Sunny Says (22 page)

Even though he looked as if he’d
lost his last friend, there was an air of authority and strength about him. And
with his hair drying into a tousled gold crown, he was drop-dead,
Hollywood
handsome, barely saved from being pretty by a strongly chiseled jaw. Though he
wasn’t a muscle-bound brute, his shoulders filled his white dress shirt quite
nicely. From his build, his tan, and the fairer sun streaks in his hair, she
might have pegged him as a California surfer at first glance, but none of the
ones she knew ever wore a suit or had enough depth to be morose about anything.

He didn’t look up when she set
down the tray. He remained seated in the white curlicued metal chair. With both
hands wrapped around the mug, he stared into its contents.

“See anything in there?” she
asked, sitting down across from him.

He glanced up, looking blank. “Pardon?”

She gave him her perkiest smile.
“In your cup. You were studying it so carefully, I thought maybe you were
reading it like Madame Zinora reads tea leaves.” She held up the pot. “How
about some more?”

He nodded and she poured.

She broke a roll, slathered it
with butter and offered it to him. “Try it. We bake the best in the Quarter.”

He took a bite. Then another. “Very
good,” he said politely, though he didn’t seem to have his heart in it.

“Told you.” She buttered the
other half and gave it to him. “By the way, my name is Amy Jordan. What’s
yours?”

“Mud.”

Startled for a moment, she
recovered quickly and said, “Like Roger Mudd, the newscaster?”

“No, Mud with one d. At
ten o’clock
this
morning I became a pariah, and my name is Mud.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.” He stared down
into his mug again. “None of it makes any sense. I ran those experiments a
dozen times. The result was always the same. Now . . .”

Amy waited, but he didn’t
answer.

The bell over the entry tinkled,
and the brief blare of a jazz trumpet slipped through the open door before it
was closed again. Amy looked over her shoulder and nodded to the scruffy,
skinny man who was none too clean and wore a tattered raincoat and a watch cap
pulled low over his eyebrows.

She turned back to the man
sitting across from her, struck anew by his sorrowful, arresting eyes and
extraordinary good looks. Touching his arm lightly, she met his gaze and said, “If
you’d like to talk about it, I’m told I’m a very good listener.”

He raked his fingers through his
hair, then glanced up at the ceiling. “God, I don’t even know where to start.”

“The beginning is always a good
place. Or you can jump in anywhere, and we can work our way backward and
forward from there.” When he only looked at her and blew out a big breath, she
smiled and said, “We can start with your real name. I know it isn’t Mud.”

“It’s Larkin. Neil Larkin.”

“I’m delighted to meet you, Neil
Larkin.”

She started to extend her hand
to him, but he glanced sharply toward the door as the bell tinkled. Scowling,
he yelled, “Hey, you!”

Before Amy could stop him, Neil
jumped up and took off after the shabby fellow who’d been in the bakery. She
hurried after them in time to see Neil tackle the fleeing man.

“What are you doing?” Amy
shrieked.

Neil pushed himself to his feet.
“He was stealing your bread. He hid it under his coat.”

He glowered at the man on the
ground who had drawn himself into a fetal position, his darting eyes wide with
fear.

Amy laid her hand on Neil’s arm.
“This isn’t Les Miserables.” She helped the downed man to his feet and patted
his back. “Sorry about the misunderstanding, Pullet. Are you okay?”

Pullet’s head bobbed on his
long, grimy neck, but he eyed Neil warily as he pulled three mashed baguettes
from beneath his coat. “But the bread’s all broke up.”

Amy examined the loaves. “Oh,
they’re not too bad, but if you’ll come back to Rachel’s, I’ll find you some
others.”

She steered the two men, who
shot leery glances at each other, back to the bakery and replaced the three
crushed baguettes with others and added a sourdough pain for good measure.

When the ragged little man had
gone, Neil said, “Will you explain why you replaced a thief’s damaged
merchandise?”

