“Nora,” he said in his smooth voice as he nodded to me.
“Jean Marc. Didn’t think you would be out among the working stiffs on a Sunday,” I remarked in a curt tone as the potent aroma of his woody cologne assaulted my nostrils.
He gave me a thorough going-over with his disturbing eyes. “I always try to check on the crews on Sundays. Make sure everyone is ready for a full week’s haul.”
“Hi there, Jean Marc.” Uncle Jack moved forward and took the man’s thick hand. “Good to see you back in town. How was your business trip, son? And how’s Ms. Marie doin’?”
“My trip was fine, Jack, and Momma’s well.” Jean Marc shook my uncle’s hand. “She wanted me to thank you for the crawfish pies you sent over last week. She really appreciates how you and all the men have been looking out for her since my father died.”
“That’s what we do here in Manchac. We take care of our own.” My uncle smiled up at the man. “How you doin’, Jean Marc?” he asked with a lilt of fatherly concern in his voice.
Jean Marc placed his hands in his pockets and stared down at the deck. “Things have been all right, Jack. I’m just trying to keep the business going. I don’t know how my father kept things afloat.”
“Yeah,” my uncle offered with a nod of his head. “With them local shrimp farms and that crawfish comin’ in from China, things been hard on the lake.” My uncle rubbed his head, displacing his cap to the side. “But things been hard on the lake before, son. Bound to get better.”
“Well, I’m trying.” Jean Marc raised his brooding, dark eyes to me. “How you been, Nora?”
I stepped to my uncle’s side. “Fine, Jean Marc. Just came out to check Uncle Jack’s blood pressure.”
Uncle Jack placed his arm about my shoulders. “She comes out every Sunday. She’s good to me, she is.”
My irritation escalated as Jean Marc’s eyes traveled down my body.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he murmured. “You take care, Jack. I’ll be checking in with you again on Thursday, once we get that new pump in for the fresh water holding tanks at the warehouse. I’ll need you and LaSalle to help me put them in.” He gave me a painful smile. “Nora,” he added and dipped his head politely. Then Jean Marc quickly turned to go.
“God, I hate that man,” I whispered as I watched him make his way down the gangway to the dock.
“Shhh.” Uncle Jack waved his hand at me. “Jean Marc Gaspard is good people. Kept me out here shrimpin’ longer than any other company would.” He stopped and then tilted his head to the side as he continued to study me with his curious blue eyes. “Why you don’t like that man?”
“Because he’s an asshole, Uncle Jack!”
“Well, then you must know him better than me, ‘cause I never seen no asshole in that boy.” He bent over and picked up a wrench from the deck by his feet. “His family may be the best off in Manchac, but he’s good to his people here. Never been no highbrow snob like your mama. When he went off to that college in Texas, he stayed away a long time, but he never came back all high and mighty.” He paused and glanced back down the dock where the figure of Jean Marc Gaspard was growing smaller. “Now that his papa’s gone, he got lots to do, him bein’ Ms. Marie’s only worthwhile son and all.”
“Where is Henri these days?”
Uncle Jack shrugged. “Who knows? Better away from here, that’s all I care. Never seen twins more different than those Gaspard boys. That Henri’s been a peekon to his mama and papa since he was a youngin’.”
I picked up my purse and swung it over my shoulder. “Jean Marc is the one who has always been a thorn in my side.”
“Since when? Boy’s never been nothin’ but respectful to you. Been nice as pie to you all your life, even when you was a peeshwank. He used to sit and watch over you. I seems to remember you had a big crush on him. You even talked ’bout marryin’ him one day.”
“When was this?” I questioned, acting surprised that the disagreeable Jean Marc Gaspard and I were ever close.
“When your papa used to bring you out here. As soon as you stepped from your papa’s car, you went runnin’ to Jean Marc. Followed that boy all over the dock, you did.” Uncle Jack pointed the wrench over at the dock next to the boat. “Jean Marc was always hangin’ around helpin’ to fix engines and such. Anytime you came to visit, he would volunteer to watch you so your papa and me could go fishin’. He even taught you how to dance. You don’t remember that?”
