And he was a JCO. No, he was Director of Juvenile Probation.
He probably lived and breathed valid channels.
“Shirleen,” he called.
I looked at him while gulping back a glug of Bellini.
“I know it wasn’t above board, how you got those boys. I don’t care about that either,” he declared.
I took the glass from my mouth but didn’t set it back on the table.
There was less than half left, but I needed it close.
“What do you care about?” I asked.
And I’d find that I shouldn’t have.
Alternately, it could turn out it was the best thing I’d done in my life.
Because he answered.
Thoroughly.
“I care that my daughters get through high school without some hormonal boy making me a grandfather ten years before I’m ready for that shit, and also ruining my record of living fifty-one years of life without murdering a teenager. I care about them making decisions that will lead to happiness, not wealth or status or designer clothes, not drugs or booze or men who treat them like garbage.”
These were good things to care about, I thought.
Real good.
Moses didn’t give me the chance to make comment.
He kept going.
“I care about the turkey being cooked just right on Thanksgiving. Juicy goodness for the meal and days of leftover turkey sandwiches. I care about staying healthy for the day at least ten years away when my grandchildren come and I can put them on my shoulders and keep up with them when we’re horsing around. I care that my toilets don’t run and my faucets don’t leak and my yard looks good because I like to come home to a house that’s well maintained with a yard that looks good. But also I think everyone should be the kind of neighbor that cares for their home, and cares enough for their neighbors no one has to look at a shitty-ass yard when they come home.”
This was all good too.
Especially the turkey and home maintenance parts.
Who was I kidding?
Especially the taking care of himself part.
(But the turkey was a good one.)
Moses didn’t stop.
“I care about the Broncos and hope they win another Super Bowl, or twenty of them before I die. I care about global warming because I’m scared as shit about what my daughters and their children are going to face if we don’t sort our asses out. I care about the kids at my center and hope like fuck every one of them finds the righteous path, even if I have enough experience to know that not many of them will because their parents are for shit.”
He leaned in again and not that he’d taken his eyes from mine as he was giving this speech, but the way he started looking at me nailed me right to the spot.
“And this minute, I care about talking a beautiful woman, in a gorgeous dress with the most badass head of hair I’ve seen in my life and the most amazing eyes I’ve ever looked into who has a golden soul she hasn’t become acquainted with yet, into letting shit go so she not only enjoys this dinner with me, she lets me take her to a movie on Thursday.”
“You already want a second date?” I whispered.
“I already want a lot more from you, Shirleen Jackson, but I’m gonna remain focused on the short run in hopes I can stretch it long so maybe one day you can taste my Thanksgiving turkey. I make the best turkey, baby. So good, you’ll want Thanksgiving to come every day.”
“You brine it?” I was still whispering.
“Absolutely.”
“Roast it with stuffing?”
He nodded his head. “Mm-hmm.”
“I like the way you look at me.”
Unh-hunh, still whispering.
“I like the way you look sitting across from me,” he replied.
“I never want to see your face looking at me any other way than how you’re looking at me right now.”
The bakery-oven goodness shot across the table as a blast of heat while understanding seeped into his eyes.
“You ever gonna deal drugs again?” he asked gently.
“That wouldn’t be a very good example to Roam and Sniff and the foster grandbabies I hope they give me in no less than ten years.”
“I’m thinkin’ ‘foster’ doesn’t really factor anymore, baby.”
I shut up.
God, wouldn’t that be heaven?
“You gonna go to a movie with me on Thursday?” he pressed.
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it through the appetizer,” I admitted.
He looked confused. “I thought we were getting somewhere.”
“You terrify me, Moses Richardson.”
That wasn’t a blurt.
I said that cognizant of each word that came out of my mouth.
He did not take it as intended.
He looked pleased with himself.
Seriously pleased.
It was his best look yet.
Oowee.
“I know how to settle you down,” he assured.
Lordy.
“That’s what terrifies me,” I pointed out.
He grinned, and it was not like any of the other ones he’d given me.
My toes curled in my Alexander Wang’s.
“You’re very sure of yourself,” I noted.
The promise went out of his face and something else set in it before he refuted me.
“No I’m not. The only thing I’m sure of is that I want to get to know you better, Shirleen, in a variety of ways. I don’t know how this is gonna go. I don’t know where this is gonna go. I don’t know how deep you’re gonna let me in. I just know I want to give us a shot, which means I want you with me in doing that. That’s all I know. But I know it good.”
I looked deep into his eyes.
It isn’t here now.
“You got pictures of your girls?” I asked.
That didn’t get me a blast of bakery-oven goodness.
A cool breeze drifted across the table emanating from the relief in his eyes, and I watched the tension leaving his shoulders as he sat back, regarding me.
“Only about seven thousand two hundred of them,” he answered.
“Then whip out your phone, my man,” I invited.
