His Uptown Girl

Her face turned even redder. “Heavens, no. I just got distracted, uh, by that car.” She glanced at the antiques store across the street and rolled her shoulders.

“Why do you need a screwdriver?” he asked, liking what his questions were doing to her. Why? He hadn’t the foggiest. There was simply something about her that made him want to peel away layers.

“The stupid lock to the store is messed up, and I’m locked out. No one else is here yet, and I don’t have an extra key.”

He glanced inside the truck. “Don’t have one out here, but I can check to see if anyone left something you can use inside.”

She caught her lower lip between her teeth, drawing his attention to the perfect pinkness of her mouth. Soft. As if she’d been painted upon canvas and intentionally smudged. Her fire-streaked hair with a stubborn flip fell to her collarbone, which was visible beneath a shirt the color of ripe watermelon. “I suppose I could ask Mr. Hibbett at Butterfield’s. He might have one.”

Not wanting to miss an opportunity to make friends in the area, he held out a hand. “I’m Dez Batiste. Let me unlock the door, and we’ll see if there’s something you can use. Wouldn’t want to bother Mr. Hibbett, would we?”

Her gaze lifted to his. “Batiste? As in the guy who wants to open the nightclub?”

His fascination with the woman immediately nose-dived. Five months ago, he’d chosen to roll the dice on an Uptown location for his nightclub rather than a place on Frenchmen Street. Tremé might be the hottest jazz scene in New Orleans, but Dez was pretty sure his old neighborhood near the Garden District would welcome the upscale club opening in less than a month. However, there had been opposition to Blue Rondo from some of the merchants. He’d recently received a letter from the Magazine Street Merchants Association questioning the judiciousness of opening a business that could potentially harm the family-friendly atmosphere. It hadn’t been “welcoming” at all. More like holding a veiled threat of ill will. “I’m Dez Batiste, the guy who will open a nightclub.”

He started to lower his hand, but she took it. “I’m Eleanor Theriot, owner of the Queen’s Box.” She hiked a thumb over her shoulder toward the large glass-front store directly across the street from where they stood.

“Oh,” he said, noting the warmth of her grasp, the sharpness in her gaze and the scent of her perfume, which reminded him of summer nights. He knew who she was, had seen that name before. On the bottom of a complaint to the city council. One of his friends had scored a copy and given him a heads-up.

She dropped her hand. “I assumed you were a worker or something.”

“Why, because I’m ethnic?”

Her eyes widened. “No. That’s insulting.”

He lifted his eyebrows but said nothing.

“You’re dressed like you were coming to work or something.” She gestured to his old jeans and faded T-shirt, her face no longer as yielding.

Okay, he was dressed in paint-streaked clothes, and the truck had Emilio’s Painting plastered to the door, so maybe Eleanor wasn’t drawing incorrect conclusions. Because though his grandfather was black, his grandmother Creole and his mother Cuban, Dez didn’t look any distinctive race. “Yeah. Okay.”

For a moment they stood, each regarding the other. Dez regretted the shift in mood. He’d wanted to flirt with her, maybe score her digits, but now there was nothing but a bad taste.

“I’d wondered about you, a renowned New Orleans musician returning to open a club in the old Federal Bank,” Eleanor said, glancing up at the crumbling brick before returning her gaze to him. Those green eyes looked more guarded than before. “So why here in this part of New Orleans? Aren’t there better places for a nightclub?”

“Uptown is where I’m from,” Dez said, folding his arms across his chest and eyeing the antiques dealer with her expensive clothes and obvious intolerance for anyone not wearing seersucker and named something like Winston. “What? I don’t meet your expectations ’cause I’m not drunk? Or strung out on crack?”

Her eyes searched his, and in them, he saw a shift, as if a decision had been made that instant. “And you don’t have horns. I’d thought you’d have horns...unless they’re retractable?”

She didn’t smile as she delivered the line. It was given smoothly, as if she knew they were headed toward rocky shores and needed to steer clear. So he picked up a paddle and allowed them to drift back into murky waters. “Retractable horns are a closely guarded musician’s secret. Who ratted me out?”

Eleanor locked her mouth with an imaginary key.

“Guess a screwdriver wouldn’t help?”

She shook her head.

Again, silence.

It was an intensely odd moment with a woman he’d resented without knowing much about her, with a woman who opposed his very dream, with a woman who made him want to trace the curve of her jaw. He’d never been in such a situation.

“Just two things before I go back over there and walk through that very much unlocked door,” she said with a resolute crossing of her arms.

“Really? The door’s not even locked?” He arched an eyebrow.

“A ploy to come check you out dreamed up by my not-so-savvy salesclerk. Totally tanked on the whole thing from beginning to end. It’s pretty embarrassing.”

“I’m flattered. Thank your salesclerk for me.”

Her direct stare didn’t waver. “Oh, come on, don’t even pretend you’re not the object of a lot of ‘Can I borrow your pen?’ or ‘Do you know what time it is?’”

“Wait, those are pickup lines?” he asked with a deadpan expression. There was something he liked in her straightforwardness along with the soft-glowy thing she had going. Not quite wholesome. More delicate and flowery. This woman wasn’t lacquered up with lip gloss and a shirt so low her nipples nearly showed. Instead she begged to be unwrapped like a rare work of art.

He shook himself, remembering she was a high-class broad and not his type.

“Maybe not pickups per se, but definitely designed to get your attention,” she said, sounding more college professor than woman on the prowl. Or maybe she wasn’t really interested in him. Perhaps she’d known who he was in the first place and wanted to goad him, size him up before he made trouble.

Dez leaned against the truck he’d borrowed from his neighbor since his Mustang was in the shop. “So what did you want to tell me?”

“One.” She held up an elegant finger. He’d never called a finger elegant before, but hers fit the billing. “I oppose the idea of a nightclub in this particular area. All the business owners here have worked hard since the storm to build a certain atmosphere that does not include beer bottles and half-dressed hookers.”

He opened his mouth to dispute, but she held up a second finger.

“And, two, this little—” she wagged her other hand between them “—thing didn’t happen. Erase it from you memory. Chalk it up to midlife crisis, to a dare, or bad tuna fish I ate last night.”

“What are you talking about?”

She frowned. “Me trying to check you out.”

Something warmed inside him. Pleasure. “I don’t even remember why you walked over.”

A little smile accompanied the silent thank-you in her eyes.

Dez answered the smile with one of his own, and for a few seconds they stood in the midst of Magazine Street smiling at each other like a couple of loons, which was crazy considering the tenseness only seconds ago.

“Okay, then,” she said, inching back toward her store.

“Yeah,” he said, not moving. Mostly because he wanted to watch her walk back to her store and check out the view.

“So hopefully I won’t see you around,” she said lightly, turning away, giving him what he wanted without even realizing it.

“Don’t count on it,” he said, playing along.

She didn’t say anything. Just kept walking.

“Hey,” he called as she stepped onto the opposite curb. She turned around and shaded her eyes against the morning sunlight. “I’m going to change your mind, you know.”

“About?”