‘You are nothing like Poochie.”
Anika shook her head. “You’re the type of man my mama, Granny Bert, and Mama Dell taught Chloe and me to stay away from.”
Deshawn’s eyes briefly pained before he blinked away the revealing emotion. “I love you Anika.”
Anika’s half smile was sad as she raised her hand to lightly caress his cheek. “I would’ve loved you forever and a day,” she told him, her voice whisper soft. “But my love for you is gone.”
His eyes dulled.
Just then his cell phone rang from his pants pocket. He ignored it, unable to look away from Anika. Only as the ring persisted did Deshawn rise, pulling it out and turning away from Anika to bark, “What?”
Anika listened, just knowing it was another woman calling. She couldn’t live her life like that. Always suspicious and looking for clues to his infidelity. No, she was not even trying to go out like that.
“We’re on our way.”
Anika rose, her expression anxious. “On our way where?”
Deshawn smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “To the hospital,” he told her, as he dug the skeleton key from his pocket. “Chloe’s in labor.”
Anika’s heart beat double time as the wooden door swung open and they both raced out of the cottage.
∞
“All right, Chloe, remember to relax as much as possible between those contractions. You’re dilated four centimeters with fifty percent effacement. Your baby’s head is right up against the cervix now. You’re doing really good. ”
Chloe faintly smiled at the friendly labor and delivery nurse as Devon continued to rub her back. She felt restless and anxious for the delivery to be over so that she could hold her baby and then sleep. “I must look like hell warmed over,” she said, her voice dragging.
Devon kissed the top of her head. “You never looked more beautiful,” he told her.
“Humph.”
“You should’ve seen the look on your face when your water broke,” he teased, wringing out a cloth that had been soaking in cold water to place on her forehead.
Chloe chuckled softly. “I thought I peed on myself.”
Devon smiled. “I didn’t know your eyes could get so big.”
Together they laughed softly as they prepared for their child’s arrival. The laughter quickly dissipated as Chloe felt another contraction coming on strong. “Here we go,” she warned him.
Devon held her hand tightly, trying to strengthen her. “Breathe, baby, breathe!”
∞
Deshawn and Anika arrived at the hospital in record time. They were in the waiting room alone. A rerun of Martin played on the television and was the only sound in the comfortable area.
Both were lost in their own thoughts of his insistence and her resistance to love, their concern for Chloe, and their excitement over the arrival of the baby. The nurse came in to inform them that Chloe was doing well and she promised to let the expectant couple know that they had arrived.
Anika glanced over at Deshawn. His handsome face was so closed and pensive. She was filled with an urge to kiss him and so she tore her gaze away and focused on the television instead.
How easy it could be to love him.
∞
Chloe closed her eyes and somewhere found the strength for one last final exhaustive push. “Congratulations . . . it’s a girl!”
A high-pitched scream filled the room just as the certified midwife made her pronouncement. Chloe felt fatigued and happy tears coursed down her cheek as Devon tenderly wiped the dampness from her face. Both felt their heart swell with unconditional love for each other and their child.
Soon their newborn was placed on Chloe’s bare abdomen, their skin-to-skin contact making appropriate heat as the nurse provided immediate care. “Devon, she’s beautiful,” Chloe whispered softly as she placed her finger in their daughter’s hand.
“Just like her mother. My two girls,” he said, surprised by how deeply emotional he felt as he looked down at the ladies in his life.
∞
Deshawn pushed open the wooden door to Chloe’s private labor suite. The dozen balloons he purchased from the gift shop floated into the room first. “Where’s my little princess?” he asked, closing the door with his foot because his hands were filled with a stuffed animal for his niece.
“Shhhh,” Devon, Chloe, and Anika chorused.
“She’s sleeping,” Chloe told him. Her once unkempt hair was now neatly pulled back into a ponytail.
But it was on Anika that his eyes fell. She was sitting in the rocking chair by the bed with his niece blanketed and secure in her arms. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her, this woman that he loved, as she sighed and cooed softly to the baby.
