"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 wonderment.
"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.”
His shoulders shifted into a hunch. “Clear enough. Be prompt; be less obnoxious than the upstart.”
"For mercy sake, Gabe, I wasn't telling the upstart all I thought about it. He cornered me!”
Gabriel's smirk she remembered. It suited him better than the thin line of displeasure he'd worn earlier. Shame for a good-looking man to go sour like that. She examined him a bit more, now the crowd had surged towards Lassiter’s band, tuning up on their temporary stage. In the increased light she saw he'd begun to pick up some silver at his temples. Still had a bit of a mane, but it was less leonine.
Maybe it was the heat lamps. They glowed burnt orange, sending out palpable pockets of warmth from their positions throughout the back yard. Not that Gabe was near one. The heat near him wasn’t from artificial sources.
She aimed to be surreptitious as she surveyed the patio for Ivy, or anyone else laying claim to him. Not that Ivy would be hanging around in the background, if she were here. A more possessive woman she’d rarely known.
Gabe caught her looking. The smile reached his crow’s feet.
“You should go for it, Gabriel,” she said. If she was being imaginative—a thing she didn’t aim to be, having decided it didn’t suit a woman in her forties—she’d interpret the quirk of his lips as his wondering how much innuendo her statement held.
“You do, do you?” His voice had slowed even further, like it was paddling through a bayou.
And there she went, not being imaginative again. One thing she knew as fact: Wendy had skedaddled, leaving the two of them alone. And she’d picked up enough dropped hints over the years to know Wendy thought Gabe was attracted to her. Which was fine. Plenty of men were attracted to her. Chloe didn’t lie to herself about being attractive to men. She wore her confidence well, plus she looked healthy and energetic—side effects, in her case, of actually being healthy and energetic. She was careful to be. All-nighters in the NICU got progressively harder as she’d aged. They’d also gotten less frequent, since younger doctors took those shifts, but sometimes, like during last year’s holiday party, a critical situation sent her to the too-thin cots in the staff room for her night’s rest. The only way to keep up with the disruptive hours and keep her focus on her patients intact was to task herself to stay healthy, so that’s what she did.
Her twin thought she was vain, but she thought he labeled her in order to excuse his own middle-aged laziness. She needed to put some serious thought into a bridge-building gift for him when she went home for Christmas. With no imagination at all, she knew she’d said harsh things to him when the long-held plans for their joint fortieth birthday extravaganza fell through so Tara could surprise him with an expensive watch that ate into their trip fund. Not that she’d told Ben that’s why they’d canceled. Blamed it on her promotion and their brother Danny’s twins being too young and some guff about a night out with her local friends.
Calling him old and fat and lazy wasn’t fair. As the daily texts from their oldest sister reminded her. She would have to spend half her free day shopping for her four siblings if she didn’t want them ignoring her in favor of their own little nuclear families.
Adding ‘kickass toys for the kids, snazzy fashion for the spouses’ to her mental shopping list, she shook off thoughts of her far-flung family and stepped closer to Gabe’s heat. “You’ve done murals before, right? Wendy said something like that.”
Something almost innocent in the way his eyes widened with pleasure. “Wendy said that?”
She crossed her arms. “Wendy and I talk about a lot of stuff. Why wouldn’t she mention you sometimes?”
“No, sure. I just mean. It’s a tad on the funny side, because she talks about you to me, as well.”
The sweater dress began to feel snugger than was cozy. “That a fact?”
He seemed to linger on how her crossed arms framed her breasts. She wasn’t unaware. She didn’t uncross them as she drew a tad closer to him.
“A fact. She mentioned you weren’t bringing a date this year.”
“I had a hint about the same thing regarding you.”
“Dance?” he asked, at least two long beats after they’d begun to sway together in time to Lassiter’s downbeat.
She ran her hands up his arms until they rested on the strong mass of his shoulders. Wondered if the work of painting kept his upper body so firm and lithe, or if he went out of his way to stay trim. She knew—Wendy, of course—he was a few years older than her. Reinforced by the hair, and eye wrinkles, and a certain settled-into-himself air that was damned attractive.
She liked his neck. Something about it made her scooch closer in his arms, put more of their bodies in contact as he steered her into a turn. They were close enough to the musicians now to make talk a foolish endeavor. Communication was through the pressure of his right hand on her shoulder blade, the skimming of his left hand through her hair. Her fingers answering by grazing the warm smooth softness of his nape, her thumb testing the stubble over his Adam’s apple.
She was the one to slow to a halt in the shadows by his door. He danced in place, turning her a slow twirl and bringing them closer at its end, leg to leg and chest to chest. His shoulders shifted in time with the song beat. Her hips echoed the motion.
“Want to come in for a little bit?” he asked. Real quiet. Lips up close to her ear, breath better at combating the December chill than all the space heaters on the patio, but still capable of making her shiver.
