by Liz Talley
It had taken him a day and a half to call her. The phone had gone to voice mail and he’d hung up. But she’d called him right back… and acted like she didn’t remember him.
But he could tell she did.
After a few minutes of talking about Kenzie and where she worked, Alicia had said, “So?”
“What?”
“You calling me just about your little cousin, or is there something more you wanted to ask me?”
“Damn, girl, you may be a lady but you ain’t scared, are you?”
“I’m not scared of too much, Trevon Jackson. Are you?”
He felt his throat close up because he knew fear was something he beat back every day. “I ain’t afraid of you.”
“Good. So when you taking me out?”
“When you want to go? You pick.”
And she had.
So here he sat on a pew, shifting and recrossing his legs, sweatin’ buckets.
“Boy, you got ants in your pants,” the old lady to his right hissed, showing him crooked teeth beneath a bristly moustache. She cackled and slapped his thigh.
He shifted again. Away from her. The man to his left grunted as he bumped him.
Thirty minutes later, Tre finally stood up and clapped at what he prayed was the closing hymn.
Please, God, let this be over. Soon. Amen.
And twenty minutes later, it finally was.
Alicia grinned at him, having shed her choir robe. Not one bead of sweat dotted her upper lip—a lip that was thankfully bare of anything resembling a moustache. In fact, her lips looked really good, made him want to embrace the sin in his heart and do bad things to her body. “How’d you like it? Good message, huh?”
He snorted. “I feel holy.”
“Yeah, and you’re sweating. You wanna go outside?”
“Is the preacher Baptist?”
She squinted her pretty brown eyes. “Huh?”
“You know. Like ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ It’s a joke,” he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her behind him as he moved through the sweating masses toward the double doors.
“Oh, yeah. A joke,” she laughed, tugging against his hand before he could reach the doors leading into the cool night. “I need to tell my mama and daddy you’re going to take me home.”
He stopped. “I can’t take you home. I ain’t got a car.”
“Well, I got one, so I’ll take you home.”
Tre kept walking. “If you got a car, why’d you ride the bus the other day? That don’t make any sense.”
Alicia tugged on his hand again. “My aunt borrowed it because hers was in the shop. It was fate. Now, you do want me to walk out that door with you, don’t you?”
If she knew what he wanted her to do with him, the church would fall down around their ears. God would smite him down for the lust in his loins… which was a close relative to the evil in his heart. Or maybe not. He wasn’t sure God’s position on wanting a woman. After all, the Big Man upstairs had made them damned delicious.
“Tre? You listening?”
He jerked his gaze to the small fireball standing a few feet away, right next to the preacher who kept wiping his brow with a soggy rag from his back pocket. “Sorry.”
“Tre Jackson, this is my daddy, Reverend Cornelius Jamison, and this my mama, Snookie.”
Damn. Her daddy was the preacher. But didn’t have her last name. Tre’s head screamed, “Get your ass outta here, Tre.”
But his feet stayed planted on the red carpet covering the middle aisle. His hand jutted out to grasp the hand of the man who looked at him like he was a cockroach on his kitchen counter. “How you do, sir?”
The older man shook Tre’s hand with forced vigor. “Nice to meet you, young man. Lee Lee told us you have a cousin who might go to her center.”
Okay, news to him. He was a charity case, all right. “Uh, yes sir. Uh, Kenzie been having a few problems with some things.”
Tre jerked his gaze to Alicia who smiled as if they’d already spoken about Kenzie and the Lighthouse Center… which they really hadn’t. All Alicia had said was they would talk about it later.
“That’s wonderful,” Alicia’s mother said, extending her hand. The woman wore her hair pulled back and earrings so big it was a wonder she stayed balanced, but her smile was genuine and warm. “My sister Evelyn and Alicia have worked so hard to help so many little angels. We’re so proud of what they’ve accomplished in just a year. I’m so glad you found your way to them.”
He didn’t know who Evelyn was or exactly what Alicia did at that center, but her mama used “so” so much. He nodded and smiled like a blessed fool.
