A Case for Love (19 page)

Forbes took her mother’s proffered hand in both of his. “Mrs. Delacroix, it’s wonderful to meet you.”

“And you, Mr.... Forbes.” Mother cast a sidelong glance at her friend.

Alaine let out her breath, thankful Mother had remembered to not mention Forbes’s last name. Having people figure out who he was when Daddy introduced him would be soon enough.

“And you remember Mrs. Voula Pappas from the restaurant.”

“I’d shake your hand, but...” Mrs. Pappas held up sticky fingers.

“Quite all right.” Forbes gave her the smile Alaine hadn’t been able to resist at the bachelors’ banquet. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“We’re hungry.” Alaine crossed to look over her mother’s shoulder at what she was stirring in a large metal bowl. “Any chance of getting a sneak peek at the pickings tonight?”

“Sure—if you’ll put all those trays out—those there, the ones covered with plastic wrap.” Voula motioned toward several trays sitting in the serving window between the kitchen and the hall.

Alaine snagged another cookie on her way past. Forbes didn’t. Several minutes later when all the prepared trays had been moved, she hadn’t seen him touch a morsel of food for himself. The longer they stayed in the kitchen, the more certain she became that Forbes Guidry, Mr. Calm-Cool-and-Confident, was so nervous he’d made himself queasy.

“Where’s Daddy?” She needed to get Forbes out of here before he ruined all their appetites.

“He went back out to help Joe and Nikki finish with the setup.” Mother pulled a tray of spanakopita from the oven. Alaine really wanted a piece of the cheesy, spinachy goodness, but it would be too hot to eat right now. And besides, she’d gained five pounds in the past few weeks already. She didn’t need any more.

And Forbes was definitely turning a pretty good shade of chartreuse. She hid her amusement and led him back down the hall to the auditorium. A dozen or so people milled about, greeting each other and finding seats. She prayed a lot more would show up. If they could get almost all of the two dozen or so people involved in the buyout here, that would be great.

“Excuse me, can I borrow my dad for a minute?” Alaine pulled her father away from the guys who owned the bicycle repair shop a few blocks over from her parents’ place. “Daddy, I wanted to introduce you to Forbes.”

Though not as green as just a minute ago, Forbes still looked pale when he shook her father’s hand. “Mr. Delacroix, it’s great to meet you, sir.”

“Please, it’s JD. We’re happy to have you here.”

Alaine scrutinized her father’s face. Though he’d agreed to invite Forbes to come and to hear what Forbes had to say, the guarded expression in his eyes clearly indicated he still didn’t consider this a good idea.

Around them, the noise level grew. Alaine estimated the crowd had at least doubled just in the past thirty seconds or so, with more people still flowing in from the lobby.

“Alaine, dear, if you’ll excuse us, there are a couple of people I need to introduce Forbes to before we get started.”

“Okay.” She joined Nikki and Joe on the front row, where his soundboard was set up, but kept Daddy and Forbes in view.

By the time Daddy’d found the third person to introduce Forbes to, she understood. He didn’t want the other members of the board to be blindsided by Forbes’s identity.

Alaine twisted the hem of her blouse and chewed the inside corner of her bottom lip. Maybe Daddy was right. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. More and more people entered the hall, far more than she’d hoped for. Just how many people did this thing involve?

Her father led Forbes up the two steps onto the stage and to the podium. Joe gave him a thumbs-up.

“We’re going to get started, so please find your seats.”

While the crowd—which had to number at least a hundred by now—jostled into the old, wooden, theater-style seats, Daddy pulled Forbes a few steps away from the live microphone to talk to him. Alaine strained to try to hear, but too much noise filled the echoing room now.

As soon as JD Delacroix, recently elected president of the Moreaux Mills Business Owners’ Association, stepped back to the podium, the room quieted.

“I’d like to thank everyone for making the effort to come out tonight on such short notice. I know a lot of you even closed your businesses early so you could be here. I pray you’ll feel like your effort is rewarded. As you read in the e-mails that went out this week, this meeting is so you can hear what a lawyer has to say about the threat the Mills is under. Then we’ll have a question-and-answer session. We’ll get to as many people as we can. If we can’t get to you tonight, we’ll make sure you get an answer by e-mail soon.” He looked over his shoulder. Forbes nodded and joined him at the podium.

