Читать книгу King's Promise - Adrianne Byrd - Страница 14

As her first day at The Dollhouse approached, Cheryl delved deeper and deeper into Xavier King’s background, almost to the point of making it a miniobsession. Her eyes pored over his family’s history like it was the latest Dennis Lehane bestseller. On paper, the King brothers’ parents struggled to raise them on a city bus driver and substitute teacher’s salary in a low-income section of Atlanta. There was no record of any of the brothers getting into any real trouble growing up—just a single missing person’s report for Jeremy King when he was six years old. Apparently, the kid had run away from home after finding a box of puppies in the woods and had become upset when his father told him that they couldn’t afford to keep them and would have to take them to the pound. Two days later, Jeremy’s childhood friend broke down and confessed that Jeremy was living in their backyard in his tree house.

Cheryl smiled every time she read the old newspaper story. Not to mention, Jeremy was an adorable kid. But even looking at those old articles, her eyes would eventually drift to a frowning Xavier standing in the background. The other material Cheryl dug up on Xavier included spelling-bee championships, high school football accolades and scholarships. At nineteen, the football accolades turned to success in the boxing ring. Xavier won the national Golden Gloves heavyweight championship in ’02 and ’03 and even made the Olympic team in ’04. But his career abruptly ended with a near-perfect 21-1 record without any real explanation as to why he left boxing.

He just stopped fighting.

As far as Cheryl could tell, Xavier just disappeared from the spotlight for two years and then reappeared as a gentlemen’s club owner, where accusations and suspicions of drug trafficking continued to swirl.

Cheryl’s gaze settled once again on the department’s black-and-white photographs of the sexy club owners. And try as she might, she just didn’t or couldn’t see them as criminals. Maybe it was something about Xavier’s dark soulful eyes. They struck her as being too honest…and playful. Now since she’d had the pleasure of being in the same room with the man, she would testify on a stack of Bibles that Xavier King did indeed dominate a room. The power of his gaze, the line of his shoulders and the unmistakable strength in his bulging arms… “Whew!” She reached for her cold bottled water and downed most of its twenty ounces, trying to put out the fire of her own making.

Something creaked and Cheryl’s head whipped around to her bedroom door. There standing at the threshold, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, was her six-year-old nephew, Thaddeus. A smile spread across her face again. “Heeey, li’l man. Whatcha doin’ up?”

“There’s a monster in my closet,” he whined. His footed pajamas shuffled across the hardwood floor of her bedroom as he made his way over to her.

“A monster?” she responded with wide-eyed shock. She circled her arm around his tiny shoulders. “Are you sure?”

Thaddeus poked out his bottom lip and nodded.

“Oh, no. That just won’t do.”

“Will you come in my room and shoot it with your police gun?” he asked hopefully.

“How about I just go in there and check it out for myself?” she suggested. “I’m tough. I’m sure that I’ll be able to handle that monster with my bare hands.”

Her bravery made his eyes grow wider. “You sure? What if it hurts you?”

“Are you kidding me?” Cheryl curled her right arm. “Check out these muscles,” she said, and waited for her nephew to give her Michelle Obama–like arms a good squeeze.

“Wow. You are strong,” he said, awestruck.

“I sure am.” She winked at him and stood. “Now let me at that monster hiding in that closet. We don’t have time for none of this foolishness, do we?”

Thaddeus shook his head and then fell in line behind his aunt as she strolled out of her bedroom and headed into his room. “That monster is going to get it,” he declared confidently.

“He sure is,” Cheryl agreed. “Just let me at him.”

They stormed into his Spider-Man–themed bedroom together. Cheryl flipped on the light switch and made a beeline to the closet. At the last second before touching the doorknob, Thaddeus gave her a quick last warning, “Be careful, Aunt Cheryl.”

She tossed him a confident wink and then threw open the door.

Thaddeus gasped and covered his eyes. But when he didn’t hear any hissing, growling or Lord knows what else his active imagination had anticipated, he slowly peeked through his small fingers.

“Huh.” Cheryl settled her hands onto her hips and looked around. “There’s no monster in here.”

Frowning, Thaddeus raced over to the closet and mimicked his aunt’s stance. “Where did he go?”

