Gift of Wonder (3 page)

Then he said, “Let's say grace and get to that pot roast.”

Lorene giggled like a schoolgirl. Alice smiled and grabbed their hands. And stewed about Jonah Sheridan while Jay said a lovely blessing. When she opened her eyes, her shrewd sister was staring at her. “Okay, start talking, Alice. What did you find out from our mysterious visitor?”

 

Jonah was stewing away over a cup of coffee in the tiny diner on the bottom floor of the Bayou Belle Inn. He was beginning to doubt his own sanity. Why had he come here? Oh, yeah. He wanted to build a new community on Bayou Rosette and he wanted to find out about the family who'd lived across from Rosette House. Two lofty notions, but he was willing to work on both—one to keep him busy and the other to finally find some closure in his life. If a certain curly-haired blonde with a hefty attitude didn't get in his way. Or discover the truth before he ever broke ground.

“Why you look so glum,
mon ami?
”

Jonah looked up to find the proprietor of the Belle staring at him with a hangdog expression. Jimmy
Germain had a gray beard and a little bit of gray hair to match on the back of his round head. He was short and husky and laughed with a robust belly bounce. His wife, Paulette, was also short and wide and very friendly. They made a good team and they cooked some good food.

So why wasn't Jonah eating his crawfish po'boy?

“I went out to look at Rosette House today,” he explained. He had to be very careful what he said since the rumors were already flying fast and furious.

“Did the girls give you a tour of the old place?”

Jonah's moroseness lifted at that question. “They give tours?”

“If you ask real nice, sure.”

“Oh, well, then I guess I won't be invited in for a tour. I met
one
of the Bryson sisters today.”

Jimmy's grin widened and the belly bounce began as he chuckled so hard his ruddy complexion beamed scarlet. “I'm guessing it wasn't sweet Lorene.”

“No…it was the other sister. Alice.”

“Oo-wee! She's a firecracker, for sure.”

“You can say that again,” Jonah replied, grabbing a crispy fried crawfish tail off his sandwich. He popped the spicy tidbit in his mouth and chewed. “What's her story, anyway? I mean, I know she's single and she works at the
Bayou Buzz
and all that. But…is there something else I need to know?”

Jimmy leaned close. “That, my friend, would require about three hours of my valuable time.”

Jonah ate another crawfish. “I got nowhere to go. Talk to me.”

Jimmy's eyes shifted as he put his beefy elbows on the mahogany counter. “Alice, she has trust issues with men.”

“You don't say.”

Jimmy nodded. “Right after the storm when things were so bad around here, she fell for a contractor who was passing through. He took on work—remodeling and such—and he also took off with some of our hard-earned money in the process. Never finished the work.” He shook his head. “And the worst of it—Alice believed in him, thought he'd come to help us. But he was just a greedy man who'd come to take advantage of us. He took advantage of Alice's good graces, too. He had her up to the altar, ready to marry him, probably just so he could get his hands on her inheritance. But she got wind of his shenanigans and questioned him minutes before the wedding. He denied all of it, then he blamed her for not believing in him. He left, just like that. On to the next town, I reckon. Left that pretty little bride heartbroken and humiliated. She's not over that yet. Might not ever be over it.”

Jonah pushed the rest of his sandwich away. Alice had said as much. She'd said they'd all been taken advantage of. That some of them had been hurt.

And she was the one who'd been hurt the most, from the way she'd acted today. And no wonder. A jilted bride. Jilted by a man who'd offered her hope while he swindled everyone in town. Just as Jonah had offered her hope today with all his big plans.

“It's worse than I thought,” he said, staring into his cold coffee. “She must think I'm like that. But I'm not.
Not at all. I could never leave my bride at the altar.” Especially if she sparkled with life the way Alice did, part fire and part flowers.

Jimmy patted his meaty hand on the counter, his words full of sympathy. “Yep. A woman scorned. It ain't good, that's for sure.”

Jonah paid Jimmy and bid him good-night. Then he walked out and stared down the long main street of Bayou Rosette. And he wondered what was going through Alice Bryson's mind right now.

