“How are you feeling?” he asked softly.
Colette smiled, “I’m hanging in there. Can’t wait to go home. Nothing like getting woken up every hour to get your blood pressure checked.” She tried to sound upbeat.
“I can’t imagine,” Gabe’s hands tightened on the handrail. “I…I owe you an apology.”
“No, no you don’t.”
“I do Colette,” Gabe lowered the rail and sat down on the edge of the bed facing her. “I shouldn’t have listened to June first of all. Secondly, I should have been here with you. I drank a whole bottle of vodka and tossed my cookies before going to bed last night. I don’t know how I’m even vertical right now, but I know it has something to do with you. Colette…” Gabe took her hands in his, “…I want us to be parents one day. I…I think we should be on stable ground first. I know that this was a fluke thing, but it still hurts. You mean the world to me and I can’t fathom a day that you aren’t in my life.”
Colette squeezed his hands and leaned in to kiss him. His hands ran up her arms and framed her face as he leaned in and kissed her gently. His tongue licked at the seam of her lips asking for entrance. When she opened her mouth and met his tongue with her, he deepened the kiss, tasting her, taking her. The intensity of this kiss went on for several minutes until they were met with a gentle clearing of someone’s voice.
Pulling away with red cheeks from embarrassment, Colette looked up briefly to see that it was Dr. Collins. Gabe smiled at Colette, then slid from the bed and sat in the chair beside her bed as Dr. Collins walked up to the end of the bed.
“Good morning,” she smiled brightly.
“Morning,” Gabe answered back, smiling brightly.
Colette raised her hands to her cheeks, but didn’t say anything.
“Your vitals look great. I’m going to have the nurse take a couple of vials of blood to make sure everything is okay before I let you go home later today. So, the bleeding that you are having is like your menstrual cycle. If it gets heavier, I want you to get in touch with the office right away. Otherwise, you can resume normal sexual activity after you’re done bleeding. I’d like for you to rest today and tomorrow before resuming going back to work. I see that you work in a pub, is that correct?”
“Yes ma’am,” Colette answered, nodding her head.
“I’d really prefer that you refrain from lifting heavy kegs or anything that may put a strain on your abdomen for at least a week. So, your limited activity will consist of lifting a glass, pouring beer, and handing it to the customer. No heavy boxes full of beer or anything else…no kegs…got it?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Questions for me?” Dr. Collins asked.
“No ma’am.”
“So, rest until your blood work comes back this afternoon. I’m keeping you until just after lunch. I want you to eat your lunch, and then the nurse will come in with your discharge paperwork. I want you to follow-up with me in two weeks. Anything you can think of?” Dr. Collins asked once more. When Colette shook her head no, the good doctor smiled at Colette, shook Gabe’s outstretched hand and left the room.
“Stay with me,” Gabe blurted. “Let me take care of you.”
“I think that would be a good idea,” Colette answered. “I don’t think I can face Bunnie and the Colonel just yet.”
Gabe took Colette’s hand and kissed it.
“You still have stuff at my townhouse, so I don’t think you’ll need anything except female stuff,” Gabe smiled.
“Hey, shouldn’t you be at work. Isn’t it Monday?”
“We have a four day weekend,” Gabe answered. “Rest until lunch, I’m taking you home with me.”
Colette could only smile as she leaned back against the bed. With Gabe’s hand in hers, she dozed off until the nurse came in to take a couple of vials of blood and left. She dozed off again after the nurse had left and woke right before lunch arrived. Gabe had left her a note on an unused napkin saying that he stepped out to make a quick phone call and would be right back, to eat her lunch and behave. So, she ate her lunch and dozed off, hoping that Gabe would return before the nurse said she could go. She didn’t want to have to wait any longer than she absolutely had to.
Gabe had called Brock to grab a t-shirt and a pair of Colette’s jeans to wear out of the hospital as he sped off to the mall to get a surprise for Colette. Parking at the main entrance, he took off at a jog and ran into Journey’s shoe store to get a pair of black, high top Converse sneakers for Colette. Paying for them and jogging back out to his car, he jumped in and made his way back to the hospital in time to meet Brock in the parking lot.
“Thanks man,” Gabe said, coming around to Brock’s side of the car. “They are going to release her this afternoon. I told her that I wanted her to stay with me.”
Brock smiled, “No problem. We’ll look after her.”
The friends shook hands and Gabe took off at a jog to get to Colette. He cleared the doorway just as the nurse asked if she needed a pair of scrubs and a pair of shower shoes, as the ER cut everything off of her when she came in.
Chapter Nineteen
Clair walked into her mother’s study to get some folders for clients that she was working on, when what she found was utterly astounding.
Bunnie, not astounding.
Drunk.
Astounding, because Bunnie never got drunk.
Clair observed her mother pouring herself another drink with her glass of clear liquid that wasn’t even half empty. As per usual, Bunnie was dressed immaculately. Her tailored light grey suit fit snugly to her body. With it, she wore a light pink V-neck blouse and accented her wardrobe with a few simple long silver chains and hoop earrings. Her blonde hair looked a bit disheveled, which was out of the norm for Bunnie.
