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Authors: Kimberly Kaye Terry

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Liza had felt an instant kinship with the woman upon meeting
her, as she too found herself feeling like the odd woman out when she first
joined the club. There was something about growing up poor and disenfranchised
that would always make her the slightest bit aware of things she probably wouldn’t
be otherwise. Things that weren’t race related. Things that were universal to
the poor everywhere.

“The one with all the stomping?” she laughed, referring to
the Broadway show that had won several Tony awards. And although she’d enjoyed
the stomping and beating it, had given her a serious headache by the end.

“I wonder where they’ll live now?” Michelle asked.

Damn. She just couldn’t let it go. Once Michelle got hold of
gossip, she was like a pit bull with a rawhide.

“I mean, where she’ll live. Didn’t she file for divorce?”
she asked.

“Hmmm. Who knows? But I sure would have loved to be a fly on
the wall during those proceedings,” Debra said. Debra was nice enough when
Michelle wasn’t around. But once Michelle was in attendance, she played bitch
partner with her. Teaming up to laugh and gossip at the chosen victim.

“Hopefully, they’ll recover.” Leslie piped in, before
turning to Liza, “Liza, I saw that musical too! I went with my mom. She’s kind
of hard of hearing, so she said she loved how well she could hear all the nice
soft music. Poor thing. Whereas it was loud as hell to us, Mom thought it
sounded like elevator music!”

Leslie and her husband Raymond had been apart of the Regency
Community from the time they were both children. They’d known each other their
entire lives and when they married it was natural they’d settle in the same
community that they’d grown up in.

The women stopped speaking when their lunch arrived.
Throughout the luncheon, try as she might, Liza just couldn’t get into the
conversation. For some reason, she was beyond irked at the stabbing comments
from Michelle and her demon spawned sidekick Debra. Yeah, she was off today.

Usually, she could brush it off, but today, their constant
gossip about the Goodman’s misfortune, grated on her last nerve. Maybe it was
the glee with which the beady-eyed Michelle told the story. Or maybe it was the
way that her eyes would widen, a sly-assed grin on her face as she all but
rubbed her hands together in creepy delight as she gave amazing details about Stan
Goodman’s affairs, along with his purported sexual prowess in the bedroom.

Whatever it was, she knew she needed to get away for a
minute or she’d say something she’d regret later in hindsight.

“Excuse me ladies, I need to visit the restroom.”

She couldn’t leave the table fast enough and almost tripped
over the thick carpet in her haste to get away. Once inside the bathroom she
breathed an audible sigh of relief and slowly peeled her body from the door,
glad there was no one in the opulent ladies room other than herself and the
attendant.

“Honey, are you okay?”

Liza looked up from the sink, which she had been standing in
front of staring into the mirror not really seeing anything. She had no idea
how long she’d been staring off into space. Her mind had been a million miles
away. She turned to the older woman with a practiced smile on her face, but
stopped as she instantly recognized her.

“Sister Pauline?” she asked. She couldn’t believe it was
Sister Pauline from the church she’d grown up in. The old woman hadn’t aged a
bit!

Her dark brown skin was liberally sprinkled with moles and
freckles dotted across the bridge of her large, bell -shaped nose. Her dark
eyes seemed magnified behind the thick lenses of her bifocals and Liza laughed
inwardly at her eyebrows. Sister Pauline obviously still shaved her eyebrows
completely off, and redrew them in thick and black, big and arched, giving her
a wide-eyed permanent look of surprise.

The old woman scrunched her large nose up and peered into
Liza’s face behind her thick pop-bottle glasses. “Liza LeCroix? Girl, is that
you?” She laughed. “Honey, let me look at you all grown up!” she said, getting
close to Liza. “Girl, you better get over here and give Sister Pauline a hug!”
she said, hugging her as she breathed heavily into Liza’s face.

Yep. If she’d thought she was mistaken before, the minute
the old woman’s breath hit Liza’s nostrils, she knew it was Sister Pauline.
After all these years, not only did she look the same, she still had funky
breath.

Liza felt tears in the back of her eyes, and not because of
the old woman’s horrendous breath. Somehow, seeing the familiar watery-eyed
woman from her childhood was overwhelming. She hugged Sister Pauline fiercely,
smoothing her hands over the woman’s bony back.

“Baby, you’re crushing Sister Pauline!”

Liza laughed and released the older woman. She’d forgotten
how she’d refer to herself in the first person.

