Threads of Steel (Bayou Cove) (31 page)

“My parents aren’t going to approve.”

“Then they need to meet him and June too. Please, just give him a chance.
Doti
, he loves her. He cried when I told him you had asked me to take her.”

Doti
burst into tears again. She dropped her head onto her arms on the table and sobbed. Anna Marie let her. There was nothing else she could say. She’d done her part and now it was up to
Doti
and her parents to make a decision.

Anna Marie left
Doti
,
then
sought out Caitlyn in the neighborhood to tell her good-bye.

Caitlyn and two other little girls were coming down the street on their bicycles. When she
saw Anna Marie, she waved her arms, then left the girls and rode up to her. She jumped off the bike and threw her arms around her. Anna Marie’s heart swelled. She couldn’t remember anyone being this excited to see her. The little girl didn’t even know her, but probably in her mind, she was searching for someone to cling to when her mother would no longer be there. Anna Marie wished with all her heart that it could be her.

“Hey, Aunt Anna.
Are you leaving?”

“Yes ma’am. I have to get back to work.”

Caitlyn giggled. “No one’s ever called me ma’am. That’s a grownup name.”

“No, that’s a lady’s title and you are definitely a lady.”

She giggled again. Anna Marie stooped down and held her hands. “I have to go back to New Orleans, but I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”

“Okay. Bye.” She raised her hand in farewell, then jumped back on her bike and headed back down the sidewalk to meet her friends.

Children.
Anna Marie had not been around many in her lifetime, but gosh, how she’d like to get to know this one. She was a doll.

With a smile and a wave again in her direction, Anna Marie found her keys and headed out of town toward the bayou bridge. In a quick decision, she turned into the golf resort and drove to where she thought Doug lived. It wasn’t hard to find, but as she pulled in front of his house, she decided not to stop. The garage door was open and she could see his SUV with another car parked behind it.

As much as she wanted to talk with him and even kiss him, she kept driving. She could call to see who was there, but what if it was a lady? How embarrassing would that be?

Disappointment settled around her
.
Everywhere she turned, a new problem arose, and right now she needed Doug more than she would possibly admit to herself, but not enough to intrude on his evening.

As she was driving off, his front door opened and he escorted a woman out onto his small porch. She heard herself groan.

“Pitiful, you’re just pitiful,” she said aloud. “You let yourself fall for a guy that sees you as just another conquest.”

A curve in the road took her out of his sight. Here she was able to slow down. Doug had been kind to her when she needed him by spending time on the golf course and taking her out to dinner, but by the way it looked, she was just another one of his female friends who frequented the golf course.

She wouldn’t let herself think about the night she’d made love to him. To her it had been wonderful, more than wonderful, but obviously to him, she was nothing more than another notch on his belt.

“Not just pitiful,” she mumbled as she drove through the narrow, curvy streets, “Pitiful
and
stupid.”

Tears flooded her eyes. She swiped them away, mad at herself for being upset over something so insignificant. But to her, his entertaining a woman at his home wasn’t little or insignificant, even though she knew it was his prerogative to have anyone in his house he chose. She just wished their time together had meant more to him.

Making love to him had been a monumental move on her part, and now she felt cheap and stupid for putting so much into it. This was the Twenty-First Century, she reminded herself. “You’re acting like your mother.”

The drive back to New Orleans was long and tortuous. Again and again she saw Doug
stepping out of his house with the lady. Then she saw
Doti
sitting at the table, looking as if she was ready to die at any minute.

“Life sucks,” she said as she pulled off the interstate and headed for the safety of her little bungalow. She didn’t like those words, thought they sounded low-life and vulgar, but right now that’s how she felt.

“Sucks,” she shouted again and again and felt better as she recognized the familiar sights and sounds of the big city.

* * *

Monday morning was sunny but still a little nippy for a mid-November day. She dressed in her warm slacks and a sweater and wore a vest. She’d learned to dress in layers this time of the year. By the afternoon, the temperature might be up in the sixties or maybe even the seventies.

Glad her trip to Birmingham and her stopover in Bayou Cove was over she walked with a spring in her step as she smiled at others along the sidewalk from the parking complex. At least here in the big city streets no one knew her problems and her inadequacies that she felt in Bayou Cove. Her phone rang as she reached the door of her office building. It was Nancy
.

“I’m so glad you called. Tell me
Harry’s
okay.”

She listened while Nancy explained that he had made it through the surgery just fine, but he was still in ICU because he had so many broken bones.

“I know it sounds awful,” Nancy said, but the doctor assured me he would be okay. He’s going to need a lot of recovery time, but he’d be okay if we can keep him from getting pneumonia. That’s their biggest fear for him right now because of his lungs.”

Even with the horrible experience she’d gone through, Nancy sounded like her bubbly self.

“That’s wonderful. I’m so glad someone has good news to report. Now tell me that you and he are okay.”

Again she smiled as she listened to Nancy tell about how they’d made up as soon as she saw him at the hospital. “Oh, Anna, he had tears in his eyes. He said when he thought he was going to die the only thing he could think about was dying without telling me how much he still loved me.”

This time Nancy sniffled.

“I knew you and Harry couldn’t stay mad at each other. See, it was just a little bump in the road.”

“Yes, but it felt like a mountain to me. I don’t know how we’ll manage now that he’ll be off work, but we will. As long as we’re together, we can do it.”

