Acadian Waltz (7 page)

“Nora,” John
called. “Bring me some more coffee when you bring the toast.”

I looked at him
huddled over his plate of food and smiled. “Sure, John.”

In an instant I
had gone from sexy morning after girl to waitress, and that was the first moment
I became acquainted with the little nagging feeling deep within the pit of my
stomach; a small, burning sensation known to appear when the heart and the head
begin to disagree.

*     *     *

After John left,
I tried to go back to sleep, but my mind was spinning with questions about our
night together. Just when I was getting a little drowsy, my cell phone rang. I
sat up in bed and glanced over at the clock.

“Who would be
calling at six in the morning?” I muttered as I reached for the cell phone on
my nightstand.

“Hello?” I said,
secretly hoping John was on the other end of the line.

“Nora?” The
smooth voice sounded familiar, but I could not place it. “It’s Jean Marc
Gaspard. I need you to come to Hammond Hospital right away. Your uncle’s had an
accident.”

My heart
trembled with fear. “What, what is it?”

“He’s all right.
Just a sprained ankle,” Jean Marc went on quickly, sensing my distress. “He
fell at his house and called me.” He paused again and I could hear him sigh.
“He was really drunk, and they’re asking me a lot of questions I can’t answer.
Can you come?”

“I’m on my way,”
I answered, throwing off my covers.

“I’ll tell
them,” Jean Marc affirmed.

“And, ah, Jean
Marc.” I paused and my throat tightened. “Thank you for calling me.”

*     *     *

I was running
through the emergency room entrance to Hammond Hospital when I spotted Jean
Marc. He appeared as if he had just climbed out of bed, complete with a very
wrinkled white T-shirt and rumpled pair of old jeans.

“I called as
soon as the doctors told me what was going on.” His features looked stern and
cold as usual. “Jack didn’t want me to call you, but I knew you’d want to be
here.”

I scanned the
empty emergency room waiting area. “Where is he?”

Jean Marc gently
placed his rough, callused hand on my elbow and motioned past the waiting area
to a wide red door with “Exam Rooms” printed across it. “The doctors need to
speak to you about something they found,” he mentioned as we approached the
front desk. “They had to do blood work when he came in, Nora. They found out
his liver is in bad shape.”

I closed my eyes
and pushed down the scream that was climbing its way up my throat.

Jean Marc put
his arm around my shoulders. “They said he needs more tests. I told them you’re
in the medical field and the only family that gives a damn about him, so they
want to talk to you.” He pulled me alongside of him as we walked through the
red door to the exam rooms. “It’s all right, Nora,” he whispered to me. “I’m
right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Jean Marc’s
presence gave me courage. I found it remarkable that a man I had previously
detested insisted on being there for me. But then I reminded myself that Jean
Marc was my uncle’s friend and employer. I chalked up his dedication to nothing
more than polite concern, but the way his arm felt about my shoulders was
eliciting an entirely different response from me. I quickly shrugged off the
funny tingle in my stomach as indigestion. Over-cooked scrambled eggs, nervous
tension about my uncle, and lingering doubts about my night with John had
overloaded my system. What else could it be? I figured the unusual sensation
would soon be gone and I would have nothing to worry about. I forced the
unsettling tickle out of my mind and focused on my uncle’s situation.

*     *     *

The sun was just
coming up over the horizon by the time Jean Marc and I were escorting Uncle
Jack from the emergency room entrance. Uncle Jack had been given a pair of
crutches, and a splint covered his right ankle. Jean Marc walked closely beside
him, making sure he did not crash to the ground as he struggled to keep the
crutches underneath him.

“Goddamned
doctors,” Uncle Jack cursed as he hobbled to my car. “Never trust the bastards,
Nora. Always tryin’ to find problems where none exist. Killed your Aunt Elise
that way. They tested her to death.”

“Uncle Jack,
Aunt Elise died of a stroke because she didn’t take care of her high blood
pressure.” I sighed as I fumbled to get the keys from my purse. “This is
something different. You heard the doctor. You have to have further tests to
find out how bad your liver is, and you need to cut back on the drinking.”

“Non! Jamias! I
didn’t want to come here ’cept that this bon rein dragged me here.” He nodded
to Jean Marc.