“Sorry, Sister Pauline. How’ve you been? I didn’t know you
worked here,” Liza said, taking a soft tissue from the marble sink vanity and
lightly dabbing at her eyes.

“Chile, I been working here for a while! I usually work
evenings though. I could ask how you’ve been, but I can already tell that,
baby…you look good! Tell Sister Pauline what you been up to. And how’s that
mama of yours?” she asked, and listened with a wide smile plastered on her face
as Liza told her how she’d gone to college and received her bachelor’s degree
as well as master’s degree in social work, with an emphasis on helping children
and adolescents.

“Oh, baby, that’s so nice. But what about your mother?
What’s she up to these days? She hightailed it out of Stanton as soon as you
left and nobody’s seen hide nor tail of her since!”

“Yes, Mom left when I went to the University. She lives out
in Oakland with one of her sisters. She always said she’d go back to California
as soon as I graduated,” Liza forced a smile on her face.

“Umm, umm umm. No offense, baby, but Edna was always a
selfish trollop, if you ask Sister Pauline. She could have waited ‘til you
finished school before she left her only baby girl alone,” she said.

Sister Pauline’s lips were pressed tightly together and
pooched up, the upper lip touching the end of her nose as though she smelled
something rank. Her eyebrows were lowered above squinted eyes, as she tsk’d and
shook her head in obvious disgust over her mother’s desertion.

The look on her heavily lined face was one that only a black
woman of her age could have and get away with. “Well any way, that’s good about
you and your social work. I always wanted to be a social worker. I bet you love
that work, don’t you? Being able to help a young girl…kind of like how you was
helped by all them social workers you and your mama had, when you was growin’
up.”

“Well, actually Sister Pauline…I don’t work, ma’am.” Liza
was suddenly ashamed. “I married my husband, Greg. He’s an attorney. He’s a
partner in his firm.”

“Well, that’s good baby, that you don’t have to work. I
think it’s nice when a woman can stay at home with her children. Too many folks
today let other folks raise their kids. Then they wonder why the little
bastards grow up trying to set off bombs at the schools and such,” Sister
Pauline said, shaking her head. “Umm, umm, umm. It’s a damn shame, it’s a
damn
shame, is what it is. All I’d need to have is them kids for one day. Just one
damn day. One day with Sister Pauline and their little asses would stop acting
a fool. One day with Sister Pauline and they’d see the light. The little
fuckers. Help ‘em Lord!” she said, suddenly catching the spirit as she lifted
her hands and waved them in the air.

Sister Pauline had caught what was known as a “mini-spirit”.
It always hit her like that. Usually after a tirade, she’d catch the “spirit”
of God.

Liza was torn between laughing and crying. Laughing because Sister
Pauline hadn’t changed a bit. She’d cursed in one breath and praised God with
the other.

Crying because she felt ashamed.

She’d gone into social work for the reason Sister Pauline
mentioned. To help young people, young women in particular, who were living in
poverty, but had potential for so much more. Potential that was often
overlooked when a child lived in the projects.

“No, Sister Pauline, I don’t have children.”

“What? No children? How long you been married, girl?”

“Seven years, ma’am.”

“Hmm.” She humphed, peering at Liza over the top of the
glasses perched at the end of her large nose. “What? He got that penis
disability or something?”

“Penis disability?”

“Girl, don’t play with Sister Pauline. You know what I mean.
When a man can’t get his willy wonka up.”

“You mean erectile dysfunction?”

“You saying it, so that tells me you know what the hell
Sister Pauline is talkin’ about! They got some pills that a get his ass hard as
a damn
rock
. Do you remember Sister Roberta Hall?” When Liza nodded her
head, she continued. “Well, a few years back her old man was having them
problems. Roberta went on that Internet and bought some of them penis pills!
Honey, he’s been hittin’ it like a porn star, ever since!” She laughed so hard
Liza had to lightly thump her on the back to help clear her throat.

“No, ma’am. He doesn’t have a problem with that. We’ve just
decided to wait until the time is right,” she said, trying her hardest not to
laugh.

“Lord have mercy, chile! If it ain’t right after seven
years…when the hell it’s gone be right? And if you don’t have kids at home, why
aren’t you out there working as a social worker? Why aren’t you helping out
children who need you? What did you get all that education for in the first
place? To live on the Hill? You know, the good Lord charges us to help each
other. He allowed you to get all that good education, girl! You need to use
it.”

