Paradise for a Sinner (4 page)

“As you wish.”

Adam let his burdens fall to the floor with a thunk. “Joe, do you think now…”

“Would you go downstairs and get Teddy’s duffel bag?”

“Sure, but then…”

“Absolutely.”

Adam gave up and headed for the sweeping staircase. He needed to burn off some frustration. Cleaning up the mess the dog made helped. Placing the broken plate in the sink, he sopped up the spilled milk with paper towels, put the jug back into the refrigerator, and the dog-licked dishes in the washer. Shouldering the duffel, he ran up the flight of stairs only to find Joe gone and Teddy alone in his room.

“Thanks, Mr. Adam. I don’t got much. Set it down by the dresser, and I can put my stuff away by myself.”

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

Across the hall, Anastasia’s shrill voice corrected, “Not there, Brinsley! My undies go in the upper right hand drawer.”

Glad to escape, Adam jogged down the stairs again. In the hallway, Joe held a sobbing Nell to his chest.

“I know Em could be mean and vindictive. She resented all the attention I got because of my illness, all the sacrifices she had to make. We weren’t close, but still she was my only sister and now she’s gone.”

Over his wife’s head, Joe mouthed, “Not now.”

Adam nodded and went out the front door. He took his seat on the step again. Macho came over, put his big head in Adam’s lap, and dusted the sidewalk with his tail.

“You know, I don’t like dogs very much. They bark too often and leave shit everywhere. They make big messes like the one in the kitchen. In America, you can’t eat them, but you’d make a pretty good-sized roast. Still, you seem like a good listener. Here’s the problem. My girl told me she is going to marry my best friend, not me. She held off until we lost the playoff game. Didn’t want to upset me. Ha!”

Macho tilted his head and scratched his side with a rear paw. He appeared ready and willing to offer comfort and support in time of need. Adam continued with his tale.

“How can I go back to Samoa when all I want to do is find Sammy Tau and squeeze his neck until he dies? He stole my
taupou,
a real island princess, not like that kid upstairs who thinks she’s royalty. Where am I going to find another one of those, huh? Everyone in Pago Pago must be laughing at me by now. I mean you can be a big deal in the U.S. of A. and still be nothing in Samoa. I can’t go home. Not now.”

Adam buried his broad face in his huge hands. Macho tongued the part not covered, then pricked his ears and, barking ferociously, raced toward the front gate.

“Even you desert me, Macho,” Adam muttered.

Running alongside another black Escalade, the dog escorted the new arrivals to a parking space and waited eagerly for a door to open. Adam recognized the vehicle and knew it bore a gold cross and a chaplain’s license plate on the rear rather than a red devil. Revelation Jeremiah Bullock, the man he had replaced on the Sinners’ team, had come calling. Adam brightened. Maybe he needed a man of the cloth to listen to his woes more than Joe Dean’s advice.

Huge, black, and ponderous, the Reverend Rev got out from behind the wheel, and being the consummate gentleman, moved around the front of the SUV to hand his pretty and svelte wife, Dr. Arminta Green Bullock, down from the front seat. She carried a medical file under one arm and smiled brilliantly when she recognized Adam. The Rev opened the backseat door, probably to release his three children, but no.

He helped a tall, slim, very light-skinned woman alight from the rear. She possessed large, green, slanted eyes that marked her as a relative of the Rev’s Mintay, but had better hair than the esteemed doctor’s straightened black bob or Adam’s frizzy mane for that matter. Hers, light brown and parted in the middle, fell in soft, golden edged waves around a perfectly oval face and down her chest to the tops of two firm, upturned breasts encased in a tangerine-colored clingy top. Not large but alluring, those tits tilted as if they offered themselves to a man’s mouth. All she needed to set off that face, that body, was a red hibiscus flower tucked behind an ear and a brightly colored lava-lava dress. Adam stood to greet her—and Mintay and the Rev of course.

Mintay reached him first and gave him an affectionate hug. “So good to see you, Adam. This is my sister, Edwina, but we call her Winnie. She’s a registered nurse, and I thought she could help out with Teddy’s needs until Miss Wickersham is free. Winnie will be staying here for a while. She’s newly divorced.”

Winnie cheeks flushed lightly. “Sister, I do not believe you just said that to this man.”

