Rock Chick Reborn (Rock Chick #9)(30)

He pulled the top off a Crock-Pot, after which zesty, saucy goodness wafted into the room, doing this saying, “This is because you’re humble.”

“Roam took a bullet for Jules.”

He stopped spooning brisket on the bottom of a bun and turned to me.

“And one of the reasons Roam and Jules didn’t die on the floor of that living room is because Sniff was runnin’ flat out, he’d lost his phone, so he was flagging down anyone who would stop, lookin’ for help. Just God’s love that the car he flagged down had Luke Stark in it.”

“Sweetheart,” he whispered.

“What made them is there, natural-like,” I said firmly.

“Okay, baby,” he agreed quietly.

Since we had that straight, I took a sip of wine.

He dished up, and when he slid my plate in front of me, it did not have a sandwich and some chips on it.

It had a sandwich, potato salad, a mound of spinach salad with bacon, blue cheese crumbles and red onion sliced so thin you could see through it (and thank God I had mints in my bag for that) and baked beans he pulled out of the oven in a crock he had to have gotten from his momma.

“You wanna feed me or make me explode?” I asked as I stared down at my plate.

“My momma taught me, worst thing a guest could do after they sit at your table is want for more and not be able to get it. She never laid a table where each serving dish wasn’t filled to the brim with more in the kitchen.”

“And you took that one giant leap further and put so much on a plate a woman can’t get through it.”

He slid his ass up on the stool beside mine and grinned at me. “You complaining?”

I pointed a fork at my plate. “Is there molasses in these beans?”

“Brown sugar. I came home at lunch and started them up. They’ve been cookin’ for five hours.”

Nice.

“No, I’m absolutely not complaining,” I belatedly answered.

He leaned into me and gave me another lip touch (which was good, pre-blue cheese and onions) before he turned to his own food.

He was scooping up some potato salad mixed with beans (I approved) when I called, “Moses.”

He turned his head my way.

“No man has ever come home at lunch to make up some beans for me.”

Warmth (or more accurately, more warmth) seeped into his eyes. “Hate you had to wait this long, but still honored to be the first.”

“Stop bein’ perfect,” I whispered.

“Gonna stretch that out, Shirleen, as long as I can.”

It was then I leaned in and gave Moses a lip touch.

I didn’t look at his face as I sat back and turned to my food.

The beans were sublime.

The brisket was orgasmic.

But it was the company that altered my world.





I would find, around about the time all was well in the world of Tarzan and Jane, that making out on the couch like teenagers, hot and heavy, was a skill that stood the test of time, even if you didn’t practice it.

And I would find, to my horror, that post-traumatic stress was not just for soldiers.

This I would find when Moses was deftly sliding into second base, hand inching toward my breast.

I wanted him to tag that bag more than I wanted my next breath.

And then my mind blanked, sheer panic saturated every cell in my body, and somehow I was off my back on the couch with Moses’s long length on top of me.

Instead I was across the room, breathing hard, hand up his way like I was fending him off even as he lay on his side on the couch, up on a forearm, his breathing also accelerated, his eyes alert and locked on me.

“Baby,” he whispered cautiously.

I still felt the tingle in my lady parts, the taste of him in my mouth, the feel of his heat against my skin, the weight of him on my body.

I could see his beauty right there on his couch.

But my brain was twisting shit up, feelings I was feeling making him grow foggy.

I wasn’t having visions, seeing Leon’s ghostly face hovering over the magnificence that was Moses.

It was all in the emotions as things I hadn’t felt in years started stomping through the dust in my bones, kicking it up, making me not able to see straight.

“Shirleen,” Moses called, slowly moving his body so he was seated on the couch before, equally slowly, straightening from it.

Okay.

All right.

This was movie night with Moses.

This was brisket and baked beans, and lip touches and smiles and good wine while he told me about his oldest, Judith, named after his momma, spending an entire summer in search of the perfect lamps for his nightstands. She had this mission because, after he’d recovered from the financial strain of the divorce and the ensuing legal battles, three years ago he’d moved his daughters into this place and had given his eldest a budget to do her dad’s pad up right. And even at fourteen, she apparently took this task seriously.

He also told how he was struggling with what it said about him that he had a problem with her latest boyfriend, who was white “when I never saw my girl with anything but a brother.”

And he shared about his youngest, Alice, named after her momma’s favorite writer, Alice Walker, and how she was a good kid, a great one. But she’d arranged three sit-ins that year on a variety of things that she wanted changed about the school and “she just cares about things so much, baby. She wants change yesterday, doesn’t understand she can’t have it and I’m worried what the world is gonna do to my little girl when she realizes it’s never gonna be easy, it’s always gonna be hard and sometimes impossible.”