Читать книгу Make You Mine - Niobia Bryant - Страница 24

Three Months Later

Julius was excited about all of the great photos he took while in Africa. He was anxious to get home, unpack, and get right into the darkroom he set up in his basement for times he didn’t feel like driving to his studio.

His agent was expecting the photos in two weeks and that wasn’t a problem. He had hundreds of rolls of film that Dwayne and he were going to work overtime to get printed.

For the past three years, Julius had been throwing around the idea of a book. At first he hadn’t known the particulars of when and what, but he knew he wanted to do it. Finally choosing Africa as his backdrop made perfect sense. It was a land rich with his culture, his history, and his ancestry. Julius Jones: My Africa would be in bookstores everywhere next year.

A fabulous career. A fabulous three months in Africa. Now a fabulous book. Life couldn’t be any more…fabulous.

“Thanks, man,” Julius told the driver who double-parked the green-and-white taxi in front of his house.

As the man hopped out to remove his passenger’s luggage from the trunk, Julius dug enough money from his wallet to cover the fare and a hefty tip.

He was just about to climb out of the cab when his cell phone rang. It was an unusual sound to him since his phone hadn’t worked while he was out of the country. Julius flung his leather carry-on onto his shoulder and reached into the inside pocket of his leather blazer for his tiny silver flip phone as he climbed out of the cab.

“Julius Jones here.”

“Welcome back, Julius Jones. You truly have been missed.”

He had to pause for a moment to catch the sultry, feminine voice on the line.

“This is Karina, silly boy.”

Julius smiled as he envisioned the model. “Of course I recognized your voice,” he lied, as he moved to allow the driver to place his two large suitcases on the sidewalk.

“I hope you haven’t forgotten our date tonight.”

Damn. He had.

“We never got to finish what we started at the photo shoot and you told me you’d be returning today and to give you a call.”

He remembered it now.

“I’m naked in my big Jacuzzi tub and just thinking of you. I’ve been waiting three whole months for some of you, Julius. Don’t let me regret waiting.”

Julius waved the driver off. “I won’t, I promise.”

“Good,” she sighed huskily. “Oh, and Julius? Your assistant sent me the photo. It’s hanging over my bed. Don’t worry you’ll get to see it. I love it almost as much as you’re going to love the real thing .”

He smiled broadly. “Really?”

“Definitely.”

“I’ll pick you up, say around—” Julius began, glancing down at his Jaeger-Le-Coultre watch.

“No, I’ll pick you up around six,” she asserted.

“Oh…okay.”

“See you then.”

Julius smiled, shaking his head as he closed the phone and slid it back into his pocket. What the hell. His time in Africa had been more work then play. A date with Karina would be a good way to cap off his return home.

Then again so would a home-cooked meal at Kendrick and Tamara’s.

Or another date with Caress , Julius thought, as he carried a suitcase in each hand up the stairs. He had to admit that she had drifted into his thoughts on more than one occasion during the past three months. He wasn’t looking for a relationship, but he damn sure would love to touch base with her again.

Putting his key in the lock of the front door, he thought, It’ll be real good to see her.

Julius set his bags on the hardwood floor of the foyer. Immediately he noticed that there wasn’t one piece of mail on the floor beneath the mail slot on the front door. He hadn’t bothered to discontinue his mail or his utilities because he didn’t want the hassle of getting them reconnected. He merely prepaid his utilities three months in advance. When he traveled he liked to return to his life just the way he left it.

Even after three months, there should be mail. Plenty of mail.

Since he traveled so often, Tamara and Kendrick had a key to keep an eye on the place whenever he was out of town. They probably piled up all the mail for me , he reasoned, immediately put at ease.

Leaving his luggage by the door, Julius jogged up the stairs, then stopped suddenly and backtracked two steps. He frowned at the odd angle of the picture hung on the wall. Correcting it quickly, he nodded in approval before continuing up the stairs.

