Listen to Your Heart - Fern Michaels [6]
Josie put the Explorer in gear and turned around in the middle of the road. She sensed rather than saw the Mercedes doing the same thing. Good, we’re going in opposite directions. She was almost to Jackson Square when she realized she still didn’t know the giant’s name. What difference did it make if she knew his name or not? Life would go on regardless. The sun would come up tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. He was a hunk, though. She laughed aloud when she remembered the interior of the luxury vehicle. Big dogs, big damage.
Josie turned left on Prytania Street continuing down until she crossed Washington Street and then Fourth Street. She turned right on Third Street and drove into her driveway. She was home.
As always, she was struck with the beauty of the old pillared house shrouded with live oaks. They’d had the house painted last October, and it gleamed now in the bright noonday sun. She heard rather than saw a tour bus with the guide shouting out tidbits about the Garden District and the people who lived inside the beautiful old buildings. He would take them past the home of Anne Rice of vampire fame. Everyone would ooh and aaah over the huge stone wolf on her second-floor balcony. Then the guide would tell them about the church she bought before he took them past Tulane and Loyola’s campuses. Just another sight-seeing day in N’awlins.
The front porch was alive with plants and hanging ferns, all in need of watering. Perhaps later, after the sun went down. For now she had to go inside. With Rosie in one hand and the po’boys in the other, she somehow managed to fit the key into the lock of the majestic teakwood door. She slammed it shut immediately and then locked it, secure in the knowledge that Rosie couldn’t get out.
While the house was old, her parents had kept up with it, and so had she and Kitty. Just last year they’d painted inside and out, and it still looked fresh and clean. They’d discarded a lot of their parents’ old comfortable furniture and replaced it with more modern but just as comfortable love seats and easy chairs. The long windows still had their swagged draperies. They’d kept the old rugs because to do away with them would have been sacrilegious. The shiny, worn pine floors and the breathtaking staircase made of solid teak were wonders that caused visitors to gasp in delight. Or perhaps it was the high ceilings or the ornate woodwork.
“Anybody home? I brought lunch. You’ll never guess what I bought. And you’ll never guess who I ran into,” Josie called from the foot of the stairway. “What do you want to drink? Cola, sweet tea, or a cold beer?”
“Sweet tea,” Kitty called from the top of the staircase. “You went uptown and got po’boys from Franky and Johnny’s. I bet you ran into the hunk. Howzat for guessing with a stuffed-up head? Did he ask you out?”
“No, he did not ask me out. It wasn’t that kind of meeting. Rosie knew they were there. You should see what his dog did to that expensive car he drives, and no, I still don’t know his name.”
“I know him from somewhere,” Kitty grumbled. “When are you going to get the screen door back? I love that screen door. I like the way it bangs shut, and I like the way it squeaks no matter what you do to it. Mom said it was supposed to do that because it was an old-fashioned wooden screen door, not like those aluminum things. I can’t believe that dog put