Cajun Vacation (16 page)

Laurent picked up the bowl, clearly confused. “Another judge dropped out last-minute and I agreed to take her place,” he said before trying the dish. Laurent licked his lips and put the bowl down. “This is really good. Is the recipe your own?” he asked.

The man crossed his arms. “Yes,” he said.

Sara edged closer to Laurent and marveled at his calm in the face of the man’s unyielding rudeness. She waited for a smart retort, but it never came.

Laurent put down the bowl and regarded the man. “Have I done something to offend you?” asked Laurent.

The man’s lips pressed together. “I’m sure a celebrity like you wouldn’t think so,” he said.

Laurent smiled, and then grabbed his clipboard from the table. “Thanks for the food. I’ll be getting together with the other judges and comparing scores later,” he said, and then turned to walk to the next contestant.

The man snorted behind Laurent’s back. “Just like a big-shot TV star,” he said, his voice carrying over the nearby crowd. “You think you can do anything because you’re a star. No guts at all. You go and fuck my wife a couple months ago and now can’t even face me like a man. So who’s your girlfriend married to?”

Sara’s stomach twisted as she processed the man’s words.
What a fool she was for thinking Laurent was different.
She took a step away from Laurent, hurt tearing through her.

Laurent whipped his head, from Sara to the man and back again, before he finally spoke. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Don’t you?” said the man. He shook his head. “I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m sure so many ladies bounce on your bed that it’s probably hard to keep track of them. But I’ll remind you. Janet. Short, blond hair. She went to your restaurant to have you sign your cookbook two months ago.”

Sara listened to the man’s words, but her eyes never left Laurent’s face. Laurent’s face dropped as the man described his wife, and Sara knew it was true.

A small crowd of onlookers watched uncomfortably. Sara felt their stares. She wanted to run and hide. The man kept ranting. “She said she told you that she was married, but that you didn’t care. You offered to give her a private tour of the kitchen, before taking her back home. What kind of man are you?”

Sara had heard enough, and Laurent’s face told her everything she needed to know. She turned to walk away. A taxi could take her back to the hotel.

Laurent caught up to her before she’d gone ten paces. “Wait! It’s not what you think,” he said, stepping in front of her.

She felt tears welling insider her, waiting to burst, and she tried to walk around him.

Laurent wouldn’t budge. “Yes, I remember the woman. And I did sleep with her, but I had no idea that she was married. She came to the restaurant one night for an autograph and I gave it to her. But then she kept coming back, night after night, pestering me for a kitchen tour, and then sex. I know I shouldn’t have, but I gave in just to finally get rid of her.”

Sara looked up at him. A stricken look crossed his face. His confession seemed sincere and she wanted to believe him. “You had sex with her. It doesn’t seem like it was such a burden,” she said.

“I know what you’re thinking, but I’m just not a player like that. Yes, I’ve had other lovers, but everything I said to you is true. I love you,” he said.

She really, really, wanted to believe him, but her inner consultant kept raising doubts.
You knew it would end in heartbreak
. She had been ready to leave her life for a fresh start in New Orleans. Now she knew it was the hopeless romantic in her making the decision. “I just don’t see how it’s going to work,” she said.

Laurent stepped aside, but before she took a step, he touched her arm. His eyes were sad. “I love you Sara with all my heart. I know I do. But unless you can get past the hurt in your past to see that I’m different, then I don’t see how it can work either.” He leaned in and gave her a kiss on the cheek before turning away and heading back to the remaining contestant tables.

You’re making the right choice.
She walked to the parking lot and pulled out her phone to call directory assistance for a cab. A tear fell down her cheek and she wiped it away. Every step she took, she repeated how leaving was good for her. All the while, she couldn’t remember a time when making the ‘right decision’ felt so wrong.

Sara paced her hotel room. Even when her boyfriends had mocked her weight, and she had consoled herself with some cookies, she’d never felt so horrible. Every mile closer to the hotel the taxi had taken her, the certainty that she had made a hasty decision increased. By the time she had arrived and paid the driver, all she wanted was to be alone. She had hurried up to her room, put on the ‘do not disturb’ sign, and drawn the shades. Then she let herself cry.

