Free The Long Hot Summer (Billionaire Season Book 1) by Kimball Lee

take her eyes off the extravagant beauty of gardenias, azaleas, bougainvillea and countless scores of blooming shrubs and vines and ornamental trees. “This is so cool! I’ve heard the French Quarter is famous for its hidden courtyards, but just wow ! It’s like an oasis in the middle of the warehouse district, right?”
    “ Yes it is, now, what do you say we walk a few blocks to the Roasted Bean ? I hate to admit that I have an out-of-control dependence on that demon called caffeine, but I do,” Brodie said and his hand strayed to the small of her back for an instant as they made their way to the street.
    Three streets over from the derelict row of warehouses the area was completely transformed. High-end art galleries and restaurants crowded into refurbished four and five story high brick and stucco storefronts. Names of early Louisiana merchants like Lafitte and Thibodaux and Saint Michele were still visible where they had been painted in scrolled script above broad antique entry doors. Brodie carried cups of fragrant steaming coffee to a bench in a picturesque park on the corner and they sat in silence until Allie took a hefty swallow of the coffee. Her eyes watered as she tasted the famed coffee and chicory mix.
    “Strong, huh? Believe it or not it’s half steamed milk but the coffee and chicory are potent.” Brodie’s grin was crooked and boyish and Allie was instantly put at ease by his good-natured charm.
    “Yes, strong is an understatement, spicy is more like it,” she said, laughing as she dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief he offered her. “This really is the Old South isn’t it? Linen handkerchiefs and chivalry and all the stuff of romantic legends.”
    “Yes ma’am! I suppose that’s the reason so many influential writers were drawn to this rarefied atmosphere. It’s the Big Easy and as far as scandal and secrets and unbridled hedonism go, well this is a hot-bed, literally, for the ‘anything goes as long as nobody knows’ way of life.” Brodie smiled and raised an eyebrow and Allie’s cheeks blushed pink as she realized he wasn’t just boyishly endearing, he was sexy in an unintentional sort of way. “Don’t drink the coffee if it’s not to your liking Allie… did you mean it when you said I could call you Allie?”
    “I like it, the first taste was surprising, that’s all. Yes absolutely, call me Allie. So you and your mother run the Literary Society by yourselves, just the two of you?”
    “Oh hell no! There’s no way I could work with my mother full time, I’m just lending a hand while I’m home for the summer. I’ve just finished my second year of law school at Vanderbilt, by this time next year I’ll take the Bar exam and if I pass I’ll be one of those dreaded bloodsucking lawyers. You know, the sort of sc oundrels Shakespeare swore should be eradicated to make the world a nicer place, how did he put it—‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers’?”
    “I don’t know any lawyers, my parents were artsy people and anti-establishment. I mean my dad still is but my mom passed away last year… so who knows what or where she is now. When my parents divorced they refused to hire an attorney, they just printed out one of those disillusion of marriage contracts from some bizarre website. It might not have even been legal and my dad has been married like, three more times so he could be a bigamist, which would serve him right since he’s definitely an asshole, what do you think?”
    “What do I think? Hmm, I think you might be okay with lawyers but not too crazy about your father,” he said, again with the disarming smile. His tosseled light-brown hair kept falling over one eye so that he raked his fingers through the mass of shaggy waves. His eyes were large and round and a color of blue that changed depending on his pattern of thought. They were darker as he listened intently to Allie speak and more crystalline when he laughed at something she said.