And here she was fresh out of class, sweaty, looking a mess with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and she had to run into him. He looked great, perfect, with strong muscular thighs and arms in full view. God bless the person who’d turned those particular pieces of cotton into a T-shirt and shorts. He had a basketball in his hands and he looked as if he was about to shoot some hoops.
She was just about to pray that he wouldn’t notice her when he looked right at her and walked—no, strutted—his fine self right over.
“Well, hello there, Ms. Miller. I didn’t know you belonged to this Y. Why haven’t I run into you here before?” Patrick offered that smile of his, that half-tilt, sparkly-eye thing he did apparently just to make her skin run hot.
“I’m not usually here during this time of day. My schedule got turned around.” And you can best believe it won’t happen again now that I know I could possibly run into temptation on legs. Strong, long, take-me-now legs…
“Listen, I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot the other day and I—”
Another voice interjected, “Aisha, I’m so glad I didn’t miss you. This schedule change has my day all screwed up. You said you would help me figure out these forms the next time the boys had karate. And I left them home and had to go back for them. Can you take a look at them now?”
Aisha turned and saw Mrs. Oliver walking over, waving a bunch of papers, and for a minute her brain had a disconnect. She shook her head to clear it and remembered that the widowed grandmother, who was raising her drug-addicted youngest daughter’s children, had asked her for some help last week filling out the oldest child’s financial aid forms.
When Mrs. Oliver reached them, her eyes sort of squinted and her lips curved. “Oh, I can see you’re busy. I can try and—”
“No, Mrs. Oliver, I’m not busy at all. We have a half hour before the boys are done with karate. Let’s go over here and I’ll try to help you as best I can. It’s been a little while since I last had to fill out financial aid forms. They can be frustrating, but we’ll get them done.” Aisha turned to Patrick. “It was nice running into you again, Captain Hightower. Enjoy your game of basketball.”
She then took off with her new savior, Mrs. Oliver, and found a quiet spot to help her with the forms.
Sure, she would now wonder what would have happened if Mrs. Oliver hadn’t shown up. And seeing him in those shorts wouldn’t do a thing to chip away his muscular image from her mind. But at this point running was the safest thing for her to do.
Patrick stared after Aisha and he couldn’t help the smile that took over his mouth. It still felt foreign and he swore he’d never get used to grinning this much. But ever since he’d met her the other day, he’d found himself smiling more, especially when he thought of her. And he’d thought about her often during the past two days.
Even though it seemed as if she couldn’t wait to get away from him, he sensed a spark there. And even though she was sweat-soaked from her workout, with her hair pulled back, she looked amazing. He glanced over to where she sat helping the older woman with the financial aid forms and he couldn’t help but remember how she had calmly, patiently and lovingly consoled the little girl the other day. She clearly had a gift for helping others. He liked that. Her kind and generous spirit was refreshing and intriguing, and seeing her again worked only to make him all the more determined to get to know her better.
The rest of Patrick’s rotation went by in a blur. He was pretty sure he knew what was happening to him. He had an inkling of a feeling as to why he couldn’t get a prim, proper and prissy kindergarten teacher out of his head. But there was no way to know for sure. He had never felt these oddly fluttery…
What kind of man feels fluttery, anyway?
Just picturing her face made him want to burst out into a wide grin. He was laughing at the corniest jokes and in a damn good mood to boot.
He was hardly ever in a good mood. He typically avoided good moods like the plague. Good moods left people wide-open with their guard down, no defenses. Gruff suited him better. Gruff should have been his middle name. But something was going on with him that was making him, dare he even think it…happy. And fluttery.
Picking up his cell phone, he made three calls to the three men who would best be able to fill him in on the these weird feelings. His younger, married and in love brothers had all made the plunge into matrimony within the past three years.
Once he had two of the three of them at his house, he was beginning to think it wasn’t a good idea after all. His brothers, Lawrence and Joel, both seemed as if they would rather have been anywhere but there. All the Hightower men took after their father in looks, and his father, James Hightower, was almost an exact body double for Richard Roundtree, the original Shaft. They were all tall, in shape and handsome, with mahogany complexions and killer smiles.
Patrick’s younger brother, the second oldest after him, Lawrence, lounged in Patrick’s favorite black leather recliner with his typical nonchalant stare. Lawrence was a narcotics detective with the Paterson Police Department and very little seemed to faze him.
Patrick had only seen Lawrence’s cool, calm demeanor crack once. That was when Lawrence had met the woman who was now his wife. Lawrence had darn near turned himself into the woman’s personal shadow and walked around like he couldn’t figure out right from left for at least three months. And when he finally realized that it was love that had taken him out, he almost blew that.
Patrick frowned. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea talking about any of this with his brothers after all. They probably wouldn’t have useful advice, since they had each struggled in their situations. But they all had their women now and they were all happy….
“Are you going to sit there all night twisting up your face, grunting and mumbling to yourself, or are you going to fill us in on why we had to pull ourselves away from our very beautiful wives? I knew you’d turn into a grumpy old man one day, big bro, but the grumbling and mumbling is a bit much even for you.” Joel, the family prankster, always had a joke or wisecrack ready to go.
There was always one jokester in every family. And, unfortunately for the Hightowers, their one had gone and found the other pea to his pod. Between Joel and his spitfire wife, Samantha, no one was safe. If one didn’t have a joke or a wisecrack, the other one was more than willing to comply.
Joel sat on the black leather sofa, constantly checking his watch, with a wiseguy smirk on his face. He had finally gotten over his bad feelings about his career-ending injury and was content working at Hightower Security and no longer being a firefighter.
“I’m waiting for your baby brother to get here. I need all of you clowns here so I can do this once and only once.” Patrick wondered what was keeping the youngest Hightower.
Even though Patrick had been the first to get married out of the bunch and the first and only one to get divorced, Jason Hightower had been the first to fall in love. He lost his heart to his wife, Penny, when he was barely ten years old. The childhood friends and teenage lovers had broken apart for fifteen years, but they were back together now, married and the parents of the cutest two-year-old girl and the most handsome seven-month-old little boy Patrick had ever seen, with the exception of Joel and Samantha’s little ten-month old son.
Patrick was very biased when it came to his niece and nephews. He was becoming the world’s largest Mr. Softie and those three blessings were the main reasons why. Being an uncle brought him a happiness he couldn’t describe. It also brought a deep longing for a family of his own.
“You know Jason can never pull himself away from his family whenever he has time off. Little Cee Cee has him wrapped around her pudgy two-year-old finger. And he dotes on Jason Jr. so much, we’re gonna have to take the little boy out every now and then when he gets older to toughen him up. Jason is almost as bad with his kids as Joel and Samantha are with Joel Jr.” Lawrence shook his head in mock disgust.
“Like you’re