Chapter Four #2
“It’s a bit like White Linen Night that takes place in August. Several of the art galleries along Julia Street will have their doors open to the public.
All participating artists are donating a portion of their profits from tonight to the local charities that support autism research.
Ten of the city’s top restaurants will have booths set up on the sidewalk, selling refreshments. ”
“And how will this help your particular cause?”
“The McGowan Group is one of the event’s main sponsors. They’re the perfect fit for this special project I’m working on.”
“You mind sharing exactly what this special project is?” April asked.
“I thought I told you?”
“No, you haven’t. You do realize that before you walked into A Fresh Start the other day, I hadn’t seen you since Christmas, right?”
Damien nodded. He did realize that. And he felt awful about it.
“I’m as much to blame as you are,” April said, as if she’d read his thoughts. A wan smile lifted the corner of her mouth. “Your number is saved in my contact list. I could just as easily call you. We need to make more of an effort to stay in touch, especially now that we’re both living back home.”
“Well, now that we’re going to be spending so much time together this summer, it won’t take as much effort. In a few weeks you’ll probably be hiding from me.”
Her eyes shone with a flash of raw heat. “I doubt that,” she said.
There it was again. That current of electricity. It sparked between them, filling the small kitchen with an energy he couldn’t describe.
“So, your project?” April asked.
“Uh, yeah, the project,” Damien said. When was the last time he’d found himself feeling so flustered? “I want to build a residential complex,” he said.
Her eyes blinked several times, her head tilting to the side in confusion. “In the Ninth Ward?”
“Yes. On the land I just bought. I want to help bring residents back by providing housing.”
“That’s wonderful, Damien.” April’s face softened and he felt as if he’d just been handed the entire world. “I had no idea that’s what you were doing.”
Pride swelled within his chest.
It was the look that was in her eyes right that second that had compelled him to want to be a better person. The look that said that he’d made her happy, that he’d given her a reason to be proud of him. That look used to fuel nearly everything he did back when he was in high school.
One would think that making his mother proud would be the thing that kept him going, but after his dad died, his mother had always been too busy to pay much attention to what he was doing.
It was an uneasy truth, but a truth nonetheless.
A single mother working two jobs to supplement the meager survivor’s benefits they received following his dad’s off-duty murder didn’t have time to dole out praise for each and every little achievement.
As long as he and Kurt came home every night and didn’t wind up in jail or the morgue, his mother was happy.
April was the person Damien wanted to impress. April was the one who was there to give him high fives when he aced a test, or got good marks on term papers.
And just as it had been back in those days at Carver High School, Damien wanted to impress her now.
He shrugged, as if putting that smile on her face wasn’t a big deal. “I figured I’m in the perfect position to do it,” he said.
“You’re also the perfect person to do it,” April replied. “Residents are far more likely to support this development if it’s someone from the neighborhood who’s driving it.”
“I can’t do it alone, though,” Damien said. “Which is why I need investors. I researched potential partners, and the McGowan Group is by far the best match for what I have in mind. I just need to convince them that they want to work with me.”
“You’re pretty good at convincing people to bend to your will when you put your mind to it,” she said. “I don’t think you’ll have a problem winning them over.”
“I like your confidence in me.”
She took his hands and clasped them between her own. “I mean it, Damien. You can do this.”
The smile in her eyes did more for him than any of those motivational posters his old boss used to plaster around the office.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he said.
“Anytime and every time. Now, let’s go,” April said. She gave his hands a light squeeze. “I’m ready to see you in action.”
By the time they arrived in the Warehouse District, the street parking was completely taken up. Damien pulled into a covered garage two blocks from Julia Street and started for the area known to locals as Gallery Row.
A three-block stretch of Julia had been blocked off to traffic.
Lights were strung from one side of the street to the other, the pale blue bulbs casting an ethereal hue over the crowd of sharply dressed patrons.
White-jacketed waiters freely handed out champagne, courtesy of the event’s corporate sponsors.
