Strong Heat

by Niobia Bryant

  “I didn’t want her then and I damn sure don’t want her now,” Kael drawled, shifting in his recliner and crossing his ankle over his knee.

  “I know that,” Lisha assured him. “But back then that heifer had me riled up. . . .”

  Chapter 10

  Way back in the day

  Lisha rolled her eyes as she swatted away the hand massaging her shoulder. The arm around the back of the front bench seat of the car was bad enough, but she wasn’t trying to have her right breast “accidentally” groped or stroked while trying to watch Foxy Brown at the drive-in movie theater. Looking over her shoulder in the darkness she saw Junie and her date damn near stretched out on the rear seat, kissing and doing only God knows what.

  As she was turning back around, her date, Tyler, leaned in.

  “You too fine to act so ugly,” he whispered in her ear.

  Lisha shut one eye and made a face at the smell of his breath before she climbed from the car.

  “Hey, where you going?” he asked.

  “Bathroom,” she lied, before closing the door of the Cadillac.

  She made her way through the rows of cars and walked toward the light of the concession stand as the cool September night winds whipped around her.

  Add no more double dates with Junie to my never-to-do-again-list.

  For the last two weeks she had moped around her apartment, still bothered by Kael and his lies to her. She barely knew the man, but it just hurt like crazy that he kissed her like that and said the things he said to her while he was also busy sniffing under the skirts of his sister’s friend.

  She had been so embarrassed by it the day in his father’s yard that she didn’t care if he thought she had a date that night. She was only trying to save face. His jumping up with his little slick comment to his father meant nothing to her.

  I guess they are all just the same, huh?

  She didn’t know what he meant and didn’t care.

  And now when they did encounter each other during his father’s therapy, she made as big a point of avoiding him as he did avoiding her. Did it stop her entire body from still reacting to him at the very sight—and sometimes thought—of him? No. Not at all.

  A man walked up to the stand shaking a cigarette out of his pack of Marlboros. Lisha stepped in his path. “Can I have one?” she asked, pushing her hair from her face.

  “Hey, no problem, baby girl,” he said, the wind causing his massive Afro to sway back and forth on his head.

  She took the cigarette and placed it between her glossy lips as he cupped his hand around his lighter to light her cigarette and then his own. “Thank you,” she said after a deep inhale.

  Lisha didn’t smoke and barely knew how, but she needed something to do with her hands as she stood around waiting for the double date to be over.

  “If my girl wasn’t with me I’d ask you to watch the movie with me,” he said.

  Lisha eyed him through the stream of smoke she released. “Do all men look for more sweets while their hand’s already in somebody else’s cookie jar?” she snapped.

  He held up his hands and took two steps back from her.

  Lisha turned and ignored him, smoking his cigarette. She was just thankful the movie was near the end. She wanted to go home, take a long hot bath and get ready for church in the morning. She finished her cigarette and leaned against the side of the stand to watch the rest of the movie.

  Before she walked back to the car she purchased a pack of Freshen-up gum from the stand. When she got back to the car her date was sitting in the front seat staring forward while Junie and her date were still lost in each other in the backseat.

  She unwrapped one of the squares of gum and popped it into her mouth before handing him one. “Here you go,” she said.

  He eyed her, the gum and then waved it away before focusing his attention back to the screen. Lisha just shrugged and counted down the last few seconds of the movie before he finally removed the speaker hanging on the driver-side window and cranked the car.

  “The movie over?” Junie asked, raising her head up with her short hair in total disarray.

  Neither Lisha nor her date answered her and neither had anything to say as he drove back toward their apartment just down the road on Highway 63. As soon as he parked, Lisha opened the door. “Thank you—”

  He waved his hand at her dismissively.

  Lisha swung her door shut hard before tapping on the rear passenger window. “Junie, we’re home,” she said.

  Moments later Lisha stepped aside as the car door swung open and Junie climbed out, smoothing down her shirt over her hips. “Bye, Gary,” she said.