Was she thinking about him? Or was she thinking up ways to stop him before he ever got started, just to prove a point about some idiot who'd done her wrong? And why did he care, anyway? He'd get the job done. He'd build his community. He wanted to do this. Had to do it, for more reasons than he could explain or even justify to himself. But he'd never factored in that the woman who'd inadvertently caused him to come down here on this crazy whim might also turn out to be the very one who'd put a crimp in his plans. Maybe he should just go back to Shreveport.

You're not a quitter, he told himself. You've dealt with much worse than a jilted blonde with an ax to grind. And he'd always done things on his own terms, even though Aunt Nancy had urged him to turn to God for guidance.

But Jonah didn't need God's help on this. He just needed Alice Bryson to play nice and let him do his job. And he hoped while he was here he could find the truth at last. He wasn't concerned so much about Alice. He'd get around her and build his new community, one way
or another. But he was concerned about those questions he'd had all his life. What if he didn't like the answers?

Maybe that was why he was so worried he hadn't been able to finish eating the best crawfish po'boy he'd ever tasted.

Alice Bryson was just one person. One very forceful person. He'd worked for months on clearing the way for approval so he could get the whole town in on this renovation. He'd make them believe he could do this. He had to. Because he needed to do this. He'd come on this quest, this journey, to fulfill his creative need to build things, but the main reason he was here was to fill that empty place deep inside his soul.

He didn't exactly want to call it a “God moment,” as some of his friends back home might say, but it sure had seemed that way when he'd stumbled across Alice's intriguing story. He had to help Bayou Rosette. Because he was pretty sure he came from the Mayeaux family and that this was the place where his biological mother had been born and raised, right across the bayou from Rosette House.

And somehow, while he was here he had to find out why that same mother had abandoned him and never looked back.

“I
don't understand why you were so rude to the man.”

Shoving her floral tote bag and her purse into her yellow vintage Volkswagen, Alice closed her eyes and counted to ten to drown out her sister's voice. How could she explain to Lorene that Jonah Sheridan reminded her of all she'd lost? She'd placed her heart in a stranger's hand once before and look where that had gotten her. Jilted and tossed aside, left embarrassed and bitter.

“Alice, are you listening to me?”

Alice turned at the door of her car. “I hear you loud and clear, Lorene, and I've tried to tell you how I feel. The man has this lofty plan. It just sounds too good to be true to me. And I wasn't rude. I just didn't get all giddy when he went on and on about building a new community across from us.”

“Not right across,” Lorene reminded her. “I think a park would be wonderful across the bridge. “I could take the baby for walks over there.”

Alice shook her head. “I knew better than to tell you anything. You can't go spreading that around. Everything he told me was off the record.”

“I understand,” Lorene said, holding the water hose out to send a spray over her geraniums and mums. “I won't say a word. But I'm sure the whole town is speculating about what he wants to do, since I've had phone calls all day about it.”

“And that's just it,” Alice replied, getting in the tiny convertible. “It's all speculation and I'm tired of speculators and curiosity seekers and people thinking they can just come in and take over and make things better again. They can't make it better and we both know that.”

Lorene dropped her hose and came to stand by the car. “Alice, you need to work on your negative attitude. You've got to look at the bright side. Our house was spared. We're okay. And everybody in this town did what they could to help each other. What's wrong with someone else coming to help, too? We need some new ideas around here, or we'll keep on suffering. I just don't see what's wrong with that. And even though you went through the worst before, this is different. It's a little bit of hope. Real hope.”

“I'm fresh out of hope,” Alice countered, wondering how Lorene would feel if Jay had left her high and dry at the altar. But then, Jay Hobert was not that kind of man. He had integrity and he loved Lorene. Cranking the car, she waited for it to sputter to life then looked up into Lorene's disappointed face. “I'm sorry, Lo. I should be more like you, but I can't see the bright side of this.”

Lorene leaned in close, as close as her growing stomach would let her. “Honey, he read your story. That
means your words made a difference to someone, and this particular someone isn't a fly-by-night drifter out to do us in. Didn't you write that story so people would remember Bayou Rosette and all that our ancestors did to make this a good town, and to make people more aware that we're still alive and kicking around here?”

Alice looked out over the garden, remembering her parents sitting in the old swing, smiling and giggling. The yard was becoming dormant now, shutting down for fall and winter. She wished she could just shrink away and hibernate, too. Why was she being so stubborn about this? “Yes, I did write about our history to attract visitors. I just wanted people to see us, to notice us.”