Alaine’s stomach lurched. Moment of truth.

“So, since you didn’t come to listen to me yammer, I’ll turn the meeting over to Forbes Guidry, the lawyer who’s going to try to figure out how to help us.”

A frisson of whispers jolted the stillness of the room. Her father left the stage and took the seat beside her, just as Mother and Voula Pappas entered through the side door.

Forbes cleared his throat and rested his hands on either side of the podium. Though he smiled, from this distance, the grimness in his eyes couldn’t be plainer. “Thank you, Mr. Delacroix. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to begin by talking about the elephant in the room. You heard Mr. Delacroix correctly. My name is Forbes Guidry. Yes, I am the son of Lawson and Mairee Guidry, who own Boudreaux-Guidry Enterprises.”

The trickle of whispers turned into a shower.

Alaine tried to beam encouragement and enthusiasm at him with her smile when he caught her eye.

“I am not here on behalf of my parents nor of their company. I have never worked for B-G Enterprises in any capacity and have acted as legal counsel for my parents only in personal business matters.”

Her heart squeezed. He hadn’t told her that before.

“But you’re a partner in the law firm that represents them,” a man called from somewhere in the middle of the small auditorium. “You’re here to make us back down, to make us sell out.”

“I know it might seem like I’m the most unlikely candidate for someone to help you oppose B-G Enterprises if it’s found they’ve done anything illegal—”

“D’ya hear that?” A woman shouted from the back of the room. “
If!
He’s already trying to whitewash Mommy and Daddy’s dirty deeds.”

“No, ma’am. I’m telling you what any reputable lawyer would tell you: No matter how injured you feel you’ve been, we’ll have to prove the other side has actually done something wrong—broken laws or contracts or conducted business in ways that violate the charters of this city, parish, or state—before any formal legal action can be taken. That means”—Forbes had to raise his voice another notch to make himself heard over the tempest now—“that I’ll need to meet with each of you individually to see if you have a claim that is actionable.”

“Why should we trust you?”

“Don’t listen to him. He’s not here to help us!”

“This is a travesty. Delacroix, what are you doing to us?”

With a sigh, Alaine’s father returned to the podium. Forbes stepped aside for him, his expression apologetic.

“Quiet please.” As soon as a semblance of quiet had been reached, her father adjusted the microphone lower. “I asked Mr. Guidry to come here in good faith. He has promised that he will set aside any personal prejudices and look only at the facts. If he discovers that B-G Enterprises—or any company they’re doing business with—has done anything illegal, he’s sworn he’ll act only on our behalf. Now please, listen to what he has to say.”

“Listen to him?” a woman shrieked. “Listen to him? Can y’all believe this? They brought the enemy right into our community—practically into our homes.”

“Look at him in his fancy suit, standing in our community center that probably isn’t worth as much as that fancy car of his.”

“How much money are you going to make when they tear down all our homes and businesses?”

“Yeah, how much of the Mills are you going to own once we’re all kicked out?”

Why wouldn’t he stand up for himself? The desire to use one of Joe’s favorite foreign words or phrases propelled Alaine out of her seat. Her feet didn’t even touch the two steps up to the stage. She bumped her father—who was trying to calm down the frenzy—out of the way and grabbed the microphone from its holder, since she could barely see over the tall podium.

“Everybody sit down and be quiet!” She didn’t have to raise her voice much; too many years of live remotes from concerts, club openings, and festivals had taught her how to make herself heard over a lot of background noise. And Joe had probably dialed the volume all the way up on the microphone. She stared at the twenty or so hecklers still on their feet. Slowly they each sat down.

“Thank you.” Recomposing her expression from stern to professional took only an instant. She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Most of you in this room know me—if you don’t know me in person you’ve seen me on television. I grew up in the Mills. All of my family still live in the Mills.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Tony lived in an apartment over in University Heights. “My parents—whom you all know—and my brother and sister-in-law work side by side with everyone here to make a living. So trust me when I say that securing the future of Moreaux Mills is my highest priority.”

