Volume Three: In Moonlight and Memories, #3

by Julie Ann Walker

Even when wearing a mask, a person’s eyes give them away.

  When Luc and Cash appear in the doorway to the ballroom, I see two things. One, Luc is happy. Joy shines in his eyes like a beacon as his gaze scans the room and finally lands on me. Two, Cash is in pain. He tries to hide it with a wide smile and a quick nip of whiskey from his flask, but it’s there in the bruised look in his eyes.

  The party is in full swing. Everyone who’s anyone is here, masked and dressed in their finest, enjoying the tuxedoed blues band onstage and the waiters roving around the room with tasty finger foods on silver serving trays. From the bunting strung across the ceiling to the centerpieces on the tables, the ballroom is decked out in the colors of Mardi Gras. And the whole place sparkles.

  Aunt Bea and Vee decided to go glitzy this year, covering everything in sequins and glitter. It’s outrageous and excessive and so totally New Orleans during Carnival season.

  I take a sip of champagne and watch the sea of revelers on the dance floor part to make way for Cash and Luc. Even sick, Cash is still a strapping man. And the mask he’s wearing hides the signs of illness on his face. The only clues that all isn’t as it should be with him are his eyes, like I said, and the rented tuxedo that hangs loose on him.

  By contrast, Luc’s tuxedo is tailored to a T. The jacket stretches across his broad shoulders and emphasizes his slim waist. Then there are the pants. They seem to make love to his thighs, and even though I can see only the front of him, I know they’re hugging his cute behind. That behind I’ve grabbed while—

  Whew. Is it hot in here? Or is it just me?

  We haven’t spent a single night apart since our first date at the beginning of the week. And don’t judge me too harshly for sleeping with him right out of the shoot. I’ve known him for years, so first date, shmirst date, the rules don’t apply to us.

  “I see you finally got to dress up like Batman,” I say to Cash, accepting the kiss he plants on my cheek when he and Luc stop in front of me. He’s wearing the mask I saw in the shop window the other night.

  “Better late than never.” He twists his lips around a smile.

  “Luc.” I turn to him, my breath catching at his proximity. He’s the kind of man who gives off a vibe. You know the kind I mean? That man vibe? That powerful, predatory thing? “Aren’t you a handsome devil?”

  The half mask he’s wearing is pure black, plain except for the horns that curl up from the top.

  Even though half his face is covered, when he smiles, you can still tell he’s a dream. And his body is certainly made for a woman’s pleasure—I should know; I do know. But it’s his words that seduce me. “Maggie May, you’re the most beautiful woman in the room.”

  I’m not. Not by a long shot. But he believes what he says, and that’s all that matters.

  “Give us a twirl.” He circles a finger in the air. “Let us get a gander at that dress.”

  I do as instructed, performing a slow pirouette. I found this ball gown last year at a secondhand shop and got it for a steal. It’s vintage. An A-line princess cut that’s off the shoulder and made of rich purple satin overlaid by a thin film of tulle and lace appliqués.

  With my back to them, I stop and peek flirtatiously over my shoulder.

  Luc wolf-whistles. Cash gives me a wink before taking another long pull on his flask.

  I laugh and adjust my Carnival mask, a simple lace number adorned with peacock feathers, and turn back to them. When the lead singer of the band breaks into a rendition of “Jock-a-Mo,” the crowd hoots and joins in, glasses raised in the air.

  This is what it’ll be like for the next two weeks. Revelry every day, parades rolling through town almost every night.

  Tourists come down here and party too hard the first few hours, wearing themselves out before Mardi Gras ever gets here. But the locals know that Carnival season is a marathon, not a sprint. We’ve learned to pace ourselves.

  “Cash! Luc!” Aunt Bea calls from across the way, motioning them over. “Come meet Mr. Cormier! He might have a business proposition for you!”

  Luc frowns at me. “A business proposition?”

  I wince. “While we were all getting ready this afternoon”—it’s tradition that Vee and the aunts and I get dolled up for the ball together; Aunt Bea hires a hair stylist and a makeup artist for the occasion—“I might’ve mentioned that Cash’s house is almost finished and that y’all will be looking to open a security business soon. Aunt Bea said she knows the man to get you started. Sorry.” I make a face. “Talking shop is probably the last thing either of you want to do tonight, but—”

  “Cash! Luc!” Aunt Bea calls again.

