Obsession

21

DREW STOOD LOOKING OUT the window of his office in downtown Kansas City, the phone to his ear. He was on hold. Which pretty much reflected the state of the rest of his life: it was all on hold.

He dry-washed his face with his free hand then turned from the window, blind to his posh surroundings. He’d opened the office some six years ago, prior to that his home office having sufficed, especially given the traveling involved in his job.

Correction: the traveling his job had once entailed.

He sat at his desk, the antique leather chair giving a low squeak. It was impossible to believe that just over two weeks had passed since he’d left New Orleans. Half a month since he’d drunk in Josie’s beautiful face. Sixteen days since he’d held her in his arms. He’d picked up the phone no fewer than a dozen times to call her, then replaced the receiver, determining that it was better if he not make contact. At least not yet. Not until he was done with what he needed to do.

Because when he returned to New Orleans this time, he meant to stay for good.

He looked around at the panoramic view of the midwestern city outside his window, at the signs of autumn, the heat of the Crescent City far away. His surroundings couldn’t have been more different from those in which Josie had been raised. But the city had never really been home. It was familiar, yes. But his brief marriage to Carol aside, he’d never felt a burning need to return here. It had just been a place where he owned a home. There was nothing wrong with Kansas City. The place had been good to him. And it’s where he was from.

But it wasn’t where Josie was.

And wherever Josie was, that was home for him.

He hung up the phone and contacted his assistant. “Get my attorney back on the line, Janice. I was cut off,” he lied.

Truth was he felt like every ticking second was an eternity. And that it put him farther and farther away from Josie.

The telephone rang and he snatched it up.

“Arnold, I need-”

“Drew?”

A female voice. His heart skipped a beat.

“This is Carol.”

His ex-wife.

He rested his elbow against the desk and scratched his head. For a moment, a precious moment, he’d thought it was Josie. Instead, it was a woman who couldn’t be more different from the woman he loved.

“What is it, Carol?” he tried to keep the impatience from his voice, but failed. He really didn’t want to be speaking to her right now. She was part of his past. And he only had room for the future.

“I…” She hesitated.

He closed his eyes. He hadn’t heard from her since she’d made off with his personal savings and the contents of his house. Even then, she’d gotten half the worth of the house in the final settlement.

Of course, he was a man who’d once lived for his career, which meant most of his capital had been tied up in his company, untouchable by Carol and her lawyer.

“I just called to see how you’re doing.”

He squinted at the framed diplomas on the opposite wall. “I’m sorry if I’m having a hard time believing that.”

Silence, then she said, “Do you think you’ll ever be able to forgive me, Drew?”

No. It was on the tip of his tongue. And would have launched right off it only three weeks ago.

Now, however, he held on to it, no matter how much it choked him. Although he really wasn’t sure why.

“What do you want, Carol?”

She didn’t say anything for a long moment and he made out the sound of a car horn in the background of wherever she was calling from. Her cell? Seemed likely.

“Drew, I’m in trouble.”

He clenched his jaw, his suspicions confirmed. She needed money.

“It’s not what you think,” she said quickly. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately.”

He bet she had. Trying to find a way to tap into even more of his cash.

“You got enough from me to set you up for life,” he said.

If she worked it right, invested a good chunk of the funds, perhaps started up a business of her own.

“My attorney and his accountant made off with most of it. I have a hundred dollars to my name.”

“And that affects me how?” he couldn’t keep himself from saying.

“Drew, I…I know you have a lot of cause to be angry with me. What I did to you…it was horrible. I know that now…”

“An epiphany caused by your current circumstances.”

“No! I mean, I’m calling you because of that, but I knew pretty much immediately that what I’d done was wrong.”

Silence.

Drew thought maybe she’d given him up as a lost cause and had hung up.

But then she spoke. “We were married for years, Drew. I made a mistake. A stupid mistake that I justified because you loved your job more than you loved me.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Look, I’m not going to make any excuses. It was wrong, and I’m apologizing.”

“In the hopes of…” he prompted.

“In the hopes that we can be friends.”

Friends.

While every other part of the conversation was somewhat familiar to him, sounded like things Carol would say to get what she wanted, the friends part caught him off guard.

He wouldn’t have put it past her to suggest reconciliation. Perhaps even say she still loved him in order to get what she wanted.

But she hadn’t done either.

An image of Josie’s face crowded his mind. He sat back in his chair and loosened his tie.

A buzz, then Janice’s voice on the speaker said, “Mr. Morrison, I have your attorney on line two.”

He didn’t move for an extended moment.

It wasn’t all that long ago that he would have told his ex where to get off. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

But he no longer lived by that motto. No longer subscribed to much of the BS he’d convinced himself of before. Josie had changed all that. Loving Josie had changed all that.

He also knew that if he didn’t help Carol, no one would.

“How much do you need?” he asked.

She named a reasonable amount.

“I’ll give you double,” he said, looking around the office. “But I have a favor to ask in return…”

JOSIE DIDN’T HAVE TO TAKE the test, she already knew: she was pregnant with Drew’s child.

She stood in the bathroom of 2C, where Drew had stayed just over two weeks ago, and the room she’d called home for the past week. The insurance company had been cooperative. The first piece of business had been to stabilize the fourth floor so that the rest of the hotel would be operable while the top floor was being rebuilt.

