Sizzling Seduction

Lawrence hung up his cell. “You owe me big-time, man. What do you have to eat in this dump? Apparently, Mom and Dad decided they wanted to spend some quality time with all their grandchildren and this freed Samantha and Penny to kidnap my wife and take her shopping for all the ‘cute little maternity clothes she’s going to need.”’ Lawrence mimicked the high-pitched, gleeful sound his sisters-in-law made when they talked about clothes and shoe shopping. “So the wonderful home-cooked meal that my wife was going to make for me is no more and you have to feed me.”

The doorbell rang and Patrick shook his head as he went to answer it. “Joel, order a pizza and some wings for your always hungry brother while I let baby bro in.”

The pizza and wings came and they sat in the living room with a basketball game on the flat screen as white noise.

They didn’t get a chance to hang out nearly as much as they used to before his younger brothers all got hitched. Patrick missed that sometimes, but what he got in return—with wonderful sister-in-laws, a niece, two nephews and a new baby on the way—more than made up for the male bonding time he was missing with his brothers. Still it was moments like these when they did hang out that made him happy to have them.

“So.” Lawrence leaned back, rubbing his now full stomach, content for the moment, with a hint of a smile even. “What was so important that we all had to get over here tonight?”

“I think I know what it is.” Jason shook his head. “Aw…man…did you find out that Courtney was moving back to Paterson?”

His ex-wife? Moving back to Paterson? Say what?

“What you talking ’bout, Jason?” Joel laughed at his own impression of Gary Coleman and everyone else just stared at him before turning back to Jason.

Patrick rubbed his chin as he waited for the anger and hurt to surface. It had been ten years since he had found Courtney in bed with another man. Patrick had come down with a severe case of the flu and he’d had to be relieved from his shift at the fire station. He had come home expecting his stay-at-home wife to pamper him and make him feel better.

Instead, flu or no flu, he had ended up opening up a can of whup-ass on the no good lawyer and church deacon he had found in bed with his wife. She begged forgiveness and wanted them to try counseling, but there was just no coming back from that as far as he was concerned. They had only been married for four years. He had hung up his player status at twenty-six to marry a woman he thought was true. And for many years he wondered if she had been cheating the entire time.

When the bad feelings didn’t surface, he shrugged. “I hadn’t heard she was moving back permanently and it really doesn’t matter. It is ironic that she would pick now to move back, though.”

“It wasn’t like she had moved far away anyway. The chick was only in Trenton and she was in town often hanging out with her sorority sisters and having her monthly lunch with Aunt Sophie. She should have moved a whole lot farther away and she should have had the good taste to stay gone,” Joel said.

Patrick sighed. He had figured out intricate ways to avoid running into his ex-wife through the years, stealth-spy ways. And he needed them because from the time the ink dried on the divorce papers, his Aunt Sophie had been trying to get him to take Courtney back.

He hadn’t seen Courtney in at least six months, and that had only been in passing. Even his best avoidance skills were no match for two schemers on a mission. So he figured out a way to deal with seeing her and as the years went by, it bothered him less and less.

“Anyway, none of that is important. And it has nothing to do with why I asked to see you three knuckleheads. I need to pick your brains about the moment you knew that your wives were the one.”

Jason tilted his head and put on his police detective inquisitive stare.

Joel’s mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. He started laughing almost immediately.

Lawrence rubbed his chin and his signature know-it-all smirk graced his face.

Too late to turn back now…

“I mean, I know that Jason was pretty much a goner for Penny from the time he was a kid. Poor sap didn’t stand a chance. And Joel, you walked around with that silly grin on your face all the time. We didn’t think we would ever see you smile again after your accident and then one meeting with your physical therapist, Samantha, and you were sprung. And Lawrence, you took one look at Minerva and you turned into a stalker—”

“I wasn’t a stalker!” Lawrence interrupted in a huff.

“Dude, you were damn close to it. I was worried I would have to arrest my own brother.” Jason chuckled and Lawrence glared at him.

