Masquerade (10 page)

By the time they reached Galatoire's, the long line of people that typically stretched out the door and down the block at lunchtime had dwindled to a mere handful. A word to the maître d' and they were immediately ushered to a table in the large, brightly lit room, mirrored on all sides. The restaurant hummed with gossip, the rise and fall of it untouched by the lazy rotation of the ceiling fans overhead.

Addressing the waiter by name, Remy Jardin questioned him on which of the seafood items were truly fresh that day, treating him with an easy familiarity that spoke of a long-standing acquaintance. Cole listened somewhat cynically, aware that in her rarefied circle such relationships were frequently cultivated as a means to avoid ridiculously long waits at such places as Antoine's, where a waiter's name became a secret and very necessary password.

At the conclusion of her consultation with the plump-cheeked Joseph, she chose the oyster en brochette for an appetizer and the lamb chops with béarnaise as her main course. Cole ordered the shrimp rémoulade and the pompano à la meunière.

When the waiter had retreated out of earshot, Remy Jardin murmured, "A word of warning. If there's something you don't want the whole city to know, never talk about it in front of Joseph. As Nattie would say, he has a mouth bigger than the Mississippi."
 

"Who's Nattie?"

"Our cook—although she's been with us so long, she's practically a member of the family."

"I see." He had an instant image of a stout black woman—the plump-cheeked Jemima type—and withheld comment, realizing that he should have known. Her kind always had some relationship like that that they could point to to show their liberalism.

After a moment's pause, with that direct gaze of hers quietly studying him, she said, "I admit the pompano sounded good. I was tempted to order it myself. Are you a seafood lover?"

"Truthfully, my favorite dish is red beans and rice." If he'd expected to shock her with his less than sophisticated tastes, he was wrong.

She laughed, an audacious gleam lighting her eyes. "Don't tell Joseph, but it's my favorite too." She reached for the glass of crisp, dry rose wine the waiter had brought her earlier along with Cole's bourbon and branch. "Nattie makes the best red beans I've ever tasted—hearty and creamy, seasoned just spicy enough—and serves it over the fluffiest bed of rice. And the sausage is homemade, stuffed by Nattie herself. You'll have to come to the house for dinner sometime."

"I'm afraid I'm too busy for socializing, Miss Jardin."

"So I've heard. In fact, my brother's convinced that you're a workaholic."

"Perhaps if your father and uncle had paid more attention to business and less to socializing, I wouldn't have to put in the long hours that I do now."

"I asked for that one, didn't I?" She tipped her glass to him in a mock salute, then took a small sip of wine and lowered the glass. "I don't recall seeing anything in your resume about a family. I assume you have one."

"I do," he replied, deliberately uncommunicative.

"Any brothers or sisters?"
 

"None."

"What about your parents? Where are they?"

"My father died when I was eight. My mother lives here in New Orleans."

"She does? Do you see her very often, or—are you too busy?" she taunted lightly, a small smile taking much of the sting out of her words.

Maybe that was why he answered her instead of telling her it was none of her business. He wasn't sure. "I usually call or stop by her shop once a week or so—and occasionally I go over to her place for dinner in the evening."

"What kind of shop does she have?"

"A small antique store."

"Really? On Royal?"

He smiled wryly, faintly, at that. "No, on Magazine. Her shop draws the blue-jean-and-sneakers trade, not the hat-and-white-gloves one."

The waiter Joseph returned to the table with their appetizers. When he retreated, Remy speared a bite of oyster with her fork. "What types of antiques does your mother sell?"

"They're not antiques as much as they are collectibles—period toys, lace curtains, bric-a-brac, wicker pieces, things like that."

"What's the name of her shop?"

"The Lemon Tree. Why?"

"Just curious," she said with a graceful lift of her shoulders, an action that briefly drew the thin material of her dress more tightly over her breasts, momentarily delineating their roundness—something he didn't want to notice. Yet as much as he wanted to deny it, a sexual awareness of her existed in him. It had ever since their slow stroll to the restaurant, ever since she'd walked into his office—ever since he'd met her that first time, six months before.

