Exit Strategy (37 page)

I reach for the remote and he plays keep away with me. “Hey, I’m the one in the hospital. It’s supposed to be my choice.” I give up after a couple halfhearted attempts to retrieve it.

“Don’t you know alpha males always control the remote?”

“Yeah, yeah. Hey, where did Mama go?”

“Pastor Johnson took her home to shower and get something—in her words—decent to eat.”

I smile. “That’s my mama.”

“So, it’s just you and me. And oh yeah, Jada and Nate came by, but you were snoring like a freight train.”

“I was not!”

He laughs and does a little dance. “Yes, you were. I even caught it on video on my i5.”

“Oh no
,
you didn’t!”

He pulls out his iPhone. “Let me show Mr. DeMille your close-up.”

My face crumbles on cue. “Carmelo, please. I’ve had enough of people photographing me and sharing my pictures without my consent. Please.”

“Oh, babygirl. I’m so sorry.” He sidles up to me again and shows me the video, then presses delete. Twice. “See. Gone.”

“Sucker!” I cackle with laughter. “You really fell for my vulnerability act, didn’t you?”

Carmelo pockets his phone and crosses his arms. He twists his mouth into a frown. “You know what they say about payback, right?”

~*~

“You feel like putting stamps on these for me?” Mama asks. We are in her kitchen, and she’s addressed a batch of invitations.

An overnight stay at the hospital and resting in my old room for a couple of days was all I needed. Besides the bandage on my right boob, I’m feeling pretty good physically. My emotions are still a wreck, but there’s no helping them right now.

“Sure. I need to do something, or I just might go crazy.”

I’m so glad Mama got the stamps with adhesive instead of a roll that I’d have to moisten. I am getting them done at a pretty good clip until a name and address jump out at me.

“Why are you sending Tristan an invitation?”

“Because I promised I’d invite him to the wedding,” Mama says.

“Well, considering everything that’s happened, I’d appreciate it if you’d uninvite him.”

“Things ended too suddenly between you two. It would probably do you both a world of good if you got a chance to talk.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve changed your opinion about him all of a sudden.”

“I’ve been trying not to have an opinion about Tristan before I have a chance to talk with him.” She puts down her pen. “Maybe I need some closure from him just as much as you do.”

“You’re welcome to seek closure if you like, but I’d just as soon not have to see or talk to him. Why don’t you call him up and invite him out to lunch or something, but don’t have him come to your wedding where I have to socialize with him like nothing’s happened.”

“You’re right, baby. I shouldn’t burden you like that after your surgery and all.” She takes the invitation from my hand and rips it into shreds. “There. Tristan is officially uninvited.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Tristan

“Mr. White, your brother, Ms. Jameson, Pastor Johnson and Mrs. Beale are here to see,” Mrs. Naven says. “I left them in the sitting room.”

Including his own, four pairs of eyes focus on his housekeeper. Tristan runs his hand through his hair. Everything was set to surveil McCaskill in action at Elysian Fields, a club on the north side he frequents now. Tristan tries not to look annoyed. He doesn’t have time for a social call, and he really has no desire to confront Keisha’s mother and roommate at the moment.

Of course, that’s all this could be since Mrs. Beale’s wedding is tomorrow, and what bride in her right mind would use the night before her wedding to pay a visit to the cad who’d publicly jilted her daughter? He was hoping to wrap up this mess with McCaskill so he could finally get the opportunity to claim Keisha again. And claim her, he would. He wanted Keisha back in the worst way and had no fucking clue how he was going to pull it off.

Mrs. Naven waits patiently, not leaving her spot at the doorway of his office-cum-command center.

Velasquez takes Tristan’s hesitation for indecision about leaving what was going on in the room. “You may receive your guests, sir. We’ve got this.”

Tristan stands and heads toward Mrs. Naven, throwing a “Thanks, Carlos” over his shoulder.

Mrs. Naven smiles. “I’ll go down the back stairs to my quarters,” she says. “Dinner for you and Mr. Velasquez’s men should be ready within the hour.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Naven.” He manages as much of a smile as he can, given what he’s about to face.

He parts ways with Mrs. Naven in the hallway and shakes his head at the quintet awaiting him downstairs. If only they knew. He’s doing this for Keisha; at first to protect her, and now to make sure she gets justice for the crime perpetrated against her, which the system had so fuck-tastically denied. If he’d been able to pull it off some other way, he would have, but necessity has required him to be inventive.

Now, he’s
this
close to snagging McCaskill and sending him to jail where he belongs. Leaving Keisha to face her cancer scare alone had driven home something he’d never believed he would experience. For the first time in his life, he’s pretty sure he’s in love with his submissive, and it’s equal parts exhilarating and frightening for him to feel this way. Now he’s embracing his feelings for her, and he can’t wait to tell her in person how he feels.

But first, he has to confront two of the most important women in her life and somehow convince them to trust him for just one more day. He’s rounding the corner into the sitting room when a little hellion flies at him—well, it was more like she launches herself at him like an Amazon.

Tristan reacts with lightning-fast reflexes, clamps his hands on her wrists when she collides with him, and holds them so she can’t hurt him or herself. Nathan, a split second from reading her intentions, grabs her, too, but around the waist. Between her struggle to get away from Tristan and being hauled away by his brother, Jada hisses at Tristan, “Give me five minutes, just five with you in a dungeon, you lousy—”

“Jada!” Nate speaks to her as only a Dom can, bringing her out of her hysterics, and she relaxes against him. “I’m sorry, bro. She promised she wouldn’t get physical.”

