Dear Love Doctor (20 page)

“Oh, yes.” Daffy toyed with her bracelet and said, “That’s something I’m quite in awe of.”

“Baking?” Thelma made a sweeping, dismissive gesture with her hands. “There’s nothing to it. At least, if you know what you’re doing.”

Daffy nodded in all seriousness.

After having heard Daffy tell him that everything she knew about cooking she’d learned from her mother—as in how to make reservations—Hunter couldn’t believe his ears. The two of them had to be playing some woman’s game. Kind of like two guys outbluffing each other on how many babes they’d laid or how low their golf score was on the back nine.

But why would Daffy bother? Why try to win his mother over?

The bell on the door of the shop clanged just as the siren sounded in Hunter’s mind.

Daffy cared.

And she cared enough to try to get his mother to like her.

Hunter swallowed and stared at his size-twelve tennis shoes. He’d only intended to flirt with her. He’d actually intended to use Daffy to find out the identity of that dratted Love Doctor. But so much had happened since his visit to the offices of
The Crescent
, he’d almost forgotten he’d ever cared about that mission. Daffy had turned his world on its head and now all he thought about, cared about, worried about, was Daffodil Landry. Well, that and his business, to be quite honest, but somehow the two of them went hand in hand. The two of them, he realized, were the future as he wanted it to be.

“Why, Hunter, what a surprise!”

He turned, his mind in a whirl, and slowly, he registered Emily standing there, a slight pout, hurt yet somehow simultaneously suggestive, curving her lips downward.

Unfortunately, Daffy turned, too, as did his mom.

Well, nothing like a negative force to make the positive ones join together.

As Emily advanced, her arms outstretched, both Daffy and Thelma seemed to bond. They moved closer together and exchanged glances.

Suddenly Emily was smothering Hunter in a hug of greeting accompanied by dramatic kisses on his cheeks—while Thelma and Daffy both leaned back against the counter, arms folded in almost identical postures.

Hunter would have laughed if he could have caught his breath. As it was, it took him a few minutes to disentangle himself from the voracious Emily. When he did, he said, “Hello, Emily. You remember my mother, Mrs. James?”

Playing the gracious lady, Emily dipped her chin the barest of centimeters. “Of course I remember your mother, Hunter.”

“And this is Daffodil Landry.”

Daffy nodded, a perfect mimicry of Emily’s motion. “I believe we met at Jazzfest. You were there with your husband, as I recall.”

Thelma actually sniggered.

Hunter wouldn’t have believed it of his own mother if he hadn’t heard it with his own ears. Thelma had no use for Emily and never had. But then, neither did Hunter.

Glancing warmly at Daffy, Hunter said, “That’s right. You and Roger were at Jazzfest the afternoon Daffy and I were there. How is old Rog?”

“He’s fine,” Emily said, her shoulders stiffening and her prissy little nose taking a vertical turn. “He’s away at a banking convention.”

“You must be lonely,” Daffy said.

“With all the friends I have?” Emily tittered, a noise Hunter had always hated, especially when she accompanied it with a sweeping flutter of her lashes, as she did now. “I’m having a little party tonight, as a matter of fact. No point in letting the grass grow under my feet. Why don’t you come?”

“Is that what fidelity is called nowadays?” Thelma still hadn’t uncrossed her arms.

Emily’s mouth formed a shocked “O.” Daffy looked from her to Thelma and over to Hunter. Hunter merely shook his head, and said, “Daffy and I have to get back to New Orleans tonight.”

“You do?” Thelma actually sounded disappointed, but to Hunter’s relief, she also sounded a lot more like her normal, stolid, and dependable self.

“Daffy’s a reporter,” Hunter said, not sure why he didn’t say “social columnist,” unless it was to protect her from Emily’s pretensions. “She works a lot of weekends.”

Daffy nodded, but didn’t elaborate.

“You know, Hunter,” Emily said, still with that pout on her face, “you keep avoiding my parties and Roger and I will think you don’t like us anymore.”

Hunter studied her face, remembering those days in high school and how he’d suffered from wanting her to say yes to a date with him, remembering how crudely she’d rejected him. He took a deep breath. “Roger’s not a bad sort, Emily, but just to set the record straight, I’ve never actually liked either one of you.”

He didn’t know whose gasp was louder. All three women stared and clasped hands over their mouths. Emily, two spots of color in her cheeks, said, “Trash will always be trash.” Then she flounced out of the shop, slamming the door so hard the bell fell off and landed on the floor with a thunk.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Thelma said, walking over and collecting the bell.

