Wild Fever Read Free Page A

brokenly.
    Olivia felt tears threaten her own eyes as she returned the embrace. “It’s good to be home.”
    She hadn’t realized just how much she had needed her grandmother until that moment. It wasn’t just her words, but the woman herself. Her house had become Olivia’s home after her parent’s death when she was seventeen. As horrific as that was, it was as if nothing dared to come near her as long as she was in that house.
    Everything changed the day she left Louisiana.
    “Now, none of that,” her grandmother said and stepped back to look at her. “You need some rest and food. You’re too skinny, sha.”
    “Only you would say that, Maman.”
    Her grandmother looked at her with eyes the same black as her own, before she turned to the stove and began to stir something in the pot. “Then it’s a good thing you’ve come home.”
    “Yum. I smell gumbo.”
    “Sha, as if I’d let you come home and not greet you with proper food.”
    Olivia opened the fridge and pulled out a Coke. She sipped the beverage as her gaze caught the loaves of fresh bread on the counter that her grandmother baked every day.
    “Anything interesting happen on your drive in?”
    “Why didn’t you tell me Sean Hebert was a Sheriff’s deputy?”
    Her grandmother’s sly smile said it all. “So, you ran into Sean. He always asks about you when he comes out here.”
    “He comes out here?” Olivia asked in shock.
    Her grandmother tasted the gumbo and put another pinch of pepper in. “He checks in on me from time to time. He’s not the only one who asks about you. Now, what had you running into him?”
    “Gator in the road.”
    “Ah,” she said with a nod of her silver head. “That does tend to stop traffic.”
    Olivia took another drink as she debated whether or not to tell her grandmother the rest. “Maman, he asked me out.”
    “Good, good,” she said with her back to Olivia.
    She pulled out a chair at the table and sat. She knew better than to get in the middle of her grandmother and cooking. “Is that all you have to say?”
    “You could do worse. Sean has made a name for himself in the parish. He’s respected, and he’ll be sheriff one day.”
    Olivia just couldn’t see herself as the wife to a cop in any form. “I think it might be too soon.”
    Her grandmother placed the wooden spoon down too gently. When she turned, Olivia saw that determined glint in her dark eyes, the one that said she was about to get an earful.
    “I hate what happened to you, my girl, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy you’re home. That man you had in Dallas is no man. If he was, he would have admitted his guilt instead of letting you take the blame and getting fired for his actions.”
    Olivia knew she was right, but it was still hard to accept. Calvin had been all she wanted. He was successful, gorgeous, and well off. He treated her as if she were a princess.
    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