As he walked into his bedroom Julius again frowned. He knew it sounded very cliché but…someone had been sleeping in his bed. Tamara and Kendrick. Their lackluster attempt at making it was definitely not up to his good-enough-to-be-in-Architectural-Digest par.

“Did those two…in my bed?” Julius asked himself aloud, already crossing the room to pick up his cordless phone. Quickly he dialed Kendrick’s work number.

“Kendrick? Hey, what’s up?”

“Julius? Welcome back. How was Africa?”

“Great, but look I got something to ask you? Have you and Tamara used my—”

“Actually, I got something to tell you,” Kendrick began, sounding decidedly unlike his usual calm and collected self. “Uhm, it’s about—”

The bathroom door opened and Julius whirled around to see who in the hell was in his house. His eyes widened in surprise. “Caress?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact. It’s about Caress,” Kendrick said on the phone.

Julius disconnected the call as he faced Caress standing unsure in a white-fitted tank top and his pajama bottoms that were rolled up to her knees. Her hair was up in a pony-tail and a toothbrush was in her hand. Her face was free of makeup. She was braless and the cotton of the tank top clung to the hardness of her nipples and the soft curves of her breasts. She bit her bottom lip and smiled nervously as she looked over at him.

He thought she looked absolutely gorgeous.

“Hi, Julius,” she began, rubbing her free hand over her—no correct that—over his pants leg.

Julius frowned deeply.

“I guess I should explain,” Caress began.

The phone in his hand rang suddenly and loudly. He held up a hand to her and then looked down at the phone to check his caller ID. Just as he thought, it was Kendrick. “Kendrick and Tamara in on this?” he asked, his voice stern.

Caress nodded, her face resembling a child about to be punished.

Hitting the TALK button, Julius raised the phone to his face. “I’ll call you back,” he said shortly, before disconnecting the call again.

“Julius—”

“Why are you in my house, Caress?” he asked, studying her and noticing that her plum-sized breasts were definitely larger than the last time he suckled them.

Shaking his head to free his mind of sudden erotic images of her naked astride him, he focused on her slow coming words.

“First, let me apologize for moving in without your—”

“Moving in?” Julius balked, his eyes darting around the room to take in the unkempt bed, the gossip magazines on his usually clutter-free nightstands, the red brassiere flung carelessly over his leather chaise lounge.

Noticing everything his eyes took in, Caress moved quickly to gather the magazines and bra into her hands. “Sorry. Look, Julius—”

Suddenly, her face paled and she dropped everything in her hands to dash into the bathroom. Curious, Julius walked over to pick up the items she dropped and then followed her.

Caress was kneeling over the toilet, retching horribly. Her back arched as she heaved up her stomach’s contents. Frowning, Julius moved to grab a folded washcloth from the shelf to dampen with cold water. “Here you go,” he told her, squatting down next to her.

She flushed the toilet before she shut the lid and moved to sit atop it. Accepting the cloth, she wiped her face, frowning at the awful taste in her mouth. “Thanks,” she told him, careful to cover her mouth so that the smell of vomit on her breath didn’t offend him.

“Are you sick?” Julius asked, rising to stand over her. Looking around, he immediately noticed the total disarray of his bathroom. He swallowed down a deep wave of irritation.

“No,” she answered softly.

Too softly.

Julius’s body immediately tensed. Their eyes met and locked. He swallowed despite a huge lump in his throat. “Are you pregnant, Caress?”

Her eyes dropped.

So did Julius’s stomach.

Caress thought of the pained expression on Julius’s face when she disclosed her condition. She couldn’t really be angry with him about looking exactly like how she felt when she saw the little plus sign appear in the window of the pregnancy test. This wasn’t the greatest news for her either. Especially having been evicted from her apartment three weeks ago.

“How are you feelin’?” Tamara asked, walking into Julius’s bedroom where he left Caress while he went downstairs to talk to Kendrick.

Caress smiled half-heartedly, tossing her shirt into the open suitcase on the bed. “As fine as I can be pregnant, homeless, jobless, and husbandless.”

