Open Your Heart

by Cheris Hodges

  Yolanda turned her back to the windows and slumped her shoulders for a moment. Charles placed a comforting hand on the small of her back. This wasn’t what he needed to do. He couldn’t get too personal or close to her. But Yolanda was drawing him in. He had to put a stop to that. “This just gets worse and worse,” she whispered. Charles pulled her closer to him.

  “We’re going to fix this,” he said. “You’re going to have to trust me on that, okay?”

  She nodded and he dropped his arms from around her tempting frame. “But, I’m not blacking out my studio during the day when I need the natural light.”

  Charles expelled a sigh and watched her head for the door. He started to say something about light not mattering if she was dead, but his phone vibrated in his pocket. Pulling it out, he smiled when he saw it was his contact in Virginia.

  “Madison Slim, what’s going on?”

  She giggled in his ear at her nickname. “You know you’re the only person who can call me that without getting a punch to the throat.”

  “Thank goodness for small mercies. You have lethal hands, Ms. MMA.”

  “I also have some news for you and your project. What do you call women you’re guarding?”

  “Her name is Yolanda,” he said.

  “Miss Yolanda is in trouble. Like bigger trouble than you thought.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Word on the street is that the person who killed Bobby G. is well connected.”

  “Do you know who this person is?”

  “Yep, they say it’s Daniel Branch.”

  “You say his name like I’m supposed to know who he is.”

  “I forgot, you left everything about Virginia behind after . . . Daniel Branch is a money man. He calls himself an investment banker, and since everyone who works with him makes money, no one complains. But I’ve heard he has a shady side, underground gambling.”

  “How do you know this but the authorities don’t?”

  “I’ve got friends in low places and his ex-wife was a friend of mine. She started asking questions when they got divorced and she hasn’t been seen in a year.”

  Charles let out a low whistle. “And no one is looking for this lady?”

  “When have cops ever cared about a missing Black woman?” Her voice was filled with bitterness. Charles understood and hated that this was happening to her again. Madison’s youngest sister disappeared from Danville, Virginia, ten years ago. No one wanted to look for the fifteen-year-old, assuming she was a runaway. A year later, her image appeared on a man’s hard drive who had been busted for child pornography.

  Madison had turned her anger into a career where she searched for missing children. First as a police officer in Danville, then in Greensboro, North Carolina. But something happened to sour her against law enforcement and she struck out on her own to help families find their missing children. Later, Charles found out that Madison had found out who the man was and she had been searching for him quietly for years. When he’d offered to help, she’d turned him down, telling him they were her bones to bury.

  And then she became an MMA fighter, too, which Charles didn’t understand. But she was good at it. He didn’t ask her a lot of questions about what she did, but when he needed Madison, she was always there. That’s all that mattered.

  She was even there when he tried to push everyone away after Hillary died. She was the only person who wouldn’t listen and made him go to therapy to get over losing her.

  “Anyway,” Madison continued, “if Danny knows where to find Yolanda, he probably sent someone to follow her. So, be careful and stay strapped.”

  “I’m always strapped. Got a question: Would going to the police be a good idea?”

  Madison sighed. “Give me a couple of days before you talk to anyone. I’ve really got a feeling that this guy has some heavy hitters in his pocket and the last thing you or I want to do is get the wrong people looking at her.”

  “Facts. And she’s already giving me hell about going to the police, so . . .” Charles looked up and saw Yolanda walking back into the studio. “I’ll call you back.”

  “Be careful,” Madison said before hanging up the phone.

  Yolanda tossed her head to the side. “I hope you’re not still going through my sketches,” she said.

  “No. I was on the phone.”

  “You didn’t have to hang up with your boo because I walked into my studio,” she quipped. “Tell her you’re safe, I don’t want you.”

  Charles shook his head. “You’re funny. I’m working, so any calls that I get are going to be related to keeping you alive.”

  She nibbled on her bottom lip and Charles had to turn away so his dick wouldn’t get hard. She oozed sensuality just doing simple things. “Listen,” she said, “my sisters are coming here in a couple of days and I’d like to have some privacy with them. We’re going to be picking out Nina’s wedding dress and stuff like that. You’d be bored out of your mind.”

  “I know how to stay out of sight, but I’m not going to ignore the fact that my job is to protect you.”

  Yolanda hated that he was going to be around when she wanted to ream Nina out for bringing this temptation into her life. She also wanted to tell her sister what she’d do to him if given the chance. But not with him in earshot. “You know when we get together, we do a lot of talking, laughing, and drinking.”

  “All the more reason for me to be around. Sounds like you guys will be distracted.”

  He didn’t realize how his presence distracted her, nearly turning her senseless. She needed to get a few minutes away from him. Okay, a few days. And she was going to make Nina sweep and mop her shop for putting her in this situation. Stuck with Chuck was almost as dangerous as the people who wanted to kill her.

