When Love Comes Around (Love Conquers All) (21 page)

Bodies drenched with perspiration, the lovers remained in a sensual tangle of heated limbs. Neither was ready to break the intimate contact just yet. If they could be suspended in time, this is where they would want to be…forever. What they’d just shared was beyond incredible.

“That was something else,” Kevin whispered, planting a path of soft wet kisses along her jaw traveling down her neck to the curve of her shoulder.

Fully sated Starr purred, “I know that’s right.”

“Starr?”

Lazily she answered, “Hmm?”

“Have my baby.”

What in the name of hell’s fire is going on!
Starr silently screamed in her head throwing her hands up in the air. All week long crazy stuff had been going on around her. Monday morning as she left her house, two flat tires greeted her, one on the driver side, and the other on the rear right passenger side. It really pissed her off because she hadn’t noticed the flat tires that morning when she walked Kevin to the door an hour before she left for work. To avoid being late for work she had to take public transportation, which she detested with a passion. People were downright rude. Somebody always had to sit next to her, sneezing or coughing spreading their germs, too trifling to cover their mouth. Not knowing the bus and train schedules added to her mounting aggravation. She ended up being over an hour late for work, despite her efforts to make it in on time.

Later that afternoon her mechanic called darkening the black clouds that were already hanging overhead. He’d informed her that the flat tires were the results of a slash job. Dumb founded, she couldn’t imagine who in the world would want to deliberately slash her tires. Although she did have a run in with Betty, one of the nurses on the unit about leaving unfinished paperwork, she didn’t think the woman would go to the extreme of vandalizing her car.

True, Betty was angry with Starr because she reported her to their supervisor. Betty had repeatedly failed to perform her job duties, leaving her coworkers to complete the bulk of her work, and oftentimes putting patients at risk. Many of the other nurses on the unit complained about Betty actions, yet none of them had the guts to report the lazy nurse because she was a longtime employee of the hospital.

Armed with documented proof of the nurse’s neglect, Starr approached the unit’s supervisor. The supervisor had no choice but to give Betty a written warning. If she received a third warning, she would be in danger of termination after being a nurse on the unit for over twenty years.

When the bitter nurse heard about the slashed tires, she smirked, “That’s what that little snitch gets. Serves her right.”

If she had not been concerned about her professional integrity, Starr would have slapped the snot out of Betty. One thing was for sure,
if
she found out that dried up prune laid a finger on her car, to hell with professional integrity, Betty was getting a beat down at the end of shift.

To make matters worse by the time Wednesday rolled around everything at work was a chaotic mess. Two nurses had called out on night shift, which meant a ton of work was left for the day shift nurses. One of the patient’s long lost sons decided to pop up for a visit antagonizing his three older brothers for putting their father in hospice care. Things got so out of hand the staff had to call security to have the son removed. Everyone felt bad for the dying patient. He definitely did not deserve to have his sons bickering over him while on his deathbed. And to add fuel to the fire, the staff was in an uproar when the supervisor announced she would be resigning her position in six to eight months. Her husband’s job was transferring him overseas in eight weeks. The only reason she had extended her stay was because their home had to go on the market and the kids had to finish out the school year.

Needing to get away from the madness, Starr asked another nurse to cover her patients. The nurse she asked the favor of didn’t have a problem with it, but of course, a few of the other nurses grumbled, “Why she gets to leave for lunch?” Starr didn’t give two shakes of a lamb’s butt about their grumbling. By law she was entitled to a break that didn’t consist of sitting in the nurse’s lounge being bothered every five seconds. On days like these, she seriously contemplated moving on like her girls had done. Ava was now a school nurse and loved her new job. Who wouldn’t love having off all major holidays and the entire summer? And Summer worked part-time, three mornings a week in a Family Medicine practice in Germantown.

Enjoying the warm, sunny fall afternoon, she took her time walking to K-Mart on Tenth and Market Streets. She wanted to get a few packs of those new energy conserving light bulbs. The second her cell phone began to ring, Starr nodded her head to the beat. The ring tone was set to Mary J’s big hit,
Just Fine.
Pushing the glass pane door open, making her way to the house wares aisle, she flipped the small device open. Normally, she’d pay attention to the ‘unknown’ display on the cell phone, but she was too busy jamming to Mary J. “Hello” she sang to the unidentified caller.

“Hi honey.”

Abruptly coming to a jarring stop, Starr cringed. After all this time, what could
he
want? She had spent years getting over his betrayal. Hadn’t he caused enough damage? Why was he bothering her now when her life was finally coming together? No thanks to him.

“What do you want?” She hissed through clenched teeth, anger twisting and knotting her insides.

“It’s been a long time.” The caller paused. “I just wanted to see how you’re doing.” The male voice had a nerve to come across the line sounding concerned.

“Not long enough. Don’t ever call me again.”

Flipping the small device closed with a sharp click, Starr was fuming. How dare he call her? Did he think she was still the same young, naïve girl? That girl that wanted his love so bad, she believed every one of his conniving lies. Well, he had better think again, because if that’s what he thought, he had another think coming.

Her good feeling mood disintegrated, taking the bounce out of her step. No longer interested in the energy conserving light bulbs, she reversed her steps and headed back to the madhouse.

