Let the Good Times Roll Read online

  “I wasn’t saying it in a bad way. I mean, they’re pretty, too. Of course. I like the eerie overtones.”

  He had his “customer is always right” face on, so it was fine. And what law of the land wrote that doctors made for intelligent art critics? She had brains enough, it was obvious from chatting with her, on top of knowing she was one of Wendy's crew. Brains didn’t equate to aesthetic intelligence. Or emotional intelligence, he suspected, since she had no clue how deep she was burrowing under his skin.

  He offered a polite smiled, because he, at least, had a modicum of EI. “My closet’s upstairs. If you want to just wear that shirt, you can change out of your sweater in the bathroom, and I’ll grab something else for myself.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to hog your party shirt.”

  So now he was a creepy painter with one nice shirt? “It’s not my only button down, Chloe.”

  He’d let his tone slip, he knew he had. He’d have known it even without any slackening of her judgmental jaw. Too many holiday events, on top of the gallery rejection, that was the problem. He’d been on overload, but there was no way to skip Mac’s annual party. Not just because it was outside his front door, but also because Mac and Wendy were the kind of good folk worth honoring in the world.

  So he’d failed to protect his solitary time, gotten overwhelmed, and was likely staring down this potentially nice woman who only opined on his paintings because he’d opened the door for her to start with.

  He sighed. Her gaze darted to his chest, and her deep brown eyes widened, which was fine for his bruised ego. “Would you like to see your options, or what?”

  She swallowed audibly. “Do you have a white shirt?”

  “Doesn’t that wine stain reach your bra?” It did; noticing it prompted him to strip down on the dance floor to start with.

  Folding her arms across herself, she shrugged. “I always wear white.”

  “Always?”

  “Always.”

  “For everything?”

  “Yes. Always, for everything. It’s easier that way—I can bleach everything no matter what happens at work, there’s no messing with matching. If you loan me a colored shirt, I’ll have to run a separate wash before I can return it.”

  What a litany of justifications. “Well, now, Chloe. I guess I’m the opposite of the baby bear you were looking for. I never wear white—odds are too good I’ll get paint on my clothes. How about green? It’s the best I can do, and if it makes you more comfortable, you can return it to me dirty.”

  Her blush might have been embarrassment, or something more intimate. Either way, he hoped his cheeks weren’t an echo of the crimson on hers. If they were, it was due to pique, not any idea of their skin transmitting dirty secrets via clothing.

  With a new-found interest in covering his bare flesh, he said, “Here, give me that. I’ll drop the green over the rail, and you can change down here.”

  She didn’t protest. Didn’t point out that removing the shirt would expose the burgundy stain across her breast. The no-longer pure white bra beneath the thin sweater.

  Wordlessly, he shrugged on his shirt, warm from her body, and mounted the stairs to his loft.

  Chapter Three

  “I haven't been to a crawfish boil since I moved back,” Chloe said, handing over her buttermilk pies. “Happy anniversary!”

  Wendy lifted the foil to take a peek. “Thanks. Wow, these look scrumptious.”

  “They are. My auntie taught me well. Also, don't laugh: the pie pans are your present. They're aluminum. I know they look basic, but they're sturdy and conduct heat really well.”

  “Just like our marriage,” Mac said, kissing Wendy first, then, far more chastely, her.

  “I look basic?”

  “You are anything but, my beautiful bride.”

  Wendy gave him a dismissive wave, but also blushed. “Hey, can’t help but notice—after the last party here, you wore white again?”

  She shrugged. “It’s cotton. It'll bleach.”

  “You know crawfish is the messiest of finger foods, right?” Mac asked, skeptical as his wife about Chloe's t-shirt and twill shorts.

  “Don’t you worry. I can suck lots of heads just fine in this,” she said.

  Wendy laughed. Mac swiveled, pretending not to. And Gabe, who she hadn't noticed behind his broad-chested friend, choked on his beer. His hair was shorter, but it hadn’t affected how hot he still was.

