Give Me Fever (24 page)

She nodded. “It was meant to be. The only thing that can destroy it is us…so let’s not do it. You are all the man I need, and I wish I could make you feel what I feel when you touch me or just look at me or make love to me. Nobody can compete with that. Nobody can take that away from me.”

“I told you before that I am a different man, Jade. I’m not that man who doesn’t understand that I can be all you need. That I am your equal. That you and I were meant to be and nobody can touch that.”

Jade smiled. “Oh, it’s me and you against the world, baby,” she told him with swagger.

With a moan of pleasure they shared a passionate kiss that made that familiar heat between them rise. Jade shifted her body so that she was straddling his narrow hips, his broadening erection pressing up with strength against her bud. She ground her hips, moving up and down the length of him in a sinful back-and-forth motion as she sucked his tongue deep into her mouth.

“Damn, I love you, Jade,” he moaned against her cheek.

Jade froze and jerked her head back to look down at him. Sitting up, her breasts swaying as she did, Jade locked her eyes on him. “What did you say?” she asked him huskily.

“I said I love you. What’s wrong?” he asked, grasping her wide hips.

“That’s the first time you ever said it, you know,” she reminded him gently before a huge smile spread across her face.

“It’s not the first time I felt it,” he told her huskily. “I love you, Jade Prince.”

“Awwwww,” she sighed.

Kaeden looked up expectantly.

“Don’t think I’m Felecia,” she began with a smile. “But today at the wedding, when we were standing at the end of the aisle, it felt like that would have been us getting married if we stayed together.”

“I felt that way too, Jade,” Kaeden admitted in a deep voice filled with emotion as he held her tighter against his chest.

“So yes, I love you, or there is no other way I could even picture spending the rest of my life with you.”

“Say it again.”

“I love you,” she said softly with a playful tilt to her voice as he pulled her back down.

“And again.”

“I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you,” she told him. “Is that enough?”

Kaeden’s eyes became serious. “I could never get enough.”

“Me either.”

They kissed, and it was filled with passion and promise.

Six months later

Jade sealed the last box with tape and then sat back on her heels with a sigh. Her little cottage didn’t look like her little cottage anymore. She sighed sadly at the emptiness and could have sworn it echoed.

She was thrilled about moving in with Kaeden, she just hated giving up the place. She had spent many a happy hour within the little cottage, but she was going to create many more happy memories with the man she loved. That she knew.

They had both lived up to their promises to make the second time around their best time. Whether at his house or her cottage, they had spent every single night in the same bed together. Moving in together had seemed like the natural progression forward. Today was the start of a new chapter for them.

So why doesn’t it feel all the way right?
she wondered.

As Kaeden and his brothers noisily carried the remnants of her independent living out the door and onto the moving truck, Jade stood and wiped her hands on the sides of her fitted jeans.

“Something wrong, Jade?” Mrs. Strong asked.

Jade pressed a smile to her pretty face as she found Kaeden’s mother, Kaitlyn, Garcelle, and Bianca watching her. “No, moving is just a little stressful, that’s all.”

“Tell me about it. When I moved all my stuff from Atlanta, I thought I would never get everything organized,” Bianca said, pausing in labeling the boxes.

Jade looked out the window at Kaeden as he talked with his brothers, his father, and her grandfather. Her heart swelled with love for him.

“We’re doing the right thing,” she told herself. “We are.”

Jade couldn’t shake her reservations, but she kept a smile on her face as the last of the boxes were loaded onto the truck. Tonight she would officially be shacking with the man she loved. “I have some sandwiches and lemonade inside the kitchen,” she told everyone as Kaeden pulled the rear door of the truck down. “And thank you all for helping me. I really appreciate it.”

Kahron pushed his shades atop his head and winked. “No problem. You’re family.”

Not legally
, she thought with a strained smile as everyone piled into the cottage.

“You okay?” Kaeden asked as he pulled her close to him to press a kiss to her cheek.

“Yeah, I’m fine, baby,” she told him. “You go ahead. I’ll be right in.”

He soundly slapped her rear before he strode up the path and into the cottage.

“Stop this, Jade. He asked you to move in and you excitedly said yes, and now that the day of reckoning has arrived you can’t weird out on the man.” Jade kicked a rock. “So be happy, Jade. This is a big step. He loves me. We’re doing this.”

