ONCE SHE’D CALMED DOWN, Brianna, who was no longer in the kitchen, had reminded Bastien of one of those old Hitchcock movie blondes. Like Grace Kelly. Cool and calm in a crisis.
Desiree, on the other hand, sticking with the ‘50s/’60s movie theme, was more Natalie Wood. He’d always found her more stunning than the girl-next-door, with an undercurrent of recklessness and sensuality humming beneath the surface that her strict and proper New Orleans Catholic French upbringing usually kept hidden. Until she was onstage. Or, he thought, as bittersweet memories caused both his body and his heart to ache, in bed.
“What are you doing here?” she asked as she finally put the possible weapon down on the counter.
“I came to see you.”
What else could have brought him to this small, quaint town that was nothing like Paris? Nor New Orleans. He found it interesting that she’d kept her singing career a secret from a woman who appeared to be a friend. Bastien had always known that of the two of them, she could have been the true star. But she’d given up her chance for fame to bake croissants and, apparently, wedding cakes. He’d stopped by her bakery on the way here, where a young woman had sent him to this house. The boulangerie had matched her personality. Tidy and organized, as baking required, yet the desserts in the window and glass display case were lovely, even sensual, and enticing. Just like her.
“How did you find me?” She made it sound as if he’d discovered her in the witness protection program. Nor did she seem at all happy to see him. Bastien could have taken that as a sign he stood no chance of winning her back, but he had always been an optimist. He decided that there’d be no reason for her to put up that protective wall if she weren’t susceptible to being won over.
“Well, I could have Googled you, but decided that could be considered a bit stalkerish, so I simply asked your father.”
“You asked Papa? I don’t understand. Did you call him all the way from Paris to ask, ‘Hey, Augustin, where can I find your daughter? I know you’ve always believed she’s much too good for me, but I want to see her.’”
He found it interesting that she knew he’d been living in Paris. True, he did appear in music magazines like Rolling Stone and on various entertainment shows, from time to time, and had even written a song for a Disney movie, but perhaps she’d occasionally checked up on him. As he admittedly had her.
“No, I asked him where to find you while having coffee and beignets at the Cafe du Monde, which is admittedly touristy, but nevertheless, they do make great beignets. And it’s conveniently near the French Market where we both happened to be shopping for greens, boudin and shrimp.”
Her eyes—a vivid clear blue of the Caribbean Sea that contrasted so sharply with tawny skin that was a beautiful blend of her Creole father and islander mother—widened. They’d always had a way of focusing in on you as if you were the only person in the room. He wasn’t the only man to get lost in those thickly lashed eyes. He’d witnessed audience members react the same way when, after looking for an individual to sing directly to, she’d single one out.
“What were you doing at the market?”
“Like I said, shopping... I’ve been living in New Orleans for the past two years.”
“But, I was visiting Papa just a few months ago and he never said a thing.”
“I doubt he wanted to encourage a reunion. Also, I asked him not to.”
“Why? Were you still angry about me leaving? Not just about having broken up the band, but after that night in Paris, two years later?”
After playing a gig in Madrid, he’d taken a train to Paris, where he knew she should be finishing up her two years of culinary training. Bastien called the number he’d never gotten out of his head, suggesting they meet for coffee at a café not far from the school. They hadn’t bothered with the coffee, but had instead gone straight to his balcony room at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée, which by then he could almost afford.
They’d been drinking champagne on the balcony when he’d sung her the song he’d written just that morning, about the love of a man for a woman, and the loss Bastien knew was going to break his heart.
Afterward, they’d made love in the deep soaker tub that had a perfectly framed view of the Eiffel Tower, and then went on to spend the night making up for all the time lost since she’d left the band. The next morning, they’d shared a continental breakfast in bed. As if it were yesterday, he could picture her plucking an elegant, golden crusty croissant from the basket, biting into it, intently studying it as if preparing for the Superior Pastry Certificate she’d only just achieved at Paris’s Le Cordon Bleu school.
“I could make a better one,” she’d decided. “But the hint of almond admittedly marries well with the buttery flavor.” She’d held it out to him, inviting him to take a bite.
