Wait for Me (22 page)

"I'm still listening Mo Ru’n. What else did you find?" 

"Ah…well, ah, the local magazine lying around the pub, Fiona writes an article for them on suggestions to bring Ireland and Nigeria's economy to a stronger state by helping one another." Jonathan accepted the golden treat Kenya handed him over her shoulder. His woman could cook. "Fiona doesn't want us to date because you'll get credit for bringing the African American retail dollar to the estate and west Ireland. According to Sophie, the cover brought ethnic interest to the estate, booking's, tours, etc. Fiona wants the recognition as the Blakemore that helped Ireland's economy. She uses the excuse of the family name, but she's all about notoriety of being a Blakemore."

He stepped back and rested a hip to the counter needing to see her face. "I've been watching her. She's dating a Nigerian to obtain a contract from his father's company to use the Inn when they do business in Ireland." Jonathan opened the refrigerator took out the pint of milk and poured himself a glass. Offering it to Kenya, he shrugged and drank it after she refused the glass. He tore off a paper towel, wiped his mouth, and then continued, "Fiona has traveled to Nigeria and the States more and more lately.

"Who's watching the estate when she's here?"

"Exactly," he said. Leading Kenya away from the stove, he lifted her into his arms. Her legs wound around his waist before he said a word. He didn’t care if she fought him now, those breasts were killing him. He walked the small apartment holding her to him cupping her hips molding her to him. Kenya relaxed face buried in his neck. "The picture you paint, Kenya…when this explodes I want you as far away as possible."

"I'd prefer that too, but who knows when or where, Jonathan."

He strode across the few feet to the front door, scrubbed his shoes off kicking them toward the boot tray under the coat hooks.

"Come back to Ireland where I can keep you safe."

"I'm not ready to come back."

“Why cradle me like this if you're not ready, babe?" he teased, inhaling her scent he's missed these last weeks. 

She burrowed deeper into his neck, her breast tight and firm. "Your life sucks and there's nothing I can do about it or deny the way you make me feel, Blakemore." She sniffed along his skin; frightened kisses tickled the hairs along his nape. The warm tears continued down his skin. "My life is here and I wish yours was too." Kenya reached between them dragging up his sweater. He sucked in his breath when her thumb stroked over one nipple. His woman wanted him, could smell her arousal rising from her panties as he stepped around the small room. Pacing her home, warm from her baking, the scent of the sweet cookies drew a picture of her in his home one day with little children running around, and he knew he would do what it took to get her back. "I want the Jonathan I met here, not whoever you are in Ireland."

“You sure, baby? I'm the same person. Both men know you like when I kiss you here,” he taunted, brushing his mouth over her sweetly scented shoulder. Kenya became serious under his embrace pressing at his shoulders.

"Sophie said something to me and I wanted to hear it from you," Kenya said, leaning back. He only raised a brow. "My being black with my professional track record will attract the ethnic clientele. Is that your attraction to me?"

"It can't be overlooked." Why was that a problem?

She fisted his sweater. “Excuse me! Is that your attraction to me?”

“Wait, before you go Malcolm X on me, pretty lady. I’m saying, as far as business goes, you’re an asset to your race, an intelligent, professional, and up standing black woman, who does community work for charity. Other ethnic professionals will take a second look at not only the inn’s side of the castle but the financial firm as well.” He paused. “As far as my attraction to you, I’ve always been attracted to black women. You got a problem with that?”

“I’m gonna excuse the Malcolm X comment because you make a valid point. I just didn’t want my skin color to be…"

"That's it," his blistering tone held a warning he’d hit the max on his restraint. Cupping her behind, he stalked through the living room, down the hallway and pushed open her bedroom door. "Kenya, I came to the States to bring you back to Ireland with me. But I don’t see us working until you face the one person you refuse to fight, Morgan."

She stepped away from him toward the door her back hit the wall. "I didn’t say anything about Morgan."

"No…every doubt you have about why someone likes you stems from your sister’s view of you.”

Crossing the room, he pulled the drapes and turned on the lamp on the low table beside the bed.

"I love you, Kenya, and I'm not going back to Ireland without you." Caressing her ribs making her breath catch, he said, "You fight for everybody's happiness but your own, why?"