Liza stared at the woman, a queasy sensation pooling in the
pit of her stomach at her words.

She knew in her heart that the old woman was right on all
counts. Even if she did sound crazy as hell mixing religion and cursing like
that.

Liza had gotten her degree in social work with the desire to
help kids who were disenfranchised, just as she’d been as a child. To give kids
that were often overlooked, a voice.

However, her first job as a social worker had been in
C.P.S., Child Protection Services, and she’d realized soon after working in the
field that it was too close to home for her. She couldn’t stomach the condition
many of the children had been living in. The first time she’d had a child as a
client who’d suffered from severe neglect, she’d wanted to run up on the
child’s parents and flat blast the both of their sorry behinds for what they’d
done to the small girl.

She realized that she was in the wrong field and had gone to
work in an area totally unrelated to her education, before she’d stopped
working altogether within a few years of her marriage to Greg.

But, in the back of her mind, she’d wanted to return to
social work.

Liza smiled at the old woman and patted her on one thin
shoulder. “You’re right Sister Pauline. Maybe it’s time I gave that some
thought,” she said and spoke for a few minutes more with the old woman.

She leaned down and kissed her leathery cheek, slipping a
twenty dollar bill into her smock before she left the restroom and returned to
the table with her friends.

For the remainder of the lunch, Liza was nearly silent, only
answering questions directly asked of her, her mind a million miles away. The
old woman’s words rang sharply in her consciousness. Was she being selfish? Was
it so wrong that she didn’t want to open the floodgates to her past? That she
didn’t feel it necessary to talk about, work with, or associate with
anything
that reminded her of the bullshit of her painful childhood?

Chapter Ten

 

“I think that we’ll find greater success if we employ the
Holt brothers. I’ve worked with them in the past and I’ve always been well
pleased with their work,” Greg spoke on the phone to his client as he leaned
back in the large leather chair, twirling one pencil between his thumb and
forefinger.

He listened as his client spoke, before answering. “Great.
Mr. Holt has just left my office and he’s prepared to work on the case. He’ll
be able to start right away,” he said and, after a few more moments of
conversation, hung up the phone.

“Renita, could you start the paperwork for Gaynor Holt? I’ve
just spoken with Mr. Grimes and he’s fine with footing the bill for the Holt’s
to take over the investigation,” he said into the small intercom.

“I sure will, Greg. Actually, Mr. Holt is still here,” she
said.

“Oh really?” Greg was surprised the investigator was still
in the office as he’d ended his meeting with Holt twenty minutes ago. “Well,
since he’s there, go ahead and draw up the contract for him to sign. And after
that, feel free to go home. I’m leaving in the next thirty minutes, myself.”

After he hung up the phone, he glanced at the antique
grandfather clock in the corner of the room. It was early for him to leave, it
was just barely five o’clock, but he wanted to take Liza out to dinner.

He and Liza needed a down and dirty, cut all the bullshit
talk. The impasse they were at was grating on his mind, screwing with his
concentration. Things weren’t right and he was determined to fix it.

He picked up the phone and placed a call to Liza to ask her
to meet him at Rigby’s. The surprise in her voice when he’d asked her out to
dinner had made him feel a bit bad. She was obviously shocked that he’d asked.
There was a time, when it was so commonplace that she’d have been surprised had
he
not
called for dinner.

After he hung up the phone, he began to clear his desk,
anticipation settling in his gut. He and Liza were going to get some things
straight. He wanted answers and by the end of the night, if all went well, he
was planning on bringing up the discussion of making a baby with his wife.

When he’d confided in Renita earlier, he’d felt as though a
great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He felt he knew what had to be
done. He walked through his office to Renita’s and noted that Gaynor Holt was
lounging against her desk in a deceptively relaxed pose.

He’d interrupted them in the middle of a conversation and
Greg picked up the irritable tone to her voice and he stopped to make sure
everything was okay.

“I suppose Renita has told you that Mr. Grimes has accepted
the change in investigators?” he smiled and shook the man’s hand.

“Yes, that’s what your lovely assistant and I were
discussing…weren’t we, Ms. Nash?” he asked, in what sounded to Greg, like a
challenging voice. As though he were daring her to disagree.

Interesting.

She smiled and agreed, “Yes. Yes we were, Greg.” The smile
she threw the investigator’s way could only be described as tight-lipped.

“Is there a problem?” he asked her. Just to make sure.

“No, everything is fine. I’ll wrap this up and leave as soon
as I’m finished. You go ahead. I won’t stay long,” she promised, with a
side-look at Holt.

