by Lynn Shurr
“Uh, no thanks. I’m in a hurry.” Leaving a half-eaten slice behind, he grabbed the sack with the scarf, ran down the four flights, and called to the doorman to get his Mustang out of valet parking as he passed.
Rounding the corner, he nearly knocked Stacy and her cup of coffee to the ground. No Angel with her today. “Sorry, Stace. I needed to catch you. Here.” He held out the crumpled bag.
“A gift for me?” She drew the scarf partly out of the sack. “I think cheap red scarves are more Ilsa’s style.”
“Haven’t seen her since she moved out of your place so I wouldn’t know. Look, I have an idea. I know you don’t want me butting into your life, but I need to make sure you’re okay. See, you can put this scarf in your window if you need my help for anything. I can see your place from mine, and I’ll come right over in case a date is giving you a hard time and you can’t get to a phone. Or if we are at the same place and you want to get away from someone, just wave it around a little and I’ll get you get home safely.”
Her smooth white brow furrowed. “Have you been spying on me?”
“No! Hell, no. I mean your shades are always down. All I can see are lights going on and off. Please, would you do this for me, Princess?” When had calling her Princess changed from being an insult to a verbal caress he had no idea, and now he found himself begging her for a favor. He really was messed up. Dean waited for her to throw the small gift in his face.
“Actually, that’s very sweet.” She shoved the scarf into a large gray leather handbag worn crosswise over her chest on its long straps and rooted in its bottom. “Here, this is the spare key Ilsa was using. If you have to rescue me, you’ll need to get in. Thanks, you big lout. I need to get going.”
“Me, too. Have a good day, Stacy.” Dean watched her move away marveling at how sexy she could make a business suit appear. The nicely rounded bottom and long legs did it. Once he pried his mind off her body, it occurred to him that she’d said “you big lout” almost as an endearment. Smiling, he started back for the condo, and then the great start to the morning cracked open like a breaching levee.
The news and tobacco store next to the coffee shop displayed the latest tabloids in its window along with boxes of cigars. There he stood with Stacy in those last seconds of the dance at Paco’s when both of them still seemed to be under some sort of sexual spell. She stroked his rough cheeks, and he swayed against her backside with his eyes closed and his mouth partly open as if he’d orgasm at any moment, pretty close to the nasty truth. Later, he’d been thankful for the long hem of the parrot shirt.
He recalled lots of people taking pictures and thought nothing of it then. Fans photographed him all the time with or without permission. He’d been on the cover of Sports Illustrated twice, appeared in magazines like People and Us often with the starlets and models who wanted some publicity, but basically he’d led a blameless, boring life since coming to New Orleans. Everyone said so. Now the headline of this rag asked the question Kissing Cousins?
His body had blocked the view of the shop as he stood there talking to Stacy. What would she say when she found out? For that matter, what would his parents think?
Head in the game. Team meeting. Couldn’t be late. But he was by a good ten minutes.
Chapter Eleven
Joe Dean Billodeaux, gone iron gray in his retirement but still in very good shape, sipped coffee with his little wife at the kitchen table. Shopping for the eleven people remaining on the ranch took lots of time, over two hours if you counted the drive into the small town of Chapelle. Corazon would figure out what her employers been up to once the five children remaining at home left for school and she drove away with her long list of provisions, but he didn’t care. In fact, he prided himself that Nell still retained some of the afterglow from this morning’s romp in their king-sized bed. Since they no longer had to worry about pregnancies, he considered their sex life better than ever. The sound of their housekeeper’s vehicle returning indicated playtime had ended for the morning.
Hefting two loaded grocery bags with her usual guilty pleasure trove of tabloids stuffed in the side, Corazon Polk hustled into the kitchen at Lorena Ranch. The passing years had made her wider and painted thick streaks of gray in her black hair, but she could still bustle around the big house. She smacked the sacks onto the counter and turned to face her boss and his wife.
“Need help bringing in the groceries?” Joe asked, trying to figure out the source of her agitation.
