“Work it now, girl,” Lena rooted. Holding an invisible microphone, Lena rendered a specific account of Cassidy’s new clothing as Cassidy spun and struck a pose.
“I hope I didn’t miss much of the show,” a smooth tenor rumbled.
A current of alarm sent a shock wave through Cassidy, and she bounced in place, jerking her hand from her hip. Not believing she could be this humiliated for the second time in one day, she looked everywhere but at Trevor.
Lena jacked a brow. “Well, isn’t this a treat!”
Cassidy mustered the nerve and faced Trevor. He was greeting Lena. While the duo exchanged pleasantries, Cassidy forgot her humiliation and secretly admired the Father’s-Day-card image of a dad with a sleeping child in each arm.
“I saw you on TV a few weeks ago,” Lena said. Cassidy had also viewed the local news that day. Trevor had been the guest chef for the cooking segment. “I love how you label yourself a dessert artist instead of a baker. It’s so millennial.” Lena stepped closer to Trevor. “I tried making that triple-berry pie, but I made a mess instead.”
“You’ll do better next time,” he encouraged.
Cassidy drew her mouth into a smirk. If Lena stretched the grin on her face any wider, it would take surgery to correct it.
“So how long have the two of you been friends?” Trevor’s pensive stare was on Cassidy, an obvious invitation for her to join the conversation. She prayed he wasn’t planning to small-talk her to death. The only thing he should be saying to her was,
I’m sorr
y
,
for the way he sabotaged her privacy this afternoon. Cassidy met his eyes, then steered her gaze away from his, unnerved when their eyes connected, her emotions as sheer as the lace curtains adorning the length of the living room window.
“I’ve known Cassidy since day one of kindergarten,” Lena answered for her. “She was picking her nose”—Cassidy felt the heat of embarrassment kindling under her chin and snaking toward her ears, and she began faking a chain of coughs, but Lena ignored the sound—“and I rescued her with a tissue.”
Cassidy hoped her eyes said,
You’re a dead woman,
because she was going to kill her best girlfriend.
“Cassidy,” Trevor voiced thoughtfully, “not Cassandra,” and both women plastered him with searching looks. He smiled. It was semicrooked and sexy, and Cassidy wanted to kick her own behind for noticing. “I thought your name was Cassandra,” he said.
Lena’s eyes grew into question marks. Cassidy could certainly understand why Lena would be wondering why a man who’d just let himself into the house was still a stranger. “You two haven’t met before now?” Lena asked.
“Not formally,” Trevor responded. There was an awkward stillness in the room as he looked at Cassidy and she looked at the painting on the wall to the left of him.
Lena, a natural at keeping the fires of conversation burning, merely said, “Oh.”
Trevor’s smaller child yawned, slightly opening her eyes as she squirmed. “Well,” he said, casting a fleeting but friendly look at Cassidy, “I’d better get my girls up to bed.”
More questions piled into Lena’s eyes as she glanced at Cassidy. “Would you like some help?” she asked Trevor.
He turned and started up the stairs. “No, thank you. I’m fine.”
“That’s for sure,” Lena flirted in a husky singsong, and Cassidy glared at her.
I
can’t believe you kept this from me,” Lena exclaimed less than a full second after Trevor had disappeared. “I bet you told Dunbar that Trevor was here. You tell him everything.”
“I do not. And for your information, I wasn’t keeping anything from you. I just hadn’t gotten around to telling you. And for precisely this reason”—she fluttered her hands in the air—“I knew you’d go all loco.” Cassidy plopped down on the couch. “By the way, I don’t appreciate you escorting Trevor along the memory lane of my life. Would you like me to tell him how you peed the bed until you were twelve?”
Lena upturned both hands above her shoulders. “Sorry,” she said. “So why is he putting his kids to bed here? And what was up with
you
? You didn’t say one word to him.” Lena joined Cassidy on the couch as Odessa reentered and put down a tray of refreshments before excusing herself for the night. When Odessa was out of hearing range, Lena spoke up, fanning herself with her hand. “Trevor sure was checking one of us out, girl, and I’m sorry to say it was
not
me.”
Cassidy shook her head. At times, she wondered if Lena was mentally stable.
“Please,”
Lena went on, “he was trying to be all ‘I’m not looking at her,’ but he was on you, and you know it.”