  Tyler sped off from them with a nasty squeal of his tires.

  “Didn’t work out, huh?” Junie asked as they made their way up the stairs.

  “Bad breath and groping hands do not a good date make,” Lisha said.

  “I thought you would like him,” Junie said, bumping her hip against her cousin’s. “Sorry.”

  “No problem. I needed to get out the house anyway and I did get to see all of the movie . . . unlike other folks,” she teased, reaching up to smooth her cousin’s flyaway hairs back down.

  “I’m glad you feel a little better,” she said.

  Lisha pulled out her key and unlocked her apartment door, turning on the lights when she entered. “A little bit,” she said as she kicked off her shoes and loosened the button on the skintight jeans she wore.

  Junie followed her inside, heading to the kitchen to grab a bottle of red wine and two goblets. “Can I ask you something?”

  Lisha folded her body onto the sofa and accepted the full glass of wine to sip.

  “You ever judge me?” Junie asked.

  Lisha swallowed her wine before setting the glass on the coffee table. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m a little free-spirited with my life and you’ve sworn off sex until you’re married, so like do you ever judge me and think I’m too fast or something?” Junie asked, coming around the sofa to sit on the opposite end.

  “Nope,” Lisha said. “I love you just the way you are.”

  “But we’re so different,” Junie stressed.

  “So does this mean you judge me like I’m a prude or something?” Lisha asked, rising to tuck one of her feet beneath her bottom.

  “I don’t judge, but I do wonder how you do it,” Junie admitted before she took a sip. “Like sex is so good and you’re twenty-five and you have never . . . like never . . .”

  “Never,” Lisha assured her.

  “You know you’re like a unicorn or Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and shit, right?” Junie asked.

  “But you know that the more I deal with men and see the shit they do, the way they lie and mess up, the more I know I’m doing the right thing,” she said, her heart aching a bit at the thought of Kael.

  Junie bit the tip of her nail as she glanced up at the ceiling and then back at her family. “But who’s to say the man you marry won’t lie or mess up . . . and then what, Lisha?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted softly.

  “But what if you wait and your husband is horrible in bed. Then what?”

  “I don’t know,” she stressed again. “But I do know that I am going to wait for that man that values me enough to propose. And what’s wrong with that?”

  Junie set her goblet down and scooted down the sofa to hug her cousin close. “Oh, nothing at all. I just don’t want you disappointed.”

  “Shit, me either,” Lisha spouted.

  Junie laughed as she sat back.

  They fell into a comfortable silence, drinking their wine and lost in their own thoughts.

  “I do want to get married one day too, you know,” Junie said.

  Lisha’s face filled with surprise. “And have babies?” she asked, her voice filled with wonder.

  Junie grabbed the bottle of wine and topped off their glasses. “Maybe one,” she said. “But that’s it.”

  “But how will you fig
ure out which man is your Mr. Right if you don’t settle down with anybody?” Lisha asked in as polite a way as she could.

  “Because the right one will make me not want anyone else,” she said assuredly.

  And Lisha thought of Kael. Since she’d met the man she hadn’t been able to muster up even a flirtation for another man. No one compared to him in her eyes. No one.

  “I want a bunch of kids,” Lisha said, purposefully steering her thoughts away from him. “Like five or six even.”

  Junie’s face filled with distaste. “Oh, no-no-no-no-no-no.”

  “Why not?” Lisha asked.

  “Girl, you’ll be changing diapers, cooking and cleaning up behind them for the rest of your life.”

  Lisha’s eyes lit up. “And loving them, and teaching them and watching them to see what kind of adults they become,” she said with excitement. “I was an only kid and it was not fun.”

  “Hey, I’m an only child too, but we had each other.” Junie raised her glass.

  Lisha nodded and toasted to her. “Yes, but even you went home and it was still me playing with my dolls all alone,” she said, thinking back on it. “No, I want my kids to have each other’s back and look out for each other and be close.”

