No Other Lover Will Do. Cheris Hodges

a delivery man, she dashed to the door and opened it.

      Solomon expected Kandace to look good in red, he expected the dress to show off her shoulders and that phenomenal cleavage, but he didn’t expect to be breathless when he saw her.

      “What are you doing here?” she asked after a brief moment of silence.

      “Shoes,” he said. “I forgot to slip these in the box.” Solomon handed her a shoe box. “Are you going to invite me in?”

      “No,” she said as she accepted the box. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

      “Then why did you come to the door looking that damned good?” he asked as Kandace made an attempt to close the door. He wedged his boot-clad foot between the door and the jamb. “We could always have dinner inside.”

      “Move your foot before I change my mind about going out to dinner with you. You’re supposed to be nicer.”

      “What can I say? I’m a work in progress.”

      “Good-bye, Solomon,” Kandace said, then closed the door as he moved his foot.

      Kandace was the kind of woman that Solomon realized he needed to meet. She didn’t give him what he wanted right away and he had a feeling that she had many layers. The more he chased her, the more he wanted to get to know her. At some point, he wanted to have her between the sheets, but he’d be willing to wait, and Solomon Crawford never waited for anything—especially a woman.

      Then again, it had been a long time since he’d had a reason to expect something special from a woman. Kandace seemed to be something special. As he walked toward the elevator, his cell phone rang again. He didn’t have to look at the caller ID to know that it was Carmen. She’d been phoning all day and he couldn’t figure out why she kept calling him. It was unlike her to be so annoying. Solomon knew if he didn’t take her call now, she would interrupt his date with Kandace and he wasn’t about to have that.

      “Crawford,” he said, when he answered the phone.

      “Solomon, I’ve been trying to reach you all day,” Carmen said.

      “Is there a fire? What’s wrong?” he asked as he headed for the stairs so that he could finish this call with her.

      “When did you hire Danny? Are there some security issues that I’m not aware of?”

      “Carmen,” Solomon said, “is this why you’ve been calling me all day? I’m on vacation, all right? And when did you start questioning my decisions?”

      “Well, I—I…It’s just that I thought there was some sort of problem. I didn’t mean to question you,” she said. “Still, if there is a serious security issue, I should be made aware of it.”

      “Here’s the thing,” Solomon said. “We have to make sure everyone who works for us is on the up and up. We have to make sure everyone has the proper documentation and that we’re not hiring illegal workers. We discussed this three months ago, remember?”

      “Right. I’m sorry,” she said.

      “Do me a favor. Don’t call me unless it’s an emergency,” he said.

      “Of course. Sorry.”

      Solomon snapped his phone shut and headed to his room. He had a dinner to prepare for and nothing was going to stand in his way.