She scanned the room, keying in on faces she recognized, making eye contact. “
I
asked Forbes Guidry to come here to talk to you tonight.
I
am the one who talked to him about what Boudreaux-Guidry Enterprises is doing in the Mills. And you know why I talked about this with someone who’s related to the owners of that company? Because there isn’t another lawyer in this city who’s willing to take on a case against them. Not a single one would even agree to meet with me. But he did.”

Of course, he hadn’t known why or even whom he was meeting. “I know you’ve got your doubts. I did in the beginning, as well. All I can ask you to do is set them aside just for a little while and listen to what he has to say. Let’s engage in some civilized discourse and see what we can do to save the Mills.”

“But why should we trust him?” one of the original hecklers called.

She licked her lips, heart hammering. “I can’t make you trust him. All I can do is tell you that I trust this man with my entire being.”

And her entire being included her heart.

All Forbes’s nervousness vanished at Alaine’s proclamation. Heretofore, the nearly paralyzing anxiety had been inexplicable. Now he knew: He’d been afraid of disappointing her.

The microphone trembled in her hand as she stood watching her parents’ friends and neighbors discuss her words quietly among themselves. He moved closer and rested his hand on her shoulder, trying to express his gratitude wordlessly when she looked up at him, her eyes wide as if she’d just witnessed a horrible accident.

He reached for the microphone, which she seemed only too happy to relinquish. She backed away, then returned to her seat with surprising haste.

Forbes looked over the crowd as he would a group of people considered for jury duty. Very few wore suits. Even Alaine’s father wore his button-down oxford with the collar open and no jacket. Appearances could go a long way in a situation like this. He laid the mike on the podium, took his coat off and hung it from the corner of the stand, loosened his tie, and rolled up his sleeves.

The hall quieted again. Rather than stand behind the podium, he picked up the microphone and moved to stand beside it.

“If, as Miss Delacroix suggested, you’ll give me a chance, I promise I will do whatever I can to make sure justice is served for the residents and business owners of Moreaux Mills.”

As no one seemed inclined to argue this time, he forged ahead, giving a bit of his professional background, then beginning to explain what he’d learned so far—couching everything in generalisms so that nothing he said could be deemed as firm statements of accusation, but so that they understood to what extent he would investigate and fight for them.

The longer he talked, the more the attitude of his listeners changed toward him. Alaine, however, looked as if she’d rather be anywhere than here. He purposely avoided looking at her often. And he could imagine how embarrassed she must be for having made a public spectacle of herself after she’d been determined to honor her promise to her parents not to be seen as the public face of the issue. His trepidation for what she might hear from her parents after this magnified his own over how his parents would react when he told them of his involvement in it.

During the question-and-answer time, though there were still a few folks obviously intent on giving him a hard time, he got the feeling that most of the people were willing to give him a chance, and that most of them were not under imminent threat of losing their property—they were concerned that if development moved forward, they would be run out in a second or third phase of building. Forbes had represented too many people like Mr. Pichon in his career to deny the legitimacy of their fears.

Finally, JD called an end to the meeting. “Thank you all again for coming out tonight. There are refreshments in the fellowship hall, thanks to Voula and Spiro Pappas. Mr. Guidry has graciously agreed to stay for about an hour to try to answer more questions. If you’ve already had a chance to ask a question in here, please allow those who did not get a chance to talk with Mr. Guidry first. And of course, let’s show him the kind of hospitality we pride ourselves on in the Mills.”

The sound of the old wooden seats flopping closed almost drowned out the immediate drone of voices.

Forbes needed to get to Alaine, to try to let her know how much he appreciated her standing up for him, but her father waylaid him before he could leave the stage to join her.

“I’d like to apologize to you, son, for the things that were said earlier. I—”

“No, don’t.” Forbes held up his hand. “You’re not responsible for anything anyone said here tonight. When sentiment runs high, people will say things they’d never even think under normal circumstances.”

JD’s shoulders sagged, and he appeared much older, world-weary, than just seconds before. “No, I need to apologize. Because when you first stood up here, I felt the same way they did. I didn’t want to trust you, didn’t believe you had any interest other than to defend your—to defend the corporations on the other side.”

