Sizzling Seduction (5 page)

When the bad feelings didn’t surface, he shrugged. “I hadn’t heard she was moving back permanently and it real y doesn’t matter. It is ironic that she would pick now to move back, though.”

“It wasn’t like she had moved far away anyway. The chick was only in Trenton and she was in town often hanging out with her sorority sisters and having her monthly lunch with Aunt Sophie. She should have moved a whole lot farther away and she should have had the good taste to stay gone,” Joel said.

Patrick sighed. He had figured out intricate ways to avoid running into his ex-wife through the years, stealth-spy ways. And he needed them because from the time the ink dried on the divorce papers, his Aunt Sophie had been trying to get him to take Courtney back.

He hadn’t seen Courtney in at least six months, and that had only been in passing. Even his best avoidance skil s were no match for two schemers on a mission. So he figured out a way to deal with seeing her and as the years went by, it bothered him less and less.

“Anyway, none of that is important. And it has nothing to do with why I asked to see you three knuckleheads. I need to pick your brains about the moment you knew that your wives were the one.”

Jason tilted his head and put on his police detective inquisitive stare.

Joel’s mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. He started laughing almost immediately.

Lawrence rubbed his chin and his signature know-it-al smirk graced his face.

Too late to turn back now…

“I mean, I know that Jason was pretty much a goner for Penny from the time he was a kid. Poor sap didn’t stand a chance. And Joel, you walked around with that sil y grin on your face al the time. We didn’t think we would ever see you smile again after your accident and then one meeting with your physical therapist, Samantha, and you were
sprung.
And Lawrence, you took one look at Minerva and you turned into a stalker—”

“I wasn’t a stalker!” Lawrence interrupted in a huff.

“Dude, you were damn close to it. I was worried I would have to arrest my own brother.” Jason chuckled and Lawrence glared at him.

“Anyway, I wanted to find out from you guys—how did it

“Anyway, I wanted to find out from you guys—how did it feel? I realized that none of you had a clue you had just met the love of your life. You were too slow to see what the rest of us could tel just from looking at you. But—”

“Wait a damn minute! For somebody who obviously wants our help, you are being a little too free with the put-downs. I know that’s how you are al the time. But if you want
my
help, you’re going to have to be nicer.” Joel folded his arms across his chest. “And for the record, I did not walk around with a sil y grin on my face. And I realized that Samantha was the love of my life fairly quickly and put her on notice, as wel . I was much quicker than the stalker cop over there.”

“I was not stalking her! I was doing my job,” Lawrence snapped.

“Anyway.” Jason shook his head at Lawrence. “I’m with Joel. Big bro needs to be a little nicer if he wants our help.

And he’s going to have to come clean about why he wants our help. I don’t know about y’al , but I need some more details.”

“I need some more details, too,” Joel said.

“Oh, I definitely need some more details,” Lawrence offered gruffly.

Patrick eyed each of his brothers cautiously. He should have known these three jokers wouldn’t have made this easy. He probably should have toned down his comments, since they had apparently gotten them al riled up.

He leaned forward. “I met a woman—”

“Oh, snap!” Joel stared at him with glee and mirth as he interrupted. “Samantha said that when the love bug bit your surly, grumpy behind it was going to take you down hard and fast. But this is ridiculous. You met her today and she’s already got you cal ing for council from your younger, smarter, better-looking—”

“Al right, can I finish? And tel my sister-in-law to stop talking about me. Anyway, I met a woman today, a kindergarten teacher who brought her class to visit the firehouse—”

“I used to love giving tours to the little kiddies. That was a fun part of the job. The kids real y looked up to—” Joel cut him off again.

“Anyway…can I finish?” He glared at his brother.

“Oops. My bad. Go ahead, man.” A sheepish expression crossed Joel’s face.

“So, from the moment I set eyes on her when I welcomed the class to the firehouse, I felt weird. I wanted to keep looking at her. So I hung around for a little while as the rookie gave the tour and I even went out afterward and asked her on a date.”

“Playa, playa…” Jason offered with a smirk. “So when are you taking her out? Is that what you need advice on, where to take her and how to impress her? It’s been a minute since I’ve been in the game, but in my day, you know

—”

“I’m not taking her out.
Yet.
She said she doesn’t date.”

“She doesn’t date? What?” Perplexed, Lawrence frowned. “Wait…Was this a Catholic school? Did you hit on a nun? You know they don’t always wear those habits and stuff anymore—” Lawrence started.

“It was a public school, and she wasn’t a nun! And I’m not asking for advice on how to woo her once I get her to agree to a date.” Disgusted at the thought that his younger brothers would even deign to think that they had more skil s that he, Patrick grimaced. “I’m the reason you scrubs had any game to start with, and the last thing I need is advice about that from y’al .
Advice?
Please! When I taught y’al everything you know?”

“So what do you want?” Jason asked.

“I want to know if this urge to break out into a smile every time I picture her face, if the serious and steady thump in my chest every time I think about her, and this urge I have to find a way, any way, to see her short of
stalking
…” He shot Lawrence a glance. “I need to know if that’s what it feels like when you meet her…
when you’ve met the one
. I think that’s why I’m feeling this way and I don’t want to be slow on the uptake like you three clow—I mean, you guys. So—”

“Yes. He’s got it bad,” Jason said with a chuckle.

“And it appears the last Hightower brother has been bitten by the love bug.” Lawrence grinned.

“I don’t know if she’s
the one.
But it seems like you are recognizing her as the one. That’s for sure. That’s what it feels like. At least that’s what it felt like to me,” Joel offered.

“Me, too,” Jason said.

“Yep. Me, too,” Lawrence added.

