by JoAnn Ross
“You’re like the Pied Piper,” she said as they walked out of the market to their cars. Having driven to the wedding alone, they had to take two cars to each of the stops. Which kept her from being in a confined space with him before she worked out her feelings about him appearing so unexpectedly.
“Just being friendly,” he said. “Bein’ as I’m going to be part of the community.”
“You are not.”
“Of course I am. And for old time’s sake, your first dinner at Sensation Cajun will be on the house.”
* * *
OVENLY WAS PAINTED a soft green the color of pine needles with white trim and double doors that looked as if they’d been taken from some old building in France. A green awning extended over the sidewalk, allowing for three bistro tables and chairs. Since she didn’t serve dinner, the bakery had closed for the day.
“There’s a brick patio in back,” she said. “Normally I’d only be able to use it about two or three months a year, but I extend the season into fall with portable post heaters.”
“That’s a good idea. And something I’ll have to consider for my place.”
“I still can’t believe you’ll actually build a restaurant here in Honeymoon Harbor.”
“Want to bet?”
“I’m not a betting person.”
“You took a bet on me,” he reminded her.
“And look how that turned out,” she snapped, then pressed her fingers to her forehead, where a headache was beginning to throb. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it came out.”
“You’re hungry,” he said. “And undoubtedly tired. Besides, your leaving was partly my fault. I was young, too cocky and we clicked so well, in every way, I forgot to let you know how much I loved you.”
“That’s all in the past.”
“The past isn’t dead. It’s not even past,” he said, quoting William Faulkner. From his outward appearance, Desiree never would have taken him for a serious reader, but in all their years together, she’d never seen him without a book. “But here we are, cher. So, let’s deal with who and where we are now, and the rest will fall into place.”
He’d always been that way, looking for the positive in a situation. Despite having been abandoned first by the father he’d never known, then his mother, Bastien Broussard had somehow remained the most optimistic person she’d ever met. She also wasn’t all that surprised that he would have given up a career, just as it was skyrocketing upward into the stratosphere, for family.
“Tell me about your idea,” she said. She still didn’t believe he’d stay, but she was willing to listen.
“First off, I want to paint my part pink.”
“Pink?” She’d been about to point out that it wasn’t yet his part, and wouldn’t be if she had anything to say about it, when his words sunk in. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
“This town came of age during the Victorian Era. Pink was a popular color for houses back then. They’re scattered all over New Orleans.”
“But not here in the Pacific Northwest,” she said.
“That’s exactly my point. I don’t want people thinking of being in the Northwest, as stunning as the scenery is. I want them to feel as if they’ve been whisked away to the Big Easy. I want Sensation Cajun to be, well, a sensational experience.”
“Okay. I get that. But why pink?”
“Brennan’s is pink. It’s also been a destination landmark for decades. Tourists who go to New Orleans are willing to wait in line to get in for a meal. And mine wouldn’t be Barbie pink. I’m thinking of a deeper rose that will stand out when people are coming in on the ferry. With big arched windows on either side of the door with an awning over it. I’d already thought of green, which works perfectly with yours. It would also be great if you extended the exterior color to yours, so they’d be more uniform.”
She folded her arms. Tried to picture Ovenly painted pink. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Because along with the larger windows on both the street and harbor side to let in more light, I’d like to take out that wall between our places.”
“You want to invade my bakery?”
“Invade’s a bit harsh. My idea was to have Brianna’s fiancé build some sort of archway between the two, keeping the old brick. New Orleans and French styles aren’t that different.”
“That’s true enough, given that New Orleans is the closest you’ll come to France in the States, thanks to our ancestors.”
“You’re getting it. Our styles could blend well together, Desiree. And not just outside, but on the menu. Luca told me he buys pastries from you.”
“He does. And Brianna buys cookies and croissants for her B and B.”
“See? You’d have a new outlet. We could set up the dessert cart with items you chose for each day. After diners taste how good your pastries are they could go into your bakery after their meal and take some more home for their evening dessert, a late-night snack, or even breakfast the next morning.
“And,” he pressed on, “you said you wanted to expand. There’s plenty of space for you to do it. Especially since I’m putting smaller, more intimate dining rooms upstairs. I believe together we’ll draw from neighboring towns along with visitors to the National Park. I’m also going with green shutters on either side of the windows across the second floor and putting wrought iron on a little extension. Not an actual balcony, but to give the impression of one.”
“This is sounding more and more like Brennan’s exterior.”
“I doubt I’ll be taking any business away from them. But for those who’ve been to New Orleans, dining at Sensation Cajun could feel like reliving their time there. And for others who’ve never been, it’ll give them a Big Easy experience.
“You’ve thought this through.”
“I have, ever since your father complained that you hadn’t come home to work in the family business. Luca thinks my name will bring in some people, too, though I’m not sure that this is blues rock country.”
“You’d be surprised. Don’t forget, Jimmy Hendrix was from Washington State. You wouldn’t, by the way, be the only famous person in town. Brianna’s uncle Mike is an artist.”