"I'm happy."

"Morgan says you can't be happy and you let her win."

"Don’t do this, Jonathan. You don’t know everything involved."

"I watched the pain in your face when you saw Morgan and watched you physically fight your sister and then it dawned on me why you keep me on the outside of your heart."

"I'm fine."

"Really," he said, grasping her shoulders pulling her close until the space between them disappeared. He flattened a hand down the slender curve of her back holding her to his chest. "You did not kill your mother." Kenya started to speak. "Shh! Just listen. You didn’t run your father away, babe," he added, lowering his face to her mouth. Seeing the twinkle of tears in Kenya's eyes, he kissed one cheek, tilted her face then the other side. "No matter how much crap Morgan’s shoveled at you all your life, convincing you that you don’t deserve to be happy, I say you deserve to be deliriously happy."

"Jonathan, don’t do this now."

"You have the same right as any other person to be happy, Kenya?" 

"What do you want me to say?" her voice quivered on each word as it left her mouth. "I can't just shut down the memories because she showed her tail in front of everybody confirming she's crazy. It takes time, Jonathan. Give me time." Jonathan glanced side to side before lowering his forehead to rest on hers. 

"I want you to promise me something."

"What?" she asked in a defeated tone. Tucking a knuckle beneath her chin, he lifted her now wet face.

"When you're ready to let Morgan go and be happy, you'll call me." He stepped away and moved toward the door. "I need to go visit my grandmother McGhee and run by the office." He opened the door stepped into the hallway of the small apartment. Each step crushed a portion of his heart as he fought not to turn around and hold his woman. Kenya was a fighter and it was time she fought back for herself. At the end of the hall, he called back. "When Kenya means more to you than Morgan, let me know." 

The silence ballooned choking the air separating them. Then her voice eased the pressure.

"I did not kill my mother!" Kenya shouted. Jonathan stopped walking. He held still and waited to hear more. "I did not kill my mother!” the ragged volume of her words filled the hallway.

"I don’t believe you," he said without turning around. "You just sound pissed. Tell me from your heart." He took slow steps backward until he felt Kenya's hand on his waist. "There is an amazing woman behind years of hurt. Stop hiding and come out, babe." He grasped her hands, sliding up under his sweater. The tremble behind her touch told him he’d gotten through the wall she hid her pain behind. He found a little girl hiding from the bully.

Kenya caressed his bare skin stopping over his heart, her warm breath penetrating his sweater when she spoke in slow gulping slugs, “I did not kill my mother.” She squeezed him tighter to her breast. “I did not…run my father away.” Kenya turned her head side to side over his back and gripped her fingers a little tighter, nails biting into his skin. Jonathan lifted his head to the ceiling jaw clenched feeling her inhale then blew it out on a long sigh. He had no idea her pain went so deep. Kenya relaxed her fingers and he almost missed her voice it was so low, “I deserve to happy just like everyone else."

He twisted around adjusting to her arms clutched to him like a life preserver and picked her up returning to the room. Closing the door, he set her back to the solid surface of the door, stretched his arms above her head, and pressed their foreheads together.

"Morgan's problem is hers. Michael's problem is his. Let them have it. You've done all you can." He touched her hair dragging the headband off until the brown tresses hung around her face. Tossing the hard plastic to the dresser, he leveled his eyes to hers. "I love you. What will make you happy?" kissing her lips he dropped a hand down enjoying the curves of her waist. "I'll give you anything, Kenya. Just tell me what it is that will make you smile?" 

She swiped away the tears smeared down her face, and said, "Give me your hand." Bunching the hem of her slip, Kenya lifted his hand held one finger and ran it down the center of her stomach. He bent and looked closer at the dark line tracing it down past the waistband of her panties. 

"Do you know what that is, Jonathan?"

"No," he said, stroking his thumb up and down the divide. What sort of surgery would leave that? "Does it hurt?"

"No. It's loosely referred to as a lifeline. I may not stand up for myself, as you keep reminding me, but how much would you still love me if I let anything happen to your child growing inside my body?”

“My child?”

“I admit a part of me I left because I didn’t want your lifestyle. Along with tracking down the money, it gave me time to ask myself some tough questions. Did I want a life without you, violence or not and I don’t, Jonathan, I want and love you. When I realized I was pregnant, my choice was made.”

