TIS THE SEASON...FOR ROMANCE (WESTMORELAND/MASTERS/JEFFERIES)

by Jackson, Brenda

  “Yes, I’m fine,” he said, having been caught day dreaming by his friends. It couldn’t be helped. He had enjoyed the days he’d spent with Peggy over the Christmas holidays and was looking forward to flying out to be with her for New Year’s.

  The meeting resumed and he tried paying attention. The Lenoir Corporation was a major textiles company in Paris and was looking for an American partner to increase its visibility on a global scale. The Grail Group wanted to look them over.

  “One of us needs to go scope out the place,” Eric Thornton was saying. “I would love to go to Paris if I didn’t have a full plate already that week.” Everyone knew what Eric had on his plate. A couple of years ago he’d partnered with other interested individuals and purchased an NFL team. Eric didn’t want to miss a single game since his team was headed for the playoffs, which could also mean a chance for the Super Bowl.

  Willie listened to the comments from the other men on why they couldn’t commit to traveling abroad, while he imagined him and Peggy in the city of love for a week.

  “What about you Willie? Can you make the trip to Paris?”

  His attention was pulled back to the meeting. “When will I need to leave?”

  “Not until the first week in February.”

  That would give him a little more than a month to work on Peggy, break down what he knew would be her possible resistance to such a thing. They had been seeing each other for eight months now and were yet to take a trip together anywhere.

  He smiled at his friends. “In that case, yes, I’ll be happy to be your man in Paris.”

  * * *

  “So how was the rest of your Christmas?”

  Peggy glanced over at her sister and smiled. She and Barbara had met for lunch at Peggy’s favorite eating place, The Cheesecake Factory in the Millenia Mall. She couldn’t help but recall how she and Willie had celebrated after they’d come from the wedding. “It was nice,” she said, knowing that was an understatement.

  Thanks to Willie it had been better than nice. And the day after was enjoyable as well. They had spent the day at the Kennedy Space Center and she couldn’t believe all the exhibits that had been added since she’d last been there.

  “Anyone know why Joe didn’t show up at the wedding?” Barbara asked.

  Peggy shrugged. “Sonya talked to her father and he claims the baby had a fever and they decided to stay in. Sonya and I figured Suzette talked him out of going since she wouldn’t be the center of attention. Joe’s excited that’s he going to be a grandfather now that’s Sonya’s pregnant and Suzette, being the bitch that she is, is probably fuming about him gloating over his daughter’s condition too much and is tightening her leash.”

  “Poor Joe.”

  “Poor Joe my ass. He got just what he deserved with his child bride. He won’t get an ounce of pity from me. He was due to retire next year and now he has to continue to work to send a kid to college,” Peggy said.

  She took a sip of her iced tea while studying her sister. There seemed to be a glow in Barbara’s face and she had an idea where it came from. “So how are things going with you and Rick?” Rick Blair was her sister’s fiancé and she had a gorgeous diamond ring on her finger to prove it.

  She watched the glow transform into a cute blush and Barbara broke eye contact with her as she took a sip of her own drink. “Fine.”

  Deciding she needed to shake her sister of out her sudden shyness she asked. “So, how is he in bed?”

  Barbara snatched her eyes up to connect to hers and Peggy thought, bingo. She still considered Barbara her little sister since there was a seven year difference in their ages. “What makes you think Rick and I are sleeping together?” Barbara asked in a low voice as if she was afraid someone else might be listening to their conversation.

  Peggy smiled. “Several reasons. First is the fact that already the two of you are talking about getting married. Then there was that guilty blush that appeared in your face when I asked how things were going between you two, like you suddenly remembered something – like naked body parts, probably his. And last is the marks I’ve seen on your neck that you’ve tried hiding in several ways.”

  Barbara eyes widened. “You saw them?”

  Peggy chuckled. “Yes, on occasion. I knew you hadn’t started wearing scarves due to any fashion trend. And by the way, the one you have on now looks nice.”