Adam smiled a grin so broad he thought his face might stay that way permanently. “Lovely lady, there is a saying in Samoa that the best cure for a lost love is a new love.” He offered his hand.

Chapter Four

Winnie Green—Green because she’d taken her maiden name back with a vengeance—stared at the outstretched hand and all the rest of Adam Malala. Being sister-in-law to the Rev, she’d seen pro football players up close at various family events, but at the time she’d been married and following the advice of her grandmother and mother. Nana, the original Arminta and wasn’t Winnie glad she’d escaped being
her
namesake, always pounded home the age old wisdom. Marry lighter than yourself. Raise up your family. Better opportunities come to the light-skinned.

Her mother, a beneficiary of the Civil Rights movement, who held a doctorate in sociology and possessed a husband who matched her in intellect, degree, and fair complexion, simply said, “Marry white because you can.” When Mintay accepted a proposal from the Rev, considerably darker than the Samoan who stood before Winnie today, her family erupted like a volcano in the South Seas.

“Do you know what you are doing, girl? We don’t care how rich he is, how can you marry that big, black brute of a football player?” By the time the wedding rolled around, the Rev had won them over with his outsized personality, kind heart, and in the case of Nana, his love of the Lord. It could happen again, especially since Winnie, the pliable baby sister of the family, had failed to keep her white man.

As of today, Winnie Green was done with skinny white boys. She desired someone big and warm and brown, as delicious as hot fudge topping. She wanted to rake her fingers through the mass of soft curls surrounding Adam’s face and enjoy everything broad about him, his nose, his cheekbones, his lips—especially his lips. Then on to his chest stretching the red knit Sinners shirt over a mass of muscles and down to an ordinary pair of khakis made extraordinary by the way they pulled over his large, hard thighs.

She took Adam Malala’s hand. “Very happy to meet you.”

“Me, too.” Without releasing her hand, Adam guided her into the house with the Rev and Mintay following, and Macho being shut out again to whine for entrance. “I’ll take you to meet Teddy. I think the doctor and Rev should go see Mrs. Joe. She just learned her sister died.”

Mintay thrust the medical file at her sister. “This is Teddy’s information for you to study. I need to comfort Nell. You two go ahead.”

In the elevator, Adam stood close enough to Winnie catch a whiff of light perfume. The scent of her shampoo in that golden brown hair exuded the fragrance of coconut and papaya that reminded him of the islands, palm trees, and ripe fruit for the picking. When the door opened on the second floor, the complaints of Anastasia ordering Brinsley about filled the air, and not in a good way.

“A niece and a butler the Billodeauxs inherited,” Adam explained.

“I would have been surprised if Nell allowed any of her children to act like that. Where is Teddy?”

They found the boy sitting near the window facing the front of the house. Although his Harry Potter book lay open on his lap, Teddy gazed outside at the tops of the oaks and Macho beneath them snuffling in the dirt and barking at a squirrel that darted up a trunk. He wheeled around to face them with a big smile. “Hi, Mr. Adam. I put my all clothes in the middle drawers so I can reach them and my medicine bag is in the bathroom. Is that okay?”

“Not my house, but it sounds good to me. This is Edwina Green. She’s a nurse who will help you out for a while. Teddy and me are buds. We met at lunch.”

“Mr. Adam made me a peanut butter and banana sandwich, Miss Ed—ed—ina.”

“Call me Winnie. That’s short for Edwina. I was named after my father, Edwin. That’s kind of funny, huh?” She sat on the bed to be more on the boy’s level.

“You shouldn’t laugh at people’s names, Mama said. She went away today and left me to be raised by my dad. Winnie is a nice name like the sound horses make.”

Faced with this bald statement of abandonment, she fell back on the mundane. “Did you eat all your lunch?”

“Most of a sandwich and some milk and an oatmeal cookie, but Mr. Adam ate four sandwiches and a big glass of milk. I guess Macho got the rest of the cookies,” he said regretfully.

“I’m sure you can have a snack when the other children get home from school.”

“Miss Nell said she has eight kids. That’s a lot. Do you think they will like me?” His small, pale forehead wrinkled with concern.

“I think they will. Adam and I like you already. Right now, do you need help using the bathroom or need anything else?”

Winnie added a warm smile to her statement that made Adam wish she’d directed it at him. He could have sworn he’d seen some heat in those green eyes when they met, but now all her attention had gone to the patient. He counted that as a good thing even if it bruised his ego some.

