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CHAPTER 1

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."

CHAPTER 2

Teddy Wilkes Billodeaux, formerly named Teddy Bear Wilkes by his adolescent birth mother for being so cuddly, strained to complete another round down the lane between the parallel bars. He'd completed his upper body strength training and his core work, but always left this most hated task for last. With the aid of his well-developed arms and his thighs where he had some feeling, he carefully placed his braced legs and let his feet flop down, trying to get them to line up in some kind of natural manner.

Thanks to keeping up his exercises, he'd been able to walk across the stage using his armband crutches in high school to receive his diploma, and stand long enough to deliver a short speech as one of four valedictorians who maintained a perfect 4.0. In college, he'd done that walk again and graduated top of his class in Communications. Couldn't give up now.

Balancing carefully, he paused a moment to mop his face with the towel hanging around his neck. Outside the rehab center, a recuperating runner sped past the window with a parachute device attached to his torso creating drag and increasing his strength. Off to one side of the bars, a jumper squatted and hurled himself upward to the top of a three-foot padded block. Another injured athlete worked the long ropes, making them jump across the floor like waves in a mighty ocean. At least, Teddy could do that one for a while. The pros and cons of having access to a facility used by university athletes was on rare occasions he could do the same exercises, but mostly not.

Teddy caught a view of himself in the long mirror some people enjoyed working out in front of, but not him. His fine blond hair lay plastered against his brow so sweat-soaked it appeared brown. His normally pale face burned red with exertion. He took a deep breath, expanding his chest built up from the strength training. There, that was better. He straightened his body to its full five-foot-six frame, that courtesy of a number of operations involving cracking open the heavy scar on his back to allow him to grow. He'd never be six feet tall like most of his brothers and heck, one of his sisters; he'd never play for the Sinners football team like two of them, but he was grateful for what he could do, thanks to a caring family.

"You stuck, Teddy? Do you need your chair?" asked one of the PT trainers.

"Nope, only resting a minute. One more round and I'm done for the day." He turned awkwardly and started down the lane again, focusing on his crutches waiting at the end of the course to give him some relief. Goal attained. Teddy placed his arms in the bands of his sticks and made his way to grab his hoodie from a rack, not that he needed it to go outside. Louisiana in early August required no extra coverage. The humidity ran so high sweat didn't dry off the body.

He almost missed her, the girl laid out on the exercise table closest to the door. A female trainer massaged and worked her patient's legs, but Teddy only noticed the beauty of the face surrounded by a halo of light brown hair, long and sun-streaked, surrounding a complexion too pale to have gone outside to attain those highlights. That perfect oval contained closed eyes perfectly made up with subtle liner and shadow beneath deftly shaped brows. Her nose was pert, her lips full, but not too heavy, candy pink outlined in a darker color. Not a single blemish marred its surface. Her hands lay crossed under her chest. Their nails, lacquered pale pink, had white tips. A French manicure his sisters called it. Gold and black running shorts showed off her still shapely legs, and the U-necked matching top revealed some cleavage between two full breasts. An old man rehabbing his knee on the next table ogled her, and other guys in the gym definitely noticed, but weren't as blatant about it. Maybe that's why she kept her eyes closed.

"Jessica," Teddy murmured.

She must have heard him because her eyes opened. They were green-gray hazel flecked with gold, large and luminous. Her lovely lips opened. "What are you staring at, jerk?"

Teddy had been stared at plenty in his life. In fact, he headed home to shower because he hated the jock atmosphere of the men's locker room. He did know how it felt to be gawked at, but he wasn't gawking. He worked his crutches to her side. "Teddy Billodeaux. We went to high school together and college, though I didn't see you around much there. Different majors, I guess. I studied communications."

"So what." She turned her head away, closed her eyes again as if blocking out all around her.

Teddy remembered her as one of the nicer cheerleaders. He'd interviewed Jessica Minvielle for the high school paper years ago. She'd been self- deprecating about her gymnastic abilities, asking who could make a career out of leading cheers. Best of all, she hadn't treated him like a dweeb or a freak, simply spoke naturally about her life. Her father coached the football team at UL, the local university they'd both attended. Her mom taught physical education at a public school and coached the girls' basketball team. Jessie came by her athleticism naturally — until the accident early this summer, a jet-ski collision reported in the newspaper, her fiancé dead, herself paralyzed from the waist down. Tough all the way around.

"I just wanted to say I'm sorry about your accident and what happened to your boyfriend."

Her head rolled back his way, and the hazel eyes blazed at him. "Troy Gilbert was my fiancé. We were going to be married in October. He played football for the Cowboys with your brother, Mack. You should have known that."

"I guess I did, but I didn't know him personally."

"You want to know what my major was? Phys. Ed. I wanted to be an athletic trainer, and I was for my dad's team until this happened. Now, I'm only a burden and this is pointless." She gestured to the therapist working her useless legs. "Just go away and leave me alone!"

"Okay." Teddy started back toward the peg holding his hoodie, then stopped and did a rather smart pivot on his sticks. He didn't raise his voice, but spoke firmly. "I've been handicapped since the day I was born. The only time I felt like a burden was when my mother abandoned me at the free clinic because her boyfriend didn't want me around. I've had more operations than I can count simply to be able to stand upright on these crutches and reach a normal height. The reason for being here is to stay healthy and keep our muscles strong in case a medical miracle comes along and we might be able to walk normally. When I look at you, I see a bright, beautiful woman who still has a lot to offer and can learn to take care of herself. Too bad she can't see that."

He didn't bother to wait for a reaction, but stumped to the rack, seized his hoodie, and pushed through the door bearing the prominent sign No Cell Phones Allowed to the lobby. Teddy continued on to his low-slung, red Honda Odyssey mobility van with the hand controls, ample room for his wheelchair and a ramp if he needed it. He stowed his sticks in the passenger seat and lowered himself behind the wheel, swinging his legs in afterward. Cranking the A/C halfway, he paused a moment to cool off both mentally and physically. Taking his cell phone from a slot, he checked for messages.

One from his adoptive mom: the best woman on earth as far as he was concerned. He frowned over the urgent need to reach him, smiled at her telling him who called as if he wouldn't recognize her voice, and puzzled over the odd sign off, "Love you — no matter what."

Teddy returned the call immediately. It, too, went to voice mail. Probably with a patient. "Been at the gym. On my way home. Catch you later. Love, Ted."

Fairly sure no one had died, but also certain that one of the Billodeauxs, most likely the troublesome Mack, had some kind of issue possibly requiring a family team meeting, he put the van into gear and headed to his apartment. Whatever had happened, it could wait on a hot shower.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Never a Sinner"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Carla S. Hostetter.
Excerpted by permission of The Wild Rose Press, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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