“Alicia tells us you work for a store down on Magazine Street.” This from Rev.
“Uh, yes, sir. I work at the Queen’s Box doing deliveries and other things for Mrs. Theriot. I’m saving for school in the fall.” He looked up to make sure the roof didn’t fall in on him. Well, it wasn’t actually a lie. Just more like something that wasn’t going to happen, but he didn’t want Rev. Jamison to know that. He didn’t want to look like he was a bum.
“Good, good,” the reverend said, nodding his bulldog head. Fathers always wanted their daughters to date men with jobs. And men who went to—
“And where do you attend services?”
“I go to St. Peter down on Cadiz.” He hadn’t been in over a year, but Reverend Jamison didn’t have to know that. “My grandmother’s in a home and I haven’t been in a while, but Pastor Greer’s been a blessing to us.”
“I know Ernie Greer very well. A fine Christian man and you are blessed indeed to be one of his flock.”
Tre nodded gravely, accepting that he was going to burn in hell for lying to a man of the cloth.
“Well, we’re going to go get some ice cream and then I’m taking Tre home,” Alicia said, smiling at her parents.
For a moment, Tre wondered if he’d shifted into some alternate universe. He’d once read a book in school about a boy who’d gone back in time and this felt like that. No knights or round tables. But going for ice cream and meeting a girl’s parents? Felt about the same.
“You two young people have so much fun,” Snookie said, her ruby lips curving into a plump smile and her dark eyes twinkling. “I remember when Cornelius took me for root beer floats at Frostop. Those were the good ol’ days.”
Alicia rose up on tiptoe and kissed her daddy’s cheek before grabbing Tre’s hand and pulling him down the aisle, calling out goodbyes to all the folks tossing “good night” her way. Seconds later, they burst out the door, the cold air wrapping round them with icy fingers. Stars overhead winked as headlight beams illuminated the asphalt lot outside the old church off Airline Highway.
“Brrr, it’s cold. Come on.” Alicia hurried toward the silver-blue car sitting near a cyclone fence covered in a tangle of dead vines, pulling her keys out and unlocking the doors. He had no clue what kind of car it was. Wasn’t new and looked like a Honda or a Toyota. Not flashy, but not a clunker.
He slid inside as she cranked the engine and turned the heater to high.
“Good Lord, it was hot up in there, but the cold creeps in fast,” she said, fiddling with the channels on the radio. She pushed several presets until she found Drake, and the bass thrummed low, mimicking the confused emotions rolling in his gut.
This was a mistake.
A preacher’s daughter, ice cream and going to church didn’t reflect his swag. Hell, Crazy Eight would laugh himself dead if he could see Tre dressed up in a monkey suit going for ice cream.
The lights in the car dimmed to black and Alicia’s hand found his thigh. He reared back in the seat as she turned, leaned over and kissed him.
Her lips were soft and tasted like strawberry lip gloss, and her quick, light hands moved up his chest to twine about his neck and brush against his closely shorn hair at the nape of his neck.
It was all he needed to pull her tight against him and take over. Her hair had been pulled back into some bun thing at her
neck and her small skull fit the span of his hand perfectly. He nipped her mouth open, and then took full advantage of the warm mouth offered to him. He slid his left hand around to cup her waist, stroke her back, impeded by the jacket nipped tight at her waist.
“Mmm—” she said, breaking the kiss and capturing his hand before he could move around front and unbutton the scratchy wool. “Wait. Uh, we in the parking lot of my daddy’s church.”
He inhaled and then exhaled. “Damn, girl.”
She laughed. “I’ve been wanting to kiss you since I saw you holding that baby girl on that bus bench.” Alicia settled back into the driver’s seat and shifted the car into Drive.
Tre couldn’t stop the smile that came to his lips. “You sure are a surprise, Lee Lee Laurence. Why’s your name different than your daddy’s anyway?”
“Because I was married for a year.”
“Married?”
“Yes, but now I’m divorced.”
“Divorced?”
