Johnny Gator (10 page)

“I
love the fall,” Nola said.
 
They sat on
her porch overlooking Caddo despite the cooler temperatures.
 
“I’m glad I stayed.”

“Me,
too,
cher,”
Johnny said. “These old
houses, though, are meant for summer and it gets colder than a witch’s tit by
December. I’ve stayed because when I shifted, I needed water as a gator, but
now that’s over we don’t have to stay in the winter.”

Glad
he said ‘we’, not ‘me’, Nola said. “Then what would we do?”

He
reached for her hand and held it close. “I used to go to Shreveport in the
winter,” he said. “I took my art along.
 
My aunt, she has a house and I would stay there.
 
She goes to Florida in the cold months.
 
For five years, I’ve told her no when she
asks if I’m coming but this year I told her ‘maybe’. What do you think? Do you
want to go? If not, we can stay here but we’ll be cold.”

The
Nola who first came to Caddo Lake would have said no.
 
She’d been to Shreveport and its sister city
across the Red River many times.
 
It
wasn’t as big as the sprawling Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex but she would have
been too afraid. But that Nola no longer existed. “If you’re going, then so am
I,” she said.

His
eyes sparkled. “
Oui,
I thought you
would.
 
But there’s just one thing.
 
My aunt, she’s a religious lady, you
know.
 
And she would never allow me to
bring a woman under her roof and into bed unless we were married.
 
I told her about you and she asked if we were
getting married and I told her we are.
 
I
just hadn’t got around to asking yet.
 
So,
cher,
would you marry me?”

Nola’s
heart expanded, so full of joy she thought she couldn’t contain it all.
 
Her fingers tightened around his but she kept
her voice light. “I thought you’d never ask,” she said. “But
yes
, I’d love to marry you.”

“I’m
glad,” he said. “So we have a date set with the priest at Holy Trinity in
Shreveport, the day before my show opens at a little gallery on Texas
Street.
 
I love you, Nola, more than I
have words to say or ways to show you, but I’d like to try.”

His
simple words touched her deep within. “I can deal with that,” she said. “I love
you, too, Jean Batiste.”

“Then
so it
begins,
the rest of our lives together.”

“That
works for me,” Nola said.

In
her own happy ending, together they’d found a new beginning.

Life
had flavor now, a rich Cajun taste, and plenty of heat.

No
woman could want anything more—and she didn’t.

Nola
kissed her Johnny, his mouth hot and sweet on hers, savoring the taste all the
more because she knew it would last a lifetime.

The End

www.leeannsontheimermurphywriterauthor.blogspot.com

Other Books by Lee Ann
Sontheimer
Murphy:

www.evernightpublishing.com/pages/Lee-Ann-Sontheimer-Murphy.html

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