by Shirley Jump
“Thanks,” Gabriel said. With two hands, he passed the camera back to Paul. “Wish I could keep the picture. Put it on my wall. So my room, it’s like the bayou, too.”
“Well, the picture stays in the camera because it’s a digital image, not a real image,” Paul explained. “I have to hook it up to my iBook with a USB cable, then download the file and—”
He could see he’d already lost Gabriel in explaining the technicalities. “Maybe I’ll get it printed out for you,” Paul said, then immediately chastised himself for making a promise he might not be able to keep. Although he would consider retaining ownership of the opera house, in the end he knew he would probably list the property as originally planned and get back to his life.
“What are you doing?”
What was with this woman? She was always coming up behind him. Paul wheeled around to face Marjolaine Savoy.
“This is getting to be a bad habit,” he said, giving her a grin. As he spoke, he was struck by the strength in her vibrant blue eyes, the long, tight braid that seemed to beg someone to undo it and the soft curves that filled a spaghetti-strap sundress. Okay, so maybe he didn’t mind her coming up behind him.
Clearly, the bayou didn’t provide the only interesting views in Indigo.
“Paul’s showing me how to be a picture taker.” Gabriel held up the Nikon.
Marjo looked to Paul for confirmation. He gave her a short nod. “Gabriel here has quite an eye.”
Her brother beamed. “Maybe…maybe I can get a job doing pictures. I’d like that better than working with Henry on the dead bodies.”
“Maybe,” Marjo said, not committing to anything. Gabriel had lots of enthusiasm but little follow-through. “Give Mr. Clermont his camera back and we can get on home.”
“I want to take some pictures.” Gabriel gave her that stubborn pout that meant he wasn’t going to leave without a fight.
“Gabriel, we need to get home. I have to get to work. We have a wake tonight.”
“I want to take some pictures,” he insisted. “Paul said I could take a few of the bayou. Then I can go to work.”
Marjo looked at Paul, wanting him to take her side so she could get Gabriel home and make her way over to the funeral home.
“Take one or two more, Gabriel, then do as your sister says.” Paul turned to Marjo. “It’ll only take a second.”
Gabriel smiled again, then turned the camera on Paul, snapping the photo before Paul could voice a protest. Then her brother wheeled around and framed Marjo in the lens, depressing the button again.
“Gabriel,” she repeated, her voice a warning.
Her younger brother let out a sigh, then reluctantly returned the camera to its owner. “Can we do it again?”
“Sure. Whenever your sister says it’s okay.” Paul sent a glance Marjo’s way, and Gabriel turned his hopeful eyes on her. Two against one.
“All right,” Marjo said. “But only if you’ve finished your chores and—”
Gabriel ran up and gave her a hug, his joy apparent in the tight squeeze and big smile. “I will.” Then he broke away just as quickly. “’Bye, Paul! I gotta go. See you soon!”
Gabriel dashed away, faster than Marjo had ever seen him move before.
“He’s a great kid,” Paul said. “So enthusiastic and friendly.”
“Thanks.” She lingered a moment longer, feeling she should say something else. A crazy thought. All she wanted to do was to put as much distance between herself and Paul Clermont as possible.
Dinner last night had actually been fun, when they weren’t sparring like Tyson and Holyfield. Maybe the tension came from their opposing views on the opera house, but every time she looked at Paul Clermont, he ignited a spark inside her that she’d thought had long ago gone out. “Well, I have to get to work,” she said, but her feet didn’t move.
“Where do you work? There aren’t very many businesses around here.”
“The Savoy Funeral Home. If you follow the road through town and up to the left, you’ll see it over by the church and the cemetery. It’s been in my family forever.” She shrugged. “Guess I just followed family tradition.”
“Do you do the embalming?”