“You going to repeat everything I say?” Alicia shook her head. “It was a dumb idea I had when I was eighteen. I’m twenty-one now… and divorced.”
“Fine. You’re divorced. So we going for ice cream?”
She slid her light brown gaze to him as she pulled out of the parking lot. “What do you think?”
He didn’t know what to think. He only knew what he hoped—that his divorced angel would give him something wonderful to think about in the weeks to come. That she would make him forget about the shithole that was his life for a few hours. That she would smile and love him and give him something good to hold on to. “I think I need something stronger than ice cream.”
Her grin got bigger. “Here’s the thing. I’m a Godly woman and I don’t mess around with men who are looking to hit it and quit it. You get me?”
“Yeah. I get you.”
“Good. So we going to have some fun. Maybe not the fun you want, but it’ll be the fun you get. Because I’m no whore. And then you going to come to church tomorrow morning and show me and my daddy that you’re a good man. You can bring Kenzie, too, ’cause we got to talk about her and how me and Aunt Evelyn going to help her. Then you going to call me later and take me to the Zulu parade ’cause my Uncle Delroy is one of the captains this year. Then we’ll see after that.”
He didn’t know what the last statement meant, but he didn’t care because at that moment, he knew he’d never met anyone like Alicia Laurence, and for some reason, God only knowing, it was meant to be like this. That’s all he knew and that was good enough.
“Let’s roll then.”
Alicia’s response was to press the accelerator.
ELEANOR CUT THROUGH several streets trying to avoid all the traffic but was blocked at every turn. It felt as if the world actually wanted to prevent her from getting to the coffee shop and Dez.
Which wasn’t true, of course.
It was merely self-doubt whispering that idea.
But even under the whole “maybe I shouldn’t do this” thing, happiness beat in her heart. The past few hours had been the most pleasurable she’d had in a long time. Dez wasn’t what she expected. Sure, he was confident and in control, with a sexy alpha maleness that sped a girl’s pulse, but romance also beat beneath the overtly male façade.
I like foreplay.
Damn, those words made her stomach puddle.
Okay, it puddled a little lower than her stomach. Those whispered words were such a turn-on. Anticipation buzzed in her stomach driving her crazy. Made her hot enough to turn on the A/C. She angled the vent at her face. She had to get some coolness, some calmness, or she was going to burn out of control thinking about sex with Dez.
Absurd.
But she cranked the A/C higher.
Her phone chirped a happy tune in the cupholder.
She picked it up and took a deep, steadying breath, gathering her composure. “Hello.”
“Mrs. Theriot?”
“Yes?”
“This is Sergeant Baglio down at the Third Precinct. I’ve got your daughter here and—”
“Blakely?”
“Yes, ma’am. Margaret Blakely Theriot? We picked her up on a minor in possession and resisting arrest half an hour ago. She’s not exactly cooperating, but we managed to find your number from her cellular phone and thought we’d give you a call.”
“Oh, my God,” Eleanor breathed, her hands shaking so hard she stopped the car in the middle of a street. “I don’t—I mean, what do I need to do? Does she need a lawyer? Can I come get her?”
“Why don’t you come on down here, and we’ll decide how to proceed. You’ll likely have to post bail. This is a courtesy we usually don’t extend, but she’s crying uncontrollably and, well, circumstances being what they are…”
“I’ll be right there.” Eleanor clicked off the phone and tossed it in the seat next to her, turning into a driveway to her left and reversing out. Dez had been following her, thank God, because she didn’t even have his cell phone number.
“Hey, what’s up?” he asked, rolling down the window, his eyes worried. “You okay?”
She shook her head. “No. They just called from the police station and Blakely was arrested.”
“What?”
“Seems she got drunk and disorderly. I’m sorry but I have to go.”
“Are you okay to drive?”
She nodded. “Yes. I’m just angry and scared for her. What’s wrong with her? To do something like this? I don’t—”
“Alright, alright,” he interrupted, pressing his hand into the air in a soothing manner, his voice mimicking his actions. “Deep breath, and remember, she’s okay.”
