Read Bourbon Street Blues for Free Online Page A

brain, he loved the idea. He could already see her on the small stage, hear her voice soaring over the crowd. And he could see more, too. Could see himself, leaning over her, kissing her, tasting her…
    “That gleam in your eyes interests me,” Holly said, interrupting his fantasy as she hooked her arm through his. “So let’s go. Show me something.”
    They took their time, acting like tourists, mingling with the crowds of pedestrians jamming up the sidewalks. A tour group strolled by, led by a thin, pale man dressed all in black and looking like an extra in an Anne Rice movie. Holly and Parker trailed behind, listening to the well-rehearsed patter about a powerful voodoo queen, Marie Laveau, who’d lived in New Orleans a century ago. Most of the tourists wereso busy taking pictures and chatting with each other, they missed the tour guide’s story, but Holly was listening.
    As the group turned onto a side street, she glanced up at Parker. “Do you think Marie Laveau knew that a hundred years later, people would still be talking about her?”
    “They say she could predict the future,” Parker mused, “so I wouldn’t be surprised.”
    “It’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” she asked, “Being remembered, I mean.”
    “For being a voodoo priestess?” He frowned. “I don’t know that that’s the claim to fame most people would go for.”
    “Oh, I don’t know.” Holly smiled. “Marie was powerful at a time when most women had no power at all. And, she wasn’t only about voodoo, you know. She nursed hundreds through a Yellow Fever epidemic—and lost seven of her own children to the outbreak. She helped the soldiers after the Battle of New Orleans and had a lot of influence over the leaders of the city.”
    “You seem to know a lot more about her than most people,” he teased.
    Holly shrugged. “She’s fascinating. In fact, I think the whole ‘she’s evil’ thing was started up by men who resented her.”
    “Possibly.”
    “The point is, though, she made an impact on this city…on the people. So much so that she’s remembered more than a hundred years later. That’s pretty impressive.”
    “True.” He steered her around a woman taking a picture of her husband. “And you want to be remembered?”
    She laughed. “Doesn’t everybody?”
    “Never really thought about it.”
    “I have.” She was silent a moment. “But then, with your background I can see why you haven’t.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “Easy, big fella,” she said, laughing at his defensive tone. “I only meant that the James family’s already put their stamp on the city. And you’re a part of that.”
    Parker frowned slightly. He loved his family, but he’d never really been interested in the coffee business. His father lived and breathed the import/export company that Jedediah James had started way back in 1806. He’d done all he could to take James Coffees and build on it—expand it. Parker admired his father for all he’d done, but he just didn’t share the same commitment. He didn’t want to spend his life working for the family business. He wanted something different. Something that was his and his alone.
    He’d worked for his father because it had been expected, but he’d never really put his heart into it. Hell, he’d even gotten married because the family expected it. Frannie’s family and his had both wanted the match to cement their partnership, something that had never happened.
    It shamed him now to remember how lightly he’d entered into the marriage. Frannie was beautiful and charming. She’d made it easy for him to go along with what the families wanted. She’d done everything she could to show him that she was the right woman for him.
    At least until they were officially married. Then she’d slowly changed, and Parker had learned just how lonely a man could be.
    His marriage had failed and his heart wasn’t in his work. The thought of continuing just to be another rung on the James family