“Michael Mannion lives here?”
“He has a studio and a gallery. Like me, he lives above the store on the third floor of a building he bought. But he’s turning the second floor into space for various local artisans. Brianna talked him into doing wine painting evenings which have proven quite popular.”
“I went to a showing of his work at a gallery on Julia Street. He’d done a book of paintings from each of the fifty states. We hit it off, and though his original paintings are above my budget, I could definitely use some of his Louisiana prints. With little tags beneath stating his name, with the address of the gallery. It might even drive some business his way.”
He smiled at her, obviously pleased with that idea. “Small-town interconnections,” he said. “This isn’t turning out to be that different from New Orleans, which is, in its way, several small, close-knit communities within one city.”
She couldn’t deny that. Still, as they entered her bakery, Desiree wondered if a man whose dream was once to play concerts all over the world could truly be happy running a restaurant here, in a town that didn’t get the number of tourists in a year that New Orleans or Paris did in a day.
“I realized I’ve dropped a lot on you today,” he said.
“Whatever gave you that idea?” The sarcasm didn’t have the edge she’d intended. He was getting to her, the sane, sensible voice in her head warned. Be strong.
“Just think about it,” he suggested easily. “What could that hurt?”
“Nothing.” But her hopeful heart, as tended to happen whenever she was anywhere around Bastien, was disagreeing with her head. “I suppose.”
“I’d never make you do anything you
don’t want, Desiree,” he said, just as he’d told her that first night he’d made love to her. Damn. That memory had long-neglected body parts jumping into the interior conversation, siding with her heart. Dinner, she reminded herself. Then he’d be on his way, back to the Lighthouse Hotel, and hopefully New Orleans, or Paris, or wherever the gypsy musician might roam.
“I’ve mostly given up making bread,” she said as they passed the pastry case, which her two employees had emptied for the night. “I prefer the art of pastry making. But I do bake bread once a week for Luca. He uses whatever he needs for that night, then vacuum freezes the rest and warms it as he needs it. I kept out a loaf to eat with some cheese along with Roma tomatoes and basil when I got home tonight. So, I can contribute that to our dinner.”
“Great plan. We’ll have bruschetta while the sauce simmers.
“I do have another idea that we can talk about over dinner,” he said after she’d retrieved the bread from the back workroom and they were walking up the stairs that Seth had insisted on replacing.
“I’m not going to bed with you,” she said, wanting to get that settled right off.
“Did I say anything about sleeping with you? That wasn’t my idea. Well, not one I wanted to talk about quite yet. Though anytime you want to ravish me, I wouldn’t say no.”
“There will be no ravishing.”
“Whatever you say, cher,” he agreed cheerfully. Too cheerfully, Desiree warned herself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“WOW,” BASTIEN SAID NOW, as they entered the apartment that took up the entire floor. “I wasn’t expecting this.”
“What were you expecting?” she asked as she put her purse on a small curved table painted in a pastoral scene by the front door. A gilded bronze mirror in one of the Louis styles—she forgot which one—hung on the buttery-yellow wall above the table.
Desiree was well aware that her apartment didn’t fit in with the typical Northwest design style. Or the heavy, and to her mind cluttered, historical Victorian homes throughout town that always showed up on the annual home tour circuit. Fortunately, Seth, who’d remodeled both what had once been Fran’s Bakery and this upstairs apartment, which had only been used for storage and, it had turned out, a home for mice and spiders the size of her hand, had caught on to her vision right away.
“I don’t know because I hadn’t given it a lot of thought,” Bastien said, taking in the buttery-yellow walls that brightened up the long, dark days of winter and the rains of spring. “But it wasn’t this.”
Tall blue draperies hung from the tops of fifteen-foot-high walls boasting wide white crown molding to puddle on the floor. Desiree never would’ve been able to afford that luxury if Sarah Mannion hadn’t sewn those drapes herself. There were prints and paintings in a variety of frames and eclectic styles—scenes of Paris, of New Orleans, bright and colorful modern art and more classic art prints, like the mother bathing her child in a porcelain bowl—all of which she’d unearthed at various garage sales and flea markets Sarah had taken her to visit.
“I knew wherever you lived would be pretty, like you. And feminine. Again like you.” He swept a long, slow look over her that once would’ve had her panties melting on the spot. But not tonight, she sternly told the rebellious, reckless body of her youth. “But I didn’t expect to find myself back home. Though this is more like the Garden District than my grand-mère’s double shotgun house.”
There were times, whenever she’d have people over for the first time, when she’d watch their eyes open wide and she’d wonder if she’d perhaps overdone the formality. But that feeling would only last a moment as her guests would immediately settle in and she’d watch the cares of their day fall away, just as hers did whenever she came upstairs from the bakery.
“Brianna’s mother, Sarah, designed it for me. She’s principal of the high school, but is taking design classes at the community college so she can have a new career in retirement. She used this apartment as a class project that entailed adding residential space to a commercial building. Usually people go industrial loft style in these old places. But I don’t feel at home in that type of space.