Cassidy twiddled her thumbs. Yes, she’d been completely cognizant of Trevor’s intense gazes, but not talking about them made them less real and, consequently, less overwhelming.
Lena filled a glass with lemonade. “So are you going to tell me why he’s here?”
Quickly, quietly, and with a face devoid of expression, Cassidy imparted the story. “I’m surprised you hadn’t heard Trevor moved in.”
“You know how crazy my shifts can get. I haven’t had time to gossip with anyone from church this week.”
Cassidy fired a peeved look up the stairs. “I’m just glad Brother Monroe’s stay is going to be delimited.” “Delimited” was one of her words from last month.
“What’s
de
limited mean?” Lena took one of the shortbread cookies from the plate beside the pitcher.
“It means no need to get comfortable because you won’t be staying long.”
“Girl, do you know how many women would love to be living under the same roof as Trevor Monroe?”
It was pathetic. Dozens of women at the church were planning their weddings around Trevor. Cassidy hardly thought him worthy of all the attention he drew. “I guess we should add your name to the list of Trevor-chasers.”
Lena swallowed a swig of lemonade. “I’m not ashamed. I’d be all up on him if I wasn’t talking to Dondre. I told you about him, remember?”
“Um-hmm”—Cassidy crossed her arms—“I remember.”
Lena sampled a chocolate cookie this time, and dark brown crumbs rained onto the napkin perched on her palm just south of her chin. “We had dinner at his apartment last night.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, Mother dearest, that’s all.” Lena’s smile became impish. “Though I ain’t saying I wasn’t tempted to move things from the dining room to the bedroom. The man knows how to push all the right buttons.”
“Did he get saved yet?”
Lena sucked her teeth. “No, and before you start reminding me of the merits of dating
saved
men, remind yourself that some of them so-called saved brothers who have their hands raised in the air praising the Lord on Sunday are using the same hands that attempted to roam all up under your skirt the night before.”
Cassidy’s memory tumbled in reverse to the first saved guy she’d had a serious relationship with. During her freshman year at the small, rural, upstate Tilden University, she started seeing a popular upperclassman nicknamed Minister. He could quote entire chapters from the Bible, and one day he was going to be the pastor of the church where his daddy served as pastor, and his daddy’s daddy had, too. Looking back now, Cassidy could clearly see how self-absorbed and confused Minister was. But at that time, all she could see was his alluring smile and chiseled body. All the women from freshmen to seniors wanted to be with Minister. But he only wanted to be with her—at least that’s what he told her—and she had fallen for it and kept falling until she crashed into a reality still too distressing to deal with.
“Don’t look so concerned,” Lena said, and Cassidy realized Lena was responding to the intense frown weaved into her forehead. “I’m staying before the Lord in prayer. But this saving-sex-for-marriage business is hard on the nerves. Maybe it would be easier if I’d stayed a virgin like you.”
Cassidy dropped her gaze to the spread of magazines on the coffee table and turned her features to neutral.
“Hey,” Lena said, finishing another of Odessa’s homemade cookies, “remember how we used to create stories about our husbands?”
“Our husbands” filled many teen journal pages. And back then, Cassidy believed those penciled dreams would come true.
“Mine’s going to be at least six feet tall, dark-chocolate-coated, built to perfection.” Lena rattled off the updated qualifications she expected her man to meet. “
And
he’s going to have a college degree, a job in corporate America, and a—”
“Relationship with the Lord,” Cassidy interjected.
Lena smiled. “I was going to say that.” She propped a pillow on her lap and hugged it. “Now let’s talk about what
you
want in a husband.”
“You know not to even go there.” Cassidy employed the impassive tone she used whenever the subject was broached. Her relationship with Larenz had sealed her decision to remain single, to completely turn her back on dating. The three guys she’d dated before Larenz—Joseph, Zair, and Bertram—all Charity Community members like Larenz had once been, hounded her for sex, but each of them had simply taken her home and never called again after she’d denied their propositions. Larenz, however, had chosen a different plan of action when Cassidy turned down his advances, and it turned out to be one of the scariest nights of Cassidy’s life.