“I didn’t know
how bad you had hurt yourself, Jack,” Jean Marc admitted in his reserved way.
“I had to bring you here, for liability reasons.”

“Bullshit!”
Uncle Jack barked.

“Enough!” I
shouted. “Uncle Jack, get in the car.” I pointed to the door of my Honda.

My uncle glared
at me, but he said nothing while Jean Marc opened the door for him. Uncle Jack
settled into the front seat while Jean Marc placed his crutches in the back
seat.

“Thank you for
everything,” I said to Jean Marc.

“No problem,” he
mumbled as he shut the back passenger side door.

I motioned to my
uncle. “I appreciate what you did for him today. It was kind of you to bring
him here and stay with him. You really didn’t have to, but you did, and I’m
grateful.”

He lowered his
eyes. “Like I said, there was a question of liability. He’s my employee and I
felt responsible for him.”

I shook my head,
feeling more than a little frustrated with the man. “You know, it wouldn’t kill
you to be nice to me for once, Jean Marc.”

He raised his
eyes to me. “Nice to you? I’ve always been nice to you. I try and go out of my
way to be nice to you.” He waved his hand at me. “You’re the one who is
always….” He stopped and looked around the parking lot. “Forget it, Nora. Take
your uncle home. I’ll see if I can find someone to stay with him tonight.”

“I’ll stay with
him,” I told him, walking around to the other side of my car. “You needn’t
bother.”

“You know, Nora,
despite what you may think, I do care about people around here, whether they
work for me or not. I don’t hold thirty-five-year old grudges, and I most certainly
would like it if we could at least be civil to each other.”

My mouth fell
open slightly as I gawked at him across the top of my car. “Civil? How do you
expect me to be civil with you when every time I see you I feel like you’re
about to chew me up and spit me out?”

He ran his hand
through his wavy, black hair. “That has never been my intention. We were so
close once when we were young. Why can’t we be that way now?”

“That was a long
time ago, Jean Marc. We have both lived very different lives since them.”

“Do you think we
could at least try to be friends?” he softly asked.

I instantly felt
very foolish. Here I was arguing like a child with a man who had come to the
aid of my uncle. I cast my eyes shamefully to the ground.

“Well, obviously
not,” I heard him say.

When I raised my
head, he had his back to me and was beginning to walk away.

“Jean Marc,” I
called out. I saw him stop and arch his back for a moment before he turned to
me. “I’m sorry. You’re right. We seem to have always been at odds with each
other over the past few years. For my uncle’s sake, I promise to try and be
friendlier to you in the future, all right?”

For the first
time, he smiled at me. Not a simple easy going grin, but a great smile that lit
up his face and seemed to warm him from within. My stomach did an uneasy flip
as I absorbed that smile. What in the hell was wrong with me? The man only
brought out the worst in me, but at that moment something stirred within me. It
was an uncomfortable sort of feeling that I was not quite sure how to
interpret.

“I’m glad to
hear it. Jack will be pleased.” Jean Marc’s dark eyes lingered on my face.
“I’ll see you again, Nora.”

When I climbed
into the car, Uncle Jack nodded to Jean Marc’s figure, heading toward the
emergency room entrance.

“What did you
say to him?”

“Nothing,” I
replied as I started the engine.

“Well, whatever
it was, it sure must have been somethin’,” Uncle Jack proposed as he fidgeted
with his splint. “Haven’t seen that boy smile like that since…I can’t remember
when.”

*     *     *

The next day, a
dozen yellow roses arrived at my office in a large green vase.

Steve smirked as
he carried the roses into my office and ceremoniously placed them on my desk.
“Slept with him, eh? How was he?”

I put the chart
I had been reading to the side and inspected the roses. “I don’t kiss and tell,
Steve,” I pronounced, and plucked the small white envelope from the bouquet. I
was going to open it, but decided to wait until I was alone.

“Must not have
been that great, otherwise you’d be blushing.” Steve waved at the roses.
“Anyway, it’s a classic post first-time-in-bed-move to send flowers.” He ran
his fingers over the yellow buds. “Means he wants more sex. If he didn’t send
flowers then the sex wasn’t so great, and you would never see him again.”