“That’s all that matters, Nancy. The other stuff will work itself out. You know you can call on me if things get bad. I’ll find a way to help your family.”

“Thank you, Anna. You’re a good friend.”

Anna Marie asked about the kids, told her about her visit with
Doti
,
then
she bit her lip. “And I drove by Doug’s house before I got on the interstate, and Nancy, I wish I wouldn’t have done it. He was walking out of the house with a woman.”

There was a long silence before she answered. “Now, Anna, you know it doesn’t have to mean a thing. That lady could’ve been a neighbor or a fellow golfer. Just because she was at his house doesn’t mean anything.”

Anna Marie could almost see her friend grimacing as she said the words, but in Nancy-form, she was telling her what she needed to hear.

“Yes, I know all that, but that’s not how it looked, and gosh, I really needed to talk with him. I needed his shoulder . . .”

“. .
.and
his lips,” Nancy threw in. “You need that man’s lips now that you know what they feel like.”

She laughed.
“Yes, Nancy, and his lips.
That would’ve been nice. But I have a feeling I’ve read too much into our time together. I’m just like the proverbial girl-in-every-port. I’m just one of the girls along his golf trail.”

They said their good-byes and Anna Marie hurried off to see Stephen. This was a new week and she was determined to have a new outlook on life. She’d managed this long without a man in her life. She could go the rest of it alone.

She met Stephen waiting for the elevator and gave him a big hug.

“Well, that’s the attitude I like to see on a Monday morning.” He hugged her back. “Your weekend must’ve been a good one. Did you have a hot date?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Not hardly, but I did have a good weekend. I drove up to Birmingham . . .”

“Birmingham? You left town and didn’t tell me?”

“It was a spur of the moment decision, but I’m glad I did it.” She went on to explain what had transpired with Ronnie, then with
Doti
, leaving out the part about Doug.”

“Wow, you had a full two days. I’m glad you didn’t ask to take today off, even though you probably need it to recuperate, because you do remember our schedule this week.”

“Yep, and I’m ready to get started.
”

She needed to bury herself in patterns, pins, needles, threads and fabrics. This was her life and, by God, she was happy to be here.

CHAPTER
20

Doti
Daniels stood in front of the hall mirror and wrung her hands. For days after Anna Marie had told her about her visit with Ronnie, she’d thought about nothing else. Now that she was feeling well enough to be back in her own house and with Caitlyn at school, she had a lot of time to think. She didn’t want to believe Anna Marie or to think about what she’d said about Ronnie.

But she had to. Too much was at stake and she had to look at all possibilities for her daughter, even if it involved her former husband.

She spun around to go into the kitchen but had to grab the wall while her head stopped spinning. Instead, she stumbled into the den and plopped down on the couch. She hated being weak and sick.
Hated it.
She wanted to be her energetic self, spending her nights at the casino dealing cards, joking with the clientele, making tips, flirting with the men, and having fun.
Actually having a life.

This life she lived now wasn’t living at all. It
was barely existing
if anyone could call it that. Lying in the bed when she wasn’t hanging over the commode wasn’t actually living, but she guessed it was
existing
. Death didn’t seem too bad when she compared it to her last six months.

But then she thought about Caitlyn and wanted to scream. She didn’t want to leave her daughter. Even though she hadn’t been the best mother in the world, she was a loving mother. She would do anything for her daughter. Anything except live. There was no way she could make her body continue. The doctors gave her a couple more months and on days like the past few she wondered if she’d be here that long.

Now Anna Marie had added a new option for her daughter, an option she didn’t want to think about. Her former friend tried to convince her that Ronnie wasn’t trash, but it would take a lot of convincing for her to see that he wasn’t the scumbag that she’d been married to. As far as she was concerned, he was not the kind of man she wanted to raise her daughter.

But just as Anna Marie had said, no judge would ignore Ronnie as someone capable of taking Caitlyn if he had changed. He was her biological father.

She’d have to deal with him, and by the way she’d been feeling this past week, it had better be soon.

Now she waited for Ronnie to come to the house. After several conversations on the phone, she realized that Anna Marie might have a point about his changing.

When she heard a car pull up in front of the house, she tugged on her wig, hoping it didn’t look ridiculous and waited for him to ring the door bell.

Her heart beat much too fast and her head felt light. “Oh God, don’t let me die yet. Not in front of him.”

She needed to have all of her senses when she talked with him. Since he’d left, there had been only a few encounters between the two of them, most of them ending in arguments.

Was it her fault that he wasn’t a father to Caitlyn
?
A wave of guilt heated her body
.
She knew most of it was. She’d kept their daughter from him all these years. Now, because of Anna Marie, she was about to confront him for one of the biggest decisions of her life.

She groaned when he knocked on the door instead of using the bell, then swallowed and opened the door.

“
Doti
.
”
Ronnie stood on the front porch, still the good looking specimen that he’d always
been. In spite of how she felt about him, he took away the last remaining breath that caught in her chest. Maybe she
would
die at this very moment. It would be better than talking about what he came to discuss, especially when he was seeing how horrible she looked.

“Hello, Ronnie.” His name stuck in her throat. It was a name she breathed and lived, loved and hated for her entire adult life.

“You look good,
Doti
.” His lip curled up.