“Anyway, I wanted to find out from you guys—how did it feel? I realized that none of you had a clue you had just met the love of your life. You were too slow to see what the rest of us could tell just from looking at you. But—”

“Wait a damn minute! For somebody who obviously wants our help, you are being a little too free with the put-downs. I know that’s how you are all the time. But if you want my help, you’re going to have to be nicer.” Joel folded his arms across his chest. “And for the record, I did not walk around with a silly grin on my face. And I realized that Samantha was the love of my life fairly quickly and put her on notice, as well. I was much quicker than the stalker cop over there.”

“I was not stalking her! I was doing my job,” Lawrence snapped.

“Anyway.” Jason shook his head at Lawrence. “I’m with Joel. Big bro needs to be a little nicer if he wants our help. And he’s going to have to come clean about why he wants our help. I don’t know about y’all, but I need some more details.”

“I need some more details, too,” Joel said.

“Oh, I definitely need some more details,” Lawrence offered gruffly.

Patrick eyed each of his brothers cautiously. He should have known these three jokers wouldn’t have made this easy. He probably should have toned down his comments, since they had apparently gotten them all riled up.

He leaned forward. “I met a woman—”

“Oh, snap!” Joel stared at him with glee and mirth as he interrupted. “Samantha said that when the love bug bit your surly, grumpy behind it was going to take you down hard and fast. But this is ridiculous. You met her today and she’s already got you calling for council from your younger, smarter, better-looking—”

“All right, can I finish? And tell my sister-in-law to stop talking about me. Anyway, I met a woman today, a kindergarten teacher who brought her class to visit the firehouse—”

“I used to love giving tours to the little kiddies. That was a fun part of the job. The kids really looked up to—” Joel cut him off again.

“Anyway…can I finish?” He glared at his brother.

“Oops. My bad. Go ahead, man.” A sheepish expression crossed Joel’s face.

“So, from the moment I set eyes on her when I welcomed the class to the firehouse, I felt weird. I wanted to keep looking at her. So I hung around for a little while as the rookie gave the tour and I even went out afterward and asked her on a date.”

“Playa, playa…” Jason offered with a smirk. “So when are you taking her out? Is that what you need advice on, where to take her and how to impress her? It’s been a minute since I’ve been in the game, but in my day, you know—”

“I’m not taking her out. Yet. She said she doesn’t date.”

“She doesn’t date? What?” Perplexed, Lawrence frowned. “Wait…Was this a Catholic school? Did you hit on a nun? You know they don’t always wear those habits and stuff anymore—” Lawrence started.

“It was a public school, and she wasn’t a nun! And I’m not asking for advice on how to woo her once I get her to agree to a date.” Disgusted at the thought that his younger brothers would even deign to think that they had more skills that he, Patrick grimaced. “I’m the reason you scrubs had any game to start with, and the last thing I need is advice about that from y’all. Advice? Please! When I taught y’all everything you know?”

“So what do you want?” Jason asked.

“I want to know if this urge to break out into a smile every time I picture her face, if the serious and steady thump in my chest every time I think about her, and this urge I have to find a way, any way, to see her short of stalking…” He shot Lawrence a glance. “I need to know if that’s what it feels like when you meet her…when you’ve met the one. I think that’s why I’m feeling this way and I don’t want to be slow on the uptake like you three clow—I mean, you guys. So—”

“Yes. He’s got it bad,” Jason said with a chuckle.

“And it appears the last Hightower brother has been bitten by the love bug.” Lawrence grinned.

“I don’t know if she’s the one. But it seems like you are recognizing her as the one. That’s for sure. That’s what it feels like. At least that’s what it felt like to me,” Joel offered.

“Me, too,” Jason said.

“Yep. Me, too,” Lawrence added.

“Didn’t you feel like that with Courtney?” Joel asked.

Patrick thought about it for a full minute. He couldn’t recall ever feeling like that from the first moment he had met his ex-wife. He remembered his aunt always pushing them together and he remembered slowly coming to enjoy her company and coming to love her. But he never felt anything like he felt now back then with Courtney.

“No. I didn’t feel like this with Courtney.”

Then, for the first time since his divorce, he started to think that maybe the failure of his marriage wasn’t all Courtney’s fault after all.

Chapter 3

“Did you finish your homework?” Aisha folded her arms across her chest and smiled at her son as he plopped down on the sofa and flipped on the television.

“I didn’t have that much homework,” Dillon offered after the short pause that had always been his tell sign.

