by Zuri Day
The tense moment seemed to last an eternity, but only seconds had passed before Ariel’s whimsical voice filled the air as she rushed up to the group. “Eden! Oh, my gosh, is this your whole family?” Ariel looked between those standing in the semicircle. “I’m so glad to meet you all, so glad you came out.” Without waiting for introductions, Ariel turned to Phyllis. “You’ve got to be her mother. Not only do you have the same facial features, but your aura is just as bright and sunny as your daughter’s.” Ariel closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Your very essence is amazing.”
Eden laughed at Phyllis’s barely veiled expression of confusion but didn’t feel now was the time to tell her mother that Ariel was an aura-seeing fairy channeler who believed that in another life she’d been married to Galileo. Alex excused himself from the group, and Eden introduced Ariel to everyone. After Ariel said her good-byes and Eden had pointed her mom and Bridgett in the direction of the tai-chi room, she turned to Jansen. “Okay, lover, what would you like to see next?”
“The exit,” Jansen said, unsmiling.
Eden grabbed Jansen’s hand and led him to her office. After closing the door, she turned to him. “I’m sorry about that,” she said.
“I don’t like him.”
“Alex is just a big flirt, Jansen. He’s—”
“Don’t make excuses for his disrespectful behavior. A man putting his hand on another man’s woman, in front of him, is an invitation to trouble.” Eden put what she hoped was a calming hand on Jansen’s forearm. He brushed it off and walked to the other side of the room. “That man has no idea who he’s messing with.”
Eden walked over to Jansen. “Baby, Alex knows how I feel about you and why I come to work skipping with a smile on my face. He was just trying to get under your skin—that testosterone-chromosome thing that thrives on competition. I’ll talk to him about it—”
“I don’t want you to say a damn thing to him about me. Let me handle my business, baby.”
“That’s exactly what I don’t want to happen. Alex is my colleague, Jansen, nothing more. I don’t know what possessed him to act like he did, but it won’t happen again. It is my desire to be a part of this center for a long time, which means you and Alex are going to have to find a way to coexist.” Eden took a deep breath and noticed the stern expression that still graced Jansen’s face. She hugged him from behind and laid her head on his strong, wide back. “Please, baby. Let it go . . . okay?”
Jansen turned and hugged her. “Okay, baby.” He kissed her forehead. “For you, I’ll chill out.”
They walked out of Eden’s office and back to the main lobby area. Jansen looked out and saw Michael sitting by the stage. After he kissed her cheek and went to join him, Eden made a beeline for the kitchen, where out of the corner of her eye she’d seen Alex heading. It was time to give someone a piece of her mind!
51
Eden walked up to Alex and Christina, who were chatting amicably while sharing chips from the same paper bowl. “Excuse me, Alex, a word, if I may?” They’d barely made it back to his office before she closed to the door and angrily reeled around. “What in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing?”
Alex remained calm, his demeanor unruffled. “Call me touchy-feely, but I didn’t see any harm in embracing a colleague. It wasn’t like I kissed you or patted your rear.” And I want to do both, believe me. “I don’t think a man who was secure in himself and his relationship would have had a problem with it.”
“Alex, I don’t want to argue about this, and I don’t want there to be problems with you and the man I love. It’s true that you and I have grown closer during these weeks that we’ve worked shoulder to shoulder on this event. And while I feel comfortable with your innocent physical displays, Jansen is not. So because we will continue to have these types of functions and other social occasions that may involve you and Jansen being in the same vicinity, I’d like to know you’ll both be adult enough to . . . get along.”
“But, Eden, you know me. I’m expressive, and often my hands are a part of that. I’ll place my hand on your arm, squeeze your hand, or tweak your cheek—it’s nothing! What kind of jerk—” Eden cleared her throat. “All right,” he continued, his hands raised in surrender. “I’m sorry for touching you in front of your boyfriend. In the future I’ll keep a respectable distance and my hands to myself.”
Eden let out a breath of relief. “Thank you.”