“You
felt
that way then? But now?”

“I trust Alaine; she’s a good judge of character. If she says you can be trusted, I’m willing to take that leap of faith.”

The warmth in the older man’s eyes succeeded in driving away the remainder of Forbes’s anxiety. “Thank you. I will do my best not to squander nor betray that belief.”

With a handshake accompanied by a shoulder-squeeze from Alaine’s father, Forbes contemplated what he’d just done. Though no paperwork had been drawn up or signed, he was their lawyer, by conscience if not by contract, committed to the cause, to the community, to the case.

“We should join everyone else in the hall.” JD motioned him toward a side door.

Forbes looked around at the mostly empty auditorium. Alaine hadn’t waited for him. He’d just have to wait until after the reception to try to have a private word with her. He followed JD into the fellowship hall, the crowd parting for them. Some people still looked skeptical, a few downright hostile, but most smiled and nodded in greeting when he made eye contact with them.

JD motioned him through to the kitchen where Solange handed Forbes a plate of what looked like a full serving of each of the hors d’oeuvres Mrs. Pappas had prepared. He ate as much as he could, but even after not being able to eat anything since his early lunch, his riotous stomach wouldn’t handle much.

“Where is Alaine?” Solange asked her husband, her accent making her daughter’s name come out as
Ah-la-ee-na.

“I figured she’d come in here with you.” JD served a plate for himself and leaned against the counter beside Forbes to eat.

“I have not seen her since the meeting ended. She said she would assist in the kitchen.”

The door swung open with a bump and a scrape, and the guy in the wheelchair and the tall redhead who’d set up the sound system entered the kitchen. Alaine had introduced them before, but Forbes’s nerves had kept him from taking in their names.

“Ah.” JD wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and set his half-f plate aside. “Forbes, this is our oldest, Joe, and his wife, Nikki.”

Forbes met Joe halfway across the kitchen and greeted him and his wife with handshakes. “I’ve heard a lot about you. It’s nice to put faces with the names.”

The husband and wife exchanged a telling glance—the same kind Anne and George had been giving him and each other at the ballroom lessons the other night.

When Joe turned back around, Forbes got a flash of recognition. “Wait—you were in the Latin Club at Moreaux High School. You were a couple of grades behind me, but you competed on our level my senior year.”

“I almost beat you at the All-State Competition, too.” Joe grinned. “But they said my accent needed work. My accent, in a nonspoken language.”

With a twinkle in her eyes, Nikki poured herself a soda. “So you were a language geek in high school, too, Forbes?”

“My parents wanted each of their children to be competitive in something, and since I wasn’t cut out for sports and found Latin easy, it seemed like the best option to make them happy.” Okay. Maybe not the best anecdote, given present company.

Nikki laughed. “Sounds like what I would have done.”

“Don’t let her fool you. She came to almost all of the Latin fairs, exhibitions, and competitions. It’s why she fell in love with me.” Joe rolled over to her and took the cup out of her hands. She swiped it right back from him. He made a doleful face, and with a sigh, she poured him his own drink. “Thanks, babe.” He rotated so he faced Forbes again. “Did you take any other languages?”

“No. Just Latin. I knew before I started high school that I wanted to be a lawyer, so really Latin was my first and only choice. And as I said, I found it easy, so what was the point in switching to something else?”

“I know what you mean. We all grew up speaking Portuguese as easily as English. So Spanish, Italian, and Latin were all simple. French is a pain—because of the pronunciation.” Joe went on to talk about the ease or difficulty with which he’d learned his first six languages.

Forbes wanted to hear Alaine speak Portuguese. He already loved the way she spoke English, so he could only imagine hearing the Romance language rolling off her tongue would be symphonic.

When he returned his attention to the conversation, Nikki and Joe were bickering good-naturedly, and Solange and JD were across the kitchen speaking in tones too low to carry.

“I should probably go out and start answering some more questions.” Forbes tossed his plate into a nearby trash can before anyone could see how little progress he’d made in the pile of food—food that was at least as good as Aunt Maggie’s gourmet offerings and perhaps even better in their ethnic rusticity.

“I’ll join you out there in a moment,” JD called across the room.

