Elli (A Second Chance Novel Book 1) Read online

  “Perfect for what?” he asked, frowning. “If it’s perfect for anything other than my family home and business, I’m not interested.”

  “As a movie set,” Ellie told him, too excited for his mood to bring her down. She could see all the possibilities for movie magic and that would translate to magic for the people who would benefit from the foundation. “You know, keeping this place hidden and not sharing it with people who would appreciate it is a crime.”

  “Arrest me.” He sat on the top of the wide brick steps leading to the front porch, his black dog standing next to him. It was the first time Elli noticed that the dog had looked like a perfectly normal lab when it was sitting in his truck, but when he stood, it looked like it was missing about four inches of its legs. Odd. It had the legs of another breed of dog. “I appreciate it,” he told her.

  “I’m sure you do.” She decided not to tell him the appreciation she spoke of was plural, affecting hundreds, if not thousands. His appreciation was singular.

  Elli walked deep into the pathless yard under the heavy, bent limbs of the oaks and the tall, straight cypresses, taking in the place as a camera would with a long shot. The house needed paint, but that might be a good thing if a dark, gothic movie was set here. The coarse gray moss hanging from the trees would certainly add to that kind of mood. It had the potential for much more than a horror or suspense thriller. It could be charming and happy, too. Her years in the movie business told her to look at the bits and parts now. Scenes were filmed in a series of smaller settings, and this place was loaded with them. The bayou running at the front of the property could have the plantation home as a backdrop, or if someone filmed it with their back to the plantation, the short clearing on the other side provided a riverbank. Beyond that was a cypress swamp or medieval forest. The waterway could be a river, a bayou, or a canal.

  She saw a small, weathered boat tethered to a huge fallen tree limb along the bank. Later, she’d paddle to the other side of the bayou to take pictures from there, capturing different angles, light, and perspectives she intended to showcase in a real estate brochure.

  She walked toward the grand side of the home. “I love how the back is so different from the front, yet it’s harmonious,” she told Ben. “The bricks on the path, the steps, and the porch were bought around here?”

  He shook his head. “They were made in fire pits and ovens here on the property over two hundred years ago.”

  “Amazing.” She could see by his deep frown that he was sorry to share that bit of history with her. Did he think it could make her any more excited about Sugar Mill than she already was?

  She stepped onto the porch that spanned the entire home. The columns were different in the front than in the rear. Here they ran uninterrupted from the lower porch up to support the roof above it. The columns were square, unadorned and in the French style, but could be painted with faux details to resemble marble or make them appear round and Italian. The twelve windows lining the front of the home from floor to ceiling were wide enough for two people to walk through side by side, but operated in a traditional up and down way. Props could make it look like the porch of small cottage or what it was—a grand mansion.

  There were no stairs, she noticed, to access the top balcony, as there were in the back, but a good computer graphic artist could insert them in postproduction if needed, or a movie carpenter could construct some to suit the director’s vision. For a moment, she wished she were producing movies again. Rarely did she miss what she had given up three years ago.

  Elli took a deep breath. The scent of camellias, oaks, cypress, and the bayou suffused the warm air that filled her lungs. Yes, she would make a fortune selling this place to the right studio group or venture capitalist. Her foundation would be safe.

  She looked at Ben—unhappy, miserable Ben. “There is no place like this anywhere in the world, you know.” She smiled and waved her arms as if to take it all in. “Sugar Mill’s architecture is so versatile. Plus, the way it’s situated on the land is perfect for a long shot to either take in the canopy of ancient trees and lazy bayou or bypass them. The back of the home could be a farmhouse in the Midwest or a modest motel in Savannah with those grand oak trees back there.”

  “Or it could be a quiet place for a little boy to play with his dogs without a worry in the world, knowing his father and his grandfathers before him played there, too.”

