They spent several nights a week together, and usually all weekend every weekend. He was slowly learning his way through using implements on her, taking his time so he didn’t harm her.
They hadn’t played at Venture yet, but that was okay. They frequently went, watched, then returned to his house to play.
Rope was next on his list to start learning, and Meri was eagerly on board with that plan.
He’d finally found the perfect day collar for her, a stainless steel chainmaille bracelet woven in an intricate pattern, and something she could wear to work or out and about without arousing suspicion.
Alone behind closed doors, she now had a set of leather cuffs and a collar to wear for him.
It was the only thing she was allowed to wear—except for one of his shirts when he could tell she felt vulnerable and needed it—when they were home alone together.
Even better? He’d already had one bad pain cycle, where he shouldn’t have mowed the grass and he did and it put him flat on his back and needing the vape pen.
As grouchy and miserable as he’d been, Meri had stuck with him, giving him a long, sweet back rub and snuggling with him, content just to be with him.
It felt nearly magical after years of solitude.
He’d proven to her he wanted her just the way she was, and she was proving it to him, too.
His next step would be inviting her over to Momma’s to meet her and Albert and Sondra. Although he’d told them about Meri, that hadn’t happened yet, because their schedules hadn’t matched up. And then they’d also had to travel to Atlanta for Keisha’s husband’s funeral a few weeks ago.
The man she’d cheated on him with had been two decades older than her and died of natural causes.
He’d just put a load of clothes in the dryer when he heard the doorbell ring.
Odd.
He thought it was a little early for it to be Meri, and he wasn’t expecting anyone else.
Besides, Meri wouldn’t ring the bell. They both just walked into the other’s house when they were expected.
Unless maybe I forgot to leave it unlocked for her?
When he stepped into the entryway and looked through the viewfinder his heart dropped, hitting his feet before it started racing.
There, on his front porch, stood Keisha.
Looking every damn bit as good as she had back then, when she’d still been his wife.
What the fuck?
After a moment of arguing with himself, he answered the door but kept a grip on it so he could slam it in her face if necessary. Belatedly, he realized he should have pretended not to recognize her. Hadn’t seen her in, what, twenty years, at least. That’d be understandable.
Instead, he kept his expression carefully schooled and his tone gruff. “Yeah?”
She arched a carefully sculpted eyebrow at him in that way she’d always had. “That’s not very friendly, Wynn.”
Scolding him as if he didn’t have a right to be at the very least irritated at her.
“What do you want?”
“I was in town to visit Momma, and heard you still lived right here. I thought I’d drop by and say hi. Aren’t you gonna invite me in?”
Keisha had parked right next to his car, where she’d always parked before.
Where Meri would be parking when she arrived soon.
“This gonna take long? I have company coming over.” Despite his better instincts, he opened the door and let her step inside.
Except he knew, if she was still the same woman in some ways, that if he tried to get her to go away she’d stand out there on his front porch arguing—possibly making a scene—until she’d had whatever say she’d wanted to say, or made whatever point she wanted to make. It’d be easier to do this inside behind a closed door and get it over with faster.
After he closed the door behind her he didn’t miss how she took in the place. “Looks good, Wynn. You been taking care of it, and yourself.” She turned, her gaze scanning him. “Real good.” Her sexy smile actually creeped him out and killed any possibility of him popping wood over how good she looked. “Done real good, it looks like.”
“What do you want, Keisha?”
The pouty voice. “I told you, I wanted to say hi. Spend some time catchin’ up.”
“You could’ve said hi on the front porch. And I don’t want to catch up with you.”
An evil smile filled her face. “Momma said you ain’t married. You gotta girlfriend gonna be jealous you talkin’ with me?”
Jealous wasn’t the word he’d use, but he didn’t owe Keisha jack shit, and definitely not an explanation. “I don’t understand why you’re here.”
