Chapter One

Nell Billodeaux palmed her car keys and picked up her travel mug filled to the brim with rich, dark coffee. Should be decaf, but it wasn’t. She paused for a moment relishing the utter peace and quiet of her enormous house. As soon as Camp Love Letter closed for the summer, Joe Dean Billodeaux, her famous quarterback husband, had taken himself off to assist with the Sinners training camp at a luxury resort in West Virginia, far cooler and more comfortable than Louisiana. Retired, he still couldn’t keep his hands off a football, loved breaking in the rookies with his long passes, and sharing his opinions on the new crop with the coach. More power to him.

Her two youngest children, the last of the twelve remaining at home, traveled to school in the van driven by their ranch manager and bodyguard. Corazon, the housekeeper, rode along to do some grocery shopping, and Nell suspected, to make a side trip and place her hands on the belly that contained their mutual grandchild. Her daughter, Xochi, and Corazon’s Junior, married in May and already expecting. Xo seemed in a rush to fill the gingerbread Victorian the couple had purchased in Chapelle with offspring as soon as possible. No wonder with what they’d been through last year. Nothing spurred the urge to reproduce faster than nearly dying.

But now, all sat settled and still at Lorena Ranch. Her children, no matter where they were, seemed happy with their lives. She was ready to resume her volunteer work as a psychologist at the health clinic, to do some good.

Then, the buzzer on the gate sounded in the kitchen. Nell never said shit, but often thought it. She expected no deliveries and feared a paparazzo seeking an intimate interview, never granted, or a Sinners fan who had negotiated the back roads to seek out the ranch and beg for entrance. The buzzer rang again, zzzzzz like a nest of angry hornets being poked with a stick. Someone laid on it hard.

Nell peered at the small video screen of their upgraded security system. A pale face with a small, lightly freckled nose pushed up against it. Large blue eyes and a fringe of corn silk blonde hair filled the view. She couldn’t see the mouth, but it spoke loudly into the box.

“Ella Sue Smalls to see Teddy Wilkes Billodeaux.” Nell hadn’t heard a twang like that in Cajun country since Teddy came to live at the ranch, and his accent had faded considerably over the years.

“I’m sorry. Teddy isn’t home, and I am on my way out. Could I take a message?”

“Figures. I spent my last dime on a taxi to get out here. It’s hotter ’n the devil’s arse at eight in the mornin’, and I’m about to die of thirst. Got no way to get back into town, neither.”

Nell had heard it all over the years and did not relent. “Teddy no longer lives here. Now, I have an appointment to keep.”

The girl stepped away from the camera and put her hands on her slim hips, which made the bulge of her pregnant belly straining the seams of a thin cotton dress all the more outstanding. “Well, I gotta talk to him. Think I’m gonna faint.” Ella Sue swayed and gripped a wrought iron upright of the gate keeping her out of Lorena Ranch.

Teddy? Her adopted son crippled by spina bifida? He’d be the last of her boys Nell would suspect of putting a girl in the family way. Not that he wasn’t capable of having sex or siring children. They’d done the tests years ago to reassure him. He carried no genetic flaw to pass along either. She guessed Joe had taken care of seeing that Teddy lost his virginity. Her husband had contacts from his old days as a playboy, but she’d never asked. Now if it had been Mack, tearing through women in Dallas according to the tabloids, she wouldn’t be surprised—but sweet, gentle, courageous Teddy?

“Ma’am, I ain’t had no breakfast neither, and I’m feeling wobbly.” Her knees buckling, Ella Sue slid down the gate and landed on the ground, sending up a small puff of dust.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’ll be right there and see you get back to town.”

Nell abandoned her coffee, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and snatched a handful of Corazon’s homemade oatmeal raisin cookies from the jar. She kicked the door shut behind her and raced for the modest little Toyota she preferred driving to the big ranch vehicles. The lane to the road was long and curving, lined with live oaks and hung with Spanish moss, but she made the trip in record time, punched the remote to open the gate, and stopped just short of the girl’s now prone body. She cracked the water bottle as she jumped from the car.

Working a hand under the pregnant woman’s shoulders, Nell raised her head and held the bottle to her pallid lips. Ella Sue latched on like an infant to her mama’s breast and drained the contents dry. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Let’s get you into the car.”

“Don’t forget my suitcase.” She pointed at piece of old, blue Samsonite that looked like it might have been purchased at Goodwill, no wheels or pull bars, but solidly packed. Nell heaved it into the back seat and settled Ella Sue in the front passenger seat.

“We’ll stop by the clinic where I work and have you checked over, then find a place for you to stay.”

The girl gave her a sideways glance. “I figured on staying at the ranch with Teddy.”

“As I said, he has his own place now in Lafayette. I’ll be contacting him about you.”

Ella Sue nodded and eyed the cookies shoved into a drink holder. “All right if I eat these?”

“They’re for you.”

The unexpected guest wolfed them down. “You got anything else? Seems I’m hungry all the time.”

“Expecting will do that to you.” Nell watched the girl brush the cookie crumbs off her belly, but a few clung to the top of her protruding navel poking against the fabric of her dress. They approached the Mickey D’s that had sprung up on the outskirts of Chapelle to the delight of the cheeseburger and chicken nugget lovers of the town, who no longer had to drive out to the highway to satisfy their cravings for fast food. At the drive-up, she ordered a breakfast sandwich with eggs, cheese, and ham.

“Get me a pop with that, a co-cola,” said Ella Sue.

“We’ll want milk and an orange juice, too. Yes, that’s all. Thanks.”

Her passenger had recovered enough to make pouty lips.

“Better for the baby,” Nell said as if she had to explain this simple fact.

“Guess so, but pop is cheaper.” Regardless, the girl ate every bit of her meal, picked a small blob of cheese off the wrapper with her fingernail, and sucked it into her mouth.

They arrived at the clinic, a low-slung brick building with a wing for medical exams linked to a section for dental care by a small pharmacy. Nell parked in her reserved spot and led Ella Sue inside where the air conditioning blasted an almost arctic chill. “Feels good,” the girl remarked. “Never gets this hot where I come from.”

“Miss Nell, your nine o’clock is here. I put him in your office,” said the long-term receptionist, though the woman’s eyes followed Ella Sue toward a chair where the girl plopped down, her legs splayed apart by the weight of her belly.

“Thanks. I’d like Dr. Bullock to give this young woman a prenatal exam. Please work her in as soon as you can.” She accepted a clipboard full of papers for Ella Sue.

The girl scanned the top sheet. “Easy—name, sex, birth date, no current address, no insurance. Can’t pay nothing.” She flipped the page. “No diseases. I’m only takin’ some big ole vitamins I can hardly swallow, and some other pills because of the baby.”

Thank heaven for that, Nell thought. “It’s a community clinic. People pay what they can.”

“All righty, then.”

“They’ll call me when you’re done.”

That seemed okay with Ella Sue. She picked up an old copy of People and leafed through the lives of movie stars and athletes. The famous Billodeaux family had appeared in it more than once. Nell went to meet her patient, but paused in the hallway outside her office door to place a call to Teddy. It went to voice mail. “Call me as soon as you can. Important. This is your mother speaking.” She always felt compelled to add that along with “Love you” and this time, “No matter what.”