Tender to His Touch

by Adrianne Byrd

  Beverly peppered kisses across his chest while he struggled to catch his breath. She was a good woman—a sweet woman. Lucius definitely wanted to see her again after this weekend. Maybe we can work something out in the morning, he thought as he drifted back off to sleep.

  However, when he woke up again, Beverly was long gone.

  Chapter 11

  Two weeks later

  It was near closing time at Hoops. Beverly felt her patience drawing near an end with a Buckhead socialite who kept griping about the dress Beverly designed to her specifications. Of course, it didn’t help that every time Ms. Gerald came in for another fitting, ten or fifteen pounds had found its way onto the woman’s large frame.

  “Are you sure that you let this out?” Ms. Gerald snapped, frowning. “It shouldn’t be this tight. If I sit down, it’s gonna split straight up the back.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Beverly rolled her eyes and started removing pins…again.

  The bell over the shop’s door jingled and Beverly glanced back over her shoulder to see Clarence strolling in wearing a sharp tailored Boateng suit. Just the sight of her friend caused a smile to break across Beverly’s face.

  “There’s my girl,” Clarence said, switching his hips toward the back of the store. When his eyes swung to Ms. Gerald, he grimaced. “Now, Alicia, you know you need to start pushing back from the dinner table.”

  Beverly winced and then waited for the inevitable explosion, but to her surprise Alicia just smiled while her face reddened with embarrassment. “Maybe I have put on a couple of pounds.”

  “A couple?” Clarence said, jabbing a hand on his hips. “Giiirrrlll, you better come off that cloud of denial and deal with reality.” He walked up to her and pinched her side. “This is definitely more than an inch. Oookaaay?”

  Beverly bit and chewed at her bottom lip to keep herself from laughing aloud. Clarence could clearly get away with saying things that she couldn’t and she loved him for it. By the time Clarence finished writing Ms. Gerald a reality check, the woman left Hoops with her dress and a vow to call Weight Watchers.

  “I swear I should hire you on as a partner,” Beverly said, locking the shop’s door and flipping a sign to let people know that she was closed.

  “Pleeeease. You couldn’t afford me.” He chuckled and brushed at invisible lint on his suit.

  “So why are you so dressed up this evening?” she asked, marching to the back of the store while her evening employees finished cleaning up.

  “It’s Friday night. You know how I get down. I ain’t interested in wasting my weekends with popcorn and Netflix like someone I know.”

  “I’m going to ignore that comment,” she said, settling behind her office desk.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Clarence pushed tape measures, beads and strips of lace out of another chair and sat down. “You should join me tonight. Cassandra Wilson is playing over at Sambuca. You know that place packs in a higher grade of brothers on the regular.”

  Beverly blocked out everything he said after Sambuca. Instead she was transported back to the night she and Lucius danced cheek to cheek to “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes” and then, of course, what came afterward in her hotel suite. A soft smile touched her lips.

  “Please tell me that smile means you’ll come?”

  She blinked and then frowned. “What?”

  “Uh-uh, sister girl. Don’t tell me that I’m up in here talking to myself,” Clarence snapped.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, giving him puppy-dog eyes to sell the apology. “I was just thinking about…some business stuff.”

  “Business? Ha!” He made a dramatic show of rolling his eyes. “Now. I guess I have stupid bitch stamped across my forehead now, right? You’re not sitting there twitching in your seat, twirling your hair and smiling because you’re thinking about anything that has to do with business. I know what a sex trance looks like.”

  “A what?” she barked, trying to sound incredulous but instead sounding guilty as hell.

  “Don’t play me. You know what a sex trance is.” Clarence leaned forward and propped his elbow up on the corner of the desk. “It’s that distant look and goofy smile that hits a person’s face when they’re remembering some good nookie.”

  Beverly’s face burned with embarrassment.

  Clarence started snapping his fingers and then pointing at her. “Aha! I knew it! You’re still thinking about ol’ boy!”

