Chapter 4
The wedding ceremony was romantic. It was one of those big affairs that the society column in the local newspaper liked to cover. Jolie hoped that no one took her picture. She did not want to end up in the paper where her grandmother might see. The old woman would be full of questions. Questions that Jolie did not want to have to answer. She was only here to have her grandfather’s debt taken care of. She was not going to let this good looking man distract her from her goal.
At the reception, Jolie and Beau ate and mingled with his family. She was surprised by one thing. She was sure that he would spend the whole night staring at his ex-girlfriend, but he didn’t. It was almost like he was not even aware that his ex was in the same room. Jolie, however, was painfully aware. The beautiful blonde kept giving her those evil eyes. She was one of those women who was probably the head of the snootiest sorority on the most Southern of college campuses. She was most likely now the president of the local exclusive women’s club, the type of club that Jolie would never be welcomed into. Jolie was poor. She had always been poor and she imagined that even once she was teaching she would still be poor. She did not mind what she was because she was raised by the most loving grandparents and she had never needed anything besides their love. She had never gone hungry and life was always interesting.
Jolie could feel Beau’s ex-girlfriend’s continual stare. The stare that lets another woman know that she is somewhere she should not be or with a man that she does not have a right to be with. Jolie tried to look confident, but it was hard with Beau’s ex making her so uncomfortable from across the room.
Jolie should have been less worried about Beau’s ex-girlfriend and more worried about his family. She did not notice all the muffled comments riding a wave of gossip between Beau’s aunts and uncles, but Beau noticed. He was not sure what was going on, but he had a bad feeling about it.
Beau asked Jolie to dance, but as he was guiding her out to the dance floor they were interrupted by Beau’s grandfather and his oldest uncle. The two men did not look happy.
Beau instinctively placed his arm over Jolie’s shoulder and pulled her closer to him, almost cradling her to his body in a protective manner. It shocked him when he realized what he had done. He felt her body freeze for a moment. She looked up at him with a raised eyebrow, but she did not move out from under his protective embrace. He smiled nervously and shrugged, trying to wordlessly explain his actions.
“Beau, what are you doing bringing this tracas to your cousin’s wedding? C’est femme de la crasse pure!” Beau’s grandfather, Ernest Thibodaux, said in half English half Cajun French as he waved his hand dismissively toward Jolie.
Jolie’s mouth dropped open, shocked by the old man’s obvious insult and dislike of her. She felt her skin warming from the base of her throat up to her scalp. She prayed that she was not actually turning as red as boiled crawfish. The old man had basically called her low class trouble in front of the entire wedding. She was glad that Beau was holding her in place because she wanted desperately to run, but she did not want to hurt Beau’s feelings, from the expression on his face she knew that he was just as shocked by his grandfather’s reaction as she was.
“Arête, Papa! You are out of line. Jolie is my date for the evening and I expect you to treat her with some respect,” Beau said, as he pulled her even closer to his side. She felt protected when he pulled her so close.
“Beau, you don’t understand. This girl is beneath you and this family. I cannot allow her to stay here. I forbid you to continue seeing her.”
Beau shook his head at the old man and then looked down at Jolie. Her eyes were wide open and he saw her innocence starring back at him. He thought that he could see tears pooling in the bottoms of her eyelids. The thought of anyone hurting this beautiful creature was just too much to bear. He loved his family but he had grown tired of them always thinking that their wealth made them better than everyone else in town. His grandfather’s treatment of Jolie tonight was just another sad example of the cruelty that he had seen over the years.
Beau slowly looked back up at his grandfather and decided that he had had enough.
“Vieux fils de putain!” Beau snapped at his grandfather and pushed the old man out of the way so that a path was cleared for Jolie and himself to exit the reception hall. Glasses and plates crashed to the floor as the onlookers gasped at Beau’s harsh words for his grandfather.
Once they were back in Beau’s truck, he loosened his tie and started the engine. Jolie’s eyes were still wide with shock or horror. He was not sure which emotion was there. It was probably a mixture of both.
“Are you okay?” Beau asked.
“You just called your Papa an old-son-of-a-bitch,” she giggled. Her soft laughter filled the cabin of the truck and before he knew it he was laughing with her.
The energy inside the truck became charged with something that Jolie had never felt before. She already knew that she was physically attracted to Beau. A girl would have to be stupid or dead not to be attracted to him, but this feeling was different from just pure physical attraction. He had stood up to his family for her. She was impressed and something else, but she did not know what to call it.
Beau drove her home and opened her door for her when they arrived back at the dorm. He was sorry that he had not gotten the chance to dance with Jolie at the wedding. He desperately wanted to hold her in his arms and feel her against him. He became nervous that he had missed his opportunity to ever hold her. They had only agreed to this one date. He had already paid the fine to meet his part of the deal. The truth was he would have paid it even if she would have canceled, but he was glad that she hadn’t.
