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.
22
THERE SHE STOOD BEHIND the freshly varnished front desk of the Josephine. A burst of color in Drew’s gray world. The last two torturous weeks between the time she’d left him standing on the street and this moment disappeared as if they had never existed.
Josie…
The two women she stood with-he absently recognized one as Anne-Marie-became aware of his presence and disappeared back into the kitchen.
That left him and Josie alone, staring at each other.
Drew picked up his suitcase and stepped inside the lobby, much as he had on that fateful day just over three weeks ago. Had it really only been that long? How quickly Josie had become an important part of his life, of his heart. So much so that he couldn’t remember what life had been like without her.
What he had been like without her.
Drew couldn’t begin to reconcile the old him with the one who wanted to be a better man for Josie. His entire philosophy had changed as a result of her love. And while he felt a healthy portion of trepidation about the shift in his life’s direction, he also knew that it was for the better. And no matter what happened in these next few moments, the changes were permanent.
Whatever transpired, he was glad to be here now, rather than at an unspecified time down the road. In a roundabout way, Carol had done him a bigger favor than he’d done her. By agreeing to close up his office and handle any on-site details in Kansas City, she had freed him up to return home.
He put his suitcase down before the front desk. “Do you have any rooms available?” he asked with a hesitant smile.
Josie’s heart was beating so loudly she nearly didn’t hear Drew’s quietly spoken question.
Truthfully, she hadn’t expected to see him again. She’d been convinced that what they’d had, what they’d shared, would be forever relegated to a special corner of the past. Never once had she allowed herself to indulge in the fantasy of his returning. To New Orleans. To her.
She removed her hand from where it lay against her belly as if protecting the precious life growing within her. But protecting it from what, she couldn’t be sure. From pain? From future hurt when Drew left again?
He placed a flyer that Sabine had distributed at the airport on the desk, much like the flyer he’d used the first time around. Josie didn’t have to read it. The pink paper was enough to identify it.
“How long will you be needing the room?” she asked, her throat so tight she nearly couldn’t speak as she turned toward the keys.
“Indefinitely.”
She swiveled to stare at him.
He smiled, seeming more unsure of himself than she’d ever seen him. “Or at least until I can make, um, other arrangements.”
“Other arrangements?”
A man she recognized as a taxi driver lugged in a couple of additional suitcases.
“Just put them over there,” Drew said, indicating a spot near the bottom of the stairs.
The driver mopped his brow with a handkerchief, then tucked the white material back into his pocket. “I’ll go get the rest.”
The rest? Drew had more luggage?
Josie felt as if the floor had just shifted under her feet as the driver left them alone again.
“You didn’t cash the check,” Drew said quietly.
She was so stunned, there was a time delay between when words were said and when they actually registered in her mind.