“My child?”

“I had to make sure you and everyone else believe we weren’t a couple. You think I wanted to hurt you, keep you away from your child? Everything settled once I was out of the picture, honey. I know Brian set up Global Learning to monitor me, and keeping track of the money, I sent back so he could have something to blackmail me with. But he was never getting his hands on our child and that meant lying to you.”

"Mo Ru’n…a bairn."

"You gave me all I need to be happy. Didn’t know I'd feel so possessive of someone I've never met." She cupped his face with one hand. "Me and this little one love you, Jonathan. I've missed you more than I've cared to admit to myself these past weeks."

"Kenya," came out on a long breath and he eased in laid his face over the soft line on her skin, shielding his child. "Kenya, Kenya, Mo Ru’n…a child," he murmured over and over on her skin holding her to his face. "You stayed away to protect our child."

"I did."

“I must’ve done something good a long time ago, that I don’t remember to have you in my life, Kenya Claiborne.” His baby lay snug and warm beneath his ear under the shelter of her bare stomach. “It never made sense to me. You fought to get in that cave, to be at my side, then up and leave when I needed ye. You went through all this alone?"

She rubbed his face. “Next month, I’ll be almost three months. The first trimester is the most crucial and the doctor cautioned me away from high stress. Baby, I’m sorry. I never wanted to keep this…”

"But…you were on the pill?"

"I was on antibiotics too. They weaken the protection and your little swimmer got through."

"Don’t ever leave me again, Kenya. You're my world, all I have. The only person in my life that wants absolutely nothing from me, but has everything I've dreamed of as a man."

“When you doubted me in the barn…the pain…it hurt, Jonathan. I meant what I said, you can trust me. I never gave up on us, Blakemore, on you." 

“It’s time for me to take over and protect my immediate family.”

“What does that mean, Jonathan?”

“It means I call in a few favors and you become Mrs. Jonathan Blakemore tonight.”

She raised a hand to cover her heart as that picture filled her mind not seeing her father’s face as she got married. Not having her mother beside her telling her she loved her. “Tonight…married…no family or friends…”

Jonathan caressed her cheek running his thumb back and forth. “I’ll make it up to you with a proper wedding after this is all over, but right now we need to be married before we walk into that hospital. If anything happens to Brian and we’re not married, it won’t matter that we have a bairn on the way, Sophie still loses everything, and you become a target.”

“Okay,” she muttered, looking away from him.

“Mo Ru’n, this is a sacrifice, I know.”

She spoke saddened, “The biggest, Jonathan. Not the wedding, the absence of family and friends.”

“We’ll send for your family after everything settles and have a proper wedding. We need to keep this quiet. If Brian knows he’s already lost, every member of our combined families will become moving targets for his revenge.”

Kenya laughed inwardly. As a little girl she’d loved the movie Shaft and Hawk reruns, watched it with her father. Didn’t know she’d grow up to be Brown Sugar.

“Make love to me before I change my mind and kick you out for making sense, Blakemore.”

~~~~

He knelt before her on the floor. His mouth pressed to her panties covering her delicious scent. He couldn’t control his arousal at Kenya sudden intake of air. He licked her through the thin material. As if she could direct his movements Kenya fingers gripped his ears as if they were handles.

"More…" Kenya warned tilting her hips toward his mouth. Jonathan slipped a finger up into the leg of her panties found her wet hairs and swollen flesh. Gently pinching the delicate skin and felt her shudder under his hand.

"Is this safe, for me to do this with the babe?"

"Doctor warned against stress and waiting is stressing me out…please honey, I've missed you tasting me," she pleaded urging him to scoot in closer and take matters literally into his hands.

"Spread your legs…like that, yes." He laid gentle strokes with the back of one hand back and forth between her legs. Slick juices spread over the thin material of her panties, as her body gave up its moisture, warming his skin, teasing him to taste her through the satin barrier. Closer, slipping off the panties, he needed more. "I'm starving." Holding her hips, he lifted Kenya until her legs rested over his shoulders and her back pressed the bedroom door. "Ah…better," he said pleased with the view and felt Kenya slap a hand to the door.