  “I am not,” she lied and then suddenly got busy shuffling paper around.

  “Why you lying?” He laughed. “Ain’t no shame in reminiscing, girl. I do it all the time.” Clarence waved her off and crossed his legs. “But then I pick up the phone and make myself an old-time booty call. If it was good once then it would be good again.”

  Beverly’s body tingled at the suggestion, but she willfully shook her head. “I am not making a booty call.”

  “And why not? From what you told me, clearly this Lucius guy knows how to tear up a G-spot. You keep telling me that you don’t want to be in a serious relationship so why not just have a special friend with certain benefits?”

  “I thought you were my special friend?” she joked.

  “If you had a few extra pieces and parts then maybe we could talk,” he quipped right back at her. “Until then I think you need to call Luscious Lucius, saddle up and get your rodeo on.”

  Even though there hadn’t been a single day since her school’s reunion that she didn’t think about her time with Lucius, Beverly stubbornly shook her head. She had made her decision the morning she’d walked out of that hotel room with Lucius still fast asleep. It was harder than she expected, which was the main reason why she had to do it.

  Falling in love was not an option. She’d been down that rocky road before and she still had the bruises on her heart to prove it. Who knows, maybe she was like her mother. When she loved, she loved hard—and there was a real dangerous possibility that she could fall in love with Lucius Gray.

  “Well, since I’m up here talking to myself again, I’ll just go on the prowl by my damn self again tonight,” Clarence said, standing.

  Beverly blinked out of her reverie again and flashed another apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. I’m just swamped,” she said, electing to stick by her thinking about business story.

  “Yeah, whatever.” Clarence leaned down, gave her two quick kisses on each cheek and turned toward the door. “But you know once you blow the top off of that celibacy box it’s harder to put it back on.”

  “Good night, Clarence.”

  “All right. Act like you don’t know what I’m talking about if you want to. You’ll see what I mean.”

  Beverly stared at the door long after he was gone, thinking.

  Later that evening, Beverly arrived home. It was the same house she was rewarded in the divorce. She kept telling herself that she was going to sell it, but so far she couldn’t bring herself to put it on the market. There were just too many memories—the same ones David ran away from.

  She shook her head and entered the cold house. Dropping her keys and purse on the foyer table, she shuffled through the day’s mail and then made a face when she saw the Netflix red envelope. “Damn you, Clarence.” She tossed the mail on the table and then headed up the stairs.

  Every night she tried her best to block out the cold chill, the stillness and the ghosts. Every night she failed. Upstairs, before entering her bedroom, Beverly stopped and then glanced at the room down at the other end of the hall—the same room that had always called out to her. It was the same room that made it impossible for her to ever be able to sell the house.

  “Pancakes! Pancakes!” Ruby cheered, making little bunny hops around the kitchen in her footie pajamas.

  “Then pancakes it is.” Lucius winked and tugged a chunk of her morning bushy hair.

  “And I want lots of syrup,” she said, rushing over to the refrigerator.

  “It’s in the cabinet, baby,” he told her as he grabbed all the necessary skillets. “But y
ou can hand me a couple of eggs out of there.”

  Ruby hopped right to it, loving being her daddy’s helper. Together they made big, fluffy golden pancakes smothered in maple syrup. Cooking was a ritual with them since Erica was never really known for her cooking…or cleaning.

  However, Lucius was awkward with everything else. His patience was often stretched thin with endless episodes of SpongeBob and iCarly and his manhood was often challenged when his little princess insisted on his wearing fake pink boas and strawberry-tinted lip gloss.

  Despite all that, Lucius was determined to show his little girl a good time. With his visitations becoming more and more erratic he had to make the precious few days that he did get with his daughter special. He was trying his best to make things work without dragging his ex to court. But if things kept going the way they were, he would have no choice but to get a judge to put Erica back in line. Plus, having Ruby over instantly filled his usually cold, lonely house with much-needed warmth and laughter. Not to mention it kept him from obsessively daydreaming about Beverly Turner.

