Let the Good Times Roll: Roll of the Dice, #4

Chapter One

Fumbling for a firm hold on the sweating six-pack, Chloe Lee blinked at the stranger who answered Wendy's door. He was hot. Hot enough to short out her celebrated synapses.

He crouched to catch Penny, Wendy's Yorkshire Terrier. She knew it was Penny because the pup featured in at least a dozen of the shots on her new boss’s screensaver. For the same reason, she knew the guy snuggling Penny up next to his glowing skin and flowing hair wasn’t Mac. Wendy's husband was a barrel-chested black man while Hot Guy was lanky and light and at least a decade older.

Retreating a step, she double-checked the house number on the lintel. The house was just as described: sunflower-yellow shutters and a porch deep enough for rocking, cream clapboards wrapping three stories high to the mansard roof. Blinking white Christmas lights cast a stars-and-shadows light on the cobalt ceiling of the porch.

Brandon’s hand on the small of her back pressed her forward again. Penny was rubbing her red and green tartan-ribboned head against Hot Guy’s chest, tugging his oxford askew, but Chloe had ahold of herself now. Instead of watching how Penny kept taunting her with flashes of Hot Guy skin, she said, I’m Chloe. Are we early?

Of course Hot Guy had dimples and a lopsided smile. Nah, everyone’s out back.

Of course he had a slow Cajun lilt to his voice.

Her date stepped around her. Maybe she’d been too rooted. Maybe he was rude as hell. She counted it against him anyway, because life was too busy to waste on people she had to evaluate for signs of decency. He shook Hot Guy’s hand. Brandon Glover.

Gabriel Babineaux.

Of course he had a sexy name. She ignored the way his tongue rolled over all his vowels. Chloe handed him the beer, took Penny, and followed Brandon over the threshold. Are you Wendy's butler?

Two dimples. More like her houseboy. I live out back. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, down the narrow hallway. Now the door was closed, she could hear voices and zydeco music floating into the front room, and the lure had snagged Brandon.

Cute dog, he said. Is that a live band?

Gabriel nodded. Some friends of Mac’s. They have a gig later tonight but they like to stop here for a bit whenever they can. For the annual party, I mean. Your first year, right? He’d turned back to Chloe, seemingly as uninterested in Brandon as Brandon was in Penny.

She smoothed back the Yorkie’s tiny ears and worked the ribbon back down towards her scalp, hooking her pinkies into the loops to firm up the knot. It is. I’ve only lived here a few months. Well, six now, I suppose. She crouched to let the dog hop out of her hold.

You must work with Wendy.

Looking up at him—long legs, of course he had long legs, long and slim and denim like the denim loved his thighs—she quirked her head. How’d you know?

He reached down to help her up, and didn’t let go. Gentle, dexterous hands. Mac and I about had our fingers nipped off when we were trying to fix Penny’s decoration earlier.

His own were a rough mess, long, the backs dusted with gold-red hair and some flecks of color in the creases. Are we playing fortune teller? she asked, pulling her smoother, darker fingers from his. Because yes, I’m a pediatric neonatal care specialist. And you must be a painter.

They were walking again, and he deposited her beer on top of a stack of drinks in the kitchen. Brandon was long out of sight in the back yard beyond them. Gabriel stuffed his fists in his jeans pockets, nodded once. You diagnose me correctly, doctor.

So you took up residence here through Mac? Mac was a photographer, and from Wendy's stories, he moved in New Orleans’s artistic communities. He always knew someone, or someone who knew someone, and those someones were always doing interesting creative things.

Another nod. We taught together for a bit. When they bought this place, I was about ready to give up the classroom, so I set up the guesthouse as a studio. They’re good to me.

Chloe took in the shelf-lined sitting room which opened, via French doors, to the patio. A few people chatted on the low long couches, and the stone-topped coffee table was crowded with cans and glasses. Wendy's bookshelves held few books; the ones on display served to visually separate the accumulation of framed photos, small sculptures, and the occasional basket of yarn. Wendy was a superpower of their profession, one of those college-at-sixteen, doctor-at-twenty-three genius types, and she’d taken over as head of neonatology at the hospital before many of her age peers were done establishing themselves in a specialty. Chloe had expected stacks of journals and some heavy tomes—an explosion of the literature cluttering her own sitting room—instead of this minimalist and peaceful aesthetic. She wanted to bask in it, or snoop for evidence that Wendy wasn’t such an outlier. Instead she followed Hot Gabriel outside.

