A Family Reunion (25 page)

His breath hissed through clenched teeth. The pain of her betrayal still hurt, although he told himself a million times a day that it didn’t. And because of her, he now had an ironclad rule of not getting involved with any of his clients. Cherise had shown him the hard way the pitfalls of that.

So no matter how much Rae’jean Bennett interested him and regardless of the fact that she was no longer an engaged woman, he would make sure things stayed strictly business between them. He wasn’t ready to get seriously involved with anyone, and from the looks of it, neither was she.

“If I hear another verse of ‘Zip-a-Dee-Dooh-Dah’ I’m going to go nuts,” Michael leaned over and whispered in Taye’s ear as they watched the girls race off to yet another ride. They’d been at the Magic Kingdom theme park in Disney World since nine that morning, and it was now almost four o’clock. Sebrina, Victoria, and Kennedy still seemed to have an abundance of energy left. Monica hadn’t made the trip, since she was still in Texas with Taye’s brother Darryl and his kids.

Taye shook her head, grinning. “It was your idea to buy a four-day pass,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, well, the next time I do something stupid like that, I give you permission to slap me silly.” He glanced down at his watch. “How much longer do you think they’ll want to hang?”

Taye smiled, hearing the weariness in his voice. They had arrived in Orlando early yesterday, and the girls had been eager to get her and Michael to commit to four days of fun at Disney’s theme parks. She had held back from agreeing, but Michael had readily agreed, saying that he wanted the girls to enjoy themselves this week. “Do you want to know the truth?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I heard them say they wanted to stay until closing time.”

“Closing time! Are they nuts? Have they forgotten we’re supposed to get up early and do Epcot tomorrow?”

“Oh, they haven’t forgotten. They just plan to make sure they get your money’s worth, Michael.”

He reached out and playfully grabbed Taye around the neck, bringing her closer to him. “Cute, Taye. That’s real cute. You like rubbing salt into a wound, don’t you?”

“As long as it’s not my wound.” The two of them laughed as they made their way over to where the three girls stood in line for Splash Mountain. The sign indicated a thirty-minute wait.

“Uncle Michael, do you and Aunt Taye want to ride with us?” Victoria yelled out.

“No thanks, I’ll pass, but Taye may want to,” he said, slanting a teasing grin down at her.

Taye shot him a ‘
don’t even try it
’ look before answering Victoria. “I’ll pass, too. My head’s still spinning from that last ride.”

“Come on then,” Michael said, taking hold of her hand. “Let’s go and find a place to sit and chill awhile.” He turned his full attention to the three girls and made sure that, likewise, he had theirs. “When this ride is over, we expect the three of you to stay put here until we return. Understand?”

“Oh, Daddy,” Kennedy said, frowning as she squinted up at him. “You’re treating us like we’re kids.”

Michael smiled. “If I am, it’s because the last time I looked, the three of you still were. And if you’re not, you’re doing a pretty good imitation by the way you’re running around this park with a kid’s look of excitement in your eyes. You almost knocked a couple down racing for Space Mountain.”

Kennedy rolled her eyes skyward but said nothing.

Michael chuckled as he walked away holding Taye’s hand.

“You seem to handle Kennedy quite well, Michael,” Taye said, smiling up at him. She noticed he had not released her hand. To passersby, they would appear to be a couple.

“It comes with practice. She’s been a cross to bear at times, trust me. But it’s been a lot easier these past three to four weeks. I have your girls to thank for that.”

“How so?”

“They’re so well mannered and appreciative. Kennedy notices and it’s rubbing off on her. She actually thanked me last week for the money I gave her to get her hair done. Boy, was I shocked.”

Taye nodded. “Don’t think Sebrina and Monica have always been Goody Little Two-shoes. I had some rough times with Sebrina a few years back. Whenever she returned from spending the summer with her father and grandparents she would drive me off the deep end. They would spoil her rotten while she was with them, and when she came home she would expect the same treatment. I had to nip that in the bud big-time.” She sighed deeply before continuing. “And Monica was hell-bent on throwing temper tantrums at one time.”

“How did you handle it?”

Taye smiled sheepishly. “I showed her that I could throw a few tantrums myself. For a week or two following a couple of my demonstrations, the girls tiptoed around me like I was a looney tune. After that we pretty much understood each other.”