She set her purse down on the dining room table like she still owned it. Which she didn’t, because she took the old one with her and that one had come from IKEA about ten years earlier. “Well, I suppose Momma or someone musta told you I was widowed now, didn’t they?”
Yeah, they had, but for only six weeks into her mourning, she sure was acting like a fucking merry widow.
He didn’t leave the entryway and stood with his arms crossed over his chest. “We don’t talk about you,” he lied, suspecting Albert wouldn’t have talked to her about his talks with him.
He hoped.
He damn well knew Sondra wouldn’t. She hated Keisha.
A scowl crossed her face. “Kinda weird, ain’t it? You still friends with my family and all, and you don’t talk about me? Like you’re still trying to stay close to me, huh?”
“I love them, not you. They’ve been kind to me throughout the years. Especially after my accident. If you came here to play games today, I ain’t buyin’. I need you gone.”
“Oh, come on, Wynn.” She tipped her chin down and smiled at him. “We was good together.”
“No, we weren’t.” He gave up any pretense of trying to just “get along.” “You were toxic. I spent too many damn years wondering what was wrong with me when it was you with the problem. You cheated on me and left me for an older, richer guy.”
“But lookatchoo now!” She held her hands out. “You bettered yourself. Made a real man of you. You got a good job, a nice house.” She waved her hands at his body. “Can’t tell me you weren’t trying to get my attention.” She tried what he had once thought of as her sexy smile. A smile that used to make him so hard he’d leave a wet spot in his briefs.
Today it only rolled his stomach. “I spent two fucking weeks in a coma. I look like this now because I almost died and I realized I wasted too many fucking years on mourning you. Not a damn bit of this had anything to do with you.”
Also sort of a lie, because in his head he’d spent a lot of time doing reps and lifting weights while trying to banish her words and voice from his memory.
So that if this day ever came, he could laugh in her face, turn his back, and walk away from her.
“Oh, but I think it did, didn’t it? You damn sure did everything I told you needed doin’, now, didn’t you?” She turned, hands on her hips, as if surveying the house again, the way she had when they’d first bought it.
Like she was planning on what to do with it.
“I’m thinking about moving back to Sarasota,” she said. “Momma ain’t gettin’ any younger, and now I don’t have anything keepin’ me in Atlanta. We could get together for dinner.” She faced him again, her smile still in place. “Bet you’re even better in bed now than you used to be.”
He walked over to where she’d set her purse down, grabbed it, and shoved it at her, forcing her to take it. Letting her into the house had been a massive mistake. “Not listening to any of your bullshit today, woman.” He stormed over to the front door, opened it, and glared at her. “Out. Now.”
The tip of her head to the side as she appraised him sent a chill up his spine. He knew that look, too. She wasn’t done. Not by a long-shot.
“Okay. Be that way.” She slowly strolled to the doorway. “I can tell you’re playin’ hard-to-get. I guess I deserve it.” She paused next to him,
sweetly smiling up at him. “You know you ain’t had better than me, though.”
“You’re dead wrong about that.”
He didn’t realize he’d said it aloud until he read the storm clouds in her eyes.
Fuck it. He didn’t owe her shit, and he didn’t have to be nice to her. He was about to lay into her when the sight of a car pulling into his driveway caught his eye and he realized Meri had arrived.
Shit. Just what he needed.
He stepped out, pulling the door shut with him and forcing Keisha to step out onto the porch or get hit in the ass by it. “Time for you to leave.”
“Oh, I think I want to hang around and meet your new lady friend.”
Elvin struggled against the urge to put hands on her—around her throat, preferably—and grab her by the arm to drag her to her car. He wouldn’t put it past the bitch to call the cops on him and cause trouble for him.
He also didn’t like the sick look on Meri’s face when she got out of her car, an expression she quickly schooled as she headed up the walkway toward the porch.
It didn’t escape his notice that she wasn’t carrying her overnight bag or purse, either.
Shit.
