CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Tabby
My stay in New Orleans lasted three more days, and they were amongst the most exciting, wonderful days of my life. I spent the rest of the nights at Owen’s house, where we made love over and over again until I fell asleep in a fit of utter exhaustion. He, on the other hand, was insatiable and likely could’ve continued well past sunup every time, but he refused my suggestion of canceling my reservation at the Ritz.
“But I’m here. All my stuff is here too. Why do I need it?” I protested. It didn’t affect me as it was on his dime, but I couldn’t help feeling like it was a waste of money on my account.
“If you get sick of me, you have somewhere to go until your flight back to Chicago,” he told me.
It was impossible to tell if he was kidding because he didn’t crack a smile, but his eyes were twinkling, and I wanted to continue arguing about it. Eventually, however, he wore me down and forced me to let the topic go by torturing me in the back of his limo for about an hour with his tongue, refusing me release until I agreed to drop it.
He took me around New Orleans on one especially gorgeous day. With the sun kissing his dark hair and his muscles visible in his unprecedented graphic tee, I was hardly able to take in the cultural draws of the city, but I did my best. I pulled my sweater around me as we strolled around the French Quarter, and he relayed some of the history of the area. I took an inordinate number of photographs while he sat back and watched. After dark, he insisted we go barhopping down Bourbon Street and we even stopped at one of the curbside vendor carts selling any number of wearable items, all of which lit up and flashed neon hues. I was more than a little amused when Owen chose a pair of glasses for himself that blinked through the colors of the rainbow.
The next day was The Day of Owen, as I so creatively titled it. Of all the time I’d spent with him since we’d met, it turned out to be my favorite day. We started early in the morning — half past seven, which was apparently “sleeping in” for a businessman but a horrible joke to a freelancer on her own sleep schedule like me. He took me to the first restaurant he’d ever invested in. It was small, quaint, and hokey in décor with swamp animals mounted on the wall, but I’d never had a breakfast so delicious in my life and found myself craving the bananas foster French toast for the remainder of my stay. After that, Stephan took us back to the house so we could grab Owen’s car. It wasn’t a Honda this time, which he’d admitted he’d rented, but a Porsche. I didn’t know much about cars and wasn’t nearly as impressed as he expected me to be.
“I just don’t understand why someone would spend two mortgages on a car,” I said as I climbed in.
He leaned on the door and reached forward to lift my chin. “Zero to sixty in two-point-five, sweetheart. That’s why.”
“Oh, right. I forgot what a difference it makes when you reach the red lights faster,” I retorted with a sarcastic grin.
“I hope you know I’m keeping a running tally on how many times that mouth of yours spouts off,” he warned. “So far, your punishment is up to I-Don’t-Know-My-Own-Name.” As my sex warmed, he tapped the doorframe and added, “If it makes you feel any better, this thing gets better gas mileage than a Prius.”
He drove me to Tulane University where he attended college, and we walked the campus as he pointed out various buildings where he’d had classes, along with the locations of pranks and party mishaps. I found out accidentally about a girl he’d dated for two years, which surprised me because I’d had the impression he wasn’t the “settling down” type.
“That’s where I passed out after too many keg stands,” he said, pointing toward an innocent bench. “I woke up to a freak frost and was so cold I thought my fingers were going to have to be amputated. Luckily, Holly went this way to her first class and she got me to her place in bed with one of her hot-water bottles she used for sports injuries.”
“Holly?” I was intrigued. I knew just in his verbiage that this wasn’t a random girl he’d seen on occasion.
His expression froze for a split second. “Yeah.” He sounded uncomfortable. “My college girlfriend.”
I stared at him for a long moment, trying to gauge whether it was worth pushing him to find out more. He was looking at the bench with a mix of nostalgia and anger. I was sure it wasn’t the bench that triggered the latter. Curiosity getting the better of me, I tried, “Were you together long?”
“A couple years.” He twisted his neck backward in an awkward gesture. “She lived right over there.”
“What happened?” I gently pressed.
He lifted a shoulder, staring past me, a vacant look on his face. “She was over it.”