Lorene rested her hand on her stomach. “Well, somebody did. And I say more power to the man.”

“Power—that's what scares me,” Alice replied. Then she patted her sister's hand. “I've got to get to work. I'm sure Dotty will be all over this like a duck on a june bug. I might not like the man, but if anyone gets this story, it's gonna be me. I have to convince Dotty of that.”

“You'll do it justice, I know,” Lorene said. “You're always fair. Just try to have an open mind, okay?”

“Okay, all right,” Alice said as she shifted into Reverse and backed the car out of the driveway. “I'll behave, I promise.”

Lorene didn't look so sure. Alice had given her sister plenty of reason to doubt over the years since their parents had died in a car wreck out on the interstate. Alice had been thirteen, Lorene eighteen, when it had happened. They had clung together and refused to leave
their home even though friends and relatives from around the state had offered them shelter. Lorene had finished high school, but instead of going to Tulane as she'd always dreamed, she had taken classes at a nearby community college so she could stay with Alice. Then she had worked it out so that a retired aunt could come and help out with Alice while Lorene worked at night at a local restaurant. Somehow, between the modest inheritance their parents had left and their combined work money, they'd managed to hang on to their house and land—even through a major storm and even through Alice's devastation after Ned Jackson's lies.

So much sacrifice. Lorene had worked at night to make extra money, just so they could keep Rosette House and so Alice could get the degree at Tulane that Lorene never had the chance to pursue. Between her scholarships and her own job, Alice had managed to get through college, but she came home the minute she graduated, armed with a journalism degree and a restless spirit. She didn't want to be anywhere else, she reminded herself now. She owed her sister so much. Maybe she could try to change her attitude, for Lorene's sake, at least. And to remind herself that she'd come home hoping to make changes, hoping to create her own niche here in the place she loved.

What if Jonah Sheridan could help her do that? Would that be so wrong? Alice didn't have the same strong convictions as her sister. She prayed, same as Lorene, but she wasn't so sure her requests were always as pure as her sister's. But in spite of her doubts and her cynical nature, Alice still held out hope, too. She didn't
like to admit that, but if she looked closely she knew she'd find a little glimmer of hope somewhere deep inside her bruised heart. How else could she have written that story only months after Ned had broken her heart? She wasn't so sure she was ready to nurture that hope, though.

 

“We need to follow up on this, Alice,” Dotty Tillman said later that morning. “
You
need to follow up on this. So why are you sitting here?”

Alice lifted an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting I stalk the man, Dotty?”

Dotty stuck her pen into the thick auburn-colored bundle of wiry hair surrounding her café-au-lait face, then looked down through her pink bifocals. “Isn't that what a good reporter does?”

Alice was suddenly having doubts regarding her abilities to remain neutral about Jonah Sheridan. “But…by the time our story comes out next month, he might be long gone anyway.”

Dotty again looked through her bifocals, a hand moving in the air. “Okay, kid, what's really going on? You come in here and tell me about this Jonah Sheridan person and how he's out to rebuild practically the whole town, but you don't have that enthusiasm I like in a reporter. In fact, you seem downright depressed about this scoop. Spill it, Alice.”

Alice sank back in her chair then glanced out the front window of the tiny cottage where the
Bayou Buzz
offices were located on Bayou Drive. Everything around here seemed to have the word
bayou
in it, one
way or another. Maybe because all the people around here had bayou blood running through their veins. She could see the Bayou Belle Inn across the square.

The blue Victorian house that had become an inn and restaurant over twenty years ago sat back from the road, surrounded by ancient live oaks and tall magnolias on the street side and bald cypress trees and trailing bougainvillea vines on the bayou side. Leaves from the nearby red oaks and tallow trees floated by in graceful symmetry each time the fall wind blew. Alice shivered, feeling that wind like a warning inside her soul.

“I guess I don't buy it,” she finally admitted. “He just shows up one day all gung ho about a place he's never even seen before. I don't trust this man.”

Dotty let out a huff of breath. “Suga', you don't trust any man, not since—”

“Don't remind me,” Alice said, getting up to pace around the square office, where her own big desk behind the reception counter served as her home away from home. “I don't want to make the same mistake twice, Dotty. I vouched for Ned. I convinced people to hire him. And even though Jonah Sheridan seems like the real deal, I just can't get excited about this. Maybe I am being too negative, but it's hard right now.”