She laughed. “Pullet’s not a
thief. He’s a street person. When I found him rummaging in the alley garbage
cans for old bread, I told him to come by at the end of the day, and we could
cut out the middleman—or can in this case. By tomorrow morning all the bread on
this table won’t be good for much except for bread pudding or driving nails. I
hate to see it go to waste.”

Neil raked his fingers through
his hair. “God, I feel like such a fool. This hasn’t been my day.”

“Good heavens, don’t worry about
the misunderstanding with Pullet. You were only trying to help. Have you had
dinner? No, of course you haven’t. I’ll bet you missed lunch too. I’m starved,
and I know that you must be. Coffee and a roll aren’t substitutes for proper
nourishment. Know what I’d like? A big bowl of seafood gumbo and a glass of
wine. Doesn’t that sound scrumptious? Why don’t you go in the back and change
into some dry clothes while I close up, and we’ll go over to the Gumbo Shop and
eat. Come on.”

She picked up his suitcase and
garment bag and started to the back of the store.

“Here, let me take those,” he
said, relieving her of the baggage. “Where do I go?”

She led him through the large
kitchen and pushed open the door to a small room with a cot folded in one
corner. “Here’s a good place. This is where our baker Emile stays sometimes
when he and his wife Felice have a fight. They haven’t had any problems lately,
so things may be a little dusty. Not from dirt,” she interjected quickly, “but
from flour. In a bakery, flour gets everywhere.” She ran her finger over a
small, scarred chest just inside the door. “Nope. Looks clean. Put on some
jeans or something, and I’ll go close up.” She patted his arm and gave him her
most reassuring smile. “Even though it might not seem like it at the time,
things always get better. Especially if you have someone to talk to.”

“You really believe that?”

“Yep. I’d rather believe that
than the alternative.”

*    *    *

Neil stood at the door and,
shaking his head, watched her go, dark ponytail bobbing. He felt as if he’d
been caught up in the maternal bosom of a whirlwind. Except that it wasn’t the
maternal appeal of Amy’s bosom that struck him. She had a veiy nice bosom. In
fact her whole body was very nice. About five and a half feet of very, very
nice.

And she had one of the warmest
smiles he’d encountered in a long, long time. So warm that he was almost sure
that he could heat his hands by it. Her whole face became animated with dimples
when she smiled—deep ones in her cheeks, two smaller ones at each corner of her
mouth. Just being around her had made him feel a little lighter, made him
forget for a moment—

Forget? How could he ever forget
the towering humiliation he’d endured? No, it was more than mere humiliation.
Embarrassment he could live with. His reputation, his credibility, his entire
career had been shattered beyond redemption. He didn’t know how to begin to
pick up the pieces.

Since he had nothing better to
do with the rest of his life, he put his suitcase on the chest and dug out the
single pair of jeans he’d brought to
New
Orleans
.

*    *    *

Amy spun the dial on the floor
safe, switched the sign on the door to CLOSED, and fluffed her bangs. She
turned to find Neil Larkin leaning against the doorjamb, fingers in his
pockets, watching her with those arresting eyes. Her own widened
appreciatively. If she thought he was handsome in a suit, he was practically
illegal in low-riding jeans, white T-shirt, and a Windbreaker the exact
baby-blue color of his eyes.

He looked down at himself. “Is
this okay? I didn’t bring much for casual wear.”

“It’s great! I mean, I like your
jacket. Nice color.”

“My sister gave it to me for Christmas.”

“Oh, you have a sister?”

He looked amused. “I have three
sisters. And two brothers.”

“Five brothers and sisters! How
on earth did you manage? I have only one sister, and she nearly drove me nuts
when we were growing up. Oh, I love her dearly, and we get along okay now, but
we’re as different as daylight and dark.”

“We’re all different, too, but
somehow we rubbed along fairly well.”