“Mother?” Clair said softly, as she made her way in the room, shutting the door behind her. “Isn’t it a bit early to be hitting the bottle, even for you?”
Bunnie swung around with a bottle of Grey Goose in one hand and a full glass in the other.
“Clair,” she smiled brightly, “come celebrate with your muhzer.” Bunnie’s speech was clearly slurred, but the smile on her face was brilliant.
“What are you celebrating?” Clair moved over to one of the chairs in front of her mother’s desk. “I seem to be behind the power curve.”
“We are celebrating…life, liberation…freedom from the French.” Bunnie poured another glass of vodka for Clair and turned, handing it to her.
“Thank you.” Clair took the glass and rested it in the palm of one hand while holding it with the other and raised her glass to her mother.
“Always impeccable manners.” Bunnie leaned in and took a long sip, while she leaned down in her daughter’s face.
Clair raised an eyebrow at her mother in question. “I was taught well.”
Bunnie stood, moved around to the chair behind her desk and plopped down into it. “Yessss. Too bad Colette couldn’t be more like you.” She seemed in thought for a moment. “In fact, that is why I’m drinking. Colette, or rather...her family.”
“Is that so?” Clair took a small sip from her glass and looked pointedly at her mother. “I think Colette came out okay. It’s not so much that the classes didn’t stick, I think it was more of the fact that she wanted to piss you off.”
“Well, she’s done a great job of that.” Bunnie raised her glass again, and took a rather un-ladylike gulp.
“So, mother, you still haven’t told me what life, liberation and freedom from the French has to do with Colette’s family.”
“Oh yes,” Bunnie smiled, she stood up and walked to the bar again, grabbing the bottle. “You’ll need more of this when I tell you everything.”
She swung her arm wide and the clear liquid amazingly enough had the good grace to not slosh over the side of her glass or the bottle for that matter. Filling up her glass and turning to Clair’s, she poured more in it and put the almost empty bottle back in place again. After making her way behind her de
sk, she took another unladylike gulp of her drink and set the glass on the desk in front of her.
“Your father and I have been sending payments of nine hundred and fifty dollars and change to Colette’s family in France,” Bunnie slurred a little more now.
Clair took a sip of her drink and her eyebrows seem to have hit her hairline as she looked at her mother in question, “Why?” She set her glass on the desk.
“Well,” Bunnie started, taking a deep breath, “your father agreed to pay for Amilie’s medical expenses.”
Clair waived her hand in the air, “So? That isn’t entirely unusual. Amilie is the mother of his daughter. They were married after all.”
“There’s more,” Bunnie took another gulp from her glass, “much more, and I’ve finally paid the last of it.”
“I’m listening,” Clair said patiently.
“Amilie wasn’t feeling well. We thought that maybe she was pregnant again when they came back to Savannah after having been gone to Fort Hood for three years. When we found out she wasn’t, we took a huge sigh of relief. You girls were only six years old.” Bunnie smiled at her daughter and reached out for her hand.
Clair had chills racing down her spine as she heard her mother start the story. She reached out to touch her mother’s hand briefly. “You keep saying ‘we’ mother. Who exactly is we?”
“Your father and I,” Bunnie said simply. “Anyway we…”
“Wait just a moment.” Clair pulled her hand away. “You said you and my father. You told me that my father abandoned us.”
Bunnie sat up in her chair, “He did my love, then he came back to us.” Her smile was big and bright.
“Wait, what?” Clair asked.
“The Colonel is your father.”
“The Colonel…is my father?”
“Oh Clair, how could you not have noticed the resemblance?” Bunnie, glass now in hand, waived it out in a wide arc. “Please don’t tell me you are that shallow,” she declared. She pouted for a moment, “I was punishing him for leaving. So, I’d always said that. I never quite got over it.”
Clair sat there dumbfounded. “You had always told me that he’d left us. Even after you and the Colonel got married, and that is your excuse? That you were mad and never quite got over it?”
“Yes, well…whatever. Now where was I?” Bunnie took a sip of her drink. “Really Clair, keep up. Ah!” she exclaimed. “We were so…”
Clair took a sip of the vodka, letting the burn take over her throat before she interrupted her mother again with a hand up to stop her.
“How can the Colonel be my father and Colette’s father? We are so close in...” She stood now, looking down at her mother with her thoughts running a hundred miles an hour. “Oh, don’t tell me...you slept with him while he was still married to Colette’s mother.”
Bunnie shrugged her shoulders, “I can’t finish if you keep interrupting me Clair.”
“Answer the question mother,” Clair leaned over the desk setting her glass down and leaning on both hands, “or perhaps you should start at the beginning.”
“We had an affair.” Bunnie had the decency to look somewhat guilty.
“What?” Clair shrieked. “Are you fucking serious? You knowingly went after a married man?”
