HEAT in New Orleans || Marcel Gerard

Chapter 20: I Need A Caterer

Chapter Twenty

I furrowed my eyebrows, grabbing the card from the flowers I just received at work. "You got a secret admirer?" Mark smirked teasingly at me.

"I'm sorry, mister manager, don't you have something to go manage?" I said, giving him a playful glare.

"Who they from?" He chuckled.

I pursed my lips as I spotted the name on the card, "Brendan... Says he's coming back into town and he wants to have dinner."

He scoffed, "You believe him?"

I shook my head, "No... take the flowers. Give them to that lovely wife of yours."

I gave him a quick smile before throwing the card into the trash. Brendan was a piece of work as usual. He stopped by last month on the way to meet a client in Mississippi, only an hour away from me and the kids. He was supposed to pass through when he was done before going back to Chicago. But he broke that promise to the kids and never showed. He had "no time." He had to rush home to his little girlfriend who said there was an emergency at their new home together. Which turned out to be that they received the wrong shade of blue paint for the exterior of their house. Brendan only spilled that tidbit to me out of frustration at his bimbo. Then he tried to apologize to me a dozen times. I told him I wasn't the one he needed to say sorry to. We were divorced. But he refused to get on the phone with his kids which broke Zach's heart of course. He said he would make it up soon. I just hated him for disappointing our son over and over again. Thankfully, Cheyenne was too young to understand and have so many negative emotions.

Part of me expected those flowers to be from Marcel. It's been 8 days since he's reached out to me. But in the weeks since our official break up, he has sent me three dozen red roses to my home, pastries while I was at work, and I've gotten a hundred text messages. Good morning every day until eight days ago. And he kept asking me to come out to meet him at his loft. A few times I wanted to, but I've been busy.

Uncle Kieran has gotten worst. Klaus has been preoccupied. Davina was struggling. Cheyenne got sick. Zachariah was a lot moodier lately and having issues at daycare. And Cami has been taking care of our uncle to the point she was skipping work and not doing anything else with her life.

Did I miss Marcel? Yes. On particularly hard days, even more so. But I didn't have time to drive out of the city to pay him a visit for a damn hug. Besides, it wouldn't fix anything. Or make it easier to let go. I had to focus on my family. Not a man. I didn't have the luxury of time, energy or the emotional threshold to date.

*** F L A S H B A C K — 3 WEEKS AGO ***

I nervously rounded the staircase, up to what should be Marcel's loft. The building looked run down and like an abandoned warehouse. I parked out front, where I spotted railroad tracks off to the right. But all around was barren trees and gravel for miles. He was isolated here. Yet I felt unsafe walking up alone.

Upon entering there was a step then to the left a wooden door that led to a staircase. Then a short hallway I was wondering through to an opening on the end to the left. "Marcel?" I called out hesitantly.

I had called his phone when I arrived to make sure I got the address right, but he didn't answer. He had walked me through it briefly this morning when we talked. That was before I showered and dressed for the day and took the kids to daycare.

I stood in the doorway of the open room. Across from me at the far end wall was floor to ceiling windows. They over looked the river and you could see the city in the far distance past the bridge. It was... beautiful. Surprisingly.