Elli (A Second Chance Novel Book 1) Page 27

  Sarah had been like his mother on steroids. If she was narcissistic, she wanted to be queen. Ben must have seemed like a king suited for her queendom. He was handsome, wealthy, and respected. Elli imagined she’d want to be the center of attention all the time. She’d seek that to feed her narcissism. The story Doug had told Elli about Ben cutting off Sarah’s money was true, but he had gotten the version Sarah wanted her father to have. He may have even given her some money because of it. It was no wonder Ben had trust issues now and thought she was trying to manipulate him.

  Elli closed her eyes and sighed. He was right. She had tried to manipulate him. Her heart weighed heavy in her chest. How could she have done that to him? He didn’t deserve it. It was worse than talking a blind man over a cliff.

  “Doug is grieving,” Elli said, turning the conversation back to where it began.

  “He blames me for making Sarah crazy the day she crashed the car into a tree.” He sighed. “Shit, Elli. Maybe, I did. We had fought right before. She had been drinking all day at a dog show in Lafayette and was putting Joey in her car to take him home. I wouldn’t let her.” He gripped both of Elli’s arms and held her at arm’s length from him. “I took Joey from her and I told her to get the hell out of our lives. She did. She took off and crashed the car forty minutes later.”

  “Oh, Ben.” Tears flowed down Elli’s cheek. She hated seeing guilt and sadness in his eyes.

  “Elli, I have gone over that afternoon in my head a thousand times. I should have taken the car keys away from her. I shouldn’t have let her drive.” He swallowed hard. “I just wanted to get Joey the hell away from her. I wanted her the hell away from me. I wanted a different life.” He turned and walked onto the porch and peered through the window into the office.

  “Just wishing for something doesn’t make it happen. Trust me, I know this is true.” Elli walked to stand near Ben, but didn’t touch him. “You don’t have that kind of power. No one does.” She wiped away the tears burning her cheeks. “Your first responsibility was to make sure Joey was safe. You did that. I know that if you could have kept her from driving drunk, you would have. I know this, Ben.” She beat her chest with her fist. “I believe you handled the situation exactly as you had to handle it.” She sniffed and wiped new tears off her face. “Could you really have stopped her from driving off without endangering Joey?”

  Ben turned and looked at Elli. There was so much pain in his eyes, her heart ached for him. “No.” His voice was low, even. “I barely had Joey out of his car seat when she gunned the engine and took off. I had to tuck Joey into my body and dive out of the way to keep from getting hit with the open door. She didn’t care if she hit her baby with the damn car, Elli. She didn’t care if she hit me.”

  “Don’t let Doug rewrite your history. You know the truth.”

  “I don’t care what he says. I just can’t let him hurt Joey, unintentionally or negligently with his behavior.”

  Joey opened the door and stepped outside. He had a milk moustache and there was peanut butter smeared at the corner of his mouth. He was adorable. “Hey there, you are way too young to be growing a moustache.”

  “What?” Joey laughed.

  Elli ran her finger over her mouth. “I know it’s a milk moustache, young man, but don’t you try to shave it.”

  “Oh, Elli. That’s silly.”

  Jenny walked out onto the porch with her snout stuck inside a plastic jar of peanut butter. Her tail was wagging in fast swipes.

  “No. That’s silly,” she said. They laughed as Jenny shook her head and sent the peanut butter jar flying across the porch. BJ raced after it, and after a few licks inside with her long, pink tongue, she had the jar stuck on her snout.

  “Why don’t Joey and I hike back to the house and see what’s happening on the movie set.” Elli smiled at Ben. “You stay here and get some work done. Sort things out.”

  “Can I go with her, Dad?” Joey tugged on his father’s hand. “It’s the last day of filming.”

  “Sure.” He kissed his son on top of the head, lingering a moment to give him a tight hug. “For the life of me, I don’t understand what you find so fascinating with that circus.”

  “It’s a movie, Dad.” He laughed, moving like he had springs in his ankles. “Not a circus.”

  “Same thing.” He smiled.