“So introduce me to your little friend, Wynn,” Keisha drawled as she hooked an arm around his.
He yanked his arm free. “Keisha, if you don’t get the hell outta here, I’m gonna call the sheriff’s office and let them drag you outta here.”
* * * *
Meri wasn’t sure what the hell was going on. Yeah, she was almost an hour early, but she’d finished all the chores she’d wanted to do after work sooner than she’d expected to. He’d told her himself she was always welcomed to come over earlier.
But the daggers the other woman shot in her direction set off a flurry of reactions inside Meri, most of which would earn her a call to a bail bondsman…or for Ron to come back her up and bring his axe.
And a couple of swords.
Maybe a few Viking friends, too.
“Aw, you bein’ so unfriendly when we’ve got a history.” The woman clucked her tongue. “Datin’ a white girl, though? Really? And one so…skinny? Is this what you’ve sunk to? Couldn’t at least pick one with cleavage? You know you prefer a thick girl, honey. You always have.” She cupped a hand around her own ample right breast and lifted it a little, the meaning clear.
Meri’s cheeks burned, but she wasn’t about to let this fucking bitch talk to her like that. “Oh, are you that cheating whore who was the best, what, three hundred pounds he ever lost?”
Okay, low blow, but Meri wouldn’t deny she liked the way the woman’s eyes flicked in reaction, meaning Meri had struck a wounding blow of her own.
The woman dropped what looked to be a very expensive purse and stepped toward her, removing her earrings as she did. “Bitch, you better—”
“Bring it, cunt!”
Elvin stepped between them, forcing Meri around and away from the other woman. “Keisha, get the fuck off my property. Right now. And don’t you dare set foot on it again.”
She tried to jab a finger in Meri’s face, around Elvin. “Nah, no bitch gonna talk to me like that!”
“Come at me, you gold-digging whore!”
Elvin scooped up Keisha’s purse and flung it toward the woman’s car, earning a shriek from the woman as she practically dove after it. It hit the driveway and fell over, some of the contents spilling out.
Meri took a step after her but Elvin scooped an arm around her waist from behind and lifted her off her feet. “No you don’t, baby girl. You’d better stay right where I put you, too.”
He carried her across the porch, opened the front door, and set her inside, then pulled the door shut and held it shut while Meri pounded on it from the other side. She didn’t stand a chance trying to yank it open.
She bolted over to the dining room window and stared out it, watching as Elvin pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “Calling 911, Keisha. Get your skank ass off my property.”
While scooping her shit into her purse, she screamed something incoherent at him but finally climbed into her car and peeled out of the driveway.
Meri charged toward the front door as Elvin walked in, his cell phone apparently back in his pocket because it wasn’t in his hand.
“What the hell was she doing here?” She realized she was screaming and didn’t care.
“She showed up a few minutes before you did. Said she was in town to visit her mom. Literally, she arrived less than five minutes before you got here.”
“You let her into your house? Why?”
“I was hoping to avoid a scene.”
“So how’d that work for you?”
His hands gently cupped around her shoulders and he dropped his voice. “Baby, I swear, I didn’t know she was coming over.”
Of course she trusted him. She wouldn’t be dating him—or doing the other stuff they’d done—if she didn’t trust him.
Still, it stung.
“She does not set foot inside this house again. Not unless you want to kiss my ass good-bye. Hard fucking limit, Elvin.”
“Done.”
Not even the briefest of hesitation in his response.
“I mean it,” she said. “That bitch shows up—”
“Then I keep the door closed and call 911 to get her out of here,” he said. “I know her game now and it isn’t working on me.”
She was about to say something else when his phone rang, not his default ringtone but one she hadn’t heard before.
He released her and pulled his phone out, looked at it, then answered. “Hey, Momma. How you doin’? … Um, well—okay. … Yeah, she already showed up and left, and— … Yeah, I—” He closed his eyes, rubbing at his forehead as he seemed to be searching for a response. “What time tomorrow? … All right, five. Okay, thank you, Momma. I’ll see if she can. Yeah. Love you, too.”