He wished then that it was their child Anika held so lovingly.
“Come on and say hello to Nia, Deshawn.”
Deshawn froze in his tracks. Nia? Nia! A cold chill raced from his toes and up his spine. There was no way he could have known that Chloe and Devon would name his niece that. They never discussed names, saying they wanted to actually hold her and look at her first before they did.
There was only one explanation and he had been fighting it for weeks. He knew then it was true. His doubts about that dream erased.
“What’s wrong, Shawn?” Chloe asked, her eyes on him with concern. “You act like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I did,” he mumbled for his own ears alone.
∞
“That was good, Hakeem.”
He looked down at his female companion with one open eye as he lay spent and tired back against the flat pillows of his twin-sized bed. “Yeah,” was his gruff reply, already dismissing her in his mind.
She rose to get dressed, knowing that his landlady didn’t allow overnight guests. He was glad because he wasn’t looking for an all-nighter anyway. He’d gotten what he wanted and it didn’t take all night for that. He was finished with her and her sex for now.
Monique was nothing like the women he used to pull. When you were driving a Benz and wearing Gucci, nothing but the top breed of women caught your eye. He had nothing now and so he dealt with hood rats to release his tension.
“I’m gone have to give you a ten on that one,” she told him, as she slipped on her Reebok classics. “The way you put it down I must have caught you straight out of prison. Good as that was, you might need to go back.”
Quicker than lightning he jumped from the bed and slapped her across her face twice. “You stupid bitch,” he yelled down at her where she lay on the floor holding a hand to her face. “Don’t you ever talk to me about going back to jail. You don’t know what I went through in there.”
Monique’s eyes filled with fear at his voice overflowed rage and venom. She grabbed her purse and fled from the room, afraid that he was going to beat her within an inch of her life.
Chapter 18
Rainy Days
A full week had passed since Devon and Chloe had brought Nia Simone Jamison home, and Anika still couldn’t shake the engaging sight of Deshawn lovingly holding his niece in his large, muscled arms. The image was locked into her memory, teasing her at odd moments of the day.
Sighing, Anika moved to look out the window of her bedroom. Her thoughts and feelings were waging war between her heart and her brain, her emotions and her sensibilities. Loving Deshawn and not trusting him was torturing her.
But then, it didn’t matter anymore because Deshawn was avoiding her like the plague. There was a noticeable change in him. Gone were the flirtatious remarks. Gone were the bawdy winks and lascivious comments. Gone were the words, be they true or false, of his love for her.
As much as she found him a nuisance, as much as she begged him to leave her alone, as much as she made claims to detest him, all of it had ceased. He came by for dinner and to see Nia but was always distant and polite to her. The chase had finally come to an end and Anika just assumed he found something, or someone, else to occupy his time. It just proved to her t
hat she had made the right decision. If his love had already faded into the distance, where would that have left her if she opened herself to him again?
Her eyes flickered and her heart skipped a beat when she saw Deshawn’s truck headed toward the house. “Ignore me?” she asked herself indignantly. “I don’t think so.”
Moving quickly, Anika stepped out of the sheer robe she wore over her naked and freshly showered body. Only respect for Chloe and Devon kept her from parading around the room like that. Instead she pulled on undergarments, a pair of pants and a beautiful white V-neck cashmere sweater that clung lovingly to her plump breasts and framed the delicate swell of her cleavage.
She brushed her teeth, cleansed her face, and applied her peach sheer lip gloss in record time before stepping barefoot and pretty out into the hall. “I’ll have him crawling at my feet,” Anika told herself, just as the front door swung open.
“Whassup, fam-a-lam?” Deshawn called out, just before his strong, masculine presence filled the foyer with raw sex appeal and charm.
Anika walked up to him with a sultry gait meant to hypnotize him with the motion of her hips. “Hey, Deshawn,” she greeted him softly, slipping her hands into the back pockets of the snug pants as she cocked her head coquettishly to the side and looked up at him.