It was a natural question, and one she’d been asked a hundred times before. “Not so much now. I’m the funeral director so I do most of the planning and oversee the services. Henry Roy is our undertaker and he does the embalming. Gabriel helps him. I learned how to embalm, even did it for a while when I was younger, then I got my degree in funeral administration. I mean, it was the family business, we just grew up with it. It was natural to help out. I remember when Gabriel and I were little, we’d help dress the bodies.”
“Wasn’t that…upsetting?”
“It was at first,” she admitted, and fell into step beside Paul as he began to walk along the edge of the water. “But, down here especially, you learn that death is simply part of life. There are a hundred different Cajun superstitions around death, but by and large, we see it simply as part of the cycle.”
“Like the bayou,” he said, pointing toward the olive-green water, teeming with life, yet edged by dead trees that hadn’t been able to survive along the crowded banks. Together, life and death created a picture of beauty.
“Yes.”
“So, was funeral work your life’s ambition?”
“No, not even close,” she said, laughing, enjoying this respite from a day that had been filled with the very detail work she hated. “When I was a kid, I had this crazy idea that I could be a singer. My mother took me to a professional teacher in Lafayette for years, and for a while, I performed locally.”
“So why didn’t you do it professionally?”
“It was just impractical. I had…” She glanced back in the direction that Gabriel had gone. “Responsibilities.”
Paul looked at Marjo and saw the woman beside him with new eyes. Apparently there was a lot more to her than he had thought at first glance.
That didn’t mean he was considering a truce, maybe more of a ceasefire as they walked along the natural path that formed at the bayou’s edge. It eventually led up to La Petite Maison. Occasionally, Paul would see an alligator skimming along the surface, showing little more than his eyes and looking like a log rather than a predator. “You were right, this place is different from anywhere else I’ve been.”
“If you stay here too long, it’ll grow on you,” Marjo teased. “And if you stand in one place too long, the Spanish moss will grow on you, too.” She smiled, the kind of smile that Paul knew would linger in his mind, stay with him all day. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
This woman was the polar opposite of him, and yet even as he moved closer to her to avoid the low-hanging moss, he felt a rush of need for Marjo Savoy surge through him. He glanced over at her, wanting to run his fingers through that long, impossible hair, to trail a palm along the soft skin of her arms. It was almost painful to walk along beside her, pretending he wasn’t acutely aware of her every breath.
“I can’t imagine settling down anywhere, period,” Paul said. “Although I did own a house, back when I was married, but that didn’t last long.”
“The home ownership or the marriage?”
“Both.” When he didn’t elaborate, Marjo let the subject drop.
They reached a thick stand of trees, which gave them two options: forge their way through the foliage so they could pick up the path on the other side, or go around the trees. Marjo turned around at the same time Paul did, and they ended up facing each other, inches apart. She stopped. He stopped. His eyes met hers, and desire sang along his veins, thudded in his heart, pounded in his brain.
Kiss her, his mind whispered. Kiss her, before you remember all those reasons why you shouldn’t.
“Sorry,” he said, not meaning it.
“No, I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going and—”
“It’s okay,” Paul said, touching her lips with a fingertip.
She inhaled
, parting her lips as she did, nearly kissing his finger. He watched her mouth open, intent and serious.
And then, in the space of an instant, he leaned down, brushing his lips lightly against hers in a touch so gentle it was more tease than anything else. He pulled back a centimeter or two, waiting for her to react.
She leaned forward, and her lips met his in a hot, frenzied kiss, the kind that came about on the spur of the moment, fueled by want and nothing else. Fire ignited nerve endings throughout his body, awakening a part of him that had slumbered for so long. Too long. For one amazing, senseless minute, she kissed him, seeming to melt into him as his palms cupped her face.
A bullfrog let out a loud, groaning belch, a stark reminder of where they were.
And why he was here.
Marjo jerked back. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I just—” He cut off the sentence.
“I’ve really got to go,” Marjo said, breathless, confused by her body’s betrayal. Then, before she could do something really stupid like kiss him again, she turned on her heel and headed off to work.
