by Kennedy Ryan
“Right.” He leans against the car and studies me. “What’s up?”
I hold out my hand, palm up, with the Star of David charm, a little tarnished, but still gleaming. He stiffens and then lifts it from my hand.
“This looks like my mom’s, but I haven’t seen it in years. She lost it.” He looks from the charm back to my face, his expression reflecting the same speculations.
“If you never came with your family, then how would that be here?” I ask. “We just knocked out some walls when we added a laundry room. Maybe the charm got dislodged or shuffled around in the commotion. I found it in the laundry room. Your family never came here, so why would your mother’s charm be in this house?”
Everything I believed about my father goes out of focus, blurred through a sheen of tears. “Do you think… Ez, do you think they came here together? How would it be here unless she was?”
“I have no idea.” Ezra’s fist closes over the charm. “But I will find out. I promise you that.”
The silence between us on the ride back to the city throbs with our unspoken thoughts. My heart is too heavy for words. Disappointment in my father. Hurt on my mother’s behalf. I’m disillusioned that the man who guided me more than anyone else at one point may have lost his way. I know he was human. Despite what Mama thinks, I wasn’t deceived that Daddy was perfect, but this?
While Ezra drives, my phone starts ringing, wresting me from the chaos of my own thoughts and plunging me into chaos of another kind. One I know how to manage.
Work.
I texted Carla and Piers with the news about Ruiz, and my phone has been pinging ever since. Carla’s already projecting what it will take to make Georgia our base for the foreseeable future. In addition to celebrating, Piers wants to discuss new findings about the author of the biography. I tell him to get me a number so I can confront this person myself. Even if the charm does raise the possibility of my father’s infidelity, I don’t want a sensationalized book and the inevitable media circus that will come with it—the reexamination of all the good my father did through the lens of one mistake. If I can protect my mother and my family’s legacy from that scandal, I will.
We pull into Ezra’s driveway, and I’m on the phone with Carla when he lets us into the house.
“My clothes are still in the master,” he whispers.
I nod, half-listening to Carla, and follow him up the stairs.
“Yeah, I need that info,” I tell her, sitting down on the bed and glancing around the room again. The photos of him, Aiko and Noah prick the smallest drop of jealous blood in my heart. He has a past. He has a family. I already love Noah and can see how being his father helped shape Ezra into the man he is today. Aiko? I hope she and I can be friends and things can be amicable in the transition ahead.
I’m momentarily distracted by Ezra’s chest, abs, and ass as he changes clothes. His muscles contract and flex with the simple movements. He’s so big now. I never would have forecast that Ezra would be as physically imposing as his father, but he is. And he’s oblivious to how horny it makes me—not that it takes much where he’s concerned.
“Did you hear me, Kimba?” Carla asks.
“Huh?” I sit on the edge of Ezra’s bed, devouring every inch of sleek, naked skin before he covers it up. “What was that, Carla?”
“I said when will you come back to the city?”
“Soon.” I know I’ll have to at least once before we set up shop here, but I’m reluctant to leave Atlanta.
For years I only came home for rare visits and holidays, but this trip has reminded me of all the things I love about the city and given me new things to embrace. I’m glad to make Georgia my base for a while. For the first time in years, I want to be close to home.
I disconnect the call and walk up to Ezra, kissing the granite line of his jaw. He dips, angles so he can catch my lips. The kiss catches fire and he sits on the edge of the bed, pulling me down to his lap. This is happiness. Passion. Contentment in a way I’ve never known it before. Even the shock of what we found at the lake house, the problems that still lie ahead, can’t diminish that.
“What the actual fuck, Ezra?”
I nearly fall out of Ezra’s lap at the angry question but catch myself and land on the bed beside him.
“Who the hell are you?” Aiko demands, glaring at me and walking fully into the room.
