Kathleen Valentine by My Last Romance, other passions Page B

pastel light and carnival music. New Orleans, I knew, was his destination on the few occasions when he went "home". The prospect of going there together excited me.

"Yes," I said. "Can we eat in sidewalk cafes and go to jazz clubs?"

"We can hardly avoid it," he said smiling.

"Can we stay in the French Quarter?"

Jean-Luc has the most rapturously beautiful smile. It captured my heart the first time I saw it and has never lost its hold on me. He is a stern-looking man normally. Focused and not inclined toward nonsense. But when he smiles his light blue eyes sparkle and his teeth gleam, the long dimples that bracket his mouth soften his stern face and shatter the illusion of severity.

"We will do everything, Bebe, I promise."

From the air the Mississippi Delta looks like a great white scallop shell opening into the tropical blue of the Gulf of Mexico. Jean-Luc wears the headphones of his iPod. From his relaxed expression you would think he is listening to music but I know better. My husband is an ambitious man with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Right now he is listening to audio books—masterpieces of world literature. The seat belt light flashes on and he removes the headphones and leans forward to kiss my shoulder.

"Look," I whisper pointing out the window. I always sit by the window when we fly because I love the mysteries below. He tucks the iPod into place beside his laptop and closes the leather case filled with pens and brushes and books and drawing pads. His illustrations are exquisitely rendered and he works on them obsessively. He says they are his children and he cannot bear to be away from them for even a day.

On the ground he shoulders the garment bags and I carry the large box wrapped with golden paper and gold ribbons. It contains the carrickmacrosse tablecloth I chose for his parents. It is an elegant gift—one any mother would adore. The first thing I notice when we step from the body of the plane is the heat—heavy, intense and penetrating—a feeling I soon learn to dread.

At the car rental desk he thumbs through the plastic cards in his wallet and selects the all-purpose platinum one. The girl behind the desk is coffee-colored and beautiful. She looks at him in an open way that I find disturbing but he appears not to notice.

It is one of the great enigmas of our relationship that we find each other so alluring. Despite his thinning hair and hard features I find him utterly devastating and the fact that he finds my lush curves so enticing awes me. After a life time of diets I have finally stopped trying to change my body thanks to his adoration of it.

It never occurred to me that his family would live anywhere in Louisiana other than New Orleans. When we head northwest out of the city he tells me that it will be a three hour drive. I am astonished. My refined husband bears no resemblance to a small town boy. After we travel through an endless sea of open grain fields and enter the dense, moss-covered swamplands I am speechless.

The population of his town is less than that of the building I work in. The houses are small, wooden and neat with large, continually occupied front porches. The trees are mammoth. Their branches extend across entire yards, propped up here and there by metal poles. The people are like Jean-Luc, compact, dark and handsome. They treat us like celebrities. His parents cannot do enough for us. We are given the only room in the house with an air conditioning unit—one which Jean-Luc bought for them years earlier but which they never use. It is a blessing for me.

Watching my husband here is fascinating. I feel I do not know him as he chats in this curious, lovely language. He introduces me as "ma femme Beverly" to women who clap their hands together and kiss my cheeks. To men who catch me round the waist, twirl me around and pronounce me something that I do not understand but which makes Jean-Luc laugh.

He laughs a lot here. He sits on the porches with his feet on