  Elli grabbed her dogs’ leashes, hanging on a hook on the porch, and latched them to their collars. Joey jumped off the porch. BJ and Jenny rushed after him, not bothering with the stairs. Elli screeched and was forced to jump off the porch into a run. “See you later,” she shouted to Ben. “Whoa, girls. Whoa. Joey, help.” She laughed and soon got another lesson on how to control her dogs from a very expert six-year-old boy.

  * * * *

  Ben settled his scuffed boots on top of his desk, clasped his hands behind his head, and eased back into his big leather desk chair. Elli was right. He needed to be alone to sort things out. She had known that. She seemed to know a lot of things about him. Ben wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Women with that kind of instinct about people were dangerous. Elli was dangerous, there was no doubt about it. There was another side of her that Ben couldn’t deny either. She was caring. Ben wasn’t sure he could trust his assessment of her in that category, though. As genuine as her affection seemed toward Joey, his family, the dogs, and even him, it could be manufactured.

  Ben closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He hadn’t been breathing right since Elli arrived. The air seemed to be sucked out of the room when she was around, especially when she was wrapped around him bare skin to bare skin. “Don’t go there.” Thinking of her in a carnal way clogged his brain and achieved nothing except getting him aroused. He had to put Elli on the back burner for now and figure out what do with Doug. That situation was more pressing.

  Ben heard a car pull up outside and recognized the quiet purr of the engine. It was Beau. His cousin walked through the door, dressed in dark, pressed jeans and a crisp, light purple, tailored shirt. He wore a few strands of fancy Mardi Gras beads around his neck. One of the necklaces was made of thick black plastic beads, with three twisted straw voodoo dolls wrapped in purple canvas dresses. There were straight pins slipped into their dresses. Too bad there were only three voodoo dolls, he thought, thinking of the movie people who kept coming around his dogs. Might not be a bad idea to have one for Elli, too.

  “Coming from a parade?” Ben asked his cousin, who had dropped into the worn leather chair across from the desk.

  “No, these beads came from my private stash of parade throws.” He had a mischievous grin. “These are some of my titty beads, cuz. I thought I’d see if the voluptuous Heather Harley likes them.”

  Ben laughed. “My guess is she will, especially if you give them to her. I had about a ten-minute conversation with her this morning and nine and a half minutes of it was her asking me about you. You made quite an impression over dinner last night. I think she might be sweet on you.”

  “No might about it. I’m driving into New Orleans to have dinner with her again tonight.” He winked at Ben. “When you’ve got it, you’ve got it. I’ve got it.” He crossed his ankle over his knee. “You don’t.”

  “Did you come here to brag on yourself and dis me?”

  “Yep.” Beau walked to the refrigerator and got a bottle of water. “The third reason I’m here is to get you to help with loading the family float. Tante Izzy asked me to meet the delivery man who’s bringing her and Elli’s throws to the float. She wants me to set up their throws and organize everything. She said she was too busy starring in a movie to do it.”

  “You should’ve seen her in costume.” Ben laughed. “Never thought I’d see the day that Tante Izzy would look like an average all-American grandmother.”

  “Yeah, no kidding?”

  A loud vehicle with a busted muffler drove past the office and stopped nearby. When its engine went silent, Ben got up and pushed aside the blinds to look outside. He hoped it wasn’t one of the mo
vie crew people returning to hassle his dogs. Beau came over to look out the window, too. They watched as Doug rushed out of his cottage, waving his arms and pointing in anger at the young man Ben recognized as the guy who had passed out under Doug’s table.

  “What the hell is going on?” Beau asked.

  “Hell if I know, but my guess is that it’s carried over from the wild party Doug had at his place last night.”

  “He had a wild party and didn’t invite us?” Beau asked but Ben knew there was no way in hell Beau would party with Doug.

  The young man stayed in his car, as Doug continued shouting at him and walked to the passenger side of the car. He climbed in and slammed the door closed. The young driver’s eyes were wide as he drove off with Doug toward the main highway.

  “I sure wouldn’t let him in my car,” Beau said, moving away from the window.

