Page 12 of Frankly, My Dear

“Huh? Those were not eye parts.”

James threw his hands up in the air in disgust and started to walk away again.

“James, please, listen to me. I don’t understand what’s happening to me, but you seem to be the only one I can turn to for assistance. If you’ll just help me get back to my own time, I’m sure there’s some way I can repay you.”

Reflexively, his eyes shot to her breasts, then darted upward, as if burned, to lock with hers. “No, thank you. I’m not interested.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Oh? What, then? Will you offer me useless money? Teach me a voodoo spell? Show me how to pop an eyeball?”

“Your sarcasm is unwarranted, James. Just think about it, coming from the future, there must be lots of things I can tell you that would help you to make a fortune, or change history, or improve life for mankind…. What’s your greatest dream? Maybe…just maybe…I can help make it come true.”

He looked at her warily. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“You’re mad.”

“I don’t think I am.” Am I? A sane person doesn’t cartwheel through time. “Nope, I’m not insane.”

“Let’s start from the beginning,” he offered in a more sympathetic tone, as if he felt sorry for her—poor demented creature that he thought her to be. “Where are you staying?”

“The same place where the ball was being held—the Bourbon Creole Hotel.”

“The Creole Hotel,” he murmured, then took her by the hand and led her across the street and back in the direction from which they’d come. Without thought, he twined his fingers with hers, the calloused pads and the hard ridges of his palm at odds with the expected image of a Creole gentleman.

But Selene couldn’t dwell on that incongruity. The only thing she could concentrate on was the rightness of his warm palm pressed against hers.

Selene slanted a look at his scowling face through half-shuttered lids, wanting to reach up and smooth the frown that seemed to be perpetually imprinted on his forehead. She sensed a pain deep inside this proud man that she wanted to relieve, and marveled at her presumption in thinking herself capable of such a daunting task.

“Where do you live anyway, James?”

“Bayou Noir. In Terrebonne Parish.”

“Tara? Oh, my God, you live at Tara?”

“Terrebonne. Not Terre.”

“Tara, Tara-bon. Big difference!” She waved a hand dismissively. “Are you sure your name’s not Butler?”

“I’m a planter, not a butler.”

“I didn’t say…never mind. Oh, James, can’t you see…this is fate that’s brought us together?”

In one curt word, he told her what he thought of her theory. It began with the letter “f” but it wasn’t fate.

Chapter Three

A short time later they were back on the street again, the desk clerk of the French Quarter hotel having told a disgruntled James that the register carried no one by the name of Selene or Sandra Selente. Somehow she was not surprised.

“Now what?” she asked.

James raked his fingers wearily through his thick ebony hair. “I guess you’ll have to stay in my room at the St. Louis Hotel tonight. Then in the morning you can get on the first steamboat back to New York.”

“I’m not sleeping with you,” Selene stated emphatically.

“Perhaps you should wait until you’re asked before declining an invitation.” His eyes raked her with lazy indifference.