Forbes waved but was glad he’d be on his own, even if just for a few minutes. People would speak more freely and honestly without someone else standing there waiting to censor or stop them if he felt like they were crossing a line.

And frankly, he hoped to be able to speak with Alaine sooner rather than later.

Though at least fifty people milled about the hall, it took only seconds for Forbes to realize Alaine wasn’t among them. Had she been so afraid of her parents’ reaction that she couldn’t face them in a public setting? Or perhaps she sought to minimize the damage by avoiding more attention with her presence at the reception.

Either way, no matter how harsh her parents were on her—though he couldn’t imagine it could possibly be too bad, given what he’d observed in JD and Solange—he would do his best to make up for it by showing her just how much her defense of him meant.

Alaine dug through the pile of notebooks and printed research piled on her desk one more time. It had to be here.

She still couldn’t believe that she’d practically come right out and said, “I love you” on stage. Had he seen it in her eyes? Had she betrayed her feelings without meaning to?

A stack of papers slid onto the floor.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!”

Instead of picking it up, she pulled the shredder and recycling bin over and started sorting through the avalanche. Most of it was trash—articles and blog entries she’d printed out from various Web sites, including her blog at the station, containing any mention of the Guidrys or Mackenzie and Son. Junk mail. Magazines she’d been meaning to get to for a few months. Notes she’d pulled from her interviews with Mairee and Meredith before the HEARTS to Hearts banquet back in February—those needed to be re-filed.

She shoved the pages back into the green folder and picked it up to set in the seat of her chair—and suddenly found herself being stared at by Forbes Guidry. She’d found it. She grabbed the July issue of
Bonneterre Lifestyles
and threw it into the recycle bin. The blue box slid across the wood floor, coming to a stop when it bumped the base of her credenza.

A heartbeat later, she jumped up and ran to the crate to rescue the magazine. She flipped the magazine open—it automatically parted on the first two pages of Forbes’s six-page spread. While most of the men featured in the bachelor-of-the-year edition of the magazine looked like they’d been posing for high school senior portraits or college fraternity “party pix,” even with the professional photographers giving direction at the photo shoots, Forbes looked like a professional model in all his shots. Her favorite was halfway through the feature. In dark jeans, a bulky gray sweater, and barefoot, Forbes sat on a red sofa—she remembered it from the lobby of the magazine’s offices—laughing. She hadn’t seen that side of him often but wanted to.

She glanced down at the article below the photo. The interviewer had asked Forbes who his hero was.

Alaine flung the magazine back into the recycle bin, not caring that three subscription cards went flying to different corners of the converted-bedroom office.

Uncertainty tore at her heart—the heart with which she’d believed she trusted him; the heart he could so easily break if she let him.

But not if she didn’t give him the chance. She pushed the chair back to the desk and sat—on the folder—and opened her e-mail program. There they were—the e-mails from Shon Murphy this morning. When she’d responded to the first one that she couldn’t meet someone tonight, he’d almost immediately sent back the alternate time of nine thirty Saturday morning. She hadn’t responded.

She pulled it up and hit Reply. Hopefully it wasn’t too late already.

She sent it and closed down the computer, ignoring the several new e-mails at the top of the list. Fatigued from the day’s emotional turmoil, she went to bed, silencing her cell phone when it started ringing just after ten o’clock. If it was an emergency, family and work had her landline number. She stared at the cordless phone on the nightstand, waiting to hear it ring, but it didn’t.

She rolled over and closed her eyes.

Sleep didn’t come.

At midnight, more exhausted than she remembered being in a very long time, she got up and took some p.m. painkiller for her headache and to, hopefully, help her fall asleep.

An hour later, she still lay on her back, staring at the ceiling.

If she prayed, would it do more than bounce off the ceiling? She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, Lord. Obviously, I don’t know what’s going on here, but it seems like You’re going way out of Your way to make sure there’s nothing I
can
do but try to step out on faith and trust You in this.”

Her rash decision to jump up on stage to defend Forbes flickered through her mind. She rolled onto her side, pulled her knees up, and wrapped her arms around her legs. “Why’d You let me make such a fool of myself? Please don’t let Mother and Daddy be too angry with me.”