Chapter Three #2
Damien cursed his decision to have a less formal office environment as he picked up the phone.
As he expected, the paper, which was one of the top entertainment news outlets in the city, wanted to interview him for what they were calling NOLA Notables.
Damien had no doubt that this was a direct result of the Top Ten Eligible Bachelors article.
It was as if the floodgates had been opened.
He was no longer seen as just a businessman in the city. He was now a “notable.”
Damien wasn’t sure how to handle this. In a way, it was press—it was good press. And good press was golden. But he wasn’t sure how this type of press would come across to potential investors. Would they see it as good-natured fun, or would they see it as a reason not to take him seriously?
He would have to figure out how to make this new local fame of his work to his advantage, because it wasn’t going away anytime soon. Something in his gut told him that having April on his arm, with her refined taste and regal manner, was the way to go.
Damien only hoped that he was making the right decision. He had too much riding on this to get things wrong.
* * *
Damien wound his way down the parking garage’s spiral ramp, then headed straight for his brother’s favorite Chinese restaurant in what was known as the Carrollton area.
The hostess knew him by face, seeing as Damien made a weekly appearance at the restaurant.
He’d been stopping in for takeout every Friday for the past two years, ever since he returned to New Orleans.
He backed out onto Carrollton Avenue and made his way across the city to Bayou St. John.
Damien considered this area, which was part of New Orleans’s Mid-City neighborhood, as the gold standard when it came to locations that had revitalized themselves following Hurricane Katrina.
The neighborhood, which was made up of a collection of colorfully painted houses done in the colonial and Italianate styles, along with a number of one-of-a-kind eateries and retail shops, was the heart of New Orleans.
Residents banded together and rebuilt their community into something that was even more spectacular than it had been prior to the storm.
The area had grown by leaps and bounds in the past couple of years. Millennials who had come to New Orleans to take advantage of its budding tech industry, small families who’d moved out of the suburbs, but who still wanted the sense of a close-knit community, had found their way to Mid-City.
And where the people came, commerce followed. New businesses continued to spring up, changing the landscape of the neighborhood. It was exactly what Damien had in mind for Alexander Quarters. He could turn that area into a viable part of New Orleans, too.
Damien pulled into the driveway of the single-story bungalow he’d purchased for his brother two years ago.
Instead of taking the front steps up to the porch, he walked along the access ramp, inspecting the wood for warping.
After a week of late-evening downpours, Damien wanted to make sure the rain hadn’t affected Kurt’s mode of getting into the house.
Thankfully, according to the meteorologist, the rains were done for the rest of this evening. It shouldn’t hamper the affair on Julia Street tonight.
The front door opened and Kurt wheeled himself out.
“Hey, man, what’s going on?” His brother, who was older than Damien by four years, greeted him with a huge smile.
“Nothing much,” Damien answered. “Other than you hitting on my office manager, that is.” Taking the hand his brother held out to him, he bent low for a one-armed hug.
“Hey, she’s the one who flirts with me,” Kurt said.
“Says you. Clarissa tells another story. And the problem is I wouldn’t know who to believe out of the two of you.”
Kurt put a hand to his chest. “That hurts.”
Damien knocked him on the shoulder. “Let’s get inside and eat this food before it gets cold.”
“Did you bring extra fortune cookies?”
“Don’t I always bring extra fortune cookies?”
“What’s with the attitude? Did you also get an extra bug up your ass?”
Damien didn’t bother answering that. He held the door open while Kurt backed into the house. As he watched the motorized chair roll ahead of him, Damien fought off the wave of anger that tried to overtake him whenever he was reminded of Kurt’s condition.
His throat tightened with emotion as he remembered that call he’d received from one of Kurt’s old buddies from the neighborhood, telling Damien that his brother had been shot while walking to the corner store.
Shot, just as his dad—a former officer with the NOPD—had been back when Damien was in middle school.
His father had been gunned down on the streets of the Ninth Ward while off duty.
He and Kurt had buried their mother only a year before Kurt’s shooting, after an aneurysm burst in her head on her way from church. The thought of losing Kurt, too—of being completely alone—had brought Damien to his knees, right in the middle of his office in Houston.
