He frowned. “All the same, my mama wouldn’t be happy if I let a woman go home alone in a strange town this time of night, in a place she doesn’t know so well.”
“You know I lived in Manhattan, right? And would take the subway home alone much later than this.”
“The bayou is different, and you’re not familiar with it.”
“Anymore,” she corrected.
“Anymore,” he conceded. “I’m sticking around, so don’t even think about fighting me about it.”
The curiosity she’d buried all day raised its head as she gathered the trash to take to the dumpster out back. “Are you staying with your parents?” She remembered the house, a sweet ranch house near the church. She’d spent a few nights there each summer, but she found his father too stern. He was a preacher, and she hadn’t been a churchgoer—still wasn’t—and he found fault in that.
Even then she hadn’t liked being judged.
“Not currently, no.”
Her brain filled with all manner of reasons why, but she wanted to get her chores done and get home. She walked out back—it was pretty creepy here at night, one gloomy streetlight in the parking lot and another by the door, the croaks and cries from the bayou floating over the air—and opened the dumpster to toss the trash bag inside. A shriek from inside the dumpster forced an answering shriek from her own throat, and she danced backward, the lid flapping behind the container to hit the metal with a clang.
“What is it?” Samson asked sharply from the back door of the bar.
“Someone’s in there!”
He grunted in disbelief, and marched past her to peer over the top into the trash bin, then jumped back with a nervous laugh.
“Raccoons.”
“Raccoons?” she echoed, stepping up beside him, but she wasn’t tall enough to see inside. “How did they get in there when the top was closed?”
“Who knows.” He stepped back, scanning the area. “Need to give them a way out.” He motioned to a wooden pallet behind the dumpster. “Help me with this?”
She wasn’t sure she could, but she also couldn’t just leave the creatures in the dumpster, even though they’d given her heart failure. And she wanted to prove to him that she was tougher than he thought.
As she helped him lift the bulky pallet, splinters dug into her palms. She bit her lower lip against the pain. But as they levered it up, they discovered it was too big to fit in the opening of the container.
He grumbled and let it fall against the ground, bumping the dumpster and sending up more chattering from the trapped animals.
He crossed the road and kicked a fallen log so it rolled. He stepped back, waited, then picked up the end of the log and dragged it over.
“The snakes did not appreciate their shelter being moved,” he said when she bent down to help by picking up the other end of the log.
“Snakes!” She danced back a few steps. Okay, maybe she wasn’t all that tough.
He jerked his head back the way he’d come. “They stayed over there, but they’re not happy with me.”
She shuddered, gingerly picked up the log. It was hard to see a safe place to hold it in the dim light. She braced herself against whatever creepy crawlies she might encounter. He lowered his end into the dumpster, angling it and leaving one end over the closed part of the bin.
Moments later, three furry creatures scampered up the log, chittering chidingly at the humans before climbing down the far side of the dumpster and heading into the woods.
“Well. They told us,” she said as Samson knocked on the side of the bin, then stretched up to knock the log down into it so they could close the lid.
“Good thing I stayed, huh?”
“I suppose,” she admitted grudgingly. She opened and closed her fists, which burned from the splinters in them.
He noticed. “Hurt your hands?”
“I’ll be okay.”
He motioned for her to precede him back into the bar. “Let’s get in there and I’ll take a look at them.”