I’ve only seen her in real life once, at my father’s funeral, and that was from a distance. The photos on the bedroom walls didn’t tell the full story of her beauty. Her face is a pale oval, her lips red as cherries, and her hair swings in a dark curtain to her waist. The expression on her face belies her fragile petiteness. She’s delicate and steely, a lovely weed in my garden.
“You have two seconds,” she says, venom dripping from her words, “to get this bitch out of my house.”
Bitch?
Hold up.
“What are you doing here?” Ezra stands, his expression strangely calm in the face of her obvious rage. “You aren’t due back until next week.”
“What am I doing here?” She steps closer to him, only coming to the middle of his chest, and points a slim finger at me. “This is my home. What’s this bitch doing in our bedroom, Ezra?”
That’s two. You got one more strike, Aiko.
I’m losing patience with this one fast. Ezra knows. He glances between the two of us like he’s caught between two she-bears.
“Don’t call her that,” he snaps, the words clipped, a frown marring the harmony of his features. “Her name is Kimba, and you won’t disrespect her.”
“Disrespect her?” Aiko’s voice breaks, and she takes her trembling bottom lip between her teeth. “What’s she doing here, Ezra? In our bedroom? Really?”
He scrubs his hands over his face and releases a heavy sigh. “Look, I know it’s disconcerting to come home and find someone else here like this, but this isn’t our bedroom anymore. I was just changing clothes because my stuff is still here.” His voice, his expression gentles. “You know I wasn’t sleeping here even before you left, Ko.”
“Yes, but I didn’t think…” She lowers her eyes to the floor. “So soon?”
“Babe!” a voice calls from downstairs. “Everything okay?”
“Chaz, I’m fine,” she yells down, her eyes never leaving Ezra’s face. “You can leave the bags at the door.”
A silence booms following her words, those few seconds after a bomb drops before you can hear again.
Ezra looks back to her, brows skyward. “Your new lover is downstairs in our house and you want to talk to me about soon? I can say for sure that you found someone new before I did. You found someone new before you even left, so don’t come in here calling Kimba a bitch and trying to make me feel guilty. You don’t have grounds for that.”
He has to sort this out and my presence isn’t going to help. Besides, I’m tired of being both the center of and the bystander in this drama. And if Aiko calls me a bitch one more time, I can’t be held responsible.
“Ezra,” I say, standing and focusing on him, not Aiko’s malevolent gaze burning through my clothes. “I should go.”
“Yeah, you should,” she snaps. “We have family business to discuss.”
She should be glad I have enough control left to ignore her. Ezra shoots her an exasperated glance and then turns his heated gaze, midnight blue, blazing, to me. “I’ll walk you out.”
We start toward the bedroom door, but Aiko steps in front of me, running her eyes over my sundress and flats, my hair and face. “I know you.”
I’m not famous. My candidates are. The average Joe wouldn’t recognize a political analyst on the street from a few television appearances, so I’m not sure that’s where she thinks she knows me from.
“The funeral,” she whispers, turning an accusing look on Ezra. “We went to her father’s funeral. I remember because it was the day my grandmother had her heart attack.”
I remember, too. Seeing her on the phone, pacing in t
he grass, distress etched onto her pretty face.
“You said she used to be your best friend.” Aiko sputters, shakes her head. “Did I really find someone else first, Ezra? How long has this been going on? Oh my God.”
“No.” Ezra closes his eyes, and I can see the discipline it takes for him to remain calm in the face of her rising hysteria. “You’re right. We did attend Mr. Allen’s funeral, but Kimba and I hadn’t seen each other since. That award I received, the event Mona and Noah attended with me—Kimba’s family foundation sponsored it and we saw each other there.”
She draws a deep breath and releases it in an indignant puff. “I’d only been gone a few days.”
“And nothing happened right away,” Ezra says, his gaze drifting to me and softening with something so much more than affection. There’s no way Aiko will mistake it for anything other than what it is.
“You care about her,” she whispers, horrified. “Do you think you’re in love with her? Already?”