“Have a nice night. Both of you.” Greg said, including
Gaynor in his farewell. “I’ll see you in the morning, Renita. I’m going to meet
Liza,” he said and left.

 

“You can’t have him, you know.” Gaynor’s deep, scratchy
voice forced Renita’s attention away from Greg’s departure.

“What? What are you talking about?” Distracted, she felt her
face heat. She stared directly into the investigators light gray eyes.

He raised a dark eyebrow, not saying a word. His silence
irritated the hell out of her.

“Well? You can’t say something like that and just leave it
at that.” She prodded him to finish what he started.

“I don’t think you really want me to say anything else…do
you?” he challenged. His voice was openly mocking.

Renita refrained from telling the rude as hell investigator
off,
just
in the nick of time. He didn’t know her like that.

She turned away from him and typed a few words into her
computer and opened the document which had the firm’s standard contract used
for contractors. She swiftly modified it according to Greg’s direction, printed
it and handed it over to Gaynor for his inspection. As he read over the
document, pulling out half-lenses, she stifled a laugh at the picture he
presented as she observed him while he wasn’t paying attention to her.

Unlike Greg, who was immaculately dressed at all times,
Gaynor was barely presentable on his best day. Most of the time he was either
dressed in jeans and t-shirt-if the weather was nice- or jeans and sweatshirt
if it was cold. Occasionally, he’d call himself dressing up and wear slacks.
With a sweatshirt. Or a t-shirt.

It wasn’t that he was unattractive, she thought as her
glance slid over him. He was just too damn big, several inches taller than
Greg, who was over six feet in height and broader throughout his chest and
legs, hands, feet…everything. She never liked to stand next to him because of
his sheer presence.

It wasn’t only his physical presence that was,
overwhelming
.
It was him. He was attractive enough, she supposed, in a sloppy,
Detective
Colombo
kind of way. His light gray eyes were fringed by thick, dark lashes
that looked ridiculous on a man of his size. Well…maybe they weren’t
that
ridiculous looking, she admitted reluctantly to herself.

His squared chin had the slightest hint of a dimple, just
enough to make a woman look closer, but was
constantly
covered with
light stubble, as was his lean cheeks. He probably had to shave more than twice
a day to keep it clean.

She wasn’t into men that hairy.

He kept his blond hair cut close to his head, almost
military style. At first she’d thought he’d dyed his hair as his eyebrows and
eyelashes were so dark and his hair so blond. He kept the top of his hair a bit
longer than what she’d think would be army regulation, as she discreetly
observed the way his hair fell over his knitted brow as he concentrated on the
document.

Her gaze swept over his large, lean body. That was the other
thing that irritated her about him. How damn big he was.

She was very petite and although she liked tall men, he was
way
too tall, and
way
to big. He wore his jeans loose, but she could still
see the way his thighs bulged through the faded jeans, the way the jeans cupped
his muscular butt when he bent down to pick up one of the pieces of paper as it
fell from his hands.

His large, very masculine hands.

She looked at his hands and wondered why they weren’t rough
and dry. That would fit more than the way they did appear. Sure, they were
overlarge just like the rest of him, but instead of rough and calloused, they
appeared strong and surprisingly smooth. When he’d taken the sheaf of papers of
the contract from her hands, she’d immediately noticed how good,
how smooth
,
his fingers felt as he took them from her.

“Everything looks to be in order,” he commented, bringing
her attention away from his hands and back to his face. He placed the contract
on the corner of her desk and dug inside his pockets in search of a pen. She
handed him one and he gave her a half-smile of thanks. A deep dimple flashed in
his cheek as he did so.

Renita suppressed a sigh of irritationas she pulled
at the collar of her silk blouse. She felt hot and wanted him out of the
office. Now.

“Here you go, signed and sealed,” he said, catching her as
she was unbuttoning the two top buttons of her blouse.

“Thank you, I’ll make a copy for your records,” she said as
she rose from her desk to walk to the small copier in the far corner of her
office. When he followed her, she turned around and stopped him with a raised
brow. “I can handle this, Mr. Holt,” she said, suddenly nervous with his close
proximity.

The room seemed smaller with his overwhelmingly large
presence. She needed to get away from him, if only for a minute. It was always
like this with him. She could never stay too close to him, without feeling the
need to escape.

She felt nervous and was, as usual, hyperaware of him. The
way he stared at her made her feel like some kind of prey. All jungleish and
just plain crazy.

