Frank nibbled at a piece of okra as he watched Carol dive in.
“Back to this afternoon,” he said at length. “There’s something else I have to tell you before I lose my nerve.”
Carol set aside a shrimp canape and gave her undivided attention to Frank. “Yes? What is it?”
“After you left—no, really, it started before you went to your room—I got to feeling so bad, honey. I mean, low-down, gut-twistin’, swamp-water bad. It hit me so quick…”
“What on earth, Frank? Was it something I said or did?”
“Hell, no!” He cleared his throat and stared down at the napkin he was about to twist in two. “It was me, Carol, all me. That’s why I have to tell you about it. See? If there’s any chance of us ever getting together,” he paused and glanced at her, cleared his throat, then added, “—in the biblical sense—you’ve got to understand from the start that I get in these foul moods. Real blue funks.”
“Depression, you mean,” she ventured. “Have you seen anyone about this problem, Frank? There are drugs now that can work miracle cures on people who suffer drastic mood shifts like yours.” She thought for a moment before she offered her next suggestion, not sure how Frank would take it. Finally, she decided to give it a shot, regardless. “Or you might consider a psychiatrist to get to the root of the problem.”
“Waste of time and money!” he growled. “Hell, I know the problem, and talking to a shrink about my rotten childhood isn’t going to make it go away.” He looked up at Carol, his dark eyes so filled with pain that her heart ached. “It’s guilt, honey, plain and simple.”
“What on earth do you have to feel guilty about?”
Frank shook his head almost imperceptibly. “My wife. You see, it’s a husband’s guilt I’m feeling. Eileen’s gone; I know that and, most times, I accept it.”
His mention of his wife sent a tremor through Carol. She’d been trying not to think about the nightmare she’d had this afternoon, but hearing Frank speak Eileen’s name brought all the details and the terror back into sharp focus. Luckily, Frank seemed not to notice Carol’s reaction.
“It was years after her disappearance before I even thought about another woman,” Frank continued. “Every day—with the help of a few stiff drinks—I’d convince myself she’d be home before dark. That seemed to keep me going somehow. But then, when Eileen had been gone about five years and I finally got my act together—sort of—I met a real nice lady. I took her out a few times—dinner, movies, that sort of thing. Finally, things came to a head. I had to make my move or lose her to another fellow.” His eyes soulful, Frank looked at Carol and gripped her hand again. “I tried; I couldn’t. I mean, we were in the damn bed!” He shied away from Carol’s steady gaze. “I could not do it! It was like Eileen was somewhere waiting for me and I was cheating on her.”
“And afterward?” Carol asked gently.
He shrugged. “Afterward, she married that other guy and I gave up trying to form any kind of normal relationship.” He glanced up at her again, his eyes heavy with sorrow. “And now there’s you. And now there’s guilt—more than I can live with. I want to promise you everything will be different. God, how I want to! But I honestly don’t think it will be. So I figured I’d better warn you right up front.”
Carol felt herself blushing again, but for Frank’s sake this time. At least he was being honest. He had already told her earlier that he felt something was happening between them. How sweet that had been to hear! Now he was, in effect, telling her that he doubted anything would come of it. Good take-off; shitty landing!
“Don’t worry about it, Frank.” Her words dropped like rocks in the silence.
He shook his head sadly. “I just want you to understand that it’s got nothing to do with you, Carol. It’s me. Me and my guilt because I could never find my wife, never bring her home where she belonged.”
“That was a long time ago, Frank,” Carol said, groping for some way to comfort him, to give herself hope.
He sighed. “You don’t have to tell me. But I guess to me it will always seem like only yesterday. I don’t know how to fight it, Carol. I do know, though, that I want my chance with you.”
“I’m glad you told me all this, Frank. I promise you, I’ll understand.” Carol said every word slowly, evenly, trying not to betray her raging emotions. “Ordinarily, I would have been able to read your mood swing for what it was.” She glanced at him; he seemed calm. She dared to confess, “Up until this morning, I could read your thoughts.”