  That morning when he’d awoken to find the bed empty and all her belongings gone, he was at first confused and then angry. Sure they had made a previous agreement, but he was offended that Beverly couldn’t even be bothered to stick around long enough to say goodbye. In a way, he felt used. The only thing that was missing was money being left on the nightstand.

  It didn’t stop there.

  Thinking about Beverly had affected his work. He was making an unusual amount of mistakes and had almost cost Keith Johnson’s widow from obtaining her much-deserved eight-figure settlement. It wasn’t like him to be so easily distracted and at times he even wondered why he was so upset anyway. He got exactly what he wanted: a wild weekend with no strings attached.

  Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if he had requested at least one string. The thought of never seeing Beverly Turner again bothered him. To not hear her laugh, to not see her smile and not feel her incredible body trembling and quaking beneath him—

  “Daddy, can we go to the zoo?” Ruby asked, tugging on his arm. “I want to see Yang Yang.”

  Lucius smiled. Yang Yang was one of the four panda bears at the Atlanta Zoo. Ruby loved pandas—always had.

  “Sure, we can go to the zoo this afternoon. I just need to swing by the off—” She frowned and he caught himself. “You know what? Scratch that. No work today.”

  “Yay!” She bounced around in her chair.

  After their late breakfast and a couple more episodes of SpongeBob, Lucius got ready for their day trip to the zoo. However, before they could leave, he had to conquer the near-impossible task of doing his daughter’s hair. What made it even more difficult was the fact that Ruby was extremely tender-headed. She was whining and flinching long before the brush touched her head.

  The end result was always a loose, messy ponytail that had quite a few wayward strands sticking every which way but loose. But she was clean and wearing clothes that matched. In his opinion that put him well ahead of the game.

  During the ride out to the zoo, Ruby chatted about everything from her new best friend at school, Penny, to whether or not Papa Andrew was going to buy her a puppy for her birthday. Lucius’s hands tightened on the steering wheel at hearing that Erica’s fiancé had now been elevated to Papa Andrew.

  It was the natural progression of things, he supposed, but it was hard for him to think of his daughter calling some other man daddy or papa.

  “When are you going to get married, Daddy?”

  The question was so out of the blue that Lucius was rendered speechless.

  “You don’t want to get married, Daddy?” she concluded when he hadn’t answered her.

  “Um. Well…” He cleared his throat. “I haven’t really given it any thought, sweetheart.”

  “How come?”

  Another cough. “Well, you know Daddy works a lot and—”

  “How come?” She crossed her legs in her seat.

  “So I can make a good living and uh, well, so I can support and buy you nice things.”

  “Oh,” Ruby said, sounding disappointed. “I thought it was because you don’t have a girlfriend.”

  Lucius laughed. “Well, there’s that, too.”

  “How come you don’t have a girlfriend?”

  Another round of sputtering ensued and then he came up with the same answer as before. “Well, you know Daddy works a lot…and there’s little time for, uh, Daddy to find a girlfriend.”

  Ruby’s face twisted in a confused frown. “Papa Andrew works and he says that he’s going to marry Momma.”

  Lucius’s hands tightened on the steering wheel again. Now his daughter was comparing him to another man. This definitely wasn’t good.

  “Don’t you get lonely, Daddy?”

  He glanced at her, surprised. Were her questions based on curiosity or observation? After staring into her large hazel eyes, his heart tugged at her open and honest concern. “Daddy is never lonely when you’re around,” he assured her.

  Her instant smile warmed his heart…until she said, “I still think you need a girlfriend.”

  “You do, do you?” He laughed.

  “Yep. That way you and Mommy can get married.”

  “To different people,” he clarified.

  Ruby nodded. “That way neither one of you will be lonely—when I’m not around.”

  Lucius shook his head. “You’re something else.”

  “I know!” She busted out into giggles. After Lucius found a parking spot at the zoo, they unbuckled their seat belts and started to scramble out of their seats. “What’s this?”