  “What the hell.” Cash pockets his flask. “Might as well go see what the man has to say.” But before he drags Luc away, his eyes linger on mine.

  There’s…something there. Something I can’t quite explain, like maybe he knows. But if he does, I can’t tell how he feels about it, and that makes me nervous.

  Then, before I can study him for too long, he turns away.

  Of course, when Luc shoots me a quick wink over his shoulder, my frown turns upside down and butterflies hatch in my belly.

  “What’s got you grinning like a dog with two peters?” Auntie June says, materializing at my elbow. She has a glass of champagne in one hand—of course she does—and a napkin heaped with finger sandwiches in the other.

  Her gown is emerald green with flutter sleeves and a fitted bodice. Vee and I had a devil of a time squeezing her into the Spanx bodysuit she’s wearing underneath it. But the effort wasn’t wasted. She looks really pretty tonight.

  “Ah…” she says when she follows my line of sight. “Never mind. I see. So you decided to give him a chance, did you?”

  A chance? Uh…well… I nod and feel heat steal into my cheeks.

  Her eyes fly wide. “Oh my Lord! You more than gave him a chance. You slept with him!”

  “Shhh,” I scold her. “Mind keeping it down? I don’t think the entire ballroom heard you.”

  Her eyes sparkle. “So tell me, how was it?”

  “Auntie June!”

  “Don’t go acting all scandalized,” she huffs. “You think your generation was the first to invent sex?”

  “I don’t kiss and tell,” I say with an imperious sniff.

  “Of course you do. If there’s anything to tell. If it’s worth a hoot. So was it? Worth a hoot?” She elbows me, wiggling her eyebrows. “Come on. Give me something. Otherwise, my imagination is liable to run away with me, and that’s always a dangerous thing.”

  How do I explain to her what it’s like to be with my best friend? How do I explain what it’s like when his big hands move over me, encouraging me to show him where to linger? How do I explain what it is to screw and rut and make love all at the same time, to feel my body and my heart and my soul meld with another’s?

  I can’t.

  It’s too big. Impossible to put into words.

  The only thing I can think to say, the only way I know how to explain it is, “He doesn’t close his eyes when he makes love, Auntie June. He watches me. He sees me the whole time.”

  Her breath wheezes from her lungs. “Oh my Lord.”

  “Exactly.” I nod.

  She laughs. “Well, cheers to you, honey.” She lifts her glass and takes a long drink before someone calls her name and she drifts away.

  “I couldn’t help overhearing.” Vee steps up beside me. Her eyes aren’t on me, though. They’re on Cash and Luc. Aunt Bea is gesturing between them and a gray-haired gentleman I recognize as a member of her country club.

  “No big surprise,” I mutter, “since Auntie June announced it from the rafters.”

  “I’m happy for you, Maggie.” Now Vee’s eyes are on mine. “But the question is, are you happy? Does he”—she tilts her champagne glass in Luc’s direction—“make you happy?”

  Does Luc make me happy?

  “Incandescently so,” I admit. Then I frown. “Which makes it so much worse, because…” I tr
ail off and stare down into my champagne, watching the bubbles fizz and race toward the surface. That’s how my stomach feels anytime I’m with Luc. Effervescent. Sparkly. “Because Cash doesn’t know yet, and that makes it feel… I don’t know.” I shrug. “Dishonest somehow.”

  “You sure he doesn’t know?” Her face is covered by a glittery gold mask, so I can’t read her expression.

  “You think he does?” I frown at Cash, wondering if I was right earlier when I thought maybe he was looking at me like he’d guessed what was going on with me and Luc.

  “I think you and Luc aren’t too good at hiding how much you’re into each other,” she says. “Even from across the room, I could see the hunger in your eyes.”

  I wince. “I was hoping to keep it a secret until Luc and I decide what’s what.”

  “And what is what?”