Doctors said Kurt’s survival could only be described as a miracle. The three bullets that struck him had missed his vital organs by millimeters. But he would be in that chair for the rest of his life.
Those streets had taken his father from him. His mother had fallen dead on the sidewalk. And his brother had been robbed of his ability to walk. Damien was sure he would never be able to forgive or get over the toll that neighborhood had taken on his family.
But a few months ago Damien ran across the listing for the vacant lot on the northern tip of the area, and he’d gotten the idea to change things for the better.
Instead of being bitter, he would usher in a new era, revitalize the neighborhood, bring in a new crop of residents and businesses that would make it a safer place to live.
That was the legacy the Alexanders would leave in the Lower Ninth Ward.
“So,” Kurt said as he dished them both plates of fragrant Chinese food. “Should I bring up the bachelor thing, or will you?”
Damien groaned. “Don’t,” he said. “I figured if there was anywhere that I could get away from it, it would be here.”
“You figured wrong,” Kurt said with a laugh. “You know the only reason you were chosen is because you’re more well-known than I am, right? If they knew of this Alexander brother, your ugly mug wouldn’t be splashed across those pages.”
“Your ego is as healthy as ever.”
“I’m just saying.” His brother laughed again. It was good to hear laughter in this house.
They dug into the food as if they didn’t eat the same thing week after week. A few minutes passed before Damien said, “I was down on St. Claude yesterday.”
Kurt’s eyes widened with interests. “You? You haven’t been down that way since Mama’s funeral.”
“It hasn’t been that long,” Damien argued, although there was a good chance his brother was right. “Have I told you about the youth program April Knight works with? It’s called A Fresh Start.”
“Yeah, I know about it. They’re building some kind of community coffee shop. I saw it online.”
“It opened already,” Damien said. “I went out there to visit it and, you know, just to see how things are going.”
“Hmm,” Kurt said.
“What’s the ‘hmm’ about?”
Kurt shook his head.
Damien could sense that all-knowing Obi-Wan Kenobi vibe resonating from him. He set his fork down and lifted his hand. “What, Kurt? Just spit it out.”
“Nothing. It’s just that I’m assuming you saw April while you were there?”
Damien’s brow furrowed at the suggestion in Kurt’s tone. “Yeah, so?”
“Oh, come on,” his brother said. “You still playing that denial game where April is concerned?”
“Don’t start this again.” Damien stood and walked over to the shelf so he could scoop more lo mein onto his plate. “April and I have always been just friends. You know that.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Because I’m friends with April?”
“Because you’re blind when it comes to April,” Kurt countered.
Showed how much his brother knew. Not only was Damien not blind to her, but he’d had a helluva time getting the image of her standing in front of the class instructing her students out of his mind.
There was something in the joy on her face that called to him.
He tried to ignore it, but it wasn’t easy.
“I only want lunch today,” Damien said. “Advice from the Love Doctor is not necessary.”
“In addition to being smart and talented, April is a knockout. I saw this concert she performed on PBS not too long ago—”
“Since when do you watch PBS?”
“Shut up.”
“Comeback of the year.” Damien snorted.
“All I’m saying,” his brother continued, “is that you’re stupid to just leave April out there for another guy to snatch up.”
Damien shoveled another forkful of lo mein into his mouth to give him an excuse not to speak. Because, honestly, he didn’t know how to respond to his brother’s statement.
It’s not as if he needed Kurt to tell him that April was beautiful, especially after seeing her yesterday. He had eyes. And when it came to spotting a beautiful woman, they worked extremely well.
And it wasn’t as if Damien hadn’t allowed that particular scenario to play in his mind in years past, either.
Hell, how could he not? He’d known April since their sophomore year of high school.
Back in those days his horny teenaged mind had imagined nearly every non-blood-related female he came in contact with in a compromising position.
But he’d felt guilty thinking about April in those terms. She was his friend.
She’d reached out to him out of the kindness of that big heart to tutor him.
She didn’t deserve to be thrust into a starring role in his wet dreams.