“I’d rather take a bite of you,” he’d said, nevertheless tasting the croissant because he’d never been able to deny Desiree anything. “Good,” he’d decided. “But not as tasty as my angel.” Putting their mimosa glasses on the table beside the bed, he’d pulled her down on top of him.
Bastien suspected, from the way Desiree’s gaze moved from his to out the French doors of the cottage toward the garden, that she too was remembering those golden twenty-four hours. After breakfast, they’d wandered the streets of Paris, had lunch at a little bistro next to the Seine before going up into the Eiffel Tower to look out over the city, which was in full, glorious spring bloom. At the end of the sun-brightened day, the flowers he’d bought her from a small stand outside the Jardin de Tuileries still in hand, she’d boarded a night flight to New York City. She was going to work for the man who’d go on to be named the best pastry chef in the world. Bastien had stayed behind in Paris, having decided to use the city for his home base.
“I wasn’t angry about you leaving the band,” he said, bringing both his mind and the conversation back to the present. “Truthfully, I was surprised you stayed as long as you did. Every morning of those five years we toured, I’d wake up thinking, ‘This will be the day Desiree leaves.’ I understood that you did what you had to do. For yourself and your career. And I’ve done okay for myself going solo.”
“You’ve done more than okay. You truly are a star.”
He shrugged. “It’s a living. I’m not going to lie and say it didn’t hurt, watching your plane fly away, off to New York, but the same way we were destined to first meet, I consoled myself with the knowledge that eventually we’d meet again when the time was right, and stay together forever.”
A dark brow lifted over those expressive eyes, which had begun to spark with a bit of temper he’d always enjoyed uncovering. “You were that sure of yourself?”
“No. I was that sure of us,” Bastien said mildly. “Unfortunately, due to contractual concert agreements, I couldn’t follow you to New York. Also, if you want me to be perfectly honest—”
“Of course I do.”
“All right. The truth was that I didn’t know how many more chances we’d get, and I didn’t want to risk screwing up what could have been our last time together.”
“You were always superstitious.”
Bastien grinned as he shrugged. “What can I say? It’s the Cajun in me.” He was also the more romantic of the two of them, but decided this wasn’t the time to bring that up. “But like I said, my situation, when you were visiting your father, was complicated.”
“Because of your concert schedule?”
“No. I’d stopped playing live concerts by then.”
“But I bought... Never mind.”
Ah. Desiree was talking about the new album he’d had engineered at a studio in New Orleans. Bastien liked that she still listened to him sing and wonder if she’d ever realized that all the love songs he wrote were always for her.
“I stopped because of my grand-mère.”
“I’ve always liked Abella.”
“As she liked you. I always wondered how she and your father could be so close, while at the same time he disapproved so strongly of me.”
“My mother died when I was born,” she reminded him. “And although my grand-mère lived with us and took care of me as if I were her own daughter, we lost her to cancer when I was twelve. Along with the understandable grief at his mother’s death, I suspect Papa was at a total loss on how to handle a hormonal adolescent girl who was growing up faster than he would have wished. He was merely being protective.”
Looking back on the young man he’d been when they’d first met, Bastien decided that if he ever had a daughter, he’d feel the same way.
“Also,” she continued, “they undoubtedly grew close because they were both in the business of making people happy with their food. And your grand-mère Abella always bought the bread for her restaurant from my family.”
“That’s why he called me.”
“My father called you? In Paris? When?”
“A little over two years ago. He found me through my manager. He wanted to let me know how ill Abella was becoming. I knew she was growing older, but she’d always had such strength, you know? And she’d raised me, much as yours did you, after my parents took off.”
Bastien’s father had been a blues musician who, like many musicians, had unfortunately become too fond of drugs and alcohol. Because LeRoy Broussard had left the family when Bastien was a toddler, he had no memory of him. He did remember his mother, who was also too fond of her “hot and dirty” Cajun martinis, taking off with an oil man who’d had no use for children. The memory of watching her drive off in that big fancy car when he was seven years old had been burned into Bastien’s mind as if by a red-hot branding iron. Over the years, it had lost its power to wound. But it had made him vow that when he settled down, he’d only wed a woman he’d want to live with forever. Like the woman who was standing so near. And yet so far.
