Free Windstar by Charlotte Boyett-Compo Page B

“And another one I found in the planter in the powder room.”
    She scrunched her eyes shut. “Why?” she queried.
    “I shouldn’t have slobbered all over you, wench,” he said. “Not every woman wants me to slobber all over them.”
    She sat there for thirty minutes and listened to him apologizing. Half the time what he said made little or no sense to her for his thoughts were scattered, his words tumbling out in that thick brogue that she could barely understand. At one point she thought he might be crying but then he laughed hatefully, called himself a few choice names then grew silent.
    “You need to get to bed,” she said.
    “Can’t fucking walk,” he said. “Tried and can’t get me legs to hold me up and I’m pretty sure I’ve pissed me britches a time or two.”
    She thought so, too, for the smell was ripe surrounding him.
    “Well, you can’t stay on the floor all night,” she said.
    “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he quipped. “Once spent the night on a loading dock.” He chuckled. “Woke up with a fucking miserable head cold.”
    He was too heavy for her to lift and she doubted if she could brace him steadily enough to get him into the shower. The only thing to do was to call Bobby, his assistant, but when she asked for Bobby’s number, Rory clammed up, refusing to tell her.
    “Rory, you ….”
    “You’re thinking of leaving me,” he accused. “Because of what I did.”
    She didn’t deny it.
    “Everybody leaves me sooner or later,” he muttered.
    Angela heard true misery in his soft voice and her heart went out to him. “Just give me Bobby’s number,” she said.
    He was quiet for a bit then told her he’d make a deal with her. If she promised not to leave him, if she would forgive him for what he’d done, he’d give her Bobby’s number.
    She heaved a long sigh. “All right. I’ll stay. Give me the number.”
    “You swear?”
    “Yes.”
    “You won’t leave me?”
    “No, Rory,” she said. “I won’t leave you.”
    He gave her the number and after she’d called Bobby, woke the poor man up, she made a second call to the AA sponsor whose number Bobby gave her.
    “He’ll get there before I am,” Bobby had told her.
    * * * *
    Long after Bobby and Lou Timmerlane, the AA sponsor, had gotten Rory into the shower and then into bed, Angela sat in the chair in her bedroom and listened to the low talk coming from the room down the hall. Though she couldn’t hear what was being said, she knew the men were trying to decide whether or not to return Rory to rehab. Apparently the decision was made that it wasn’t necessary and Timmerlane left. Bobby remained behind to spend the remainder of the night on the sofa.
    * * * *
    “What set him off, do you know?” Bobby asked her the next morning as he sat with her at the breakfast table over coffee.
    She looked down into her cup. “He kissed me and I reacted badly.”
    Bobby sat back in his chair. “He kissed you?”
    She nodded. Her hands were wrapped around her coffee cup as though she were trying to keep them warm.
    “I thought you said I didn’t interrupt anything yesterday,” Bobby accused.
    She lifted her gaze to his. “You didn’t. He told me he had been dreaming that he was making love to me and got pissed when you called and woke him up. I thought he was playing a very cruel joke by saying such a thing and I called him on it. I don’t like being the butt of someone’s childish spite.”
    Bobby stared at her. “Rory doesn’t do things like that,” he stated.
    “Ah, come on!” she snapped. “You don’t think he was putting me on?”
    “If there’s one thing I know about Rory John Keith,” Bobby said, “it’s that he never lies. That man wouldn’t know how to. He might be a fallen away Catholic, but he’s still an altar boy at heart.”
    “And you think a man like him would be dreaming about someone like me?” she demanded.
    “If he told he was, you can take it to the bank, sister,” Bobby