A Case for Love (9 page)

Jessica leaned her elbows on the edge of the table, cradling her super-sized frozen margarita in both hands. “So, ’Laine, tell us all about the Most Eligible Bachelors’ dinner. Did you get to meet him?”

“Him?” Alaine smiled at the waitress and reached for the glass of iced tea.

“Forbes Guidry! Who did you think I meant?”

Alaine sprinkled salt on her cocktail napkin to keep it from sticking to the sweating tea glass. “Yes. I sat next to him at dinner, in fact.” She looked around the table. Five pairs of eyes ogled her, expressions dripping with envy. She shrugged and allowed only one side of her mouth to curve up. “He asked me out.”

The shrill shrieks that went up from her suitemates nearly deafened her and drew remonstrative glances from the diners around them.

Alaine told the story about meeting Forbes, lingering over describing what he looked like in his tuxedo, the reddish tint to his dark hair, the almost periwinkle color of his eyes, the fact that he wore her favorite cologne.

Smugness settled into her chest over the fact that she finally had something to make these girls jealous of her. She hadn’t had that since she’d gotten to interview Cliff Ballantine last year after his engagement party. And since someone from each of the local stations had gotten to meet with the megastar actor for a five minute one-on-one, even that hadn’t drawn the kind of looks she was getting from the girls now.

Of course, she couldn’t tell them that Forbes’s family’s company was trying to steal her parents’ home and business. Nor that she would never stoop to going out with him.

As soon as the girls had drawn all the details about Forbes out of her—the ones she was willing to tell them, anyway—talk turned to the latest celebrity scandals. Alaine drowned herself in greasy fried shrimp and clams and calamari and fish, savoring the french fries dipped in the spicy tartar sauce. She washed it all down with a huge chocolate dessert.

Yet no matter how satisfying the junk food was, she still couldn’t get past the pain that came from realizing she had the shallowest friends in the world. While the focus of their monthly dinners was to get together and have fun, if she got to a point where she needed someone to talk to about something serious, she would never consider calling a single one of them. She would never confide anything to any of them—knowing it would not only get around to all of the others, but that they might use it as a source of amusement at a future get-together.

Regret formed a tight ball in the back of her throat. For years, these had been her only friends. When she’d met Meredith Guidry a few months ago, she’d thought she’d finally found a true friend—someone she could turn to, trust with anything. But now she had no one to turn to. No one to talk to about Mother and Daddy’s situation. No one to trust.

Why did Forbes have to be a Guidry?

“Please, Forbes? Go with me. I can’t do this by myself.”

Forbes stared at Jenn. His sister had asked a lot of him over the years—not the least of which was providing most of the start-up capital for the restaurant in which they now sat. “Ballroom dancing lessons?”

“Yeah. It’ll be fun. I’ve always wanted to learn. Anne and George are going to do it.” She inclined her head at them across the noisy table. “Meredith and Major wanted to, but some of the dates interfere with their work events. So will you sign up with me so that I don’t have to worry about whether or not there’ll be someone there for me to dance with?”

“What about one of the guys you’re seeing? Why not ask one of them?”

Jenn shrugged, setting her strawberry blond ponytail to swinging. “Because I don’t want to give Clay or Danny or Ward the wrong idea.”

“And what would that be?” He probably didn’t really want to know the answer to that question.

“That I’m serious enough about any of them to want to spend that kind of one-on-one time with them.”

“Why not just split the time evenly between them?”

“Because you have to purchase a package. Plus, according to the Web site, it’s very important to be there for the entire series, because many of the steps build off of each other.”

Forbes leaned back and crossed his arms. “What about the restaurant?” Even though she’d bought him out fully more than two years ago, he still liked to keep up with the goings-on around here.

“I hired a restaurant manager—didn’t I tell you?” Jenn’s expression was a little
too
innocent.

“No, you didn’t, oddly enough. I trust this person has good credentials?” Maybe, if he got her talking about the restaurant, she’d drop the dancing thing.

“Yeah—well, Major was one of his references.”

Interesting. Too bad Major and Meredith were currently in Colorado on their mini-honeymoon. “Well, if Major vouched for him...”

“So anyway”—Jenn sounded annoyed—“the lessons are on Monday evenings, which is my new day off. And I’d like for you to go with me.”

Should he remind her now that his “Most Likely to Succeed” title his senior year of high school had come with an asterisk:
*except in dancing?
His lack of physical coordination had kept him from success in sports and led to girls thinking he was arrogant for refusing to go out on the dance floor at homecoming or prom except for a couple of obligatory numbers. Even then, he picked slow songs so he could do his Fonz-style dance: hold the girl close and turn slowly in a circle.

“Please, Forbes?”

The word
yes
tripped out to the end of his tongue, but he caught it before it escaped. “Let me think about it.”

“Don’t think too long. The next session starts Monday.”

“As in four-days-away Monday?”

“That would be the one.” Jenn bounced up from her chair, kissed the top of his head, and flittered off to visit with other patrons in the nearly full restaurant.