  Elli wrapped her arms around herself and nodded. “Yes. There is that.” Her heart felt heavy and light at the same time. Sugar Mill could save lives by funding genetic testing or it could be home for a father and his little boy. Elli hated taking that dream away from Ben, but it might be a dream he would never realize. He was a widower. She knew that from doing an Internet search of the stranger her aunt cast her into partnership with. His wife had died in a tragic car accident four years ago. She didn’t learn much about the woman; there had only been the one article in the local paper about the accident and the funeral arrangements. She hadn’t seen any evidence that he’d married again. So this dream of having a son run on the property with a dog might not ever come about. If he did marry, his wife might want to live in New Orleans or Nebraska and not on the plantation. Maybe he’d have a daughter instead of a son. Maybe he wouldn’t have any children and remain single his entire life.

  Regardless, Ben could still create the utopia he spoke of somewhere else. There were other wonderful places he could have his kennel and his future son playing with dogs. It didn’t have to be here. Elli sighed. She’d have to prove that to him. She understood emotional attachment to something, but she also understood what was really important in life, and it wasn’t brick and mortar.

  She looked at him reclining on the step with his arms folded easily over his chest, his strange looking dog resting next to him. His body might be saying that he was having an easy afternoon, but his bright, narrowed eyes revealed something else. Now was not the time to try to convince him of anything. “Let’s go inside,” he said, his voice dark and contained. “I don’t have all day.” He stood and she and Lucky followed him to the front door.

  Chapter Two

  I have a low-grade fever today! It’s one of the things we are cautioned to watch for, and call the doctor immediately about…or go directly to the emergency room. My blood count is down. I’m sick. I’m scared. I hardly have the strength to hold my head up. I’m posting this from my cell phone as I wait in the doctor’s office for a wheelchair transport to the hospital bed waiting for me. I’ll be spending the night in the hospital…prayers, please. I don’t want the blood transfusion the doctor says I may need. I just want to get better fast enough to not miss a chemo treatment. It’s irrational but I fear that if I miss a chemo treatment the cancer will go wild. Well, at least tonight I will have someone to take care of me and I will not be alone. I wish you good health, E.

  Bosom Blog Buddies Post

  Elli understood why Ben loved Sugar Mill Plantation. It was truly amazing. It was beat-up, in need of repair, but had great bones and great history. How in the world would she convince him that he should sell it? Could she have understood how her precious things were just that, things, had she not had cancer? Could she have understood how objects, articles, and stuff didn’t define her or really matter, if she hadn’t faced death so intimately? How could she or anyone who hadn’t lived through that experience? What she had to do with Ben was find that one thing that would make him believe that selling Sugar Mill made sense for him. She had to learn more about him to find that thing. “How long have you lived here?”

  “I’ve lived on the property in one of the slave cottages for the last six years. In here,” he gestured to the plantation home, “since Rosa passed. And, for many years before that when I was growing up.” He held the door open for her but his dog raced in first. “Look, I’m only showing you around because I have to. Don’t think we need to shoot the shit and be social. I don’t plan to be your pal or even business partner. All I want to be is the person you used
to own Sugar Mill with.”

  She stepped into the center hall surprised that she had the willpower not to tell him to go to hell. His rudeness and open anger annoyed her. She was used to being light-years apart over issues that needed settling. This was not how differences were resolved.

  Elli clasped her hands in front of her and waited for her eyes to adjust to the indoor lighting. When they did, she forgot about Ben smoldering next to her. The inside was just as perfect as the outside. Worn and faded, but perfect. She looked at Ben leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his chest again. “Neither one of us asked for this situation,” she began, choosing her words carefully. “I’m sorry it’s so complicated and that Aunt Rosa was a flake.” He nodded. Finally, they agreed on something. “I didn’t set the ground rules and neither did you. Can’t we be reasonable enough to find a way through this?”

  “Darlin’, I have found a way through this. You can go back to Californ-i-ay, let me run the kennel and plantation, and I’ll buy you out in a couple of years. Until then, I’ll live here and send you a check once a month for half the rent.”

