Ahmed closed the car door behind her and locked it with an electronic chirp. “Ready?”
“As ever.”
Elle turned to take in the small town, and the subtle flare of Elle’s hips and the curve of her butt under cream cotton caught and held Ahmed’s attention. She would fit perfectly in his lap. He could practically feel the way she would wriggle on top of him. The crease of her butt pressing down—He cleared his throat and shifted to hide his growing…interest. Trying to look casual about it, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks.
“Welcome to Valerian,” he said roughly.
Elle leveled a curious look at him over her shoulder.
To take his mind off his not-so-little problem, he tried to imagine the small town through her eyes. Rural Georgia, a little place nearly an hour from Atlanta and firmly trapped decades in the past. The town was primarily Black now and had been for decades, with thriving businesses on the tree-lined streets, a light breeze moving through the glistening leaves and an old Baptist church on the corner, red brick and beautiful, with stained glass windows. From nearby, he could hear the music. Something old-fashioned and timeless he’d heard his mother singing a time or three.
Ahmed always thought he would move back to Valerian one day. The town was small, a place where everyone knew each other and parented each other’s children and looked out for each other. But that was before basketball and fame and everything else that came along with it. He liked Atlanta and everything he had found there, but sometimes he wanted something slower, something different.
And speaking of different…
For a moment Elle gazed around with pleasure, it seemed, enjoying Valerian just as he did, the simple pleasure of it on her face. But when her eyes met his, she straightened her spine as if steeling herself for battle. She tucked that silly purse of hers under her arm and turned her entire body to face him, fake smile firmly in place.
“Where to now?”
Ahmed pocketed his keys and stopped himself from the unexpected impulse to give her his arm.
“Now we go.” He gestured in the direction of the music.
At a few minutes past one o’clock on a Saturday, Valerian was at its liveliest. The kids were out of school and had their parents with them, workhorses and worker bees let out for the weekend. The day throbbed with freedom.
“Oh, this is really nice.”
Their walk took them from the parking lot—more scenic than some picnic spots Ahmed had seen in other places—and through the small town center, its avenues lined with low trees and the smell of summer flowers in the air.
“I’ve never been to this part of Georgia before.” She blinked down at a ponytailed girl who walked past holding her mother’s hand. The girl looked at Elle with wide eyes. “I’m more of a city girl. I don’t think I’ve ever left the city limits for more than gas or to go to the farmers’ market.”
“There’s a whole other world out here,” he said.
The little girl was still walking, still staring back at Elle, who hadn’t stopped smiling. The child seemed entranced, and the wonder in her eyes only disappeared when she turned the corner, tugged along by what Ahmed assumed was her mother’s gentle hand. Kids liked Elle, he couldn’t help but notice. Or at least that kid had. He opened his mouth to ask if she wanted children, but that seemed like too much of a “real date” conversation.
“We’re heading this way.” He gestured in the direction the curious little girl had disappeared.
They turned the corner and walked into Valerian’s celebration of summertime in winter.
“Oh!” Elle’s eyes widened in delight.
It looked like the entire town had turned out for the annual festival and ice-cream social. Stretched out across the park and flowing like one of Elle’s fairy tales through the center of town, the festival to celebrate the birthday of the town’s founder was a feast of color. Women with flowers twined in their hair, a stage where a live band played “Treat Her Like a Lady,” stalls selling the arts and crafts of the townspeople and jams and jellies, a Ferris wheel turning lazily while the music of laughter drifted all around it.
A chorus of happy shrieks from behind him warned Ahmed just in time to tug Elle toward him and prevent her from getting trampled by nearly a dozen giggling girls who were chasing each other. The girl in front had a clear bag of brightly colored candy clutched in one fist.
“Wow! I didn’t know places like this existed so close to the city. Or…” Elle looked even more amazed when the milk-delivery truck passed them with the driver in starched white behind the wheel of the open-side van that looked like a white version of a UPS truck. “Is this a hologram or something? It seems so perfect. Almost unreal.”