I sat back in my
desk chair and stared at him. “Am I missing something here? Some unpublished
phantom handbook that floats around on the particular elements of dating? You
and my mother keep quoting these rules to me.”

“Ah, you must
have told Claire about him. Now it will get interesting. Did she ask you to
bring him over for dinner yet?”

I grimaced with
apprehension. “Not yet.”

Steve laughed, a
loud sounding cackle that filled my small office. “She will!” 

“I don’t know if
I’m up for that.” I paused as I inhaled the sweet aroma of the roses. “Knowing
Mother, she’ll probably scare him away.”

“Hell, Claire
will probably abduct him.” He took in my concerned frown. “Don’t look so
worried, Nora. If he’s serious, he’ll want to meet her.”

“How do you know
that?”

He shrugged.
“All men approach dating the same way, and meeting the future in-laws is always
a serious step. Except it’s a much bigger deal to women.”

“How would you
know what women are like?”

He waved his
hand dramatically in the air. “I went with girls in high school. Where I came
from in Mississippi, no one even knew what a homosexual was, let alone how to
act like one. So, I started out with girls, but when I was ready I switched to
men.”

“When did you
decide you were ready? Do all men have some unwritten schedule when it comes to
dating? When to date someone, when to sleep with them, when to get serious?”

Steve gave a
heartfelt laugh. “That’s silly, Nora.” He started toward my office door. “The
only people I know who do stuff like that either need medication or are already
on it,” he added over his shoulder.

After Steve shut
my door, I took the white envelope out of my hand and opened it.

“Sorry I was
such an ass. I apologize, and hope we can be friends.” The card was signed Jean
Marc Gaspard.

I had to read
the note twice to make sure I was not hallucinating.

“Great, just
great.” I slapped the card down on my desk. This was completely unexpected.
Then, another thought crossed my mind. Why didn’t John send flowers?

I picked up the
phone and pressed the intercom button to Steve’s desk.

“Miss me
already?” he said into the intercom.

“Steve, see if
you can find the number for a Gaspard Fisheries in Manchac,” I stated, still
looking at the flowers on my desk.

“Why, are we
having a crawfish boil or somethin’?”

“No.”

“Then why do you
need the number?” he persisted.

“Because the
owner of Gaspard Fisheries, Jean Marc Gaspard, is the one who sent me the
flowers.”

There was
silence on the other end of the line, and then my office door flew open.

“Who in the hell
is Jean Marc Gaspard? Have you been keeping another man from me, Nora?” Steve
called from my doorway.

I gave an
exasperated sigh. “He’s an old family friend, not a man in my life.”

Steve stared me
down with his intimidating blue eyes. “And I’m straight.” He took a step inside
my office. “So who is he?”

I sat back in my
chair. “A friend…no, not a friend, more like an adversary. He and I never got
along well, except when I was little. He used to watch over me when I was
younger.” I waved a dismissive hand at him. “But that was a long time ago.”

“Obviously his
feelings haven’t changed.” Steve nodded to the flowers. “Is he cute?”

“Cute?” I shook
my head. “I don’t know. He’s dark and moody. He always seems to be in a foul
temper, and talks to me like I’m eight years old. Oh, and the way he looks at
me, it’s as if I have the plague. And he’s always got—”

“Nora.” Steve
rolled his eyes at me. “You’re in trouble.”

I furrowed my
brow at my secretary. “What makes you say that?”

He grinned at
me. “The doctor never got you this hot and bothered.”

“I’m not hot and
bothered. I’m aggravated,” I corrected.

Steve snickered.
“Darlin’, for you it’s the same thing.” Then he quietly pulled the office door
closed behind him.

*     *     *

It took three
different transfers on the phone with Gaspard Fisheries to finally get through
to Jean Marc’s offices. I was about to give up after holding on the line for
several minutes, when I suddenly heard a smooth, deep voice come over the
speaker of my cell phone.

“Gaspard here,”
he said in his usual brisk, businesslike tone.

“Jean Marc, it’s
Nora Kehoe.”

There was a
moment of silence. “You got them,” he whispered.

“Yes, thank you,
but it was not—”