The warmth came back in his smile as he reached inside his blazer to pull out his phone.
Moses Richardson did not have seven thousand two hundred pictures of his daughters.
He had nine thousand two hundred of them.
They were beautiful.
And as he spoke of them, I realized that beauty ran deep.
So it was clear they got a lot from their dad.
I had no earthly clue how I was sitting next to Moses Richardson in his truck.
Yes, I did.
I’d planned to have a few drinks at dinner with the girls, and the boys had need of my Navigator, so I’d Ubered it there.
And after dinner, when he’d found out I did, he would hear nothing but me allowing him to plant my ass right where it was so he could drive me home.
We were going to a movie on Thursday.
He loved 300 and thought The Accountant was the shit.
“That belt scene, baby,” he’d drawled. “Bad . . . ass.”
Though he hadn’t seen Tarzan and shared he had no intention to, but asked, “You like yourself some white boys?”
“He’s six foot four,” was my reply, and if Moses had a vagina (which thankfully he did not), he would understand this was all I had to say.
Moses had no reply to my reply.
Clearly I had to say more.
“And his portrayal of Eric Northman adheres to my philosophy on how to be a vampire.”
A surprised chuckle bubbled from him as he asked, “You’ve got a philosophy on how to be a vampire?”
“Who doesn’t?” I asked back.
Moses again had no reply, but this time he did it looking like he was trying real hard not to bust a gut laughing.
“It’s simple,” I stated.
“Share,” he urged.
I did.
“Own it. You’re gonna live forever and gotta do that by drinkin’ blood and raisin’ hell, why not? Live it up. Go for the gusto. Bust it out. And make no apologies.”
“Maybe there’s somethin’ for you to learn from this fictional vampire guy,” he’d said quietly.
That was when I had no reply.
Until I did.
“There you go, making it all deep.”
“I don’t know what’s deeper than finding out what kind of vampire a woman would wanna be.”
And that was when I burst out laughing.
That had been it.
After a rocky start, it was good conversation with delicious food and cocktails that led into fantastic wine, and now my ass was beside his in his truck where he was driving me home.
How did this happen?
One second, I was “puttin’ on the Ritz” to hit the town with my girls.
The next, I was sitting beside a hot guy in his truck after having a good date.
No, a great date.
No, a fabulous date.
Damn.
“We’ll hold hands at the movie theater, but tonight, baby, I’ll just walk you to the door. So you can settle down. It’s been beautiful and I don’t want you to get all nervous now. That would fuck it up.”
I turned my head to look at him.
The last thing Leon Jackson did before he left our home and then got whacked was backhand me into a wall.
And I knew without asking, the man sitting beside me had never raised a hand to a woman.
Hell, he might never have raised his hand to a man, unless he was sparring with him at his boxing gym (I did not know if Moses belonged to a boxing gym, but it was a good thought).
He glanced at me, his beautiful lips quirked, before looking back at the road.
“You good?” he asked.
What did I say?
My dead husband regularly beat the shit out of me? And the last years of our marriage, sex was more like habitual rape since I never wanted it but he took it anyway, and by then I’d learned not to fight it? And since the man got dead, I got myself a little somethin’-somethin’ here and there but it never lasted and it never meant anything? Now I’m sitting next to Moses and I worked with good men. And through them and my friends, I witnessed every day how a functional, loving relationship survived.
But I had no clue what I was doing and how I got my ass here beside him.
“Shirleen?” he prompted.
I turned forward.
“Okay, baby,” he said gently, “we’ll let whatever you got goin’ in that head of yours slide.”
Thank the Lord.
“For now,” he finished.
Shit.
He drove.
I sat beside him listening to the soothing strains of vintage R&B punctuated with his GPS guiding him to my driveway since he made me give him my address to program it in (okay, he didn’t “make me,” as such—he asked and I gave him my address), as well as my phone number.
He let the silence settle, and I had a feeling it was all right with him. Moses struck me as a man who could be comfortable in silence.
I was not.
He pulled into my drive, put the truck in park, turned it off and then twisted to me.
“Boys home?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I told them to text me when they got home. They’ve learned to do that without fail. And they haven’t done that, so no.”
“I’m walking you to your door.”
Moses bringing up my boys made me think of them and the fact they wouldn’t be home any time soon since it wasn’t yet eleven and that was their curfew when they were working at NI.
But maybe Jack at the office who usually manned the control room for the night shift was feeling some alone time and let them go early.
This was my last thought before Moses opened my door.
The man opened a woman’s car door.
Oh sweet Lord.
He offered me his hand.
I took it and the warmth and strength of his long fingers wrapping around mine made me freeze solid as I stared at our hands. His unrelentingly masculine, mine had long fingers, rounded knuckles with the skin darker there, my nails long and now coated in a silvery metallic with a hint of soft purple.