Jade turned and walked inside the cottage. She paused at the doorway to find Kaeden on his knee with everyone standing behind him. Her eyes dropped to the engagement ring he held in his hand. She gasped and touched her hand to her chest.

“Jade Prince, you are the one for me and I don’t doubt that in the least. You make me a better person. You’ve made a better man.”

She smiled as several of the ladies sighed in pleasure.

“I knew about a month ago that I was dying to see just how pretty you would look in a wedding gown walking down the aisle to me.”

Jade stepped forward until she was standing before him.

“So when we leave here, I want you to know we are headed to our home where we will build a life together and make babies together and grow old together.”

Jade reached down and touched her hands to the sides of his face.

“Marry me, Jade.”

“I love you sooo much, Kaeden,” she told him in a whisper as she blinked away tears.

He stood and wrapped one arm around her waist to pull her body close to his. He planted a dozen kisses on her mouth before deepening it with a moan.

“Um, is that a yes?” Kaitlyn asked dryly.

Jade laughed as she broke the kiss and looked over his broad shoulders at them. “It’s a definite yes,” she told them emphatically.

Everyone applauded in happiness for the couple.

Kaeden reached for her hand and slid the weighty three-carat solitaire onto her finger.

They stared at each other for the longest time, just lost in their own little world.

“So I guess you won’t be moping around here anymore, Jade,” Garcelle teased, even as she wiped tears from her own eyes.

“Or kicking rocks,” Esai teased as he stepped forward to kiss her cheek.

“Or talking to yourself,” Kahron added.

Jade eyed them all, finally feeling like everything was just right as Kaeden pulled her close for one of many kisses to come.

Hello all,

Another Strong family sibling has fallen in love, and I must admit that I am having a ball bringing love into their lives.

Jade and Kaeden are the epitome of opposites attracting, but once they got beyond their differences, they discovered a love that is meant to be. Destiny. Fate. Chemistry. The one. All of that. It’s nothing but the pure goodness that we all search for…and many have found. Sigh. Ain’t love grand? I love it.
Love
it. Ow!

So, my romance-loving people, three Strong siblings down and two more to go. Next up is Kaleb, and you will never guess who is going to wrangle this playboy cowboy. It takes one playa to know another…and to slow down another. The ultimate cougar on the prowl, Deena Rockwell, and the playboy rancher, Kaleb Strong, are going to discover that they are just what the other has been searching for. That’s right, a sizzling May/December romance. Y’all ready?

Best,
N.

If you enjoyed
Give Me Fever
, don’t miss

Lessons from a Younger Lover
by Zuri Day

Available now wherever books are sold

There were two things Gwen Smith never thought she’d do. She never thought she’d move back to her rinky-dink hometown of Sienna, California, and she never thought she’d come back as a forty-year-old divorcée. Yet here she sat in the middle seat of a crowded plane, at the age where some said life began, trying to figure out how the boring and predictable one she’d known sixty short days ago had changed so quickly.

The first hitch in the giddyup wasn’t a total surprise. Her mother’s dementia had become increasingly worse following the death of Gwen’s father, Harold, two years ago. Her parents had been married forty-four years. It was a tough adjustment. At the funeral, Gwen told her husband that she knew the time would come when her mother’s welfare would become her responsibility. That she thought Joe would be by her side at this crucial time, and wasn’t, was the fact she hadn’t seen coming.

But it was true nonetheless. Joe had announced his desire to divorce and packed his bags the same evening. Two months later she was still reeling from that okeydoke. But she couldn’t think about that now. Gwen had to focus on one crisis at a time, and at the moment, her mother was the priority.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned on the seat-belt sign, indicating our final descent into Los Angeles. Please make sure your seat belts are securely fastened and your seats and tray tables are in their upright and locked…”

Gwen stretched as well as she could between two stout men and tried to remove the crook from her neck. Still, she was grateful she’d fallen asleep. Shut-eye had been all too elusive these past few weeks, when ongoing worries and raging thoughts had kept true rest at bay. Fragments of a dream flitted across her wakened mind as they landed and she reached into the overhead bin for her carry-on luggage. Gwen didn’t know if she wanted to remember it or not. Lately, her dreams had been replaced by nightmares that happened when her eyes were wide open.