“Some of the things, like the Mardi Gras masks on the bookshelves, we ordered online, and the art on the walls were all my choices, but it was as if she somehow was inside my head, reading the thoughts I couldn’t quite put into words.”
She definitely wasn’t going to put into words the thoughts she was having now. Like how much she wanted him to lift up her skirt and take her hard and fast against the door. Stop that, she told her bad, bad head, dragging it back to a safer topic.
“Both Seth and Sarah had understood that as much as I love Honeymoon Harbor, I wanted a blend of New Orleans and Paris.”
Bastien stuck his hands in his back pockets, looking up at the oversize bronze-gold chandelier dripping with crystals that created rainbows on the walls. “That looks like an authentic plaster medallion.”
“It is. Seth found it down in Portland. It was badly chipped, but his father, Ben—”
“Who would be the husband of Caroline.”
“That would be him.” She smiled at the way he kept mapping out the connections between all the people he’d met today. “He’s one of the few remaining old-time master plasterers. His family built most of the original buildings in town and, as you can see, he managed to repair it beautifully.”
Sarah had covered a reproduction curved Louis XV–style sofa in a deep blue velvet. Desiree had decided against sanding and repainting the cracked and peeling paint that gave the piece character and enjoyed imagining all the families who’d owned it before her. As they passed the sofa, an unwanted image of making love to him on that soft velvet flashed through her newly sex-crazed mind.
An archway through the tall brick, much like the one Bastien had suggested to connect her bakery to his restaurant, led to her kitchen, where she’d replaced the top cabinets with open shelves, and had Seth install a deep farm sink, marble countertop and a vintage, butcher-block-topped wheeled table to use as an island.
Bastien put the groceries down on the marble countertop while she went out onto the wrought iron–railed balcony that allowed her to keep a small kitchen garden in pots and sit with her morning coffee, breathe in the aroma of fresh herbs and watch the boats on the water.
“Nice setup,” he said when she’d returned with a tomato and leaves of basil. “I like the espresso machine.”
“During the day, I’ll run down to Cops and Coffee. But this is my sanctuary, so I like my coffee French. And before you ask, I do leave out the chicory.”
“Not a bad call, in my opinion,” he agreed. “It took a while, but I talked grand-mère out of putting it in the café coffee.”
“Would you like some wine?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t turn it down. I’d say we earned it today. Especially you, who, along with stepping in to perform, also did all that baking.”
“Ah, but you’re cooking dinner when we could have ordered out. Or picked up an already cooked chicken at the market.”
“Bite your tongue,” he said as he laid out his ingredients. “So you still don’t sing at all, cher?”
“Only to myself.” She got out a bottle of an Oregon Sauvignon Blanc that always reminded her of the Pouilly-Fumé they’d drunk with that lunch at the little bistro beside the Seine and poured them each a glass. “When I’m alone baking.”
“Thanks,” he said. “You still have some amazing pipes.”
While she got the ingredients for the bruschetta out of the refrigerator, Bastien washed the vegetables, then began chopping carrots, green pepper and onion—the “Holy Trinity” of Cajun food. “The first time I heard you, singing that solo for ‘Joyeux Noël,’ I thought I’d died right there in Jackson Square, because I knew only an angel could sound so sweet.”
He looked up from peeling the shrimp. “You looked like an ang
el come down from heaven, too.”
“It’s not going to work this time, Bastien.” Oh, but it was. As it had been more and more all day. She sliced the bread on the diagonal and rubbed it with a garlic clove.
“What?”
“The famous Broussard charm offensive,” she answered as she brushed olive oil onto the bread, then put it beneath the broiler.
“It’s the truth.” Behind her, shrimp shells boiled in a pot along with leftover bits of vegetables to make stock.
He’d always been as serious about his cooking as she was about baking. The difference, she thought now, was that baking was chemistry, while cooking, at least how he did it, was more art. Each fit their personalities. Except when it came to this man, her head tended to rule her heart, while he’d always worn his heart out in the open on his sleeve.
“It’s good to be back in the kitchen together,” he said. “The same way it was good to sing together at the wedding.”
There was no point in lying about the connection; it had felt like that first night they’d strolled through the Quarter, singing together. On Bourbon Street, as they’d stood on a corner, waiting for the light to change, a man had come up and handed Desiree a dollar. “You’re a true professional now,” Bastien had told her, making her laugh. But it had still felt rewarding.
“I’m sorry the musician Brianna hired cut her hand, but it was fun to sing again,” Desiree admitted. The bread had browned. She put it on the butcher-block island counter, cut up the tomato, rolled up the basil leaves and cut them en chiffionade from either side up to the bitter stem, which she tossed away. “Especially at such a happy occasion.” She spread on the goat cheese, then topped the bread and cheese with tomato, basil and capers.
“That was a nice story about how they met at that World War Two cemetery in France,” he said. “And each knew, at that moment, that they were meant for each other.”
“I suspect it was more lust at first sight,” she said, her tone as dry and crisp as her wine.