“Of course I knew she was growing older. But she’d always been so strong,” Bastien said. “I’d call her every Sunday, from wherever I was, timing the call between when she got home from early mass and before she opened the restaurant for the after-church crowd. Not once had she so much as hinted that she had a heart condition. I learned about that from your father, who, like I said, tracked me down in Paris, where I was living in the Oberkampf—”
“Where, despite making a good enough living to live in one of the pricier arrondissements, you preferred to hang out with musicians.”
“That would only be natural since I am a musician,” he said. Although he only played in public occasionally these days. “The only time I ever was comfortable with pricey things was when I wanted to show off for you. Rather than take you to my very plain room with a cranky old landlady who watched with an eagle eye for me to bring home a woman, or a man, if I were so inclined, both of which were against my rental agreement, I splurged and booked that hotel room.”
The color in her cheeks and the way her eyes turned a little dreamy told him that he wasn’t the only one who had bittersweet memories of that twenty-four hours they’d spent together.
“At any rate, Augustin told me that the restaurant was wearing her heart out, but she refused to sell. She insisted that she’d keep working until they put her in a box. Which was exactly what she did until last month, two years after I came home to help her run it. In truth at the end, she spent her last six months sitting in a chair, bossing me around her kitchen as if I were a mere line cook, but despite her failing health, we passed a good time together, her and me.”
“I’m so sorry.” She reached out and touched the bare skin beneath his rolled-up sleeve, warming Bastien all the way to the bone. “But at least you had that special time together.”
“True. It’s a debt I owe to your father. Have you ever thought what a coincidence it was that we both grew up so many years with our grandmothers taking on our mothers’ roles? I’ve often wondered if that was another reason why we connected.”
“But I never knew my mother, so I suspect that was easier for me. And my father was always there.” Unlike either of his parents.
“Grand-mère’s passing put a lot of things in motion. I’d already hired my cousin Octave as a sous chef. She left the restaurant to me, so, after staying a few months to make sure he could handle it, I sold it to Octave, whose wife is having their second child this fall. And voilà.” He lifted his hands. “Here I am.”
“Why?” Desiree asked again.
“To see you, cher.”
“And do you have plans beyond that?”
“Bien sur. I’m opening a restaurant. I checked this town out online and it’s definitely lacking in dining choices. So I decided it would be a perfect location to open a Cajun café.”
She tilted her head, and put her hands on her hips. “You’re opening a restaurant here? In Honeymoon Harbor?”
“I am. I find the name prophetic. I saw a couple getting married in that pretty little gazebo as I drove by. What would you think of us exchanging our vows there? Or would you prefer being married in New Orleans, where your father can walk you down the aisle in the same cathedral where you received your First Communion and confirmation?”
“I’m certainly not going to marry you.”
“Of course you are,” he said easily. “Because we’re soul mates. But don’t worry, I’ll give you all the time you need to get used to the idea.”
“You gave me that soul mate line that day you asked me to join your band. After you’d heard me sing.”
“It wasn’t a line then. And it isn’t now. It’s the God’s own truth. And while I’m being truthful, here’s another fact for you. I wouldn’t have cared if you could sing or not. I just wanted an excuse to be with you every day. That, by the way, has not changed.”
“You’re out of your crazy Cajun mind.”
“Over you,” he agreed. “And here’s the best part.”
She folded her arms over her white apron with Ovenly written in pretty script on the bib part. “I can’t wait to hear it.”
“I’m opening up that café in the space next to your boulangerie. Which will make us neighbors.”
“You are not.” Her remarkable eyes were now shooting flaming daggers. “That space only became open last week and I’m expanding Ovenly into it.”
“Have you signed a lease?”
“No, but—”
He flashed her his most sincere smile. The one that had usually charmed Sister Mary Constance out of assigning him to detention.
“I’m sure a compromise can be worked out. But why don’t we discuss that later, cher?” He glanced down at his watch. “We’re running out of rehearsal time and you wouldn’t want to disappoint the brides.”