Galahad in Jeans (Louisiana Knights Book 2) by Jennifer Blake Page A

of despair. Carla shouted his name; he heard that clearly. A moment later, both of them were kneeling over him; he could feel their warmth, though he hadn’t realized how cold he was until then. He could hear a tapping sound, too, and realized Carla must be holding her umbrella over him, protecting his head and shoulders from the endless rain as he had protected her not so long ago. Turnabout was fair play, it seemed.
    “Is he—is he dead?” Lizzie asked, her voice thick with tears.
    A hand, gentle yet firm, pressed down on his chest, directly above his thundering heart. “No,” he heard Carla say with precision. “He’ll live to do plenty of other stupid things.”
    He opened one eye to see her hovering over him. The frown of soft concern he read on her face didn’t quite go with the bite in her voice. It was swiftly banished as she saw he was conscious, which was a fine and timely reminder that it would be foolish to read too much into a twitch of facial muscles.
    “Are you hurt? Can you move your legs? What about your arms?
    “I’m okay all over, I think, except for my ego.” He paused, then asked because he couldn’t help it, “Stupid things?”
    “Canceling the rescue equipment that would have made this job easier. Climbing a tree in the rain.” She gave a quick shake of her head. “You could have broken your neck.”
    “But I didn’t,” he said quietly, answering the concern behind the scolding instead of the accusation.
    “What about Twitter?” Lizzie asked in an agony of doubt. “Did you see him? Could you get him?”
    Beau turned his gaze to the girl, more than a little glad of the diversion. “I did, and I could,” he said, as he pushed up to a sitting position and released his hold on the parakeet. Small claws scratched his breastbone, scrabbling for purchase. Seconds later, a blue head came poking up at the hollow of his throat, struggling from under the neck of his wet T-shirt.
    “Twitter!” Lizzie sobbed, and launched herself into Beau’s arms, catching his neck in a stranglehold. “You saved him! I knew you would.”
    “Hey, no more of this crying stuff,” he said, rocking her a second in his arms while making certain Twitter wasn’t flattened between them. “Everything is all right.”
    “I thought he was gone and I’d never see him again!”
    At the sound of a screen door slamming, Beau looked past the girl to where her mother was coming toward them with a cigarette in one hand and a bird cage in the other. “Here’s your mom now. You’d better take Twitter inside where it’s warm and dry. He’s a house bird, not used to being out in the rain.”
    That wasn’t the end of it, of course.
    Lizzie’s mother thanked him over and over, saying how much she appreciated him coming out for nothing but a bird, running on about how upset Lizzie had been when it got away, and how over the moon she was now to have Twitter returned to her. She also had to be introduced to the lady from the magazine, as she called Carla, though it was obvious she knew who she was already. She couldn’t get over having the two of them standing in her front yard, tried to insist they come inside for coffee.
    Beau was as polite as he knew how to be while standing there without a dry stitch on his body and his scrapes and bruises beginning to sting as rainwater seeped over them. Thankfully, Carla took things in hand.
    “I believe Beau needs to get home and get cleaned up,” she said. “I’m seeing blood on his shirt. He must have hurt himself when he fell.”
    She was right, he saw as he lifted his arm to look. There wasn’t a lot of the red stuff, it was true, but it made a good excuse for leaving. When Carla took his arm and turned him toward his truck, he let her get away with it.
    No one was around when they reached Windwood. Eloise had left early to run errands. The field hands that helped out this time year were off, and had been since it started raining. They had the place to