  She reached for a longneck of her own, doing a damn fine job of not picturing him when he stripped down to save her modesty a few months earlier. She'd debated wearing his shirt to the party, instead of her standard white, but it was a more provocative move than she'd been willing to make.

  So was the innuendo-laden comment about the mudbugs, which she’d intended only for her friends’ ears.

  Best laid plans. Not that her plan was to get laid. But now she was rid of Brandon, she'd remembered those sparks between her and Gabe, and wondered. He must be a good egg, or Wendy wouldn’t have him living in her back yard. She’d taken to dropping the odd factoid about him: divorced, lovable, sensitive, peaceable. The catalog left off his examining eyes, his lean strength, the gallant nature paired with humor and respect for others.

  All things in his favor, or at least not to his detriment. Whether he thrilled to the idea of casual good times, she didn’t know. His marriage lasted eleven years, but relations since then weren’t serious. It boded well.

  Gabe’s throat was flushed under the patio’s fading light. He cleared it. “We’re boiling.”

  So the heat between them affected his blood, too. Comforting. Intriguing. She took in his worn jeans, his shirt bearing a bar logo, the paint flecks on his well-muscled forearms. His smooth jaw. His gaze, flicking between Mac and a point over his shoulder. Not a single indication he was aware of her.

  Mac lit up. “Why didn’t you say so? Not long now, folks,” he said to the party at large, heading over to the pot set up over a whooshing propane flame in the middle of the brick patio. They’d clearly gotten all kinds of prep done out there, based on the worktable with empty potato sacks, discarded jars of seasoning, and garlic and onion skins scraped into a pile beside an oversize cutting board littered with lemon seeds and the remnants of a head of celery. They were soon surrounded with people craning to watch Mac and Gabe tilt wriggling crawfish into the redolent boiling water.

  She was no fool, so she kept the worktable between herself and the splashes as the crustaceans hit the surface and started cooking. Mac beamed as he stirred the mixture with his wooden paddle. Gabe stood by with the lid, and Wendy made note of the time on a small whiteboard.

  “You’re being very precise there, boss.”

  “Don’t call me that. And of course I am. Do I want rubbery tails? Don’t I want firm, juicy heads?”

  “You calling me, cher?” Mac asked.

  “In your dreams, sugar.”

  “You got that right.” He set aside the paddle and draped himself over Wendy. “That’s what I’ve been telling you for ten years now.”

  “You two are nonsense,” Chloe told them, but she was as charmed by their sweetness as everyone else there.

  As the cooking contingent fussed over the rate at which the pot was boiling and when to add the frozen corn to cool everything down and if the bugs had sunk far enough down and if the baby potatoes were too big to cook through and every other intersection of chemistry and flavor in the several gallons of boiling water, she helped herself to a couple of hush puppies and went to help a few others from the hospital secure newspaper over the tables. The tables were, in fact, the four-foot by eight-foot sections of painted and reinforced plywood that had served as a dance floor during the Christmas party. Mac must have attached legs to the undersides, and once they were covered with disposable tablecloths and the newspaper, they served this dual purpose. Wendy joked about his penchant for organization and planning, and it seemed it wasn’t just a skill he used in his photography business.

 
She’d met his sister at the holidays, and they fell into a conversation that kept them side-by-side as the cooks dumped baskets full of crawfish and vegetables over the prepared tables. Chloe tucked a length of paper towel into her collar and passed the roll to Delaney.

  “Your brother thinks I’m a fool to wear white to a boil.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything. But I’m impressed by your bravery.”

  She lifted a shoulder. “Well, it’s more convenience than anything else. Shopping’s fast if I eliminate everything but white clothes. And when I get a three in the morning emergency call, I know I won’t be showing up all mismatched to work. Besides, I think it signals confidence.”

  “Well, it looks sharp on you, whatever else. Even if I do think it’s not so very sensible for today’s event.” Delaney scooped a pile of boiled crawfish towards herself. After glancing at the red spices already staining her hands, she waggled her fingers at Chloe. “Dig in.”