Jenn wanted him to go dancing; Shon wanted him to reenter the dating scene. Forbes glanced up at the ceiling, half expecting God to peek around the pirogue hanging there and laugh at him. Just when he had everything under control...

“Come on.” George nudged his shoulder. “Jennifer is playing our song.”

Singing “Me and My Shadow” with George to kick off the Thursday night family friendly karaoke at Jenn’s restaurant had become something of a tradition over the past few months. When Major was here, all three of them got up and sang it together.

Forbes could just make out Jenn’s lithe figure darting around, working the room beyond the halo of the stage lights. Maybe he should push her a little more toward Clay Huntoon, the bass in their quartet. With Major and George officially members of the family now, adding Clay seemed like the next logical step.

Forbes and George surrendered the stage to a ten-year-old who started belting out “My Favorite Things” before they got back to the table. As usual, everyone had changed seats; Forbes took the empty chair beside his brother Rafe, who sat slumped over the table, cheek and eye distorted by the pressure of leaning his face against his fist.

“What’s wrong?” Forbes stood to lean over and retrieve his tea from his original spot. He sat again and stretched his legs out under the table, crossing his ankles.

“Remember Tonya, the girl at B-G I was seeing?”

Forbes liked the sound of the past tense verb. “Yeah.”

“Well, I found out she’s been dating someone else all along. Apparently, he works for another company there in the building.” Rafe stared morosely at the basket of now-cold hush puppies in the middle of the table.

“And...?”

“And it turns out she was just playing me. She thought that since I’m a Guidry, I had some kind of huge trust fund or something. She flat out asked me how much money I have. I told her I’m saving to buy a plane, that I’d paid cash for the ’Vette, and I have equity in my condo because I did a big down payment. That’s when she told me about this real-estate investment guy who apparently makes seven figures a year. It’s like she was saying, ‘Beat that—I dare you.’”

Forbes tightened his jaw to keep his joy from showing, happy that he hadn’t had to figure out how to start convincing Rafe this girl wasn’t worth his time and attention. “Sounds to me like it’s a good thing you found this out now instead of when things got more serious.”

Rafe groaned. “That’s the problem. I thought things already were serious. I asked her to marry me. That’s when she asked me about the money.”

Forbes took in a deep breath, held it a few seconds, then released it slowly. “Had you already bought a ring?”

“No, thank goodness. I was going to take her shopping and let her pick it out herself.” He blinked a few times, then sat up straight and turned to face Forbes. “Hey—the guy who lives next door to you. He owns that dating service, doesn’t he?”

“Let’s Do Coffee. Yes, that’s my next-door neighbor.”

“What do you know about it? Think it might work for me?”

Only if Forbes got a part-time job there so he could screen the candidates. Well, he’d agreed to trust Shon to find someone for him; maybe he could trust him to find someone for his brother. “It might be worth looking into a three- or six-month membership.”

Alaine groaned when the phone on her desk trilled yet again. Didn’t people know it was rude to call at four o’clock on a Friday afternoon? If they didn’t let her alone soon, she’d never get everything wrapped up before she had to be out in the field covering the concert tonight. She grabbed the receiver on the third ring. “Alaine Delacroix.”

“Alaine, Russell LeBlanc here. I looked over the information you gave our volunteer, and I’m calling to set up a time for us to meet so we can discus the case in more detail.”

She pumped her fist in the air, then glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one had walked past the opening into her cubicle and seen the gesture. “When would you like to meet?”

“Would you be available for lunch...next Wednesday?”

Impatience momentarily overrode her excitement at finally finding a lawyer who might be willing to work with them. She pulled up her calendar on the computer. Wednesday afternoon looked open. “It would have to be after two o’clock. I can’t get away from the studio any earlier than that.”

“That’s great. I usually take a late lunch. Would it be better if I meet you somewhere near your office?”

Even though Alaine didn’t have any set office hours—she could come and go as needed—she tried to stick to regular hours; so a nearby restaurant would allow her more time to talk to Russell LeBlanc. But what if someone else from the studio ended up at the same restaurant and realized she was meeting with a lawyer? “Where are you located?”

“In the Moreaux Mills area.”

“Perfect! How about ... Pappas’s on Hyacinth Place?” Alaine clicked her pen with nervous repetition.

“The Greek place? Great choice. I didn’t know anyone outside this neighborhood knew about it. Want to say two fifteen, since you’ll have to drive all the way out here?”

“Two fifteen it is. See you then.” Alaine closed her cell phone and typed a cryptic note into her calendar program and set a reminder to pop up that morning. She didn’t think she’d forget, but with the way things got around here sometimes...

“Hot lunch date next week?”

Alaine whipped around. Pricilla, the production assistant, entered the large cubicle and perched on the edge of Alaine’s desktop.

“Sometimes you forget just how thin these partitions are.” The plain but hardworking younger woman tapped one of the walls. It wobbled to prove her point.

