Let the Good Times Roll Read online

  He was good in bed, and seemed to give a shit about her happiness, other than the social anxiety-induced commentary, so she’d been giving him a chance. A lot of chances. And somehow he interpreted that so meeting Wendy was significant, and not just the kind of thing that happens when you date someone during the holidays.

  She brushed a kiss to his cheek, and a fleck of dust from his jacket. “You’re handsome, and I don’t need you or Wendy to approve of each other, but I’m sure you’ll get along great.”

  He let his tense shoulders drop and smiled as the door opened.

  “Hey, y’all, come on in,” Mac said.

  She made introductions, and the men were polite, and she spotted Wendy in the kitchen holding Penny—in a Christmas-hued tartan cape-coat this year—so she hauled Peter to her boss’s side.

  Peter launched into a long explanation about the microbrewery where he’d picked up a growler for the party. Wendy was nodding along. Mac raised his eyebrows at her, and she stuck her tongue out. He disappeared toward the patio before his laugh could seem too pointed, thank goodness.

  They were dancing when Peter bumped into a woman who looked familiar. Chloe knew she wasn’t one of the Wendy crowd—those people were all her crowd by now—but couldn’t place her as one of Mac’s many friends. It seemed the woman knew her, though. Chloe suffered through a dismissive sneer before the woman twinkled up at Peter. “Best to watch those dance moves, sugar, or you’ll find yourself in trouble some day.”

  He laughed. “Your kind of trouble don’t seem like the type I’d be threatened by, darlin’.”

  Oh, they were pouring on the treacle charm, were they? She was gathering up her own best Southern manners when her phone buzzed. It was the hospital. When she returned to Peter on the dance floor, he was still chatting with the rude woman. Gabe was behind her, hands on her hips, and she remembered who Rude Lady was.

  Gabe dropped his hands and rounded Rude to give her a kiss, warm and firm on her cheek, a hand pressed to her waist. “Chloe. Merry Christmas.”

  “Gabriel. Nice shirt.”

  She couldn’t even spot her nail polish on it anymore, although he held up his cuff for examination. Greens and purples and way more oranges than she’d have guessed after seeing his canvases, splats and dabs and streaks sprinkled over the once-pristine white. It would make her giggle, if she were the giggling type.

  “I had a feeling you’d appreciate its festive nature. Ivy here was of the opinion I wasn’t suitably honoring the occasion, but Wendy swore up and down you’d be here and she and Mac wanted to hear how you liked it.”

  “You can report that I was overwhelmed by just how colorful you managed to make it.”

  “Dance this way with me, and tell them yourself.”

  “I can’t. I need to find—oh, there.” Peter was fussing with his tie just beyond her. “Hey, Peter. This is Ivy and Gabriel. Gabe lives in the outbuilding.”

  “Guesthouse.”

  “Garage, I think.”

  “It’s a fully outfitted artist’s studio,” interjected Ivy. “And Gabriel is not a guest, he’s a tenant.”

  “Well, you should check out his stuff if you can,” she told Peter. “There’s a spooky cypress scene in the dining room, or there was last time I was here. In Wendy's dining room, I mean. I don’t know what’s hanging in Gabe’s converted carport at the moment.” She shot a speculative look at him, making sure Ivy caught it, because the woman was plastering herself to Gabe’s side as if her thousand and three signals about the man being taken were unclear. Was she not there with a date of her own?

  Speaking of whom. “So, listen, that was the hospital. I’ve got a little one fighting her food, and we need to figure her out before she’s losing more than is going in. I’ve got to take off. Can you get home on your own? Stay here for a bit, the band’s great.”

  He nodded and looked around the crowds. She could hear his inner monologue, about gumbo and strangers and dancing—Ivy could lay claims on her man all she wanted; Chloe had seen the woman gyrating with Peter.

  “It’s fine. I’ll stick here a bit.” He turned to Gabe and Ivy. “I’m going to grab a beer. Can I get y’all anything?”

  She smiled like it was the most captivating offer she’d ever heard. “Aren’t you the sweetest? A glass of cabernet would be super, doll.”