She treated Laurent like a boyfriend that had cheated on her, but he hadn’t. Two months ago, they had never even met and she still had her own boyfriend. She watched the entire scene unfold at the park between Laurent and the man. Laurent had told the truth. He never knew that woman was married. Whatever reason she had for her infidelity, Laurent had no part in initiating it. The idea that Laurent should be tossed because of a past lover made sense only if something worse were true: That he was right. That her own insecurities and doubts had built a wall between them that she wouldn’t lower.

What did she really want in her personal life? Love. A family. A good man. Her parents loved each other and had set a wonderful example of what she wanted for herself. But things hadn’t worked out for her. She kept saying she wanted a good man and true love. But then she’d go out and pick the wrong man. Men who didn’t say kind, or endearing, things to her. Men who cheated on her. Men who didn’t deeply, passionately love her.

Laurent did love her. She felt it flow from him, and his love laid bare the truth of her own previous boyfriends. Not one of them compared to Laurent. She had to get him back. Calling him up and saying that she’d changed her mind seemed inadequate. He’d have his own doubts about her change of heart. She had left him. Now she needed such a convincing show of commitment that he would know that she intended to stay, and fight through the rough times, for a lasting love.

Her pace quickened as she thought about her options. Before she wanted to be alone, now she wished her sisters were here to give her ideas. She fell back onto the bed and held her hands to her face. Whatever she decided to do, it needed to be soon.

The harder she thought, the further an idea seemed. Nothing. The woman that billion dollar corporations relied on to come up with fresh ideas didn’t have one for her own problem. She grabbed a pillow to scream into it when her stomach grumbled; she froze. Her stomach grumbled again and an idea clicked in her mind. She rolled over to the room phone, dialed the front desk, and ordered a taxi.

A minute later she walked in the elevator and headed to the lobby. She flipped through the restaurants one-by-one in her head. She’d been to all of them today, but that was on a bike. She really didn’t remember how to get to any of them. But she did remember each of their names, and the general section of the city they were in. It should be enough information for any competent taxi driver to figure out.

The doorman held the door for her and she quickly slipped into the waiting taxi. She told the driver where to go, and she followed the stops in the same order that Laurent had earlier. At each restaurant that Laurent had said he liked, she ordered a part of dinner. An appetizer. A soup. Some Salad. A seafood entrée. Then the most decadent dessert she could find.

Food was her enemy. But now she intended to show Laurent otherwise. If she could get past her image issues and bring him a meal as calorie busting as this, then she hoped he’d see that she could move on from her past into a future with him.

Once she had everything, she had the driver bring her back to the hotel. She pleaded with the kitchen manager to let her use the kitchen to heat everything up. They insisted on payment, and she laid down her credit card without hesitation.

Then she took her time to prepare everything and repack it to carry over to Laurent’s restaurant. She walked, the two bags containing her peace-offering meal dangling from each hand. When she reached Laurent’s, she stood outside the door looking in. An early dinner crowd had gathered inside. The wait staff moved deftly from table to table, filling drinks and serving dishes.

She pushed inside, walked past the hostess, and headed straight for the kitchen. That was Laurent’s comfort zone. If he was here, she’d find him in the kitchen. She ignored the stares of patrons and employees as she walked and swung the kitchen door open.

Her eyes found Laurent in a second. His back was to her, but she saw him tense when her eyes past over him. She didn’t wait for him to turn around. Instead she walked up to him. His head turned to her as she laid the carryout on the counter and started unpacking it. He had a pile of uncut vegetables in front of him and he pushed them aside.

“I thought you were leaving?” he asked.

The best meals start with dessert. She pulled the cake out and unpacked it. “I like the food in New Orleans better,” she said. “Would you like to have dinner with me?”

“What are we starting with?” he asked.