She didn’t seem to notice that her hands were pressed against Ahmed’s chest, her laughter soft and breathless as she paid more attention to the people and the town than to him, the man holding her. But he was very aware of how close they were. He stroked a light hand down her back and slowly released her. After a flickering glance at him, Elle’s laughter trailed away and she stepped back. He could almost see the blush in her chestnut cheeks.
“It’s real enough,” he said, thinking of the blissful years he’d spent in the town as a kid before his family moved south to Atlanta. “I wouldn’t trade it for Atlanta, though.”
“Me either,” she agreed and began walking again, her gaze sweeping up to take in the towering magnolia and ginkgo trees. “But I bet the fall season up here is incredible.”
Elle strolled on at his side, her little purse held in front of her with both hands, graceful like a fawn, the swing of her slender hips pulling his eyes again and again.
“Yes, incredible,” he said, looking away from her hips. He didn’t need her as a distraction, this candy confection of a woman to make him see things that weren’t there. That there was more to her beauty than just obvious good looks and the normal pull of lust.
He rubbed a thumb over the face of his watch, felt the tiny nick in the glass. “How about an ice-cream cone?”
“Why? Are you trying to bribe me into shutting up?”
“Come on. This is supposed to be a date. Something fun. We should put aside any animosity—”
Elle jumped in and tried to cut him off. “Animosity? There’s no animosity here.”
But he pushed on. “Let’s just have as good enough a time as we can and get this over with. Whether you call it animosity or the strong desire to disagree with me often.”
Elle rolled her eyes, still walking in that seductive and slow stroll of hers that turned Ahmed’s mind to mush. She wasn’t like the other women he’d been into before. Her beautiful but prickly exterior only made him want to get closer to her, to risk the thorns just to sample a hint of that sweetness he’d seen before he’d turned her sour with his hasty words the day they’d met.
“Nobody promised today was going to be fun,” Elle said. “If fun was what you wanted, you should have gone to one of your groupies.”
Damn, he was tired of people talking about these nonexistent groupies of his. “Can we just leave these imaginary groupies out of this?”
“What? Is one waiting for you at home as we speak—a palate cleanser, so to speak?” Her look was scornful and amused at the same time.
The pavement gave way to grass under their feet, then to the organized chaos of the rows of food stalls. Ice cream and fried Oreos. Funnel cakes and hot dogs. Despite his late breakfast, the mix of smells made Ahmed’s stomach growl. Food wasn’t the only thing he wanted in his mouth, though.
“You have a very dirty imagination,” he said. “Under normal circumstances, I would be more intrigued by it.”
Elle snorted. “You’re such a child.”
Ahmed couldn’t resist. “That’s not what the groupies say.”
She made the same noise and kept walking, her intrigued gaze roaming over each food vendor they passed. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about your groupies.”
“You brou
ght it up.” The sway of her hips was damn near hypnotic. Ahmed’s feet stuttered to a halt. He watched Elle for a long while before he realized she was actually walking away from him. When he caught up to her, he brought a vanilla ice-cream cone with him.
She arched an eyebrow. “Only one?”
“It’s for you, of course.”
Her lips pursed and a hint of wickedness flashed behind the deliberately blank look. “Vanilla isn’t quite my style.”
Really? His mind immediately tumbled into murky waters, images of her tied up and getting spanked by his hand making the rounds before he heard the rest of what she had to say. “—strawberry is more my speed.” Of course. Pink ice cream.
But he had to laugh at himself, and reevaluate his thoughts about Elle.
Her comments about assorted flavors of ice cream included, she was nothing like he’d expected. In the bright winter sunlight, she was still hypnotically alluring—her voice, the way she walked, even her laugh. But she was also comfortable to talk with, funny, even interesting beyond his sexual attraction to her.
It didn’t fit with his initial impression of her, of a woman living in a dream world, selling lies of love and perfect romance when it was painfully obvious those things didn’t exist.
“What made you decide to start your business?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Why can’t I just be making conversation?”
