Needing Nicole (The Cantrelle Family Trilogy Book 2) (28 page)

“I’ve got something pretty for you, too, honey,” he said, setting Aimee down again. He reached into his other pocket, pulling out another jeweler’s box.

To Nicole’s great delight, there was a miniature version of her diamond engagement ring in this box, and when Jack took it out and put it on Aimee’s pudgy finger, Nicole thought her heart would burst.

Aimee dashed off into the kitchen. “Grandpa! Grandma! Guess what? Jack Rabbit’s gonna be my daddy! Look at the ring he gave me! We’re ’gaged!”

Jack and Nicole both laughed, and then he pulled her into a fierce embrace. Just before his lips met hers, he said, “Six kids, eh? Don’t you think we’d better get started?

THE END

Here’s an excerpt:

Prologue

Lafayette, Louisiana --- early July, 2000

He liked everything about her.

Her hair. The way the dark, glossy curls bounced when she walked.

Her head and the way she held it. Chin up, so that his view of her profile and her sleek neck was unobstructed.

Her graceful movements. The flash of her long, tanned legs as she strode past him.

The length of her skirts. Not too short. Not too long. Just brushing the tops of her knees so that she looked ladylike and innocently sexy all at the same time.

The colors she wore. Cool colors. Soft colors. Feminine colors.

This was the third time he’d seen her. Every afternoon he sat on a bench at Cypress Lake and ate the lunch Daisy had packed for him that morning. And all three times, about ten minutes after he’d arrived, the woman entered the pathway that circled the lake, walked past him as he sat on his bench munching his sandwich, and proceeded a few yards down to a bench that sat directly under one of the cypress trees. Once there, she’d sit and open her big book bag, remove a sketch pad and quietly draw for about forty minutes. Then she’d put her sketch pad away and walk quickly back to the main campus.

Dev knew she was a University of Southwestern Louisiana student, although she looked as if she were in her late twenties or early thirties—much older than usual for a college coed.

She never looked at him. Or at any of the other males who eyed her as she walked along the path. Dev liked that about her. He liked that very much. It reinforced his idea that she was someone special, a woman without vanity or wiles. An honest woman.

Of course, he wasn’t the romantic type, but this woman brought out something in him . . . .

He even gave her a name.

Ann. In his imaginings, he’d called her Ann. He’d always liked the sound of the name Ann. It was clean. Pure. Simple. And old-fashioned. No parents named their daughters Ann anymore. Like Mary, Ann was a forgotten name, belonging to a bygone era when women were happy and eager to make a home for their families. When they thought it was the most important work a woman could do to keep house and cook meals and care for children and wait for their men to come home from the wars.

She had an aura of innocence about her...a sweet, straightforward integrity that drew him... that caused him to think about her at odd moments throughout his day.

He wondered what would happen if one of these days when she approached his bench, he spoke to her. Just said “Hello” or “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”

He imagined her voice: soft, low, cultured. Never strident. Never shouting jingo. Never argumentative.

He imagined her smile. Gentle. Sweet. A little wary. Because she wasn’t the kind of woman who would feel comfortable talking to a strange man—even on a college campus—but she also wasn’t the kind of woman who could be deliberately rude or cruel. Dev wasn’t sure how he knew that about her, but he did.

Yet something held him back from speaking to her. He told himself that he didn’t want to do anything to make her feel uncomfortable or cause her to stop coming to the lake. He also told himself it wasn’t a good idea for a teacher to make an overture to a student—even an older student.

But he knew these were all excuses. Because in his innermost thoughts, deep where his darkest secrets lay, Dev admitted that to speak to her, to force her to respond to him, might destroy all his illusions about her.

Chapter One

“Thank you, Ms. Cantrelle. I hope your stepmama, she likes the scarf.”

Elise smiled at the motherly Cajun salesclerk.

Ms. Cantrelle. She savored the sound of the name. Cantrelle. Her father’s name.

And now it was hers.

Elise accepted her charge card from the clerk at Abdalla’s, her favorite place to shop in Lafayette. She signed the charge slip and took her package, which contained the silk scarf—a gift for her stepmother, Lisette—whose birthday was on Sunday.