Her ten-year-old son was a joy on most days. But morning cartoons made it difficult to get him dressed and out the door for school. And afternoon cartoons distracted him from his homework.

The copper-brown-complexioned child looked like a little male version of her, with the exception of the black curly hair he’d gotten from his dad. Her own hair reached the middle of her back and was chemically straightened. She seldom did more to it than curl the ends and pull it back with one of her many-colored and many-styled headbands. When she was feeling really adventurous, she pulled it back in a ponytail with a scrunchie. One day she would work up enough nerve to cut it all off into one of those funky hairstyles her teaching assistant, Toni, wore. But for now, she had a ten-year-old trying to get out of doing homework to deal with.

“You didn’t answer the question, Dillon.” She added extra inflection in her voice, walked over to the television and stood in front of it.

Sulking, Dillon turned it off and got up. “My favorite show will be off by the time I’m finished.”

“Then maybe you should have started earlier and then you would have been done, huh? You were messing around back there doing everything but your homework. So get to it so that you can be done by dinner.”

A spark of hope gleamed in his big brown eyes. “I could skip dinner and do my homework during dinner and watch my show now. Today we find out if the super ninja spider will—”

She had to cut him off. “Are you trying to say you’d rather watch those silly ninja spiders than eat one of my wonderful creations?”

Aisha knew she wasn’t the greatest cook in the world—nowhere close. She experimented often with recipes that she saw being prepared on TV. But she also tried to make sure she put together simple healthy meals for her child and the little cartoon addict was going to eat his dinner.

“Well, Mom…” Dillon gave her one of his sly, playful grins. “You could stand to watch a little less Food Network.” He backed away as he spoke and his lanky body took off running when she picked up a pillow and tossed it at him.

“Just for that I’m not going to try the new recipe I found for a cool dessert.”

“Yay! No test recipe this week!” her darling child yelled from his back bedroom.

“Oh, do your homework, you little prankster!” She laughed as she plopped down on the sofa and turned on the Food Network. One of these days she was going to get one of those recipes to turn out the way they did on TV.

Watching the cooking shows always soothed her mind and gave her something else to think about. She had never been a great cook and barely made the basics. It hadn’t been a problem when she was married to William “Bill” Miller. He had always been fond of telling her he hadn’t married her for her cooking or her brains.

The moment her verbally abusive former husband decided to up the ante and actually put his hands on her, her life took a detour. She only followed her desire to really learn to cook once she had gotten the courage to leave her husband, go back to school, finish her elementary education degree and got a job with the Paterson public school system.

Life was good now. She just had to make sure she resisted temptation and didn’t let any man try to seduce her into giving up her new path. No matter how sexy and smoking hot he was…

Now that looks good. I bet I can totally make that.

She let her mind think of safer things as she watched the Barefoot Contessa whip together the mocha buttercream frosting. How hard could that possibly be? It looked easy enough. She grabbed the notepad she kept by the sofa and started jotting down the ingredients and directions. She might have missed some, but she was sure she could wing it. She would try the dessert soon. At least she could clear her mind of thoughts about the sexy fireman.

Then, despite her best efforts, she suddenly envisioned herself feeding the fireman delectable morsels of her own mocha buttercream-frosted chocolate cake. The vision looked too good to vanquish from her head right away. So she let it linger. And then she had the nerve to start daydreaming about mocha buttercream frosting and that muscular frame of his. That’s when she knew she had to stop. Too bad she couldn’t….

Chapter 4

Aisha sat in the Public School Number 21 faculty lunchroom, enjoying her turkey, avocado and tomato sandwich on whole wheat. During her hour-long break between her morning class being picked up and her afternoon class being dropped off, the building fire alarm went off. It wasn’t a scheduled drill, so she hurried out of the building, helping other teachers control their students as she exited.

Standing outside in the brisk fall air, she only hoped that whatever fire team responded it wasn’t one led by the sexy fire captain Patrick Hightower. The last thing she needed was a reminder of how she had totally blown off the finest man to ever make a move on her, ever.

She didn’t regret turning him down. Not really…But she certainly didn’t need to see him again. His confident, bordering on cocky, approach let her know that he was probably a man just like her father, just like her ex-husband.