Dotty dropped her glasses on Alice's desk. Her gold hoop earrings shimmied as she shook her head. “We all make mistakes, you know. Especially when it comes to men.”

“Is that why you've never married?” Alice asked, hoping to glean a bit of information from her tight-lipped boss. No one really knew much about Dotty,
except that she had grown up in Texas and lived in New Orleans until a few years ago. She'd started a multicultural magazine there, but something had gone wrong and she'd wound up here. A blessing for Alice, since she'd needed a job, but a mystery for the whole town. More fat to chew, more fodder for bayou legends. “Dotty?”

Dotty's exotic chocolate-colored eyes widened. “We were talking about you, kid, not me.”

And that was as far as she usually got with lovable, stubborn, opinionated, exotic Dotty. No denial, no explanation. Dotty didn't talk about Dotty. But she lived to write the truth about everyone else.

“I'll get the story. You know that,” Alice said, wishing Dotty would allow other human beings close. Her boss was a loner. And she never darkened the church doors. Dotty didn't seem to need God in her life. And that made Alice sad. And determined to help her friend and mentor.

“I want the story, no doubt,” Dotty said, getting back to business. “But I want a good, solid story. Not just some notes and an attitude. Get to the bottom of this, Alice. Find out what's behind Jonah Sheridan's driving need to come to a town he'd never even visited and help us rebuild. Does he have some gold stashed away to help the poor and needy? Or does he have some other reason for wanting to do this? You need to find out, because we both know there's always more to the story.”

“I will,” Alice said, but her heart hammered like loose tin hitting against a barn roof, fast and steady. “I didn't say I had to like the man to get to the truth.”

“No, you sure didn't,” Dotty replied, her expression smug and sure. “You didn't have to. Apparently, our Mr. Sheridan got to you in a big way.”

Alice shook her head. “No, he didn't.
He did not.
He just got my feathers ruffled with all his pie-in-the-sky talk.”

“And maybe with his crisp brown hair and lady-killer smile?” Dotty asked, staring beyond where Alice stood with her back to the window. “Or maybe the way he walks all loose-limbed and laid-back?”

“You've seen him?” Alice wanted to bite her tongue. She'd just verified that she agreed with Dotty's spot-on description by blurting out the question.

“Yep,” Dotty replied without missing a beat. “Up close, too.”

“When?”

“About two minutes ago, when he started walking across the street toward our front door.”

Alice whirled around in shock just as the man himself opened the door and looked up to find her staring at him.

 

Jonah's surprise caused him to inhale a deep breath. “Uh, hello, ladies.” He could tell they'd been discussing
him,
since one looked guilty and the other one looked amused.

The guilty one—the one with the blond curls dancing around her high cheekbones—sank back against a cluttered desk. “What brings you to see us, Mr. Sheridan?”

“It's Jonah,” he said, leaning against the tall receptionist's counter. “I came by to see if we could talk.”

The amused one got up and came around the desk to extend her hand. “I'm sorry. Our receptionist is out on an errand. I'm Dotty Tillman, publisher and owner of the
Bayou Buzz.
And you're just the man we wanted to see.”

He smiled, thinking this was a very good sign. He'd thought about how to deal with Alice Bryson, and he'd decided to gain her trust before she decided to delve too heavily into him and his past and his future. He had to keep her close so she wouldn't dig too deep. “Great, because I wanted to see you, too.” He shook Dotty's hand but he kept his eyes on Alice. “If you're not busy.”

“We are,” Alice said, folding her arms across her midsection in a hostile stance.

“We are not,” Dotty replied as she cut her gaze to Alice. “Come on back and have a seat, Jonah. Maybe you can fill us in on all these rumors. Tell us a little bit more about your plans for this area.”

Seeing the perturbed look on Alice's face, Jonah walked past her and settled down on a high-backed floral chair. “That's why I'm here, actually. I plan on giving the local weekly paper an interview, but I wanted to offer y'all the chance for an all-out, in-depth exclusive on this project. That way, your story will hit at just about the time we get things going on the property.”

Dotty grinned big, her dark eyes beaming with glee. “Funny, that's exactly what we were talking about. I just assigned Alice to cover you—I mean, to cover your project. I wanted her to find out all she could so our readers will get the big picture on this.”