Daffy looked the most shocked. Hunter watched her, stung by Emily’s harsh words, yet somehow not minding them the way he would have at so many points in his past.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me?” Daffy murmured the question under her breath, a look of caring and concern clear in her eyes.

Hunter reached out a hand and joined it with hers. She squeezed his fingers gently and he smiled deep into her eyes. “You’re a treasure,” he said.

Thelma dropped the bell and it hit the floor with a protesting clang. “Well, I never,” she said.

“There’s always a first,” Hunter said, stroking the back of Daffy’s hand and wondering if she’d think he’d lost his mind if he told her he couldn’t live without her in his life.

20

T
helma tied the bell back onto the door and turned around, her face much more welcoming than it had been when Daffy and Hunter had first entered. That was a relief, Daffy thought, retrieving her hand from Hunter’s.

She caught his look of disappointment when she pulled away from him, but she couldn’t hang all over him with his mother present. She might have a wild reputation, but Daffy followed her own set of social strictures.

“So,” Hunter said, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“Don’t let her bother you,” Thelma said. “You know quite well she only started sniffing around after you made a pot of money. Fortune hunters!”

She crossed to a large layout table that stood near the cash register counter. “Hunter, why don’t you run down to Paul’s Café and get us some coffee? And tell whoever’s behind the counter to make a fresh pot, not to send me any sludge.”

“Coffee? But you don’t like—”

His mother’s stare could have pierced a stack of picture frames.

“Sure. Be right back.” Looking as if he’d rather do anything other than leave the two of them alone in the shop, Hunter left the store.

Thelma patted a stool next to the one she occupied. “Join me?”

She might have asked, but Daffy didn’t hear it as much of a question. Curious, she took the seat and smoothed the short skirt of her summer shift. Her bracelet caught the light and Daffy felt Thelma’s eyes on her.

“At least you don’t look like you’re after Hunter’s money,” his mother said.

Daffy smiled. Her own mother never managed to speak a forthright sentence to her. Why, even the time she’d taken them to the doctor to be put on the pill, her mother had left them alone with the doctor for what passed as an explanation. “Oh, no,” she said. “I have plenty of my own.”

“Inherited or earned?”

“Both. I’m a photojournalist.”

Thelma’s eyes sharpened under her fluffy graying hair. “You make your living with a camera.”

Daffy nodded. “And you make yours providing pictures and art their very best setting.”

Thelma said, “Berry best.” And then she smiled and Daffy saw the softer side of her coming through.

“You must be proud of Hunter.”

“That I am, but life is about being happy as much as it is about being wealthy.”

“And he’s not happy?” Daffy considered his mother’s statement.

“There’s happy and there’s happy.” Thelma picked up an Exacto knife and toyed with it. “Hunter’s never brought a girlfriend here to visit. Not in the whole time he’s lived in New Orleans.”

“I’m not really his girlfriend,” Daffy said, thinking she ought to set the record straight. “We haven’t known each other very long.”

Thelma snorted, a quite inelegant noise that said a lot about what she thought of Daffy’s protestations.

“Every girl in Ponchatoula, even that married slut Emily, is after Hunter. He’s had his pick of the sweet ones any time now and never settled down. If anything, he plays the field a lot more than a mother likes to see. But he’s charming and good-looking . . .”

Her voice trailed off and Daffy guessed Thelma’s thoughts had turned to the man who had fathered the son.

Thelma cut a stray strip of paper free from a matting frame with the Exacto knife. Chop. Slice. The wisp of paper curled and she flicked it away. “Well, I want him to find that level of happiness we all seek.”

Daffy wasn’t sure what to say. So she sat there in silence, pretty sure Hunter’s mother wanted her to say just the right words to reassure her that she, Daffodil Landry, was that source of happiness that Hunter needed.

But Daffy couldn’t say that. For one thing, it was too presumptuous. She might know in her heart that she’d fallen oh-so-hard for Hunter James, but it took more than one half of a couple to dance a waltz. And she wasn’t too certain Hunter was at a point in his life that he’d consider partnering anyone—let alone a woman he’d been warned away from.

“Well,” Thelma said, putting down the knife, “maybe you two haven’t known each other long, as you say. But when a customer walks in here with a piece of artwork and suggests this kind of frame and that type of matting, it doesn’t take me more than a few seconds to know whether it’s a match or not.” She rose from her stool. “You’re a photographer. Trust your instincts.”

