The woman smiled. “What’s his name, honey?”
“Benson Beauregard,” I answered, hoping that was the name he’d given them.
The woman smiled. “The big guy with the little girl?”
I nodded once. “That’s them!”
“Come on, I’ll show you to his room.” She gestured to me to follow her. “We put them in the kid wing since it’s easier for the child to be entertained while the parent is seen to. She’s just a doll. You’re a lucky woman.”
I felt my heart swell in my chest.
I was a lucky woman, but not for the reason she’d been thinking. She wasn’t my daughter, but she was my boyfriend’s. And I was beginning to care for her just as much as her father.
Very much so.
Isa’s daddy had already had my heart, but I had a feeling Isa wasn’t far behind.
I heard Bayou’s voice before I saw him, and a shiver tingled down my spine.
“…two more stitches,” Bayou said.
The woman rounded the corner of an open exam room and gestured for me to go inside. I did, smiling thankfully at the woman.
Bayou’s eyes were closed, and he was lying on the hospital exam table with his arms crossed over his chest. The uniform shirt he was wearing was covered in dried blood, as were his pants. He had his booted feet crossed over each other, and he was lying there as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Isa was up by his head, sitting there, phone in hand. Her eyes weren’t on the phone, though. They were on what the doctor was doing to her father’s head.
The woman patted me on the shoulder and walked away, leaving me in the doorway staring as the doctor pulled the needle through a now almost-closed wound on his forehead, right above his eyebrow.
“One more,” the doctor continued.
It was then I realized that he was speaking to Isa, and not Bayou.
“One,” Isa said softly.
I smiled.
I loved how Bayou treated her, as if she was an adult that could comprehend everything that was said. Which, maybe she might. Maybe she knew exactly what was going on and benefitted greatly by the way Bayou was raising her.
“All done.” The doctor rolled back and snapped off his gloves, tossing them into the trash can at his feet. “I’ll get some antibiotics called in for that. Probably just the standard take a pill twice a day for ten days kind. Any objections to that?”
Bayou shook his head and sat up, somehow bringing Isa with him. Isa let him, not saying a word as she was brought up almost parallel with the floor over Bayou’s shoulder. When he was all the way up, he swung her up and around to place her on the exam table between his thighs before his eyes met mine.
“No,” he said to the doctor but kept his eyes on me. “That’s fine.”
“Okay.” The doctor stood and turned, finally spying me in the doorway.
“Hello,” he said. “You’re here for Benson?”
I nodded. “I am.”
“He’s all fixed up. You don’t have a thing to worry about,” he told me gently.
I grinned. “That’s good to know. I need him in fighting shape.”
The doctor winked, and that was when I realized how that’d come off.
Shit.
My face flamed as the doctor strolled toward me.
Hastily, I moved out of the way and kept my gaze on my feet as he passed.
“I’ll send a nurse in with your discharge paperwork.” The doctor snickered. “Have a good day, y’all.”
Once he was gone, I looked up to find Bayou staring at me.
I swallowed hard as I saw the stitches above his eye. “How many of those did you end up getting?”
“Eight,” he answered. “What are you doing here?”
I felt my belly drop.
“I wanted to make sure that you were okay,” I answered. “I tried calling, but you didn’t answer.”
“Turned my phone on silent,” he admitted. “I had a few calls from Ilsa.”
My stomach knotted. “Isa’s mother? Really? What did she want?”
“Based on the first and only call that I took from her, she wants Isa back,” he rumbled. “She ‘needs her mother’ she said. She’s worried about her well-being. Now that she’s been bailed out of jail, she feels that she should be able to have her.”
I felt my stomach drop. “I thought it was decided that while whatever played out, you’d keep Isa.”
“That was my impression, also.” He paused. “Though I never talked to her. I guess I should’ve seen that coming. She’s not the type of person to just let it go. And honestly, I’m sure that it chaps her ass that I have Isa when she was likely hell bent on me never knowing that I even had a kid.”
I growled. I hated the woman, and I’d never even met her.
“I guess giving me three days was good, though.” Bayou sounded tired. “But I haven’t had a chance to meet with my lawyer yet. That happens tomorrow. As a result, I don’t know the legalities. Technically, she gave Isa to me of her own free will. Nothing was ever decided through the court. I’m not sure what legal leg I have to stand on.”