He was not a man she wanted or needed. She repeated those words like a holy mantra in her head and hoped that they would sink in.

When the fire truck and fire engine pulled up and she got a glimpse of him jumping off the truck like a doggone super action hero coming to save the day, looking fine in his full fire-repellant uniform, she cursed the mantra. Her mouth went dryer than the Sudan and she could have sworn her breath was starting to make soft little pants. He looked dead at her; at least she thought he zoomed right in on her before he went into the building.

The other firemen with him hardly seemed to matter. She barely registered their presence. It was something about the way his eyes seemed to take all of her in with one glance that left her blind, deaf and dumb.

She must have been imagining things. There was no way he had found her out of all the other teachers and the many students standing outside the building. She shook her head trying to clear the daze.

Not for me. Not for me. Not for me.

Maybe if she changed her mantra she’d stand a better chance. The image of Patrick’s slow, seductive smile and simmering eyes came into her mind and she realized that all the mantras in the world wouldn’t help her. She’d just have to be sure to stay away from him.

Since there was no smoke and the only heat she could sense was the sizzling sparks she felt whenever she thought of the fire captain, she figured that fate must have conspired with some little kid who was thinking it was a good idea to pull a prank by pulling the fire alarm.

She hoped the little rat was caught and suspended for an entire month—heck, the rest of the school year wouldn’t be enough punishment for him bringing temptation in the form of the sexy fire captain into her world yet again.

Sure enough, there was no fire in the building. The school administrators were now looking for the child who had wasted the time of the fire department.

While they did that and the other teachers took their students back to class, Aisha watched the firemen get back in the truck. She told herself it was because she had to stand outside and wait for her afternoon kindergartners anyway. But deep inside she knew it was because she wanted to get just one more peek at Patrick.

Just because she couldn’t have him didn’t mean she couldn’t look. Did it? What possible harm could be done by looking?

She regretted the thought as soon as she caught his dead-on stare once again. If she had any doubts about who he had been looking at the first time he zeroed in on her, they were all gone now. The rest of the teachers and students had gone back to their classrooms.

She watched as his sumptuous lips slowly curved, showing a hint of perfect white teeth and then the full bright grin hit her and sparked a powerful keening, needful emotion deep down in her gut.

What the heck was it? Lust? Desire? Wantonness? It had to be one of those. Whatever it was, she certainly wasn’t giving in to it. No matter how much it was starting to ache just looking at him.

She let out a sigh when the truck started to pull off. Patrick kept looking at her, though. She could have sworn he kept looking at her until the truck reached the corner. And then he pointed from himself to her and she found herself smiling as she shook her head. He pointed between them again as he nodded and the truck turned the corner.

“Mmm-hmm. I see that, missy. You can’t fool me. You want that fine Hightower man in a bad way, don’t you?”

Rats! When had Toni crept up on her?

Her teaching assistant had had an emergency dental appointment because one of her fillings fell out, and had missed the morning class. Even though the little ones could be more than a handful, Aisha almost wished Toni had stayed out the entire day.

“Looks like I missed the fire drill and the fire, too, the way you two were heating things up out here. Dang, if he wasn’t all the way up there in that truck fully clothed in that sexy fireman’s uniform, I would have had to tell you two to go get a room.”

“Stop playing. How’s your tooth?”

“Uh-uh. Don’t try to change the subject. What did I miss?”

“You missed a false fire alarm. I think it was one of those little roughneck-in-training eighth graders.”

“Okay. Be like that, Aisha. But you wait until I have a sexy fireman giving me the ooo-baby-I-want-you-bad look. Don’t think I’m going to give you the dish. Because I won’t.”

“Girl, you wouldn’t be able to help yourself. You’d tell me everything as soon as the dude cracked the first smile at you.”

Toni burst out laughing. “You know me so well!”

“Hello, Michaela. Stand in line as we wait for the rest of your classmates.” Aisha shot Toni a quick glance to let her know the subject of Patrick Hightower was done as soon as the first parent walked up and dropped off her child.

“Oh, don’t worry, missy, we’re going to finish this conversation at book club tomorrow.” Toni grinned. “Hey, Michaela! Are you ready for a fun afternoon?”

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