A chill settled inside her. “What?”
The fact that he hesitated told her more than what he eventually said when he found his voice. “That was Momma.”
“You mean Keisha’s mom?”
“Yeah.”
“What the hell did she want?”
The flash of a hard look crossed his face before he schooled his expression back to cool and calm. “You know I love her, baby. Momma, not Keisha. She and Albert and Albert’s wife, Sondra, they helped me out. After my accident. Keisha don’t have a damn thing to do with that.”
“And of course she’s calling now?”
“She mentioned Keisha was in town and had talked about stopping by here.”
She barked a laugh she knew was too high, too harsh. “Perfect timing. What’d she want?”
“She invited me over to dinner tomorrow at Albert and Sondra’s at five. It’s her birthday Monday, and they’re having the party early.”
“I thought we were going to Venture tomorrow night.”
“We still will, after I get back.”
“But we were going to go to Sigalo’s with everyone.”
Part of her hated that he looked like he was trying to hold on to his patience, like he…knew how much this was going to hurt her. “Baby, she’s gonna be seventy-five, and this means a lot to her.”
“Fine, but I’ll strangle that bitch if she so much as looks at you wrong. Your ex,” she added. “Not your ex-mother-in-law.”
He let out a breath. “Honey, you’re not going.”
The cold chill inside her headed toward blizzard territory. “Why not? Am I not invited? Or did you not even tell them about me? Are you ashamed to be dating a ‘white girl’?”
“Actually, she did invite you. And yes, obviously I’ve told her about you or she couldn’t have invited you, now, could she?”
Meri stared at him for a moment, certain she’d misheard him. “Then why can’t I go?”
“Because maybe Ron can afford bail money, but I’m not sure I can, and I’m a teacher.”
“You…you’re serious?”
But that wa
s mostly rhetorical, because she could tell from the look on his face he was.
“You’re not taking me to meet them?”
“Baby, I’ll be happy to take you to meet them any other time, as long as Keisha isn’t there. I’m not putting the two of you together in the same room. And don’t think I missed that potshot she took at you and what it probably triggered in your head.”
“Which one?” She realized her voice was climbing in volume and didn’t care. “The one about me being white, or basically calling me a flat-chested twig? Don’t think I didn’t notice you not standing up for me!”
“I threw her off my property and threatened to call the cops on her, baby. Unless I punched her and got myself tossed in jail, I can’t do much more than that.”
“But you’re still going to go? Without me? What happened to us spending all day together tomorrow?”
He rubbed at his forehead again. “Sweetheart, you’re spending the night here and will be here all day and tomorrow night. And Sunday night. I’ll only be an hour or two, at the most, and you’ll be here when I come back. It’s better this way, really. Baby, please understand. I’m not close to my family. When I was in the wreck, it was Albert and Sondra, and Momma and all them, who were at my bedside, who took care of me. They’re like blood to me.” He sighed. “But you tell me no, and I won’t go.”
But she hated the tone in his voice when he gave her that concession—defeated. The last thing she wanted to do to him was make him sound like that, the same way he’d sounded telling her about what Keisha had done to him, the emotional carnage she’d wreaked upon him by divorcing him the way she had.
“So if I tell you no, you can’t go, then I’m a bitch. If I tell you yes, that woman will be all over you all night long.”
“No, I will not think you’re a bitch if you tell me no. And you did see how I was trying to get her off my property, right?”
“Yeah, and if you’re at her brother’s house you’ll be nice to get along and not upset her.”
“Then tell me no, Meri. Tell me no, and I’ll call Momma back and say sorry, I can’t go.”
“Why can’t I go if she invited me?”
“Because you nearly ripped Keisha’s weave out and I’m afraid she’d hurt you if she went after you, or I’d hurt her keeping her from going after you.”