She felt a shiver run down her spine when he laughed.

“No problem, Ms. Nash,” he raised his hands in front of
himself, as though surrendering as he walked backwards to her desk. “But may I
ask you a question?”

“Would my saying no, stop you?” she muttered.

“Probably not,” he laughed low in his throat. “Why are you
always so irritable with me? Always so ticked off? What am I missing? Have I
ever done anything to you?”

She glanced in his direction and saw that he’d crossed his
thick arms over his broad chest as he leaned on her desk. She quickly turned
back to the copy machine.

But she felt the eyeball darts he shot at her back.

She
refused
to turn around and demand that he explain
his question.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she denied,
despite the quickening she felt in her stomach at his words.

Whenever she was in his presence, she could only take being
around him alone for just so long before she felt claustrophobic with the need
to get away from him. She didn’t like the way she’d catch him looking at her,
from beneath dark lashes, staring at her from those strange looking eyes of
his.

“How long have you and Colburn been together?”

“How long have we’ve been
working
together?”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

Renita knew he was playing with her. She didn’t know what he
got out of it, but whenever he caught her alone, he found it necessary to try
and get under her skin. When he’d worked for the agency that handled the firm’s
investigations, she’d worked with him often and found it increasingly difficult
to stay aloof around him.

Holt was picky. And because he was a top-notch investigator
at his agency, they’d allowed him to pick and choose which clients he’d work
with. He and Greg worked well together, so Holt had been the sole investigator
assigned to their cases, because he liked the attorney.

Whenever he was around her, she’d catch him staring at her.
She immediately went on the defensive and had called him out on several
occasions. The first time that she did, he was clearly surprised. She knew what
image she presented.

Cool, calm, and collected, Renita.

Which she felt that she was. As long as no one…messed…with
her. Then, she’d turn into the Renita who had to be sent away to boarding
school by her bourgeoisie parents to help “control” her more
wild
tendencies.

But she’d come a long way from the wild-haired, out of
control kid she’d once been. The same kid who had continually embarrassed her
parents, from the time she was a young girl caught ditching school, to the
young woman who flunked out of college.

She was a respectable grown woman, had a degree beneath her
belt, and was close to finishing her law degree.

It had taken her a while to control her natural inclination
to want to do serious damage to anyone who stepped to her crazy. But, she’d
overcome the tendencies by turning to yoga, meditating, drinking herbal
teas…and often locking herself in her apartment yelling, screaming, dancing
buck-naked, or whatever…to calm herself when she felt the sometimes
irresistible urge to act a fool and do something she
knew
that she’d
regret later.

It
was a process and
she
was a work in
progress.

At least that’s what her mother would remind her, that she
was a
work in progress
, when she visited her parents during her weekly
Sunday visit to their home for church and dinner.

“Greg and I have been working together for three years…why?”
She turned cool dark gray eyes in Gaynor Holt’s direction as she asked the
question.

“Just wondered if you thought it was time to move on. Have
you given any thought to that?” he asked.

“Why would I want to move on? I enjoy what I do. I enjoy law
and have no desire to do anything else. Why?” she demanded.

As she’d spoken he’d walked toward her, slowly, stopping
within mere inches of her. She had to draw her head back in order to look at
him. The look on his chiseled scruffy face made her heart leap in her chest.
She resisted the urge to shove him away from her. To do so, would show him he
had an effect on her. It would show him that she was uncomfortable with him
standing so near.

She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“My brother and I are looking for someone to work with us.
Someone to help us in our research. With your background in law, you would be
perfect,” his scratchy voice had deepened.

“I have no interest in leaving Greg…the firm. I’ve worked
here for three years and as soon as I take my bar exam, the firm has offered me
a position,” she said and licked her suddenly dry lips. “Why would I leave that
to be a secretary with you and your brother?” she scoffed.

“You would be much more than a secretary, Renita.”

As she stared up at him, the look in his eyes was hypnotic.
She felt crazy as hell and just as disoriented having lost the thread of the
conversation.

“If you came to work with me, you wouldn’t feel the need to
be so…uptight,” he told her, his scratchy voice deepening as he took a step
closer to her.

“What makes you think,
uh hum
,” she started and had
to stop to clear her throat from the sudden restriction before she could go on.
“What makes you think that I’m uptight?” she finished, taking an involuntary
step back when he reached one of his big hands out, as though to touch her.

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