There’s a part of me that doesn’t want him to tell her, doesn’t want to hurt her any more than she obviously is already. But the alpha part of me that feels like he’s always been mine since the day we were born wants to pin her to the wall and growl that he was on loan, but he’s mine again and she will back the fuck down.
But it’s Ezra’s call.
“I knew it would be hard for you,” Ezra says, not addressing her question directly. “But we need to be civil and adult about this. How we handle the transition will affect how Noah adjusts. We’ll work out the details. You can have the house. I can stay nearby so Noah can—”
“You have it all figured out, huh?” Aiko interrupts.
“We have a child together,” Ezra says. “It would be irresponsible for me not to have considered how this will affect—”
“Two,” Aiko says, her smile dropping, her eyes hard and flat, a pane of glass over her emotions.
“Two?” Ezra frowns. “Two what?”
“You said we have a child together,” Aiko says. “But we have two.”
She turns to me, challenge and pain mixing in her expression. “I came home early because I’m pregnant.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Ezra
“You’re what?”
I’ve been careful with my words, disciplined in my emotions since Aiko walked in, but her ridiculous statement pulls the pin on my control.
“Pregnant.” Aiko looks at me, hope rising in her eyes and lifting the corners of her mouth. “A baby, Ezra. You always wanted another one.”
Kimba flinches, and I see her face again last night, uncertain in the moonlight, hear her voice shaking as she told me she may never have a child.
“Years ago,” I remind Aiko. “I wanted another baby years ago. You didn’t. It was fine. It’s not something we’ve discussed in a long time and you know it. And if you’re pregnant, it’s not mine. We’ve barely had sex all year. Chaz would be—”
“Barely is not never,” Aiko says softly. “Once is enough. And you fucked me once.”
“No, I…”
Taco Tuesday. Margaritas.
I gulp back the bile of regret and force myself to meet Kimba’s questioning gaze. She knows before I say it, grabbing her purse from the bed and leaving the room. I bite off a growl, toss a frustrated glance at Aiko and start after her.
“Wait here,” I clip out.
“It’s my home,” she yells back. “Where else would I go?”
I take the stairs so fast I almost fall down the last two. Chaz is staked out by the door with Aiko’s bags. A muscle tics in his jaw and his hands are clenched into fists at his side.
Me, too, man. Me, too.
This is about as awkward as a situation could possibly be. There is no greeting that would be appropriate, so I blow past and leave him for Aiko to deal with. Through the screen door, I see Kimba already outside on the porch, head bent over her phone.
Pulling the door closed behind me, I put my hand over hers. She snatches it back, shaking her head.
“Ezra, do not.” Her voice is steady, but her hand trembles around the phone, despite her death grip.
“Look at me.”
She doesn’t, training her eyes to the porch floor. I cup her face, locking my hands gently around the high cheekbones, feeling the tense muscles at her jawline.
“Please talk to me, Tru.”
I hear the begging in my own voice and don’t care. Nothing means anything if she leaves this porch without hearing me out, without giving me a chance. She pulls free of my hands and steps away.
“You have, let’s see.” She looks at her phone. “Three minutes before Lamont, my Uber driver, arrives. Talk.”
“You can’t let this come between us.”
She whirls around at that, her sundress flaring out and re-settling around her long legs. “Let this come between us?” She barks out a disbelieving laugh. “If Aiko is pregnant with your baby, there is no us, Ezra.”
“The hell there’s no us. You can’t say that.”
“What the fuck do you expect me to say? That I’m fine with it? I’m not. Don’t ask me to be. I can’t…” She presses her lips together and blinks rapidly. For a moment, I wish I didn’t know her as well as I know my own hands, my own heart. There’s so much hurt under her fury and I know her too well not to see it.
“I’m just hearing all of this for the first time,” I say. “Just like you. I don’t know what the hell is going on. Don’t know what’s true or—”
“But it could be true. You did sleep with her, right?”