Again, she wanted to know what in hell’s fire was going on? as she stood on the sidewalk, her mouth hanging open, looking at what used to be a beautiful flower bed. She had been so proud of her handiwork. For three weekends straight at seven in the morning, she had dragged herself after working all week to Home Depot to take gardening classes. Now some imbecile had destroyed everything. Flowers, grass and mulch were all over the place. Someone had ripped up every beautiful flower that had been planted.

Planting her garden had made her feel close to her mom. It made her think of the vibrant, loving woman her mother had once been. Growing up, the one thing she vividly remembered was that her mom was always her happiest while gardening. She would hum and talk to her flowers telling them how beautiful they were going to make world. The first sign of her mother going into a deep depression was her lack of interest in her garden. With no zeal to make the world a beautiful place, weeds chocked the life out of her small paradise. Starr didn’t like remembering that version of her mom. So she created the one thing that had brought her mother joy. A beautiful garden.

Feeling totally defeated from the events of the week, she dragged the few steps to her front door. Before she could get inside Mrs. Virginia stopped her. “Starr, I tried to stop them. But by the time I got back with a piece of paper and pen to write down the license plate number they were gone.”

The elderly woman proceeded to tell her a dark car pulled up across the street about an hour ago. There had been two people in the car. The driver was described as a young black woman and the passenger a teenage boy. Mrs. Virginia knew this because the boy jumped out the car with two huge vicious dogs leading them to Starr’s lawn. Letting the beasts loose he gave them the “Attack!” command.

Mrs. Virginia was downright appalled as the hooligan doubled over laughing as the dogs brutalized the beautiful flowerbed. She hadn’t meant to let the screen door slam shut as she hurried to get pen and paper.

“I heard that woman yell, ‘Hurry up! Get them so we can get out of here!’” Sighing Mrs. Virginia apologized. “I’m sorry I slammed the door. I was in a rush to get something to write down the plate number.”

Starr gave the older woman a weak, tired smile. It wasn’t her fault someone had destroyed the one thing that kept her connected to her mom. “Don’t be sorry, Mrs. Virginia. It’s not your fault. Have a good night.”

Gently closing her front door, she racked her brain trying to figure out who would slash her tires, and then trash her flowerbed. Other than dried up Betty, she hadn’t had any run-ins with anyone else. Quite honestly, there wasn’t anyone for her to have any run-ins with. She got along with all the other folks she worked with. And her time while not working was spent with her girls and Kevin.

Flopping down on the sofa, Starr was miserable. It was official…she had had the week from hell. The only thing that kept her sane was that she and Kevin talked every night on the phone. Having to prepare for a major presentation to land a multi-million dollar firm had tied him up. They hadn’t seen each other all week. Sure, she enjoyed their talks. However, she wanted more. Just talking wasn’t enough. She wanted to wake up each morning in his arms after a thorough night of love making.

Leaning her head back she closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly.
In with the good and out with the bad.
Starr repeated this mantra several times as an attempt to forget this week’s madness. As a sense of calmness began to claim her, she let her mind travel to the last time she was with Kevin.

Later that night as they lay in bed, limbs tangled in a sweet embrace she whispered, “Did you really mean what you said? Or was it the heat of the after moment that had you talking?”

Untangling himself from the embrace, he pushed up on his elbow. Gazing down at her he gently traced her bottom lip with the tip of his finger. “Baby, I would never mislead you about something as serious as us bringing a child into the world.”

Her heart skipped several beats. Was he serious? All she’d been thinking about for weeks was having Kevin’s baby. Every night before she fell asleep, she imagined what their baby would look like. Would it have her dimples? or Kevin’s beautiful caramel complexion? Would it be boy or a girl?

“But what if I can’t get pregnant?” She softly asked, her eyes filling with tears.

Kevin’s fingertip stilled. “What are you saying?”

Swallowing the lump in her throat, willing the tears to stay behind her lids, she shared with Kevin every detail of her medical history. He listened intently as she relayed her condition and prognosis as told to her by Dr. Neil.

When she finished her story, he wiped the lone tear that escaped sliding down her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Baby, don’t cry. We’ll have a baby. I promise.”

“You promise.” She sniffled wiping a tear away.

Lying back down on the bed, Kevin pulled her to his chest kissing her forehead. “I promise.”

Kevin’s statement was made with such conviction. He had faith. He was living proof that God was still in the miracle business. Now all he had to do was convince Starr not to give up hope, but to put her trust in the Lord.

Nodding her head, she snuggled against his chest. Kevin was going to make everything all right. She thanked God that for once she had a man that had her back. A man that supported what she wanted. When she told him she dreamed of being a mother since she was a little girl, he hadn’t gotten all crazy on her. Instead, he promised to make her dream a reality.

Covering her mouth, she yawned. “Night Kevin.”

“Night baby.”

Closing her eyes, Morpheus called to her and she followed. All night as she lay contently nestled in her husband’s arms, visions of sweet cherubs cooed and gurgled at her until dawn.

A broad smile spread across her face as she remembered Kevin’s promise and her dream. Not even the horrendous week she had could take the joy away she was feeling at this moment. Placing her palm over her flat belly, she whispered a prayer. “Please let a little one be growing inside of me.”

Three Months Later Saturday Afternoon

“Girl, you know I love you.” Kevin grunted out between gasps. Starr was working him over big time.