“I don’t know.” Cheryl pretended to be dumbfounded before suggesting, “Maybe he heard you going to get me and he got scared?”

Her nephew nodded at the explanation. “Yeah.”

“Well, he better run. I was really going to put a hurting on him,” Cheryl bragged as she dusted off her hands.

“Were you going to use karate on him?” He shifted his gaze from the monsterless closet and stared up at her.

“You know it.” She tried to run her fingers through his thick blondish-brown hair, but as usual it was a bit tangled with its wayward curls. “When is your mother going to fix your hair?”

“She was supposed to do it tonight, but she fell asleep.”

Cheryl shook her head. “All right. Back in the bed you go, li’l man. You have school in the morning.”

Thaddeus poked out his bottom lip, but shuffled his way over to his twin-size bed where Cheryl peeled back the top sheet and waited for him. When he got close to the bed, he launched himself onto the mattress and laid his head on his cartoon-character pillow.

Cheryl couldn’t resist tickling his side to elicit one of his hilarious, funny-sounding giggles. Once she got it, she leaned down and planted a wet kiss on his chubby cheek. “Good night, li’l man.”

“Night, Auntie. When I grow up, I’m going to be a police officer just like you.”

Cheryl’s heart squeezed as tears quickly flooded her eyes. “And I’m sure that you’ll make an excellent police officer.” She stole another kiss and then tucked him into bed. “Sweet dreams,” she said at the door before turning off the light switch.

Her smile was still stretched across her lips as she walked from her nephew’s bedroom and headed toward the kitchen. There, her younger sister, Larissa, was slumped over her biology textbook and snoring softly into the pages.

Cheryl stopped at the entry to the kitchen and shook her head. She couldn’t help but be sympathetic to her sister’s hectic schedule. She worked full-time in a clothing store, while juggling being a single mom and going to college at night to become a nurse. It was a lot, and Cheryl was extremely proud of her sister. Because Larissa had her son so young, she could’ve continued her life making bad decisions. But when Thaddeus’s father decided not to be a part of his biracial son’s life—along with his well-to-do family—Larissa didn’t fall apart. She picked herself up, dusted herself off and got busy trying to ensure a better life for her and her son. A lot of times that meant having to lean on family members, but everyone in the Grier family was more than willing to help as long as Larissa was committed to doing what was right.

Cheryl was no different.

Three years after Thaddeus was born, the Grier sisters were thrown a major curveball when their parents were killed in an electrical fire in their family home. The fire occurred in the middle of the night. Larissa managed to save herself and Thaddeus, and their mother did manage to get out, but she later died in the hospital. Their father never made it out of bed. The fire department report said that there had been some bad wiring in one of the upstairs bedrooms—the room where their father had installed a ceiling fan two days earlier.

After such a devastating blow, Cheryl and Larissa relied on each other more than ever. As a result, Larissa and Thaddeus moved into Cheryl’s single-family ranch in the small Atlanta suburb of Marietta. It was a bit of a tight squeeze, but the sisters were doing all they could to make the living arrangement work.

Cheryl placed a gentle hand on Larissa’s back and spoke just loud enough to break through her snoring. “Rissa, why don’t you go to bed?”

“Hmm?” Larissa lifted her head, but didn’t open her eyes.

“Go to bed,” Cheryl said, using the opportunity to close her sister’s schoolbooks.

“Can’t,” Larissa moaned. “I have a big test tomorrow and I’m not prepared.” She sat up and stretched.

“You’re not going to learn anything by drooling on your textbook. I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“I knooooooow.” She dropped her head into the palms of her hands for a second and almost immediately drifted off to sleep again.

Cheryl put her sister’s book back on the table and chuckled when her sister jumped. “I’ll put on some coffee for you.”

“Thanks.” Larissa grabbed her book again and opened it up. “I can’t wait until this quarter is over with. It’s really kicking my butt.”

“Didn’t it just start?” Cheryl asked as she shoveled Folgers grinds into the coffee filter.

“What’s your point?”

“Hang in there. Next year this time, you’ll be holding that degree.”

“More like I’ll be falling out and crying, and calling out for Jesus,” Larissa corrected.

