On Ryan’s suggestion, we piled into the Scout and I drove us to the French Quarter, where we tucked into a tiny, deli-like restaurant called Johnny’s on St. Louis Street.
“Like I told you before when we were talkin’ about your Great-Aunt Myra, I don’t know much about her or your house,” Ryan answered as he took an enormous bite of his catfish po’boy, chomping it for a few seconds before wiping his mouth with a napkin and taking a few sips of his Coke. He smiled and asked, “Are you gonna dive into that or what?” before motioning to the alligator sausage triple-decker po’boy I’d ordered.
“I’m still deciding,” I answered honestly. I’d never had alligator before, but Ryan convinced me it was the be all and end all. As for a triple-decker on Texas Toast? Yep, that was his idea too—promising he’d finish whatever I didn’t.
“Dive in, girl!” he said with a laugh, hiding his fries behind his gigantic hand. “Or else you’re cut off from my fries.”
I eyed my side salad forlornly before frowning at him. Then, taking a deep breath, I picked up my alligator sandwich. “Here goes!” I took a bite and after a few chews, realized it was actually pretty tasty. Heavier than chicken and more like the consistency of steak, it wasn’t scummy or moldy at all, as one might expect of a swamp-dwelling creature.
“So?” Ryan asked, leaning toward me.
I finished my mouthful and sipped on my iced tea. “It’s actually not bad.”
“Not bad as in…good?”
“I don’t know. Let me take another bite.” I held the sandwich up to my lips, but before I took a bite, I added, “While I’m chewing, you can tell me what you do know about my house.”
“So demandin’!” he teased me with a laugh before taking a deep breath. “I’ve lived on Prytania Street for, oh, ten years now.”
“You bought your house when you were twenty-six?” I asked, surprised.
“Peyton, your mouth is still full,” he pointed out with a shake of his head and a put-on wince.
“Sorry,” I managed with a sheepish smile, my mouth no less full.
He chuckled before remembering my question. “I’ve been doin’ construction since I was twenty, an’ luckily for me, I was good at it. So, yes, to answer your question, I bought my house when I was twenty-six.”
I sipped the last of my iced tea through the straw until it snored when it encountered the ice cubes. Ryan raised his brows at me, but I just smiled and mooched another of his fries. “I’d love to see it sometime.” I was suddenly struck with the notion of how completely refreshing it was to be able to be as candid as I was right now, to be able to be silly and flirty. They were feelings that had been foreign to me for years. And now, as I laughed and played with Ryan, I felt like I was coming into my own again, relearning what it felt like to be Peyton Clark.
“You always have an open invitation. You should know that.”
“Why should I? It’s not like you ever invited me…,” I said with a shrug as I stole another fry and used the last of his ketchup. He smiled and, grabbing the bottle, squeezed out another red mound on the corner of his plate. I plopped the fry in my mouth and moaned with pleasure. “These fries are so good!”
“Mouth full!” Ryan chided me.
“Blah,” I waved him away.
“Well, I apologize for not invitin’ you,” he started, while intercepting my attempt to steal a long and especially doughy-looking fry, plopping it into his own mouth with a smug smile.
“Hey!” I swatted his upper arm, feigning offense as he finished his mouthful.
“It never actually crossed my mind that I hadn’t invited you over,” he continued. “But I would like it known that you, Peyton Clark, the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met, with the worst table manners I’ve ever seen, are always welcome at my home.”
I laughed and couldn’t stop the blush across my cheeks. Sometimes he just said things that made me melt. “Thanks, Ryan.”
“And as to what I do know about your house,” he started, reaching over to grab my alligator sandwich with both hands. “I’m guessin’ you’re finished with this since you haven’t touched it in the last five minutes?”
I just nodded. “Let’s switch. I’ll eat the rest of your fries.”
“Deal,” he answered, taking such a huge bite of my alligator triple-decker sandwich that only two-thirds of it remained.
“Jeez, careful you don’t swallow your hand!”
He waved me away in the same way I had earlier. Then, once his mouth was empty, he continued. “For the entire time I’ve lived on Prytania Street, Myra owned your house.”
“And you said you stopped in to check on her a handful of times?”
He shook his head. “Well, truthfully, it was more often than that. I would visit her about once a month to make sure the house was in order and she wasn’t in want of anythin’.”
“Nice work you did for her on the leaky roof, by the way,” I taunted him.
He held his hands up in mock defense. “Hey, she died five or six years ago and the house just sat there, empty, before it fell into disrepair. I had nothin’ to do with that leaky roof!”
“She died five or six years ago?” I asked, finding the news surprising. “I wonder why it only came to me recently?”
Ryan shook his head as if to say he didn’t know. “Maybe the courts had a hard time locatin’ you?”
I nodded, thinking that made sense given the fact that I never even knew I had a Great-Aunt Myra and my mom had been deceased for quite some time. Whatever the reason, all that mattered now was that the house was mine. “So you didn’t know much about Myra?” I continued. “Do you have any idea who that policeman pictured in the newspaper was?”
He shook his head. “No clue. I do remember Myra saying she’d lived in the house with her mother, who’d owned it since the thirties. I reckon those newspapers are about that old?”
“Maybe thereabouts or the twenties would be my guess.”
Ryan nodded. “As to the identity of your mystery cop, I have no idea. I guess we’ll have to wait and find out once we get the rest of those boards down.”
It was a mystery I couldn’t wait to solve.
5
I was so anxious to uncover the riddle regarding the newspaper clippings that I spent the majority of the evening pulling nails from the whitewashed boards in order to free up the pages behind them. Both of Ryan’s men who had been working demolition on the guest room were able to remove the remaining drywall on all four walls without upsetting the boards underneath.
As I busily pulled nail after nail from the splitting, aged planks of wood, my thoughts were mostly centered on Ryan Kelly. Despite my attempts to hide the obvious from myself—my undeniable attraction to him—doing so was pointless. There was no way I could fool myself into thinking that I was some sort of detached ice queen who could control my wayward emotions as easily as flicking off a switch. I couldn’t. And even though I was convinced as a new divorcee, I shouldn’t have any interest in the opposite sex for at least a year, it was now obvious to me that I was simply deluding myself.
Try as I might, I couldn’t get Ryan off my mind. I genuinely cared for him and what was more, I hoped he cared for me…as something more than a friend. I mean, of course I valued his friendship enough that if he chose to see me in a purely platonic way, I could definitely deal with it. But that wasn’t to say I didn’t hope there might be something more.