“Jamal was a little hard to pin down when it came to getting an estimate of how much this repair job is going to cost me,” she finally remarked, selecting her words with great care.
“He’ll give you a good price, Keezia.”
That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Well...actually...it probably was, given her limited financial resources. She certainly wasn’t looking to get overcharged or cheated by Fridge’s friend! But she wasn’t looking to be handed some kind of bogus bargain, either.
“It better not be too good,” she emphasized after a moment, staring directly up into her companion’s dark eyes. She needed him to understand that she was dead serious about this. “I heard what he said about owing you for delivering his son—”
“Simone did all the hard work,” Fridge interjected with a shrug. The bunch and release of his shoulder muscles was clearly visible beneath the fabric of his jacket. “I just caught Jamal Junior when he popped out.”
“Maybe so,” Keezia conceded, although she sincerely doubted it. While Jamal Senior hadn’t gone into detail, she’d gotten the impression that his son’s entrance into the world had been a very dicey matter She suspected the scenario had been one of those forget-trying-to-make-it-to-the-hospital-this-baby-ain’t-gonna-wait types of medical emergencies that every firefighter heard about during training and secretly prayed he or she would never have to face in the field. “The thing is, I saw those looks you and Jamal were giving each other. I don’t want him doing me any favors because of you.”
Fridge expelled a breath, his features tightening. “Because that’d make you feel like you owed me.”
She stiffened, uncertain how to interpret his tone. He’d sounded—what? Offended? No. Not exactly. He’d sounded closer to ..to... hurt.
The possibility that she’d bruised Ralph Randall’s feelings shook her. The man had been nothing but good to her from the day they’d met.
“Fridge—”
“It’s cool, baby,” he interrupted, his expression altering with breathtaking swiftness. He brushed the tip of one finger against her mouth. Her heart somersaulted at the feather-light caress. “Forget what I just said ”
“But—”
“It’s cool, baby,” he repeated firmly. “I heard what you were tryin’ to tell me. I’ll explain the way things have to be with Jamal. He’ll understand. ’Course, he’ll probably end up chargin’ you double for parts and labor just to make sure you don’t think he and I are conspirin’ to do you a friendly turn—but, hey. Sometimes that’s how life works out.”
Keezia gaped. Was he serious? Was he actually threatening to have his friend stick her with an outrageous bill if she didn’t let him cut her a sweetheart deal?
Then she saw caught a wicked glint of humor in Fridge’s eyes and realized he was getting a little bit of his own back. Profoundly relieved, she started to laugh. Her companion quickly joined in.
“Would you like to come up for a few minutes?” she found herself asking as their mutual merriment finally petered out. It wasn’t an invitation she’d intended to issue. But now that she had...
“To your apartment?”
She nodded, wondering at the wariness she thought she heard in his voice. “I could, uh, fix you a quick cup of coffee before you head home.”
Fridge regarded her silently for several seconds, his dark eyes searching deep into her topaz ones. “You don’t have to, Keezia,” he said at last.
It was the perfect opening for a retreat from her impulsive invitation. For reasons she was nowhere near being prepared to articulate, Keezia didn’t even contemplate the possibility of taking it.
“I know,” she said evenly, sustaining Fridge’s penetrating gaze. After a moment, she returned to him the words he’d given her earlier when she’d tried to brush aside his offer of an escort out to her car. “But I want to.”
There were lots of reasons Fridge accepted Keezia’s obviously unplanned invitation. Not the least of them was her coffee. He knew from experience that the brew she served was strong, black and sweet—just the way he liked it.
“Hard to believe this is the same place Jackson and I moved you into last month,” he commented, glancing around approvingly. They were sitting in the living room of her one-bedroom apartment in Virginia Highlands. He was ensconced on a comfortable, pillow-strewn sofa. She had kicked off her shoes and was curled up in an armchair angled off to his right. The earthenware mug that had held his coffee sat on a small, tile-topped table in front of him. Keezia’s cat, a marmalade-colored feline named Shabazz, was sprawled across his upper thighs, purring contentedly.
“It’s coming along,” Keezia agreed. Although her words were modest, they were laced with pride. “I got those—” she nodded toward a collection of shallow baskets hung on the cream-colored wall opposite her “—the other day at that gallery across from the High Museum. Handmade in Zimbabwe and marked down 50 percent.”
“Impressive,” Fridge said with a chuckle, scratching lightly beneath Shabazz’s chin. He’d known the cat almost as long as he’d known Keezia. She’d rescued Shabazz’s very pregnant mama from a tree during her first week as a probie, succeeding at the task after several veteran firefighters had failed. A month or so after this episode, the mama cat’s owners had turned up at her station house with a boxful of mewing kittens. After being assured by her captain that the prohibition against firefighters accepting gratuities did not apply to things like home-baked cookies or helpless, homeless little animals, Keezia had happily taken her pick from the litter.
“You must be wearing catnip for cologne, Fridge Randall,” she observed with a trace of asperity after a few moments. “Anybody else comes to visit, Shabazz hisses, spits and scratches. With you...”
“What can I say?” he asked wryly, stroking the cat from head to tail with a slow sweep of his fingers. He glanced down, struck by the contrast between the color of his skin and the color of the animal’s silken fur. He repeated the head-to-tail caress several times. Shabazz’s purring grew louder with each pass. “I have the magic touch with certain females.”
“Mmm.”
Something about this nonverbal response caused Fridge to look from the cat to her mistress. Keezia was staring at Shabazz. Or, rather, she was staring at Shabazz being petted. Her gaze was fixed on his hands, the dilation of her pupils reducing her irises to narrow rings of gold. Her lips were parted and trembling. There was a faint flush of excitement along the line of her angled cheekbones. She looked...dazed.
The memory of what he’d felt earlier in the evening when he’d watched Keezia toy with her right earring came back to Fridge. His body tightened in response to an erotic rush of sensation. Blood—heated and heavy—began to pool between his thighs.
Time to go, he told himself.
“Keezia,” he said, disciplining his voice into something he hoped approximated its normal tone.
She jerked, causing her earrings to swing wildly, then lifted her eyes to meet his. Although she did her best to hide it, he could tell that she was shocked by the potency of what she’d just experienced. He wondered, not for the first time, whether her ex-husband had been sexually incompetent as well as abusive.
“W-what?” she asked, the word catching in her throat.
“It’s getting late,” he told her, easing Shabazz off his lap The cat rebuked him with a disdainful twitch of her tail, then leapt to the floor and padded away.
“Late?” Keezia checked her watch. “Oh. I didn’t realize—”
“No problem,” Fridge assured her, standing up. “But it’s definitely