The next two hours went by without a hitch. Phyllis and Kathryn had had their massages, and after initially balking, were now sitting in a beginner yoga class. Michael was talking with the percussionist of the band who’d just played, and Bridgett had gone in search of her favorite thing these days . . . food. Eden was talking with Ariel when she felt a pair of large, strong hands grip her shoulder.
“Hey, you,” she said, giving him a wink and an air kiss. “We were just talking about you.”
“All good, I hope.”
“What else is there?” Ariel asked, her green eyes sparkling as she looked from Jansen to Eden and back again.
“Ariel said that even without a uniform she would have guessed you to be law enforcement or some type of security. She also said she thought she could best you at the target range.”
Jansen’s eyes widened. “What? A woo-woo shooting expert?”
Ariel laughed and told him about her country roots. “I can knock off a cola can from fifty feet,” she boasted. “Blindfolded,” she added with a lyrical laugh.
“Ha! Sounds like I’d have my work cut out for me,” Jansen said. “Maybe you can join Eden and me when she goes for her shooting lessons.”
“Oh, no. I’ll leave the fun with fire power up to you guys.”
Jansen asked Ariel what types of guns she’d used, and they continued chatting about kick, recoil, and other firearm verbiage of which Eden wasn’t privy. Sounds Greek to me. She looked to her side and saw Alex approaching with Christina. Well, speak of the devil . . . .
Jansen saw Alex seconds after Eden, and the smile he wore disappeared.
“Jansen,” Alex began as soon as he reached the trio. “I need to apologize for my earlier actions. While I did not intend to upset you, your reaction proved otherwise.” Jansen cut his eyes from Alex to Eden. “We’ll undoubtedly be seeing each other in the future. I don’t want there to be any hard feelings or bad blood between us. So I wanted to apologize, and I also wanted you to introduce you to my friend, Christina Montague.”
Jansen hesitated only briefly before extending his hand. “It’s all good.”
52
Eden, Phyllis, Bridgett, and one of Jansen’s sister-in-laws joined Kathryn in the large, airy kitchen of her Long Beach home. The men, which included Michael, Jansen, and Jansen’s brothers, gathered in the dining room around a mean, competitive domino game. Their trash talking filtered in and out of the women’s conversation, which bounced between food, movies, yesterday’s health fair, and now . . . men.
“Girl, I hope you don’t think your dating Jansen came as a surprise,” Phyllis said, pulling the potato and vegetable casserole she’d assembled out of the oven. “You can’t keep anything from your mother.”
“Obviously,” Eden replied. When the evening before had come and gone without Phyllis saying anything about what she’d seen at the center, Eden knew her mother hadn’t been surprised. She’d believed it to be mother’s intuition. Now she knew it was just Michael’s big mouth. “That boy gets on my nerves!”
Kathryn and Phyllis shared a look between them. Neither felt it necessary to tell Eden that Jansen had been the first one to spill the beans, having shared the news about his and Eden’s first date. Kathryn had promptly called Phyllis, overjoyed that what she’d wanted for years was finally happening—that her son would wake up and see that Eden was one of the good ones. Michael’s tattletale phone call had come about a week later.
“What difference does it make?” Bridgett asked, eating almost as much
of the salad as what went into the bowl. “I’ll tell anything moving or breathing that Michael is my man. In fact, I’m thinking about taking out a wedding announcement in USA Today.” When three pairs of wide eyes turned in her direction, she added, “Just kidding.”
“Well, just for the record,” Kathryn said as she basted a rump roast in its own seasoned juices, “I couldn’t be happier. I could do worse for a daughter-in-law.”
“Ha! That sounded like a backhanded compliment, Miss Kathryn.”
“Wasn’t meant to be, child. I’ve known you since you were knee-high to a grasshopper; that you’re one of my best friend’s daughters is a bonus. Let that boy step out of line one time, and we’ll be on him so fast it will make his head spin. He’d better treat you right, act like he’s got some brought-upsy.”