“Soon, not now. We got a big problem.” She unfurled one of her magazines and placed it before them on the table.
Her boss raised one eyebrow and a slight smile settled on his lips. “I always wondered when Dean would cut loose a little.” Then, he stared more closely at the photo and the headline. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, that’s Stacy!”
“Let me see.” In her race to grasp the paper, Nell upset her husband’s coffee cup, and Corazon stepped in with a dishtowel to wipe up the mess.
Joe rose and went to pour another cup, not that he needed more caffeine to wake him after seeing that picture, but he wanted something to do with his hands. “I admit I didn’t see that coming. I mean, Dean never got in any real trouble, just kid’s stuff with Tom. He didn’t smoke, drink very much, or do drugs. No begging for tattoos or fast cars either. He only had sex with his steady girlfriends and always used a condom. I taught him that. No matter what they say, use a condom.”
“Hush, Joe.” Nell scanned the article. “At least they got their relationship right, orphaned cousin by marriage, raised by his parents—the well-known Joe and Nell Billodeaux. Magazines are always writing about our family. They must have had that on file. She is an interpreter and translator, speaks three foreign languages, runs her own business, and obviously enjoys salsa dancing. Could be worse. It notes they danced only once and didn’t leave the club together, but hotcha, what a dance. Their words, not mine. More pictures inside. Oh, my.” She returned the open paper to her husband.
“I knew Stacy had long legs, but I’ve never seen her wrap one around a man before. By the expressions on their faces, they might as well be in bed. Say, maybe we should take up salsa dancing.”
“I’m too short and way too old.”
“Not too old to try. I could lift you up for a leg wrap. You still don’t weigh much more than on our wedding day.” Nell ignored his rather nice compliment she was that upset, and he thought he’d crafted it so well.
“Let me see.” Corazon studied the photos. “You know in the salsa dancing the look on the face is important like on Dancing with the Stars. I watch that show regular.” Corazon studied the photos. “I think they scored a ten.”
“I did not raise Dean to be a womanizer.” Nell tore the tabloid away from their housekeeper.
“Hey, he had two girlfriends in high school and two in college, nothing serious since then. They only seem to last two years, and when they don’t get a class ring or one of those promise rings or a real engagement ring, they bail. I wouldn’t call that womanizing,” Joe said.
“You wouldn’t, Mister I Slept with a Hundred Women before settling down. Your mother spoiled you because you were her only boy and then expected the nuns at Ste. Jeanne Parochial to straighten you out.”
Oh, the double whammy of their marital life, how many women he’d had and how his interfering mother didn’t raise him right. To give Nell credit, she rarely mentioned either. She must be really, really upset. Joe dug deep to find the right words. “The nuns couldn’t save me, only you could.”
Nell pried her gaze from the picture and looked up at her still handsome husband with tears gathering in her big, brown eyes. “Oh, Joe. Thank you for saying that. When the reporters followed us around that was one thing. We were all grown up. But what else are they going to say about my sweet baby boy?” The tears spilled over.
Joe cupped her face in his hands and smoothed back her short brown hair with nary a gray one in it. He used her pet name. “Tink, our son is the same age as I wa
s when we met, and Stacy isn’t much younger than you were. They are grown up.”
“What if this attraction started here right under our noses and went on for years?” she asked.
“Hmmm, I don’t think so. All they did was argue. He’d call her princess in a sneering sort of way. She’d come back with that big lout business. Other than trying to drown each other in the pool, I didn’t see much physical contact back then. By the time Stacy developed enough to be of any interest, Dean had his regular girlfriends and went off to college.”
Nell took a deep breath and let her psychology degree come to the fore. “Sometimes fighting substitutes for foreplay.”
“Don’t I know it?” Joe’s hands moved down her body to her waist, just skimming her breasts as he passed. He could never get enough of his little pixie of a wife. She fingered that unruly curl turned gray that fell across his forehead and gave it a small tug.
