Jezebel's Blues (24 page)

Twenty feet from the door, Celia paused, clutching her stomach. All around her were cars with license plates from all over the South, Louisiana to North Carolina. A crowd spilled outside, white and black, young and old, every single one of them dressed to the nines.

“What’s wrong?” Laura asked, stopping in concern.

“I had no idea he was so famous,” Celia whispered, a nervous wavering in her belly.

Laura smiled and lifted one careless eyebrow. “Now you know.”

Celia took a deep breath, her mind a kaleidoscopic whirl as she saw hordes of paparazzi of a dozen European cities on the sidewalks. She remembered getting a black eye from the elbow of an overeager photographer once. Jet set. That had been her parents.

This was a completely different kind of crowd. There was an almost palpable aroma of anticipation of the music that was coming, a fervid excitement. And Eric, her Eric, had put it all together.

Shortly after his return to Gideon, he had spent several days engaged in secret errands. Finally, with his plans firmly in motion, he revealed his idea.

And for weeks he’d thrown himself into the preparations for this night, the grand opening of his blues club. Celia smiled to herself. All the suppressed energy she had sensed in him came out as he made dozens of phone calls, ordering supplies, and chairs and tables, calling musicians he knew, who knew others, who agreed it was time for a major blowout.

“I’ve never even seen him perform,” Celia said helplessly.

Laura laughed. “Oh, honey. You love him now.” She grabbed her arm. “Just wait.”

The club had been given a fresh coat of whitewash and a sign outside proclaimed its name proudly. Inside, a bevy of bartenders poured beer from taps and clacked ice into glasses, and a flurry of waitresses tried to keep up with orders. A ripple of excitement rushed through Celia.

Just as the three women took their seats, the first cluster of musicians ambled onto the stage. The young man Celia had seen at Eric’s house picked up a guitar, and the reed-thin old sax player grinned at him. A piano player Celia didn’t know sat down. The crowd started to cheer and holler and whoop, its excitement drowning out the sounds of the warm-up from the stage.

At last Eric came forward, smiling easily as he lifted a hand. Celia felt her stomach flip over. She clutched her fists in her lap. This was the real Eric, the man she had seen lurking in the magnetic charisma that was nearly too large to be contained in even this big room.

And everyone knew it. There were genuine screams as he bent over the microphone—piercing whistles and roaring from both men and woman. He started to talk, but was drowned out. With a wry half smile, he glanced at James.

Lost in the audience, Celia stared at Eric. He wore his simple uniform of jeans and boots and a chambray shirt. His hair was too long, but it gave him just the right aura of rakishness to go along with his heart-stopping smile.

When the crowd showed no signs of settling down, he bent over the mike and whistled back. “Hush, y’all, or we’ll never get to anything.”

In a daze Celia heard him introduce the various blues greats who would be singing and playing this evening. He thanked Gideon, to more shouts and hollers, and promised the town would be a center of the blues if he had anything to do with it.

Then he stepped back, winked at James, and they eased into the first song.

Celia recognized the notes instantly. They were the same ones Eric had played in her attic the night they had talked of his childhood. Woven in were the bits and pieces she had heard him playing on Laura’s porch, the melancholy notes that called up visions of lonely graveyards.

Eric played the harmonica on the intro, then bent his head and began to sing.

It was a song about a man, restless and hungry, who traveled far away from home; about a man who sought the truth of his life, over and over, and never found it because the truth was left behind in a little town by a river that sang magical songs. It was lyrical and mythical and folksy, like all good blues.

It was the story of Jacob Moon. As Celia met Eric’s eyes, watching him through a blur of tears, she thought it was the finest tribute her father could have had—a blues song written in his honor. It made her cry. Laura squeezed Celia’s hand. Celia looked up to see that Laura’s eyes were filled with tears, as well. “I never thought he’d play again, Celia,” Laura said, and she wetly kissed Celia’s cheek.

When Eric finished, he smiled across the room. Celia shook her head and raised her hands to clap with the rest of the crowd, even stuck her fingers into her mouth and whistled, smiling in pride at him.

“Before we move on, I’d like y’all to meet somebody.” He lifted his hand and gestured toward Celia. “Come on up here, sugar.”

Celia blushed and widened her eyes at him, warningly, shaking her head infinitesimally.

He grinned at the crowd. “She’s shy.” He jumped off the stage and cut straight through the tables to her, amid chuckles and shouts and whistles of approval.

Celia set her jaw and vowed silently to kill her husband when she got him home. His laughing eyes told her he knew it and that he’d welcome the tussle. He grabbed her hand and tugged her to her feet. “This beautiful ray of sunshine is my wife, and you have her to thank for this night.” He looked at Celia, his eyes shining. His voice dropped to a more sober note. “Because if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be here.”

And right there, in front of hundreds of people, in front of Laura and Lynn, who were cheering along with everyone else, he kissed her.

Celia swallowed, flushing as the crowd clapped with enthusiasm.

“Now I’m going to get out of the way and let some other folks play.” He nodded toward James. “I have to dance with my woman.”

James fell into a song Celia recognized as Eric pulled her from the stage to join others beginning to mill out onto the floor for a slow dance.

He took her in his arms. “Remember this song?”

Celia nodded. “You walked out on it the last time.”

’’Jezebel’s Blues,’” he said. “It was the first song I wrote.” He pulled her close. “Thank you for giving it back to me.”

Celia smiled. “It wasn’t me that gave it back.”

His clear, untroubled eyes met hers. For a moment they were puzzled, then he grinned in understanding. “I guess we owe old Jezebel quite a bit, don’t we?”

“You owe her another song, I think,” Celia said.

He pushed her head into the crook of his shoulder. “I’ll write her a whole ream of songs.”