Soon after Lena had gone home, Cassidy sprinted down the stairs into the living room, a fierce dash to seize the teddy she’d left on the sofa. With the way her day had been going, Trevor would find it, and even if she tried to pin it on Odessa, there was no way he’d believe a mother of the church owned something so racy. Surprised to find the front door ajar, Cassidy edged to it, eased it slightly wider, and peeked outside. The streetlights provided sufficient gleam for her to see Trevor as he stood on the sidewalk with a woman pressed against him.
T
revor pried Rave’s twiglike arms from around his neck. She had run to him, embraced him, rambled on about having a flat and how scared she’d been at the prospect of being stranded for hours on a dark city street.
“How fortunate for me you’re living here now.” Her red lips became a smile. “This must be heavenly intervention.”
“Heavenly” wasn’t the word that surfaced in Trevor’s mind as he massaged the constricted muscle at the back of his neck. “What are you doing out? Kregg said the two of you were spending the evening together.”
“I canceled,” she said. She fluttered her eyelashes, and Trevor got the impression it was a rehearsed action. Rave directed a thumb over her shoulder. “My convertible is just around the corner. Can you help me?”
Rave’s gray eyes beckoned like jewels. Cheap ones, Trevor mused. “Wait here,” he said, and walked four cars back to his Expedition, parked in what was the closest available space to the house. In case Rave didn’t have the necessaries, he grabbed the black duffel bag that held his roadside emergency equipment. He thought about going back to lock the front door of the house but figured the task of changing a flat wouldn’t take long. He would haveRave well on her way within the half hour. “Lead the way,” he said when he returned, neither smiling nor frowning at the woman who’d blocked him before he could get to his vehicle to retrieve the Bible he’d left under the front seat.
Caroling crickets filled the night with music as Trevor assessed the situation. Rave’s Mercedes did indeed have a flat. “Keys,” he said.
Rave coiled her fingers around his wrist, lifted his arm, and dropped the ring of keys in his open palm. She stared at him with wide-eyed innocence, but as she flapped her lashes again, her expression seemed more sinister than sincere when she whined, “I must have run over some glass or something.”
Trevor removed the spare, the jack, and the tire iron from the trunk of the white car and went to work while Rave disappeared around the other side of the vehicle. Suddenly, as if he’d been slapped across the back of the head, he jerked his shoulders, censure crossing his features. Rave had turned on the car’s sound system, and a blast of hip-hop drowned out the peaceful serenade of the crickets. She was beside him now, snapping fingers, flailing arms, swiveling hips, and chanting lyrics. From his squatting position, he looked up at her. “Here, hold this.”
Rave accepted the flashlight, continuing to bop.
“I need you to hold it still,” he ordered.
“I’ll hold it any way you want.”
Her purr had been close enough to warm his ear. Trevor continued working, ignoring the long bare legs she rubbed against his slacks. He soon put the damaged tire in the spot from which he’d taken the spare, Rave on his heels. He wasn’t sure if he bumped into her or the other way around as he slammed shut the trunk. “Watch out,” he grumbled.
The pink tones creeping into Rave’s cheeks told Trevor she’d been wounded by the brusque command. But what did he care? Rave’s bruised feelings could heal on their own. After all, she’d been far more offensive to him . . . and to Kregg, carrying on like this behind Kregg’s back with Kregg’s friend. “I’m sorry,” Trevor apologized anyhow. “I didn’t want you to get hurt.” He perceived any hurt feelings to have been soothed when she trailed a fingernail along his arm from elbow to wrist and smiled up at him. Trevor hastened to the front of the car and opened the door, an invitation for Rave to take her seat.
Rave advanced, her chunky heels loudly hitting the asphalt. She stopped toe-to-toe with him, threw her arms around his middle, and leaned into him from the waist down. “How might I compensate you for your services?”
Trevor tightened his grip on the door while his other hand found that muscle cramping again at the base of his neck. “No payment necessary,” he said, and deliberated when he would tell Kregg about this.
“Oh, come on. Let’s go get a soft pretzel”—she smiled—“share a soda. Or if you want, we could go to my place and have
Bible
study.” Rave giggled.
“No, thank you, Rave.” His voice was unyielding. “I have to get back to my girls.”
“I’m sure the old hag will keep an eye on them.”
Patience waning as swiftly as the time, Trevor replied austerely, “Rave, let’s say good night. Like I said, I need to get back. I didn’t tell Mother Vale or Cassidy I left the house.”