They all held hands and Shara said grace before Reeba opened the Crock-Pot lid to the gumbo and began filling everyone’s bowl once they were passed to her.
Both Mona’s body and her heart were happy and felt blessed to be in the company of her sisters and her aunts, but her mind was elsewhere. On someone else.
I wonder what he thought of my letter....
“‘Dear Anson. Thank you so much for being the shoulder—or is it the chest?—for me to lie on,’” Anson read aloud for the tenth time that day. “‘I’m heading back to Louisiana to visit my aunts. Hopefully they will guide me through this, because I can’t do it on my own. It’s funny how it’s barely been two weeks since you’ve been in my life and I will miss the hell out of you.’”
Ditto.
Waking up to find she was gone had been such a surprising letdown for him.
“Hey, boss man. You busy?”
Anson swiveled in his drafting chair to find Malik standing in the doorway of his office.
“I went by Modern Day Cupid, but it was closed, so I just came back here.”
Anson nodded. “Yeah, I should have called you about that. Mona’s out of town indefinitely,” he said, still holding the folded note in his hand.
“I hope everything’s okay,” Malik said, his face concerned.
Me too.
“Yeah, I’m sure it is,” he said, turning back around to look down at the letter.
“Let me get to work.”
Anson dropped the letter and turned again, careful of his foot. “Hey, Malik,” he called. The office manager stepped back into the doorway. “What do you think of all that matchmaking business?”
“As a business model or personally?” Malik asked, leaning back against the door.
“Both.”
“To respect her privacy—as I assume you understand—she really has a good thing going. Very profitable. And I have to admit I like the way she goes about doing the matches. Very detailed. Very thoughtful,” he said. “Thinking about signing up myself.”
Anson was stunned and it showed.
Malik laughed with a shrug before he saluted Anson and headed to his own office.
Anson reached for the note and used his index finger to unfold it.
“‘I hope you will understand and respect my wishes not to call. I need the distance and the time to clear my head. Not running from you—just trying to deal with my innate desire to run to you. Mona,’” he finished, tracing his thumb over the ink of her words and feeling connected to her.
Closing the letter, he tapped it against his chin as he stared out the window at a light rain falling down. It was perfect lie-in-bed weather. Whether cuddling or making love—he preferred the latter. And he could imagine how steam would rise from their bodies if he was to make love to Mona outside in the rain.
The image of her holding her breasts with her nipples poking through her fingers might have been just as hot as seeing her coming out of the pool naked. Maybe. Close. No. Nah. No way.
Buzzzzzz.
He picked up the remote for his intercom system and pointed it over his shoulder before he hit the button. “Yes, Greta,” he said, calling over to the machine on the corner of his desk.
“You asked me to remind you of your appointment with your accountant.”
Anson glanced at his gold watch. “Thanks, Greta,” he said, rising to his feet.
Anson was a suit and tie man, but in the wake of his broken foot he had to settle for a shirt and pants. He was okay with splitting the seam on a few pairs so that they would fit over his cast. He cranked his car with the automatic start button on the remote and picked up his briefcase before leaving the office. During the short drive, he fingered his phone, fighting the urge to call Mona. He really just wanted to hear her voice.
“Not running from you—just trying to deal with my innate desire to run to you.”
Parking his car in front of the renovated brick house, he made his way up the stairs and hobbled through the door, a smile spreading across his face to see the wife of his accountant. “Another receptionist bit the dust, Jade?” he asked as the chocolate beauty with brown hair rolled back her seat and stood up.
“You know it,” she said, her hand pressed to the swell of her belly.
He bent to kiss her cheek. “You’re pregnant! Congratulations.”
“Finally,” she said, her eyes beaming. “I told Kaeden that if we had to go through one more round of in vitro fertilization, we’d have to go get one of those beautiful African babies like all the white Hollywood celebrities.”
“How far along?” he asked.
“Just four months.”