“Once. One time in months, and we’ve lived together for ten years. You can’t actually be angry that I slept with my ex-girlfriend once weeks ago before you and I even started.”
“Not so ex.” She laughs, the sound void of amusement. “This is her home, that’s her bedroom, possibly your baby she’s carrying. Not so fast with the ex.”
“Chaz is literally standing at the door.” I take her hands, holding on when she tries to pull away. “If Aiko is pregnant, it could just as easily be his.”
“This is some Jerry Springer shit,” she says, her breath coming hard. “I don’t need this. If I were a client of mine, I would advise them to walk away and not look back.”
“Is that what you want to do?” I ask, my voice solemn, my heart cracking. “Walk away from me?”
She squeezes her eyes shut, blocks me out. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now.”
“You know this.”
I clasp her neck and drag her close, pressing our lips together. She withdraws, but I pursue, needing the tinder of our passion to catch fire, to remind her. It only takes a second. As soon as our lips meet, I hunt for the taste and texture of her tongue and the sweet, slick lining of her mouth. She softens, moans, leans into me, clenching her fingers in my hair, gripping my jaw, prying my mouth open wider. I let her take as much as she wants, touch me how she wants. I run my hands in a tight wave down her back and clutch the swell of her ass.
She feels so good.
She was made for me. She can’t forget that. No matter how bad this cluster fuck with Aiko looks right now, Kimba cannot lose sight of us. With subtle thrusts of my hips into her, I remind her how instantly hard the feel, the scent of her makes me.
The seeking movement is a faint echo of what we shared just hours ago at the lake house. She was mine. I was inside of her where I belonged, and if it wasn’t broad daylight on my front porch, I’d turn her dress up and be there again.
“Shit.” She groans, reaching between us to palm my dick. My teeth clench. I want to lose myself in this, desperately wish I could let her take me out, fall to her knees and suck me off. But Chaz is inside just feet away and my neighbor two houses down just came outside to mow his lawn.
“Baby,” I mumble against her lips. “Come back inside so we can figure this out.”
My words shatter the spell our bodies always work on each other and reality filters back into the haze we made. Bob’s lawnmo
wer fires up. Two moms chatter at the stop sign, pushing strollers. An alert sounds from Kimba’s phone.
She glances down, licking lips swollen and wet from my kisses.
“Lamont’s here.” She stomps down the steps toward the Prius idling in front of my house. “I have to go.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Kimba
“So the publisher is softening some on the legal end,” Keith says. “But exerting your wrath of Kimba Allen pressure would probably help. Are you calling them today?”
I blink a few times, dispelling the mental image of Aiko yesterday standing in their bedroom crowing about having Ezra’s baby.
“What?” I clear my throat and focus on my brother’s frowning face. “Yeah. I’ll do it.”
I look around the office at our family foundation’s headquarters, like it will give me a clue of my next step. “What am I doing?”
“Where is your head?” Kayla demands from behind her desk. “Everything I’ve said to you this morning I’ve had to repeat.”
“I’m sorry.” I lean back in my seat and release a long breath. “Just a lot going on. Yeah. I’ll call the publisher. Piers found the real name of the author. She’s writing the biography under a pseudonym.”
“What’s the name?” Kayla asks.
“Um, lemme see.” I glance at my phone, flicking past Ezra’s name and all the messages he’s sent that have gone unanswered and find Piers’ last message. “Serena Washington.”
Keith frowns and sits on the edge of Kayla’s desk. “I knew a Serena Washington.”
“For real?” I ask. “Who?”
“Remember Mrs. Washington?” Keith asks.
“Our old nosy neighbor?” Kayla’s face lights with recognition. “That old lady caught me in so many compromising positions.”
“All of high school was a compromising position for you, Zee.” I laugh, ducking when she throws a paper clip at me. “You know it’s true. Mama didn’t call you fast tail for nothing.”