“It just happened one day,” Bunnie laughed. “I was showing him houses that he needed for Amilie.”
“Oh, and Amilie conveniently happened to not be there, and your clothes magically disappeared, and you fell on his dick?” Clair took a long sip of the vodka and scrunched her face up as the burn came on and dissipated. “Is that what happened? You fucked a married man while his wife was God knows where.”
“Oh sit down Clair. Sheesh, your theatrics are ridiculous.” Bunnie got up and went to the bar, filling her glass again. “He wasn’t married to her. Not legally anyway.”
“What?” Clair fell back into the chair now. “Holy shit mother. You preach these morals and all of this bullshit on how to act like a lady when you fucked another woman’s husband. Whether he was legally married to her or not, he wasn’t yours.”
“He said that he’d faked the paperwork so that he could get further in the Army,” Bunnie Explained, “He didn’t want to be tied down, but to further his career in the Army, he needed to be married.”
“Politics,” Clair whispered simply.
“Yesss,” Bunnie exclaimed dramatically, “now hush and I’ll tell you everything.”
“I think that would be wise.” Clair watched her mother bring a new bottle of Grey Goose to the desk with her, open it and pour more in her glass.
Chapter Twenty
“Now, if we can avoid any other interruptions, I can continue...and please, Clair, save your questions for the end.” Bunnie took a long sip and set her glass down. “Theodore was getting to the point in his career where he wouldn’t be flying so much and would be in an office in Operations or some such nonsense. To further his career, he needed to get married. So, he’d gone to Paris a few times, had visited this bakery that he enjoyed near the tower and started a courtship with the daughter of the baker.”
She waived her hand in the air. “Amilie was her name. Since Theodore was stationed in Germany, he’d have to travel to see her. So, he made her an offer of marriage, said that he’d take care of her and send her to a fabulous American cooking school. Which, he did. Well, the whole marriage was a quick thing with the equivalent of a Justice of the Peace, but in France. For it to be legal, he had to marry her in the States. Anyway, they got married, he produced a fake certificate...voila.
“After they came back to the States here in Savannah, three months later. I met him as an up and coming realtor. His wife was back at the hotel, either sleeping or going to school. We saw each other for a week...looking at houses and taking lunch together. Finally, I set them up in a little house downtown near the townhouse I lived in. Anyway, it all happened so quickly. We fell for each other. It was definitely lust at first, but then it quickly got shoved into love. He’d go for runs and he’d come to my townhouse. We’d make love and spend time together.”
Clair saw the dreamy look, because there was no other word for it, on her mother’s face when she spoke of Theodore Hughes. So many questions were running through her head of why her mother kept from her the fact that her father was right under her nose. Maybe Bunnie was upset that he and Amilie had left to Fort Hood and come back. There were just so many questions, but she sat there and watched Bunnie drink from her glass, amazed that the woman was still standing. How much would she remember after this conversation ended? At this point, did it really even matter?
“After a few months, I finally met Amilie and she was so nice it almost made me feel bad that I was having an affair with who she thought was her husband. Then, a few months later I learned that I was pregnant. Apparently, Theodore was distraught as he went home and decided to get drunk and fuck his wife without a condom and poof! We then found out that she was pregnant a month after. It was stressful, but I endured. Amilie asked who the father was, and I had to make up some tragic story about a lost lover that came into my life however briefly, and we had a hot and heated affair before he left me when I told him that I was pregnant.
“Ever the sweet Amilie, she took me in her arms and gave me a big hug. We went through our pregnancies as good friends. Even when you girls were born, she insisted that she and Theodore stay with me through my whole labor process.” Bunnie looked off toward the windows in her office in thought for a few minutes.
“Anyway,” she waived her hand, glass still in it, and continued, “Theodore continued to come over. You two girls grew up together and Amilie stayed a friend to me. It was rather odd in retrospect, but she had become a good friend. Then, Theodore got sent to Fort Hood. Texas was so far away. He kept a secret email account, and he phoned religiously. But, eventually they came back, and we started up like nothing had ever happened. It was a year and a half later that Amilie became sick, and nobody knew what was going on. She was so weak
and scared that she wanted to go home back to France. So, Theodore took her home.
“She was admitted into the hospital after her doctor saw her. It was during her stay that Theodore agreed to pay for her expenses. She asked him if he was paying for her hospital bills, because he was having an affair with me. He didn’t have an answer. She somehow found out too that they weren’t officially married and threatened to go to anyone who would listen to get him in trouble.” Bunnie set her glass on her desk and stood up.
“She was hurt. Who wouldn’t expect her to do that?” Clair asked.
“Theodore told her that he was taking Colette with him, back here.” Bunnie looked lost as she spoke now, “He told her that she didn’t have to pay him child support; he’d give her that money to help Colette when she got better. He’d pay her hospital bills until she was better and would send Colette back to her.”
Pick Me (Wait for Me Series Book 2) Page 13