  Lifting her chin in mock-regal splendor, she pulled a crawfish apart and sucked in the head’s juices. Delaney and the rest of the crowd were slurping and moaning along the tables. Pinching the critter’s tail, she slurped up the rest of her first crawfish and discarded the shell, dabbing her mouth with a paper towel and gesturing to her pristine self. “What’d I tell you?”

  “Anyone can stay clean for the first one. Just you wait.”

  She grinned, and snatched up a corn cob. Looking across to the next table, she caught Gabe watching their banter. Sure the serious expression in the set of his mouth wasn’t her imagination, she turned to ask Delaney if she knew anything about the man.

  “The elusive Gabe? Sure.”

  “Elusive?”

  “Back when he first moved over here—maybe two-three years ago? DeAndre and Wendy set in to telling me about him at every turn. He’s got this good heart, sis. He’s so generous, sis. Great cook, great partner, what more do you want, sis?”

  Upside of it sounding all too familiar? She knew they thought Gabe worthy of a beloved sister. Downside? She asked, “So, you weren’t into him, or what happened?”

  Delaney glanced around. “We snuck off on a date once. Figured he had to be hiding some redeeming stuff somewhere, to make my brother all positive about him. Boy calls me picky.”

  “Well, Wendy’s a good one.”

  “Don’t I know it. She and he make me believe in true love. But none of that romance showed up with Gabe. Don’t let on we went out. It’s not worth the interrogation and the awkward.”

  “He’s not worth it?”

  Delaney shot him a dirty look. Chloe had all the confirmation she needed from his abrupt turn and retreat. “First thing he says when we’re alone is he doesn’t want me getting upset but he’s not the long-term type anymore. Did I propose we elope? I’m not down on bended knee before the drinks even arrive, so what’s with the preemptive strike? Ridiculous.

  “So what’d you have to say to that?”

  “Hell, girl, I walked out. What else?”

  They clinked beers. She had half a mind to ask more, but Mac claimed their attention. “Say cheese.”

  They smiled, obedient, brandishing pink-orange-red crawfish, and being blinded by his flash in return.

  “DeAndre McCann,” complained his sister.

  “Art comes at a price.”

  “I think the artist is the one meant to suffer, you brat. Not your poor subjects. You know how close I was to rubbing my eyes after that flash?”

  “Don’t do that. It would be a bad idea.”

  “No shit,” she said, but without too much venom in her voice. “You’re a menace to your entire party.”

  He took his cameras off to capture others bright smiling against the backdrops of dusky sky and colorful food. “I can see us being turned into tourist postcards as we eat.”

  Delaney snorted. “With a caption like: Crawdads in the Crescent City.”

  “N'awlins Nightlife.”

  “Laissez les bons temps rouler,” Delaney said, and they drained their beers before shouldering their way through the guests to grab more food.

  She ate her fill and kept herself from coming over all spice-rubbed, but never did manage to find out if Gabe’s antagonism with Delaney meant he just didn’t feel it with her, or if he made it a point to pick over every woman his landlords tossed his way like so much seasoned seafood.

  Chapter Four

  “See you tomorrow night?” Wendy asked as she packed empty lunch containers into her tote.

  “With bells on.”

  Wendy smirked, and Chloe added, “Not literal bells. I’m not that festive.”

  “Shame. I’ve got a jingle bell collar for Penny. You could match her.”

  Chloe smirked right back at her boss. “I bet that’s a relief for Mac, instead of the bow. Easier for those butterfingers of his.”

  “Don’t you worry about Mac’s fingers,” Wendy said. “He does just fine.”

  Chloe didn’t comment, because teasing was one thing, but Wendy was still her boss, and break room or not, they were still at work. Thinking of Penny’s slippery little bow, though, reminded her to ask, “Hey, do you still have that artist living in your back yard? Gabriel?”

  “Gabe. Yes, why? Are you planning to give him lessons in dexterity?” The unsubtle resume of all things Gabe had petered out over the months, but her boss seemed poised to restart her matchmaking engines.