I gave my uncle a bewildered side-glance. “Dance?”
“The Acadian Waltz. Your papa and me come back from fishin’ early one day and found you two dancin’ on the dock with no music. Funniest damn thing I ever see.”
“I don’t remember that,” I mumbled.
“‘Spect not. You was barely out of diapers then. That boy always has taken a fancy to you, Nora T. He liked you then, and if you ask me, he still likes you.”
I walked over to the gangway made of two old boards. “He’s an ass. He’s always been short and rude with me.”
My uncle cackled as I walked down the gangway. “That’s the way his kind is,” he called behind me. “They never know how to act ‘round a girl. ‘Specially a girl they fancy.”
“Fancy?” I tried not to laugh as I peered down the dock. “The man looks at me with nothing but disgust.”
“That ain’t what I see.”
I turned back to my uncle and frowned, wanting to change the subject. “No more than two beers a day, Uncle Jack.” I waved my hand at him. “I’ll see you next week.”
Chapter 2
Over the course of the next few weeks, Mother began arranging meetings for me with a heavily screened line of suitors. An endless number of boring lunches with attorneys, engineers, bankers, and accountants began to clog my calendar. They were either divorced or never married, and they all looked at me with the eye of a butcher trying to discern which cut of meat from my hearty loins would taste the best. But a few of these casual lunchtime encounters led to dinner dates, where the real task of weeding the worthy from the worthless took place.
In my rapid-fire dating experience, perpetuated by my mother’s frenzied excitement for grandchildren, I was dined from one end of the city to the other. Fed sumptuous grilled oysters by a rather portly tax accountant from Shreveport, to catfish fried in four-day-old oil and served on newspaper by a personal injury attorney on the lookout for wife number three.
I was courteous to each man, but I’m sure I lacked the bubbly charm they wished to see when meeting someone with long blond hair, blue eyes, and a well-endowed figure. Actually, most of my life had been filled with the subtle irony that my looks never matched my inquisitive, quiet, and academic nature. Mother used to say I was a librarian trapped in a stripper’s body.
God knows how many mindless dates I had endured since my mother first impressed on me her need for the patter of little feet. But one evening, the prospect of finding Mr. Right for my mother suddenly took a turn for the better.
I was dining with a witless diamond dealer from New York that Lou had been forced to set me up with, when over the course of some poached salmon at a small bistro in the French Quarter, my date began to grab at his throat and turn a rather unusual shade of pink. Being a physical therapist, I went into full emergency mode, called for the waiter to dial 911, and helped my date stay calm until the rescue unit appeared.
An hour later, I was waiting in the emergency room at University Hospital when I was approached by a tall, slender, dark-haired man wearing a long white coat, and calling himself Dr. John Blessing.
“Your boyfriend had an allergic reaction to the shellfish stuffed into his salmon, Ms.….” He looked me over with large gray eyes.
“Kehoe, Nora Kehoe,” I stated as I stood from my chair to greet him. “And he’s not my boyfriend. More like a blind date from hell.”
That made the handsome Dr. Blessing laugh. “Yes, I, ah, have had a few of those myself.” He glanced back down at the chart he was holding in his long h
ands. “Do you know his family or anyone we can call?”
“I’m afraid we never got that far, actually. I could call my stepfather in the morning. He set us up. Maybe Lou will know.”
“Good idea.” Dr. Blessing’s gray eyes held mine for a second longer than necessary. “In the meantime, we will admit him overnight for observation; he can leave in the morning if everything is all right.” He looked over my shoulder at the busy waiting room behind me. “Perhaps you’d better head on home.” His eyes returned to mine and I noticed the way the bright fluorescent lights overhead highlighted the curve of his darkly shadowed jaw. “I’ll get security to walk you to your car,” he offered.
“Don’t have one. I came with the ambulance,” I admitted. I turned and surveyed the waiting area. “I’ll just call a cab.”