“Whatever. You just make sure that you get that degree, too.” Cheryl hit the brew button and then turned back toward the table. “About Thaddeus’s hair…”

Larissa groaned. “Oh. I’ll take care of it this weekend. Drae recommended this great barbershop in Atlanta and I’ll take him there.”

“Do you want me to take him?”

Larissa’s eyes widened with hope. “Will you have time? I thought that you were starting some new super-duper secret case tomorrow?”

“I am. But I can take Thaddeus Saturday morning, if you want.”

“If I want? Girl, if I had the energy I would jump up and kiss you. That means I can sleep late for once.”

“Not a problem.” Cheryl pulled out a chair and sat down while she waited for the coffee to finish brewing.

“I know that you probably can’t wait for me and Thaddeus to finally move out and find our own place.”

Cheryl frowned. “I never said that.”

“Oh, please. You don’t have to.” Larissa eased back in her chair. “Any sane single woman would love to have her place back—child-free, so that you can do what single women do with the opposite sex.”

“Give it a rest.” Cheryl stood and went to the cabinet for two coffee mugs. “I like having you and my Energizer Bunny nephew around. We’re a family.”

“True. But I imagine that one day—maybe one day soon—you’d like to start your own family.”

Cheryl glanced over her shoulder.

“Maybe with a certain lieutenant?”

“Oh, God, please. Just say you’re kidding.”

“What?” Larissa shrugged. “You know Jason still has the hots for you. He still calls—”

“What?”

“C’mon. Don’t play coy. You know that man is like a puppy dog around you.” Larissa laughed. “I don’t know what you put on him, but it’s clearly something that he can’t shake or take a pill for.”

Cheryl huffed out a long frustrated breath and poured their coffee. “I tell you what. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking when I hooked up with that man. Maybe I bumped my head or something.”

“You mean to tell me that you don’t feel anything for him?”

“Zip….nada….nothing.” She quickly added French-vanilla creamer and sugar to their mugs and headed back to the table. “You know it all happened so soon after Mom and Dad died and… Maybe I was just weak. He caught me at a vulnerable time. Insert standard cliché here.”

“Sounds like it makes life real interesting around the department,” said Larissa as she carefully picked up her coffee mug. “Was he at least good in bed?”

“Excuse you.”

Larissa shrugged and refused to retract the question. “Hey, I can’t remember the last time I even had sex. So you’re going to have to forgive me for getting all up in your Kool-Aid. I have to get my jollies off some kind of way.”

“You know…if you want to go out sometime, I can babysit Thaddeus.”

“Ughh. The last thing I need in my life right now is the complications of a man.” Larissa shook her head. “Maybe after I get at least one thing off my plate.”

“So does that mean that you’re going to take a rain check?”

“Is the offer good until next summer?”

“As a matter of fact it is.”

“Then, yes, ma’am. I will.” Larissa straightened up in her chair and flashed her sister a silly grin as she thought about a potential date she might have…a year from now. “Now all we have to do is find you a new man.”

Instantly, Xavier’s face popped into Cheryl’s head, and less than a second later, her body was flush with a tingling warm sensation.

“Ooooh. Looks like you already have a new man in mind,” Larissa said, easily reading her sister.

“What? No.” Cheryl shook her head but the damage had already been done. She popped out of her seat. “You want some cake?”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire!” Larissa wagged her finger. “Who is he? And where did you meet him?”

“It’s no one. Stop it.” Despite her protests, Cheryl couldn’t look her sister in the eye. She made a living deceiving criminals when she went undercover, and yet she was unable to get a simple lie past her sister. So she did the next best thing, she sliced them both two huge pieces of lemon cake.

“Pathetic.” Larissa laughed as she accepted her late-night snack. “Go ahead. Keep your secrets. Deny your only sister the pleasure of living vicariously through you.”

“Oh, God. Someone please give Ms. Larissa Grier her hard-earned Academy Award.”

“I’m still waiting for a name.”

“Then you’re going to be waiting for a long time,” Cheryl said, still struggling to push Xavier’s image out of her head.

Larissa’s laserlike gaze studied Cheryl as she shoved the first bite of cake into her mouth. “Uh-huh. We’ll see.”