The Pepper In The Gumbo: A Cane River Romance

by Hathaway, Mary Jane

  He let Charlie’s hand go and smiled. “I’m not on TV. And I should have introduced myself but I think we started off on the wrong foot.”

  “No, it was my fault.” Alice put down the little box and took off her gloves. She held out her hand. “I’m Alice Augustine. Let’s pretend we just met. I’ll have better manners and you can buy anything in my store that you want.”

  He reached out and took her hand, feeling the softness of her palm against his. For just a moment, Paul forgot all about the portfolio and the argument and the teen girl watching them. And he forgot especially about the long-term boyfriend sitting at Alice’s desk.

  “Alice, are you coming or should I just go by myself?” Eric walked up, a scowl on his face. He took in the scene and his eyes narrowed.

  Paul let go of Alice’s hand. “We’re just finishing up. I need to get going, too. I have to meet a realtor about an apartment.”

  “You’re staying in town for a while?” Charlie asked breathlessly. Alice shot her a look.

  “For a few weeks. I’m from this area but haven’t been back in years. I thought visiting during the three-hundredth year anniversary would be a good time to come home for a while. Looking forward to things like the zydeco festival this weekend.”

  “I’m going to that, too,” Charlie exclaimed. “I mean, my mom mentioned it and I thought it sounded kinda weird, but if you’re going then I’m sure it’s a good idea.”

  Paul moved toward the entryway, even though Eric was blocking the spot, face like thunder. “Plus, we want to make sure the store gets off to a smooth start so we’re temporarily moving our home base here.” At the last second, Eric turned and stomped toward the middle of the store.

  “Which store is this?” Alice locked the case again and followed Paul out of the room. “Did you buy one of the local businesses? We’ll be neighbors, then. I’m on the historic district board so if you need anything, I’d be glad to help if I can.”

  “The ScreenStop store,” Charlie said, bouncing alongside of them. She looked thrilled to pieces. “This is Paul Olivier, the guy who invented the biggest online social platform ever while he was in college and sold it for like, a bazillion dollars. Then he started a company that designs some of the best games and got even richer! He has stores all over the country.” She paused, her voice dropping shyly. “I’d love your autograph. I can’t believe we’re actually talking in real life.”

  Paul was used to awkward introductions but this was probably the most awkward, if only for Alice’s expression. She’d stopped at the register, face blank with shock.

  “It wasn’t a bazillion,” he muttered. “That’s not a real number.”

  “ScreenStop?” Alice whispered.

  “Excuse me,” Eric called. He was only a few feet away but his voice was loud enough to reach the end of the store. “Are we going to lunch or not?”

  Alice whirled toward him and said in a low voice, “No, Eric, we’re not. I have a store to run. Whether you think this place is important or not, I do. I can’t walk away from a customer just because you want to order at exactly noon so you can eat your lunch in exactly fifteen minutes, and have exactly ten minutes to walk back to your office so you’ll have exactly eight minutes to flirt with your secretaries before patients arrive.” She paused. “In fact, since we’re having this conversation right now, I’d rather not have any more lunches with you again. Goodbye.”

  There was a beat of complete silence and then Eric sputtered something about not flirting with anybody, that she obviously she wasn’t hungry, and he’d call her later. He turned around and left the bookstore, letting the door slam behind him.

  Paul wanted to offer Alice a big high five but the fierce expression on her face told him that now was not the right time.

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said. Smoothing a hand over her hair, she sighed. “That was extremely unprofessional. It’s just… I suppose it was long overdue.”

  “Not a problem, really. I completely understand.” He shifted his feet. “You’d been together a long time?”

  “Huh. Not even six months. Miss Alice is impossible to please.” Charlie grinned, leaning against the counter. She was talking about Alice, but only had eyes for Paul. “In fact, she hates you, too.”

  “Charlie!” Alice glared at her.

  Paul knew they’d gotten off to a rough start but thought hate was a rather extreme response. “Well, maybe we’ll learn to appreciate our differences―” he started to say.

