Chapter Seven #3
“A massive restoration project,” April said. “They returned it to its former glory, and now it’s one of the highlights of this neighborhood.”
They entered the white building with its huge windows and beautiful woodwork. The inside of the vast space hummed with the voices of patrons traveling from one vendor stall to the other.
Dozens of huge columns stretched to the ceiling, their bright white paint contrasting sharply with the dark wooden counters and stools that occupied the space between each set of columns.
He and April both opted for Korean tacos, then took a seat at the tables set up toward the rear of the building.
“I have to admit, this is pretty nice,” Damien said, his eyes continually roaming around the beautiful, airy marketplace.
“It’s a lot better than the run-down place it used to be,” April said. “We used to think the old building was haunted, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. It looked it.”
April grinned. “Speaking of haunted, do you remember Halloween?”
“Mr. Johnson’s haunted house,” Damien said with a laugh. “How could I forget? That man was spooky as hell when it came to Halloween. I never got through the entire thing. I’d always bail halfway through.”
“I never even tried,” April said with a laugh. “The candy just wasn’t worth it.”
“You remember his house at Christmas, though? He used to go all out with the decorations then, too. It was beautiful.”
“I think his wife was behind the Christmas decorations,” April said. She sobered. “He stopped doing all of it after she died.”
“What ever happened to him?”
She hunched her shoulders. “I think his daughter took him to live with her in Atlanta after Katrina.”
Damien shook his head and huffed out a humorless laugh. “It’s amazing how life can change in an instant, isn’t it? I still remember that Friday before the storm hit.”
“You were at Alcorn, weren’t you?”
He nodded. “The semester hadn’t even started yet, but football players had to report early.
Kurt called to say that he and my mom were heading up to Hattiesburg.
I called him a pu— A not so nice word,” Damien said with a sheepish grin.
“We’d never evacuated before. And the storm wasn’t supposed to be all that bad, remember?
But my mom said she had a funny feeling about this one, so the two of them left. ”
“It’s a good thing they did.”
“They would have both drowned in that house,” Damien said.
April remembered the first time she toured the neighborhood following the storm.
It had been months after they’d finally cleared it to allow residents back in.
She’d stopped in front of Damien’s old clapboard house and her knees had nearly given out on her.
She could still recall the waterline, only a couple of inches from the eaves of the house.
“It’s hard to see that so many of these houses remain the way they looked just after the storm,” Damien commented.
“But that’s what we’re trying to change,” April said.
She reached across the table and captured his hand.
“The Ninth Ward was all but written off by most of this city. But the people who live here refused to count themselves out, and they’re no longer waiting for city leaders to take the lead.
We’re doing it ourselves, and when we’re done, the Ninth Ward is going to be better than it ever was.
” She gave his hand a fervent squeeze. “Tell me that you can see what we’re doing here, Damien. ”
“I see it now,” he said.
And he did. Finally, he did.
Damien shook his head. “But I still believe in this project, April. I don’t want it to die.”
“It doesn’t have to,” she said. “Maybe there’s a way to fit your vision in with what others in the neighborhood are doing.
You can still build it, but change the concept.
Make it affordable, make the retail shops something that the people in this neighborhood can use, and not something that will push them out. ”
Damien ran a hand down his face. “That’s something to think about,” he said. “It would provide jobs and housing, and it can still have the aesthetics I’m hoping for.” He hunched his shoulders. “Who knows, this may work.”
Damien realized that having her here right now was the perfect opportunity to finally bring up another thing that had been on his mind lately.
“Not to change the subject,” he said, even though that’s exactly what he intended. “But are we going to discuss what Jason said at the christening party, or am I supposed to just pretend I never heard it?”
“I choose option B.”
“I don’t,” he replied, grinning at her quick comeback.
“Damn that Jason.” April pulled her hands out of his grip and splayed them wide on top of the table, stretching them, then fisting them in a clear effort to get a grip on her frustration. “If he were not a new father, I swear I’d kill him.”
Damien laughed. “Something tells me your sister-in-law would be upset if you made her a widow.”
“She’d get over it,” April said.
Damien drew a single finger across her soft skin. “Was there any truth to what he said?”
April sat back in her chair. She heaved an annoyed sigh, then looked at him with stark honesty. “What do you want me to say, Damien? That I had a crush on you? Is that what you want to hear?”
“I know you had a crush on me,” he said. Her eyes widened with surprise. Damien shrugged. “Just because I was slow in English doesn’t mean I was stupid. And, not to come across as cocky, but there were a few girls with crushes on me back then.”
“Yes, that sounds cocky,” April said.
He laughed, but then he grew more thoughtful. “I figured it was just a passing thing when it came to you, but based on what Jason said at the christening, yours was more than just your run-of-the-mill high school crush.”
April groaned. “I really don’t want to talk about this.”
“You made me talk about Kurt’s incident. It’s payback time.”
She held her hands out. “Yes, fine. I had a huge crush on you. I helped you to pass English and you took pity on me and invited me to the prom. The end.”
“Is that what you think, April? That I asked you to prom out of pity?”
“Well, didn’t you?”
His mouth tipped up in a smile. “No.” Damien shook his head. He folded his arms on the table and leaned forward. “I didn’t ask you out of pity. I asked you to prom because there was no one else I wanted to go with more than you.”
Once again, April’s eyes grew wide with disbelief, but then they dimmed.
“There’s no reason for you to lie about this after all these years,” she said.
“Exactly,” he replied. “So why would I?”
He leaned in even closer, caught her chin between his fingers and tugged ever so gently. His lips were only centimeters from hers when he spoke.
“If I’d known that your feelings for me were serious, I would have handled things very differently back in high school.”
Damien’s heart began to beat triple time as his mouth descended on hers. His muscles tensed with arousal at the first brush of his lips against her sweetness. He pressed his closed mouth to her lips several times before his tongue began to trace along the seam.
Applying the barest hint of pressure, Damien pushed his way inside with amazing ease. The sweetest desire flooded his bloodstream at his first taste of April. He sought the crevices of her, his tongue roaming around, sampling. Learning.
Ignoring the fact that they were in public, he slowly and methodically explored her mouth. He’d waited much too long to do this, and he wasn’t inclined to bring it to a close anytime soon.
But apparently April had other plans. She pressed a hand to his chest and pushed.
When she looked over at him, her eyes were wide with shock.
“What was that?” she asked.
“It’s called a kiss,” Damien answered.
She gave him a “No shit, Sherlock” look.
“Are you upset that I kissed you?”
“Surprised would be a better word,” she said.
“Why are you surprised? You’re a smart woman, April. I know you’re not blind to what’s been going on here over the past few days. You feel what’s been happening between us.”
“So, you’ve noticed it, too?” she asked in a shaky voice.
Damien leaned forward again, and pressed a kiss against her temple. “Yes, I have,” he whispered into her ear. “I never allowed myself to imagine that something like this was possible with you, but lately it’s all I can think about.”
Her big brown eyes widened.
“What do you say, April? Maybe it’s time we stop playacting, and see where this goes.”
“Are you—” She stopped, swallowed deeply and then started again. “Are you sure?”
Damien couldn’t stall the grin that tipped up the corner of his mouth.
“I’ve never been surer of anything else in my life.”