Eleanor sucked in the air and exhaled. Any other time and she would have felt like Dez patronized her, but she knew he only tried to give her perspective. It wasn’t the end of the world, and Blakely was safe. It was, however, the end of their evening together. “I wanted to spend some more time with you.”
“We have tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. Right now you need to take care of your daughter. Do you need me to come with you?”
“No. I’m fine. I’ll be in touch.”
“Sure. Let me know if you need anything, okay?”
“Thank you,” Eleanor said, inching the car forward as a pair of headlights appeared in her rearview mirror. “You’re a good man.”
“Nah.” He smiled with a wave. “I’m just trying to get you into bed. Later.”
He pulled away, and oddly enough, his flirty words gave her a strange comfort, as if there were lightness left in the world even as she faced something that was definitely a drag on her soul. And that said a lot, considering her soul felt rock bottom in regard to Blakely.
Eleanor pressed a button on her phone, pulling up directions to the Third Precinct on Paris Avenue, and sped away. Twenty minutes later after cursing the traffic, she pulled into the station parking lot right beside a white Mercedes she knew belonged to Porter Theriot. Damn it, her in-laws had beaten her to the station.
She parked, and then hurried toward the glass doors. She’d just begun to climb the steps when Margaret and Porter pushed out the doors, a silent, soggy Blakely between them.
“Oh, honey,” Eleanor said, raising her arms to her daughter, who started crying when she caught sight of her mother.
“Mom,” Blakely cried, falling into Eleanor’s arms, smelling like booze and faintly of vomit. “I don’t feel good. I wanna go home.”
“You are going home,” Margaret said, with a sniff. “To our house where you will be taken care of properly.”
Eleanor clasped Blakely tighter. “No, she’s going home with me. I’m her mother.”
Porter wagged his head. “Now, Eleanor, no need to cause a scene. We need to get out of here and take care of your daughter. This isn’t a power struggle. Blakely needs to come first.”
“Of course,” Eleanor said, tucking a hank of her daughter’s hair behind her ear. Blakely cried harder, fisting her fingers into Eleanor’s shirt
. “But she can get that at home in her own bed. I appreciate you coming here, but I can handle this.”
“Can you?” Margaret said, stepping down so she was level with Eleanor. They were the same height and thus their gazes lined up. Margaret’s cold blue eyes resembled the winter sea. “Because Blakely tells us you were on a date with a black musician who is a decade younger than you. That doesn’t sound like much control. It sounds like a woman who has lost her ever-loving mind.”
Eleanor felt the familiar anger burble inside her. Normally, she ignored it and avoided ruffling Margaret’s feathers, but not tonight. When she’d sat in Margaret’s house and made the decision to go out with Dez, she’d taken her life back from the Theriots. No more.
She patted Blakely’s back and disentangled from her. “Go on to the car, honey.”
Blakely straightened and blinked. “Huh?”
“The car. Go to the car.”
“But, Mom, I don’t want you and Grandmother to fight. I’m really sorry. I am.”
Margaret patted Blakely’s upper arm. “Don’t you worry a bit, sweetheart. Your granddaddy has already talked to the D.A. and the charges will be dropped. Everything will be okay. You know Grandmother takes care of you.”
“But I don’t mean that. I mean about Dez.” Blakely swayed a little and her bloodshot eyes beseeched. “He’s not what you make him sound like, Grandmother. He’s not trashy or anything. I like him, so don’t make it sound like he’s bad or something. ’Cause he’s not.”
“Of course not, dear,” Margaret said, her voice patronizing. “I’m sure the boy is nice, and I’m certain your mother will put a stop to the shenanigans going on between them if only out of consideration for you and the family.”
“Go to the car, Blakely,” Eleanor said through gritted teeth. Her stomach tightened as anger burgeoned into full-fledged fury. Dez had nothing to do with the trouble Blakely had brought on herself—he was a diversionary tactic her daughter used to force the attention off her inappropriate behavior and onto her mother. Besides, who Eleanor went out with wasn’t any of Porter’s or Margaret’s damned business.