  “Nope. Never gonna happen.” Charlie jerked her head in Alice’s direction. “I heard her on the phone yesterday, trying to track down who gave you that building permit. She wants to kick ScreenStop out of the historic district. She’d be happier than a clam if she could kick you all the way out of Natchitoches. She says people like you don’t belong in a place like Cane River.”

  Paul turned to Alice, brows raised. People like you. She saw him as the poor kid he had once been, ignored unless he was being ridiculed, denied passage into the nicer parts of the city. No, Alice had never met that boy. She was looking at a rich businessman.

  So she really did hate him before today. Then she hated him when he showed up in person. The only version of him she seemed to like was his fake identity. It was a triple ego-whammy. “We received the building permit in the usual way, going through all the regular channels.”

  Alice’s face was pink but her voice was steady. “Impossible. Everything has to be passed by the board. I never saw any plans for that store.”

  “Not everything goes by the board. Believe me, my lawyers looked at the city bylaws very carefully.” His gaze dropped to the portfolio she still held in her hands. “You’re not going to sell me that, are you?”

  Alice narrowed her eyes. “If I didn’t, that would be spiteful,” she said. “But will you think you’ve bought me off like everyone else in this city if I do? Because I don’t have a price. Not even one this high,” she said, holding up the Arthur Rackham illustrations.

  He opened his mouth to respond, but she went on. “I do have a question, though.”

  “Go ahead.” It couldn’t get much worse. He had nothing to fear.

  “The realtor you’re meeting. Is she June LaTraye?”

  He frowned. Maybe Alice was going to warn him off the woman. There were crooks in every city, every profession. “Yes. We’re supposed to meet in about ten minutes. There’s an apartment in the historic… district…” Paul’s voice faded away.

  They stared at each other for a moment. “Listen,” Alice said, coming around the counter toward him. “You don’t have to buy this portfolio. And you should probably find another place to rent while you’re here. The Judge Porter House is a very nice bed and breakfast with full suites and it’s right down the block. I wish you the best of luck.”

  Paul said nothing. The last few hours had been some of the strangest of his life, but he hadn’t gotten where he was in the world by ignoring his intuition. Over and over he’d made decisions that weren’t completely explainable, especially to his board of directors or to Andy. They’d learned to trust him and everything had always come out for the better. He didn’t take her hand.

  “I’d like to buy the portfolio. And I’d like to see the apartment,” he said simply.

  Relief, confusion, and something else flashed over her face. “If you’re sure…”

  “I am,” he said. “I have no interest in trying to avoid a constant rotation of nosy tourists or sleeping in a canopy princess bed for a month.”

  “I won’t promise to stop fighting your store.”

  “You should give me a chance to change your mind. Maybe you just haven’t found your inner tech-loving geek. ”

  His chest tightened when she let out a soft laugh. She was more than pretty when she laughed. She was beautiful.

  “I’m fairly certain I don’t have one. Even if I didn’t believe your company is changing society for the worse, your store just doesn’t fit here, especially in the historic district.�
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  Paul said nothing aloud. Challenge accepted, Miss Alice Augustine. Her words seemed to echo every time a resident of Natchitoches had told him that he was unwelcome, every single spoken and unspoken slight. He hadn’t listened. He’d worked hard, devoted everything he had to proving them wrong.

  “It’s like I died and went to heaven. You’re going to live upstairs? Right above the store? Are you going to have parties? Will they have cosplay?” Charlie put both hands to her face and let out a little shriek.

  “Maybe.” He couldn’t help smiling at this girl’s enthusiasm. He was just a guy who owned a gaming company and this sort of excitement never got old. He turned to Alice who had moved back around the counter and was wrapping up the portfolio in tissue, and placing it in a larger box.

  Charlie leaned in, chewing her lip. “Listen, I know everybody must ask you stuff like this, but I’ve been on the new Ultimate Voyager game you created for, like, two weeks. I got that expansion pass and I got some awesome gear and weapons, but I can’t get past the Planet of the Wolf Army. I’m just stuck in this forever cycle of injuries and recuperation, and I’m wasting all my time in that little canyon near the jump station. At this rate, I’m never gonna become Legend.”