She shook the testing stick although the directions had told her not to, stepping into the other room and looking around at the little she’d been able to salvage from the burned husk of what had been her and Granme’s private rooms. Some photos, her grandmother’s rocking chair, a trunk of her older clothes. Everything else she’d needed had been supplied by Sabine and Anne-Marie-who’d, strangely, become fast friends, so close, in fact, that Josie was beginning to experience pangs of jealousy. The two women had taken her shopping, displaying a generosity that had humbled her.

While the room no longer looked like the one Drew had stayed in, and also didn’t resemble her old room, she was okay with that. It reflected where she was now. And that was a very good place, indeed.

The Josephine would survive. Better, guests were already returning, the occupancy level at half and another guest looking to check in when Josie had sneaked up to her room during her dinner break to perform the test.

The test!

She’d almost forgotten about the stick. She stopped shaking it. A green dot had appeared in the once-white area.

She smiled, her hand already resting against her still flat stomach.

“Josie, tell Anne-Marie that I’m entitled to see everything that comes into-”

Sabine and Anne-Marie had let themselves into the room and caught sight of what Josie was holding before she could hide it behind her back.

“What is this?” Anne-Marie asked, plucking the test stick from behind her.

Sabine stepped up next to her. “A pregnancy test?”

Anne-Marie stared at her. “What does it say?”

She didn’t think she was ready to share this information yet. She wanted to savor the moment a little longer before letting her cousin and friend in on it.

Still, the news was too good to keep. “I’m pregnant.”

She wasn’t sure what the response would be. She was a single woman with a hotel under renovation and enough work ahead of her to keep ten women busy. How could she bring a child into that environment?

The same way her mother and her grandmother and her great grandmother before her had.

The Villefranche women’s tradition continued.

Sabine was the first to whoop with joy as she hugged first Josie, then Anne-Marie, to her surprise.

“A girl! I know it’s a girl. The Villefranche women don’t know how to have anything but girls.”

“You can’t know that,” Anne-Marie objected, hugging Josie and looking at her closely. She smiled. “Josie here might just be the first to break the tradition.”

Josie took the stick from her friend and slid it into her dress pocket. “What did you two want to talk to me about?” she asked.

Anne-Marie held up an envelope. “I caught Sabine about to open this.”

Her cousin spoke up. “I was tidying the front desk and happened to come across it, that’s all. She doesn’t have to make a capital crime out of it.”

Josie’s chest tightened as she took the familiar envelope. It had been locked in the cash box, so Sabine hadn’t been merely cleaning up, she’d been snooping.

The envelope held Drew’s name.

“Hey, isn’t he the guy you were with when the fire started?” Sabine asked.

“Shush, girl,” Anne-Marie told her. “You have all the manners of a goat.”

Josie didn’t have to open the envelope to know what was inside. She’d read the note no fewer than a hundred times since she’d received it two days after she and Drew had said goodbye.

But she hadn’t done anything about the hefty check that had come with it.

“Something to tide you over until we meet again,” the note read. “Love, Drew.”

“It’s a check,” Sabine told Anne-Marie. “But I didn’t see for how much.”

Josie tucked the envelope into her pocket along with the test stick. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to cash it.”

“Why not?” both women asked in unison.

Josie stared at them, then led the way out of the room and down the stairs to the front desk where Monique was quickly stubbing out a cigarette. She instantly got up and, murmuring something under her breath about having to come and clean rooms on her off hours, disappeared back into the kitchen, her maid’s uniform rustling.

“Look,” Anne-Marie said, slapping her hand on the desk when Josie rounded it. “You have more than yourself to think about now. View it as a sort of child support…in advance.”

Sabine agreed. “It’s a damn sight more than any of the Villefranche women got from the fathers of their children.”

“That’s because the fathers never knew of the children’s existence.”

“Same difference.”

“No, it’s not,” Josie said, the switch in conversation feeding directly into the dilemma she faced.

In the previous Villefranche women’s cases, it had been different times, and they hadn’t known how to contact the men who had fathered their children. Josie had an address for Drew right in her pocket.

Should she tell him? Did he want to know?

“If you don’t want the check, I’ll take it,” Sabine said.

Josie frowned at her. Her cousin was still on the public dole. Granted, she’d only worked at the hotel for a week so that could change. And at some point when the hotel was doing better, Josie hoped to put Sabine on the deed, which might make her feel more confident financially. But Josie was determined to get her cousin to listen to the voices of the women who had come before them. To get her to stand on her own feet and make do for herself rather than believing she was owed.

But there would be time for that.

She smiled as she smoothed her hand over her stomach. There would be time for everything.

The sun was beginning to set on the street outside and no one had turned on the lobby lights yet aside from the desk lamp. She wasn’t sure what compelled her to look in the direction of the door. A ghostly hand on her shoulder. A familiar scent.

Whatever the reason, she stood stock-still at the image she encountered.

A man in a neat, navy-blue business suit stood there, hat in his hand, an expensive brown leather suitcase on the banquette next to his feet.

Drew.

Anne-Marie and Sabine were chatting. It was her friend who first caught on to Josie’s distracted state. She looked in the direction of Josie’s gaze.

“Uh-huh. Speak of the devil.”

Devil? No, Drew was no devil. He was her savior. A man who had entered her life, and lied to her, then given her his love, and shown her what the word was all about.

And just as he’d promised, he had come back.