The smile remained on Elise’s lips as she exited the store and headed for the parking lot and her Toyota. The July sky was clear and bright, and even though it was only a little after nine-thirty in the morning, the air held the promise of another hot Louisiana day.

Elise was filled with a deep contentment. Her life was so different than it had been only a few years ago. During the past three years she’d made so many positive changes: she’d left an abusive husband and gotten a divorce, she’d been reunited with the father she’d never known and been made his legal heir, and she’d enrolled at the University of Southwestern Louisiana.

She smiled as she unlocked her car and tossed her package in the back seat. Next January, after the fall semester, she would have her degree in psychology. Then, if all went as she hoped, she would join the full-time staff at the women’s shelter.

Elise sighed with satisfaction. Soon she would even be financially independent—a goal she used to wonder if she’d ever reach. At thirty-one, her future seemed bright—the possibilities that lay ahead of her limitless. It was hard to believe that so few years back she had felt almost completely alone and without hope. Now she had not only found her father, but she had friends, she had goals, she felt useful and in control of her destiny, and she had been welcomed into her father’s large and wonderful family without reservation.

As she started her car, she glanced at her watch. Nine-forty. She had plenty of time. She wasn’t due at the St. Jacques Women’s Shelter until ten. For the past year and a half she’d worked three days a week—Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays—at the shelter, doing whatever needed doing. She’d worked behind the reception desk, helped sort and catalog donations in the Thrift Shop, assisted in food preparation in the kitchen, organized field trips, tutored children and taught their mothers simple skills, gone through the training necessary to man the hotline, and now she led group therapy sessions as well.

The work was by turns enormously satisfying or deeply frustrating. Sometimes it was even frightening. The workers at the shelter fought a constant battle to stay as objective as possible. Meg Bodine, St. Jacques’s director, had warned Elise of the danger of becoming too personally involved with any of the women and children. “They’ll break your heart, sweet pea, if you let them,” she was fond of saying. “Teach them, help them, listen to them—but don’t take their troubles home with you. Not if you want to survive.”

Elise smiled as she thought of Meg, who, in addition to being a woman Elise admired and respected and hoped to be like someday, had also become a friend. She wondered if Meg was back from the symposium she’d attended in Boston. She’d been gone a week, and the shelter just hadn’t seemed the same without her brand of breezy goodwill and down-home common sense.

A few minutes later Elise’s question was answered when she pulled into the shelter’s parking lot and saw Meg’s sporty red Volkswagen Bug in its covered parking slot—the only perk Meg guarded like the crown jewels. Elise chuckled every time she saw the spiffy little car, which reminded her of an Easter egg. It was such an incongruous form of transportation for Meg, who was tall and big-boned, cared nothing about clothes or how she looked and routinely donated large chunks of her salary to the shelter’s coffers.

“Hi, Elise,” said the young woman sitting behind the reception desk as Elise entered the two-story building.

“Hi, Kim.”

“Meg wants to see you.”

“Oh, okay.” Elise headed straight for Meg’s office, poked her head around the open doorway and peered inside. Meg was shuffling through some papers on her desk. “Welcome back, fearless leader. How was Bean Town?”

Meg looked up and grinned. “Bean Town was great. I wowed ’em at the symposium, of course.”

Elise returned her grin. “Well, of course. I expected no less.”

“I also ate too much, as usual.” The grin faded, and Meg’s bright blue eyes filled with some nameless emotion. “Come on in. I want to talk to you for a minute.”

A tentacle of fear crept along Elise’s spine. “What’s wrong?” She walked into the small office and perched on the edge of the black leather chair centered in front of Meg’s desk.

“It’s Penny,” Meg said.

Now the fear turned to alarm. Elise swallowed against the sudden dryness in her throat. “Wh-what happened?”

“Last night her husband went on another drunken rampage. He hurt her bad.”

Elise fought to keep her voice steady. “How bad?”

Meg shook her head. “They don’t know if she’s gonna make it.”

