The Heat Between Us. Cheris Hodges

for us to get together?”

      He could hear the keys on her computer moving at a rapid pace. “I have an opening at nine forty-five.”

      “That’s about the time I have breakfast. Want to see if the Sunshine Café has better eggs than West Egg?”

      “No, but I’ll meet you at West Egg because those potatoes are just amazing.”

      “Good. See you later,” he said.

      “And what are we doing tonight?”

      “You’ll see when you get there. ’Bye, MJ.”

      * * *

      Looking at her phone, Michael couldn’t help but smile when she and Jamal hung up. He always made her smile. But that doubtful voice in her head kept telling her that they would never be serious. He was a player. And what made her think that she could be the woman who would change his mind about his lifestyle? The last thing she wanted was to be another one of those women who saw him out on the town and had an emotional breakdown.

      That’s not my style, she thought as she shut her computer down and prepared to leave the office. It wasn’t easy to keep saying and pretending that she didn’t want more from him. She just couldn’t say it to him. Fear froze her tongue every time she tried. As she walked out of the office toward her car, she decided to head to the gym to burn off some nervous energy.

      Would tonight be the night that she and Jamal took the next step in their relationship?

      What was this big surprise? She knew that he wasn’t going to propose. That thought made her laugh. It wasn’t as if they’d known each other long enough for her to start fantasizing about being Mrs. Carver. She put the blame squarely on Mimi’s shoulders for making marriage look so good.

      As she pulled into the parking lot of the gym, Michael’s cell phone rang. She wasn’t happy at all when she saw Nic’s name flash across the screen. She started to ignore the call, but she knew he wouldn’t stop calling because obviously he needed something.

      “Yes, Nic.”

      “Don’t sound so excited. I just wanted to see if you had time to meet with me tomorrow. I have some great ideas that I want us to look at for the jazz festival.”

      “You do realize that it is way after office hours, right?”

      “Since when did we start standing on ceremony?” Nic’s laughter actually made her blood boil.

      “Nic, you’re simply a client. We aren’t in a space where you can call me in the middle of the night because you have an idea. You made it clear that we’re all about business. So, respect me enough not to invade my personal time because you have a freaking idea.”

      “I’m sorry—am I interrupting you and Mimi talking about whatever it is you two cackle about when you get together?”

      “No, you’re interrupting me and a very handsome man making a beeline between my thighs. Good night.” She ended the call and tossed the phone in the glove compartment. Michael was ready to punch something really hard now.

      * * *

      It was times like this when Jamal was glad he lived out in the burbs. Tonight he’d have a clear view of the sky and he had a fire pit that he didn’t have to worry about getting zoning permission to light. He took his telescope to the edge of the woods that abutted his property and gave him the clearest view of the sky. Not many people knew that Jamal was an astronomy nerd. Since he was a kid, he’d enjoyed looking to the stars for answers. He would’ve been an astronaut if the Challenger incident hadn’t scarred him. But still, he enjoyed watching the universe. And though he wouldn’t tell his boys, he was a man who wished on stars sometimes. Especially when he was in Iraq. He’d prayed and wished for all of his comrades to make it through the night. He’d prayed and wished that the people he shot in the heat of battle were terrorists and not human shields.

      The stars calmed him, made him feel as if he’d have his normal life back. After two years in the Middle East and an injury that left him unfit for combat, Jamal had lost partial sight in his right eye. And though he had surgery to correct the injury and remove the shrapnel from his eye, he hadn’t been able to pass the physical requirements of the Marines to rejoin the corps. For about a year, he’d been a recruiter in Alabama. But Jamal missed action. Missed helping people and saving lives.

      Deciding not to reenlist, Jamal had moved back to Atlanta and opened First Line of Defense. His grandmother had not been pleased. The matriarch of the Carver family wanted her only grandson, at the time, out of harm’s way. She needed him to settle down and carry on the family name. For years, he’d ignored her constant nagging about finding the one. Jamal wasn’t interested in a family. His father was MIA and that had had a huge impact on his life. He’d watched his mother cry over this man who’d broken his promises. One thing that Jamal could say about the women he dated was that he never made promises to them. He tried not to play with their emotions and make them believe that he was going to provide them a future.

      In all these years he’d taken three women to his family’s annual low-country boil in Savannah, but he now knew it had been a mistake to take any of them there. Introducing a woman to his family was unfair to her if he wasn’t serious about the relationship, so Jamal had decided that the next woman he took to Savannah would be the one he planned a future with. And for a long time, he’d felt he wouldn’t be bringing anyone down there for a while.

      But lately, Jamal had caught himself wondering what it would be like to take MJ to Savannah. Would she even want to go with him this year? He figured that she’d say no. But he liked the idea of Gran and the family meeting her. He wouldn’t even step in if they started asking uncomfortable questions like Are you guys serious?

      That was a question he wanted an answer to. Could they be serious? What was holding her back from being his? Glancing at his watch, Jamal saw that he needed to get the shrimp on the grill and grab the graham crackers for the s’mores. Tonight was going to be simple and fun. And he hoped that it would lead to MJ understanding that he wanted her and no one else. She was a woman who made him feel like love did exist, without cameras and tabloid headlines. Too many women in Atlanta wanted to live like reality-TV stars. He wasn’t about that life and he was glad that MJ felt the same way.

      Even though she might not believe he was ready to be a one-woman man. But Jamal was so ready for MJ to be the only woman in his life.