“No, I can cath myself,” Teddy said with some pride. “But I need help with doing a number two at night.”

“We’ll take care of that this evening. I see you like to read.”

“Yes, ma’am. I can’t take PE in school. Mostly I read during that time.”

“Reading is great, but you need your exercise, too. Are you using crutches yet?”

“Yes, ma’am. They are in Miss Nell’s car, but I don’t like them. They slow me down. In my chair I can go fast as I want.” Teddy swirled his chair in a quick circle on the hardwood floor to make his point.

“Still, you need to practice with your crutches every day to get better at it and do some upper body exercises to make you strong.” Winnie made a note in the folder. “I need to look over this big, fat file that tells me all about you. Why don’t we just sit here and read for a while?”

“Okay.” He opened his book, but stared out the window again. “I bet heaven is like this—way above the treetops. I bet my granny is there, and Jesus gave her a room just as nice as this one. And dogs. There would be dogs running around in heaven.”

“I’m sure you are right about that.” Winnie shared her smile with Adam now.

He smiled back, maybe a little too broadly. “Guess you don’t need me here.”

“Not at the moment, but I think I’ll want some help lifting him into the bath and bed if you are staying overnight.”

“I hope I am. I want to stick around for a while if Nell and Joe will let me.” More reason now than ever.

“You know they always have room for one more.”

“True, they are full of
alofa.
That’s a giving kind of love in Samoan.”

“I’d like to learn more about Samoa.”

“I would love to teach you. I wish we had a few palm trees and a beach for our lessons.”

Even Teddy felt the sexual tension invade the air. He asked, “Is Mr. Adam your boyfriend?”

Winnie laughed, a low and lovely sound. “No, we just met.”

But Adam said, “Not yet.”

Chapter Five

Mintay held Nell’s hand and gave Joe’s shirt some time to dry. They’d been over the ambivalent feelings Emily’s death caused, and the Rev had offered a prayer for the soul of the departed. Their attention turned toward the two children upstairs who must be foremost in their minds.

“We have to keep Anastasia and try to teach her how to fit into the family. That won’t be easy after nine years in Emily’s hands. As for Teddy, I know Maydell will come back for him when she’s less stressed and leaves that boyfriend of hers. In the meantime, we’ll see Teddy has all the care he needs. Good idea bringing Winnie over to help us. I worried if I could handle his schedule. His mother left a long list in his medical bag.” Nell squeezed Mintay’s hand and let go.

“Two birds with one stone as they say. Winnie’s divorce went through last week. She packed her bags, left Shreveport, and landed on our doorstep last night. Says she is so humiliated she is never going back. Can you believe she gave up medical school and took nurse’s training instead to help her husband become a doctor, and that bastard drops her for a busty blonde he met while my sister worked double shifts at the hospital? The asshole!”

“Language,” the Rev reproved gently.

“You are the minister, not me, honey bear. Anyhow, Winnie is at loose ends now. I think she should go back to med school and finish. She says she will look for another job in this area and not impose on us any longer than necessary while that lowdown slime she married sets up a practice and a household with his mistress who is going to be his receptionist. We should sue for all the money my sister earned to put him through school. That’s what we should do.”

“Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord,” the Rev quoted. At a glare from his doctor wife, he added, “We’ll cover her tuition if she wants to go back to med school, and she is welcome to stay with us as long as she likes. You know that, sweet thang.”

“Look,” Joe said. “We’ll pay her for taking care of Teddy until Nurse Wickersham is available. Anything else we can do to help?”

“You might have already done that. When I heard Adam showed up here, I thought exactly what that Samoan said. She needs a new love, and pretty quickly to get over that skinny-assed white boy. I mean Adam is just mouth-watering delicious, don’t you think, Nell?” Mintay appealed to the only other woman in the room.

“Fairly scrumptious, yes.”

“Hey! Sure, he’s a good-looking young man, but he is supposed to be getting married in a few months. Besides, the two of you have the best men the Sinners ever produced, past or present,” Joe insisted.

“Shit!” Mintay exclaimed. “Forgive me, this sorry affair has me all worked up. I forgot about his engagement, but I could have sworn I saw a spark when Adam and Winnie touched hands. Maybe he is having second thoughts about the wedding and that’s why he is here.”