  “Doug’s been acting more hotheaded than usual. Angry. Different.” Ben shook his head and walked to his desk and leaned against it. “I’m worried about him.” Ben fisted his hands, feeling anger bubbling inside of his stomach. “Do you know that the young Biloxi Police search beagles we’re training got loose? It was his fault that they did. He was supposed to be watching the place. Instead, he not only invited the people who let them loose, he was partying with them.”

  Beau and Ben didn’t speak for a moment, both assessing the situation. Beau spoke first. “I wouldn’t have figured he’d associate with someone that kid’s age. Mid-twenties, right?”

  “That’s what I’d figure.” Ben walked around and sat in the desk chair. “Besides that guy, there were two others partying with him, including a barely eighteen-year-old girl he’d been messing around with.”

  “Doug is nearly sixty.” Beau shook his head. “You know, come to think of it, I was coming out of the movie palace a week ago and saw Doug pull up in front in his truck. Two guys I didn’t recognize walked up to him and talked to him through his open window. I didn’t pay any attention to it. The guys looked to be college age, I guess.”

  Ben wasn’t sure what the hell was going on. He just knew in his gut that something was wrong. “I’m not going to leave Joey alone with him. I’m glad he’s going to Mardi Gras with Camille and her family tomorrow. Otherwise, I’d break the no-kids-ride rule and bring him on our float.”

  “It’s probably midlife crisis,” Beau said, standing. “You know, feeling his mortality. Trying to regain his youth.”

  Ben laughed. “Midlife? That would mean he’d live to be one hundred and twenty.”

  “As interesting as this conversation is—I am no psychologist. I am at this moment in time a roustabout. Time for me to roust myself and do a bout of labor for Tante Izzy.”

  Ben stood. “Let’s swing by the barn and get my beads on the way out.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Today is my first radiation treatment and I would like to tell you I am feeling brave as I lay on the cold, hard, narrow table, wearing only a plain, pale blue, cotton panty—the kind I only wear for doctor visits, or when I am too sick to care. I know I was prepared for how this would look and sound, but it feels so foreign. All I can do is take deep breaths, inhaling the sterile scents of alcohol and heated hospital equipment. It is a smell I haven’t gotten used to in the six months since my diagnosis, it’s a scent I’ll never forget. Oh God, my body is vibrating now with shivers that started from somewhere deep within my soul. This feeling has nothing to do with the chillingly low thermostat setting that pampers the sensitive radiation equipment above my naked torso. It comes from that fearful place I can’t control…my epicenter, where the solid, constant earth shifted. Funny, but someone once described falling in love as feeling the same way—like the earth shifts under your feet. All I can say is…been there, done that…No thanks. I wish you good health, E.

  Bosom Blog Buddies Post

  Fat Tuesday

  It was ten in the morning when the Party Express bus ended its two-hour ride through the streets of Vacherie Parish. The tour included a lot of loud music, loose-hipped dancing, liberal drinking, cautious feasting and uninterrupted laughing from the Bienvenu clan aboard the bus. There were about twenty of them and they all wore similar costumes of plantation-era style clothes, but in the flamboyant colors and bling of Mardi Gras. And, to Elli’s surprise, the costumes only covered the top half of their bodies. Shorts or sweat pants were worn on the parts of the body that would be hidden behind the walls of the floats. Since it was a warm day, Elli and Rachel wore shorts and rainbow-striped leggings beneath them.

  Elli still couldn’t believe she was on the Party Express bus. It was the same purple, green, and gold converted school bus that had carried Ben and his fellow neon pirates onto Sugar Mill Plantation the day she met him. Never in all of her wild imaginings had she thought she would be on that same gyrating, decapitated vehicle singing and having the time of her life. She wished Ben had been there with her. It was ridiculous, but she missed him. She hadn’t seen him since the evening before, when he and Joey left the plantation house to stay at the kennel so he could keep an eye on things there. He didn’t join the pre-parade party because he had to bring Joey to Camille’s place along the parade route to make sure his son was settled before heading to the float. He had also volunteered to give Tante Izzy a ride to the float since she had given up on the early morning partying long ago.