  Chloe thought she just might not object. “No. I just have something of his.”

  Wendy nodded, a slow nod that Chloe knew well meant skepticism.

  “Stop it. He loaned me a shirt when dumbass Brandon spilled wine all over me. I need to return it.”

  Wendy wasn’t even wearing a watch, and it had been months, not hours, since Gabe had stripped the oxford off his back for her. Twelve months, to be exact. So Chloe didn’t need Wendy's fake checking of the time to remind her how long she’d kept the man from wearing his shirt.

  She’d intended to return it via Wendy after the New Year. Gotten it dry cleaned, no starch because to mess with the softness of the cotton would be a crime. And the day she’d hauled it in, crammed the wire hanger into her locker, Wendy went on vacation.

  After a couple of days, the plastic bag encasing the shirt seemed like it was suffocating her, flapping out to grab staticky hold of her every time she changed, or stashed her bag. So she took it back home. By the time of the anniversary party, she’d fallen for Wendy’s hints, and returning it would have deprived her of an excuse if they’d hit it off and she wanted to pursue him without her boss’s direct supervision. The impulse died at the boil, and a few weeks later, a perfect storm of chaos hit her. Getting her house in order ranked lower on her list than sleeping, eating, and watching every breath of a twenty-eight week birth who refused to let the lung therapies help him thrive. Once he’d made it home and she’d slept a dozen hours, nothing she owned was clean and warm enough for the sudden cool front. So she’d worn the green shirt. Which meant it had to be washed again. Which meant it was sitting in her near-empty closet the next time she got caught in a chaos loop. She’d let herself get used to the sight of it, hanging there all bold and green, a spring leaf against the clouds of her white shirts.

  So a year had passed, and she’d received the invite to Wendy and Mac’s holiday party, and sliding open her closet door didn’t reveal Gabe’s shirt as a pop of refreshing color, but as a pulse of accusation. Her excuses were no excuse. She would have to return it, and apologize, and take whatever comments he made about it.

  But not whatever comments Wendy made. “So he still lives there? He’ll be at the party?”

  “He will. You can bring back his shirt, with or without bells on. Are you bringing a date?”

  Was she insinuating? Wendy’s curiosity about her dating life echoed that of her siblings and friends in long-term relationships. Avid, but with an underlying smugness that whoever Chloe was seeing, no matter how fun and well-suited, she was missing out on the intense connections that
making a life with someone else builds.

  She had a twin. She knew all she needed to about connection. Who was the first person Ben called when Tara agreed to marry him? Chloe. When their son was born? Aunt Chloe. She had in-jokes and daily messages and a place she could turn up in the middle of the night and her favorite beer would be in the fridge, not because he kept it for her despite their living hundreds of miles apart, but because her favorite beer and Ben’s favorite beer had been identical since they were teenagers. So she didn’t need smug marrieds acting like she was missing out on anything.

  “No date. Not seeing anyone right now.”

  “What happened to what’s-his-name? Bumblebee?”

  “His name was Hornet, and if that’s your best joke about his name, I’m sad for you.”

  “Wasn’t going to say anything about his stinger.”

  “Wasn’t worth having anything said about it. He and I decided to part ways. He was in a fuss cause I wouldn’t take him back to Ben’s for Thanksgiving.”

  “Didn’t you two hook up at a Halloween party to start with?”

  “Yep.”

  Wendy shook her head. “Presumptuous ass.”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, I can’t say if Gabe’s involved right now or not. Want me to text you if he’s single?”

  “Wendy. Come on. I’m thirty-nine years old. Any notes I need passed to the cute boy in class, I’ll lob myself.”

  Ivy took his hand and set off towards the back yard. “Hey, hold up. I want to introduce you to Wendy.”

  She had this pursed lip thing she did. It was supposed to be a pout or a pucker, he thought, since she pulled the same face when flirting, but it always struck Gabe as petulant, not provocative.