  “You are going to make some man a really good wife and a bunch of kids a really good mother,” Junie said with an earnest expression.

  Lisha smiled in thanks. But her doubts were there. Would she ever find love and make all of her dreams of a happily ever after come true?

  Two days later, Kael and his ranch hand, Jim, were busy checking the heifers they bred with one of the two bulls a month ago. He was glad for the break in the humidity and heat of summer, particular with the rather intrusive palpitation method of checking the herd. Having his arm deep in a cow’s rectum up to his armpit was necessary so he could decide how many of the open cows he would sell to avoid the cost of caring for them all winter when they weren’t going to produce a calf next year.

  Gently easing his arm and hand free, he shook his head at Jim as he carefully removed the arm’s length glove and dumped it into the trash. He wasn’t discouraged; his experience in cattle ranching let him know that cows were not that fertile, and so far he was at an eighty percent conception rate.

  “How’s it going?”

  Placing another glove on his right arm, Kael looked up in surprise at his father standing at the gate of the corral with his cane. “How’d you get here?”

  “I drove,” he said with spunk as he leaned forward against the gate.

  “By yourself?” Kael asked, coming around the front of the cattle to walk over to the wooden fence.

  “Yup,” Logan said, his eyes squinted as he watched Jim check the next cow. “How many so far?”

  “Just over eighty percent,” Kael answered, turning to watch Jim as well before turning back to his father.

  “My doctor approved me to drive, son,” Logan said before Kael could open his mouth. “I had an appointment just this morning.”

  Kael nodded. “I forgot that was this morning.”

  “Son, you and your sister have to stop worrying about me. My hip is doing good. My therapy with Lisha is done in two weeks. You have your ranch to focus on and I’m shipping your sister back to her husband full-time. Trust me, I’m cool.”

  Kael thought of Lisha at the mention of her name and that now-familiar mix of anger, jealousy and desire filled him. He knew he had no right to not want her with any other man when he was clear on his decision not to get serious with her, but he couldn’t lie. The thought of that irked him to the core.

  “It’s time for the old dog to come off the porch because driving is not all the doctor cleared me for, son,” Logan said with a roguish wink and a noise he made with his teeth. “Me and my truck both gonna ride tonight.”

  Kael kicked at a dried cow patty in the dirt. “Aw, man. Come on, man.”

  “Hey, you may not care that your Johnson stays dry as the Sahara lately, but I’m going to take mine for a dip in a nice sweet pool, buddy,” he assured his son.

  “You don’t know what I do with my Johnson,” Kael said, shifting his hat back on his head as he looked up at the afternoon sun.

  Logan just grunted.

  They both looked on as Jim gave a thumbs-up that the cow he just checked was pregnant.

  “Sure gonna miss Lisha,” Logan said, giving his son a sidelong glance.

  Kael just shrugged.

  Logan grunted again.

  “How many more?” Kael called out.

  “Last one, boss,” Jim called back.

  Logan shifted his tall frame on his cane. “I’m real proud of you, son,” he said, looking around the property. “Real proud.”

  Kael nodded as he reached over with his fist to lightly tap the top of the hand his father used to grip the railing. “Thank you. You taught me to work hard for what I want. I learned by your example.”

  Logan blinked rapidly as he looked down at his boot. “Good boy. Real good, son,” he said.

  Kael looked at his father curiously, swearing he could see a little wetness in his eyes. He stepped up and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. His father swatted him off and Kael grinned, knowing that would be his reaction.

  “You boys done here?” Logan asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Kael said.

  “Come on, show me your house.” He turned and walked away with a limp, not waiting to see if his son was going to do as he asked.

  Kael helped Jim finish cleaning up and getting the cattle watered before finally walking the distance to the house. His steps faltered at seeing Lisha standing on the porch with his father. He eyed her, liking the way she had her hair straight and framing her face.

