Bourbon Street Blues Read Online Free PDF Page A

in the Garden District. But this old house off Fontainebleau Drive would always be home to her. Her heart was here. With her family.
    Shana’s dark eyes met and held Holly’s. “I’m just going to ask you to be careful around that man.”
    “Shana, I’m not—”
    “Hush.” Her full lips thinned into a stern line and Holly was treated to the same kind of warning glare Shana gave her fifteen-year-old daughter Kendra when she stayed out too late. “You don’t want to go getting mixed up with a man in the middle of a divorce, honey. There’s no happiness there for you.”
    Heat rushed through Holly and she was willing to bet she was blushing like a ten-year-old. “Nobody said anything about getting mixed up with him.”
    “Honey, it’s in your eyes. You’re smitten with him.”
    Holly laughed and squeezed Shana’s hand. “ Smitten? God, I didn’t think anyone used that word anymore.”
    “I do.” Shana wasn’t smiling. “That man’s got problems of his own and you don’t need to get yourself into the middle of ’em.”
    “I know. I only said he was handsome.”
    “Uh-huh. I know that’s all you said. But it’s not all you’re thinking.” The front door slammed and Shana looked up and shouted, “T.J.? That you?”
    Reprieve, Holly thought, grateful for the interruption.
    “It’s me, Mama.” A twenty-year-old female version of her father, Tommie Hayes Junior—T.J.—popped her head around the corner of the kitchen door and grinned. Her shoulder-length hair, woven into dozens of tiny, bead-bedecked braids, swung out in a thick curtain. “Hey, Holly!” Then she asked her mother, “Supper almost ready?”
    “Fifteen minutes. Go up and tell your sisters.”
    “I will. Daddy home?”
    “No, but he should be anytime.” Standing, Shana laid one hand on Holly’s shoulder. “Go get cleaned up,” she said to her eldest daughter.
    When they were alone again, Shana looked down at Holly. “You mind what I said.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Holly whispered, then shifted her concentration back to her work. One by one, she went through the pods, scooping peas out, filling the ceramic bowl. And as she worked, her mind drifted back to everything Shana had said.
    There was no reason for Shana to worry, Holly realized. Nothing would ever happen between herand Parker James. But once in a while, it was nice to daydream.
    Nothing wrong with that, was there?

CHAPTER THREE
    B Y THE NEXT AFTERNOON , Holly had been giving herself a stern talking-to for nearly twenty-four hours. So far, it hadn’t helped.
    She stepped off the streetcar at Canal and then headed down Bourbon Street for the long walk to the Hotel Marchand. It probably would have been faster to take a cab, but she enjoyed the St. Charles electric streetcars. They cruised every day through the Garden District and the French Quarter, taking visitors to the city on lovely tours of antebellum mansions and delivering the locals to work in the business districts.
    The sun was pleasantly warm on her back. Soon enough, the summer would be here with a heat and humidity unlike anywhere else. But for now, the weather was perfect. And the sounds of her own heels clicking against the pavement kept her company while her brain raced.
    Despite knowing better, despite the talking-to Shana had given her the night before—despite everything— she just couldn’t seem to get him out of her mind.
    It wasn’t only that he was about the best-looking man she’d ever seen. Handsome men were easy enough to find. No, it was more the painful shadows she’d noted in his eyes that called to her.
    “The problem is,” she murmured, ducking between two people taking pictures of themselves in front of a voodoo store, “you know too much about him.”
    Well, she knew why his marriage had failed, anyway. She’d often wondered over the years if she’d done the right thing in keeping quiet. Maybe she should have gone to Parker before the ceremony and told him about what she’d