  “You got it.”

  “Tell Mac and Wendy bye for me?” Chloe asked Gabe.

  “You got it.”

  “We’ll be sure to do that,” Ivy said. “You have a nice Christmas, now.”

  Not to be out-done in the man-claiming department, Chloe planted a kiss on Peter’s lips and murmured that she’d call him later.

  If Ivy thought that meant phone sex in between monitoring Baby Gloria’s stats, well, Ivy was an idiot. But that was no problem of hers.

  “Dance with me, babe.”

  Gabe kept his face at rest. He’d asked Ivy not to call him that, but she thought the rhyme with his name was adorable. It made him cringe. Darling, hon, cher, even baby: she could give him any other nickname, but she persisted with babe.

  “Hang on a sec. I’ll go tell Wendy Chloe had to go.”

  She slid her hand up his chest. “Oh, that can wait. It’s not like anyone needs to know where she is every second.”

  It wasn’t a bad point. They danced for a few.

  Mac and Wendy twirled by, showing off their two-step dip. Gabe lifted his chin at them, and when the song ended, led Ivy their way. After explaining about Chloe’s call, and reassuring Wendy that she hadn’t been wanted, he smiled at his date. “Wendy says Chloe handles the NG tubes better than anyone, but just watch, three minutes tops before she’s checking her phone for messages and calling into the nurses’ station just to check it out.”

  “Well, maybe she doesn’t think Doctor Chloe Ice Maiden is all knowing after all.”

  He slung an arm around her. “Nah. Wendy says Chloe’s hyper-dedicated. She has a way of fighting for those preemies, kind of encouraging them along somehow. I had no idea before talking to her about it how tenacious those little ones can be.”

  “I suppose Chloe says the same?”

  He shrugged. “Never talked to her about it. But Wendy says Chloe’s family lost a preemie when she was a kid, like ten or so, and that’s what got her interested in neonatology to start with.”

  “Sad. What else does Wendy say?”

  He looked down at her, but she made sure to appear captivated by the rhythm of Manny’s strummers on the washboard and wouldn’t catch his eye. “It is sad. I mean, damn, Ivy, we’re talking about a dead baby here. What’s eating you?”

  By dint of flicking her head, she managed to be looking his way even less than she had been. He leaned in to catch her words over everyone’s applause for the final song. “Wendy says Chloe is smart. Wendy says Chloe is compassionate. Wendy says Chloe has a sob story from her childhood.”

  He was nonplussed. “I mean, that’s just what she told me. I’ve got no reason to doubt her.”

  Ivy’s head flick this time ended with her direct stare at him. “Why are you wearing that ridiculous shirt? Why are you running off to tell Wendy the second Chloe gives you a message? How is it that every third thing you’ve said to me tonight is to relate some fascinating tidbit about Chloe that Wendy told you?”

  He coiled in his temper, set it to settle so he could think about his answer. Drawing her towards his door was easier now that the band had packed it in; five minutes earlier she’d have planted her feet on the patio, and not for nothing but Ivy had talked up seeing them perform tonight so much that he’d put off the break-up conversation they both knew was coming. “What I talk to my friends about is the real problem here, or is it something more?”

  “I think you were looking forward to seeing Chloe tonight.”

  “That’s a crime, to have a female friend?”

  Ivy snorted. “She’s no friend to you. No matter how many things Wendy told you about her, you’ve only seen her four time
s in your life, and half of those you were with me.”

  “You’ve been taking quite the inventory of my interactions with her.”

  “It seemed like it was my business to do so. Unless you have something to hide.”

  “One thing, I’m always honest with you, and you ought to know that by now. And another, if you can’t trust me so much that you’re checking up on someone I’ve met a handful of times, I don’t guess you trust me in the least. So that cheapens all that honesty I’ve laid at your feet.”

  She stomped one of those feet. They were pretty feet, and they danced real smooth, but he wasn’t going to keep chasing after them. “Okay. So. I can trust you, and no matter how obviously you pant after someone else, I can’t be bothered by it? Because you’re honest about your intentions towards her?”