Alaine hadn’t said anything that would clue anyone in to what she was doing. But still ... she had to be careful. “A potential story. Won’t really know until after I meet with him.” That should work. Alaine, Pricilla, and Garnet, their show’s producer, were forever chasing down stories that didn’t pan out; and none of them wasted the others’ time with details of a no-go piece.

Plus, there was the idea that even if he decided not to take on her case, Russell LeBlanc might be interested in doing a Q&A segment once a month like Andrew Blakely and the make-your-life-more-green guy did. So in essence, she’d told the truth.

“Big plans for the weekend?” Pricilla twirled a lock of dishwater-blond hair around her finger.

Alaine looked away to try to hide her annoyance at Pricilla’s unconscious habit. “Live remote from the big gospel music concert tonight, and tomorrow I’ll be taking Noah down to Riverfront to cover the christening of the
Bonneterre Beauty
paddleboat.”

“Oh, I forgot that was Saturday afternoon. Are you doing the dinner cruise that night?”

“Noah’s wife is going to meet him down there. Noah’s going to cover it as a photo essay. I figured it was only fair. Since he’s covering for Nelson, he should at least get to treat his wife to a free evening out, even if he is technically working.” Alaine surreptitiously glanced around her desk to make sure that she hadn’t left anything lying about that might indicate what her appointment next week was really about. She’d promised Mother and Daddy that she wouldn’t turn this into a big news story; and if she wasn’t going to break and cover the biggest business scandal in Bonneterre history, she wouldn’t let anyone else here get a whiff of it from her.

“I thought I might go out to the dog agility competition at the park tomorrow afternoon, if it isn’t raining. I’ll take a camera if I do.” Pricilla stopped twirling her hair and picked at the already chipped dark brown polish on her thumbnail.

Alaine cringed and looked away again. She kept her nails buffed because she couldn’t stomach the idea that each time a piece of polish flaked off, it took a layer of nail with it. “Well, you know if Brent’s the one forecasting rain tomorrow, it’ll probably be bright and sunny.”

“Why do you give him such a hard time?”

“Because I can. Because he hurt a really good friend of mine when they were in college.” Alaine swallowed hard. Despite everything going on, she still longed to claim Meredith as a really good friend.

Pricilla shrugged. “To each his own. Oh, hey, you’ve always said you wanted to learn ballroom dancing, right?”

“I’ve thought about lessons. Why?” She picked up her pen and twirled it in her fingers. Hardly anyone knew she’d minored in dance her first year of college, and ever since dropping it when she switched her major to journalism, she’d longed to go back to it.

“One of the interns took a call today from someone at that new dance studio that just opened down in Comeaux. Apparently, they’re going to be having a six-week ballroom dancing class, starting this Monday. They were hoping we might be interested in covering it for
Inside Bonneterre.
I thought since you already have an interest in the subject, you might want to take it on.”

She’d rather be
in
the class than covering it for the show; however, she took the slip of paper from the assistant producer with a trickle of excitement. Maybe now was the time to start dancing again if the package wasn’t too expensive. “Thanks, Priss. I’ll look into it.”

“Well, I’m done with everything. I fixed those links on the blog post and put it up.” Pricilla stood and brushed the flakes of nail polish off her shirt and slacks. “Oh, and someone from Systems called. They wanted to know why we can’t just post the recipes on the blog instead of on a static page on the Web site.”

Alaine should have known that one would come back to bite her. “I’ll talk to them about it next week. Have a good weekend.”

“You staying much longer?”

“I’ll just return this call to the dance studio and then call it a day.” She waved the little piece of paper.

“Okay. See you Monday, then.”

Alaine waited until all of the rustling from the adjacent cubicle stopped and the sound of Pricilla’s footsteps faded away before picking up the phone.

“Arcenault Dance Studio. How may I help you?”

“Hi, this is Alaine Delacroix from
Inside Bonneterre.
I received a message from ... Ruth about your ballroom dancing class. I’d like to speak with her to see about covering your opening night on the program.”

A high-pitched squeak came through the line. Alaine smiled.

“That’s so awesome. Ruth is going to spaz out. This has been her lifelong dream, to open a dance studio, and it all just kind of fell into her lap, so she hasn’t had a lot of time for promotion or to contact the media. But your show was the one she definitely wanted to get on.”

“Wonderful. May I speak with her?”

“Oh—well, she’s rehearsing right now for an exhibition at the Savoy tonight. Should I...?” The girl hesitated.

“No. Tell you what, I’ll give you my cell phone number. Have her call me whenever she’s free this weekend to talk about Monday.” Alaine recited her number twice and made the girl repeat it back to her to make sure she hadn’t transposed any of the numbers, which she had.

“I’ll be sure to get this message to her as soon as she finishes up.”

“Thanks.” Alaine hung up, threw what she’d need at the remotes tonight and tomorrow into her bag, and left. She still had two hours before she was scheduled to meet Nelson at the football stadium at ULB, where the concert was to be held—so long as the rain held off—so she took a detour leaving downtown and, after a few minutes, pulled into the parking lot of her favorite shoe store—a warehouselike place that carried expensive brands at discount prices.