Celia just settled close, feeling his voice humming through his chest, hearing the celebration of the blues in the tapping feet and hazy pictures dancing all over the room.

“I love you,” she whispered, and knew she meant the blues and Gideon and the river, but most of all her precious, beautiful drifter, whose loneliness was gone forever.

The notes of the music drifted out the door to mingle with the song of the river, who sang peacefully between her banks, mollified. A bright sign shone over the door of the club, and its reflection shimmered in her dark waters.

Jezebel’s.

~~###~~

For the blue-eyed, gorgeous, legendary Putmans; especially Madoline O'’eal Putman, who gave me the magic of Texas in her stories. Thanks, Grandma.

BARBARA SAMUEL O'NEAL

Barbara Samuel (also known as Barbara O’Neal) is the bestselling author of more than 40 books, and has won Romance Writers of America’s RITA award an astounding six times, and she has been a finalist 13 times. Her books have been published around the world, including France, Germany, Italy, and Australia/New Zealand, among others. One of her recent women’s fiction titles,
The Lost Recipe for Happiness
(written as Barbara O’Neal) went back to print eight times, and her book
How to Bake a Perfect Life
was a Target Club pick in 2011.

Whether set in the turbulent past or the even more challenging present, Barbara’s books feature strong women, families, dogs, food, and adventure—whether on the road or toward the heart.

Now living in her hometown of Colorado Springs, Barbara lives with her partner, Christopher Robin, an endurance athlete, along with her dog and cats. She is an avid gardner, hiker, photographer and traveler who loves to take off at dawn to hike a 14er or head to a faraway land. She loves to connect with readers and is very involved with them on the Internet.

You may read more about Barbara’s books at her main website, find her at her A Writer Afoot blog and on Facebook. She also blogs regularly at The Lipstick Chronicles.

Visit Barbara on the Web!

www.BarbaraSamuel.com
www.AWriterAfoot.com
www.BarbaraONeal.com

~~~

Please enjoy excerpts of some of Barbara's other Books:

Excerpt: A Minute to Smile
Excerpt: Breaking the Rules
Excerpt: In The Midnight Rain
Excerpt: Light of Day
Excerpt: Walk in Beauty
Excerpt: Rainsinger
Excerpt: Summer's Freedom
Excerpt: The Last Chance Ranch

Additional titles, including those from other genre, are listed at the end of the excerpts or click
HERE
to jump there.

Barbara is very active writing new books and converting her backlist into eBooks. To find the most up to date information, please visit her website.

(Excerpt)

by
Barbara Samuel

Prologue

F
rom the window seat in his tiny office, Alexander Stone could see a great portion of the university campus. The big, multi-paned window was the one redeeming feature of the stuffy room, located high in a tower, and today the view acted as a balm on his aching heart. Trees branched out in feathery green, waving their slender topmost branches into a vivid Colorado sky. Beyond the sprawling campus, dusty blue foothills surrounded the city of Boulder like brawny sentinels.

Alexander’s gaze was focused below, upon the whirling reds and russets and wines of a festival sponsored by the history club each year. The sound of medieval flutes and harps floated through his open window, mingled with the laughter and catcalls of the students below.

He watched the quadrangle for a long time. As usual, everyone had thrown themselves into the preparations for the fair—a great many of them his students. He had been among them until an hour ago, when the sense of his own isolation had driven him upstairs to this quiet room. Once, he had enjoyed the bustle and noise, but that had been back in the days when he’d had someone to share it with. Now the fair seemed like just another obligation to fulfill.

Obligations. He eyed the stack of final exams on his desk, but the thought of wading through them held absolutely no appeal.

Picking up a pair of binoculars he kept in the office to examine the birds that often sang outside the window, he scanned the high branches and was rewarded with the sight of a shiny black crow alighting briefly on a branch before it swooped down toward a knot of discarded food on the sidewalk. Alexander watched the bird descend almost dizzily, snag the food and sail away.

Through the binoculars, he caught sight of a group of his students who were singing a rousing—and no doubt bawdy—song in front of a hedge. He smiled to himself. Farther on was a fellow professor, sprawled against a tree, eating chicken. A pair of dark-haired children chased one another in the grass. Handsome lads, he thought distractedly, moving his binoculars a little farther.

He paused as a woman came into view, no doubt the mother of the two little boys. The vivid yellow of her blouse caught his eye, a yellow impossibly at odds with the cloud of pale red hair skimming her bared shoulders. Those colors should never have worked together, he thought.

But they did. He admired the bold combination for a moment, and found his eyes sweeping the flawless, milk white of the woman’s skin. Generous breasts and hips balanced the roundness of her arms. As he watched, she laughed robustly, then reached out to snag one of the children, affectionately tumbling him into her lap to nibble his neck and tickle his ribs. There was a vividness about the woman, about the vibrant love spilling out from her that stirred Alexander deeply.

As the small boy giggled helplessly against his mother, Alexander felt a wistfulness move through him, a pinch of hunger he’d not felt in a long time. He watched the woman kiss her child almost reverently, then hold out an arm to the other boy, who sank next to her, his face flushed.

All three of them simply sat there for a moment, spent with the festival, dappled by the speckled shade that fell through the branches of an oak tree. Alexander felt the restless stirring within him grow and ache for an instant before he could push it away. He threw down his glasses and turned away from the window, shedding the mantle he’d worn for the festival in favor of his street clothes. There was no restlessness, no pain that a good round of combat in the dojo couldn’t cure.

One

E
sther Lucas was running late. As usual. This afternoon, it was for a typical reason. She’d been unable to find the boys’
gis
, which turned out to be exactly where she’d put them—folded in a neat stack on the dryer. It was the towels folded on top of them that had thrown her off.