Chapter Twelve
Chapter
Twelve
Wine Cellar
I sat in my car, staring at Darius’s house, thinking
what a nice house it was.
It was a mid-century square with a long overhang that went
out so far, it shielded the steps up to a front door that was set off to the
side.
That had to be handy during a snowstorm.
The front door was painted a bright red, but it was mostly
windows and had two panels of glass on either side. All of this was set into a
white frame, but the rest of the house was two-toned brick, red on the bottom,
some sandy colored brick at the top, with a thick red brick line close to the
roof.
It had an old bungalow to one side of it and a classic
Denver square to the other.
There was something very him about it. The fact it was
unusual, made a statement, but managed to do this in an understated way.
And there was something very not him about it. The fact it
was established and had a big tree out front that was probably older than the
house, a house which had undoubtedly been built in the late 50s or early 60s.
I’d never allowed myself to think how, or where, Darius
lived without us.
And this realization was so uncomfortable, it was painful.
I wondered, in all that I wanted from him, if I ever really
thought about him at all.
So yes.
This meant, even though I knew Liam was hanging with Tony
and Kenneth at T&T’s house playing video games while Toni and Lena kept an
eye and made sure Liam didn’t get in his brand-new Charger and head home (no,
his father didn’t mess around, I got a text with a picture of his new wheels on
day one back at his dad’s).
I was wearing a new dress, which was not conducive to our
current fall weather, seeing as it was bright pinks and oranges with mustard
yellow and greens all in a flower and leaf motif, an orange leopard head with
yellow spots here and there. It had a smocked waistband that went from below my
breasts to upper hips, long, puff sleeves, and a barely-there frill of a skirt
that showed off nearly all of my legs.
I wore this with green strappy high-heeled sandals that Lena
let me borrow and some big, real gold hoop earrings that Toni loaned me.
It was an outfit to wear at a resort in the Caribbean, not
during the mission I was currently on.
What was I thinking?
I couldn’t go home and change now, as much as I wanted to
use that as an excuse to get my behind out of there.
I had to do this.
I again let my eyes sweep Darius’s cool house.
There was a light shining out of the long bank of the
windows just off the front door.
So he was probably home.
I should check, though, before I knocked on the door.
Right?
The issue with checking was that it looked like a
three-story house, except the first floor was kind of built into the earth, the
second was a little elevated, and the third was super high.
This was smart, if you didn’t want people walking by and
looking in the windows.
My heels were high too, but it wasn’t like the windows the
light was shining out of were normal height and I could just walk up to them
and peek in, even in my heels.
But…the house had surprised me.
What if the inside was immaculate? Say, designed by an
expensive interior designer?
This visit was important. I had to stay on target. I didn’t
need to be blindsided by Darius’s fabulous décor.
“Right, yes, just go peek in, make sure he’s there and get
the lay of the land. You aren’t chickenshit and delaying,” I told myself. “This
is reconnaissance.”
On my pep talk, I got out of my car, again lamented my
choice of dress when the blast of cold hit me, and as casual as I could, I
strolled up his lawn, in the dark, in a cute, bright, flirty, sexy dress and
high heels and ducked to the side in hopes there were windows there (there
were).
And then I realized I was right. The windows were high off
the ground. I had to reach up with my hands, curl my fingers on the ledge and
try to pull myself up to see inside.
This, I did.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I squawked, dropped, turned my ankle and would have gone
down if Darius hadn’t shot forward and caught me.
I got my feet under me, pushed away from him, brushed my
skirt in a nervous gesture since there was nothing to brush off, looked up at
him and said, as nonchalant as I could, “Hey.”
“There’s a reason cat burglars wear black, woman,” Darius
drawled.
God, how embarrassing was this?
“And they don’t sit in their car psyching themselves up for
twenty minutes right in front of the joint they’re gonna knock over before they
go do a job,” he went on.
Okay, we needed to move away from this. It was mortifying.
“Um…are you busy? Can we talk?” I asked.
He took a step back and did a top to toe.
As I mentioned, it was dark.
But that light was shining out of his window, and I could
see all of him (and all of it looked good, just a red thermal (skintight) and
jeans (that fit too well and had a fade mark that made me salivate a little),
but it worked on me), so he could probably see all of me.
“You wanna try the front door?” he asked. “Or you want me to
go in, open a window, come back out and heft you through it?”
All right, that was it.