“Carmel coma cake,” she said cutting a bite of cake off with her fork, and then feeding it to him.

He ate it in a single bite. “Delicious,” he said, and then he reached over and pulled her in. His lips locked with hers. All her tension melt away and she knew she was home.

Chapter 22

Alicia

Alicia closed the door and tossed her bag on the bed. In five minutes she wanted to be out of these clothes and halfway to the pool. While Erica had to work, and Sara needed to make their dinner arrangements, the only thing she needed to do was to lie out under the sun.

She pulled her pool bag out and filled it with all the essentials for a few hours of lounging around. Because Sara hated it when she wore her skimpier bikinis, she brought along something a bit less revealing. All the men would still stare at her, but that wasn’t her fault and Sara wouldn’t feel as self-conscious.

Both her sisters were beautiful, especially Sara, but they didn’t always think of themselves in that way. She wanted to slap every one of Sara’s boyfriends after they dumped and hurt her sister. How Sara could continually defend them, and then start dating yet another looser, amazed her. But they were sisters. Even though she was the youngest, she had more experience with men than both Erica and Sara put together. It always fell to her to lay out the blunt, matter-of-fact truth of how men really operated.

Her sisters still believed in love, whereas she knew better. Men didn’t do love, they did sex. Lots of it.

She pulled the business card out of her pocket and looked at the room number scrawled on back. A man she flirted with gave it to her in the bar a few minutes ago. He hadn’t even bothered to take his ring off. Married or not, it didn’t matter. Give a man the chance for a new girl to grace their bed, and they all fell over themselves to sneak that girl into their rooms while their wives were out.

She avoided actually sleeping with the married ones, even though she liked seducing them enough that they gave her their numbers. Sometimes she even went so far as to have the married men get a room, but she never showed up. She didn’t care. They spent the money, if they really wanted a girl they could check online and have one in under an hour.

The seduction game was fun years ago. Once she realized that no man would ever love her for anything except what she could give them naked, she gave up the pretense of offering anything more than sex. The rush of seduction, the high she felt when she bent another man to do what she wanted in bed, had lost its thrill. She crumpled the business card up and tossed it into the trash.

She stripped her clothes off and folded them. The bikini hugged her body in all the right places. Her breasts filled out the cups nicely and she pushed them together for a second. She laughed whenever her sisters got upset over her sex talk, but they didn’t understand. She’d never interrupted their vacation together for something as useless as a man. Family meant more to her than any meaningless hookup she could have. There wouldn’t be any male distractions this weekend.

She flung her pool bag over her shoulder, tied a towel around her waist, and then headed downstairs to the pool. All the men she passed turned their heads to watch her as she walked. Most quickly avoided her eyes, if she bothered to look at them. A few gave her hopeful glances, but she ignored them all.

She realized that Sara was probably angry with her. For all her dedication to keep this a girls-only weekend, the idea of actually sleeping with a bonafide celebrity had piqued her interest. Most famous men had their pick of women, so it wouldn’t be hard to actually convince them to sleep with her. But she had never had any opportunity to really meet any. If the everyday, normal men she usually slept with had lost their thrill, then at least a celebrity had put her head into a rush.

But Sara had been reluctant, and she regretted mentioning it. Instead of thinking of her sisters, she had lost her mind for a moment and thought only of herself. When Sara made it back from making dinner arrangements, she would have to let her know that she wasn’t going to pursue anything romantic. Sara won the prize, and this was their weekend together. She didn’t want to ruin it for the three of them.

She walked into the pool showers and cleaned off before heading to the pool deck. A small crowd rested in the chairs or swam in the pool. No one stood out and she ignored the stares. Sara would be back soon. She pulled two chaise lounges next to each other, threw her bag on one, and laid back in the other.

The chlorine smell permeated the area, and she was tempted to jump into the water to get an initial swim in, but she wanted to rest in the sun first. She pulled her sun glasses over her eyes and sunk back into the lounge chair, oblivious to everyone around her.