Sexy Ink!

by Jamie Collins

  She reached for the door handle, and just as she did so, a skinny black man in saggy pants and wearing a Clippers jersey, bounded off of the elevator and collided with her, knocking her arm and causing her to drop the tote bag. The contents, along with her keys, spilled out onto the sticky linoleum floor.

  “Oh, man! My bad, Miss. Sorry!” he said, helping her to retrieve her belongings, including the pepper spray that had fallen on the floor.

  “It’s fine,” she said, not making eye contact. She stuffed everything back into the tote bag and reached for the door handle. It was then that he noticed the distinctive tattoo—a small black panther on her left wrist.

  He watched as she slipped into the cool bright lights of the social services office suite.

  Then, he sauntered out into the daylight, scrolled through his contacts, and dialed his buddy AJ. What were the chances? He couldn’t believe his freaking luck.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Louis’s graduation was a momentous day marked with ardent celebration, starting with a breakfast fit for a boss, in which La Costa whipped up all his favorites, including pancakes with strawberries, bananas, and whipped cream. She had his best pants pressed and his blue shirt starched, hung them on his bedroom door and laid out his cap and gown regally on his bed. A new pair of shiny dress shoes, still in the box, were placed next to the suit coat that he would wear beneath the crimson robe.

  The ceremony was planned for two o’clock at the high school and was to be held on the football field in the blaring sun. La Costa was ready with her favorite wide-brimmed straw hat with the satin bow that she had called her “church hat,” and she had stashed plenty of mints, gum, and several bottles of water in her enormous purse. It was predicted to be hotter than six shades of hell, as Georgia was fond of saying, and La Costa was not going to take any chances.

  She and Louis met Henry at the school, near the gymnasium, where most of the students were gathering to slip into their caps and gowns and take group photos. Henry wore a suit and tie despite the blaring heat.

  “You look amazingly cool, Mr. Paige,” La Costa said as he walked toward them, smiling.

  He planted a kiss on her powdered cheek, and then shook Louis’s hand with a solid grip.

  “The big day is finally here, huh?”

  Louis grinned. “Did you bring the extra hiking gear?”

  “The jeep is packed with provisions. This time tomorrow, we will be sleeping under the stars.”

  “Awesome!” Louis said, adjusting his hat.

  The marching band struck up the school’s fight song, and the graduates started to make their way onto the field. “Let’s go, guys. It’s starting!”

  Following the ceremony, La Costa and Louis drove back home to take a few more photos before Louis ditched his dress clothes for his jeans and high-tops. Henry followed them back to the apartment. La Costa had planned to officially present Louis with a special gift—a Rolex with his initials engraved on the back. It was a bit extravagant, but it was her privilege to indulge him with a grownup timepiece that she’d hoped he would keep forever to remember the import of this milestone day. Although Louis was the youngest in his class, due to skipping the fifth grade the year that they moved from New York to LA, he was head and shoulders ahead of his peers in all the ways that counted. La Costa could not have been prouder.

  “I am going to change,” Louis said, as he headed to his room.

  “Don’t be long. I have something I want to give you before we leave for the restaurant,” La Costa said.

  Henry emerged from the kitchen with a small white cake with a sparkler in the middle, at the ready to light it when Louis returned. The gift box was set innocuously on the coffee table.

  “This could take a while,” La Costa said, smoothing out her skirt and lowering herself onto the sofa. “That boy takes forever to pick a decent button-down shirt.”

  Henry chuckled. “Is he all ready for tomorrow? We’re pulling out of here at five a.m.”

  “Who do you think packed that boy’s clothes? I did!” La Costa said, shaking her head. “I do hope that he is aware that there is no maid service in the woods.”

  Henry laughed.

  Just then, a knock at the door caused them both to exchange a glance. “Who would be stopping by at this time? The doorman hadn’t called up to announce anyone,” La Costa said.

  The two walked to the door.

  “I got it,” Henry said, stepping in front of La Costa.