Dr. Blessing eyed his stainless steel watch. “It’s almost two in the morning. You’ll never get a cab here at this time of night.”
I began rummaging through my purse for my cell phone. “I’d better call my stepfather then. Maybe Lou could come and pick me up.”
“My shift ended twenty minutes ago and I was about to get out of here myself,” Dr. Blessing spoke up. “Where do you live? Maybe you could let me drive you home?”
“I couldn’t ask you to do—”
He smiled, silencing my protest. “Where do you live?” he asked again in a sultry voice.
“By the lake, off Milne Avenue,” I answered, feeling a tweak of electricity travel up from my stomach.
“What a coincidence. I live out by the lake as well.” Dr. Blessing’s smile grew, showing his perfectly straight white teeth. “If you don’t mind waiting a few minutes, I could drive you home.” His smile quickly fell and he cleared his throat. “That is, if you don’t think that would be too forward of me?”
“I think that would be just fine, Dr. Blessing,” I assured him with a flirty grin.
His smile returned, deepening his five o’clock shadow. “In that case you will have to call me John.”
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, John and I were headed outside of the city in his used but very clean dark blue BMW M3. I kept searching for topics of conversation, trying desperately to avoid those awkward silences that often creep into every nervous conversation.
“Where are you from?” I inquired.
“I’m from Dallas. My folks and my sister still live there. I go home from time to time, but not as much as I should. My residency has kept me busy over the past few years, but this is my last year at University Hospital.”
“What are you going to do when you finish your residency?”
“I’ve had an offer from Southwestern University in Dallas to do a fellowship. Then there are the numerous emergency room staffing companies that I could work for, make my own schedule and so forth, but I feel I would like to stay in one hospital and not hop around. My mother wants me to come back to Dallas, but….” He shrugged.
“You don’t sound too enthused about going back home,” I surmised as I observed his strong profile.
“Let’s just say my mother wants me home, but my father has never forgiven me for going into medicine.”
“What father doesn’t want a doctor for a son?” I asked in amazement.
“The kind that has a family business to pass on.” He shifted down the car at a stoplight and turned his eyes to me. “My father has a geological survey company and works for a lot of the oil companies. My sister is a geologist and works with him, but that was never good enough for Dad. He wanted his son to take over the company, not his daughter.”
“What does your sister think about all of that?”
“Nancy?” He sighed and rolled his head back. “Not only did she study geology to please my dad, she studied law to please my mother. Mom was an attorney before she married my father. So, my poor sister has taken on the brunt of both my parents’ expectations. I, on the other hand, have always done the complete opposite of what they wanted.”
“At least you’re a doctor.” I shook my head. “My mother’s only hope for me is that I marry and have the right house in the right neighborhood with the right friends, and the perfect two point two kids.”
“Yeah, my mother wanted that for my sister.” He put the car into gear and started down the road ahead.
“How did your sister deal with it?”
“Well, she did get married, have the kids and the house, the whole pretty picture. Until Phil, her ex-husband, ran off with his secretary, leaving Nancy pregnant and poor. The whole divorce kind of cured my sister of my parents’ delusions. She leads her own life now, not my mother’s.”
“It seems you lead your own life as well, John.”
“To a point, but every now and then I hear my father’s voice in my head, or worse my mother’s voice, egging me on to be what they want. I’m not as free as my sister, but then again, I’m in New Orleans. I guess that’s the real reason I don’t want to go home. I can live my life here.”
John Blessing expertly maneuvered his German machine through the slopes and around the numerous potholes that had plagued every city street since Katrina. He was still wearing his green scrubs with “Property of University Hospital” printed all over them, along with his grungy white coat. Identification tags hung from his lapel, while assorted pens, a stethoscope, and papers crowded his coat pockets. On the waist of his green scrub pants was clipped a black beeper.
“Your parents sound just like my mother. I guess that’s why I became a physical therapist, because it’s somewhere between a doctor and housewife.”
