by JoAnn Ross
As if that smile had emptied her head, a feeling which Desiree had experienced too many times in the past, Brianna appeared to have forgotten her immediate problem.
“Perhaps you’d better go find Seth so he can hook up that system,” Desiree suggested.
“I suppose I should. Oh, I’m sorry, I just realized that I was so distracted that I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Brianna Mannion.”
“And your family would have come here from the auld sod,” he said, somehow pulling off what sounded to Desiree like an actual Irish accent.
“Like yours, from a few generations back,” she confirmed. “It’s good to meet you, Mr. Broussard. Enjoy your visit. In fact, I just had a wonderful idea.”
No! Desiree begged inwardly. Don’t go there.
“Why don’t you stay for the wedding? I know Kylee and Mai would welcome having you here and that way you and Desiree can catch up.”
Damn. She’d gone there.
“I’d enjoy that,” Bastien said. “Although I’m afraid I’m not dressed formally enough for the occasion.”
Both women skimmed a look over him in his dark, slim-cut indigo jeans, a white button-down linen shirt worn open over a black body-hugging T-shirt, and cobalt-blue loafers that looked so soft they had to be pricey Italian leather to allow him to go without socks. He still looked like a Cajun bad boy blues rocker, but he had taken on a definite Parisian flair since she’d last seen him. His hair, as black as her own, was no longer down at his shoulders, but had been cut to a shaggy style that just reached his collar and begged a woman’s hands to run through it.
“You look great,” Brianna said. “We’re very casual here in Honeymoon Harbor. The only reason I’ll be dressing up is that I’m the maid of honor.”
“Bien, then,” he said. “I’d be honored to accept your invitation. But I do have another suggestion that might solve your problem.”
“Oh?” Brianna lifted a perfectly arched blond brow.
“As it happens, I’m a singer. And a musician.”
“Really. What instrument do you play?”
“A tenor sax typically. Which is in my rental car. But I can also play the alto sax, keyboard and guitar. And once, while I was in Hawaii, I had a lesson in the ukulele. Coincidentally, it was the ‘Hawaiian Wedding Song.’”
In full official wedding coordinator mode, Brianna folded her arms. “I don’t want to risk insulting you, Mr. Broussard, but are you any good? Because this wedding is the most personal event I’ve ever planned.”
“Je comprends. I’d feel the same way myself.” He reached into the pocket of his dark jeans, pulled out a cell phone and opened YouTube. “This was at a live concert in Australia.”
He hit Play and there he was standing alone in the spotlight onstage, wearing much the same outfit as he was wearing now, but with a black leather jacket and black rocker boots, his beautiful voice crooning a blues ballad about love and loss Desiree knew that he’d written about them. Bastien had played it for her in Paris, on the balcony of their room in the Hôtel Plaza Athénée with its perfect view of the Eiffel Tower their last night together.
“Oh. Now I feel really foolish.” Brianna looked up at him. “You’re famous.”
He shrugged in that casual Gallic way he had. “A bit,” he allowed. “In my own circle. There’s no reason you should know of me.”
“He won a music award,” Desiree heard herself saying before she could stop herself.
“Three,” he corrected her with a self-deprecating grin that was sexier than any male swagger. “But who’s counting?” He turned back to Brianna. “If you’d like to give me the bride’s playlist...”
“It’s right here.” Brianna pulled it out of a white binder and handed it to him. “I’ll have to talk to Kylee and Mai, but I’m sure they’ll agree that you should feel free to play whatever you’d like. And what feels appropriate. I don’t know what you usually charge, but—”
“Consider it my gift to the happy couple,” he said. Then tilted his head and looked at Desiree, who knew very well what was coming. “Desiree sings, too. In fact, we were in a band together. She was the front singer, of course.”
“You were in a band?” Brianna looked at Desiree as if she’d been keeping some big secret from everyone in Honeymoon Harbor.
“It was a very long time ago. I was nineteen, working in my father’s bakery as an apprentice with plans to attend culinary school in France. Then I got sidetracked for a few years.”
Plans which she’d put off after Bastien had approached her in New Orleans’s Jackson Square, where she’d been singing Christmas carols with a choral group. And hadn’t her father exploded when she’d told him that she’d agreed to join the band of a stranger whom she’d met that very same night? That had caused a split between them for two weeks, until Augustin Dupree had thrown in the towel. Only after threatening to slice Bastien into pieces with a filet knife and feed him to the gators if he ever hurt his baby girl.
“I was three years older,” Bastien said. “Mood Indigo, that was our band. It was blues rock, but to be honest, we’d play whatever someone would pay us to play. Including our share of weddings, until Desiree decided that baking would provide her a steadier income. Which, at the time, she was correct about.” He touched her with his melting dark gaze. “What do you say, cher? Want to relive our young and foolish past for a couple hours?”
“Oh, that would be so romantic!” Brianna actually clapped her hands. The outward display of excitement from the warm but usually composed woman was like a brass Mardi Gras band marching through the kitchen. “Would you, Desiree? I know it would mean so much to Kylee and Mai.”
“Your cake appears nearly finished,” Bastien noted.