  A month ago, she wouldn’t have felt comfortable asking me that question. But ever since our talk on the porch swing, we’ve become sisters again. With the nosiness and aversion to bullcrap that comes with the title.

  “It’s complicated,” I tell her.

  “Mmm,” she hums. “Are you in love with him?”

  Her question strikes a nerve. One that’s exposed and raw. One I’ve been avoiding since I knew if I looked at it too closely, I’d see the truth, and I haven’t been ready to admit it and face the consequences.

  I’m not sure I’m ready to admit it now, but the words come anyway. “Yes. I’m in love with him. And it’s bigger than anything I’ve ever felt before, Vee. So big it terrifies me.”

  A smile spreads slowly across her face. Then she grabs my fingers and gives them a squeeze. “I don’t know from experience, but I’ve heard people say that’s how you know it’s the real deal, Magpie. When it scares you to death.”

  We stand there, two sisters hand in hand, and I take comfort in her presence, her support. I wish I hadn’t spent so many years hiding from her behind my guilt and shame. I wish I’d had the courage to talk to her. Who knows how my life might’ve been different if I had?

  She hitches her chin toward the dance floor where Luc has broken off from Aunt Bea and her country club companion. Three women have encircled him. One of them is Lucille Kidder, the biggest flirt ever to come out of the Crescent City.

  “Uh-oh,” Vee says. “You better go lay claim to your boyfriend before that man-eater sets her hooks into him.”

  Boyfriend… I like the sound of that.

  I’ve never considered myself a jealous person, but when Lucille puts her hand on Luc’s chest and leans toward him so her boobs brush his arm, I swear I feel my blue eyes turning green. “I thought she was seeing Brett Davies.”

  “Nope.” Vee shakes her head. “That ended a month ago. Word around town is she’s on the prowl for someone new.”

  “Over my dead body.” I hand my champagne flute to her, grab my skirts, and stomp toward Luc and his passel of female admirers.

  “Go get ’em, little sis!” she calls to my back, tossing her head back and laughing.

  “Excuse me, ladies,” I say when I reach the group, carefully removing Lucille’s hand from Luc’s chest. “He promised me the next dance.”

  The look on Lucille’s face says she’d like to claw my eyes out. But she has the wherewithal to recognize a lost cause when Luc wraps a possessive arm around my waist.

  I have the oddest urge to stick my tongue out at her. Nanner-nanner, boo-boo. But I refrain.

  Luc spins me into the middle of the dance floor as the band breaks into Fats Domino’s “Walking to New Orleans,” a slow number. Then he pulls me close, placing one of my hands on his shoulder. The other he presses over his heart. The rhythm beneath my palm is strong and steady, like the man himself.

  “You coulda just pulled her hair,” he says, a smile flirting with his lips. Those wonderfully talented lips that I want to kiss right this moment. That I want to kiss for the rest of my life.

  “I didn’t want to be too obvious,” I say with a grin.

  “You were jealous.”

  I blink up at him. “Are you surprised?”

  “Honestly? Yeah. A little.”

  That makes my chin jerk back. “Why? I mean, we’re a thing now, aren’t we?”

  He cocks his head, still swaying me to the beat. “A thing?”

  “You know.” I pinch his shoulder through his jacket. “Only seeing each other. Not seeing anyone else.”

  His lids drift to half-mast. His voice goes low and liquid. “If that’s what you want, Maggie May, all you gotta do is ask.”

  “Luc.” I bat my lashes. “Will you be my boyfriend? Pretty please?”

  He regards me for a while. Long enough that all the teasing goes out of me. Long enough that I go light-headed from holding my breath. Finally he says, “Woman, I’ve been your boyfriend since the first moment I saw you. You just didn’t know it.”

  There’s a pressure in my chest that slowly slides up my throat. I don’t realize it’s three little words until they burst from me. “I love you.”

  He stops swaying, his dark eyes sharp on my face. “I love you too, Maggie May.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “I mean, I’m in love with you, Luc. Like, hearts and flowers. Head over heels. Swept all the way off my feet. That kind of love.”

  His Adam’s apple bounces in his throat. He slowly leans forward to kiss my forehead and whisper, “I’m in love with you too, sweetheart.”