  He could tell from the look on her face that she didn’t want to be there but was acquiescing for his father. Stiffening his back, he walked over to the house and climbed the porch as she avoided even looking at him. Moving past her to unlock the door, he hated how the scent of her seemed to make him feel more alive.

  Kael opened the door and stepped inside, needing the space between them widened. He removed his Stetson. “You haven’t seen it since I did all the work,” he said to his father who stepped inside, nodding in approval.

  “You took my advice on the fireplace, huh?” Logan asked, walking over to touch and inspect the new deep cherry stain Kael had put on it.

  “Sure did.”

  “All new windows?” Logan asked, walking across the large expanse of the room to enter the hall leading to the kitchen.

  “No, I didn’t need to right now. Some were in good shape,” he said, following behind his father and leaving Lisha standing in the hall by the front door.

  He looked back over his shoulder just as she reached out to lightly touch the wall where they shared that first heated kiss.

  “Beautiful kitchen, son,” Logan called down the hall. “Now you just need a woman to cook in it for you.”

  Lisha looked up. She dropped her hand and looked away at the sight of Kael looking back at her even as his steps carried him toward the large and airy kitchen.

  “I don’t need the hassle,” he said, before looking forward. “Trust me.”

  His father was inspecting the used stove and refrigerator he’d purchased. “They look damn near new,” he said.

  Kael set his hat on the counter and looked on as his father finished walking the entire length of the spacious kitchen.

  “Plenty of room for a big family, son.”

  “One day,” he said, looking back down the hall at Lisha still standing rooted in the same spot.

  Logan grunted. “Lisha,” he called out.

  Kael looked away as she turned and made her way down the hall.

  “My son needs a woman’s touch in here,” Logan said. “What would you do?”

  Lisha looked surprised and then her face closed up.

  Why is she mad?

  Kael watched as she walked around the empty kitchen slowly. “Well, if any other man than Kael own
ed this house and that man was smart enough to ask me my opinion, then I would do bright colors to break up the wood floors and cabinets,” she said, before casting a little glance over her shoulder that was sarcastic.

  Kael had to fight the urge to storm across the room and literally turn her over his knee. “Well, since it is my house and I didn’t ask, I’ll wait for the opinion of the woman I do ask.”

  “Uh-oh,” Logan said, shaking his head as he leaned back against the counter.

  Lisha whirled. Her bright eyes flashed even more brightly as she glared at him. “Yes, and I’m sure the particular woman you have in mind will make it look just as tawdry as her makeup and just as nasty as her chicken.” Lisha finished her words high-strung.

  Kael threw his hands up in the air. “What?” he asked, his face showing his confusion and annoyance.

  “Your ass, negro,” Lisha snapped, walking out the kitchen.

  Kael looked over at his father at Logan’s chuckle. “What the hell is she talking about? What is she mad for?”

  Logan pointed his finger at his chest. “You asking me?” he asked. “Now that don’t make sense.”

  “Women are crazy,” he said, his brows crinkled.

  “Sometimes,” Logan agreed. “And sometimes a man drives her crazy.”

  “Man, hell with it,” Kael said, going out the other entrance of the kitchen that led directly into the dining room.

  His father followed behind him and they finished going through each of the rooms on the first level, including a den, guest bathroom and a small room Kael planned to use for an office.

  Lisha had replanted herself in her spot by the door, making it clear to him she cared nothing about his house. It wasn’t until Kael led his father to the staircase in the hall between the living room and den that she quietly moved to climb the stairs behind his father. Her eyes stayed locked on Logan as he carefully used an up and down motion with each step.

  “Any pain, Mr. Strong?” she asked, midway up the stairs.

  “No,” he said. “No pain.”

  They reached the top and Lisha remained by the door to the hall closet as he and his father walked in and out of each of the five bedrooms. “Which one is yours?” Kael asked his father.