“Gwen! Over here, girl! Gwen!”

Gwen smiled as a familiar voice pierced the crowd roaming the LAX baggage claim area. She turned and waved so that the short, buxom woman, wearing fuchsia cutoffs and a yellow halter top straining for control would know that she, God, and everyone within a five-mile radius had heard her.

“Gwendolyn!” Chantay exclaimed, enunciating each syllable for full effect as she reached up and hugged her childhood friend. “Girl, let me look at you!”

“You just saw me last year, Tay.”

“That visit went by in a fog. You know the deal.”

Gwen did, and wished she didn’t. Her last time home was not a fond memory.

Chantay stepped back, put her hands on her hips, and began shaking her head so hard her waist-length braids sprayed the waiting passengers surrounding them. “What are we going to do with your rail-thin behind? You couldn’t find enough deep-dish pizzas to eat in Chicago? No barbecue or chicken and waffle joints to put some meat on your bones?”

Gwen took the jab good-naturedly. Her five-foot-seven, size-six body had caused her heftier friend chagrin for years. No matter that Gwen had never mastered how to show off her physique, put on makeup, or fix her hair. The fact that she could eat everything, including the kitchen sink, and still not gain a pound was a stick in Chantay’s craw.

Chantay enveloped her friend in a big bear hug. “You look good, girl. A day late and a dollar short on style with that curlicue hair straight out of
A Different World
, but overall…you look good!”

Gwen’s laugh was genuine for the first time in weeks. “You don’t look half bad yourself. And opinionated as always, I see.”

“Honey, if you want a feel-good moment, watch
Oprah
. I’m going to tell you the truth even if it’s ugly. And speaking of the ‘u’ word, those
Leave It to Beaver
pedal pushers—”

“Forget you, Tay! C’mon, that’s my luggage coming around.”

A half hour later, Gwen settled back in Chantay’s Ford Explorer as they merged into highway traffic for the two-hour drive to Sienna. The air conditioner was a welcome change to the ninety-degree July heat.

“I still can’t believe you’re here.”

“Me either.”

“You know you’ve got to give me the full scoop. First, I never thought you’d ever get married, and if you did, you’d never,
ever
get divorced!”

“Obviously life wasn’t following your script,” Gwen muttered sarcastically.

“Oh, don’t get your panties in a bunch, sistah, you know what I’m saying, and I’m not the only one. Who did everyone vote the least likely to, uh, get married?”

“I believe the exact description in the high school yearbook read ‘would die an old maid.’”

“Well, I was trying to save you the embarrassment of quoting it verbatim, but…who was it?”

They both knew the answer was Gwen. But rather than help make the point, Gwen answered the question with one of her own. “Who did they say would probably have ten kids?”

“Hmph. That’s because those nuckas didn’t know that fornicate does not equal procreate. After being stuck with raising one
accident
and another
oops
by myself, I had my tubes tied. I told the doctor who did the procedure that if a ‘baby, I pulled out’ number three showed up in my pee sample, his would be the name on the father line. So believe me, if there’s a sperm bad enough to get past the Boy Scout knot he tied, then that’s a baby who deserves to be born.”

Gwen looked out the window, thought about Chantay’s two daughters, and watched the world whirl by while Chantay pushed past seventy and flew down the surprisingly light 405 freeway. While Chantay had often said she didn’t want kids, Gwen had always looked forward to motherhood. She was still looking, but couldn’t see any bassinet or baby bed because a divorce petition was blocking the view.

Chantay scanned for various stations on the radio before turning it off altogether. “Why are you making me drag the details out of you?” she whined, exasperation evident in her voice. “What happened between you and Joe?”

The name of Gwen’s soon-to-be former husband elicited a frown. “You mean
Joey
?”

“Who the hell is that?”

“That’s what he calls himself now.”

“I call him ‘bastard,’ but I digress. What happened?”

Gwen sighed, sat up, and spoke truth straight out. “He met somebody else.”

“You have got to be kidding. Corny-ass Joe Smith, the computer nerd who could barely pull the garter off at y’all’s wedding?”

“That would be him.”

“What fool did he find to listen to his tired lines?”

“You mean besides me?”