  A middle-aged man in a plaid shirt spoke flat and quick when Henry swung the door open.

  “Ma’am, are you Mayella Jackson?”

  La Costa nodded, though the words caused an immediate pang, and her breath caught in her chest. Before she could speak, the man thrust an envelope at her. “You have been served.” Then he turned on his retro sneakers and headed down the hallway toward the stairwell.

  Henry swung around to find La Costa tearing into the envelope with mounting distress. She pulled the stack of official papers from the envelope and frantically read the words with shock and dread—it was a court summons from one Phyllis Jean St. James and—she wanted Louis back.

  Henry barely caught La Costa before she collapsed to the floor.

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  The moments following were a blur. La Costa had come to on the stretcher in the elevator on the way down to the street. Still, the paramedics insisted on checking her vitals and conducting other tests on the trip to the hospital. Henry and Louis followed, speeding down the streets behind the emergency vehicle with its sirens and flashing red lights.

  Thirty minutes later she was sitting up in a hospital bed in her clothes. Her blouse had been torn in the commotion, and her skirt was wrinkled. Henry was there, at her bedside, caressing her hand as the hospital staff shuffled around with their charts and chatter, adjusting the beeping machines that tracked her temperature and heart rate.

  “I’m okay, really,” La Costa said. “Where’s Louis?”

  “He’s out in the waiting area. He knows that you are okay. Is there anything that you need, sweetheart. Some more water, maybe?” Henry looked a fright. Like he had just weathered a storm, or plowed a field with his bare hands.

  La Costa shook her head. “What happened?”

  “The doctor will be by to fill us in on some tests they took—an EKG and some blood work, I think, from when you first arrived here. Do you remember fainting?”

  She nodded. Then, the flash of memory about the envelope suddenly caused her heart rate to spike and her nerves to reel. “Henry—the envelope!”

  “I put it in your office drawer,” he said, reading her mind. “Louis didn’t see it.”

  She closed her eyes and leaned her head back onto the stiff pillow. “Thank God,” she whispered.

  Henry stroked her forehead. “How are you feeling, babe?”

  “I am fine, really.”

  Just then the doctor, a woman of about thirty, with long, dark hair twisted in a snaky braid down her back, appeared from behind the plastic drape and greeted them cheerfully.

  “Hello, Ms. Reed! Pleased to meet you. I’m Dr. Keller. I see that you had a little incident this evening.”

  “I was at my son’s graduation this afternoon, and I’m afraid that I might have gotten a bit too much sun,” La Costa said.

  “Is this your husband, Ms. Reed?” she said, gesturing toward Henry.

  “My fiancé,” La Costa said, giving Henry’s hand a little squeeze. “You can speak freely in front of him.”

  “I see, well, it looks like your sugar levels were a bit low, but everything checks out concerning your heart rhythm and vitals.”

  “Thank God,” La Costa said. “Am I cleared to go?”

  “If you don’t mind, I would like to keep you a bit longer for one more test, seeing as how there was a little something of note with your blood work.”

  La Costa’s face puzzled. “Of note?”

  The doctor checked the chart once again, and then asked, “Ms
. Reed, your health records indicate that you are in menopause?”

  “Yes, I am. I haven’t had a period in over a year.”

  “I see,” she said. Then, jotting something onto the clipboard, she exhaled sharply and smiled. “Well, I’d like to do an ultrasound just to confirm. But it does appear, Ms. Reed, that you are pregnant.”

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  The ride home was quiet. La Costa and Henry had agreed not to mention the news about the pregnancy to Louis—not yet, at least. It had been a harrowing evening that followed a wonderful afternoon, and they didn’t need to add the news of the incredible new development of the past hour to the mix. What was happening? La Costa wondered, as Henry drove in silence and Louis struggled to make small talk from the back seat.

  “Who wants one with cheese?” he said, rifling through a grease-stained sack of burgers and fries from the drive-thru.