  “Half?” It didn’t escape her that the home was split in half by a wide center hall. It had been a common way to build plantation homes, offering the best ventilation by opening the front and back doors to allow airflow during the sweltering Louisiana summers. Which half was his? Which was hers? She wished it could be that simple.

  “Seems fair,” he said, looking at his watch.

  “Only we can’t buy each other out and the plantation can’t be divided in a sale to a non-related third party.” She quickly took in the details, knowing the watch-looking thing was a warning that time was running out. The ceilings were high and the walls thick. A wide, straight stairwell was on the right, just past the entrance to one of the formal parlors; its match was across the hall on the left. Both rooms were sparsely furnished with old furniture—not antique old, more like 1970s old. The faded velour sofa in the parlor on the right was burnt orange with bold yellow ovals all over it. It was nestled between two dull, antique, walnut end tables. A huge, man-sized, flat screen TV sat on a beautifully carved, antique, French provincial buffet server with a cracked, white marble top. A large beige dog pillow was in front of it, with Ben’s dog reclined on it. At a right angle and directly in front of the TV were two mud-brown leather recliners—one adult-sized and one child-sized.

  Elli looked at Ben. The man-sized recliner she’d expect in his home, but why was there a child-sized recliner next to it? She’d googled Ben and hadn’t read anything about him having a child. In all of Aunt Rosa’s long narrative in her will, she mentioned how wonderful Ben was with dogs but never how wonderful he was with a child — his child. Was the smaller recliner for a young cousin? A lover’s son or daughter?

  She wanted to ask, but decided to see what he volunteered. “Lovely,” she said, motioning to the recliners and TV. “Your furniture?”

  “Damn straight.” They walked past the stairs and down the hall on the first floor.

  “What about Aunt Rosa’s furniture?”

  “Not good enough to donate to St. Vincent’s.”

  She lifted her brows but refrained from asking him to prove how being someone who owned a Me and Mini-Me matching recliners and a Mod Squad sofa qualified him to know good furniture from bad. They walked into the kitchen. It was clean, white, and had the same orange and brown geometric pattern linoleum on the floor as the countertops.

  Ben opened the old white refrigerator door and exposed the freezer section above the refrigerator compartment. The door shifted on its hinge and made a thunk sound. He grabbed a bottle of water and lifted it to her. “Want one?”

  “No thanks.”

  He tucked the water under his arm, lifted the door with a bit of effort to realign it back on its hinges, and then closed it.

  “What? St. Vincent’s didn’t want the refrigerator?”

  “Didn’t offer it to them. It’s mine.”

  “Okay.” She absently ran her hand over the old, homemade, scarred, wooden table as she looked around the room. A splinter slid deep into the meaty part of her right hand. The pain was sharp and surprised a gasp out of her. “Oh, no.” She looked at the splinter, which felt bigger than it looked. “Damn it.” She looked at Ben. “You have a first-aid kit?”

  “It’s just a splinter. You don’t have to look like you just got knifed with a rusty blade on Bourbon Street.”

  Funny, but that was pretty close to what she conjured in her mind. “I need a first-aid kit,” she insisted. “Can you just get it for me?”

  “All right, all right.” He opened the cabinet under the sink and pulled out a tackle box, dropping it on the table.

  Elli sat in the chair. “I hiked on the Inca Trail in Peru and managed to do just fine, but I touch a chewed-up table with two-hundred-year-old germs and may lose my arm because of it.”

  “I think you’re being a bit hysterical.”

  “The hell I am.” She opened the tackle box and took out the peroxide. “Can you hand me some paper towels so I don’t get this all over the place? Wait, on second thought, it might help with those two-hundred-year-old germs on this table if I spill some of this on them.”

  Ben handed her the roll. “You’re a bit germ-a-phobic there, cher’.”

