Page 1 of Frankly, My Dear

Chapter One

New Orleans, 1996

“Hot damn!” Selene stopped dead in the tracks of her designer shoes, slapped an expertly manicured hand over her heart, and gasped, staring straight ahead.

“Umph!” Her agent, Georgia Jones, slammed into her back. With a curse, the statuesque black woman picked up her Hermes handbag from the pavement where it had dropped, checking for scuff marks, and adjusted her white silk Donna Karan suit. “What? What is it?”

“Look, Georgia! Over there. Ooooh!” Selene sighed ecstatically.

Then, like a running back looking for a hole in the line, Selene wended her way doggedly through the Vieux Carre crowd, barely conscious of the cacophony of street vendors, steamboat whistles, soulful jazz music in the distance, and the chatter of the many dialects of the Crescent City. The delicious smells of steaming coffee and fresh baked goods mixed with those of newly cut flowers, in contrast to the pungent products offered by the vegetable and fruit vendors, fishmongers, and butchers.

Finally, Selene stood before a popular beignet stand. Closing her eyes in delight, she arched her neck and inhaled deeply.

“Lord, give me strength. The woman is having an orgasm. Smack dab in the middle of the French Quarter market. Over a sugar pastry, no less.” Georgia rolled her eyes heavenward. “Geez! I should’ve known.”

Selene lifted her chin haughtily and turned a deaf ear to her agent’s sardonic humor as she ogled the scrumptious baked goods. Licking her lips in anticipation, she opened her purse, preparing to pull out some money.

With a determined snarl, Georgia clasped Selene’s wrist in an iron grip and pulled her out of the market and up toward the levee. “What am I gonna do with you? Other women get turned on by drop-dead-gorgeous men,” she muttered. “You swoon over a donut.”

“Not a donut. It’s a New Orleans specialty, a baan-yah,” Selene said with careful pronunciation of the French word.

“Baan-yah?” Georgia repeated after her, then added quickly, “I don’t care if it’s a bloomin’ daffodil. It’s got two zillion calories, and you have to fit into a size five ballgown for today’s shoot. Besides, all that sugar is bound to bring out a zit. Come on, honey. You, of all people, know better.”

“You’re right,” Selene agreed dolefully and dropped down onto a bench at the top of the flat-topped levee overlooking the wide Mississippi. “But I’m so darned hungry. In fact, I’m always famished these days.”

“It’s all in your mind,” Georgia said, not unkindly, and squeezed her hand warmly. “You oughta talk to your shrink about it,” she added, laughing softly.

“Dr. Walters would probably say I wouldn’t know an orgasm if it hit me in the face, that there’s some deep psychological reason why I have this fascination with food.”

“Typical shrink! In fact, she’d probably give the disorder some fancy name like oral dysfunction obsessive mania. Maybe write a book about it. Get on the Oprah show.” Georgia cocked her head thoughtfully. “Hmmm…do you think Dr. Walters has an agent?”

“Oh, Georgia!” Selene playfully elbow-nudged her cynical friend, whose opinionated, sometimes vulgar mouth hid a heart the size of Texas. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without Dr. Walters these past six months. Or you, for that matter.”

“Hah! Too late to suck up now, sweetie,” Georgia said with an affronted sniff, though obviously pleased at Selene’s affection. “Do you still miss the bum…Devon, I mean?” Georgia smiled guilelessly when Selene glared disapprovingly at her choice of words to characterize her former lover.

“Sometimes,” Selene conceded with a sigh. “But not because I still love him. I probably never did. I miss the security, though.”

“Security! You are losin’ it, girl. Devon made you insecure. You did every blessed thing for the man, and it was never enough.”

Selene gave a resigned nod. “The last straw was his lack of sympathy for Tessa. I mean, dammit, my best friend died from anorexia, and his version of sympathy was, ‘Tessa was a dumb broad.’” Tears welled in Selene’s eyes and she blinked to keep them from overflowing. “Still, Devon and I lived together for three years. It’s hard to stop caring completely.”

“Humph! Seems to me that the woman voted The Most Beautiful Face in America by We magazine ought to have dozens of men lined up to help her forget a creep like that.”

Selene looked around dramatically. “I don’t see any.”

“You want me to help you find a man?”

“No way!”

Georgia fanned her face with a widespread hand. “I can’t believe I left my nice, air-conditioned Manhattan office for this.”

“It is hot, but I love Louisiana. I’m sick of the fast-track life in New York. Life is slower here.”

“Of course it’s slower. It’s too hot to move.”

“From the minute we arrived last week,” Selene continued, ignoring Georgia’s sarcasm, “I’ve felt a strange sense of belonging, as if fate ordained I be here. I can’t really explain it.”

Georgia snorted rudely. “Lord! You’re here, girl, because I got you a lucrative contract to do this shoot with Phillipe Dubois.” She studied Selene for a long moment. “So what’s this all about? You always did have this Gone With the Wind fixation. You planning a move to the South?”