Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 55769 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55769 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
“Yes.”
She threw her head back and cried, “Yippee-kay-yay!”
He smiled at her.
But when she looked back down at him, he kissed her.
Then he fell on her in the bed.
And sometime later, he helped her clean chocolate ganache out of her hair.
Track 10
Rock Chick Reborn
His Future
* * *
Moses
* * *
“Chill, baby,” he murmured.
“Chill is not an option, my man,” his woman replied.
At this comment, he heard nothing from the back.
This was both surprising and unsurprising.
At least with Julien, who had something to say or grunt at or at the very least verbally smirk about, with everything.
Moses was noticing, though, that since graduation a few weeks ago, and his official sign on with the Army, Julien was shirking off the last remnants of boyhood.
He was off to boot camp in a month. Maybe it was the fact he had weightier things on his mind. Maybe, in preparation for what he was about to face, he was fully letting the teachings of the men at Nightingale Investigations sink in.
Maybe he was just growing up.
Roman, on the other hand, finished growing up around a decade ago.
“They know how I feel about you,” Moses reminded her. “And they’re my girls. How is this going to go bad?”
He was at the wheel of Shirleen’s Navigator (a rite of passage in their relationship, seeing as Roman nor Julien even blinked when she handed him, and not one of them, the keys).
He chanced a glance from the road to Shirleen and saw the look she was aiming at him.
He turned back to the road and chuckled.
“Nothing is funny, Moses,” she warned.
“Be nervous, sweetheart,” he invited. “You’ll meet them soon, so you’ll get over it soon.”
They were joining his girls for dinner, meaning she and her boys were meeting his daughters for the first time.
The full Jackson onslaught, rather than them meeting just Shirleen first, had been Alice’s idea.
“No reason to draw it out, Dad,” she’d said like he had an IQ of forty. “You come as a package with us, right? So does she with her boys. Let’s just get it all out of the way in one night. At Bastien’s.”
He couldn’t fault her logic.
Though he had the sense that part of it was about her angling to go to Bastien’s. It was her favorite restaurant.
Their turn with their mom was over that evening. Judith had her own car, so she was driving them to Bastien’s. After dinner, he’d go home with his girls, Shirleen would go home with her boys, and he’d add more time spent in his head trying to figure out how long he had to wait to ask her to move in so, one day, he could just go home with her.
He heard Shirleen make a freaked noise, and he knew it was because Bastien’s sign was in sight.
He decided to ignore that, and so did the boys.
But he felt his lips quirk.
He found a parking spot and they all got out.
But Moses halted in his intention to go to Shirleen and claim her.
This was because Roman had already done it, and Julien was standing sentry, eyes on Moses to share he needed to keep distant.
So they’d passed the rite of passage of Moses taking the wheel that night. And definitely in the last couple of months, the boys had given indication they were getting used to him and they liked him being with their mom.
But they were protective.
He loved that for her.
And they’d had her all to themselves for a while, and they were still adjusting to a new man in their midst.
He’d give them the time they needed.
Just as long as they didn’t take too much.
Bottom line, he’d always have to share her with them, but she had so much love to give, that wouldn’t be a problem.
Therefore, Moses hung removed while Roman, head bent to Shirleen and in her space, gave his mom a peptalk. She nodded. He spoke so low Moses couldn’t hear him. She nodded again. Roman spoke more. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.
There it was.
She then turned to Moses. “Right, let’s do this.”
Moses smiled at her and finally made his approach. He took her hand and together they led the way inside.
He knew his girls were already there because he’d seen Judith’s car outside.
And he was prepared for what was going to happen next because his girls were beautiful, and her boys were boys.
However, he wasn’t prepared for how it happened.
Shirleen had told him both boys didn’t discriminate, but for the most part, Roman liked white girls. Julien’s attraction tended to lean toward Black.
So he figured it would be Julien whose interest would be piqued.
But when they’d walked up to the table Judith and Alice were already occupying, he noted that Julien had a wary, aloof smile on his face and was standing protectively close to Shirleen.