“Where is she?”

“St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.”

“What about the children?”

“They’re okay, thank God.”

“Where are they?”

“Here, temporarily.”

“Temporarily?”

Meg nodded. “Penny’s sister, you know...the one who lives in West Virginia... she finally said she’d come and get them. She’ll be here on Saturday.”

Elise fisted her hands in her lap. The alarm had been replaced by anger, an anger so deep and so strong, she was trembling with the force of it. Why had Penny gone back to her husband? Why? He had refused to get help. He had done nothing to change his life. All he had done was cry and plead and promise he’d never hit Penny again. The same promise he’d made dozens of times before and never kept. And still Penny had gone back to him.

“Elise, I know you’re upset, but—”

“Yes, I’m upset! I talked and talked to her, Meg. I told her what was going to happen. Why didn’t she listen to me?”

Meg gave her a rueful smile. “For the same reason you didn’t listen when people tried to talk to you. You thought things would change. And you were afraid.”

“Yes, but I didn’t have someone like me as an example. I didn’t have a place like the shelter to fall back on. Penny does.” Elise ran her hands through her hair. “I keep thinking this is somehow my fault.”

“Now stop that! You can’t blame yourself. You did everything you could, but the choice was Penny’s to make. You know that.”

Elise sank back into the chair in wordless defeat. Yes. The choice was Penny’s to make. But why hadn’t she listened?

“I also told you not to get so personally involved, sweet pea,” Meg said kindly. “That soft heart of yours has got to be toughened up a little.”

“I know, but—”

“Penny reminded you of yourself, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” Elise whispered. But they all did. And Meg knew they all did.

“How many times have I told you that the work we do here is very like being a nurse or a doctor? You never want to lose your compassion, but you’ve got to stand back just far enough so that what happens to these women doesn’t affect you to the point you can’t function. When that happens, you’re no good to anyone.”

“I know.” But Penny. There had been something special about Penny; Elise had felt it the first time she’d met the waiflike young woman with the huge, frightened gray eyes. “I want to go see her.”

Meg sighed. “They’re not letting anyone but family see her right now. She’s on the critical list.”

“Family! You don’t mean her husband?”

“No, of course not. He’s in police custody.”

“For a minute there, I was afraid maybe he’d managed to get away with beating up Penny. After all, he’s done it before.”

“Yes,” Meg said, “but not this time. This time the next-door neighbor heard enough to tell the police exactly what happened. And the oldest boy corroborated what she said.” For the rest of the day, Elise thought about Penny and wondered if there had been anything else she could have done to prevent this latest episode. Intellectually she knew she’d done everything possible to help and counsel the other woman. Emotionally was another story.

By the time six o’clock and the end of her shift came, Elise had a pounding headache. She had planned to attend a lecture at the university that evening, and until she’d heard the news about Penny, she’d been anticipating it with pleasure. The campus had been buzzing lately about tonight’s lecturer, a Professor Devereaux. He’d arrived in mid-May—right before the summer session, which had begun the first week of June—on a year’s grant from the Acadian Society of America. Elise knew that the professor was a noted anthropologist who, while enjoying visiting professor status at USL, would study Cajun culture in Louisiana.

Tonight’s lecture on Cajun family life particularly interested her. Although she wasn’t an anthropology student, she had a keen interest in her roots and a growing appreciation for the values and moral fiber of the Cajun people.

Oh, shoot, she might as well go. If she went home, she’d just sit and think about Penny, and inevitably, about her own past. Going to the lecture would be a good way to take her mind off her sometimes depressing job and the always-depressing subject of abused women and children. She’d just grab a quick sandwich, take a couple of Advil to relieve her headache and head for Griffin Hall and the lecture.

At five minutes to seven, Elise gratefully sank into a seat in the last row of the lecture hall—one of the few seats still available. She glanced around. Good. The professor had drawn a nice crowd. Elise was pleased. She was proud of her school and wanted them to make a good showing.

The lecture hall hummed with conversation. Elise settled back in her seat and waited expectantly. She was glad she’d come.