  “I have no intentions towards Chloe Lee. I’m with you, ain’t I?”

  They’d made it inside his place, which was good because the raised voices weren’t so conducive to a fun holiday party. Also because when Ivy shook her head to deny their relationship, he could sink into his own familiar sofa and clam up like a mule. She clattered upstairs to grab her stuff from the loft, and he just watched as she retrieved her vodka from the freezer, dropped her toothbrush in the trash, disentangled her headphones from his sound system. It would be easier to paint without her singing sotto voce to whatever was thumping in her ears.

  “Okay, Mr. Gabriel Babineaux, I trust you’ll run off to make my goodbyes to Mac and Wendy with as much fervor as you did for your dear-heart Chloe the White. Tell them thanks for inviting me, and maybe I’ll see them around.”

  “You can tell them yourself, if you want. Go enjoy yourself, have some catfish and gumbo. I won’t follow you around.”

  “Oh, we all know you’ll hide here in your cave now I’m gone as well. You have yourself a merry little solitary lonely Christmas, Gabe. Thanks for not pitching fits and making this drawn out.”

  He shrugged. “Same.”

  She stared at him like she expected more. Tears or negotiations or the suggestion of goodbye sex. He wasn’t in the mood for any of it.

  Tossing the spare key towards his lap, she rolled her eyes, pivoted, and went right out the door.

  Once he had some time to think it over, he figured he’d work up some sorrow. Until then, he stared down at his arms crossed in front of his chest, tracing mental dot-to-dots on the paint and nail polish splatters on his once-white shirt.

  Chapter Seven

  “Gabe. Where y’at?”

  “All right, man. You?”

  Yori Hinds enveloped him in a hug bigger than the man’s frame would suggest. It was a Yori thing: rampant enthusiasm. Gabe first met him when he was advertising for studio artists to come in and talk at his intro painting classes, back when he taught at the community college. Yori did small-scale shadow boxes, and he came into the classroom pushing a rolling toolbox almost as tall he was. He proceeded to captivate the students with forty-five minutes of verbal pyrotechnics and visual prestidigitation. The toolbox held tiny nails and hammers, miniature lighting rigs, wire and pliers, paints and fabrics, wood scraps. By the end of his demonstration, he’d constructed a new piece, which the students passed from hand to greedy hand. Yori left the box with Gabe, who displayed it in the classroom until he left the place. It now rested on a shelf in his living area.

  He’d been off on one of his collection expeditions, but returned just as Mac’s show was opening in a Royal Street gallery. A bunch of the usual crowd was there, which meant shaking hands and catching up on news as soon as the doors opened.

  “Hey, point me at Wendy.”

  Gabe surveyed the space. It felt intimate, thanks to dark ceilings and a wall of soft red brick, which fell to crumbles if not reinforced with lime. New Orleans clay was notorious for its poor quality, but the building had stood, squeezed between its neighbors, for decades. Two bow windows at the front and an office alcove at the back obscured his view, but he spotted the back of Wendy’s straight bob as the crowd shifted. “Over there?”

  “Where now? Don’t play tall man games with me. I need some specific mapping to get anywhere in this crush.”

  Gabe ducked his head, a holdover from the days when his brother pestered him to go out for the basketball team. He wasn’t even all that tall, but he’d been blessed with a growth spurt in middle school that meant all kinds of notoriety when all he wanted was to work on his art. The only thing his early height had done for him was make it easier to run fast if he was worried about getting caught when he was out with his spray paints. “She’s just gone over towards the front door, talking with Manny.”

  “Superb. She promised to introduce me to someone. I’m going to hook myself up to a gravy train like Mac did.”

  “Like Mac did what?” the man himself asked, coming up behind Yori.

  “Great show! This shit’s gorgeous.”

  “Thanks, Yori. Glad you made it. What kind of train did you call my wife?”

  Yori blushed, which was so adorable Gabe wanted to snap a pic so he could tease him about it forever. “Hey, you know I respect all you’ve done. You earned this.” He nodded at the sign welcoming everyone to view new prints by DeAndre McCann.