Deshawn closed the door behind himself and looked at Anika’s face very briefly with distant eyes.
“Hey,” was all he said briefly before he walked past her, leaving nothing but the breeze as her companion in the foyer.
Anika’s left brow rose. Her eyes widened and her mouth shaped into an O as she swung around to watch his retreat into the kitchen.
“Hey?” she said sarcastically, before releasing a sharp breath filled with frustration. That coolness had been between them ever since the night they left the cottage.
So unlike the impassioned plea he had made about his undying love for her. So unlike his usual charming and flirtatious self.
At a slower, more contemplative pace Anika turned and retraced Deshawn’s steps into the kitchen. She was surprised to find Chloe and Devon already sitting at the table, little Nia in her mother’s arms. Deshawn was standing up, leaning against the island with a plate of food in his hand. “Good morning,” she greeted them, immediately moving to the sink to wash her hands.
“Morning,” Chloe and Devon answered in unison.
As Anika dried her hands with paper towel, she surreptitiously glanced at Deshawn and saw that he was looking out the patio door, still pointedly ignoring her. “Let me hold my goddaughter,” she said, crossing the floor to where Chloe sat to easily scoop the precious bundle into the curve of her arm.
“Uhm, there is nothing like the sweet smell of a baby,” Anika cooed, as she buried her nose in Nia’s neck. “Aren’t you the most beautiful little baby in the world?”
Nia’s eyes fluttered open and Anika looked down at eyes so like Chloe’s that it was eerie. Yet her complexion, already deeply bronzed, and her little features were clearly Devon’s, including the thick mat of straight jet-black hair. ‘I’m going to have to buy you a baby fur, maybe a sable to go with that hair,” Anika teased, laughing softly when Nia smiled up at her.
“Girl, hush,” Chloe told her, laughing.
“You know my Granny Bert says when babies smile they’re seeing an angel.”
Chloe’s hazel eyes caressed her daughter with tender devotion. “Maybe it’s my mama.”
“Or Nana Lil,” Devon added.
The sudden crash of glass caused everyone to turn and look at Deshawn. He smiled and shrugged. “It slipped,” he explained, before stooping to pick up the large shards of glass.
“Funny Deshawn. I thought you always had a firm grip on . . . things,” Anika said slyly to him, her words obviously containing a double entendre that she knew he could not ignore.
“Getting clumsy in my old age, I guess,” he answered briefly, his usual warmth and charm lacking.
He didn’t even look up from his task.
Anika turned away from him in a huff, missing the long look that passed between Chloe and Devon. “Little one, I can not wait to school you on men.”
Chloe and Devon exchanged an even longer look, this one more confused.
Nia began to root her pouting mouth toward Anika’s breast. “Oh no, this is where my godmother duties end,” she said, holding the baby away from her chest. “Chloe someone’s ready to eat.”
Chloe rose and held out her hands. “It is about that time.”
Anika handed the bundle over as Deshawn passed by on his way to dump the glass in the trash. Slashing her eyes at him, Anika felt devilish. “I’m equipped quite nicely but I’m afraid these beauties are more for a man’s pleasure than a baby’s feeding.”
“Ready, Dev?” Deshawn called out, wiping his massive hands on his work jeans.
Anika felt indignant and then felt immediately foolish for even feeling that way. So what if Deshawn had backed off? Wasn’t that exactly what she wanted?
∞
“Just the wench I wanted to meet.”
Anika’s body froze where she sat beside Cyrus on the wooden porch of his small store. She had stopped there on her way from Walterboro where she had done some grocery shopping for the house. Her intention had been to spend a little time with Cyrus and get Deshawn off her mind, certainly not to be confronted by one of his paramours.
Anika sat up on the edge of the rocking chair and then looked around. “Funny, I don’t see your mother anywhere,” Anika retaliated boldly, before locking eyes with the vamp.
Cyrus dropped his silver-covered head into his hand, smelling trouble with a big and bold T. “Ladies,” he began.