Brandon, who was also good looking, if in the generic way of many men in her age bracket, shimmied her way when she cleared the crush on the patio. He handed her a plastic cup of wine and tapped it with his longneck. Cheers.

Thanks. She sipped. What is this?

He shrugged. I just asked for red. Is it okay?

She had ordered burgundy at their last dinner, so it wasn’t so presumptuous an assumption. But he could have asked. It’s fine.

There were dozens of people in the yard. The multicolored Christmas lights that lined the fence and wrapped a few trees flashed almost in time with a trio of musicians playing button accordion, frottoir washboard, and Cajun fiddle. She couldn’t deposit her drink anywhere convenient, so she kept hold of it as she gestured Brandon to follow her over to where Wendy was swaying at the edge of a painted plywood dance floor.

Her boss hadn’t impressed her right away. Her credentials were great, of course, but Chloe’d worked with wunderkinder before. There were three residents under twenty-three during her pediatric internship with Emory, and while she served her neonatology fellowship at Louisiana State University, her housemates’s thirty-year-old best friend garnered a National Medal of Science nomination. All the early-to-college doctors were smart and driven and proficient.

But so was Chloe. So were plenty of people she knew. Being good at the job didn’t translate to being good at administering a department full of not just other neonatologists, but also specialists, neonatal nurse practitioners, staff nurses, and occupational and physical therapists.

Her second week on the job, Wendy invited her to coffee and asked her to lay out the differences in the standard of care between Atlanta and New Orleans. We’ve returned to what could be called normal operation after Katrina. Part of my process of rebuilding is to examine the things we do because they’ve always been done that way, and make sure they’re the best ideas, not just the go-to ones. So—and I’m telling Philipe Dluski the same thing—if your experience suggests that we could make better use of ECMOs or change a therapy routine, I want to hear about it.

Philipe Dluski was the other new guy, a respiratory therapist. The hurricane had scattered staff, some permanently. In the aftermath, Wendy was promoted and, in time, she hired Chloe. Her years at LSU had given her a strong attachment to the area. The levees breaking also broke her heart, which she determined to mend by relocating south.

It’s like you think your actions now can erase the past, Ben said when she told everyone she’d found a promising job opening. The lash of her twin’s words stung more than if all the rest of their siblings said the same thing in unison.

They were quiet, letting Ben be the one to tell her that heading to Louisiana after the hospital reopened was no more useful to the city than her becoming an expert in persistent pulmonary hypertension was to the sister they’d lost before she was two months old.

She didn’t let them stop her. Well, if they’d put effort into it, she wouldn’t have let them. They backed off when she asked Ben if he was afraid he wouldn’t always look like the Perfect One without her around as counter-example. And living in even a denuded New Orleans was theoretically amazing, but much of Chloe’s time was spent at the hospital or asleep. The periodic all-nighters in the NICU weren’t as easy on her at thirty-eight as they’d been in her early days. But she wouldn’t trade her career for any other.

She introduced Brandon to Wendy, who danced a curtsey in acknowledgement of his greeting. The man always on Wendy's screensaver slid between them. You’re Chloe, right?

Mac. Charmed. This is a great band. I hear you’re responsible.

His smile was light and welcoming. I saw you talking to Gabe. He blames everything on me, even the good things.

Oh, you met Gabe? Wendy looked past her, then over her own shoulder. Where did he get to?

I think he’s at the bar. And, Mac, he also blamed you for Penny’s lopsided hair bow. I guess I have to believe everything else you say about him now.

I like her. Mac slipped an arm around his wife’s waist. I’m glad we got her over here at last.

You messed up Penny’s bow?

Mac bumped his hip against Wendy's until her mock-glare transformed into an eye-roll. She bumped him back and pulled him into a two-beat slide along with the chorus. I’m sorry, beautiful.

It’s okay. I fixed it, Chloe told them.

Brandon took her hand. Want to dance?

He didn’t wait for an answer, leaning back at arm’s length then jerking her in his direction. It was either fling her arm out towards her boss’s husband, or pull it in towards herself. Chloe had fast reflexes, and was trained to use them to preserve others ahead of herself. She cradled the glass of red wine against her white sweater.

Oh holy crap! Brandon released her. You splashed me.

Mac offered his pocket square. It was the same red plaid as Penny’s bow. She checked out its smooth sheen. Is it washable?

I think so, sure. Doesn’t matter.

She waved him off. It's not something I can just blot up, regardless. This sweater is toast.

Wendy asked, Do you want to change into something of mine? That has to be cold. Indeed it was. Despite the space heaters,