  Barbara blushed again and then she said. “I’ve never known anyone like Rick. He makes me feel…”

  “Sexy? Sensuous? Like a natural woman?” Peggy prompted.

  Barbara smiled. “Yes. And just to think I spent all those years with Ron thinking that was the best there was.”

  Peggy nodded. She knew just how her sister felt. The first time she’d shared a bed with Willie she had concluded that Joe had been a selfish lover. “I know what you mean,” she said.

  Barbara didn’t say anything for a moment and then, “So, have you and Willie decided on a date yet?”

  Barbara lifted a brow. “A date for what?”

  “Your wedding.”

  Peggy was taken aback by the very thought. “What makes you think Willie and I are getting married? Ever?”

  Now it was Barbara’s time to be taken aback. “You’ve been seeing each other for what, about eight months now? I know the two of you are close and he stays at your place whenever he comes to town. I guess I just assumed the two of you would eventually marry one of these days.”

  “No, we don’t plan to marry. Personally I like things just the way they are between us. I’ll never marry again.”

  Barbara stared at her sister, not believing what she was hearing. She was talking like the idea of remarrying was leaving a bad taste in her mouth. Granted she of all people knew what an ass Joe had turned out to be, but still. Peggy had been the main one encouraging her to move on with her life after Ron.

  “Excuse me,” Barbara then spoke up and said. “But weren’t you the one who encouraged me to get something going with Rick? To move on with my life?”

  Peggy smiled. “Of course. I didn’t want you to do like I did by spending the rest of your days wondering what you could have done to hold on to your husband while nursing a bottle of Jack Daniels.”

  She paused to take a sip of her iced tea and continued on by saying, “And then there was the hell I put Sonya through by having an alcoholic lush for a mother when my self-esteem took a hit. It took my mother-in-law’s death to knock some sense into me. Before she died she made me promise to seek help and to get over her son because after what he’d done, he wasn’t worth it.”

  Barbara slowly nodded, knowing Irma Morrison’s death had been her sister’s wake up call. Irma and Peggy had always been close from the time Joe had brought Peggy home to his parents as the woman he was going to marry. Irma and her husband Fred totally adored Peggy, and they had spoiled their first grandchild Sonya rotten when she was born. Joe’s decision to divorce Peggy to marry a younger woman who lacked of all things, class, was a bitter pill for his parents to swallow and they’d all but disowned him.

  Peggy had taken control of her life after Irma’s death by joining a group of women called Dropped Wives Anonymous. All twenty-plus women had at one time been dropped by their spouses for some other female or in a few cases, males.

  Barbara was pleased with how things had turned out for Peggy in the end. Although her sister had a masters degree in public relations, Joe hadn’t wanted her to work outside the home, so at fifty-two she’d suddenly found herself divorced and unemployed. She could have rightly lived off the trust fund their mother had established for them, as well as Joe’s monthly alimony payments, but she hadn’t. She had taken a job at making Dreams Come True, a nonprofit organization that granted dreams to terminally ill kids. She had met Willie when he had offered to construct, in his granddaughter’s memory, an amusement park for Dreams Come True in Orlando.

  “Does Willie know how you feel?” Barbara couldn’t help asking. Her sister and Willie looked so good toget
her.

  “I’m sure he does, although we never discussed it. He knows the hell I went through with my divorce, and he knows I’ll never go through it again.”

  Barbara lifted a brow. “Do you think that’s fair to him if he wants the relationship to become a serious one?”

  A frown settled on Peggy’s face. “First of all, he wouldn’t want such a thing. He knows our relationship is as serious as it’s going to get. He doesn’t love me and I don’t love him. We just enjoy each other’s company. In the case of you and Rick, you two wanted the same thing and are good for each other that way. I think it’s admirable that after all the things Ron did that you would still want to be any man’s wife. Call me chicken, but I refuse to risk my heart like that again. I honestly don’t think I’d recover if I had to go through it a second time.”