She rested her crown against his clavicle as she surveyed the area. No sign of Mac, or Wendy, or any of her colleagues. Still, it was a public thing, a space populated with half the people she knew well in New Orleans. Presumably he could say the same. “Maybe not just this moment. I feel self-conscious about it.”
His smile—she was sure it was a smile—pressed the edge of his lips against her forehead. “It?”
The man could drawl. She’d fallen under the sway of drawls in the past, and expected she would in the future, and held no complaints about doing so right there in the present.
“Going off to have sex with you in the middle of my boss’s Christmas party. I haven’t even said hi to Penny yet. Or eaten gumbo.”
“You like my gumbo?”
She pulled back enough to look at him. “Is that innuendo?”
He was round-eyed again, happy. “Not in the least. I’m not sure how even to turn okra and Andouille into innuendo. You boil me up nice like white rice? You mince my garlic?”
“Peel my shell?”
They started toward the buffet. Arms still around each other’s waists, because having sex mid-party felt odd, but it wasn’t like half the people she knew in New Orleans were unaware that she was flirting with the man from Mac and Wendy's guesthouse.
“It’s my daddy’s recipe. The gumbo. I make it.”
“Do you now?”
“You like it?”
“I’ve been nursing an envy for it for the past twelve months,” she admitted. “I had to run off too fast last year, and didn’t get any. Wendy just laughed in my face when I caught up with her after the holidays and asked if there were leftovers.”
He preened, which wasn’t an attractive trait, but not one that weighed heavier than his gumbo skills. “Play your cards right, I might just find you a pint or so you can take home for your freezer.”
Now that would make a fine bridge-building gift for Ben. But she convinced herself it wouldn’t travel well and that she should keep it for herself. If she played her cards right.
“So your daddy is the gumbo king of, where, New Orleans?”
“Nah. He’s in Baton Rouge. Not but what he couldn’t compete here. He’s won plenty of accolades back home.”
“I can imagine. I’m grateful he didn’t guard the recipe from his son.”
“Me and Chris, my brother, are the only ones in possession, besides him. One of these days he’ll publish it, but until he’s ready to retire and let someone else take over the roadhouse—Daddy’s head cook at a roadhouse—the secret stops with us.”
“Chris single, too?”
He paused, then reached those long strong arms to grab them a couple of bowls. “Well, nope. I guess just cause I never told Heidi—that’s my ex-wife—the secret, is no reason to think Chris hasn’t told Sasha or their son. I’ll make it a point, in fact, to let young Will in on the secret. Stick it in his Christmas stocking or some such.”
She handed him a spoon; he handed her a bowl. The gumbo was, as it had been in previous years, perfect. A touch of salt, plenty of spice, succulent shrimp and sausage and veggies simmered just enough to burst when she bit down. If the man fucked like he cooked, she was in for a merry Christmas, indeed.
Maybe her thoughts read on her face, because he pounded a fist to his solar plexus a couple of times. “I begin to see how you are capable of making innuendo out of gumbo after all.”
She swallowed. The stew left a pleasant amount of fire in her mouth, and she let it lick flames in her tone. “I’m capable of making plenty of things with you, Gabriel Babineaux. I hope the next thing we make is plans.”
He leaned in. “Plans?”
“For our departure from this otherwise engaging party. Now that my craving for gumbo has been satisfied. How much time do you need to devote to socializing before we can go attend to more private cravings?”
“You are direct.”
“Do you disagree? If you’re not interested...”
“I do not disagree. How you could think such a damn fool thing, with me standing her seducing you with my own two hands and a forty-quart stockpot of my secrets.”
She shushed him by tilting her head towards his place. “So how long?”
“Zero minutes. No one here I need to devote any public time to, and I’m not ashamed to walk you straight up to my bed right now.”
“Hell, Gabe. I’m not ashamed. I’m being politic. I’ve got friends here. I’m supposed to talk to them.”
Something about his look told her she was too stubborn, but screw him. Not literally—that was a bit in the future. She’d see him in what she expected to be his nude glory soon enough. First she had to air-kiss the pulmonary specialist and her wife, who had sent tins of festive fudge to the break room. She had to congratulate the head of neonatal nursing on her community award. She had to spend a few minutes away from this furnace of a man, planning how to enjoy his heat without getting second-degree burns.
A nudge at her ankle made her start, then laugh. She shoved the empty bowl at Gabe and picked up Penny, whose ugly holiday sweater outshone the ones Mac and Wendy wore. The silky fur standing up between her alert ears was quivering as she trembled in excitement at being handled. Her tiny pink tongue found a drop of gumbo flavor on the back of her hand, and probably the look of rapture Penny turned on Gabe echoed the one she’d had herself upon tasting the man’s flavors. “Tell me about it,” she told the dog.
“Feeling left out here,” Gabe said, but he scratched Penny’s muzzle and didn’t cop a feel while he was at it.
“You go schmooze more hospital people about your mural. Start with Dr. Halcort over there. And don’t think about the fact that in about an hour, I’ll be standing in your place, stripping off this dress.”
She took Penny away before either of them could try to lick him.