Anson turned to see Kaeden Strong walk through the door of his private office. He came to stand behind his wife, pressing a kiss to her neck as he palmed her belly.
“I think it’s gonna be another big old strapping Strong boy to grow up into a big old strapping hardheaded man,” she said.
Anson pursed his lips and laughed as he thought of each of the Strong brothers, all broad shouldered, solid, and well over six feet too—at least. They were built for the farmwork they did. And even Kaeden, who he knew hated the outdoors, had the same build.
“Hardheaded?” Kaeden balked.
“I didn’t mean it,” Jade said, looking up at him with love as she leaned against him in the way a woman does when she knows her man has her back.
Anson watched them. There was no denying the love between the two. Their marriage was more than companionship and breeding offspring. It was all of those things under the umbrella of love.
He and Carina had never shared that type of intensity. . . and never would. Their bond had been forced. A charade that imploded.
“You ready to get these taxes done?” Kaeden asked.
Anson nodded. “Yeah. Let’s do it,” he said, giving Jade one last smile before following her husband into his office.
Kaeden took his seat in front of the bay window overlooking the front yard and street outside. “I really just need your receipts to go through,” he said.
“Got them all ready,” Anson said, handing him a folder.
“You or Greta?” Kaeden asked, slightly loosening the paisley tie he wore with a pale gray shirt.
“Well, I pay Greta . . . so same difference.”
“Right, right.”
Knock-knock.
Both men looked at the door. Jade’s head was peeking in.
“Yeah, baby,” Kaeden said.
“Before you guys get started I wanted to make sure Anson and Carina got their invite to Kaitlyn and Quint’s wedding,” she said.
Anson shifted uncomfortably. “I got it, but Carina and I are no longer engaged,” he said.
Kaeden looked up from the receipts he was flipping through. “Man, I didn’t know that.”
Jade looked pained. “Are you okay?” she asked.
He nodded. “It was for the best.”
Jade stepped into the room belly first. “Well, if you want my opinion—”
“Jade.” Kaeden’s voice was filled with censure.
Anson glanced from one to the other. “What?” he asked, looking at her.
He and Jade both ignored Kaeden, who was clearing his throat behind Anson.
“You two didn’t seem that happy,” Jade said, walking up to Anson with one hand on her hip. “Anytime I saw you together you looked as miserable as Kanye and Kim.”
“Jade . . .” Kaeden began.
“I never saw any passion between you two,” she said. “You know?”
Anson actually chuckled. “I need someone to bring out the lighter side of me. To take the proverbial stick out of my ass.”
Jade held up her hands. “Well, if you want to be honest . . .”
“Baby, the phone is ringing,” Kaeden said, obviously lying.
Anson laughed. “You’re the second person to tell me,” he said to Jade, thinking of Mona.
“Well, my mother-in-law always says ‘the truth don’t hurt and lies do
n’t work,’” Jade said.
“I agree.”
“So you’ll be at the wedding?” she asked, turning to head back to her office.
“And miss seeing Kaitlyn Strong tied down? Never. But don’t tell her I said that,” he added.
“Love can change people,” Jade said, then blew a kiss to Kaeden over her shoulder.
Real love can.
He surprised himself with that thought.
Sitting on the swing under the large oak tree, Mona could clearly remember the day her parents and her aunts had sat her and her sisters down to tell them about their gift. She had been pushing her mother and sisters in the swing when their father walked out to the yard to retrieve them.
Nothing about that talk could have prepared her for the quandary she was in. Nothing they said had prepared her for this possibility.
“Hey, there. You ready to talk?” Aunt Millie called from the porch.
Mona only knew them apart because one wore small diamond hoop earrings and the other wore studs.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, picking up her iPad case as she rose to her feet to cross the large yard.
She entered the house through the rear door leading right into the kitchen, the center of the old servants’ quarters. Walking through the empty kitchen, she followed the voices into the sitting room off the foyer. They all looked up when she entered the room. She laughed a little to see a bevy of snacks on the table, including homemade lemon bars.