He stabbed a piece of shrimp with the tines of his seafood fork and tried to ignore the thought. "I thought this lunch was to talk about business."

"I never said that," she replied, quickly and smoothly. "I said I wanted to get to know you better." She paused in the act of forking another bite of oyster to her mouth. "By the way, where did you manage to find that print?"

Cole hesitated an instant, then said, "When I was in London last month I had some time between appointments, so I stopped in at Christie's, and there it was."

"Christie's—really? That's where I took my training in eighteenth-century French porcelain." She smiled absently, as if some thought had just occurred to her. "I wonder if Jacques the jackal is still there."

"Who?" Cole frowned.

"This absolutely insufferable man—French, of course—who was an authority on
everything.
Nobody could stand him. But he had this laugh that sounded like a hyena." She paused and arched an eyebrow in his direction, her eyes glinting with amusement. "You wouldn't believe the lengths we used to go to to get him to laugh—especially if there was an important client around."

"I think I can." He nodded, imagining the conspiracies among the trainees to make the man break up with laughter.

"I thought you'd be able to." She showed him an unsettling smile of shared humor, then turned her attention back to her appetizer. "Are you a collector of sporting prints?"

Cole remembered the quiet appreciation in her expression when she'd seen the print. It would have been easy for him to talk to her about his interest—which was precisely why he didn't.

"I doubt that five—six"—he corrected himself—"prints would be considered a collection by your standards."

"Really? And what
are
my standards?" She sounded amused.

"I'm sure you and your friends generally collect original art, not prints. But that's all I can afford."

She picked up her wineglass and raised it to her lips, holding his gaze and murmuring over the rim, "You don't have a very high opinion of me, my family, or my friends, do you?"

He hesitated, then chose to be blunt. "Frankly, no.

"Why?" She studied him thoughtfully, curiously.

Finished with his shrimp rémoulade, he laid his fork aside and coolly met the silent challenge of her gaze. "Look at the pathetic shape the Crescent Line's in now, and you'll find the answer to that. You and your family bled the life out of it, paying stock dividends to yourselves when the company couldn't afford it, when that money needed to be reinvested. You were solely concerned with yourselves and maintaining your style of living. You didn't give a damn about what might be best for the company—until it appeared that the company might go broke."

"Guilty as charged, I'm afraid," she confessed. "Although in our defense I would have to say that initially none of us realized the situation was quite so serious."

"It was—and is. Perhaps if you had studied the balance sheets and asked some questions at the directors' meetings instead of rubber-stamping whatever your father or uncle put in front of you, you would have found out."

"You're right, of course," she admitted again, untroubled by his criticism of her. "Although I felt that since I knew nothing about the business, they were better qualified than I to make decisions."

"As one of the owners, Miss Jardin, you should have made it your business to know instead of donating all your time to the museum, playing at being a docent and dabbling in acquisitions."

The dimples appeared in her cheeks again. "That sounds remarkably like a suggestion that I should be working in and for the company. Obviously you didn't intend for me to take you literally, since I can't imagine you being an advocate of nepotism."

The waiter came back to the table to remove the dishes with the remains of their appetizers and serve them their main course, his presence eliminating the need for Cole to respond to her remark and creating a lull in the conversation.

"I am curious about something else," she said when Joseph left. "Considering the company's financial problems and your opinion of us, why did you take the job?"

"Simple. You—the company—met my terms."

"Yes." She paused reflectively. "And your terms were: full and complete authority over all facets of the company; any decision you made was final; no approval required from the board of directors. If you succeed financially in turning the company around within three years, you are to receive ten-percent ownership in the company, plus some very favorable stock options."

"Then you did read my contract."

"Honestly? I read it for the first time the other day after Father told me what you said he could do with the nomination to his krewe."