Poochie held up one taloned hand. “Hold up . . . hold up. If I ain’t know no better I’d think you callin’ my mama a wench,” she spat. The anger and jealousy she had for Anika was in her eyes.
“Poochie, get from here with dat foolishness. Go on back to the diner,” Cyrus told her, rising to point his gnarled finger across the street.
Anika’s eyes raked over the woman, taking in it all, the dyed blond hair, tight-fitting clothes, and bad attitude. Derision filled her face at what she saw and she sighed. “Look, what do you want?” she asked.
Perhaps he had resumed his dealings with this woman who was more ghetto than country. That would explain his lack of amorous feelings toward Anika. Maybe Poochie just wanted to let her in on their reconciliation. Anika swallowed back the pain at that thought.
“You ain’t all that, you know,” Poochie said maliciously, with the stereotypical head rolling and finger snapping at the bottom of the porch. “Why don’t you tell your man to stop calling me?”
“Oh, really?” Anika finally answered.
“Yes, really. Did you think he would leave all this alone?”
Anika watched with amused eyes and a hint of a smile at her lips as Poochie slowly turned as if showing off.
Cyrus released a low, agitated breath.
Anika uncrossed her leg. “Go away, little country girl, huh,” she countered calmly. This was all so sophomoric. She waved her fingers at her dismissively.
“Who is you?” Poochie screeched, marching up the steps toward Anika.
Anika quickly moved to her feet, preparing to wipe the dust off the porch with Poochie’s behind.
Cyrus stepped into her path. “Enough,” he roared, his eyes like steel as they bored into Poochie. “Pretend to be a lady even if you ain’t.”
Poochie stopped abruptly in front of him, petulant. “She called me out my name, Mr. Cyrus.”
“You started the mess. You was across that street at work and you should’ve stayed over there.”
Anika stepped up behind Cyrus and dwarfed his short stature. “You better be glad Mr. Cyrus is here or I’d really tell you something to hurt your feelings.”
“Anika,” he barked, turning his head sideways to look over his shoulder at her. “Leave it alone.”
Anika nodded slowly. “I’m going to hea
d on home now, Cyrus.”
The two women eyed each other with open hostility as Anika walked down the steps and over to Chloe’s SUV.
“You think you all that,” Poochie shouted behind her.
Anika shrugged. ‘You know I’m all that, so we got something in common,” she told the other woman, just as she pulled off. “Bye, Cyrus.”
Poochie stormed back over to Donnie’s, closing the screen door of the small restaurant behind her with an echoing slam.
Cyrus removed his damp handkerchief with a chuckle, “Boy, wait till everybody hears about dis. Yup, they sure missed a good one.”
∞
“What’s up with Deshawn and Anika?” Devon whispered to Chloe while she lay back in his arms, securely holding Nia against her chest.
“You tell me,” she said, knowing how close the twins were.
“My brother has not been his usual self around Anika. I’m not seeing the love he told me about.”
“I just noticed something this morning. I guess I’ve been kind of caught up with the baby.”
“He’s barely said ten words to her as far as I know.”
“Have you asked him about it?” she asked, laying Nia on her blanket atop the bed.
“Yeah, today at work. He just said he didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Maybe they had an argument, or maybe he’s doing what Anika has been begging him to do from the start—leave her alone. I don’t know but I’ll ask Anika about it tomorrow.”
Devon nuzzled his face in Chloe’s neck, inhaling deeply of the scent he would know in his dreams. “You’re right,” he agreed, his words mumbled against her soft skin.
He watched as she opened her pajama top and unsnapped her brassier to expose one chocolate mound swollen with milk. Never had he seen a more beautiful sight as his wife nursed his daughter and softly hummed a lullaby to her.
“Who knew that one day I would be this happy with you?” he mused, a smile hinting at his supple lips.
“We used to fight like cats and dogs,” Chloe added. “Remember when we almost crashed outside your house?”
“Or when you and Nana Lil came back from Charleston and we argued over the spilled tea?”
Heavenly Match Page 20
