In Shining Whatever (Three Magic Words Trilogy #2)(21)

"Who was yours?" she asked right back.

"Kevin Bacon isn't my type."

"He's not mine either."

"Did you have a Sam?" he asked.

She fidgeted while she collected her thoughts. Yes, she had a Sam, but his name was Zac Verret. He played fiddle for a Cajun band. He had jet black hair he wore too long and ebony eyes.

"So what was your Sam's name?" Hart asked.

"What makes you think there was a Sam?"

"The look on your face. Did you love him?"

"No, I didn't love him. His spirit wasn't stable, and we'll leave it at that"

"Good God, Kate. Was he a convict?" Hart asked.

"Don't you judge me. You were dating Stephanie. Look where she ended up. As far as I know, my Sam is still playing the Cajun joints in southern Louisiana"

"He's in a band? I never pictured you as liking that kind of fellow." Hart almost pouted. He'd wanted to hear that she'd pined away for him and never had another man in her life.

"He was pretty, and it was a hot night. I mean, really hot. My sundress stuck to my body and we'd been dancing for hours, so when the band took a break and he asked me to dance with him to the jukebox, I did."

Hart didn't want to hear any more. The thought of Kate doing that dance she'd performed at the barbecue with someone else didn't sit well at all.

"Want to hear more?" she asked.

"I get the picture. What else is on television?"

"Nothing but reruns"

"You said, `We' had been dancing for hours. Who was with you?"

"My cousins. I've got a whole beaucoup of cousins down there yet. Daddy came from a big family. We worked hard all week and we danced hard on the weekends. I wish I could bring that lifestyle to Texas. We'd all gather up at Maw Maw Miller's place out by the bayou. It didn't take much for a cochon de lait. That's where someone roasts a big hog, and there's music. Someone's birthday, a child's birth, a death in the family, an anniversary, the first sugar crop, anything to celebrate and have a good time."

"You missed that when you went to college?"

"I lived for the days when I could go home for the holidays. There'd always be one to celebrate my coming home. I was important to those people. I was getting an education. I was going places," she said.

"So you got the best of both worlds. Your momma's good looks and your father's Cajun parties."

"I did, but Momma is also a good Cajun cook," Kate said.

"Why doesn't she start a Cajun restaurant of her own?"

"Because Aunt Ilene needs her at the Amigos. Momma doesn't need the money, but she needs the schedule. Daddy was her life. She has to have something to fill her days since he's gone," Kate explained.

"And since you are the only child, you had to give up your job and come back to hellish Texas?"

She glared at him. That he knew so little about her when she'd lived in the same town as he did for the first fifteen years of her life proved what she'd been trying to say for weeks. He didn't know her at all.

"I have four older brothers born right after Momma and Daddy got married. Four boys in as many years. Raymond, John, Azore, and Paul. They almost had them all raised, and here I came along. Paul graduated before I even started school."

"Where are they now?"

"Raymond is in Nashville. He's a baseball coach for a high school. John is in Florida, an inspector for the government in the fruit market. Azore is in California, retired military and working for the postal service. Paul is Father Paul in Savannah, Georgia."

"I never knew any of them. Don't know that I heard them mentioned," Hart said.

"Why would you? Raymond got a scholarship to play ball at the university in Tennessee right out of high school. He married a Tennessee girl and they settled down right there. John hated school. He got a job at one of those T-shirt shops on the strip near Panama City Beach. But he found out real quick that wouldn't pay the rent and support any kind of lifestyle, so he wound up taking classes in science. Azore wanted to be an actor, so he went to California. That lasted about one summer, and he enlisted in the Navy. Paul was born a priest. Momma said Daddy marked him when he named him after the parish priest back in Louisiana. Anyway, they all left right after high school. You weren't old enough to remember them. They weren't important enough in Albany to be remembered by anyone other than our church and friends, neither of which you fit into."

Hart looked hurt. "I'm not your friend?"

"Oh, bon ami, stop your bobbin'," she said, in a slow Southern drawl.

"What did you just call me? I'm not so sure I like this Cajun talk."

"I said bon ami, or good friend, stop your bobbin', or pouting."

A smile split his face from side to side. "So I'm not only your friend, I'm your good friend."

"Maybe, but not my cher."



"And that would be?"

"Anything more than a friend."

"Why can't I be a cher?"

"Cher means dear. Chere means my sweet. Both sound a little sissy, don't they? And I wouldn't want to be calling you a sissy."

"I could show you right here that I'm not one bit sissified," he teased.