Kicking off her shoes, she tossed her iPad on the sofa beside Reeba as she sat on the floor directly in front of the loaded coffee table. “So y’all know it’s serious then, right?” she said dryly before picking up two lemon bars—one for each hand.
“So what you want to know?” Aunt Millie asked.
“You sure you two don’t already know?” she asked, thinking they did.
With her mouth full, and not caring, Mona told them of everything from her first encounter with Anson up until the night she slept in his bed. She only left out the X-rated parts. A woman’s got to have some business of her own not to share.
“Anything ever happen to you like that, Shara?” Mona asked once she was done with her story and the lemon bars. “You ever run up on someone you just couldn’t get a vision on?”
Shara shook her head as she loudly bit down on a mouthful of Doritos.
“Hunter, as nice-looking a man and future successful doctor that he is, does absolutely nothing for me, while his brother—his arrogant, bullheaded, reserved, slightly uptight brother—is just . . .”
She closed her eyes and shook her head as she licked her lips with a little moan in the back of her throat.
“Damn. Is it like that, sis?” Shara asked.
Mona opened her eyes just as Reeba passed Shara her phone. “What’s that?” she asked.
“A picture of Anson I got off his Facebook account,” Reeba said.
“Really, Reeba? Really?” Mona said, exasperated.
Shara held the phone close. “Oh. Okay. I get it. Oh, I get it,” she said with a vigorous nodding of her head. “Yup.”
“I was curious what he looked like,” Reeba said, handing the phone to Aunt Winnie.
Mona eyed the phone. “I wanna see the picture,” she said, as the aunts’ heads came together to peer down onto the screen.
“Oh, we get it too,” Aunt Millie said.
“Ladies, can we focus?” Mona said, rising up on her knees to reach across the table and pluck the phone out of her aunts’ clutches. She sat back as she enlarged the photo of Anson smiling in a tailored three-piece suit that fit his strong physique.
Mona smiled and stroked his photo with her thumb. I wonder what he’s doing....
“You’re in love,” one of the aunts said.
Mona looked up to find four sets of eyes on her. She shook her head. “No, not love, not yet. But I like him. I like him a lot,” she admitted, reaching for the iPad in its sleeve and pulling out her sketches. “He sketched these of me from memory. He hadn’t seen me in a like a week and he drew this like I was in his mind the whole time. So yeah, I like him a lot.”
Reeba reached for the four sketches on four squares of what looked to be parchment paper. “Wow,” she said, obviously impressed.
The Ballinger women all passed the sketches. The aunts held on to them.
“Stories have been passed down through the generations of our family,” Aunt Millie said, glancing over at her sister, who sat next to her on a love seat.
“Stories to make you laugh, make you cry, and make you wonder,” Aunt Winnie added. “And stories to make you realize that this gift we all have been blessed with is ever changing.”
Mona sat the phone on the table as she and her sisters paid attention.
“We’ve always believed and been taught to believe that the reason we can’t see our own love or that of our family members is because too much knowledge can be . . . confusing.”
“And in our seventy years we have learned that what happens to us was meant to be, and sometimes you just have to take the highs and lows to get where God wants you to be.”
The three sisters all nodded.
“So we have a new story,” Aunt Millie said, leaning over slightly to touch her shoulder to her sister’s.
“Of a young, beautiful girl who is completely ignoring all the signs that she has met her soul mate,” Aunt Winnie added.
“Hunter?” Mona asked, her eyes troubled.
The aunts rolled their eyes. “You can’t see the forest for the trees, baby girl,” Aunt Millie said.
The aunts tsked at her. “When life is giving you all this newness, why would you continue to think of things the same way?” Aunt Winnie asked.
“Right,” Aunt Winnie chimed in.
“First she gets a vision to go help Anson—something that has never happened before,” Reeba said, sitting up straight as her face filled with the light of clarity.