“Didn’t you feel like that with Courtney?” Joel asked.

Patrick thought about it for a ful minute. He couldn’t recal ever feeling like that from the first moment he had met his ex-wife. He remembered his aunt always pushing them together and he remembered slowly coming to enjoy her company and coming to love her. But he never felt anything like he felt now back then with Courtney.

“No. I didn’t feel like this with Courtney.”

Then, for the first time since his divorce, he started to think that maybe the failure of his marriage wasn’t al Courtney’s fault after al .

“D
id you finish your homework?” Aisha folded her arms across her chest and smiled at her son as he plopped down on the sofa and flipped on the television.

“I didn’t have that much homework,” Dil on offered after the short pause that had always been his tel sign.

Her ten-year-old son was a joy on most days. But morning cartoons made it difficult to get him dressed and out the door for school. And afternoon cartoons distracted him from his homework.

The copper-brown-complexioned child looked like a little male version of her, with the exception of the black curly hair he’d gotten from his dad. Her own hair reached the middle of her back and was chemical y straightened. She seldom did more to it than curl the ends and pul it back with one of her many-colored and many-styled headbands.

When she was feeling real y adventurous, she pul ed it back in a ponytail with a scrunchie. One day she would work up enough nerve to cut it al off into one of those funky hairstyles her teaching assistant, Toni, wore. But for now, she had a ten-year-old trying to get out of doing homework to deal with.

“You didn’t answer the question, Dil on.” She added extra inflection in her voice, walked over to the television and stood in front of it.

Sulking, Dil on turned it off and got up. “My favorite show wil be off by the time I’m finished.”

“Then maybe you should have started earlier and then you would have been done, huh? You were messing around back there doing everything but your homework. So get to it so that you can be done by dinner.”

A spark of hope gleamed in his big brown eyes. “I could skip dinner and do my homework during dinner and watch my show now. Today we find out if the super ninja spider wil —”

She had to cut him off. “Are you trying to say you’d rather watch those sil y ninja spiders than eat one of my wonderful creations?”

Aisha knew she wasn’t the greatest cook in the world—

nowhere close. She experimented often with recipes that she saw being prepared on TV. But she also tried to make sure she put together simple healthy meals for her child and the little cartoon addict was going to eat his dinner.

“Wel , Mom…” Dil on gave her one of his sly, playful grins. “You could stand to watch a little less Food Network.”

He backed away as he spoke and his lanky body took off running when she picked up a pil ow and tossed it at him.

“Just for that I’m
not
going to try the new recipe I found for a cool dessert.”

“Yay! No test recipe this week!” her darling child yel ed from his back bedroom.

“Oh, do your homework, you little prankster!” She laughed as she plopped down on the sofa and turned on the Food Network. One of these days she was going to get one of those recipes to turn out the way they did on TV.

Watching the cooking shows always soothed her mind and gave her something else to think about. She had never been a great cook and barely made the basics. It hadn’t been a problem when she was married to Wil iam “Bil ”

Mil er. He had always been fond of tel ing her he hadn’t married her for her cooking or her brains.

The moment her verbal y abusive former husband decided to up the ante and actual y put his hands on her, her life took a detour. She only fol owed her desire to
really
learn to cook once she had gotten the courage to leave her husband, go back to school, finish her elementary education degree and got a job with the Paterson public school system.

Life was good now. She just had to make sure she resisted temptation and didn’t let any man try to seduce her into giving up her new path. No matter how sexy and smoking hot he was…

Now that looks good. I bet I can totally make that.

She let her mind think of safer things as she watched the Barefoot Contessa whip together the mocha buttercream frosting. How hard could that possibly be? It looked easy enough. She grabbed the notepad she kept by the sofa and started jotting down the ingredients and directions. She might have missed some, but she was sure she could wing it. She would try the dessert soon. At least she could clear her mind of thoughts about the sexy fireman.

Then, despite her best efforts, she suddenly envisioned herself feeding the fireman delectable morsels of her own mocha buttercream-frosted chocolate cake. The vision looked too good to vanquish from her head right away. So she let it linger. And then she had the nerve to start daydreaming about mocha buttercream frosting and that muscular frame of his. That’s when she knew she had to stop. Too bad she couldn’t….

A
isha sat in the Public School Number 21 faculty lunchroom, enjoying her turkey, avocado and tomato sandwich on whole wheat. During her hour-long break between her morning class being picked up and her afternoon class being dropped off, the building fire alarm went off. It wasn’t a scheduled dril , so she hurried out of the building, helping other teachers control their students as she exited.

Standing outside in the brisk fal air, she only hoped that whatever fire team responded it wasn’t one led by the sexy fire captain Patrick Hightower. The last thing she needed was a reminder of how she had total y blown off the finest man to ever make a move on her,
ever.

She didn’t regret turning him down.
Not really
…But she certainly didn’t need to see him again. His confident, bordering on cocky, approach let her know that he was probably a man just like her father, just like her ex-husband.

He was not a man she wanted or needed. She repeated those words like a holy mantra in her head and hoped that they would sink in.

When the fire truck and fire engine pul ed up and she got a glimpse of
him
jumping off the truck like a doggone super action hero coming to save the day, looking fine in his ful fire-repel ant uniform, she cursed the mantra. Her mouth went dryer than the Sudan and she could have sworn her breath was starting to make soft little pants. He looked dead at her; at least she thought he zoomed right in on her before he went into the building.

The other firemen with him hardly seemed to matter. She barely registered their presence. It was something about the way his eyes seemed to take al of her in with one glance that left her blind, deaf and dumb.

glance that left her blind, deaf and dumb.