“A tattoo?” Rusty mouthed silently at her. Then, out loud, “Where?”
I thought you’d never ask. She glanced down near the crotch of her jeans, then back up. Holding his gaze, she smiled.
He gulped several times and looked as if he’d swallowed his tongue.
Everyone was chuckling at the interplay between the two of them, though Rusty, sitting directly across from her, had been the only one to see the direction of her gaze.
“Then, after Antoine, my fourth husband, I… oh, never mind. I shouldn’t discuss that in mixed company.”
Rusty didn’t say anything. She suspected his tongue was still stuck to the roof of his mouth.
“Atta girl,” Tante Lulu encouraged her, sensing that she was on a tear, deliberately teasing Rusty so.
“Don’t stop now, darlin’,” Rusty groused, once he’d dislodged his tongue. “Tell us what you got after your last divorce. I can see you’re just dyin’ to blab it to one and all.”
Gleefully, she informed him, “I bought myself a toy.”
“A toy?” he practically choked out, suspecting a trap she had set for him. Smart guy!
“A boy toy?” Tante Lulu whooped. “I’d like to get me one of those.”
“No, I didn’t get myself a boy toy.” She tried to appear offended but ended up laughing. “A mechanical toy, so to speak.”
Jimmy continued to frown as he tried to follow their conversation. “Like a Game Boy?”
“You could say that,” she answered with her tongue firmly planted in her cheek.
“Sometimes, chère, you are not happy till you go too far.” Rusty’s shaking head and chastising words were belied by the wicked grin that lifted the edges of his lips. “Dare I ask what you got after your first divorce?”
“The biggest heartache of my life,” she blurted out before she had a chance to bite her tongue. Could a woman die of overcrying? I almost did.
For some reason, Rusty looked surprised.
“Will you sing your pageant song for us?” Linc asked then. “I don’t recall the music precisely for “The Man I Love,’ but I could provide some background chords.”
“Me too,” Clarence said, pulling out his harmonica.
“Oh, I don’t know if…” She hesitated. It had been a long time since she’d sung before an audience, and never professionally. But this was just friends and family. And she’d sung this particular song for Rusty before… in private. She hadn’t met him yet when she’d entered the pageant or reigned as Miss Louisiana. “Sure. Why not?”
She thought she heard Rusty moan under his breath. She wasn’t sure if he moaned over the possibility of her making a fool of herself or over the possibility that she would shake him up even more than she already had. She decided to assume the latter.
Going to the doorway where she would be backlit by the lamp hanging over the kitchen table, she posed herself against one side and pulled the elastic neckline of her blouse down over her shoulders. Good move, that, she concluded when Rusty moaned again. “Picture me in a long slinky, flame red dress. Off the shoulders like this blouse, but form-fitting from the bodice to the toes of my red-sequined stiletto heels. The whole point was to look like an old-time torch singer.”
“We get the picture,” Jimmy said enthusiastically, though he’d probably totally missed the image she was going for. Rusty didn’t, though, as was evidenced by the arousal that glazed his dark eyes, causing them to go half-shuttered as he studied her. She noticed that his hands were folded over his lap. Clenched.
Linc was already playing soft chords on his guitar as an introduction, but then he seemed to change his mind. Setting his guitar aside, he leaned over and took out the trumpet. Lipping the mouthpiece, he tested it several times, then let loose with a long wail of pain in the vein of the oldest blues known in the South. New Orleans at its best. Clarence, not to be outdone, blended in with a trill on his harmonica in perfect counterpoint to Linc’s rhythm.
It was showtime!
And then she blew them all away…
Raoul was still in love with Charmaine.