Tamara winced visibly. “Besides all of that, how are you doing? How’s the baby, Caress?” she asked, moving over to pick the suitcase up off the bed. “Why are you packing?”

Caress’s expression was odd as she watched her best friend set the suitcase on a luggage caddy by the door and then sit on the chaise lounge adjacent the bed. “I’m packing because he’s going to put me out. Why’d you just do that?” she asked, pointing to her luggage.

Tamara made a face. “Girl, Julius is so anal about his things. He’d pass a stone big as both our heads if he saw your suitcase on his suede comforter.”

Caress smiled. “I kinda noticed that he is very…organized.”

Tamara sucked air between her teeth. “My daddy’s a career military man and he’s not as orderly. Trust me, Julius is a neat freak bordering on obsessive compulsive.”

Caress felt sadness weigh her shoulders down. “I don’t know anything about my baby’s daddy,” she wailed, dramatically dragging out her words as she flopped back on the bed.

“You know his name, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you know his address?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you got the most vital info girl, so hush.”

The two women fell silent.

“I told you this was a bad idea, Tam-Tam.”

Julius paced back and forth across his living room. Every time his friend tried to speak he silenced him with an agitated wave of his hand. He had a lot on his plate to swallow, and it was sticking in his throat like bile. Finding out he may have a baby on the way and an unexpected roommate was quite a bit to handle all in one morning.

Caress is pregnant with my child.

Is it my child?

He paused in his therapeutic pacing. Okay, it was very possible that it was. He couldn’t deny that they had sex. Great sex. Focus, man, focus . Nor could he deny that although he carried two condoms in his wallet, he didn’t use either of them that night. Everything had been so hot. So fast. He never had unprotected sex. But the one time he did—zip bam BOOM—he was going to be a daddy.

What was I thinking?

Julius continued his pacing. He was slipping. This type of thing didn’t happen to him. He was too together for a baby mama. And with a woman he knew nothing about except that she was awesome in bed, homeless and jobless, and had taken residence in his home.

Julius felt like screaming as the control he cherished slipped through his grasp like sand.

“I know what we did was a little presumptuous—” Kendrick began from his seat on the sofa.

Julius swung around to gawk at him. “A little?” he scoffed. “Negro, please.”

“Look man, I was just as shocked as you are when Tamara told me that you, Mr. Magnum, had gotten Caress pregnant—”

“Gotten?” he asked sarcastically, piercing his friend with angry eyes.

Kendrick held up both of his large hands. “I didn’t mean it that way, Julius. All I’m saying is that you were in Africa and we couldn’t reach you. Caress hadn’t found a job yet and was getting evicted. Hell, Tamara was on my neck like a flea. What was a brother to do?”

“Certainly not give her keys to my home and tell her to move on in.” Julius’s voice was filled with exasperation and some resentment.

Kendrick went on the defensive. “What? You’d prefer that in your absence I let the woman who is pregnant with your child move into a shelter…or worse?”

“Why couldn’t she stay with you?” Julius countered.

“Man, please, our one bedroom is tight enough quarters for me and Tamara.”

The two men were at a stalemate.

“Look, Caress fell on hard times but she’s not one of these chicks out to gank a brother for his cash. She’s an independent, working woman. Hell, we had to bribe her into staying here.”

“With?”

“Huh?” Kendrick asked, obviously confused.

“What’d you have to bribe her with?”

“Not telling you she was pregnant if you happened to call.”

Julius frowned.

“What are you gonna do?” Kendrick asked, loosening his tie.

Julius walked over to the mahogany bar in the corner of the room and poured himself a shot of Courvoisier. Thinking of his predicament, he tripled it. “Now he asks me,” he muttered into his drink murderously, before he gulped it down in one swig with a wince.

Julius released a heavy breath. “So this is what it feels like between a rock and a hard place?”

Kendrick rose to walk over to the bar. “It’s just until she gets on her feet, Julius.”