Elle made a disbelieving noise, a cough of sound from her elegant red mouth. “You make me crazy, you say things to get under my skin, you don’t just make conversation.” She scoffed again, her eyes rolling skyward.
“I don’t think I’m that guy,” he said.
“Well, you are that guy.” She smirked and bit the top off her ice cream. A wince told Ahmed she immediately regretted the action.
“Careful or you’ll get brain freeze. And you know I will laugh at you.”
“Well, of course you would.” Elle took a cautious lick of her ice cream this time and Ahmed’s stomach clenched in a heated, instantaneous reaction.
Her eyes caught whatever transparent expression he wore and she smiled mischievously before leaning the ice cream his way to taste. Since he didn’t think she really wanted to share, he took a healthy mouthful and watched her squawk with indignation and pull the cone away from him.
The sweet cream on his tongue tasted like a promise.
“Ahmed Clark!”
Reluctantly, he turned away from Elle’s almost-flirtatious smile when he heard a familiar voice call out his name. He swallowed the bit of sweetness in his mouth.
Jonetta Greenlaw, his mother’s best friend, floated down the narrow sidewalk toward them in yoga pants and a flowing purple blouse, which fluttered around her knees. From several feet away, she held her arms wide to receive a hug from Ahmed. A smile of genuine gladness lit up her otherwise plain face while wisps of her gray hair blew across her forehead from a casual topknot.
“I haven’t seen you around here for a while.” The words rang with humor. In Mrs. Greenlaw’s eyes, “a while” was more than a week. Ahmed greeted her with a kiss on the cheek, subtly sniffing in appreciation at the scent of warmed sugar and fresh bread that clung to her.
“You know I can’t be around you too long, Mrs. G. My heart can’t take it.”
She smiled at him, silver hair gleaming in the sun. Mrs. Greenlaw threw not-so-subtle glances at Elle, obviously curious. He reeled Elle close with a hand around her slim waist, and she came after only the slightest hesitation, her body settling warm and perfect against his side. “Elle Marshall, please meet Mrs. Jonetta Greenlaw. She makes the best pies in Valerian. And also happens to be the mayor.”
A look of surprise flitted across Elle’s features, but she moved without hesitation to squeeze Mrs. G’s hand and give her a warm smile. “Your town is wonderful, ma’am. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Thank you.” Mrs. G’s interrogating gaze missed nothing, Ahmed was sure. The woman was a human information-seeking missile. The CIA would do well to hire her. When he was a kid, she’d found out all his secrets in less time than he’d taken to tuck them away. “We’ve never seen Ahmed with a woman around here before. I see why he brought you, though. You’re so pretty.” Her eyes skimmed Elle’s body, lingering on her flat stomach, and Ahmed winced at the question he could sense about to fly out of her mouth.
“Do you have any kids, Elle?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Do you want any?” came the quickly fired follow-up question.
“Um…sure. If I find the right man.”
Damn. It was a clear opening for Mrs. G, and Ahmed cringed as he waited for the inevitable: Is Ahmed that man?
“It’s good to wait.” Mrs. G touched Elle’s arm with a wink at Ahmed that she must have thought was subtle. “Not every man is the right father for your children, although they may be just right when it comes to making them.”
Elle laughed and leaned into Mrs. G, surprising the hell out of Ahmed. “You’re so right. Although it’s hard to tell the difference in the heat of the moment.”
Mrs. G chortled. “I like her, Ahmed. You should bring her around more often.” Then she patted his arm, leaving him with the impression that she’d be on the phone to his mother before she turned the corner. She was almost as irrationally invested in his future family life as his mother.
“She’s nice,” Elle said, smiling at Mrs. G’s retreating figure.
“You would think so.”
Elle laughed and this time there was nothing but pure amusement in it. “How do you even know her anyway?”