The doorbell clanged and Hunter entered, a cardboard tray of drinks in his hands.

In a far less gentle voice, Thelma said, “Just don’t break his heart.”

“Room service,” Hunter announced, exchanging smiles with Daffy. Only that morning he’d arrived at her house and used the same line. Only that morning, but it seemed like a lifetime ago.

He set the tray on the cash register counter and handed a cup to Thelma, who said, without a trace of embarrassment, “Daffy and I have been having a get-acquainted talk.”

Hunter carried a cup to Daffy. She took it and he was relieved to see a twinkle in her eyes. Thelma could be hard on people she didn’t cotton to, as she phrased it, but it seemed from Daffy’s unruffled expression that she’d passed whatever test Thelma had constructed.

“Good,” Hunter said, popping open the Coke he’d bought for himself. “And I guess that was something you couldn’t do with me?”

Thelma gave him one of her looks. “Of course not. Women don’t talk the same when there’s a man around.”

“That’s true,” Daffy said. “Just like men talk differently when it’s just the guys.”

“Sports and locker-room jock talk, you mean,” Thelma said as she moved back to her layout table, the coffee carefully located away from her work area on a side shelf. She began arranging a print, trying first one mat color, then another. Hunter had always liked watching his mother work. When she had been the employee and not the owner of Berry Best, he’d done his homework there, under the sharp eyes of Thelma and old Mr. and Mrs. Farmer, the former owners.

“So how long are you two staying?”

“It’s just a day trip,” Hunter said, wishing he could get Daffy alone again. And soon. There was so much he wanted to say to her, so much he wanted to know about her. Funny, but with all the other women he’d dated, he’d focused so much on the chase that once he caught them he was pretty much bored, except for the initial rush of the sex, of course. But the more he saw Daffy, the more he wanted to get to know her.

“Come back next week,” Thelma said, “and stay over. We’ll go out to the river. Do you like water-skiing?”

Daffy jumped like a kid caught daydreaming in class. Hunter wondered where her mind had wandered to, and hoped she was thinking the same sort of thoughts about him that he was having about her. “I’m not sure,” she said, sipping her coffee.

“That means you’ve never done it,” Thelma said.

“I’m afraid that’s true.”

“I’ll teach you, if you’d like to learn,” Hunter said, moving over to stand beside Daffy. He’d figured out she was being very reserved and ladylike around his mother, which he appreciated—to a point. He could barely keep his hands off her and if he couldn’t hold on to her, at least he could stand close by.

It was crazy, this way he needed her. Physically. Mentally. Sexually. Crazy. It was like some software virus had infiltrated his operating system and everything read
DAFFY
.

“I’m game,” Daffy said, smiling up at him with a hungry expression in her eyes.

That did it. They had to leave. She wanted him. He wanted her. Enough of the social chatter. Hunter glanced at his watch and said, “As a matter of fact, this is more like a half-day trip than a day trip. We’re going to have to be going.”

“So soon?” Thelma, to Hunter’s chagrin, sounded more amused than surprised. Sometimes his mother read him a little too well. “Then would you stop by the house on your way out of town?”

“Sure,” Hunter said. “You want me to deliver something?”

“No.” Thelma studied the print in front of her. “There’s a roast in the freezer and I forgot to put it into the refrigerator to defrost. Would you mind doing that for me so I don’t have to leave the shop?”

An innocent-enough request, Hunter knew, but Thelma was up to something. “Sure, we can do that.”

“A roast?” Daffy’s eyes had lit up. “You mean you cook it from scratch?”

Thelma looked amused. “How else do you fix a pot roast?”

Daffy blushed slightly and said, “Pick it up at Langenstein’s?”

Hunter laughed, but with her, not at her. “That’s a New Orleans deli,” he explained. “Daffy’s the queen of takeout and reservations.”

“Come back next week and I’ll give you a lesson or two.”

Hunter almost dropped his Coke. That invitation was clearly a stamp of approval from Thelma. He wished he’d been a fly on the wall when he’d been out of the shop, to hear what the two of them had discussed.

Well, Daffy would probably tell him. “Ready?”

She nodded and crossed over to Thelma. “It was a pleasure to meet you,” she said, sounding as if she sincerely meant what she said.

Hunter watched as Thelma put down her work, then stared Daffy in the eye. “Next week. Pot roast. And maybe I’ll show you how to make a pie crust. I bet you’ve never even seen a ball of pie dough.”