And staring at them, it hit me there was nothing more beautiful than two clasped hands.
“Shirleen?”
I tore my eyes from our hands and forced myself to shift my body to get out of his truck.
He held me gripped tight as I negotiated my dismount.
And he kept hold on me as he guided me out of the door, closed it, and walked me up to my front door.
He stopped us there and I stared at it so I wouldn’t turn my head and stare at him.
Or burst out crying.
Because there I was, Shirleen Jackson, fifty-three, with my history, being walked to her front door after the best date I’d had in my life.
“Uh, baby.”
Forced to do so due to manners, when Moses called, I turned my head.
Yep.
Best date of my life.
“You got the key?” he asked.
It was then, I didn’t know what came over me.
Well, I knew what came over me. I just didn’t know how I let it come over me.
You see, I tugged my hand free from his.
Then I put my hands to either side of his head and pulled it down to mine.
And I kissed him.
His beard was bristly.
But his lips were soft.
I slid my tongue between them.
Lord God, he tasted of panna cotta and man.
Nothing more beautiful had ever touched my tongue.
Overwhelmed by it, I shoved him back until he hit the side wall to the alcove that shadowed my front door, protecting it from the elements.
And I kissed the ever-lovin’ hell out of Moses Richardson.
Then suddenly I wasn’t kissing the ever-lovin’ hell out of him.
Even though I was pressed up to his big, solid body having shoved him into a wall, his arms were tight around me, his head had slanted, and he was kissing the ever-lovin’ hell out of me.
Oowee God!
Shirleen was dizzy!
Suddenly (and regrettably) I became conscious of the fact that I was a woman raising two boys and I had neighbors.
So I tore myself out of his arms, took a step back, and smoothed my dress down my hips.
“Uh . . .” I mumbled.
I found my jaw cupped by a big warm hand and a handsome face right in mine.
“How we feelin’ about watchin’ that movie on my couch?” he asked, the honey gone, all that was there was smooth gravel.
Lord.
“Um, I’m thinkin’, uh . . .”
I couldn’t finish because what I was thinking about was lying-down couch action and if one of the boys would miss it if I took a condom or two.
No, no, no. A woman did not steal condoms from her boys.
That was what drugstores were for.
And anyway, wasn’t that Moses’s territory?
I didn’t know. It had been too long.
And I wasn’t asking a Rock Chick as I’d decided I wasn’t speaking to them (any of them) for at least a week.
“We’ll pick a movie for both and decide Thursday,” he stated.
“Sounds like a plan,” I forced out.
“That was a nice kiss,” he murmured.
“Um, yeah,” I murmured back.
“Real nice.”
“Uh . . .”
His eyes started twinkling. “Never been body slammed into fake adobe before.”
My eyes narrowed.
His eyes roamed over my face and hair and the look in them changed.
“Fuck, could you get more perfect?” he whispered.
I went solid.
His gaze locked onto mine. “Don’t go back there.”
“Moses.”
“In the now.”
“I’m not—”
“In the now, right now, after that kiss, you bein’ so cute, you . . . are . . . perfect.”
Hell and damn.
I wanted to cry again.
He bent in, brushed his lips across the apple of my cheek and pulled away, dropping his hand from my jaw, and the loss of it felt like the loss of a limb.
I drew in a steadying breath.
He bent and nabbed the Minkoff clutch I hadn’t noticed I dropped.
“Please tell me there’s a key in there,” he joked, offering my bag to me.
I took it, opened it and slid the key out.
I held it up and showed it to him.
He took it from me and turned to the door.
Then Moses Richardson, like a gentleman, let me into my own house.
Of course, I had to push in to reach and punch in the code for the alarm that was beeping.
But still, the move was smooth.
And it was sweet.
Like honey.
Like Moses.
Standing just inside my door, I turned to him.
He moved close and rested a hand on my waist.
“Please don’t kiss me again,” I begged in a whisper.
“No way,” he replied. “I’d rather not meet your boys when I got you naked on the tile of your foyer.”
I huffed out a breath that I wanted to be a huff of irritation, but it was more a huff of relief because I didn’t want that either.
Though I did.
Just not the meeting my boys while it was happening part.
He knew what it was and smiled at me.
Then he bent in and I sucked in breath while he touched his lips to the skin right in front of my ear.
He pulled away.
“Great night, Shirleen. Perfect.”
“Mm-hmm,” was the only thing I trusted to move between my lips.
“Thursday, baby.”
I nodded.
His fingers at my waist gave me a squeeze.
After that, he turned and I watched him walk away.
He wasn’t as fabulous from the behind as from the front.
But it was a close call.
He got in his truck and gave me a finger flick before he pulled out.
I was closing the door as he was driving away.
Once I got the door closed, I locked it.
Then I put my forehead to it.
I closed my eyes.
After that kiss, you bein’ so cute, you . . . are . . . perfect.