“Girl, I didn’t mean that personally. Joe has some good points. He seems to know his way around a computer better than anybody.”

“That’s one.”

“We’ve got ninety minutes of driving left. I’ll think of something else.”

Gwen laughed, appreciative of the levity Chantay brought to a sad situation.

“So…who is she?”

“Her name is Mitzi, she’s twenty-two and works in his office. They both like motorcycles, Miller Lite, and poker. He tattooed her name on his arm and moved into her studio apartment last month. But I don’t want to talk about him right now.”

“Whoa, chick! You’re sure going to have to talk about him later…
and
her. That was way too much information to leave me hanging. But I can wait a minute, and in the meantime change the subject to somebody you can talk about—Adam ‘oh, oh, oh, oh’ Johnson!”

“Chantay, you are too silly! I haven’t thought about that line since we left high school.” Gwen, Chantay, and a couple other misfits used to substitute his first name in Ready for the World’s hit, “Oh Sheila.” Chantay would hum it as he passed in the halls and the other girls would break into hysterical laughter, making them all look like fools.

“That is the single welcome surprise I’ve had these past few weeks—that Adam is the principal at Sienna. Can you believe it?” Gwen said.

“No, because I never thought a brothah with that much weight in his lower head would have any brains in his upper one.”

“Well, there’s that, but even more, the fact that he’s back living in our hometown. After being such a standout at Texas A and M and going on to play for the Cowboys? I guess a lot happened to him since he was sidelined with an injury and forced to retire early.”

“I can’t believe his wife would agree to move back to such a Podunk town. She looks too hoity-toity for Smallville, but I only saw her one time on TV,” Chantay said.

“They’re divorced.”

“What? Girl, stop!”

“Yep, he told me that when we talked. He was nice actually, not the cocky, arrogant Adam I remember. He wouldn’t admit it, but I know he’s the reason why my getting this post is, to use his words, ‘in the bag.’”

“Don’t give him too much credit, Gwen. You’re a first-rate teacher, and it’s not like our town has to beat off qualified educators with sticks.”

“Maybe, but the way everything happened…I’m just happy to know I have a job secured, or at least I will after my interview next week. Mama has some money saved up, but that’s all going into her assisted living expenses. I still need to support myself, and pay half the mortgage on the condo until it’s sold.”

“How’s Miss Lorraine doing?”

Gwen shrugged. “Mama’s about the same, I guess.”

“Isn’t she a bit young for what the doctors say is happening to her?”

“From what I’ve learned, not really. The disease usually comes with aging, but can actually occur at any time, from a variety of causes. It’s usually given a different name when it occurs in someone, say, under fifty-five. But whatever the title, the results are the same—a long-term decline in cognitive function.”

“Just be glad she’s still here,” Chantay replied. “You can always hug her, whether she knows you or not.”

“Oh, she recognizes everybody, and remembers more than she lets on, I’m thinking. But I hear what you’re saying, Chantay, and I’m grateful.”

They were silent a moment before Chantay changed the subject. “Joe’s a lowlife. He could have stayed in the condo and split the rent with the fool he’s sleeping with until somebody bought it. He’s just an asshole.”

“That would have been too much like right. But it is what it is. Don’t get me re-pissed about it.”

Chantay started humming “Oh Sheila.” “Wouldn’t it be ironic if you moved back to town and snagged its star player after all these years? Now, we’ll have to give your dated butt a makeover, but by the time I’m done with you…you’ll move over all those other silicone-stuffed heifas in town.”

“I wonder who else from our class still lives there.”

“Girl, it don’t even matter. Keep your eye on the prize.” Chantay shot another sideways look at her friend. “Um-hmm. If it’s Adam Johnson you want—trust, I can help you get him.”

Gwen had thought about Adam, and what a nice balm he might be for the hurt Joe had caused her. Not that she’d get into anything serious right away. It would be months before the divorce came up on the backlogged Illinois court docket and was finalized. But since speaking to Adam, she’d fantasized a time or two about the heartthrob she remembered: tall, lanky, chocolate, strong, with bedroom eyes and a Jheri curl that brushed his shoulders. She never dreamed she’d get another chance with someone like Adam. But as she’d learned all too painfully in the past few months—life was full of surprises.