The one benefit of working with dead people all day—it effectively killed all thoughts of romance.
CHAPTER SIX
ON MONDAY, Cally came by, dragging Marjo out of the funeral home long enough for a quick lunch at the Blue Moon. Cally knew Marjo well enough to know she’d forget to eat, buried in the paperwork on her desk. Once their food arrived, Cally cocked her head one way, then the other, studying Marjo from the opposite side of their booth. “Something’s different about you today.”
“Same as always.” Marjo forked at her boulettes de chevrettes, but didn’t take a bite.
“You don’t lie very well, you know.” Cally grinned. “And you have that stunned, can’t-believe-I-did-that look about you. So…” Cally leaned closer. “What did you do?”
“I kissed Paul Clermont,” Marjo whispered, knowing the Indigo gossip chain often started right here at the Blue Moon. “But it didn’t mean anything.”
“You kissed him!” Cally sat back, clearly shocked. “I don’t blame you. He is totally hot.”
Marjo agreed with Cally’s assessment, but that still didn’t make it right to be fraternizing with the enemy.
“It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Marjo said. “And it’s not going to happen again.”
“Uh-huh. That’s the same thing I say when I dip into a box of chocolates. I’m going to stop at one.”
“Well, this time I will. Getting involved with that man will only confuse the issue. I have enough going on, what with the effort to renovate the opera house and the CajunFest happening there in a little under two weeks.”
“Speaking of things you say won’t happen again, are you going to sing at the festival?” Cally asked.
Marjo was surprised by the question. “Me? Why? We have lots of great local talent. Nobody needs me.”
“That’s a crock and you know it. Heck, half the town’s been asking about you, wondering if you’ll sing.”
“It’s been years since I stood on a stage.”
“So? Just get up there, girlfriend, and use the gifts God gave you.”
“I am. At the Savoy.”
“Marjo,” Cally said, reaching for the friend she’d had ever since the two of them had met in Mrs. Langley’s kindergarten class, “when are you going to quit that funeral home and pursue what makes you happy?”
Marjo shook her head. “I’m thirty-five. I can’t be going after some pipe dream.”
“Now is the perfect time. Before you’re ninety and can’t remember the words to your own songs.”
Marjo laughed. “Tante Julia can remember every person she ever came in contact with, along with the words to some songs that shouldn’t be sung in mixed company.”
Cally rolled her eyes. Before she’d entered the nursing home, Marjo’s ninety-two-year-old aunt had been well known in Indigo for her compulsion to tell off-color stories at the worst possible time. Like during a wedding or a baby shower. Or, worst of all, at Tee Tim’s funeral. “Tell me she’s not performing at the festival.”
“Only as a backup singer,” Marjo joked.
“Seriously, Marjo, you should get up there. Show Indigo what you’ve got. You never know where it might lead. Like, out of this place.”
The waitress slipped the bill onto the table. Marjo laid some money on top, then rose, her food still mostly untouched. Her appetite for it had deserted her. “I have to get back to work. The Dufrene family is coming in at one and I need to put together some information for them.”
“Promise me you’ll think about it? In between thoughts of kissing Paul Clermont again, of course.” Cally winked.
“I’ll think about singing. But not Paul Clermont.”
“Uh-huh. That’s what they all say.” Cally gave her a grin.
After she left the diner and returned to work, Marjo tried not to think about what Cally had said, or about kissing Paul Clermont, but it didn’t work. No matter how busy she got, or how many times she straightened the furniture in the viewing rooms, both thoughts kept coming back, stubborn as thistle.
Particularly the one about kissing Paul.
What had gotten into her? How could she have risked upsetting the careful balance of her life? She had plans, plans that required she stick to a prescribed path if they were ever going to work out. Because Gabriel needed that security and there was no one to give it to him but her.
After work, she headed home, made supper for Gabriel and herself then set off for the restoration committee meeting at the Blue Moon Diner. Most of the usual members were already there, dining on sweets and coffee. At this rate, she might as well move into the back room in Willis and Estelle’s little restaurant.
