American Heroes Series - 03 - Purgatory (39 page)

“Do you think he’ll be able to
make it out by Saturday?”

She nodded. “I don’t see why not.
I need to call him right away, though. He can jump on a Southwest flight to New
Orleans tomorrow.”

Nash slowed the car down and
pulled into the parking lot of what looked like a few cabins all huddled
together with foliage and patios surrounding them. Elliot looked at the area
curiously.

“What is this place?” she asked.

Nash turned off the car and
opened his door. “A good restaurant.”

Elliot sat in the car until he
came around and opened her door. He was very chivalrous and would get agitated
if she tried to open her own door. She climbed out, her sexy legs drawing
Nash’s attention again until she caught him looking at her butt.  She pointed
at her face.

“My eyes are up here, Aury,” she
pretended to be angry. “Remember?”

He laughed and pulled her into a
tight embrace. “And they’re beautiful,” he murmured, kissing her sweetly. “But
so is your butt. And your legs.”

She giggled as he kissed her once
more and let her go, taking her hand as he led her towards the restaurant. It was
a small place, an old slave cabin that had been matched with other old slave
cabins to form a restaurant that was appropriately called “The Cabin
Restaurant”. 

Elliot loved the rustic
atmosphere immediately, trying to be careful and not twist an ankle on the
gravel walkway as she looked around.  There were several cabins, one of them
being a general store, and she was very curious about everything.

The main part of the restaurant
was an authentic slave cabin, big and open. The hostess on duty knew Nash on
sight. She showed Nash and Elliot to a very nice table by a window that
overlooked the garden. She gave them a menu and left them to look over the
goods.

“Do you come here often?” Elliot
asked, looking around the very rustic interior with the original brick
fireplace.

Nash shrugged. “I eat most of my
meals out,” he said. “This place is close to my house, plus it’s good, so I’ve
come here a fair amount.”

Elliot looked over the menu. 
Nash already knew what he wanted so he watched Elliot as she perused the
offerings.   He just sat there, watching her, before abruptly standing up.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

Elliot just smiled at him,
thinking he was going to the restroom but he went outside, back to the parking
lot. Elliot returned her attention to the menu and had nearly decided on her
order by the time he returned to their table.

She smiled at him as she lay the
menu down. “What did you do?”

He began to unroll his silverware
from the napkin, pausing when she asked the question. “I, uh, forgot something,”
he said, changing the subject. “What are you going to have?”

Elliot turned back to the menu.
“I think I’m going to have the French Onion soup.”

“Is that all? Get something
substantial, honey.”

She made a face at him. “My belly
is kind of funny right now.”

He smiled. “Well,” he said after
a moment. “Maybe I have something that can help.”

She looked up from the menu.
“What?”

He couldn’t seem to take his eyes
off her and Elliot sensed that there was something more on his mind. She set
the menu down as he reached across the table and took her hand.  He didn’t say
anything for a few moments; he simply stared at her.

“We seem to be doing this all
backwards,” he finally chuckled, suddenly looking nervous. “I proposed to you
within a week of knowing you. Now there’s a baby on the way and we’re getting
married on Saturday. I think my dad would say I’m closing the barn door after
the horse has escaped.”

Elliot giggled and he continued.
“I just can’t express how much I love my life right now,” he said softly, his hazel
eyes glimmering warmly at her. “I’ve told you so many times how much I love you
and how lucky I feel that you’re going to get sick of hearing it.”

“No,” Elliot shook her head
firmly. “I’ll never get tired of hearing it.”

He smiled at her, learning forward
on the table and pulling her forward as well.  They huddled over the table top,
holding hands sweetly in the dim light of the restaurant.  Finally, he dug into
his coat pocket, pulled out small box and set it on the table between them.
Elliot looked at the object, recognizing it as a ring box, and her pulse began
to race.  Nash saw her features soften with realization.

“My mother has an old heirloom
ring that has been in her family for over one hundred years,” he told her. “She
wanted me to give it to you but I wanted to give you something more, something
that no one else has worn. So I took the heirloom ring to a jeweler in Baton
Rouge and he helped me design something around it. I really hope you like it
because it’s something I put my heart into, making sure this ring was designed
by me just for you.  Ellie, I love you so much and I’m so happy you’re going to
be my wife.  I hope this ring is a small token of that.”

He handed her the box and she
accepted it gratefully, her eyes already starting to well up.  Nash watched her
face as she flipped open the top and the ring came into view.  Elliot gasped
when she saw the ring, tears of joy coming as she pulled it out to inspect it. 

The original heirloom ring had
been a simple round solitaire, easily four carats, probably more, mined and cut
back in the days of no income tax and industrial billionaires like Astor and
Morgan.  Nash had the jeweler design a jacket to wrap around the platinum
setting with dozens of pavè diamonds encircling it. It was the most glorious
ring Elliot had ever seen.

“Oh, my God,” she gasped, handing
him back the ring as she wiped the tears off her cheeks. “Put it on me.”

Nash grinned as he took her left
hand, slipping the ring on her third finger. It was a little loose but not too
terribly.  He looked at the ring on her finger and had never felt so content or
complete in his entire life.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

She was trying not to sob. “I
love it. It’s spectacular.”

His grin broadened. “Good,” he
kissed the ring and her hand, “because this is where it belongs.”

Elliot laughed through her tears,
trying not to make a scene but not doing a very good job.  She jumped up from
her chair and ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck and nearly toppling
him off his chair. He joined in her laughter, kissing her sweetly, and Elliot
ended up sitting on his lap.  As they cuddled and kissed, the waitress came
over.

“Are ya’ll celebrating?” she
asked. “Can I get you something to help?”