“You want I should leave again?” Corazon said. “But out in the car, the ice cream is melting and the milk goes bad.”
“Right, the groceries. I’ll call Dean tonight and see what I can find out.”
“I’ll do the same with Stacy. Corazon, lead us to the frozen foods.”
****
Dean sat at his dining room table and watched Stacy’s windows as he ate Thai takeout from the boxes. Tom had gone to Mariah’s in case she showed up tonight, but Stacy rarely went out during the week. Prince would be there for sure probably mouthing off about what happened in the locker room this afternoon. After arriving late for team meeting and paying his fine without protest, he’d stayed on for some weight work and light training. They’d be back on the practice field tomorrow. Unfortunately, Prince Dobbs followed the same schedule.
With a trainer spotting, he’d been working on the bench press when Prince sauntered over and drew a phone from his sweat pants. Dean had no desire to know where he’d carried it.
“Listen here, Billodeaux. I’m calling Stacy for a date tonight. No sense letting a bitch who is hot for you cool off for a whole week.”
Unruffled, Dean continued to do his lifts with the trainer counting. “Don’t bother. Stacy rarely goes out during the week. She doesn’t keep her phone on when she’s working with a client either. I do know her a little better than you.”
He could tell by the sour expression on Prince’s pretty face that his call went to voice mail. “Hey, babe, this is the Prince. How about we hook up together tonight around eight?” He disconnected.
“She won’t go out with you.”
“Says who?”
“I do. She has better taste than that.” With a final grunt, Dean put the weight in the bracket and slid out from under it. He wiped the sweat from his face with a towel that Prince Dobbs ripped from his hands.
“Look at me when you say that, sucka.”
“Sure. I said Stacy will never date you.”
Prince searched the gym for allies before saying in a voice that could be heard in the far corners. “You just don’t want me screwing her lily-whiteness.”
Eyes turned their way, but none of the players moved to back up Prince. Tom jumped off the treadmill.
Dean stared Prince in the eyes before speaking. “It’s not the color of your skin. It’s the content of your character.”
“You quoting Martin Luther King, Jr. to me, white boy?”
“Paraphrasing.” Dean enjoyed watching Prince struggle with the word. For a guy who spent three years at the University of Alabama, he certainly had a limited vocabulary and poor grammar. “You should listen to what the great man said. It is character that counts and yours is low. She could go out with Jakarta or any other man on the team, and I wouldn’t care.” He lied. He wanted Stacy for himself but couldn’t let that get out. Still, he’d made his point. “Doesn’t matter if you’re black or white.”
“You leave Michael Jackson out of this. Jakarta is married and got three kids. What she want with that old man? This between you and me.”
Dobbs threw the first punch. Dean expected it, ducked aside, no damage done. He hooked a foot behind Prince’s ankle and shoved him to the floor on an exercise mat. The man got to appreciate the soft landing for a moment before Dean sat on his midsection and glanced a blow off one perfect cheek. The fight ended right there with trainers breaking it up by prying Dean off before Tom or any other players could get involved.
Jakarta Jones helped his counterpart up. “He’s a hothead, Dean. I’m trying to teach him how to keep his cool, but he won’t listen. Come on. Let’s get some ice on that cheek.”
A trainer bent over Dean’s hand checking for damage. “I’m fine. Leave me alone.”
“We should ice it just in case.”
Dean submitted to the treatment and went home shortly afterwards. Now he sat here feeling like a donkey’s ass for letting Prince get to him, though when he really thought about it, the incident had been the other way around. Mostly he worried that the man would turn up at Stacy’s tonight and take their argument out on her. The Pad Thai lost its sweet taste.
His phone rang. Dean checked the incoming number and saw the call he’d been dreading all day. “Hi, Dad.”
“I noticed you’ve been off your game some. Maybe your sophomore slump came a year late, huh?”
Wonderful, his father wanted to talk football. Home free. “I’ll do better against Minnesota. I’ve been watching their film. Their defense is weak this year. Good news for me.”