“You’re a physical therapist?” John’s eyes brightened, as he looked me over with renewed interest.
“At Uptown Hospital. I manage the total joint replacement program.”
“Really? I did a few rotations through there a year ago. A shame we never ran into each other.” He turned down my street.
“Well, it’s a big place. I’m one block up on the right,” I said, pointing to my home up ahead. “The little yellow cottage,” I added.
“When I was at Uptown Hospital I used to eat at this great little café around the corner…what was it called?”
“Lucifer’s. I know it well.”
He parked the car in front of my raised, single story home. “Why don’t you and I go there this Saturday night? We can have dinner and perhaps head to the French Quarter after for some music.”
“All right. That sounds like fun, John,” I commented, trying to sound casual and not desperate.
“Good.” He pulled out a pen and piece of paper from his coat pocket. “Write down your number for me, and I’ll call you so we can work out a time.”
I wrote down my cell number, and when I handed the paper back to him, our hands touched. The shock of his cool skin against mine made me shiver. Hoping to hide my blushing cheeks, I reached for the door handle.
“Saturday night then, Nora Kehoe,” he stated behind me as I stepped onto the curb. “I hope you like jazz,” he asserted.
I turned back to the car. “Of course I do. Jazz is required listening in these parts.”
He gave me another killer smile, highlighting his smoky gray eyes. “I’ll see you Saturday.”
I shut the car door and headed up the walkway to my home while his dark blue BMW waited at the curb. When I was safely inside my front door, I heard the motor of the car rev, and watched the sleek machine pull slowly away from the curb. I flipped on my living room lights, still warm with an inner glow from our chance encounter, and wondered if this evening was going to turn into one of those life-altering moments. Suddenly, the future looked a little brighter than it had earlier in the day. I just prayed that the attractive John Blessing did not become yet another dating disappointment.
* * *
The following day at brunch with my parents, I made sure not to mention anything about my meeting Dr. Blessing. But later that afternoon, out in Manchac at my uncle’s boat, my cautious attitude eased.
“I met someone last nigh
t, Uncle Jack. A doctor at University Hospital,” I divulged after I finished checking his blood pressure.
“What was you doin’ in that place, Nora T?” he asked as he gave me an odd look.
I rolled my eyes. “Some guy mother had Lou set me up with had an allergic reaction to shellfish when we were eating dinner. I had to go with him to the hospital.”
“Don’t trust no people that can’t eat shellfish. Ain’t normal.” He walked over to the side of his boat.
“I would expect a shrimper to say that.” I chuckled as I followed behind him. “The man I met is an emergency room resident. He was very nice to me, even drove me home from the hospital.”
“He kiss you?” Uncle Jack questioned as he turned back to me.
“No,” I answered, noting the frown on his face. “I thought you would be happy for me. I met someone interesting, and he’s a doctor.”
My uncle stepped inside the wheelhouse while I waited on the deck. I leaned against the weathered white boards that covered the wheelhouse.
“You want to marry this man?” His voice came from deep within the boat.
“Marry? Good Lord, Uncle Jack, we haven’t even had our first date yet.”
“You like him ‘cause he’s nice or ‘cause he’s a doctor?”
“Uncle Jack, I thought you would understand. I thought you would want me to date a nice guy who has a lot of career potential.”
“You know, Nora T.” He came out of the wheelhouse carrying a wrench in his hands. “You sound just like your mama when you talk ’bout this man bein’ a doctor. More to a person than what he do.”
From behind us someone cleared their throat. Uncle Jack and I turned around at the same time to see Jean Marc Gaspard standing in a pair of grease-stained blue jean overalls, old tennis shoes, and no shirt. I could not help but notice the thick muscles in his arms and beneath his bare chest.
“Nora,” Jean Marc said in his usual condescending way. “Going to help your uncle and me fix the oil leak in the engine?”
I shook my head, trying to avoid his uncomfortable gaze. “No, Jean Marc. I just came out to—”
Acadian Waltz Page 2