Eden thought back to the night before and how Jansen had treated her. He’d been “up” all right, almost half the night, and that he’d been anything but gentlemanly was why Eden’s body seemed to tingle still. She’d been so pleased that Alex’s health-fair antics hadn’t been mentioned, that Jansen had indeed put the incident behind him. Or maybe that was what had fueled him, and why Jansen had sexed her to within an inch of her life—branding her time and again, thrust after thrust.
In the dining room, bones were being slammed, smacked, and spun on the table.
“Take this, my brothah,” Jansen’s younger brother howled as he put down the double six and got thirty points. “You know the boss man rules. All y’all getting ready to sing Donald Byrd. Fallin’ like dominoes—ha!”
“Man, shut up,” Jansen replied, placing a double five on the board and increasing his lead over his sibling. “Your butt has the fewest points of anyone sitting here.”
When the men around the table laughed, Michael chimed in. “Don’t let ’em get you down, son. Because they’re getting ready to be right where you are.” Michael played his last bone, a double trey that locked the board and clinched the game. “Lost!”
Groans and curses dotted the trash talk as the men pushed all the dominoes into the bone pile and started a new game. As Jansen reached for his bones, he glanced up and caught Eden and his mother sharing a laugh. His heart clenched and filled his body with love for her. She belongs here, he thought, remembering how his mother had often babysat her when she was six, seven years old. How he and she would work puzzles together before it became uncool for him to hang out with someone’s kid sister. Back in the day, he hadn’t wanted her anywhere around. Now he never wanted her to leave.
Bridgett joined them, and now both Michael and Jansen seemed more preoccupied with what was going on in the kitchen than the domino game. Michael watched as Eden put a hand on Bridgett’s stomach. Yeah, that’s my seed growing in there, he mused as his chest swelled with pride. I’m getting ready to be a father. He couldn’t wait.
Jansen followed Eden into her condo, using his foot to kick the door closed while his hands balanced containers of sock-it-to-me cake. Eden had run ahead of him to use the restroom, a testament to all of Kathryn’s spicy, nonalcoholic sangria tea she’d drank that afternoon.
“That feels better,” she said, joining Jansen in her bedroom. He’d already pulled off his shoes, jeans, and shirt and now lazily gazed into the dresser mirror, eying his five-o’clock shadow. Eden stripped off her tan jeans, jeweled T-shirt, and bra and donned a cotton baby-doll lounging dress that hit midthigh. She slipped into a pair of fuzzy yellow house shoes, pulled her hair back into a ponytail, and headed for the kitchen. “You want to start the movie while I warm up the cake?”
Jansen swatted her behind as she passed him. “Sounds like a plan.”
Moments later they sat cuddled up on Eden’s chenille divan, eating divinely moist cake with warm glaze. In between bites they shared kisses and laughed at the antics of Paul Mooney and others in the Robert Townsend classic, Hollywood Shuffle. In the month they’d seriously dated, watching these urban classics was just one of many things Eden and Jansen had discovered they both enjoyed. The one-thousand-piece puzzle they’d recently purchased—and that now lay spread out on a card table in one of Jansen’s guest rooms—was another. They both were suckers for sweets and loved dogs, nature, and the Lakers. They also relished making love. Jansen had always been insatiable; for Eden, nightly loving had been an acquired taste.
“Mmmm, look at that,” Jansen purred, gently brushing a glaze-tipped fork across Eden’s barely covered nipple. “I’ve gotten glaze on my baby.” He continued to lightly graze the fork over her peak until it hardened into a dark chocolate pebble.
“You sure have,” Eden eked out through a suddenly constricted windpipe and awakening nana.
“Well, I can’t have that,” he whispered, smoothly setting the saucer on the coffee table in front of them. “Let me . . . clean that up.”
Jansen dipped his head inside her wide bodice, his tongue immediately finding its goal. He flicked the nipple back and forth with his tongue, swirled it around the areola and then sucking her full into his hot, wet mouth. Eden gasped with the impact of his mouth on her breast. Jansen kissed his way up her neck, eased the dress off her shoulders, and gave attention there before licking the side of her face, nibbling her earlobe, and placing wet kisses along her temple.