  “I’ll take one,” Henry said. “Pass it up here.”

  La Costa had no appetite. The smell of the onion rings was vile.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, Mom,” Louis said. “Are you going to miss me when Henry and I are out there in the wild?”

  “What, sweetheart? Oh, you know I will. I’m just going to have to find a way to keep myself busy, since I won’t have any dirty gym socks to pick up or cans of soda to clear off of the coffee table. Yeah, I think I’ll manage.” She chuckled to make light of it all, when, deep inside, she was reeling. A mixture of dread and euphoria collided in her mind, seemingly at the same time. How could the two emotions co-exist in one woman without killing her dead?

  It was a surreal feeling that reduced her to tears once she arrived home and stood naked in the shower, stripped bare and overwhelmed. Panther had come back—she had come back for Louis! Panther would tear apart every bit of good that she had done these past seventeen years. Years that belonged to them, not her! Why now?

  La Costa sobbed into her hands beneath the water jets until she was so exhausted, she had to call Henry to assist her into her pajamas and onto the bed.

  “It’s going to all be okay, babe. We will fight this thing that Panther has brought into our lives and beat it. She can’t touch you—or Louis. She won’t. I promise.”

  “How do you know that? Sweetheart, I was wrong to do all of this. To put myself out there to the world like I was bullet-proof. I swear, last I heard, Panther was locked away—I believed that she could never touch us. Not ever. But now—I did this!” She broke into another fit of sobs, letting the guilt and disbelief feed her anguished and tormented thoughts.

  “Stop it. Do you hear me? I promise you. She will not touch us,” Henry said, as if his very word could make it so.

  La Costa looked deeply into his piercing blue eyes. The eyes that made her always feel safe and secure and invincible. For the first time ever, what she saw there, besides great and unconditional love, was fear. She knew it. He knew it.

  “Just hold me,” she said, curling up like a frightened child. “Just hold me, Henry. What are we going to do?”

  “We’ve got this, babe,” he whispered.

  She buried her head into his chest, and then quietly said, “Henry, we are going to have a baby.”

  “I know,” he said, smiling, letting the emotion override the gravity of the fear and the unknown.

  La Costa’s face broke into a trembling smile. It was a fact, and it was an undeniable truth that God had blessed her yet again with the greatest of all blessings.

  “Oh, baby!” Henry said, caressing her tummy and laughing softly at first, and then with great glee.

  This sent her into a fit of giggles, tears, and then more laughter. “Lord have mercy! Henry, we are having a baby!”

  Chapter Sixty

  La Costa contacted the best family law attorney that money could buy. His name was Hugo Maldonado of the firm Guzman and Maldonado. The practice had a pricey Rodeo Drive address and a track record of winning custody cases. Most importantly, the team was well versed in handling high-profile cases for celebrity clients who needed to keep things clean and out of the media spotlight.

  “Gaining custody as a non-biological parent can be difficult,” Hugo told La Costa and Henry at their first meeting. “But it is definitely possible to prove abandonment of the child from infancy due to Ms. St. James’s indiscretions, and later, in light of her incarceration. Plus, seeing as how Louis will be eighteen in December, I don’t see there being any trouble in doing so.”

  “Except for the damage that Panther can do by showing up here. Now, out of the blue.” La Costa was inconsolable. “Louis mustn’t find out—not this way.”

  Henry clasped her trembling hand and leaned forward. “What can we expect?”

  “At present, it is just a petition for Determination of Child Custody. A judge will decide. We should easily be able to prove unfitness, or incapacity at the very least. The initial hearing is where it all starts. We have already requested relevant information from Ms. St. James’s attorney for discovery. It’s a bit of a waiting game at this point.”

  “What can we do?” La Costa said, clutching a shredded tissue in her palm.

  “Sit tight. Wait to hear from me. We’ll be contacting you to get some additional statements.”

  La Costa nodded. “Of course. Whatever you need.”