“I wouldn’t know one if it bit me,” Daffy told her.

“Figured as much.” Thelma waved a hand at them. “You two run along, but don’t forget to stop by the house.”

Daffy stepped toward the door. Hunter leaned over and kissed Thelma on the cheek. She rubbed a worn hand on the top of his head and said, “Be happy, son.”

For Thelma, that was a highly sentimental thing to say. “I’ll try,” he replied lightly.

Her expression grew fierce. “Don’t just try. Do it.”

So his mother didn’t think Daffy was all wrong for him. Hunter sketched a salute, and said so only Thelma could hear, “I’m going to do my damn—darndest.”

“Get along with both of you. I’ve got a shop to run here.”

Hunter had just helped Daffy into the Jeep when he caught sight of Lucy’s car out of the corner of his eye. She was cruising the main drag slowly, looking for a parking place.

Looking for Hunter.

He leapt into the Jeep and, gunning the engine, sped off. Given Thelma’s approval of Daffy, perhaps his mother would turn her efforts to dissuading Lucy from thinking Hunter would come home to her.

Home, Hunter thought with a rare sense of contentment, sat next to him.

Lost in his reverie, he went straight at the light.

“Isn’t that the turn to your mother’s house?”

“You catch on fast.” Hunter made a U-turn just past Paul’s Café and said, “If you look to your right, in that wired-off area, you’ll see the town’s mascot.”

She peered out the window. “Is that an alligator in there?”

“Yep. Poor schmuck. Years ago, or so legend has it, someone caught an alligator here in the center of town, so they penned him up and made him a home. When he died, the town gave him a funeral, complete with a fire truck procession. And then someone had to go and catch a replacement.”

“You don’t approve, do you?”

Hunter shook his head. “How would you like to spend your days in a cage? That poor gator should be out in the swamps, killing birds and fish and lazing around with the other gators.”

“You don’t like to feel trapped, do you?” Daffy asked the question just as Hunter pulled up in front of his mother’s house.

“Never,” he said.

She climbed out of the car, a thoughtful expression on her face. Funny, Hunter reflected, but that was one of his own fears of marriage. Being trapped and unable to move freely, unable even, in some sense, to change and grow as a person without threatening the other half of the couple. So why didn’t he worry about that with Daffy?

Go figure, he said to himself, walking side by side with Daffy to the front door.

“That cat hasn’t moved,” Daffy said, sounding amused.

“He can sleep for hours,” Hunter said, thinking he could, too, in bed with Daffy. But then again, he’d keep waking up to taste her, take her, possess her, surrender to her.

Surrender to her?
No guy in his right mind thinks like that, Hunter
. He told himself to get a grip and led the way to the kitchen.

He opened the freezer compartment, searching for the cut of beef. His mother liked to buy in bulk from a local butcher, so there were several choices to sort through. At last he found the one labeled “chuck roast” and took it out.

Daffy was leaning against the counter, arms at her sides, staring hungrily at him as if she wanted to put him into a slow cooker.

Hunter switched the package into the lower compartment of the refrigerator. Be happy, his mother had said.

He let go of the leash he’d been holding on his desire for Daffy and advanced across the kitchen, holding her gaze with his. When he stood right before her, he said softly, “So you want to learn your way around the kitchen?”

He could tell by her puzzled reaction that she’d expected a different sort of comment. A sexual come-on, a “Hey, let’s hop in bed together before we head back to New Orleans.”

But who needed a bed?

“I’m interested,” Daffy said at last.

“Good.” Hunter brushed his fingertips up one side of her neck. “Because we’re going to start with a lesson on appetizers.”

“Appetizers.” She was breathing a bit faster. Her blue eyes had gone even bluer.

“You know,” Hunter said, removing her purse from her shoulder and setting it on the floor, “a delicious mouthful or two you eat before the main course.”

“Right.”

Hunter took one of her hands and, lifting it, feathered a kiss over the inside of her elbow. Then he did the same on her other arm.

The pulse in her throat was racing, so Hunter kissed her there, too, suckling her neck with just enough pressure to cause her to throw her head back and clutch the back of his hair.

He grinned. “So far, what do you think of the appetizer lesson?”

She moaned and reached for the buttons on his shirt. He caught her hands gently and said, “Oh, no, you’re the apprentice and I am the master chef.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s a bit like being my slave,” Hunter said. “If you want to learn, you have to do everything as I explain it.”

“We’re in your mother’s kitchen,” Daffy said, half protesting, but more for form than with any real conviction.