  Barbara didn’t say anything, and was very much aware Peggy had returned to eating as if the subject was now a closed one. That may very well be true for Peggy, but for some reason she didn’t think it was closed to Willie as her sister assumed. Barbara hadn’t failed to notice how he would stare at Peggy when her sister wasn’t aware that he was doing so.

  And Barbara could recognize that look in his eyes. It was the same look Lake would give Courtney, Mike would give Sonya and now the same one she knew Rick gave her. She wondered how Peggy was going to handle it when the truth came to light.

  “So, when will you see Willie again?” she decided to ask.

  Peggy paused in the middle of biting into her grilled chicken and said. “He’s arriving on Thursday. We’re going to the party Toni and John are giving on New Year’s Eve night, and then we plan to spend New Year’s Day together. Why?”

  Toni was Peggy’s best friend from high school. “I know Sonya and Mike are flying out to New York to see the ball drop on New Year’s Eve and won’t be returning for a few days, and Courtney and Lake are still be on their honeymoon. Why don’t you and Willie drop by my place on New Year’s Day and hang out a while. Rick and I plan on watching the game.”

  Peggy smiled. “We just might do that.”

  Four

  “Umm, I missed you,” Willie whispered against Peggy’s lips.

  He hadn’t been in the house but a few seconds, just long enough to drop his traveling bag on the floor and close the door behind him before pulling her into his arms. And he meant every word he’d said. He had missed her. He had thought about her every waking moment and at night he would dream about her.

  Needing the taste of her, he covered her mouth with his while slipping his hand into her hair to cup her face for deeper penetration. Those were the key words whenever he was with her – deeper penetration. It didn’t matter if it was when his tongue was inside her mouth, between the folds of her womanhood or when his shaft was buried deep inside her body. He always wanted to delve deeper and penetrate further.

  And he liked the sound of her moan signifying her pleasure. He loved pleasing his woman and thought of her as his in every way. And when she wrapped her arms around his neck and molded her body to his, every primal instinct inside of him reacted. He got hard even more and responded in kind by deepening the kiss when a shudder of desire, as intense as it could get, rammed through him, tempting him to take her right then and there.

  He finally released her mouth when she gently shoved at his chest. “Hey, what are you trying to do, Willie? Seduce me in the middle of my foyer?” she asked grinning.

  He couldn’t help but grin back. He’d seduced her in the middle of her foyer before and she very well knew it. In fact there weren’t too many places in her condo that they hadn’t made out in, including a few of her closets. The two of them had healthy sexual appetites and it seemed whenever they were together they also dealt with constant cravings – mainly for each other.

  “Besides, since your plane arrived later than expected, you just have time to shower and change. I promised Toni I would get to her place early and help out before everyone arrives.”

  He glanced down at her. She was wearing a bathrobe and he knew she was naked underneath. “Hey, you’re not even dressed.”

  “Yes, but it won’t take me long. I plan to finish dressing while you shower.”

  He leaned closer to her ear and whispered, “And what if I said I wanted to take you now? All I thought about on the flight over here was getting inside of you, mating, and exploding.”

  He could tell by the sound of her breathing that his blatant description of what he wanted to do to her effected her. But still she took a deep breath and pushed out of his arms. “Then I would say I owe you a check later.”

  He smiled. “And I plan to collect.”

  She laughed. “I know you will. Now scat, I don’t want to be late.”

  He made a move to walk around her and then he reached out and pulled her back into his arms and kissed her deeply before releasing her. He then grabbed his bag off the floor and headed toward her bedroom.

  Peggy drew in a deep breath as she watched him go, thinking the man had a nice backside that looked damn good in a pair of jeans. Always. Thinking she needed something cold to drink she headed toward the refrigerator. She loved iced tea and always had a pitcher on hand, and after pouring a class she took a long soothing drink. Already she could hear the shower going and Willie singing. He liked to sing in the shower and she loved hearing it.