Tristan is incredulous. “And you believed her?”

Mrs. Beale comes to Tristan’s aide, pulls a handkerchief out of her purse and dabs at the bleeding scratch Jada gouged out of Tristan’s neck in his struggle to restrain her.

“Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword,” Pastor Johnson says. “Young lady, we came here to talk to Mr. White, not beat him with many stripes.”

“Yes Jada, we didn’t come here to assault poor Tristan.”

Tristan frowns at Mrs. Beale’s choice of words as she looks up into the eyes of the man who, for all intents and purposes, broke her daughter’s heart. Tristan has been called many things he’s disagreed with, but never “poor.”

He doesn’t even react to Jada’s attempt to kick his ass. He calmly smoothes his clothes and turns to Clara Lee and the pastor.

“I’m sorry you had to witness such histrionics your first time as a guest in my home,” he says to Mrs. Beale and her groom. “Please have a seat.”

Before Tristan takes his seat, he addresses Jada. “I’m only letting you off for striking me this one time because you’re my brother’s girlfriend.” Then he lowers his voice so Clara and the pastor can’t hear. “If it happens again,
I
get five minutes with
you
in a dungeon.”

Jada doesn’t flinch. “Bring it.”

Tristan is surprised but doesn’t blanch under her threat.
No wonder Nathan is over the moon about her. Ms. Jameson is hardcore.

“So, what brings you all here the night before your wedding, besides Ms. Jameson’s desire to take a piece out of my hide?” He sits in a chair adjacent to Clara Lee and the pastor and across from Jada and Nate on the sofa.

Nate begins. “Jada and Mrs. B. wanted to talk to you about Keisha, and the pastor and I came to support them.”

As much as it pains him to do so, Tristan feigns aloofness. “What about Keisha?”

“We want to know why you ditched her like a goddamned coward, that’s what.” Jada says.

“Tristan,” Mrs. Beale says. “I don’t think Jada is in the right frame of mind to have a rational conversation with you right now. Is there somewhere the pastor and I can speak to you alone?”

“Sure,” Tristan stands and offers Mrs. Beale his arm. “Right this way.” Tristan can’t help but gloat a little as he leads the older woman and the pastor out of the room and away from his brother and his barracuda. Jada’s eyes are narrowed to slits, and her lips form an angry pout as he leaves her to be either consoled or punished by his brother. Were he given the opportunity to make the choice, he’d have Nate punish her ass but good.

They cross the marble foyer to a formal living room, which is only used when he has the occasion to entertain. He escorts the elder Mrs. Beale and Pastor Johnson to the sofa, and he sits across from them.

Tristan pounces with a question before they can get a word in. “How’s Keisha, really?” He’s seen video footage of her and knows she’s physically faring well, but if anyone has a pulse on Keisha’s emotions and might be willing to share, it would be Clara Lee.

“I wish I could say she’s fine,” her mother begins. “She puts on a good front for me and the world, but she’s hurt in a bad way.”

Tristan quails from that knowledge. “I’m so sorry, Clara Lee. I never meant to hurt her. I’m about to finish an operation I set in motion after the trial. I had to find out who was threatening people I care about, and I had to make them believe I didn’t care about Keisha anymore to keep her safe.”

“So you didn’t really take up with the blond woman?” Pastor Johnson asks.

“No. It was all a ruse.”

Clara Lee grins. “Whew. That’s good, because if you’d said yes, I can’t promise I wouldn’t have gone after your head like Jada just did.”

Pastor Johnson pats her knee. “Now, Clara Lee.”

“And I would have deserved it,” Tristan says.

Clara Lee looks thoughtful. “I’m so glad I wasn’t wrong about you, Tristan. I thought my knack for gauging people had left me for sure.”

“I’m glad you weren’t wrong, too, because I wouldn’t dare defend myself against you, unless I want the pastor coming after me.”

“William is a more, ‘turn the other cheek’ kind of man.”

“Ah, a true pacifist.”

“I am, but I’d protect Clara Lee with my life,” the pastor says with conviction.

“Tristan, you and Keisha are just alike with your fifty-dollar words. So, when you gonna put my baby out of her misery? She’s over you, she says, but I don’t believe a word of it.”

Tristan’s heart thuds to a halt when he hears those words. “She has every right to hate my guts for doing what I did, when this business is over, but I’m going to buy an ad in the Post and Sun Times and a spot on all the local television affiliates so they’ll know Keisha is the only woman for me right now.”

Clara Lee and the pastor aim narrowed eyes at him in tandem. “‘Right now’?” Pastor Johnson says. “When God blesses you with someone you have the kind of connection that I’ve witnessed you and Keisha have, you can’t just relegate it to
right now
. And when you consummate that connection with someone you care about, as I believe you do her, you’ve created something sacred.

“I was a young man once. I know what it is to sow wild oats, but I also know what it is to finally find that person you were meant to share your life with. Commitment can be a fearful thing for a man who’s only seen heartache and pain come out of loving someone so much. It is a sign that you’re a mature man when you can cast out that fear of commitment and accept love from a woman who cares enough to put your needs before her own. A woman who will submit to your authority because she knows you will take care of her every need. There is freedom in loving and being loved by the woman who inspires this in you.”