“Oh, God!” he groaned.
“Don’t worry about it. You keep ’em pretty clean.” She tried to smile, to make a little joke, but the subject was far too serious. “But then suddenly you blocked me out. I figured you had some ESP of your own and you were using it to shield yourself from me—not wanting me to know what you were thinking.”
“We better put this conversation on hold. Here comes our dinner.” Frank nodded toward a huge, brimming tray headed in their direction. “I hope I haven’t killed your appetite.”
“No way!” Carol answered with forced enthusiasm. In truth, she felt less than hungry at the moment.
As he placed steaming plates and bowls on their table, Papa Joe explained in a mixture of French, English, and Cajun patois that he was offering them his Acadian Sampler. He named each dish, pointing it out proudly: “Filé gumbo, garfish boulets, crawfish étouffée, oysters Bienville, Turtle On The Bayou, baked ’coon and sweet potatoes, zucchini squash with dill sauce, stuffed cucumbers, and fried green tomatoes.” He also tossed a huge salad at the table with his “secret Cajun dressing,” then sliced thick hunks of hot French bread for them before bowing away from the table to allow them to “Enjoy!”
“We’ll never eat all this!” Carol cried in dismay.
“Sure, we will,” Frank told her, piling his plate high. “We’ve got all evening. Why do you think I wanted to get an early start? Other folks eat to live, but here in New Orleans, we live to eat.”
“I believe it!”
Carol passed on the “’coon and ’taters,” as Frank called the dish, and dipped into the spicy, steaming gumbo instead.
After over two hours of Cajun feasting, walking it off seemed their only salvation.
“I’ve never eaten that much at one sitting in my entire life,” Carol moaned.
With almost schoolboy caution, Frank slipped his hand into Carol’s. She stopped on the Moon Walk as if she meant to gaze out over the silvery river. In truth, the mere touch of Frank’s flesh against hers left her weak-kneed and breathless. Holding hands with him was, she realized suddenly, as physically arousing as having some other lover kiss her nipples or stroke her thighs. She was trembling all over.
“Let me know when you’re ready for the good part,” Frank said.
Carol’s breath caught and she glanced up at him through lowered lashes, inviting come-what-might. She was ready for the “good part” now!
“Dessert is my favorite part of any meal,” he added. “I figured we’d stop in at the Cafe du Monde for coffee and beignets.”
Carol moaned and laughed aloud at her own disappointment. “Talk to me about dessert next week this time. Okay?”
A cool breeze off the river sent a shiver through Carol. Frank slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. Their eyes met for a moment and Carol held her breath. Was this it? Was he going to kiss her? Or would he shy away at the last instant, afraid of facing his guilt if he let his longing show.
Frank’s hesitation lasted long seconds, a minute. Carol held perfectly still. She dared not even blink. Her breathing grew shallow and quick. His dark, liquid eyes were kissing her—a deep, probing, wet kiss that set her senses reeling and left her feeling almost faint. This was one of those extraordinary moments when time simply stood still. Carol held her breath—waiting, longing, aching for his kiss.
Finally, almost in slow motion, Frank leaned down—Carol meeting him halfway—and their lips met. It was no great, passionat
e production number, no fondling of breasts or thrusting of tongues. Just a simple, brief, tender kiss, but it had all the dramatic impact Carol could have handled at the moment. Her whole body warmed in that instant and she felt an earthquake of pleasure mingle with the desire that burned through her body.
From the startled look on his face, Frank must have experienced the same pleasant jarring of the senses and jolt to the soul. For several minutes, they neither spoke nor moved, but stood close together, staring off into the distance. The electric moment passed gently away.
“I couldn’t help myself,” Frank whispered.
Carol tried to laugh brightly, but the sound came out a fractured, high-pitched trill. “I don’t think you need any help, mister.”
“You’re not offended? I didn’t mean to rush you.”