“It just needs the topper,” she said. “Which I’m going to wait to add until right before rolling it outside.”
“Wonder Women.” He nodded his approval, not that she needed it. “I like that.”
“You like all women,” Desiree retorted.
Brianna’s brow furrowed again. “Mr. Broussard—”
“Bastien,” he said easily.
“Bastien it is,” Brianna said in an outwardly casual tone that didn’t fool anyone for a moment. “Perhaps you could get your saxophone from your car while Desiree and I go over a few last-minute details about the cake cutting?”
“Fine.” He met Desiree’s gaze. “I’m parked down the street. I’ll be back soon.’
They both watched him walk away. “I’ve always been mad crazy in love with Seth,” Brianna murmured. “But looking never hurt, did it?”
“Every other woman always has,” Desiree said, sounding a bit too sharp to her own ears. “I’m sorry. That sounded snarky and I certainly didn’t mean it that way.”
“I’m the one who should apologize, inviting him to stay without talking with you alone first. Is there a problem?”
“No.” She wouldn’t allow it. “Don’t worry, nothing’s going to screw up Kylee and Mai’s special day.”
“You loved him,” Brianna guessed.
“Yes.” Desiree sighed. “I was young and naive.”
“I’ve been there. It’s hard. Are you sure...”
“It’ll be fine.” She forced a smile. “I haven’t sung in public for years. It could be fun.” Right up there with a root canal.
“Being a wedding, there are going to be a lot of love songs.”
“As long as I can avoid singing ‘Unchained Melody.’ Because that always makes me cry when I think of Patrick Swayze getting murdered.”
“You’re not alone. That one’s not on the list because Kylee cries like a baby whenever we watch Ghost. Jolene would be really upset if we ruin the makeup she spent so much time applying.”
“Then it’ll be fine,” Desiree said.
“Perhaps this could turn out to be a romantic reunion for the two of y
ou.”
“Nope,” Desiree said as Bastien walked back into the kitchen, looking good enough to scoop up with a spoon. “Not happening.”
CHAPTER TWO
ONCE SHE’D CALMED DOWN, Brianna, who was no longer in the kitchen, had reminded Bastien of one of those old Hitchcock movie blondes. Like Grace Kelly. Cool and calm in a crisis.
Desiree, on the other hand, sticking with the ’50s/’60s movie theme, was more Natalie Wood. He’d always found her more stunning than the girl-next-door, with an undercurrent of recklessness and sensuality humming beneath the surface that her strict and proper New Orleans Catholic French upbringing usually kept hidden. Until she was onstage. Or, he thought, as bittersweet memories caused both his body and his heart to ache, in bed.
“What are you doing here?” she asked as she finally put the possible weapon down on the counter.
“I came to see you.”
What else could have brought him to this small, quaint town that was nothing like Paris? Nor New Orleans. He found it interesting that she’d kept her singing career a secret from a woman who appeared to be a friend. Bastien had always known that of the two of them, she could have been the true star. But she’d given up her chance for fame to bake croissants and, apparently, wedding cakes. He’d stopped by her bakery on the way here, where a young woman had sent him to this house. The boulangerie had matched her personality. Tidy and organized, as baking required, yet the desserts in the window and glass display case were lovely, even sensual, and enticing. Just like her.
“How did you find me?” She made it sound as if he’d discovered her in the witness protection program. Nor did she seem at all happy to see him. Bastien could have taken that as a sign he stood no chance of winning her back, but he had always been an optimist. He decided that there’d be no reason for her to put up that protective wall if she weren’t susceptible to being won over.
“Well, I could have Googled you, but decided that could be considered a bit stalkerish, so I simply asked your father.”
“You asked Papa? I don’t understand. Did you call him all the way from Paris to ask, ‘Hey, Augustin, where can I find your daughter? I know you’ve always believed she’s much too good for me, but I want to see her.’”
He found it interesting that she knew he’d been living in Paris. True, he did appear in music magazines like Rolling Stone and on various entertainment shows, from time to time, and had even written a song for a Disney movie, but perhaps she’d occasionally checked up on him. As he admittedly had her.
“No, I asked him where to find you while having coffee and beignets at the Café du Monde, which is admittedly touristy, but nevertheless, they do make great beignets. And it’s conveniently near the French Market where we both happened to be shopping for greens, boudin and shrimp.”
Her eyes—a vivid clear blue of the Caribbean Sea that contrasted so sharply with tawny skin that was a beautiful blend of her Creole father and islander mother—widened. They’d always had a way of focusing in on you as if you were the only person in the room. He wasn’t the only man to get lost in those thickly lashed eyes. He’d witnessed audience members react the same way when, after looking for an individual to sing directly to, she’d single one out.
“What were you doing at the market?”
“Like I said, shopping... I’ve been living in New Orleans for the past two years.”
“But I was visiting Papa just a few months ago and he never said a thing.”
“I doubt he wanted to encourage a reunion. Also, I asked him not to.”
“Why? Were you still angry about me leaving? Not just about having broken up the band, but after that night in Paris, two years later?”