Ahmed thought back to his days of wanting nothing more than to leave Valerian and live in a big city, feeling stifled by the confines of the town he’d known his whole life. Mrs. G had not only been the town’s mayor for a good number of years. She was always involved in politics—she’d either been running for office, in office or defeating an opponent for the job. She was also his mother’s best friend and his sisters’ godmother. There hadn’t been a time when she wasn’t in his life.
“She’s my mother’s best friend,” he said, simply. “They went to high school together here, although sometimes I think they were in the womb together, too.” Mrs. G and his mother didn’t see each other as much since his mother moved into the house on Ahmed’s property, but they were on the phone with each other at all hours of the day. He knew very well the sound of his mother’s laugh when she was talking to Mrs. G. Joyful and uninhibited. It made him happy just to hear it.
“Your mother is very lucky,” Elle said.
“Yeah, they both are. They’re lucky to have each other.”
The women were close and had gotten even closer after his mother had been widowed after her long marriage and Mrs. G had been after her very brief marriage to a man who’d disappeared under strange circumstances.
“Yeah, I get it,” Elle said. “I like to think Shaye is my friend like that, even when she pisses me off. I’m lucky to have her.” Her mouth curved up. “And she’s damn lucky to have me.”
Ahmed didn’t doubt that.
Elle quietly ate her ice cream, and Ahmed watched her with a helpless pleasure. She was unfailingly polite as she greeted everyone who glanced at her in fascination, and the residents of Valerian wore smiles of speculation as they looked between her and Ahmed. They really were shameless. He wouldn’t be surprised if his mother got an avalanche of phone calls from her friends in town letting her know that her only son had brought a woman with him to the festival.
Just like Mrs. G had fallen under her spell, Ahmed had a feeling his mother would like her, too. At the unwelcome thought, he shifted with unease.
He rushed to fill the silence between them. “When you finish your ice cream, we can have a real meal.” Ahmed pointed Elle toward a BBQ stand with a long line of people already waiting. “You’re going to love this.”
An hour later, they walked away from Miriam’s BBQ rib stand stuffed to bursting. At least Ahmed was. He�
�d ordered the biggest platter they had, since he hadn’t had the ribs in a while and couldn’t get anything near as good in the city. Elle at first had played coy, claiming not to be hungry and only nibbling at the straw of her lemonade, but after Ahmed encouraged her to try a bite of the meat that practically dripped from the bone, she ended up eating just about half of the ribs overflowing from the paper plate.
Ahmed tossed the wet wipe into the trash and inspected his fingers for lingering traces of BBQ sauce. Beside him, Elle checked her face and teeth with a mirror from her purse. Although she’d dived into the ribs as enthusiastically as Ahmed, she still managed to look like a cool splash of sorbet in the late-afternoon sun, as if minutes ago she hadn’t been fighting with Ahmed for the last piece of meat on their shared plate.
“I could just curl up in a bed and go to sleep right now.” She sighed out a contented breath.
Ahmed laughed. If he’d known a serving of good ribs was all it would take to calm this kitten down, he’d have brought her to Miriam’s booth as soon as they walked into town. “I don’t have a bed for you but how about a bathroom for a quick cleanup?”
She eyed her slender hands with their clear and neatly trimmed nails. “I’ll take it.”
Ahmed took her to the town’s general store, where a freestanding sink with soap and recycled paper towels waited for them in the back. After they washed their hands with soap and hot water, he held the door open for her—the bell jingling merrily above their heads—while she stepped back out into the brilliant sun. Despite the sunshine, a distant rumble of thunder sounded overhead.
Elle pulled a small bottle of lotion from her purse, tucked the purse beneath her arm and smoothed the lotion into her slender hands. The motion was practiced and graceful, and Ahmed watched the delicate movement of her fingers while the aloe-and-lime scent of the lotion suffused the air around them.
“Can I have some of that?”
“Sure.” She squirted more lotion into her palm then cursed softly when it splashed everywhere. “Wait.” A breathless laugh, eyes flicking up at him in a way that made his throat click. “I just took too much.” She tucked her little purse back under her arm and held her hands, streaked white with lotion, out to him. “Here, take some from my hands.”
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