I realized this girl was a huge part, if not the catalyst, of why he’d turned to The Blackjack Club for romantic encounters. It also added another piece to the puzzle as to why he’d wanted me to go with him to The Club so badly. If I didn’t conform to that part of his life, if I didn’t sign the NDA, I wasn’t just a risk to his reputation but also a risk to his emotional well-being. Like she’d been.
In the interest of continuing the day on a good note, I dropped any conversation of Holly, and we resumed the tour. He took me into one of the buildings to meet a professor of biology he still kept in contact with, a Professor Keaton who strongly reminded me of mad scientist clichés, and I was regaled with tales of Owen’s many failures in the undergraduate class. I filed away one such story involving a mishap during a rat dissection for future taunting.
Afterward, we headed off campus to a nearby neighborhood Owen called Broadmoor and pulled up to a small, faded Spanish-style home. At first, I thought he was going to tell me he’d grown up there before I remembered he was from Maine, and my curiosity spiked. We’d barely gotten out of the car when the storm door flew open, snapping against its springs with a crack, and a woman at least a century old, maybe two, shuffled out onto the semi-enclosed porch.
“I wouldn’t park that car there, if I was you!” she croaked. “Them kids down the way, they’ll steal just about anything, they will, and I ain’t ‘bout to be held responsible!”
“Oh, I’d take you for every penny you’ve got!” Owen called back teasingly.
She squinted her already scrunched eyes and held a hand to her brow. “Who’s that?”
He took my hand and led me up her crumbling front walk, which was blocked by a crooked chain-link gate. Pulling it open and ushering me through, he announced loudly, “Only your favorite weed-puller in the world!”
Her slippers slapped against the rotting porch wood as she scuttled toward the stairs, clinging to the railing. “Oh, Howie!” she rasped.
“Very funny,” Owen retorted with false bitterness. He climbed up the two stairs to her level, released my hand, and enveloped the ancient woman in an enormous hug. “How are you doing, Maw?”
“Good enough,” she chuckled, patting him on the back. “How’re you, honey?”
“Better now that I’ve seen your beautiful face.” She swatted him away from her like he was an obnoxious fly, making both Owen and me laugh. He reached for me, cupping my hip in his hand and pulling me gently forward. “Maw, this is Tabby. Tabby, this is Eugenia Spring, more affectionately known ‘round these parts as Maw.”
I extended a hand at once. “Hi,” I said, feeling a little shy all of a sudden. Eugenia — or Maw, rather — had one of those very imposing auras about her despite her frail and aged physique, like she’d smack someone upside the back of their head as soon as bake them a dozen cookies. Plus, it was evident Owen had a special place for this woman in his heart, and I didn’t want to make a bad impression.
“I ain’t one for shakin’ hands, child. I got the arthritis some years back,” she told me. I quickly pulled my hand away, but she did the shoo-fly gesture again. “Don’t worry yourself about it. I’d ruther take a hug, anyway.”
We embraced briefly, and she patted me on the back just as she had Owen. I felt a bit more relaxed in her presence, though I was still wondering who she was.
“You know, in all my time knowin’ this fool, he ain’t never brung a young woman ‘round to meet me,” Maw told me, sinking back onto a rickety rocking chair. The curved wooden feet creaked against the porch with each rock. “I almost thunk he was gay when he showed up with that Howie friend of his, but I knew my Owen good enough to know that he’d ‘a had better taste than that chicken liver if he was.”
I snorted with laughter, and Owen snaked his hand down from my waist to subtly pinch my rear in retaliation. Forcing the yelp down, I choked out, “I’ve met Howie. He’s… interesting.”
“Interestin’? Yeah, I s’pose he’s interestin’, if you think runnin’ headfirst into an old lady’s fence is any kind of fascinatin’. I almost had him arrested! Woulda done, too, if Owen hadn’t begged me not to. I made that boy pay for that head-hole, though, yes I did!” She turned her attention to Owen, glaring at him accusingly, and I was stunned to see him shrink back minutely. “Someone special like you bein’ friends with a fool like that. You know I almost done called your mama and give her what-for, lettin’ you pal around with that dummy since diapers? I almost called her, yes I did! Find out what she was thinkin’…”
Maw went into a series of sour mutters under her breath, and I had to hold back the laughter building in my chest. She was a character, and I had absolutely no confusion as to why Owen seemed to care about her so much. I was starting to wonder if she was his grandmother or other relative of advanced age when Owen clued me in.