Then he reached for the fork, swirled it into the glaze. Now Eden knew why he’d requested she pour extra on his slice. She held her breath and watched the gooey substance come toward her, watched in awe as Jansen lowered the fork to the other nipple and repeated the process. Eden squirmed and moaned, reaching for Jansen’s T-shirt, wanting to feel his flesh.
Jansen’s laugh was throaty, knowing. “Patience, little garden. I like to take my time with dessert.” He eased the dress over Eden’s head, directed her to lie back, and then slowly rid her of the beige bikini panties she wore. His pupils blackened with desire, and for a moment he simply stared at her. Eden grew more heated under his intense perusal, her mouth watering in anticipation of things to come. Jansen dipped the fork in the glaze over and again and, like an artist, began to paint Eden’s body with the sweet treat—her breasts, stomach, inner thighs . . . and elsewhere. Then his tongue gave special attention to everywhere the fork had been.
Finally it was Eden’s turn. Jansen stood and removed his shirt and boxers. His arousal sprang up like a python—stood at attention like a private greeting brass. He stood beside the divan, waited, and watched to see what Eden would do. She was unsure at first, but then, smiling, she rose to her knees, ran her fingers through the glaze, and rubbed them up and down his engorged shaft. Soon, as Jansen had so expertly demonstrated, her tongue followed the frosted trail as she licked, sucked, nibbled, and squeezed.
“Mmmm,” Jansen growled. “Damn,” he barely whispered, followed by a hissing sound as Eden took in as much as she could. He reached for her hair, released it from its holder, and then began to massage her head as she massaged . . . his head. Jansen’s legs began to shake, and Eden, emboldened with the power she wielded, turned toward the wall, grabbed the back of the couch, and commanded, “Now, Jansen. I want to feel you inside me. Hard. Deep. Show me what you’re working with.”
Her commanding tone turned Jansen all the way on. He spread her wide and plunged inside her with one long thrust—hard and deep as she had ordered. He spent the rest of the night showing her what he was working with—and then some.
53
After taking two days off to spend time with her mother, Eden returned to work. She was barely in the door when an unexpectedly early Ariel pounced.
“He’s gorgeous! Eden! You didn’t tell me you were dating a god!”
Eden laughed. “Okay, Ariel, I admit he’s handsome, but that’s a bit much.”
“Eden, he’s—”
“Amazing,” they both said together and then laughed.
“Well, he is!” Ariel walked to the kitchen with Eden.
“Speaking of amazing, where was Travis? I just now realized he wasn’t there, that I have yet to meet this artiste w
ho has captured your heart.”
“He’s in a forest near Seattle attending a rainbow gathering/sun dance.” When Eden cast Ariel a questioning look, she continued. “It’s a communal meeting that involves meditation, visualization, and focus on peace, love, harmony, freedom, and community, among other things. But back to your guy—wow, what a bod. No wonder you’re willing to forego your reservations and handle his gun.”
“Ariel!”
The sound of Ariel’s tinkling laughter trailed behind her as she returned to her desk. Eden finished fixing her tea, shaking her head and smiling at Ariel’s bawdy comment. Ariel was like the little sister Eden had never had. She was a bit flighty, and a tad extreme, but Eden knew the freckle-faced redhead had a heart of gold and emitted love like sunbeams wherever she went.
Eden entered her office and immediately began tackling a massive to-do list. She began with her e-mails, responding to the hordes she’d received from satisfied attendees of the weekend’s health fair. She crafted a thank-you letter and had it sent out to all the practitioners, chefs, artists, and others who’d participated, and sent a special package to the City of Venice for their stellar cooperation throughout the day. The package included gift certificates for all of the Zen Den’s offerings to be given to the employees at the mayor’s discretion. Next she went through her regular mail, sorting from “important” to “file,” from “pending” to “trash.” Before she knew it, it was noon, and Alex was knocking at her door.
“I was beginning to think you might not come back.” His smile was easy and his stride confident as he entered her office and sat down in a chair facing her desk.