Michael couldn’t stop from laughing. “Yeah, I could see how that might work. Last year Kennedy went through a lot of changes, and she tried explaining to me what peer pressure was, like that was a good-enough excuse for some of the stupid stuff she’d been doing.”

“And what did you do?”

“I told her I understood peer pressure. But in my day peer pressure was nothing compared to a good behind whipping from Zoe Lee Bennett. If I had to make a choice between getting into trouble, with the possibility of facing one of Zoe Lee’s heavy hands on my backside, and peer pressure I’d choose peer pressure in a heartbeat. You know for a fact that my mama didn’t play, but then neither did yours.”

Taye nodded, remembering those times. Otha Mae Bennett had been a force to reckon with. She still was. “If you ask me, the kids today got it made in the shade. They don’t know the meaning of having it rough.”

“I agree. The worst part of Kennedy’s week is breaking a fingernail.” They stopped and sat down on one of the park benches. Michael was satisfied that he still had a pretty good view of the girls. “OK, that’s enough about the girls. Let’s talk about us,” he said, finally releasing her hand.

Taye’s eyes were full of questions. “Us?”

Michael smiled. “Yes, us. We need to plan some fun time for ourselves.”

“What do you have in mind?”

Michael turned to face her. His dark eyes were gleaming with the thrill of adventure. They were identical to how Kennedy’s had looked that morning. “One thing I’d like to do is check out City Walk at Universal Studios. I heard that Motown Café is a must-do. How about if we go there tomorrow night?”

“That’s fine with me, but do you think you’ll have enough energy left after doing Epcot?”

Michael’s smile widened. “Yes. We’ll put our foot down and tell the girls we plan to leave Epcot at five o’clock. What do you say?”

Taye smiled at him. “I say that sounds like a plan that’ll work.”

Taye frowned, immediately wishing she could have gone straight to bed after her shower like the girls had done. But she had promised them she would talk to Michael.

She glanced around. The condo at Westgate Lakes Resorts was a vacationer paradise, a real dream come true, and she appreciated Michael for including her, Sebrina, and Victoria in his plans this week. She smiled when she thought of how well the girls were getting along and how much fun they’d had today.

But now, they were upstairs sleeping off exhaustion and here she was downstairs fighting off her attraction to Michael. Today hadn’t been easy. She had forgotten what a touchy-feely person he was. It was nothing for him to hold her hand or wrap his arm around her shoulders while they strolled around the park. Even this morning at breakfast and tonight at dinner, he had sat close to her.

She reflected how things had been over the past three weeks, since that Saturday she had spent working with him in his yard. He and Kennedy had been over for dinner more than a few times. He’d even spent the night once, crashing on her sofa after he had arrived back in town late after a flight and she’d suggested that instead of waking Kennedy to take her home he just stay over for the night.

Each time that Taye had thought she’d begun to feel more comfortable around him, something would happen to make her painfully aware of how attracted she was to him. Like the time he had returned the favor and helped her work in her yard and he had taken off his shirt because of the heat. Seeing him shirtless in a pair of tight-fitting faded Levi’s while trimming her hedges had nearly been too much for her to handle. But even with her constantly feeling overheated around him, she liked having him around, and the girls did, too. He was fun to be with and could turn some mundane situation into a pleasurable escapade.

Taking a deep breath, she slid the glass door open and stepped outside on the screened patio. Michael was standing with his back to her, gazing out at the lake. She immediately caught herself staring at the clothes he had changed into after his shower, a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt. For some reason, his striking, elementally male features were sharper tonight, probably because the moonlight reflecting off the lake was hitting him at an angle that was compelling. It was bathing his muscular limbs in a way that made him look too gorgeous and too distracting.

Scrambling to get her thoughts together, she took a deep breath and took her gaze off Michael and put it on another picturesque view—the lake. Michael had gotten a condo with a fantastic view of the lake. The three bedrooms had been built so each room could have a breathtaking view. The girls were occupying the master bedroom upstairs, since it was the largest of the three, with a king-size bed. She and Michael had taken the two guest bedrooms downstairs. It had been nice to wake up and look out the window and see how the sun blended with the waters in the lake, making various shades of blue.

Shoving back a bothersome wisp of hair from her forehead, Taye walked over to Michael. “The girls are out like a rock,” she said, coming to stand next to him.