"You admit that?" He was surprised by her candor.

"The truth hurts, but—yes, I do. Of course, I console myself with the knowledge that despite past mistakes, we at least had the good sense to bring you on board."

"First interest, now flattery, Miss Jardin?" he mocked.

"I don't suppose I could persuade you to call me Remy."

"What would be the point?"

"Why not say ... in the interest of establishing friendlier relations between owners and management."

"I repeat, what would be the point?"

She laid her knife and fork down and rested her elbows on the table, folding her hands together and thoughtfully propping up the point of her chin on top of them. "You resent who I am, my background, don't you? You do realize there's nothing I can do about it. And I'm certainly not going to apologize or feel guilty because I happened to be born into the Jardin family. I had no control over it. Or—is that my problem?" She raised her chin long enough to flick a finger in the direction of his hand.

"Is what your problem?" Cole frowned.

"You prefer brunettes with short hair." She reached over, plucked a dark hair from the sleeve of his suit jacket, and held it up as evidence.

"Sherlock Holmes you're not, Miss Jardin." He took it from her and let it drop to the floor. "That happens to be cat hair."

"You own a cat?" She picked up her knife and fork and cut another bite of lamb chop.

"You've obviously had little experience with cats or you'd know that nobody ever
owns
one. You may occasionally share the same living quarters, but that's about all."

"And this cat you
occasionally
share your quarters with, what kind is it?"

"The alley variety. Its pedigree is the street."

"Does your cat have a name?"

He hesitated. "Tom."

"You're kidding." She stared at him incredulously, then burst into a laugh.

In spite of himself, he laughed with her. "Not very original, I admit, but the name suits him."

"I wouldn't do that very often if I were you."

"What?" Suddenly he found himself captivated by her gaze, unsettled and disturbed by the warmly interested glow in her eyes.

"Laugh," she said simply. "It makes you seem human."

He caught himself wanting to respond to her as a man, and immediately steeled himself against that impulse. "I'll remember that," he said, wiping the smile from his face.

"Other than occasionally sharing your digs with Tom, collecting sporting prints, and dining with your mother now and then, what else do you do? Are you interested in sports? Football? Soccer? Tennis?"

"I don't have time."

"You must do something to stay in such great shape," she said, running her gaze over the width of his shoulders and chest. "And somehow I can't imagine you working out in a gym with weights."

"Actually I do try to make it to the gym a couple-three times a week to spar a few rounds."

"You mean—you box?" She seemed uncertain that she had understood him correctly.

"Yes." Dammit, why was he telling her this? Had it been deliberate, to remind him how he'd met . . . ? But Remy Jardin's reaction was different. There was no look of fascination for what many regarded as a violent sport, nothing that even remotely resembled an attraction to blood and gore.

"An art collector who boxes. What perfect therapy it must be," she marveled. "Personally, I can't think of a better way to get rid of frustration and repressed anger than to unleash it on a punching bag. How long have you been doing it?"

"I started boxing when I was a kid. My mother figured I'd be getting into fights anyway, so she decided it would be better if I did it in a ring under supervision, instead of with a gang in the streets."

"Obviously it worked."

"For the most part."

"I'm almost afraid to ask what kind of music you like?"

"A little jazz, a lot of blues." Too late, he caught himself and wondered why in hell he was answering these questions of hers. He knew better. She wasn't his kind. Nothing would come of it.

"Then you must like Lou Rawls. Have you seen his show at the Blue Room? From what I've heard it's drawing rave reviews."

"The tickets are sold out."

"Really." She gave him a knowing smile and a bold glance. "It so happens I have two tickets for tonight's show. Gabe was supposed to go with me, but he has a heavy date tonight—with a weighty legal brief, he claims. I can't think of a single reason why I shouldn't take you instead."

"I suppose next you'll try to convince me this invitation is all in aid of friendlier relations between ownership and management," Cole replied cynically. He signaled for the waiter to take away his plate, then ordered coffee.