  Paul wanted to laugh at Alice’s expression. He was torn between outright laughter and wishing Charlie would leave this topic for another time. Alice’s aversion to technology wouldn’t lessen when people wandered around speaking the language of game culture. But he’d never been able to resist a gamer in trouble.

  “There’s a cheat. Use a broadsword on the first Wolf soldier. Nobody follows him if you do.” He nodded at her protest. “It’s true. If you’d tried every weapon, you’d have been able to get out.” He held a finger to his lips. “And don’t tell anyone I told you that or I’ll deny everything.”

  Charlie was grinning hugely, bouncing on the toes of her shoes. “Man, this is awesome. Do you wanna play sometime? My name’s UltimateStarCrossed. You can friend me and we can go on a raid sometime. I have a group I join every night for about three hours. They’d be so stoked if you dropped in.” Her cheeks went pink.

  Paul cleared his throat. He always hated this, when someone wanted to know his username. If he gave it out to everyone, then he’d never actually get to play. It would be all messages and friend requests. But he kept an alternate character in almost every game and that’s the name he’d use if he ever played with Charlie. He’d always looked young and his love of T-shirts and jeans probably made him seem even younger. He was used to teen adulation at gaming expos and he was well aware that Charlie might not think he was too old for her, even though he was long out of college and sliding toward thirty.

  “Sure, I’ll friend you when I get set up here. I always like to meet new groups of players.” He hoped his emphasis on “groups” would erase any assumptions on her part. He turned to Alice. “There are two apartments above this building, right? Is the other empty also? Maybe I could rent that side for my CTO who came with me. We’re good friends but maybe he’d like his own space.”

  Alice looked up, her mouth open a bit. She seemed confused. “No, it’s―”

  “Miss Alice lives on that side. You guys are gonna see each other all the time,” Charlie said gleefully.

  “Oh,” Paul said and tried to keep his face neutral. He should have known. He’d already said that she lived close by when he was being his jerky self earlier. And now he knew for certain the apartment was going to be as low tech as she could get away with and still be up to code. They would share a wall, this woman with the dark eyes and throaty laugh. The one who thought he was destroying society with his frivolous company. The one who had already grabbed his heart and squeezed it so hard he wasn’t sure if he’d known her for a day or for a year.

  Her gaze locked on his. A small smile touched her lips, as if she were daring him to back out now. It was silliness to think being next door neighbors would even matter. He desperately wanted to prove to her, and the rest of the Natchitoches elite, that he belonged here as much as she did. But staying within feet of each other might be last the drop of awkward to fill the bucket of bad feelings, spilling over into hate.

  He held her gaze until she started wrapping up the box once more. As she reached for a larger box, he saw the bookshelf behind her. It was the picture she’d sent, with the colorful mysteries, the big science fiction with the dragon, the worn copy of Austen’s Emma and the collector’s edition of Wind in the Willows. And next to it was the little leather volume that he had on his own shelf. He felt the room tilt, as if the axis had shifted, and he looked back at this beautiful woman who sent personal bookshelf pictures to anonymous book-loving men. He thought of how the emails had made him laugh, made him feel as if he’d made a real connection with someone new for the first time in years.

  It didn’t matter if this apartment was a throwback to the Paleolithic era. He was going to take it.

  “Nice to meet you, neighbor,” he said and smiled.

  Chapter Nine

  Technological progress has merely provided us

  with more efficient means for going backwards. ―Aldous Huxley

  Alice let Charlie’s excited chatter wash over her. She felt numb. She’d learned she might lose her store, made a fool of herself online, met the most infuriating man, broken up with her boyfriend, sold an incredibly expensive manuscript, met the man whom she was fighting to keep out of the historic district, and met her new renter. One person was responsible for almost all of those dramatic happenings. One clever, stubborn person.