He chuckled as he turned to her. “Hell, they should be. Either they got too much energy or I don’t have enough.”

Taye shook her head, smiling. “Are you taking any vitamins?”

He lifted a brow. “No.”

“Then maybe you should, since you’re determined to keep up with them.”

She saw his shoulders stiffen. “Are you saying we should let a bunch of young girls run wild in the park, Taye?”

Knowing this topic of conversation was one she and Michael would not agree on, she chose her words carefully. She had promised the girls she would talk to him and she intended to do just that. He had been the ferocious watchdog today, the overprotective father. “No, but I think they’re mature enough in their thinking to stay together as a group and meet us at a certain location and time that’s spelled out beforehand. I don’t think we have to stay on their heels every minute.”

Silence stretched so long between them that for a moment Taye began to wonder if he’d heard her. “What about that group of boys who were trying to hang around them today?” he finally asked.

Taye smiled and shrugged. “Show them pretty girls and boys will be boys.”

“Yeah, and that’s what worries me.”

Taye chuckled and shouldered past Michael to sit in a patio chair. “You can’t go around wanting to do bodily harm to every boy who looks twice at Kennedy.”

Michael crossed his hands over his chest and looked at her. “Was I that bad?”

“I’m sure Kennedy thought you were. You scared those little boys to death.”

“Little boys? They were fifteen. Too old to be sniffing behind thirteen-year-old girls. Besides, for all we know they could have been little criminals-in-the-making, future hoodlums of America.”

Taye rolled her eyes upward. “Or they could have been geniuses in the making, future presidents of America, Michael. They only wanted the girls to sit next to them on some rides, not to elope.”

Michael sucked in a deep breath. He admitted he probably had put the fear of God in those three boys and would even go so far as to admit he had enjoyed doing so. “You didn’t have a problem with them hanging around?”

“No, I trust the girls.”

“It’s not the girls that I don’t trust. It’s those boys,” Michael grumbled in such a way that made the smile tilting Taye’s lips widen.

“Then, you’ll have to trust the girls to make the right decisions.”

Michael came over and sat in the chair next to her. “They’re only thirteen, Taye. They shouldn’t even be thinking about boys yet.”

Who says?
Taye thought.
I sure thought about you at thirteen.
“Michael, it’s not as serious as you’re trying to make it.”

“It doesn’t bother you that Sebrina likes boys?”

“No, and it shouldn’t bother you that Kennedy likes them, either. It’s natural. And how we handle the situation as parents is very important. I think the main reason I got pregnant once I went off to college was because for the first time I felt free. Momma was too strict on me; you know that. You had to follow me, Rae’jean, and Alexia around everywhere we went to make sure we didn’t get into any trouble, but most important, to keep the boys away. And it worked. News got around fast that the three of us were your cousins and if any of the guys tried to talk to us that meant trouble.”

“I was just following orders.”

“I know, and they were well-intended orders, but I wished Momma would have loosened her rope just a little. If she had then I wouldn’t have been so eager to get a taste of forbidden fruit after leaving home for school.”

Taye let her thoughts reflect back to that time when she’d gone to college and had tried making up for all those things she’d missed out on during her teen years because of her parents’ strictness. “I’m not saying you’re not supposed to keep an eye on Kennedy and not be cautious of the guys who come around. All I’m saying is that you should trust her to make the right decisions about some things. If you don’t, she’ll resent you for it and do things for the hell of it just to aggravate you.”

He gave a derisive snort. “She does that anyway at times.”

“Well, then maybe she won’t do it as often. Tomorrow at Epcot I suggest we let them explore the park without us following them around and have them check in with us every four hours at a designated place.”

“Every four hours?” Michael squawked.

Taye laughed. “OK, how about every three hours?”

“How about every two?”

Recognizing his indisputably stubborn nature, Taye conceded. “OK, every two hours if it makes you happy.” She’d known asking for any time beyond two hours would be pushing it but had tried her luck anyway. “Is it a deal?”

Michael shrugged, frowning. “I guess so.”

Taye reached over and hugged him. “Cheer up, Michael; it’s not going to be that bad. You’ll survive.”

The hug was meant to be innocent. Neither of them was prepared for the sudden surges of desire that swept through them or the disturbing amount of sensual heat that immediately engulfed them.