Echoes in the Bayou (31 page)

Then,
much too soon, the day came. Kelly joined them at the hotel for breakfast; she
would go with Magnus to see her friend off.

"Steve sends his best," Kelly said.
"He's sorry he couldn’t make it, he's busy with client meetings, you know
how it is
," she smiled at them.

Ava
couldn’t help but notice a large
bruise on her
neck, it looked as if she'd been grabbed hard. 

"Magnus, would you excuse us for a
minute?" She asked.

When he
was out of ear shot, Ava demanded her friend tell her what was going on.

"It's
nothing really, Steve just gets upset
sometimes,
he's been under a lot of pressure lately what with taking on new writers and
deadlines from publishing houses. It gets to be too much for him that's all."

 
 "Kelly I wish you had told me something
sooner; I would have put him in his place. Kelly listen to me, you need to
leave him, and no man has a right to strike a woman. That son of a bitch needs
to be taught a lesson; someone has got to tell him what will happen if he does
it again."

"Ava,
I don’t want to waste this time that I ha
ve with
you talking about my husband. I'll handle it, it will be okay."

"Goddamnit!" She cursed. "Kelly, I
want you to call me each and every day do you understand? And if I find out
that he hit you again, I'm telling Magnus to drop him as a friend and agent.
Then I want you to get the hell out do you understand?" She held her hand
tight.

"I'm sorry to interrupt but I need to give my
Ava a proper goodbye and they'll be announcing your flight soon," Magnus
said to them
.
"And Kelly, you'll be
out to see me for the holiday's right?" Ava reminded her.

"Are you kidding? I've already booked my
flight," she grinned
.

"I'll
give you two some space. Good Bye Ava, see you soon," she smiled but tears
were inevitable as she they hugged and sai
d
goodbye. To Kelly, it was as if she was saying good bye to a childhood friend,
a friend she had known all her life. She blew her a kiss before walking over to
the airport bar.

 
"Well this is it, are you sure you want to do
this?" Magnus asked. His arms were around her waist and he was gazing into
her eyes. 

She could
only manage a slight nod, for a brief moment her thoughts drifted to last night
and how they made love slow and sweet. And when he had released himself inside
of her he whispere
d in her ear, "I'll never
love another."

Would she
be able to endure the cold New England weather without the warmth of him by her
side? She'd have to
.

When the
tears came he could hardly contain himself. He pulled her close, lifted her
chin and kissed her deeply.

"I love you Magnus and I want to wish you well
in all that you do. And please don’t lose sight of who you really are. Don’t
let all that fame and fortune go to your head," she grinned. "I have
a feeling that this book is going to take off and I don’t want to have to read
about you getting caught in a rut or anything like that do you hear me?"
She held her hands on either side of his face.

"I
hear you," he said, his expression one of sadness.

 
"And one more thing she told him, "If things
ever get to be too much for you, you come home to me," she said and listened
as her flight was being called.  "Take care baby, and keep in
touch," she said tears streaming now.

"Call
me when you get there and every minute in between. I'
ll miss you," he said and kissed her once again and then watched
her walk towards the security check point.

As she
took off her shoes, she glanced up and gave him one final wave before
disappearing into the sea of people
.

Chapter
Twenty Two

After she
arrived in Dorset Vermont, Ava did what she did best- she threw herself into
her work. But she wasn't joyful or excited about it. Instead she felt as if she
were in mourning, she hadn’t thought she'd be hurting this bad and it didn’t
help that now that Magnus had left to go on his book tour it was harder for her
to get in touch with him. She hoped that the feeling would pass soon.
After all, she'd had many break ups and losses in her life and had weathered
them well. At least Magnus was getting along well; he just wasn’t in her home
or in her bed.

She
couldn’t wait for the holidays though, Kelly was planning on coming and she had
promised that she would stay at least until after the New Year.  By the
time November rolled around she had pretty much settled into her new home, and
the antique store was doing quite well. The previous owners had left the entire
contents of the small shop and she was glad for that. She knew that she wanted
a fresh start but having to start that fresh, with an empty shop would have
been too much.

Although
she spent most of her time at the store she enjoyed coming home at the end of
her long days. The Queen Anne Victorian home complete with gables had a great
big yard along with front and back porches. Inside there were four bedrooms,
two and a half baths, a formal dining room, living and sitting room. The
kitchen was one of her favorite rooms. It was complete with weathered hard wood
floors, and plenty of cabinets. "The perfect country kitchen," she'd
told Kelly when they spoke on the phone one night. "It's really too much
house for me, but I hope that one day I'll be able to fill it with family and
friends."

She
had fun decorating each and every room and soon the
large house became a home, her home that she hoped to one day share with
Magnus. It had a widow's walk too, which is where she went when she wanted to
be alone with her thoughts and think about Magnus.

She also
felt blessed to have had grand
parents and
parents that were able to leave her an inheritance. Especially considering that
she was adopted. "That doesn’t matter, your papa and grandma love you like
no other." She remembered her mother telling her that. It was right after
her grandparents had died that her mother and father told her about the
inheritance. It's quite a substantial amount of money Ava, take care not to
blow it, they'd told her. And she listened to them, she was able to go to the
college of her choice and study interior design and by the time she'd
graduated, there were no student loans to pay back and she was able to get her
own car and place.