Marjo looked around. Sophie Boudreaux was absent, but that was expected. Exhaustion from trying to keep up with her job in Texas, manage the antique shop and help raise Alain’s two children, combined with a pretty serious case of morning sickness, had forced Sophie to curtail her involvement with the committee. It was too bad, because Sophie’s career as a professional fund-raiser made her a great resource person. Marjo scanned the rest of the group, and noted another important absence.
“Where’s Hugh?” The elderly man was the greatest supporter of the restoration project, and the only one of the committee members, as sweet and helpful as they all were, who understood Marjo’s driving need to preserve the town’s heritage. Hugh Prejean was the opera house’s champion, and she didn’t feel right beginning the meeting without him.
“He might have gotten tied up with something at home,” Jenny LaFleur said. “Although, I don’t remember him ever bein’ late before. He’s like the Indigo rooster, up and at ’em before anyone else has even put the coffee in the pot.”
Marjo glanced at the clock. Quarter after the hour. Jenny was right, Hugh was never late for anything. They’d often joked he’d be early for his own funeral.
Concern crossed the faces of the others in the room as Jenny’s words sank in. Marjo felt a sense of foreboding in the pit of her stomach, but she pushed it away. Surely, Hugh would be here any second.
“Well, let’s get to work,” she said, pulling a file folder from her bag and handing out an agenda to everyone. “I’m sure Hugh will show up soon.”
But as she started the meeting and listened to Loretta Castille update everyone on the VIP dinner planned for the night before the festival, she wasn’t so sure even she believed that. Hugh was never late, never missed a meeting. For him not to be here was highly unusual.
“So what are we going to do about this man from Nova Scotia?” Doc Landry asked. His upcoming wedding to Celeste Robichaux had finally convinced him to retire. “I met him and he seems hell-bent on trying to sell the opera house. He doesn’t give us the time of day for months, and then just thinks he can come on down here in a fancy rental car and sell the place out from under us?”
“I’m working on him,” Marjo said.
“He is, after all, one of the descendants of Amelie and Alexandre, so he technically has the right to do whatever he wants.” Murmurs of dissent and frustration rippled through the room. “However, I’m hoping that if I can show him his family’s history, and what a valuable piece of that history the opera house is, he’ll agree to hold on to it and let us move forward.”
“And what if he doesn’t? A lot of people in this town are counting on the festival and the opera house.” Doc Landry scowled. “Indigo’s not exactly Boomtown.”
“I say we string him up and serve him in the gumbo,” Jacques Bergeron grumbled. “That’ll put a dent in his engine.”
Marjo didn’t try to figure out Jacques’s meaning. He had a habit of mixing his metaphors. When someone corrected him, he told them language was like soup—you could put in any old thing you wanted and still come out with something good.
“Let’s talk about the CajunFest,” Loretta interrupted, using, as always, her deft touch to soothe tempers and steer people back to the important issue. “Are we on track with all the participating businesses? I know we had a lot of interest from companies outside of Indigo, too.”
“Yes,” Jenny said, reading down her list. “We just got three more from New Iberia and five from other area towns. That should really add to the event. But…”
Jenny frowned, and Marjo felt that sense of dread again. The festival was so close; the last thing she needed was another disaster. It was bad enough that they were running out of time to finish the repairs on the opera house. “But what?”
“Alain just told me that two bands backed out. Seems the third member of the Possum Trio has a slipped disk and won’t be out of the hospital in time to play, and the other band had an argument over wearing matching sequined vests, which led to a very dramatic breakup. The loss of those two leaves a big hole in the schedule.”
“If there’s one thing that’s plentiful in Louisiana besides gators, it’s musicians,” Marjo said. “Don’t worry, Jenny, I’m sure Alain will find someone else.” The police chief, a fiddler in his spare time, had gladly taken on the task of coordinating all the musicians for the festival.