“Can I walk you up to your room?” he asked. Beau was not sure what the rules in the dorm were for male visitors.
“Yes,” Jolie answered, her voice hitching up slightly, like she was pleasantly surprised by his request.
“So male visitors are allowed in your room?” he asked, as they walked upstairs toward her room.
“This is a co-ed dorm. There are boys everywhere.” Jolie fished around in her small handbag for her room key. “This is me.” She stopped in front of a door with a poster of Maroon Five’s Adam Levine practically naked taped to the door.
Beau arched one of his eye brows at her and smiled pointing to the very in shape and tattooed rock star.
“You like him?” he asked, still smiling. He was amused. He did not think of Jolie as the type of girl to put up a poster like this on her door. He looked around the hallway at the other doors and saw that they were all decorated with various posters and signs.
Jolie turned from unlocking her door to face her smiling date.
“It’s my roommate’s poster, but yes I do think he is cute,” she answered, looking into Beau’s deep brown eyes. It was the first time she really looked at his eyes. They were a shade of intensely dark brown, she almost had trouble seeing where the iris stopped and the pupil began.
He moved closer to her and reached out to place his hands around her face. Jolie felt her body warm. He was going to kiss her. She was not sure if she wanted to kiss Beau. He was a distraction that she did not need in her life right now and his family obviously did not want them together either.
Jolie could feel his warm breath on her face as his lips parted getting closer and closer to her own. She froze. Beau immediately reacted sensing a change in her body.
“What’s wrong? You don’t want me to kiss you?” he asked.
“I’m not sure but I think someone is watching us.” She could not explain the feeling she just knew that someone was close by watching their first kiss and it was something that she did not want to share with anyone.
Beau backed away slightly, still holding her head in his hands. He looked into those beautiful blue eyes and knew he was lost to her. He had gotten close to kissing her, but he could tell that she was uncomfortable with the possibility that someone was watching their first intimacy and he did not want her to be uncomfortable the first time he kissed her. He wanted her to be relaxed and happy. The most important thing was that he wanted her and he was going to do whatever it was that he needed to do to have her.
He slowly dropped his hands from her face, trailing his fingers down her neck and over her exposed shoulders. It was the most sensual feeling she had ever experienced.
“Can I see you again?” he asked, his dark eyes searching hers for the answer he hoped she would give. Silence greeted him as she thought it over just starring back at him, wishing that the mysterious eyes she felt on them would just go away. She wanted him to touch her again and to kiss her. It was amazing to her, how that one touch of his hands on her shoulders made her feel. She found herself suddenly wanting the distraction that he would become in her life.
“Jolie, I would really like to see you again,” he said, hoping she would answer him this time.
“When?” she asked, looking down shyly at her shoes.
He tipped her head back with his fingers. She was staring into those deep pools of warm chocolate eyes again.
“How about tomorrow?” he asked. He was off on Saturdays and he wanted to spend the whole day with her.
“Okay.” She had things to do, but she wanted to see him again.
“I’ll pick you up at six,” he said.
“Six for dinner?” she asked.
He shook his head no.
“Six for breakfast. I’m going to take you fishing,” he explained.
Jolie smiled a little apprehensively. He was going to take her fishing. She hated fishing but she loved riding in a boat.
“Okay, well, you better go then, because I need to get some sleep if I have to wake up that early.”
“Alright,” he said and began to turn to go and froze. There was someone watching them and he looked angry. Very angry. Beau knew immediately that this young man had a thing for Jolie.
Beau turned back to Jolie to assess her reaction to the young man. She looked uncomfortable and he could tell that she was not romantically interested in the man. Her body language changed. She looked like she wanted to run into her dorm room.
“Go into your room.” Beau gestured to her door. She nodded in agreement and he watched her go inside and he heard the door locks click into place. Then he turned back to the young man who was still sitting in the chair in the communal lounge area watching him. Beau guessed that the man was about twenty-two-years-old and that he was an athlete. Football player he thought. He was blonde and good looking, but there was something about him that made Beau uncomfortable. Maybe it was the way the man had blatantly sat there watching Jolie. Jolie was a beautiful woman, but this was just odd behavior. Beau decided that the best thing to do was leave it alone for now. Tomorrow he could ask her about the young man and then decide how to handle him. Tonight he would go home with the feeling of her silky soft skin on the tips of his fingers.
Jolie on the other hand paced the floor of her small dorm room. Her roommate had gone home for the weekend and she was alone walking a path between the two twin sized beds. She paused at the window to watch Beau climb into his truck and drive away.
How dare Dreux sit there in the lounge and watch her intimate encounter with Beau. She was getting tired of telling him to leave her alone and she hated that he was getting bold enough to pull a stunt like this.
She would have to do something about Dreux. Maybe she should report his unwanted attention to someone at campus police. Maybe she should let him take her out on a date like he has been asking to do. She could bring along her gun. Maybe he would get the point if her gun was pressed into his groin.