“Yes, that is good news. Now about the other news, the kind that gets you on the front page of those grubby tabloids. What’s going on with you and Stacy?”
“Nothing really. We were at the same club. She said I couldn’t do salsa dancing. You know how we always pick at each other. I showed her I had the moves.”
“Looked like more than moves to me and your mother.”
“It’s a style of dancing, that’s all.”
“Your mom is worried sick that you and Stacy might have—ah—been intimate while you both lived here.”
“I swear to God, no. She was way too young.”
“Let me tell you the hardest thing about raising girls is seeing them grow up. One day they’re boobless and skinny-legged, and the next thing you know they turn into young women with knockout figures. You just want to shoot any guy who sniffs around them. But Stacy isn’t too young now.”
While his father waxed sentimental, Dean swore he’d seen a red Lamborghini at the stoplight. He moved to a better angle to discern if the sports car had rounded Stacy’s corner. How many people in New Orleans had one of those extremely high-ticket items besides Prince Dobbs? His dad droned on: treating women with respect, thinking before he acted on his urges, using condoms always. Yadda yadda.
“Wait, what did you say?”
“I said your mother and I discussed this situation. She says marrying an adopted cousin isn’t illegal in Louisiana. I tell you me that come as a shock.” Joe added some Cajun levity to relieve the tension. He turned serious again. “If you really care for Stacy, you have our blessing to go ahead, but please proceed with caution. If this deal crashes and burns, it would do terrible things to our family. Your mom has been trying to call Stacy but can’t get through to her. She hates that texting business. Says this matter is too important, and it is.”
Blessing, he had their blessing to be with Stacy. That’s about all he heard as his dad rambled on about texting. Neither of his parents thought of his feelings as wrong, immoral, or illegal. Now if only he could convince himself. His dad reached the signoff point of the awkward conversation. “We love you, son. Take care.”
“Love you, too.” In the Billodeaux family no one got away without saying the words even if they were mumbled during the teen years or whispered into a phone before a game. Mama Nell always said it was important, as you never knew what the next day might bring.
The call improved his appetite. Dean put the phone away and dunked a spring roll in the peanut sauce, never taking his eyes off Stacy’s windows. He’d work
ed his way to the fortune cookies, not a particularly Thai custom, but they always put a handful in the bag. He cracked the brittle shell and popped a piece of it in his mouth while reading his fortune. “Life can change in a flash.”
Not too profound or oriental sounding, he thought. Yet in the instant he’d removed his glance from the windows across the street, the red scarf had appeared hanging from the top of the blinds in Stacy’s bedroom. Life did change with a flash of red.
Chapter Twelve
Stacy’s phone rang again. She shut it off. One more call from Prince Dobbs and she’d kick herself for starting this whole mess. He’d begun by inviting himself over tonight. “No, I’ll be too tired from work,” she replied in a text.
“Dean got to U, baby? U let him run ur life?”
“No, just tired.”
The messages got uglier as the day progressed. Busy, she didn’t bother to reply but cautiously saved each one. They’d reached threat level by the time she got home and changed out her pumps for ballet flats, her suit for an oversized black Sinners tee that came to her knees and bore only the team logo of the little red devil. A note from Xochi sat on the kitchen table. “Have to go interpret for some more jailbirds. Couldn’t reach you by phone. Don’t know how long it will take. Love you, Cuz.” She could imagine Xo wrinkling her nose at the assignment, then smiling ruefully as she penned the message.
The phone beeped again. Another incoming call. She hated to turn it off in case she was needed at the hospital or elsewhere, but figuring it would be Prince, she declined to open it until she got something in her stomach. A client would try Xochi next. But why couldn’t it be Dean calling? She laid her phone on the table and taking a low-cal meal from the freezer, she nuked it into near edibility. And the doorbell rang. She debated answering, but it might be Xo who often forgot her keys or Tom visiting—or Dean checking up on her. She hoped for the last.