God! Rush her? This man had burst into her life like a sexual sonic boom. Wasn’t he even a little bit conscious of his own vibes? Couldn’t he tell she ached she wanted him so?
“I’ll let you know if I feel like I’m being rushed, Frank.” Carol glanced up at him and grinned. “That was the best dessert I’ve had in ages. Thanks.”
“My pleasure,” Frank answered in a halting, boyish voice.
They strolled on, hand in hand. Carol tried to think of something more to say, but it seemed to her that the moment needed nothing more than their companionable silence.
Finally, Frank was the one who broke the silence. “What about tomorrow morning?”
Carol couldn’t think what he was talking about. Here, at this moment, with this man, tomorrow had ceased to exist for her.
Before she figured out his question, he asked another—one that quickly yanked her out of her euphoric state. “Are you going off again with that guy, Choctaw?”
“Oh, that! I don’t know, Frank.”
“If you are meeting him, I’m definitely going with you.”
Carol had been so caught up in so many other things all day that she’d almost forgotten about Camille Mazaret, Choctaw—anything having to do with her real reason for coming to New Orleans in the first place.
“I honestly don’t know, Frank,” she answered. “I haven’t seen the woman in the red tignon today. It seems like she’s the key to these mysterious jaunts.”
“Well, if you see her, you tell her that from now on I’m in, too. I’m not going to let you go traipsing off to God-knows-where without me. Understand?”
Carol could tell by his tone that he was dead serious. But as much as the thought of her traveling all alone through time frightened him, the idea of Frank trying to go scared her even more. He had no psychic powers that she could detect, other than the average amount of ESP. On top of that, Carol wasn’t even sure Frank believed her. If he was not convinced that she really could go back in time, then there was little chance that he could accomplish that transition. His attempt to do so might well put an end to her ability to make these trips.
“Frank, I really don’t know about this.” He started to argue with her, but Carol held up her hand to silence him. “No, hear me out! I know that I have a place back in time. Suppose you did manage to go back with me. What would happen then? I would become Camille the minute I get there, but you would probably remain Frank Longpre, misplaced man from the twentieth century. Do you see the problem we have here?”
He was scowling at her, obviously ready to do battle before he’d let her go alone again. “Okay, tell me this: how’d you get to be Camille? Did you pick her out and jump into her body or something when you decided to go back?”
Carol shook her head, frustrated with trying to make Frank understand. “First off, I didn’t decide to go back. I was sent back. As for how I become Cami, I have no idea. One minute I’m me, the next minute I’m her. And, as I’ve told you, when I am Cami, I have no conscious memory of ever having been anyone else—of ever having lived in any other time. It’s not until I return to this century that I’m able to see the whole picture.”
Frank was silent for a time, mulling all this over. Finally, he said, “Maybe I’m Black Vic.” He grinned at her, his excitement growing. “Yeah! I think I could be Black Vic.”
“About as easily as you could be Rex the Carnival King and sing ‘If Ever I Cease To Love,’ standing on your head on top of St. Louis Cathedral!” Carol replied scornfully. “That’s not the way it works, I keep telling you. You don’t just pick a character from that other time and become that person because you want to. Frank, this isn’t a game.”
“I know that,” he answered. “I just thought…”
“No, I don’t think you thought at all!” was Carol’s sharp retort.
He pulled her almost roughly into his arms then and kissed her with much more force and passion than he had displayed moments before. If he meant to shut her up, it worked. Like a charm! She couldn’t have spoken a single syllable when he released her. She was that shocked by the kiss, that overwhelmed.
“Dammit, there’s something you have to understand!” Frank said. “I’m not letting the woman I love go running headlong into any more dangerous situations alone. I don’t care what happens, if you go with Choctaw again, I’m going, too.”
His declaration of love stunned Carol more than his rough kiss. In movies maybe it happened this way sometimes, but not in real life. It had been her experience that those words had to be pried out of a man, usually through much effort, cajoling, and pleading. She almost wondered if he could be serious, he sprang it on her so quickly.