“I met Maw my very first day of college,” he explained. “She was on campus selling home-baked goods because she thought it would help the freshmen with their homesickness. I can’t speak for everyone, but it helped me. I bought a bag of cookies from her, ate three, and demanded a weekly supply for the entirety of the year.”
Maw nodded along as she rocked, and I swiveled my eyes back and forth between them.
“Believe it or not, I wasn’t always as wealthy as I am now,” he went on, puffing out his chest dramatically. Maw flicked her hand at him, and I rolled my eyes. “So, since I couldn’t afford a bag of cookies, along with the other amazing treats she baked, every single week, we came to an agreement. I came over and weeded her garden in exchange for cookies. If I wanted brownies or a cake or anything else, I did other chores.”
“I think it was a pretty fair trade,” Maw piped in.
“Of course you do,” Owen shot back with a grin. “You had your attic cleaned out and your windows washed and your doors rehinged and your lightbulbs changed.”
She narrowed her slivered eyes at him sternly. “And you got cookies.”
“Yes, I did,” he agreed. “Along with many years of your invaluable wisdom.”
We stayed for a couple hours at Maw’s, where I learned even more stories about Owen in his college years, then went to dinner at another restaurant in Owen’s portfolio. I took the opportunity to ask why he’d never brought Holly over to meet the delightful old woman.
“She wasn’t special enough,” he told me without missing a beat. “And Maw would’ve told me so.”
“Does that mean I’m special enough?” I poked, wiggling my eyebrows up and down.
He chuckled. “Oh, yeah. You’re too special.”
Something deep in my heart squeezed, and I could feel the faint blush of pleasure heat my cheeks. I wished I could capture this moment. Capture the way he looked at me.
By the time the third day rolled around, I was feeling misery starting to set in. I didn’t want to leave. Spending time with Owen was the freest, wildest, happiest I’d ever felt, and the place I’d spent my entire life suddenly seemed cold and unwelcoming as my departure loomed closer. Once we pulled up to the passenger drop-off at the airport, every step felt like I had thousand-pound weights strapped to my ankles. I wanted to stay.
“So,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around me as Stephan withdrew my luggage from the limo trunk. “I had an idea.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“You could come work for me.”
I wrinkled my brow. “What are you talking about?”
“You could come work for me,” he repeated. “You could move to New Orleans and be my official photographer for every property, organization, or event I invest in. Hell, you could do all the pictures for anything I do, even if I get into other areas of business. I’ve been considering hopping aboard the real estate train. There seems to be some good money in flipping houses.”
“Owen,” I said slowly, shaking my head and averting my eyes to the ground. “I can’t do that.”
“Sure, you can. I’ll pay for your moving expenses and everything. And I guarantee I’ll pay better than anything you’re doing now.”
It was tempting. Too tempting, and not because of the money. But no amount of fantasy was able to override my realism in that moment, and I shook my head again. “I can’t. One of the draws of doing what I do is being my own boss. I mean, yes, I have clients, but I still don’t answer to anyone but myself on a grand scale. I don’t want to give that up.”
He frowned, studied my face with consideration, then kissed my nose. “Fine,” he conceded. “For now. Don’t think this topic is dropped.”
I leaned into him, absorbing his warmth. “Fair enough.”
He pulled me against him in a smothering hug, and I breathed in his scent. I had no idea when I would see him again. I knew he’d fly me out any time I asked, but I wasn’t the type to ask and I had a lot of work I needed to catch up on if I wanted to make my rent. Finally, and reluctantly, we broke apart. Stephan stood off to the side with my luggage, prepared to bring it inside for me.
“Don’t go picking up the first woman you see just because you’re trying to forget how much you miss me,” I teased. I was only half kidding.
Looking me dead in the eyes, he murmured, “The only woman I’m picking up is you, the next time you come back to Louisiana.”
He kissed me passionately, swatted my butt, and bid me farewell. As I strode into the airport, Stephan insisting on hauling my bags to check-in, Owen’s words rang in my mind like bells. This was something. It was him and me, nobody else.
God, it felt good.