Outside, Amy gave Neil the poppy
umbrella to hold while she locked the bakery door. He unfurled the petals and
held it over them as they walked the short distance to die Gumbo Shop. To keep
dry they had to stay close together, which led to her arm around his waist and
his arm around hers. It seemed very natural, she thought as they avoided the
puddles. And rather . . . intimate. Which was strange. She was a toucher. She’d
always been a toucher. But touching Neil was somehow different. He sort of . . .
vibrated. She hadn’t a clue as to why. Maybe it was the drop in the barometric
pressure. Or the music in the Quarter.

Her body automatically picked up
the beat of the “Muskrat Ramble” coming from one of the clubs, and she jigged
along to the tempo. “I just love Dixieland music, don’t you?”

“I’ve never been very musical.
Link says I’m tone-deaf.”

“Who’s Link?”

“My younger brother. He’s a
singer.”

“Link. Link Larkin? He’s your
brother?”

“Yes. Have you heard of him?”

“Of course I’ve heard of Link
Larkin. He’s the hottest young country and western singer since Garth Brooks.”

“Who’s Garth Brooks?”

Aghast, Amy stopped and looked
up at Neil. “You’ve never heard of Garth Brooks? What rock have you been hiding
under?”

He shrugged. “No rock. I
stay—stayed pretty wrapped up in my work.”

“What kind of work?”

“I am—was a research biologist.”

“Good Lord. With test tubes and
slides and microscopes and the whole schmear?”

“The whole schmear. I . . . was
in cancer research.”

“How wonderful! I wasn’t much
good in biology. Especially lab. I felt so sorry for the poor little frog that
I couldn’t force myself to dissect him. If it hadn’t been for my partner, I’d
have probably flunked the course.” She paused and looked up at him again. The
haunted expression was back in his eyes. “You said
was
.
Aren’t you doing research anymore?”

“Not since
ten o’clock
this
morning.”

She urged him on toward the
restaurant. “I want to hear the whole stoiy. But first we’re going to eat and
have a couple of glasses of wine. Ummm. Smell that gumbo. Doesn’t that make
your mouth water like crazy?”

“It does smell good.”

“It tastes just as good as it
smells,” she said as they went inside the Shop. “Scrumptious.”

A few minutes later they were
digging into big bowls of spicy gumbo filled with shrimp, crab, and sausage,
accompanied by demi-baguettes of crusty bread. Amy noticed that Neil ate
heartily.

“Good, huh?” she asked.

He looked faintly amused. “Scrumptious.”

“What was it like growing up in
a big family with three sisters and two brothers?”

“With six of us sharing a
bathroom, what was it like? Loud. Hectic. Competitive.”

“But loving, too, I imagine.”

He nodded. “That too.”

“Tell me about your family.”

“Well, my parents retired last
year and moved to
California
to be near my oldest sister, Peggy, and their only
grandchildren. Peggy and her husband are entertainment attorneys. My brother
Tom has a diving school in
Florida
.”

“Diving? Like scuba diving?”

“No, like swimming pool diving.
He trains Olympic hopefuls. He was a gold medalist.”

“Gold medalist? As in Olympic
gold medalist Tom Larkin?”

“He’s the one.”

“Well, what a small world.” Amy
grinned. “I watched him on TV. He’s your brother?”

“Yes. And you might have seen my
younger sister on TV as well. Sunny Larkin. She’s a network correspondent in
Washington
.”

“Of course I’ve seen her. She’s
dynamite. Wow, and with Link, your family is quite impressive.” She counted on
her fingers. “One sister is missing.”

Neil chuckled. “Linda is
definitely not missing. She and Link are twins, and she’s his manager. She’s
the scrappiest one in the family and the power behind Link’s success.”

“Holy moley. I’ve never heard of
so many high achievers in one family. Do you see one another often?”

“It’s hard with everybody
scattered all over the country, but we try to get together at least once a
year, usually at Thanksgiving.”