Nash looked at Elliot, thinking
of the baby she carried. He doubted she would go in for a bottle of champagne,
which the place probably didn’t have, anyway. He grinned at her as he spoke to
the waitress.

“Yes,” he told her. “Two diet
colas, one French Onion soup, and one flatiron steak, medium well.”

The waitress took the order and
headed off.  Elliot remained on Nash’s lap until the soup came and she finally
had to return to her seat. Nash chewed on a roll as she gingerly sipped her
soup and talked about her free-spirited mother who had been on a bicycle trip when
both of her grandchildren had been born. When she was half-way through the
soup, her cell phone rang.

Elliot pulled it out of her purse
and answered it on the fifth ring. “Penny?” she had seen the caller I.D. “What
are you doing, sweetie?”

There was a lot of screaming and
laughing going on in the background as Penelope spoke. “Mom, you’ll never
believe it!” she gasped. “We saw your ghost!”

Elliot grinned and put the phone
on speaker so Nash could hear it. “What did you see?” Elliot asked.

Penelope was laughing
hysterically and they could hear Alec and Shane yelling and whooping in the
distance. “We were watching a movie with the lights off in the ballroom and the
dog started going nuts,” she said. “I looked up to see what he was barking at
and I saw this weird fog coming out of the dining room.  Alec and Shane saw it,
too.  It moved from the dining room and then disappeared once it came into the
ballroom.”

Nash grinned broadly, listening
to all of the hollering going on in the background. He took the phone off
speaker and put it to his ear. “Tell those ladies in the background to keep it
down,” he told her. “Your mom and I will be home in a little while.”

Penelope was reduced to giggles.
“I’ll try to keep the boys quiet,” she said. “But I wanted to tell my mom that
we saw her ghost. It was little, like a child.”

The waitress brought Nash’s
steak. “Weird,” he said. “Well, try to tough it out. We’ll be home in a little
bit.”

“Alec and Shane are afraid to go
to sleep now. They said they’re going to sleep with you and mom.”

“They’re
not
sleeping with
me and your mother. They’re just going to have to man up.”

He hung up the phone, handing it
back to Elliot with a grin. “What a couple of goofballs,” he shook his head,
picking up his knife and fork.

Elliot took her fork and speared
one of the roast potatoes, chewing with relish. “I’m really glad that Alec and
Shane are getting along so well,” she said. “Alec really likes him.”

Nash took a bite of steak.
“They’re both essentially the same personality,” he said. “They’re both easygoing
and a little immature. It works for them.”

She shrugged. “I guess,” she
said. “Beck still can’t seem to decide how he feels about Penny, though.”

Nash snorted. “Don’t get him
wrong; he knows how he feels. But with you and me getting married, he’s not
sure he wants to date his step-sister. What does Penny say about it?”

She took another potato. “She
thinks he’s nice and cute, but I don’t think she wants to date him. He’s just
somebody fun to hang out with.”

Nash just lifted his eyebrows and
cut another piece of steak. “It’s going to break his heart, but that’s probably
for the best.”

Elliot nodded, returning to her
soup for the moment. “So they saw my ghost?”

Nash nodded. “So they say. I
might have to check the house for the crack they were smoking.”

Elliot shrieked softly in
outrage. “You said that you believe in ghosts,” she pointed out. “You said you
believed me when I told you about the ghost in the dining room.”

He nodded. “I did,” he said. “But
the way those two were screaming in the background….”

Elliot giggled as he shook his
head and rolled his eyes. She continued to pick at his plate, eventually
deciding she liked his potatoes better than her soup, so Nash ordered her a
side. The waitress brought the potatoes and she dug into them as she and Nash
spoke of what they needed to accomplish before Saturday.  He was in the process
of trying to convince her to take a bite of steak when his phone rang. He set
his fork down and answered his phone.

“Aury.”

It was Sheriff Dispatch and
before a word was even said, Nash could hear a lot of traffic on the radio in
the background.

 “Sheriff,” a woman with a heavy
drawl was on the line. “We’ve got an officer needs assistance call at the
Dutchtown Mobile Home park off Highway 10 and Cornerview Road.”

Nash swallowed the bite in his
mouth. “What happened?”

Dispatch came back. “It’s kind of
sketchy, but it sounds like an ambush,” she said. “Now it looks like we’ve got
a barricaded suspect and he’s shooting at anything that moves.”

“Were any of my deputies hit?”

“No, sir. But I’ve got a watch
commander and a Special Weapons team rolling.”

“I’m on my way,” Nash said. “Have
the watch commander call me as soon as he arrives.”

“Yessir.”

When he hung up the phone, Elliot
was watching him with big eyes.  He smiled weakly. “We need to go, honey. I’ve
got a situation….”

She cut him off, already standing
up. “I know,” she said softly. “Do you want to take your steak home?”

He could see that she was trying
to act normally about it and he let her. He would let her handle it however she
felt she could, knowing what a tough time she had the last time he had a call
out. His heart ached for her as he hoped she didn’t ask him the details. 
He’s
shooting at anything that moves….

“Take it for the dog,” he said,
spying the waitress across the room and waiving her over. He dug into his
wallet and pulled out a fifty dollar bill. “Do you want to take the potatoes?”

Elliot shook her head. “No,” she
told him, watching him hand the money over to the waitress and get a take-away
box. “This is a nice restaurant. Thank you for dinner.”

He smiled at her as he took her
by the hand and led her from the restaurant. Elliot didn’t say a word as they
made their way back to the car, nor did she say a word as he drove eighty miles
an hour back to Purgatory. The only sign of her anxiety was the fact that she
held Nash’s hand so tightly that she nearly broke his knuckles.

The full moon loomed high in the
sky as they drove the six or seven miles back to Sorrento. The big, new gates
opened automatically with his remote and he pulled in, parking the car in front
of the house to let her out.