“Hey there,” the aunts said by way of agreement.
“Then she can’t get a read on Anson—another first,” Shara added, looking to the aunts for their approval.
“Right,” they said.
All eyes turned to Mona.
Mona’s eyes searched all of theirs. “Then I have a vision about myself when I touched Hunter and that means I’m his soul mate. So . . .”
“Change the way you think of things.”
“God is trying to tell you something,” Reeba sang under her breath.
“O-kay,” Shara added.
They reached across the table and softly high-fived.
“You ever think that you’re dancing with the brother of the groom . . . and not the groom?” Aunt Winnie asked.
Mona’s heart raced, but her brain reigned. “But that doesn’t make sense, because why wouldn’t I see whomever Hunter’s soul mate is if it’s not me but I’m in the vision.”
Shara and Reeba shared a look before looking at the aunts. “She’s got a point, aunties,” Reeba said.
Aunt Millie picked up her glass of lemonade and sipped. “Neither did you having premonitions of Anson getting hurt make sense, or that you were the one to hurt him.”
“Besides, maybe you were so focused on you that you missed his soul mate in the vision, because maybe it’s not your story to tell,” Aunt Winnie said.
Mona thought of the brief vision. There had been people surrounding Hunter—plenty of women—but she couldn’t recall specific faces in the short space of time . . . except her sisters standing there in their bridesmaid’s gowns.
“Oooh,” she said in sudden understanding, looking from Reeba to Shara.
“So the vision wasn’t about me,” she said.
“Right,” the aunts agreed.
Hunter was the soul mate of one of her sisters, but she held on to that revelation. It was not her story to tell. But the fact that Anson was her soul mate and future husband was.
“Anson,” she gasped, her chest filling with happiness.
“Anson, Anson, Anson,�
�� her sisters teased her.
Aunt Winnie smiled. “Spirit has a way of giving just enough . . .”
“But not too much,” Aunt Millie finished.
Mona picked up Reeba’s phone and swiped the screen to look at the man she was meant to spend the rest of her life with.
Chapter 11
“Well, lookey-lookey,” Reeba said, mimicking Sheneneh from the still popular nineties sitcom Martin.
Mona’s heart raced. “Take my car,” she said, her eyes locked on Anson sitting on her porch as her sister parked behind his BMW in her drive.
Reeba had driven from the airport where they had left Mona’s car parked while they were away. She pulled to a stop on the road at the end of the driveway. “I’ll meet my future brother-in-law another time,” she said. “Don’t want to ruin the reunion.”
“Good girl,” Mona said, climbing out of the car with her tote and not even bothering with her luggage still in the trunk.
Anson rose to his feet and smiled at her as Mona came down the drive. She had barely made it around his car before he took long strides to pick her up.
She wrapped her legs and arms around him as he captured her mouth with a kiss. At first soft and sweet. Then deep and passionate.
“Hey, stranger,” Anson said after one last taste of her mouth.
“Hey,” Mona said, resting her forehead lightly on his.
“Awwwww.”
Mona looked over her shoulder, whipping Anson in the face with her hair, to see her sister still sitting there with the passenger window down, all in their business.
“That’s my sister,” Mona said, motioning with her head for Reeba to leave.
“Hello,” Anson said from beneath the cover of her hair.
“Have fun, y’all,” Reeba said, before pulling away with a small toot of the horn.
Mona shook her head.
Anson laughed and sat her down on her feet. “I’m glad you’re back finally,” he stressed, reaching over to tug at the hem of the white shirt she wore with flare-legged jeans and red flats. “Did you work everything out? What was the result?”
Mona reached up to touch his cheek. “It was . . . revealing,” she said lightly.
Anson turned and caught her hand. “Mona, you’ve been gone for over a week. You said don’t call. I didn’t. You text to say you’ll be home tonight and you’ll call when you get here. Well, I’m here. I’m waiting. I want to know what’s going on.”
Want, Need, Love Page 13