The McGowan Group’s logo—the letter M encased in a square—adorned the champagne bottles and paper napkins.
Conversation and laughter lit up the air, which shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone in attendance. This was New Orleans, after all. And if there was one thing the Big Easy knew how to do, it was throw a party.
Walking a step ahead of him, though still holding on to his hand, April looked at Damien over her nearly bare shoulder. Her smooth skin had already developed a slight sheen from the humidity hanging heavily in the air.
“Are you ready to mingle?” she asked.
Damien nodded. “Let’s do this.”
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but he sure as hell hadn’t anticipated that April would have just about everyone eating out the palm of her hand within the first twenty minutes.
Yet he shouldn’t be surprised. She’d spent over a decade hobnobbing with dignitaries, celebrities and wealthy symphony buffs.
She knew how to charm this type of crowd.
The two of them entered a gallery that, according to the platinum plate just outside the door, displayed modern mixed-media art.
Damien had never been one for staring at a piece of artwork and dissecting its meaning.
If something looked like bits of construction paper glued together by a four-year-old, then that’s what he was going to call it.
However, in her life of world travels and mingling with the rich and cultured, April had apparently learned how to tell the junk from the...
well...as far as he was concerned, bigger junk.
Several fellow gallery-goers gathered around them to discuss the quality of the various works, expounding on the richness and passion. Damien simply nodded and smiled while April worked her magic. She was brilliant.
They dipped in and out of several galleries. Just as he’d anticipated, a number of people brought up the magazine article. Several of the women gave April long, curious looks, but none remarked on the fact that one of the city’s top bachelors had a date on his arm.
He and April visited five galleries before Damien finally spotted Michael Berger, one of the managing partners of the McGowan Group.
“That’s him,” Damien said. He tipped the champagne flute he’d grabbed from a passing waiter a few minutes ago toward the tall gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair. “That’s the one I’m here to see.”
“The one wearing the tie with Van Gogh’s Starry Night on it?” April asked.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Damien said.
With an exasperated sigh, she said, “The tall one standing next to the redhead?”
“Yes,” he answered. “I’ve met him a couple of times, but it’s been a few months.”
“Okay,” April said. “Let’s go.”
They started for Berger, but they were stopped just a few feet away from him by a reporter with a cameraman. Damien recognized the local news station’s logo on the side of the camera.
She stuck her hand out. “Hi, I’m Rebecca James from Channel 9. How lucky to run into you here, Mr. Alexander. I hope you don’t mind the ambush, but I’d love to get some live comments from you.”
“Actually, I—”
The reporter turned and nodded at the cameraman, and suddenly the camera’s shining light blinded Damien.
“Here we are at Art for Autism,” the tall brunette with the Colgate smile said into the camera.
“And it should come as no surprise to see local entrepreneur Damien Alexander here. We all know that this worthy cause is worth patronizing, but I think what’s on the minds of most in the Crescent City is what it feels like to be named one of the city’s top eligible bachelors. So, Damien?”
* * *
At first, April was unsure of what to do.
Damien’s deer-in-the-headlights expression was so foreign to anything she’d ever witnessed from him that it completely caught her off guard.
But she quickly recovered. She recognized the tension that had slowly begun to rise in him by the way the smooth skin stretching over his defined cheekbones grew taut.
Pasting on an overly bright smile, April stepped in between Damien and the reporter.
“Actually,” she started, “I think Mr. Alexander would rather discuss why it meant so much for both of us to attend this wonderful event on behalf of children with autism.”
“Oh, of course,” the reporter said. “But we all know that the viewers out there would love a word from him about being named one of the city’s best catches.”
“He finds it flattering,” April answered for him. “Now, about Art for Autism.”
Taking the reporter by the hand, she led her to the other side of the gallery, pulling out all the trite responses that reporters expect at an event such as this one. April looked back at Damien and gave him a subtle nod toward Michael Berger.