  “Come on, Elli,” Rachel shouted over the blaring lyrics of Mardi Gras Mambo. “Time to load our float. Did anyone tell you the title of our float is the Krewe du Bienvenu? Don’t you love the double entendre? The Welcome Krewe and it’s our name, too! It’s tradition that we’re the first float, the welcoming float, right after the Krewe of Cajuns royal court.” She waved her arm for Elli to follow, sloshing a generous splash of the spiked lemonade in her hand. Elli lifted her plastic cup of the sweet drink and took a healthy sip to keep hers from doing the same when she climbed off the bus with her cumbersome plastic bag. As soon as Elli’s feet hit the parking lot pavement, Ruby handed her a decorated sports bottle with more of the spiked lemonade inside.

  “This is better for the float,” Ruby explained adjusting her bright orange and purple costume that had twisted during her last dance on the bus. “You won’t spill your drink on the parade-goers. They don’t like getting soaked with our drinks.” She laughed and looked at her husband, John, who was stumbling off the bus. “And try not to toss it with the beads like my darling husband does every year.”

  “We won’t, Mom,” Rachel said, looping her arm through Elli’s and tugging her toward the two-story float that was decorated with thick metallic tinsel and bright paint, depicting a cartoon-like scene of Sugar Mill Plantation, sugarcane fields and cypress swamps. “Come on, almost everyone from the bus is on the float already. This is it here.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Elli said, looking at the tall, moss-draped oak trees arched over the top of the float. There was even a wide plank swing hanging from one of the trees, high above the front of the float. An adorable eight-foot, tan, papier-mâché Labrador with his pink tongue hanging out of its mouth sat perched on the swing. This float and the others around it were a far cry from the homemade floats built on a trailer that she expected to see. “It’s just like you see in the movies and the TV coverage of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It’s so colorful and fun.”

  Elli approached the rear of the float to follow Rachel up the steps and spotted Ben. Her heart started kicking in her chest as she watched him help Rachel, Ruby, and John on the float first. She was last. “Hello, there,” she said smiling up at Ben. He returned the smile with such warmth and sincerity that she paused on the middle step and just let it soak into her skin. “Your smile is better than the sunshine on this beautiful blue sky day.”

  “Rachel,” Ben shouted over his shoulder. “What have you given Elli to drink?”

  “Lemonade.” Elli lifted her sports bottle. “And vodka.”

  He tugged on her arm to get her up the last two steps. “You might want to slow d
own or you won’t make the start of the parade at noon.”

  Elli threw her arms around Ben’s neck, knocking him in the head with the huge plastic bag she carried. “Sorry.” She kissed him on the mouth.

  “It worked,” Tante Izzy shouted with a happy hoot from behind Ben. “I tole youz the potion would work.”

  Elli released Ben. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kissed you. That wasn’t very covert.”

  Ben tucked his hands into his pockets and gave her a half smile, but said nothing.

  “We didn’t drink it,” Elli said, looking past Ben to Tante Izzy. “It probably has something weird in it like spider spit.”

  Tante Izzy laughed. “What youz worried ’bout? Spider spit is organic.”

  “What are y’all conniving about?” Ben asked, but both women just waved their hands at him as if he were a bothersome fly.

  “You don’t know nothin’,” Tante Izzy told him from where she sat on her tall, gold lamé, cushioned stool. Her half gold, half purple lamé hoop dress encircled her like the petals of a flower. With the tall bins of beads covering every inch of space around her and the beads hanging on hooks behind her, she looked like she was floating in a sea of color. Elli grabbed her cell phone from her back pocket and snapped a picture of Tante Izzy. “Moodee, rascal. Take another picture. I wasn’t givin’ you my Greta Garbo smile.”

  Elli snapped another picture, then took a quick photo of Ben, who was just staring at her in that dark, sexy way that made her insides melt. After what seemed like a half hour but was probably only seconds, he pointed to Tante Izzy. “Your spot is next to her,” he began, then burst out laughing when Elli turned to look at where he wanted her to go. “What is that on your backside, cher?”