Chapter 2 #2
Right up until funds went missing from their work, and he placed the blame on her. It didn’t matter how much she professed her innocence, Holbert and Dobbs Incorporated believed him – a man who had been with the company for ten years – over her.
To make matters worse, that’s also when she learned he was married. With three kids.
It was as if the kicks wouldn’t stop coming. The final jolt had been when she ran out of money and had the hard choice of paying for her car or her apartment.
Olivia had no alternative but to pack up her belongings and return to the only place she could to lick her wounds and try to piece her life back together.
“It wasn’t his mistake, Maman,” Olivia said. “I think he targeted me because I worked in accounting. He stole those funds, and put the blame on me. Everything he did was done through my computer, at my desk, with my access code. Who else could the company blame?”
Her grandmother rubbed her hand up and down Olivia’s arm. “Are they still going to press charges?”
“Oh yeah. That’s a given. I may go to jail, Maman.”
“Not going to happen, sha. Now get some bowls. The rice is done and so is the gumbo.”
Olivia let her grandmother take over with talk of her flower garden, town gossip, and inordinate things that kept her listening as she ate.
It wasn’t until they were sitting on the porch drinking wine with the crickets singing and the smell of gardenias that Olivia realized her grandmother had gone out of her way not to mention a single person Olivia knew in Lyons Point.
“You don’t have to protect me, Maman.”
Her grandmother snorted, not even pretending not to know what she was referring to. “Of course I do, my girl. It’s what I’ve done since the moment you came into the world.”
“I hired an attorney,” Olivia said. She didn’t want to bring it up again, but she wanted her grandmother to know that she was going to fight. “I told her everything. I gave her texts, emails, and even phone messages.”
“Is she capable?”
“I wouldn’t have hired her if she wasn’t. She has roots in Louisiana as well. Her father’s family is from near Lafayette.”
That made her grandmother smile. “Do you think she can get the charges dropped?”
“If you met her, you’d understand why I chose her. She’s like a pitbull in the lawyer world.”
Her grandmother threw back her head and laughed. “We’ll have to invite her down. I’d like to meet her. What’s her name?”
“Ava Ledet.”
Her grandmother nodded and sipped her wine. “I want Calvin’s balls in a bag.”
That caused Olivia to start laughing so hard she spit out her wine. Leave it to her Maman to say something like that. “I think Ava will get them for you.”
They sat on the porch for another twenty minutes in silence until her grandmother rose and kissed her on the cheek before going off to bed.
Olivia couldn’t go yet. It had been too draining of a day to try and turn everything off and find sleep. She pulled her legs up against her in the chair, and thought back to nights in high school when she and her friends would sit on her porch late into the night.
There had always been a plethora of food for her and her friends to choose from. Her grandmother loved to have a house full of people to feed. Olivia hadn’t comprehended until now just how lonely her grandmother must have been to go from a houseful to no one in a day.
Olivia hadn’t been thinking about her grandmother the night she left. She had been thinking of herself. Just as she hadn’t been thinking about her job when she was busy kissing Calvin or running his errands while he went in and stole from the company.
She was paying for her sins now, and rightly so. After all her grandmother had done in taking her in and raising her, Olivia hadn’t done well by her.
That was going to change. Olivia might have wanted out of this small town, but she had a chance to start again here. She wasn’t going to turn her nose up at it now.
She stood and walked to the door of the porch. The screen kept the mosquitos out so that they could enjoy the night, but Olivia wanted a closer look at the water.
The moonlight had always been so pretty on the water. Not even that could compare to the way the beams shown through the moss hanging from the cypress trees.
Olivia walked through the door and down the steps to the dock. It was narrow and long, and showed evidence of several boards having been replaced recently. She walked to the end and looked down at the still water.
The bayous scared some people, but for her, it was what she had grown up with. There were terrors out there like gators and cottonmouths, but there was beauty as well.
Olivia didn’t know how long she stood there before she realized the crickets had ceased. Suddenly the hair on the back of her neck lifted, and she knew she was being watched. It was a predatory, threatening feeling.
And it scared the hell out of her.
She backed up a step as her gaze skimmed the area looking for what it could be. There were plenty of shadows for it to hide in, which didn’t make her feel any better.
The low rumble of a growl made her heart hammer against her ribs.
That wasn’t any animal she knew. Olivia spun around and ran up the dock.
She tripped on the steps, slamming her shin against a board as she reached for the handle to the door.
Even then she didn’t stop until she was inside the house with the door locked.
She backed away from the door, waiting for something to bust through. Seconds turned to minutes, but nothing happened. She checked the locks on the doors, but left the lights on as she walked to her room in a vain effort to find sleep.
Vincent was closing in on the creature when he caught sight of Olivia Breaux. He was so shocked to see her standing at the edge of the water with her hair loose, and her long legs bared by her shorts that he was struck senseless by her beauty, struck dumb at having her so close again.
She had always had that affect on him. It was just one reason he had kept his distance from her. It hadn’t helped that he wanted nothing more than to kiss her.
Vincent forced his gaze away, but the creature was gone before he realized it. He let out a silent curse as he once more looked at Olivia.
He was afraid the beast had found its next target.