  Lucius glanced over to see his daughter holding up a shimmering gold earring. Beverly’s earring. A half smile sloped across his face as he held out his hand and Ruby plopped the gold jewel into his hand. “This…is an opportunity.”

  Chapter 12

  Wednesdays were normally slow days at Hoops and it was then that Beverly and her employees would perform inventory calculations, rearrange the floor and/or do some intense cleaning. Basically, it was just busy work. Clarence, whose hair salon was just a few doors down, dipped into the shop around lunchtime, carrying two plastic containers of his and Beverly’s favorite grilled salmon salad from Le Chez restaurant.

  “I’m here to rescue you,” he announced when he entered her office.

  Beverly looked up from her endless amount of paperwork and smiled. “You’re a lifesaver.”

  “That’s what they all say.” Clarence fluttered his long lashes and then set their food down on the corner of the desk while he removed his jacket. “You just make sure that you buy me a fabulous gift for Christmas next month. I got my eye on this gorgeous Louis Vuitton Bastille bag.”

  Beverly laughed. “Louis Vuitton? Girl, you better get your man to hook you up. I was thinking along the lines of a free manny and peddy.”

  “Hmmph. Cheap heifer.”

  “Whatever.” She cleaned a spot on her desk and then reached for her salad.

  “I come not only bearing good food, I got some gossip, girl.” He pulled out a magazine. “Word is music mogul Micah Ross is getting hitched.”

  “Really?” Beverly said. “You know he came to my class reunion a couple of weeks ago?”

  “I know. I’m still mad that you didn’t get me an autograph—at least from that fine-ass Justice Kane.”

  “You’re always mad.” Beverly looked around. “What—nothing to drink?”

  Clarence’s gaze raked her up and down. “Oh, no you didn’t.”

  Beverly turned toward the small personal refrigerator and pulled out two iced tea bottles. “Look at that. Bam! I got you,” she said, laughing.

  “Good thing or we would’ve just had to bust out some water up in here.”

  Beverly took the first bite of her food and moaned her approval.

  “If you moan like that over some food then I just know how you—”

  “Cut it out,” she warned with a sharp look.
r />   Clarence snickered. “Fine. I was just saying.”

  “So who is Micah Ross marrying?”

  “Some writer chick…Tamara Hodges, I think.”

  Beverly dropped her fork. “Get out of here. Are you for real?”

  Clarence frowned at her reaction. “What? You know her?”

  Beverly nodded while recalling the brief conversation she had with Tamara at Cork’s ladies’ room and, more importantly, her admitting her pregnancy. It wasn’t hard to draw a conclusion. “Wow. Micah and Tamara.” She shook her head. “Seems like a lot of people were hooking up at the reunion.”

  “Oh? Maybe at your twentieth they’ll just cut to the chase and call it an orgy party.”

  “My goodness. Don’t you ever quit?”

  “Well, one of us got to be scandalous. It’s how we keep balance in the world.”

  At the knock on her door, Beverly glanced up to Leslie, one of her part-time employees.

  “There’s someone here asking for you.”

  She frowned. “Who is it?”

  Leslie shrugged and walked away.

  Beverly glanced over at Clarence.

  “Good help is hard to find,” Clarence joked.

  She shook her head, took another bite of her salad and then went to go talk to a customer. However, the moment she walked into the front of the store, her eyes instantly zoomed in on Lucius, who was standing in the center of Hoops and scanning through a rack of clothes.

  Beverly stopped short and blinked, as if it would somehow erase what had to be a mirage—that is, until Lucius turned and smiled at her. “Lucius.”

  “Well, I’m glad that you still remember my name.”

  Leslie and the other employees started shifting curious glances their way.

  “What are you doing here?” she whispered, looking around and growing uncomfortable about what everyone might hear.

  Unfazed by her less than enthusiastic response, Lucius strolled over to her with his sly grin firmly in place. “What if I told you that I missed you? Would that be so bad?”