  She stared at the counter where he’d been standing minutes before. She’d never met anybody like him. She told herself that it was a very good thing her life had been devoid of anybody like Paul Olivier, but a little part of her disagreed. That little part was in no way connected to the logical, rational side of her, and had everything to do with the romantic she truly was.

  “I wonder if his friend is just as cute.” Charlie chattered. “I can’t believe we’re going to play together. He’s so nice, too. The way he helped me out, I felt like my heart had like an extra layer of frosting on it or something. And sprinkles.” She smiled dreamily at Alice. “And oh my gosh, he’s so much hotter in person. The pictures I’ve seen are from some convention or whatever and there so many girls all over him that you can’t really see him, but obviously the guy spends a lot of time in the gym. I mean, did you see his arms? They’re like―”

  “Charlie, I still need you to take over for an hour so I can get some lunch.” Alice really didn’t want to talk about Paul’s gym habits and she seriously hoped he wasn’t going to be hanging out with her barely eighteen-year-old employee.

  “Sure! And so sorry about Eric.” She paused, looking up at the ceiling. “Ok, not really. He was kind of a baby. Such a whiner.”

  “Yeah, he was. I hate to say it, but he was.” She sighed. “He had his good points, though.”

  Charlie leaned over the counter. “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Well, for one…” Alice paused, searching back to when they first met. “You know, aside from having a job and not being an ax murderer, I don’t really know,” she admitted, laughing.

  Charlie giggled, covering her mouth. “I think Paul Olivier is hot. Like, really hot, not just geeky hot. And he’s from around here so you guys will have so much in common.”

  The momentary sense of sisterhood evaporated. Alice rubbed the gold rings between her fingers and shook her head. “Nope. Nothing in common. Except we might actually have to see each other face-to-face a few times if he signs the lease.” Then again, she wondered if he was just saying that. A billionaire couldn’t possible want to live in her outdated apartment. At least, she sincerely hoped he wouldn’t. Now that she’d sold that Rackham portfolio, it didn’t matter if she left that apartment open indefinitely. It wasn’t near enough to pay off Mr. Perrault’s niece, but it would buy her some time.

  The bell tinkled and Bix came in, the bright sun illuminating his old straw ha
t. “You’ll never guess who I just saw,” he called out.

  “June LaTraye? She’s showing the apartment upstairs,” said Alice.

  “Nope, I just saw Paul Olivier, the billionaire tech genius.” He beamed at them. “I shook his hand. I told him I was his biggest fan.”

  “Me, too,” crowed Charlie. “And we’re gonna hang out together sometime.”

  “How do you know him?” Alice asked. “I mean, you don’t even have a computer.” The better question might be how someone with Bix’s eyesight managed to recognize the man.

  “How did you know it was him?” Charlie asked. “Was there a big crowd around him?”

  Bix chuckled. “Mais, no. He was sitting on the bench outside and had the Arthur Rackham portfolio on his lap. I recognized the box. I been dusting the case around that thing for twenty years. I know it cost a pretty penny, so I stop to introduce myself. I tell him that he shouldn’t open it in the sun and he should have some climate controls on the display case. He tells me his name and says he’s having it shipped back to New York City today.” He paused to wipe his forehead with a red kerchief. “That’s when I thanked him on behalf of my sister Betsy and myself.”

  “Betsy?” Alice prompted.

  “He invented this computer gizmo that keeps my sister able to live on her own, instead of in an old folks’ home across the river.” Bix took off his hat. “See, she could never remember when to take her pills and which pill to take. Lots of phones have alarms, but he made something that is an alarm and a picture together. The alarm goes off on her cell phone, she looks at the picture, finds the right pill, and stays on schedule. Genius!”

  “I didn’t know he’d invented more than games,” she said, almost to herself. But one or two small inventions for the greater good couldn’t erase the fact he was luring a whole generation into willful ignorance. She felt like the world was in love with Paul Olivier and she was the only sane person left.

  “Miss Alice broke up with Eric while Paul Olivier was standing right there,” Charlie said, pointing to an approximate spot near the counter.