“I was curious about your décor,” I snapped.
“Good way to find out is knock on the door and say, ‘Hey,
Darius, got a second to show me your crib?’”
“Hey, Darius,” I said sarcastically. “Got a second to show
me your crib?”
He threw an arm out for me to precede him.
The ground was cold, not frozen (even though my legs were
close to that), the trek to the side of the house had to be on my toes so my
heels didn’t sink in, as did the trek to the front door.
We finally made his walk, and I breathed a sigh of relief I
hadn’t made an even bigger fool of myself.
Once I hit the top of his steps, I stood aside so he could
open the door.
He did but held back so I could go first.
When I did, moving through the entryway and into the living
room, I really wished I had better sleuthing skills and upper body strength
because I was blindsided by his fabulous décor.
I saw a boxy, creamy-beige couch with creamy-beige toss
pillows with odd width black stripes running through them. Two square,
low-sitting, black leather armchairs, and the leather looked soft and inviting.
A massive fern on a stand. Interesting-based lamps. And a coffee table that
looked like it was a slab shorn off a huge, gorgeous piece of wood, the top
finished to a high shine.
There was a built-in low cabinet on the back wall on which
was an African mask on a stand in the corner and an expensive-looking stereo
with turntable in the middle. Over these was a triptych in blues and grays with
a shock of white and some inlaid finished wood.
Last, there were stacks of hardback books everywhere.
“Meet your inspection?” Darius asked.
“It’s very…stylish,” I murmured my understatement.
“Yeah, Liam thinks it’s the shit,” he murmured in return.
I was sure he did.
I tried to decorate in gender neutral, but I’d pretty much
failed (it was impossible, what could I say? I’d explained the dress I was
wearing—I was all girl), and Liam had no choice but to live with it.
“Wanna see where he sleeps?” Darius offered. “He’s got the
whole lower level.”
Every cell in my body which held the mother gene (which was
every cell in my body) screamed, Oh God, NOOOOOOOOO! at the idea of my
sixteen, nearly seventeen-year-old, who started casually dating last year, and
now had his own car, having a whole level to himself.
I sounded choked when I asked, “Does it have its own door to
the outside?”
“Yeah. It was once reno’ed to be
an apartment. But he comes in the back, from the garage, like me, into the main
house, and goes down the stairs.”
I cleared my throat since it was clogged with all the words
I needed to say about our son with his own ingress and egress on a level of a
house his father didn’t occupy.
“You need some water to hydrate since you’re burnin’ up so much fluid tryin’
not to tell me I gotta keep a closer eye on our boy who’s a teenager and
probably pretty much lives for getting in pretty girls’ panties?” he asked.
I retched.
Darius burst out laughing.
I froze, staring at him.
I didn’t think I’d seen him laugh like that in seventeen
(nearly eighteen) years.
When his humor died (though, not entirely, his eyes were
still sparkling with it), he said, “One good thing about bein’
in the business I used to be in, Malia, not much gets by me. You don’t survive
long in that world with people doin’ shit you don’t
want them to do around you. Kinda like how I knew you were sitting in your car,
psyching yourself up to come to my door and ask me to have a look at where your
son spends every other week.”
I was surprised.
“I…that’s not why I’m here,” I told him.
His head cocked slightly to the side. “Then why are you
here?”
“I…” I brushed at my skirt again and lost track of my
thoughts.
“Baby, you can swipe at it all you want, it’s not gonna grow
longer,” Darius said in a sweet, sexy, teasing tone.
A sweet, teasing tone (the sexy was new, he was young back
then, he hadn’t developed that part yet) was so very Darius, every
cell in my body that loved him (and that was all of them too) heated up.
Okay, I was there to talk, not jump him.
Talk, not engage in wild sex on his incredibly attractive
Berber carpet.
“Malia?” he called.
Shit.
I tackled him.
His arms went around me as he flew back and landed in one of
the low, black leather chairs, me on top of him.
I straddled him, knees in the seat and grabbed his head.
“Sweetheart—” he tried.
“We’re gonna talk, just after you give me the business,” I
said.
He grinned.
It was cute.
I still kissed him.
He took over the kiss as, miraculously, he got us both out
of that chair. He walked with me wrapped around him, his arm around me, one
hand at my behind, all the while kissing me.
Then I was going down, Darius on top, in a bed.
God, I’d missed his weight on me.
I’d just missed him.