  Mac crossed his arms.

  “And also, you earned the love of your fine, professionally remunerative wife. Who knows some other doctor longing to date a creative soul such as my own, and who said I would make an excellent candidate.”

  Gabe’s chest was tightening, but damned if he was going to show it. Wendy wanted to set Chloe up with someone, no problem. Maybe she’d thought Ivy still had a stranglehold on him. Maybe Chloe’d specified “any artist but Gabriel.” Maybe there was some aspect of Chloe he hadn’t seen, something repellent to Wendy, so she was protecting him from the woman. That excuse meant he had to imagine Wendy willing to embroil Yori in a toxic relationship, but sure.

  Mac released Yori from making any more stumbling excuses and shepherd him over to make a love connection instead. Being tall enough to see over many of the heads between them, Gabe witnessed the hugs, the animated jabber, the display of a phone pic. Mr. Miniaturist himself, Yori took Wendy’s phone and zoomed in. Gabe wished him luck finding some detail or flaw to discredit Chloe. Except that they had a bit of an age difference, and nothing about Chloe’s age was something to fuss about, likely they were perfect for each other.

  Yori didn’t grow all over with greenbrier vines as soon as someone offered faint praise of his work. He worked with all those tiny materials, so he’d come to Chloe with some sort of innate understanding of her doctoring of the littlest people alive. He liked to hug. Chloe seemed as if she would be a woman who liked a good, solid hug.

  If Wendy didn’t consider him capable of delivering a hug, it didn’t have to make him chafe. Helping himself to a plastic cup of over-chilled white wine, he made his way to a group of friends who’d never once opined about his suitability as a romantic partner.

  Chapter Eight

  "Chloe, come tell Gabe he needs to do this."

  "Do what?"

  "The mural."

  She's just arrived at the party, hadn't even checked out Penny's annual holiday costume. The Yorkie was in hiding, or being carried around by someone else, or lost in the crowd.

  Wendy, though, was right there on the patio, the red brick underfoot, twinkle lights above, a rare nip of ice in the December New Orleans air. Chloe mentally snuggled down into the chunky cable-knit turtleneck she was wearing. It was, of course, white. Wendy had opted for the traditional ugly Christmas sweater. Gabriel Babineaux was in blue. It was the kind of periwinkle that made his hair look almost red under the holiday lights.

  He wasn't looking festive, though. His lips were compressed, eyebrows drawn. His arms were crossed and thanks to the way Wendy had turned to include her into the conversation, he was hulking behind her, almost menacing. Not that there was anything the least menacing about his average appearance—he held too much intrinsic interiority and wo
nderment.

  "You don't want to do the mural?" she asked. Never mind what she thought, it seemed like a good gig for anyone. The children's wing's renovated family room was a blank canvas. Blank wall, to be exact. Someone had to paint something on it, so why wouldn't Wendy's backyard painter be in consideration? Made sense to her.

  Gabriel shrugged. "It seems fine enough a project. I'm just telling Wendy not to be giving me any special consideration."

  "Is it special consideration for you to consult with the chief of neonatology about what she considers a good look for the space? I'll talk to any of the interested artists. Already did, to be honest here. Damn upstart cornered me coming out of the cafeteria. So I'm not giving you any advantage anyone else could have."

  "What'd you tell the upstart?"

  Wendy waved him off. "To read the bid request and remember it needs to be a room for refuge as well as comfort. The usual."

  Gabe turned to Chloe. "Maybe I should be asking your advice. I'm imagining you have a clearer opinion about it all."

  “Are you always this reluctant a salesman? If you don’t want to do it, don’t bid. If you do, I’m sure you’re more than qualified. Offer a fair price and see what happens.”

  “Your high opinion is noted.”

  “Oh, what do I know? Don’t rely on me for praise, you already know I don’t say the right things about your painting. I’m sure what the mural committee cares about is if you’re on time and don’t make a huge mess and give them back the room on schedule.”