  She was about to head in the direction of her bedroom to get dressed when her phone rang. She reached to pick it up off the table. “Hello.”

  “Peg, this is Joe. Where’s Sonya? She’s not answering her phone.”

  Peggy rolled her eyes. The only time her ex called was when he was looking for their daughter, not that she was complaining. As far as she was concerned the less she heard from him the better.

  The two of them hadn’t been on the best of terms since that day around seven months ago when he had invited her to lunch to let her know he was seeking an attorney to stop his alimony payments to her since his child bride was having a baby. Peggy had threatened to counter his actions by contacting her own attorney and having her monthly alimony payments increased if he were to try it. Evidently he hadn’t wanted to call her bluff and had backed down. She was certain he had caught plenty hell at home for doing so.

  “Sonya and Mike are in New York, Joe. They left this morning to celebrate New Year’s. I would imagine the reason she’s not answering her phone is because she can’t hear it. You know how people are trying to squeeze into Times Square to see the ball drop. It’s probably crowded.”

  “I guess you’re right. With that size crowd I hope she’s careful.”

  “She’s married to Mike remember. He will not let anything happen to Sonya.” Peggy said, knowing that to be true. She couldn’t ask for a finer son-in-law and knew Mike loved her daughter.

  “Yeah, I remember who she’s married to,” he said, reminding Peggy he hadn’t been all that keen about their daughter marrying outside her race. She on the other hand just wanted Sonya happy and thought love was colorblind. She knew for a fact that Sonya was happy.

  “And how have you been doing, Peggy?”

  She couldn’t believe he was actually asking. “I’ve been doing great. What about you? You missed Courtney’s wedding.”

  “I hated to have to do that but I was under the weather.”

  She rolled her eyes. Hadn’t he told Sonya that it was his newborn baby who was under the weather? He needed to get his lies straight and almost called him out on it but changed her mind. It was none of her business and she could have cared less.

  “Well, I need to go. Nice talking to you, Peg.”

  Nice talking to her? She smiled knowing he was lying through his teeth, but she would accept yet another lie. “Fine. Goodbye.”

  “Happy New Years, Peg.”

  She blinked. It had been five years since he’d said those words to her. Suzette must not be around for him to be having this conversation. “Happy New Years to you, too, Joe.” And then she quickly hung up the phone. />
  She hated admitting it but he sounded rather sad, but then how he sounded was none of her business. She’d heard the tough economic times were killing his business, but not surprisingly that hadn’t stopped Suzette from breaking the bank, buying whatever she wanted.

  But then she thought as she moved toward her bedroom. His happiness or lack of it wasn’t her problem. He’d made his bed so now he could wallow in it for all she cared.

  * * *

  The New Year’s Eve party was held in the home of Peggy’s high school friend, Antonia Siplin, and her husband John. Willie figured if it was anything like the last party he’d attended here then the place would be packed later. The one thing he’d discovered about the couple was that they enjoyed having a good time.

  Technically, Antonia or Toni as she preferred to be called, was Peggy’s boss. And according to Peggy, the woman was also her best friend and lifesaver. During the rough time of her divorce Toni had been there for Peggy through thick and thin and had provided her a shoulder to cry on.

  He parked the car and then got out to open the door for Peggy. He couldn’t help but admire her outfit, one hell of a mini-dress with fish-net stockings. And long dangling earrings hung from her ears. She had warned him the theme of the party was “Old School” and he knew the moment they walked to the door with Earth, Wind and Fire’s, Let’s Groove Tonight, blasting from inside that the party would be a fun one.

  “Remember, I don’t care what I’m doing or where I am at the stroke of midnight, I want you to find me,” Peggy whispered.

  He smiled. Did she honestly think that he wouldn’t? Although he was looking forward to having fun tonight, it wouldn’t bother him in the least if by the time the New Year came in they’d made it back to her place, stripped off their clothes and were in bed making love. He’d come close to suggesting such a thing to her a few times on the drive over.