 
It was shortly after she'd landed the job at Gavin's
Realty when she learned that her mother had been diagnosed with throat cancer.
She'd been a smoker for over forty years and when her father broke the news to
her she was devastated. And during the end, Gavin had been kind enough to let
her take a leave of absence so that she could care for her mother and she did,
she along with her father were by her side the night that she passed.

A week to
the day that her mother passed, Ava's father died in his sleep. It was such a
blow to her heart and soul that it took her several months before she could
even manage to go back inside the house and clear everything out. She'd held on
to the mementos of course and they were still in a storage unit back in
Savannah. "When things slow down I'll have to send for it all," she whispered
to herself.

 
"What was that?" Sterling asked. Sterling
Baringer was the new sales associate she'd hired shortly after she renamed and
opened up the shop.

"Oh
nothing, just thinking out loud," she said and patted him on the back
.

Sterling had
been the first of several appl
icants who she
interviewed for the job, there was something about him that told her she'd be
sorry if she didn’t hire him and she was right. He had quite a knack for
selling big ticket items and she loved watching him work his charm on the
customers.

Even the
customers who came in to browse or introduce themselves to Ava would end up
walking out with something. Sterling would introduce them to an item and manage
to convince them that the item in question was something that they could no
longer live without. She remembered when a young woman had come in hoping to
find an antique watch for her husband. It was their one year anniversary and
she had wanted to get him something special. Well after talking with her for
several minutes, Sterling talked the woman into purchasing a centuries old
grandfather clock. The woman didn’t even attempt to haggle over the price, even
after he told her that the clock was twenty five hundred dollars.

 
It was delivered that very day and the following day
the young man returned to the store to thank Sterling for selling his wife the
clock, turns out that the maker of the clock was the young man's great, great,
grandfather and that clock was the first ever made by him.

"I've
a flair for making sales," he
'd
flamboyantly told her when she congratulated him on making the sale.

 
"And honey, you need me. You're new here and this
is a very small town but we look out for one another and you are going to need
a friend and co-worker," he winked.

And a
fter making him sweat it out for half a day, she
called him and told him that he got the job.
"Honey you look tired.
Why don’t you head on home and get some rest, I can close up. Besides, I highly
doubt that within the next hour a ton of customers are going to come barging
through that door," he gave her a silly frown.

"I am tired, I don’t know why though, I get
plenty of sleep," she thought out loud.

"Oh
you're just probably getting your time of the month, you know my sister N
ancy? Well we all know when it's her time because that
woman falls asleep where ever she's at. Honey, I'm not kidding, folks like to
call her narcolepsy Nancy," he joked. "Most women get moody or have
the sudden urge for salt and chocolate but leave it to my sister to get the sleepies,"
he grinned.

"Maybe
you're right," she said. "Come to think of it with all that's been
going on… Oh my god no!" She let out a gasp.

Sterling
jumped down from the step ladder and rushed to her side. "Honey what is
it?" He asked
concerned. 

"Sterling
will you please come to the pharmacy with me?" She begged
.

"Sure
honey what do you need?
"

"I
need to get a couple hundred pregnancy tests," she said, the color leaving
her face
.

 "Magnus,
the book is climbing buddy. I bet this time next week, you'll be on the top ten
best sellers list. You have got to be loving this buddy," Steve said as he
poured them each a drink. Magnus stood staring blankly out the window at the
garden. They were in Alabama and staying at the Renaissance Montgomery Hotel
& Spa. When he was making the reservation, Steve knew that booking an
appearance at
Books-A –Million
in Montgomery, Alabama was going to cause a problem,
but they had to stop there.

 
Magnus had a large fan base out of Montgomery and it
would have been bad publicity had he not agreed to do a book signing. It's just
a name Magnus, stop acting like a child," Steve scolded him.

He took a
big swallow of scotch before responding. "I told
you that no matter where we go I was going to have a hard time trying
to not think about Ava and its worse being here in Montgomery, well for obvious
reasons!" He shouted.

"Look
buddy, I am sure Ava is fine and I know she'd want you to do this tour so why
don’t you try forgetting about her for a while and concentrate on your adoring
fans because they are going to be coming out in droves buddy and you can't
disappoint them."

Magnus
simply nodded his head and finished his drink. He planned on ca
lling her the minute they returned to the hotel. He
hadn’t spoken to her in several weeks and it was killing him. The schedule that
Steve had lined up for him was excruciating, and he knew that it was because he
didn’t want to deal with the marital problems that he and Kelly were having.

 
Kelly had moved out of the house and Steve wouldn’t
tell him why, he only told him that she'd been bored and was thinking of
leaving him and moving back to New York. "Let her go," Steve had
said. "Things are starting to progress at an extremely high rate buddy and
she can't keep up so I told her, if you go don’t plan on coming back. So it is
what it is my friend."

He spoke
with insensitivity.
Maybe Kelly is better off
, he thought to himself.