane propellers were one helluva big fan, but they also made an extreme noise.

Quickly, she strapped smaller headsets on the dogs, and wasn’t that a sight?

Two dogs with silly smiles as if they knew they were her favorites.

Make that three. Keller felt a smile coming on, too.

At last she called to the other dogs on shore, “Stay. I won’t be long. Y’all know what to do while I’m gone.”

Keller tapped his headset when her voice came through loud and clear.

Which meant she understood Bluetooth audio technology and there had to be a cell tower nearby.

She wasn’t uneducated at all, and Sanctuary wasn’t as remote as Keller had initially thought.

What else didn’t he know about Savannah Church?

Proficiently, she backed the airboat away from shore before she turned it around and gradually accelerated. Sir Galahad grinned, long strings of drool streaming into the wind. No wonder they sat forward. All that drool hit the plastic back of his chair, thank heavens.

Meanwhile Red’s long ears trailed behind him.

For a badly used bait dog, he seemed happy and carefree instead of jumpy and traumatized.

Big and gangly, he’d shocked Keller when he’d first brushed against his hand back on Savannah’s porch.

As usual it had only taken one touch and Keller had felt precisely what Red endured in the dog fighting pit.

It’d taken all he had to not break down in front of Savannah and cry like an idiot for the torture Red survived.

There were times Keller was ashamed of humankind. They could be such monsters.

Glancing out the corner of his eye, he sneaked a look at the competent and beautiful woman at his side. He knew now that Savannah would’ve understood if he’d broken down. She’d have cried with him. He just wasn’t ready to fall apart again.

Night had fallen and the water way glimmered from the last of the fading sunlight.

The boat’s soft blue interior LED running lights turned on under the deck, while yellow driving lights along the deck did the same.

Keller took a deep breath of the only part of Louisiana that he considered home.

The bayou. Here, he finally felt at peace.

How could he not? Beauty was everywhere.

Tattered curtains of silvery Spanish moss hung from dark fingered branches high overhead.

Humidity hung in foggy patches like a stifling damp blanket over the swamp, filling Keller’s nose with the distinct smells of fish, mold, and mud.

It’d been a long time since he’d been in the bayou, but it seemed like yesterday. Part of him was still here.

The soundtrack hadn’t changed a bit. At his left, the too close swoosh of a gator sliding into the water turned his head.

Several pairs of bright, beady eyes glittered starboard.

A lazy fin or perhaps a spiny tail stirred the water between those eyes and the boat.

Could be an alligator checking them out.

Not that Keller was worried. He’d learned years ago that alligators were near-sighted and easily distracted.

They were ambush hunters. They survived by sneaking up on unwitting prey, generally along the edge of the swamp.

The rules were simple. If you were close enough to hear an alligator hiss, you were too damned close.

But if you were unfortunate enough to encounter one on land, your best bet was to run like the wind in the opposite direction.

Rarely did an alligator run its prey down, mostly because its top running speed was shit.

The rules changed in the water, though. There they could burst into speeds of twenty plus knots per hour.

You were in their domain. All they needed was a good hold on a leg, arm or foot, and the infamous death roll began.

Gator one, idiot human zip. Crunch. Crunch. Gurgle. Gurgle. You died. The end.

Even as Keller lifted his fingers out of the water, his soul seemed to unwind and relax.

Here there was peace. Even as dark as it was becoming, there were still waterfowl everywhere, bobbing for minnows attracted to the surface or fishing for crawdads.

The chorus of the bayou swelled around him.

Tree frogs croaked. Bullfrogs bellowed. Owls hooted and the spring’s first fox kits yipped in the dark.

So much life layered upon life. It was an opera like no other.

Though he couldn’t see or hear them, Keller knew there were possums, muskrats, raccoons, and snapping turtles along the muddy, marshy shoreline.

During the day he might spot a great white egret or a heron.

Other shore birds. Thick vegetation lined most of the shoreline.

Rats and mice lived in the sawgrass. Snakes.

Lizards. Which made him think of the long-snouted crocodile, the gharial that had seemed intent on attacking them.

Add that to the mystery of Savannah’s rosy red bird from Australia, and Keller came up with an inevitable conclusion.

Someone was smuggling rare birds and animals into the bayou. They’d lost track of a shipment.

Instinctively, he reached for Savannah’s hand on the stick.

She knew this part of the bayou and it showed.

The boat had yet to scrape sand or hit any submerged stumps.

Pursing his lips, Keller sent her an air kiss.

A smile curled her pretty lips and she sent one back to him.

She wasn’t angry. Just busy. She deserved more, but that would do for now.

They made good time. By the time Savannah cut the motor and pulled her craft into shallow water, Keller had no idea where they were.

He hadn’t thought to ask. The glide through the swamp had been restful and distracting.

Even now fireflies twinkled from the reeds along the murky shoreline.

There was a time when the bayou had been home. He’d missed that.

“We’re back at Gran Mere’s,” Savannah announced through his headset. “At least, we’re close. My car’s parked a mile or two from here. ”

Here being a secluded sandbar beneath the crowded boughs of a shadowy enclave of bald cypress.

The most prolific plant in the bayou, these hardy giants with their unique, submerged buttressed trunks thrived in brackish water all their lives.

They stood firm and unmoving. Many of these enclaves shared the same root system for miles of shoreline.

Like the grasses of the Everglades, all they needed was water and sunshine, and they could take over the world.

Savannah had chosen well. This tree’s mighty branches disappeared into the night sky.

Its base measured at least six feet wide, and its needle-like leaves were thick and fragrant overhead.

Once he doffed his headset and jumped on shore, Keller put one palm to the tree’s trunk.

Instant calm filled him. Instant peace. The last of his apprehension melted in the sublime contact with a lifeform older than the United States of America.

Another benefit of his unique gift of empathy was that trees communicated with him.

Not like they spoke English like the Ents of Middle Earth in Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.” But all trees definitely passed a sense of calm and peace to anyone who stopped long enough to listen.

It was as if they knew puny mankind needed assurance that life would always find a way.

Patting the tree’s stalwart trunk, telling it goodbye in his way, Keller turned to find Savannah staring at him, her eyes wide as if she knew precisely what he was doing.

“You communicate with trees but you can’t hear human thoughts? ”

“No big deal.” He shrugged. “I like trees.”

Which made her smile. “And I like you.”

What else could he say? “I like you too, Savannah.”