  I didn’t realize I was scared I might not hear him say the words back until this moment. Now relief is a warm wave that bowls me over and fills me up.

  He holds me to him for a while longer, his lips resting on my forehead. We’re both overcome by the simplicity and magnitude of our declarations. Then he straightens, and the love I see shining in his eyes is a lighthouse. Calling me to him. Calling me home.

  That’s it. That’s what this feeling is when I’m with him. It’s home. He’s home.

  “What do we do?” I ask, the warmth of his breath lingering on my forehead. “About Cash, I mean? Should we tell him now? Wait until after he’s gone to rehab?”

  “I reckon we should tell him next Saturday when we do the intervention. Maybe it’ll make him more likely to go. You know, time away from us. Time to adjust to this new reality where you and I are…”

  “Together,” I finish for him when he trails off.

  He smiles sweetly. “I like that word. Together.”

  Me too. It sounds right. It feels right.

  “Okay. So next Saturday,” I agree, although it breaks my heart to think of Cash submitting to rehab simply as a means to escape us. That the joy Luc and I have found in each other might cause him pain is a terrible thing to consider.

  My eyes search him out, and I find him at the back of the room, talking to Vee. I tense, waiting for the fireworks to start. But to my surprise, Vee places a hand on his arm and nods. Then she turns away and disappears into the crowd. Cash watches her go before emptying his flask down his throat. Then he, too, melds into the sea of partygoers.

  What was that all about? I wonder.

  Then the song changes, and Luc breaks in to my thoughts. “So what was it?” he asks.

  “Hmm?” I ask distractedly. “What was what?”

  “What was the thing I did that made you fall for me? Was it…” He leans forward and whispers something blush-worthy in my ear. Something he did to me only last night.

  “No!” I slap his arm, glancing around, scandalized that someone might have heard. Thankfully, no one is staring at us in slack-jawed shock. “For the record, I didn’t fall for you. You tripped me. And not by doing…that thing.” I bite my lip to stop my smile. “Although, that thing is pretty amazing, and you should do it again soon.”

  “Tripped you?” He frowns. “How?”

  “Easy. By being you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Delightful, charming, wonderful you.”

  “You forgot handsome and sexy.”

  “Those two things
go without saying.”

  “Come with me.” He grabs my hand and starts pulling me from the dance floor.

  “What? Where?”

  “To the library,” he says over his shoulder, murmuring “Excuse me” as he plows a path through the crowd.

  “What’s in the library?”

  His grin is downright rakish. There’s that word again.

  “Hopefully, nothing and no one,” he says in that low voice I’ve come to recognize from the bedroom. “That’s the whole damn point.”

  Chapter Eighty-seven

  ______________________________________

  Cash

  You only live once. But if you do it right, once is enough.

  Can’t remember who said that. Someone famous.

  The quote comes back to me now as I stand in the crowd of Carnival revelers waiting for the Krewe of Iris to roll down the street. The people of New Orleans truly know how to live right. They truly know how to celebrate life.

  Sure, there’s the usual drunken debauchery going on around me. The eighty-year-old dude wearing nothing but a purple banana hammock, sipping a Hand Grenade, and prancing around like he’s on a European beach in the middle of summer instead of an American street in the middle of winter. The twentysomething guy not being too coy about pissing into the gutter on the corner. And the slurring girl beside me who confesses to her stumbling friends, “I’ve eaten Popeyes chicken five times this week. I need to take a long, hard look at my life.”

  There’s the smell of beer and too many bodies pressed together. There’s the group of guys pushing a keg around in a shopping cart. And there’s a woman in a Marie Antoinette costume who can barely stand up, but she’s still imperiously yelling at passersby, “Let them eat king cake!”

  A common saying in the Big Easy is that we don’t hide the crazy; we parade it down the streets.

  But there’s also music and singing. Families have set up lawn chairs along the parade route and A-frame ladders so their little ones can climb up to see the bands and performers and floats from an optimal viewing perch. There are coolers packed with soft drinks and picnic dinners. People dancing with the uniformed police officers on duty. Shouts of hello and well wishes. And a general sense of being in the now and having as much good, wholesome fun as possible.