was so you,” he said, chuckling.
“Kelly will probably never speak to me again.”
“Annie, it’s not your fault Ted went to Maggie’s house.”
“Oh, my stomach!” she moaned.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, concerned.
“I’m not sure. I hope I’m not coming down with something.”
“Do you think it’s the baby?”
“I don’t think so. I’m almost eight weeks. It’s planted in there pretty good by now, I’d think.”
“Stay here and I’ll get you some dry toast and tea.”
“Ugh, that sounds terrible.”
“Yeah, but that’s what you give people who are sick. I’ve watched enough TV to know that.”
She sat up in bed, waiting, thinking. Not only her faux pas, mentioning that Ted had gone to Maggie’s cottage uninvited. The job thing was making her crazy. She’d immediately applied for unemployment the same day she was terminated.
Then on Wednesday, Maggie told her about an idea she was considering, to open an animal rescue at Bayou Cottage, and then, surprisingly, she offered Annie a job. To work at a place where she could bring the baby was like a dream. Although she liked Steve’s mother, Beverly, who volunteered to babysit, she’d rather take care of her own baby. And Beverly might not be responsible after noon. Kelly said she’d never let her own mother babysit for her.
“It’s going to take at least three months to get started,” Maggie had explained. “But in the meantime, I’ll need help setting everything up, including fundraisers, a way to get memberships for donations and a website, all the good stuff.”
Now, sitting up in bed, letting Steve serve her, she contemplated all these things while he waited in the kitchen for the toast to pop. Forbiddingly, he thought of Maggie, attracted to her the moment she moved into the cottage and he’d gone there to install her Wi-Fi. But she let him know right away that she was already attracted to Justin.
Then, without missing a beat, Maggie had introduced him to Annie, and the first time they laid eyes on each other, it was lust at first sight. She got pregnant right away. Steve loved Annie the way you love your first car. And being a kind and gentle soul, he knew that it was up to him to make the decision to stay in love with her, through unemployment, gas, and foot-in-mouth disease.
He wasn’t especially close to his sister, Kelly, but he didn’t want her to be disappointed, either, and it sounded like she was totally unprepared to hear that Ted had gone to Maggie’s house.
***
Throwing an empty cat carrier into the utility sink, Kelly turned the water on full blast, squirting detergent all over it. Then she went at it with a scrub brush like she was trying to kill Satan. Her baby daddy had finally taken their kid for a holiday and wasn’t going to return with him until Sunday night. It should have been an opportunity to spend quality time with Ted.
But nooooo. Instead, after their night of passion, she found out that he had shown up at Maggie’s cottage, unannounced and uninvited, and not only was Maggie annoyed, Justin and his sheriff brother were livid.
“Is that why you came over to my place last night? She rejected you, so I was the consolation prize?”
With the phone stuck to his ear while he examined a baby rabbit who had been bitten by a dog, Ted peeked at the owner from the corner of his eye.
“I’m with a patient right now. Can I talk to you later?”
Kelly hung up on him. What was she doing? Being with Ted was like being with your best friend’s younger brother; there was an air of forbidden pleasure about it, but you knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere, and you were a little ashamed you’d started it in the first place.
“What’s wrong with you, jackass?” she cried, to her distorted reflection in the metal paper-towel dispenser.
She banged around some more, wondering why everything in her life was going to shit. The rescue that she’d put her heart and soul into had gone down the tubes with one withdrawal of a lease. Was life really that tenuous that a landlord held the power between success and failure? It was at that second that the phone rang. She grabbed it, wiping her arm across her nose.
“What!”
Taken aback, it was Maggie, preparing to ask for information about how to start a rescue. But the greeting was unexpected, and she deliberated hanging up. Obviously, Kelly was upset, maybe about Ted’s visit.
“Kelly? I guess I’m