She stared at his face, her mouth slightly agape. Serious, he was—dead serious! There was no doubting it when she gazed into his eyes. He looked as vulnerable as a child, as open to love and to hurt as any man she had ever seen. In that instant, she knew that fate had sent her to New Orleans, to Frank.
“You win,” Carol said softly, still staring into those wonderfully dark eyes. She reached out and touched his cheek. “And, Frank?”
“What, darlin’?” he whispered.
“I guess I love you, too.”
He blew out a long breath and pulled her into his arms. “Well, I’m sure glad that’s all settled!”
Carol wondered what he meant. Was it settled that she would let him accompany her and Choctaw or settled that they did, indeed, love each other?
She was still mulling this over when she heard a harp playing off in the distance. She glanced about, hoping to see a musician performing in the square. She did not. What she spied instead sent a chill through her.
“What’s wrong?” Frank asked, feeling Carol tense in his arms. “You’re ghost-white.”
“Nothing.” She tried to deny the apparition. “Nothing at all.”
“Tell me,” Frank insisted. He followed her gaze, then exclaimed, “The woman in the red tignon!”
His words shocked Carol out of her stupor. “You see her, too?”
“Right there by the fence, big as day,” he answered. “So that must mean you’re supposed to meet Choctaw tomorrow morning. And since I can see her, too, my guess is that they want me to come along,” he added with no small amount of triumph in his voice.
Carol slipped her cold hand into Frank’s and gripped it tightly. She was shaking all over, but the chill came from inside.
“Don’t worry, honey,” he whispered. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
She couldn’t answer. How could she tell Frank that she knew she’d be safe, it was his uncertain fate that had her scared out of her wits?
Carol didn’t tell him anything. Instead, she turned to him and slipped her arms around his waist, then buried her face against his chest. He reached down and cupped her chin with his fingers, bringing her lips up to his. Holding her close, there on the Moon Walk, he gave her a long, lazy, very thorough kiss. By the time he finished with her, she was limp in his arms.
“Ready to go home, darlin’?” he whispered. “If we don’t find some privacy right soon, I’m afraid I might get us arrested.”
“But, Frank, what about…?”
&
nbsp; Sensing that Carol was going to ask him if he was willing to bear the guilt in order to be with her, Frank cut her off before she could say the words. “Don’t you worry about that, honey. That’s my problem; I’ll handle it.”
When they turned and headed back toward the Hotel Dalpeche, Carol experienced a strange feeling of being somewhere else—another time, another place, but with the same man. She glanced up at Frank. Could this possibly be happening to her—to them? And had love, she wondered, been theirs to share once before, long ago?
A short time later, they had all the privacy they needed back at Frank’s place. Once the door closed, Carol realized she felt as nervous as if she’d never done this before. She had a genuine case of virgin’s jitters.
Frank seemed to sense her problem as clearly as if he were the psychic. Then, too, he was experiencing his own nagging fears. They needed a little time together to think things through before they took the plunge.
“Want some wine?” he asked. “I bought a bottle of your favorite and put it on ice.”
Carol stared at him, incredulous. “You mean you planned all this?”
Frank shrugged. “I never plan anything much. I just like to be prepared for any emergency. Comes with being a cop.”
He held up the smoky bottle so Carol could examine the label.
“Nice,” she said. “Good year.” Now her smile was nervous only around the edges.
Frank uncorked the wine and poured a glass for Carol. He brought it to her, put it in her hand, then watched as she tasted it.
“Good?”
Carol closed her eyes, tossed her head back, and hummed her pleasure through a smile. “Wonderful!” she sighed. “Want a taste?”
Frank frowned and was about to decline when he realized she was offering him a taste from her lips. He leaned down and draped one arm around her shoulders. The next moment a tremor ran through Carol’s body when she felt Frank’s tongue glide softly over her moist lips. She opened slightly, inviting him in. But he drew away.
Whispers in Time Page 15