Julius felt the tension increase at the back of his smooth neck. “What exactly are you suggesting?”

Kendrick poured himself a glass of ginger ale and looked over at Julius in astonishment. “I’m suggesting that she stay here. What were you thinking?”

Julius reached down to pull a can of Pepsi from the mini-fridge, taking a healthy swig to kill the aftertaste of the liquor. “I’m suggesting paying for an abortion.”

“No abortion. Tamara already asked.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Damn,” Julius swore, rubbing his beard. “If I agreed to the absurdity, where’s she supposed to sleep? My only other bedroom is set up as my home office.”

Kendrick wiggled his eyebrows suggestively and Julius immediately shook his head, adamant. “No. No. Hell no. I’m not looking to play house. Sex and living together adds up to one sticky ass situation.”

Footsteps echoed on the stairs. Julius’s eyes darted to the entrance of the living room just as Caress appeared.

This woman was going to be the mother of his child… if the child was his. Were prenatal paternity tests safe?

She walked straight up to him, her eyes swollen and red from tears. “I’m sorry.”

Julius swallowed back a desire to pull her into his arms. “For?”

“All of this,” she said, looking pointedly down at her stomach.

Julius nodded. “It took both of us, so don’t apologize.”

Caress nodded.

Instinctively, Julius could tell that she was embarrassed by her situation. He looked over her head to Kendrick. His friend’s eyes said, “Do the right thing.” He looked to Tamara, who now leaned against the doorframe, and her eyes said, “Don’t make me whup your ass!”

“Come on, Kendrick,” he said reluctantly.

“Where we going?”

Julius looked down at Caress. “To buy whatever I need to change my office back into a bedroom.”

He strode out of the living room before anyone could say a word.

Kendrick hopped up, moving to kiss his wife before leaving the house behind Julius.

Tamara moved over to hug Caress’s petite frame close in a motherly fashion.

Caress swallowed back hormonal tears.

“I’m going to have a baby.” Caress whispered the words softly as she lay resting on Julius’s bed.

Because the furniture for the other bedroom wouldn’t be delivered until tomorrow, Julius had given her use of his bedroom for one last night. Caress would only admit to herself that she was a little disappointed that they wouldn’t share the same bed and pick up where they left off.

Obviously Julius didn’t feel the same way. That night clearly meant nothing to him, and a relationship was the last thing he wanted. In fact, since Julius returned late this afternoon he had kept his distance.

If that’s how he wanted it then that was fine. Caress was not a woman to force herself on any man. Not even one she was pregnant by.

Truthfully, she was happy about the pregnancy. Okay, not at first. But once she realized that she couldn’t bear to have an abortion and would have a beautiful baby after about nine months, well she got happy.

Tamara’s assertion that Julius was not the kind of man to be a deadbeat dad had pleased her even more.

“As long as he’s a good father to you,” Caress spoke to her child, her hand on her still-flat womb. “Then I’ll be fine about everything else.”

She wasn’t any less anxious about giving up her space and independence than Julius was. But the first rule of motherhood—as far as she was concerned—was you do whatever, whenever for your child. She would give her child something she hadn’t had since she was two years old. A mother.

Caress was climbing out of the bed when someone rang the doorbell. Knowing Julius had secluded himself in his darkroom in the basement, Caress made her way out of the bedroom and down the stairs. She was just opening the front door when the door leading from the basement opened.

A tall and beautiful dark-skinned woman stood on the porch in a massive sable that was open and showing that she wore absolutely not a stitch of clothing underneath it. Obviously she thought Julius was going to open the door.

Well she thought wrong , Caress thought, frowning. “Excuse you?” she asked with attitude.

The woman didn’t even bother to close her fur as she stepped past Caress into the foyer. “Julius?” she asked, her tone obviously confused.

Caress turned, realizing that he stood behind her.

Julius looked from Karina, his forgotten date, to Caress, the woman pregnant with his child, and then looked heavenward.