  “I will let you know the soonest we can get this before a judge. In the meantime, try to carry on with your life. I know it’s difficult.”

  Henry stood to shake Hugo’s hand. “Thank you.”

  La Costa and Henry headed back to the car. La Costa felt less at ease than before.

  “What is all of this? Discovery? Petition for Determination? Henry, I am not sure if I am going to be able to get through this.”

  “That’s why you have me,” he said cheerily. “How does a couple of weeks in Hawaii sound? Just you, me, and Louis. Let’s take a break from all of this and let Hugo do his job. You know, Louis has never surfed anywhere other than here. Let’s do a little island hopping and find him some bucket-list swells to check off his list. What do you say? Florian can take care of things while you’re gone.”

  La Costa considered the alternative. Sitting around and waiting at home, or at the beach house, would only drive her crazy. She needed a change of scenery, now more than ever. “I say, yes. It will make a great distraction. I’ll have Florian run interference with Tess. As long as there’s a Wi-Fi connection, I can work while you and Louis hit the waves.”

  “Perfect,” Henry said. “Just us, the sea turtles, and the sunshine. Aloha!”

  Five days later they were on a plane and landed at Kahului Airport, where the warm summer breezes hit their senses with a mix of fragrant floral and salt-scented air. The thirty-minute car ride to the Four Seasons resort felt like a dream as the lush green landscape and cloudless blue skies transported La Costa to a better frame of mind. She had her two favorite men by her side and the sweetest secret of all inside her. The gratitude that flowed within her felt uncontainable, like her hopes for their future.

  Later that night, after they had unpacked, Henry had planned for a private dinner for just the three of them. Room service arrived and set up the feast on the terrace outside of their suite, overlooking the ocean, which was perfection. The stunning view through the palms of the sapphire-blue ocean beneath the setting sun was magical. Even Louis managed to ditch his iPod to take in the sounds of the surf that entranced the mind and senses. He shared his thoughts freely with Henry and La Costa about the move ahead, college choices, and concerns about his studies.

  He barely touched his ahi tuna, talking away instead, at a mile a minute. “I’m sort of leaning toward NYU, but of course, there’s a great sports management program at Duke. I wonder what it would be like to live in a dorm? Maybe Reyce and I could room together.”

  “That’s a possibility, sweetheart,” La Costa said, smiling.

  He was enjoying the uninterrupted attention as he slurped the fruity mango mock-tail with the sweetest chunks of pineapple
floating at the bottom.

  “This is so cool. Thanks for suggesting this trip. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any better, you guys keep surprising me!”

  La Costa gave Henry a glance and winked. The plan was to enjoy a delicious sunset dinner and then take a walk on the beach to find the perfect place and moment, to tell him the news about the baby.

  His reaction was priceless. Louis’s smile burst from ear to ear, and he actually turned three cartwheels in the sand when he heard the news. “What! I’m going to be a brother?”

  “It sure looks like it,” La Costa said, as he flopped down into a heap of exhaustion and giggles right at the water’s edge. “In about six months—right around your birthday, too, it seems.”

  “So cool,” Louis said, gazing out at the horizon and wedging his feet deep into the wet sand.

  Henry and La Costa did the same. They all buried their feet in the macadam sludge created from the foamy waves. It was a moment, indeed. The three of them stuck to the earth and stuck with each other—soon to be four. It was a dream of dreams, and so much of a karmic interlude for La Costa.

  “Can I just ask,” Louis finally said, after a long soulful pause.

  “What, dear-heart?”

  “Can we name the baby something cool, like Rainbow or Zeus?”

  “Uh, I’m not sure about that, Champ,” Henry said. “Maybe we should leave the baby-naming to your mother, the writer.”

  “You’re probably right,” Louis said, and then added, “If it’s a girl and you ever write her into one of your stories, Mom, be sure to make her a bad-ass, smart woman, like you.”

  La Costa held on to the moment and resisted the urge to cry. If love were an ocean, she was sure her portion could fill the universe to the brim.