Miss Opportunity - Ch. 8.5

In Enfield, Millsap waved goodbye to his mother as she walked with her cane back to the brand new car he’d just bought for her. After that stroke she’d had, he’d gone out of his way to pamper her even more.

Though Millsap sometimes felt that his mother was milking her illness for all it was worth, especially after she returned to being a bail bondsman and managing her group of boosters full-time, he couldn’t take the chance on being wrong. Not again. He still had too much guilt left over from the last time he thought she was crying wolf.

I just hope I don’t go broke before she gets all the way well, Millsap mused, closing the door to the two-bedroom garden apartment he occupied in the city.

Fortunately, Millsap wasn’t about to go broke any time soon. Not only did he own this very apartment building, which was full to capacity with steady middleclass residents, he owned real estate all over the tri-state area and a few businesses. And those were just some of his legal ventures.

Even so, Millsap still needed to find more ways to curtail his mother’s spending. So far the only thing he’d been able to tell her no about was gambling. He became even more resolved on that issue after watching Franco struggle to overcome his addiction to gambling.

Initially, Millsap despised his friend’s weakness in allowing anything to take control of him like that. Over time he grew to respect and admire Franco’s strength in owning up to that weakness and then doing something about it.

Millsap and Mike-Mike did what they could to assist their friend in his recovery. They helped Franco financially, stopped gambling themselves, and even removed the word ‘bet’ from their vocabulary. As a result, their friend was now two years bet-free.

Unfortunately for Millsap, he was about to embark upon an adventure that would expose a weakness of his own. An unexpected weakness for…Cami Edison.

© 2008 by Suprina Frazier