  She glared at him. If he knew how serious this splinter could be, he wouldn’t be so sanctimonious. Since her lymph nodes were removed during her lumpectomy and mastectomy, she didn’t have a good way to fight off infection in her right arm. She poured the peroxide on the splinter and began trying to take it out with her stubby fingernails.

  “You should use a needle.”

  She glared at him. “Do you mind?”

  He walked up to her to take a closer look at the splinter. “Damn. That’s big. I bet it hurts.”

  “Not as much as my fist in your gut would.”

  For the first time since he realized who she was, he smiled. It was lopsided but genuine and beautiful. Elli’s stomach did a little flip.

  “You want me to take you to the emergency room?” Sarcasm laced his words, and mischief sparkled in his eyes. Elli had a quick vision of being wheeled in on an old, rusty dog stretcher with her injured arm hanging to the side, banging into the wall as Ben raced down the hall of a veterinarian clinic.

  She glared at him a full ten seconds before trying to push the splinter out of her hand.

  “Now, don’t think you can sue me over this because you’re on my property and all.” He leaned in to get a closer look, and Elli smelled the clean scent of freshly washed hair. It reminded her of the inexpensive soap of her childhood, but with a masculine, grown-up earthiness. Very nice, she thought, leaning a little closer.

  Ben turned his head and nearly bumped noses with her. He looked at her mouth and her heart did a funny jig. Must be the antique germs zipping through my body, she thought, looking away to dig into the tackle box; for what, she wasn’t sure yet.

  Ben reached for her wrist. “What’s this?”

  With her heart beating so hard and sending blood flooding into her brain, it took her a minute to register what he was talking about. Her medic alert bracelet. “It’s nothing.” She tried to pull her arm free, but he gripped her tighter.

  “No needles and pressure cuffs in right arm,” he read. “Lymphedema. What’s that?”

  “It’s a medical condition.”

  “Yes, I figured that out with the Red Medic cross symbol and all. I’m smart like that, me,” he said with a heavy Cajun accent that thickened with his sarcasm, a far cry from his otherwise gentle, rhythmic, subtle accent.

  She yanked her hand free. “I have a compromised lymphatic system. I can potentially not heal properly from injuries in my right arm because of it.”

  He raised her hand to him for closer inspection. “Hence, the melodrama over a splinter.” He pulled out a chair and sat across from her. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Are you being nice to me?”

  “Don
’t be so difficult. Just tell me what to do.”

  “Sell the plantation and split the proceeds with me?”

  His head jerked up. “Over my dead body.”

  “Whatever.” She looked at her hand. “I can’t stick my hand with a needle, so I need to try to wedge this thing out without causing more damage.”

  Ben washed his hands with the antibacterial lotion from the tackle box, and then poured peroxide on his hands. “I do a lot of doctoring with my dogs,” he offered. “Let me try.”

  Dogs. No surprise there. Why couldn’t Aunt Rosa have bequeathed half the plantation to an ugly, smart, generous medical doctor? She gave him her hand. He pressed firmly on the backside of the splinter. “Ouch.”

  He hesitated, then looked to see how much pain she really was in. It was strange, but she found it kind of sweet that he did that. Did he do the same for his dogs? Probably.

  “I think I’m getting somewhere,” he said, sweat beading above his lip. Seeing it sent a warm flush over her chest. How odd? “It’s poking out a little. Let me get the tweezers.” He pulled the tweezers from the tackle box and poured peroxide on them. The liquid spilled onto the table and ran in bubbling rivulets across the wood, onto Elli’s nicest, darkest jeans. She began to laugh.

  “If Donna’s tinkling isn’t ruining my clothes, other things are.”

  Ben frowned and focused on her hand. She wasn’t sure he even knew about the spill that was in the process of leaving white spots on her jeans.

  “Ah-hah. Mais, I got it, cher.” He held up the splinter.

  “You sure you didn’t leave any in my hand?” She examined her wound closely. “I’d have sworn it was bigger than that.”

  “Hearing that would make most men unhappy, darlin’.”