After playing a gig in Madrid, he’d taken a train to Paris, where he knew she should be finishing up her two years of culinary training. Bastien called the number he’d never gotten out of his head, suggesting they meet for coffee at a café not far from the school. They hadn’t bothered with the coffee, but had instead gone straight to his balcony room at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée, which by then he could almost afford.
They’d been drinking champagne on the balcony when he’d sung her the song he’d written just that morning, about the love of a man for a woman, and the loss Bastien knew was going to break his heart.
Afterward, they’d made love in the deep soaker tub that had a perfectly framed view of the Eiffel Tower, and then went on to spend the night making up for all the time lost since she’d left the band. The next morning, they’d shared a continental breakfast in bed. As if it were yesterday, he could picture her plucking an elegant, golden crusty croissant from the basket, biting into it, intently studying it as if preparing for the Superior Pastry Certificate she’d only just achieved at Paris’s Le Cordon Bleu school.
“I could make a better one,” she’d decided. “But the hint of almond admittedly marries well with the buttery flavor.” She’d held it out to him, inviting him to take a bite.
“I’d rather take a bite of you,” he’d said, nevertheless tasting the croissant because he’d never been able to deny Desiree anything. “Good,” he’d decided. “But not as tasty as my angel.” Putting their mimosa glasses on the table beside the bed, he’d pulled her down on top of him.
Bastien suspected, from the way Desiree’s gaze moved from his to out the French doors of the cottage toward the garden, that she too was remembering those golden twenty-four hours. After breakfast, they’d wandered the streets of Paris, had lunch at a little bistro next to the Seine before going up into the Eiffel Tower to look out over the city, which was in full, glorious spring bloom. At the end of the sun-brightened day, the flowers he’d bought her from a small stand outside the Jardin de Tuileries still in hand, she’d boarded a night flight to New York City. She was going to work for the man who’d go on to be named the best pastry chef in the world. Bastien had stayed behind in Paris, having decided to use the city for his home base.
“I wasn’t angry about you leaving the band,” he said, bringing both his mind and the conversation back to the present. “Truthfully, I was surprised you stayed as long as you did. Every morning of those five years we toured, I’d wake up thinking, ‘This will be the day Desiree leaves.’ I understood that you did what you had to do. For yourself and your career. And I’ve done okay for myself going solo.”
“You’ve done more than okay. You truly are a star.”
He shrugged. “It’s a living. I’m not going to lie and say it didn’t hurt, watching your plane fly away, off to New York, but the same way we were destined to first meet, I consoled myself with the knowledge that eventually we’d meet again when the time was right, and stay together forever.”
A dark brow lifted over those expressive eyes, which had begun to spark with a bit of temper he’d always enjoyed uncovering. “You were that sure of yourself?”
“No. I was that sure of us,” Bastien said mildly. “Unfortunately, due to contractual concert agreements, I couldn’t follow you to New York. Also, if you want me to be perfectly honest—”
“Of course I do.”
“All right. The truth was that I didn’t know how many more chances we’d get, and I didn’t want to risk screwing up what could have been our last time together.”
“You were always superstitious.”
Bastien grinned as he shrugged. “What can I say? It’s the Cajun in me.” He was also the more romantic of the two of them, but decided this wasn’t the time to bring that up. “But like I said, my situation, when you were visiting your father, was complicated.”
“Because of your concert schedule?”
“No. I’d stopped playing live concerts by then.”
“But I bought... Never mind.”
Ah. Desiree was talking about the new album he’d had engineered at a studio in New Orleans. Bastien liked that she still listened to him sing and wondered if she’d ever realized that
all the love songs he wrote were always for her.
“I stopped because of my grand-mère.”
“I’ve always liked Abella.”
“As she liked you. I always wondered how she and your father could be so close, while at the same time he disapproved so strongly of me.”
“My mother died when I was born,” she reminded him. “And although my grand-mère lived with us and took care of me as if I were her own daughter, we lost her to cancer when I was twelve. Along with the understandable grief at his mother’s death, I suspect Papa was at a total loss on how to handle a hormonal adolescent girl who was growing up faster than he would have wished. He was merely being protective.”
Looking back on the young man he’d been when they’d first met, Bastien decided that if he ever had a daughter, he’d feel the same way.
“Also,” she continued, “they undoubtedly grew close because they were both in the business of making people happy with their food. And your grand-mère Abella always bought the bread for her restaurant from my family.”
“That’s why he called me.”
“My father called you? In Paris? When?”
“A little over two years ago. He found me through my manager. He wanted to let me know how ill Abella was becoming. I knew she was growing older, but she’d always had such strength, you know? And she’d raised me, much as yours did you, after my parents took off.”
Bastien’s father had been a blues musician who, like many musicians, had unfortunately become too fond of drugs and alcohol. Because LeRoy Broussard had left the family when Bastien was a toddler, he had no memory of him. He did remember his mother, who was also too fond of her “hot and dirty” Cajun martinis, taking off with an oil man who’d had no use for children. The memory of watching her drive off in that big fancy car when he was seven years old had been burned into Bastien’s mind as if by a red-hot branding iron. Over the years, it had lost its power to wound. But it had made him vow that when he settled down, he’d only wed a woman he’d want to live with forever. Like the woman who was standing so near. And yet so far.