  How was she going to look out for a killer when she wanted to see her bodyguard naked all the time?

  “Can I at least get some time alone up here to get a little work done?”

  “As long as you close the blinds.”

  Yolanda sighed. “Fine.” She crossed over to the windows and closed the curtains and blinds. When she turned around to ask him if he was satisfied, Chuck was gone. “Wow,” she murmured, then sat down at her desk.

  For the next three hours, Yolanda sketched more drawings of men in swimwear, but she kept looking at the door to see when her protector would return. It was after midnight before she decided to shut everything down and head to bed. Tonight, she vowed not to give him an accidental striptease.

  Heading down to her bedroom, she noticed him on the sofa, his long body stretched against the cushions, shirtless. She stood in the shadows and drank in his image. He had a dragon tattoo that started on his shoulder and looked as if it wrapped around his back. His washboard abs rose slightly as he slept. She wondered what it would feel like if she ran her tongue up and down those abs, sucked his nipples, and mounted him like he was a wild mustang.

  Her lustful gaze traveled down to his thighs. Too bad they were covered with a blanket. She imagined him looking like the great gorilla king from the Black Panther movie. She expelled a low sigh and shook her head.

  “It’s rude to watch people when they’re sleeping,” Chuck said, his voice thick with sleep.

  “Um,” she said, “I was heading to my room.”

  “You’ve been standing there for five minutes,” he said as he sat up. When the blanket dropped, she saw that he actually slept in pants. Gray. Sweatpants. Sweet Jesus.

  “How would you know that if you were sleeping?”

  “How are you from Charleston and don’t know the phrase ‘every shut eye isn’t sleeping’?”

  “Good night, Chuck,” she said, then dashed into her bedroom. Yolanda liked being the cat and not the mouse in her little flirty games. Normally, it worked, but these weren’t normal times.

  Someone was still trying to kill her and her life was in danger. Her libido would have to wait. Crossing over to her bed, she flung herself onto the soft mattress and clo
sed her eyes, hoping sleep would come quickly.

  Chapter 12

  Restless nights were becoming normal, but when Yolanda woke up covered in sweat at 4:30 a.m., it wasn’t because she was reliving the murder she saw or the brains pooling by her feet. No. Nightmares didn’t keep her tossing, turning, and moaning. It was Chuck Freaking Morris. Well, at least in dream form. The sex was a dream. The banging on her door was real.

  She stumbled out of bed and opened the door. “What?”

  “You were screaming,” Chuck said. She looked down at the gun in his left hand.

  “I-I was?” Her face heated from embarrassment and that never happened to Yolanda Richardson. “Must have been the TV.”

  Chuck nodded toward the darkened set mounted on the wall. “Were you having a nightmare?”

  She nodded, unable to tell him the truth. Chuck walked into her bedroom and she drank in his image like a glass of wine. That tattoo was more expansive and detailed than she’d imagined. It covered half of his back and seemed to stop at his hip. She wished he slept in shorts, but then again, he made every Internet meme about gray sweatpants the God’s honest truth. It was like Victoria’s Secret for women.

  As he looked around the room, Yolanda’s eyes fell on his backside. Salt ’N’ Pepa played in her head and she thanked his mother for an ass like that.

  “You want to talk about it?” he asked, breaking into her thoughts. She hadn’t even noticed that he’d taken a seat on her bed.

  “Um. No.” She walked over to the bed and tilted her head at him. “I’d like to go to sleep.”

  “All right,” he said, rising to his feet. “But I’m here if you need to talk.”

  Yolanda cleared her throat. “That’s good to know. But I just want to go to sleep.”

  He headed for the door and Yolanda felt drawn to follow him. “Charles,” she said. “Wait.”

  He turned around and Yolanda pressed her body against his. He was hot. His body was on fire and she knew the only way to calm those flames was with a rejection or a kiss. Chuck glanced down at her and Yolanda’s heart throbbed. “You don’t know what you’re doing and you should probably stop.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  “Then, I’m going to make the decision for you.” He took a step back and walked out of the room. Now she was clear on what she needed to do—wrap up her emotions and hormones. No one had ever pushed her away. Was she really thinking about seducing this man? All because he had the good sense to focus on saving her from killers and not giving in to what she wanted. He wanted it too because what she felt against her thighs wasn’t his gun.

  Charles knew things had gone too far in Yolanda’s room. Damn it, he wanted to kiss her. Hell, he wanted to do more than kiss her—he wanted to strip her naked and make love to her until the sun came up. Until he came. Until she came—several times.

  Why was she tempting him? Was this her way of masking her fear? He needed to put a stop to this now. But how could he when he wanted to get lost between her thighs?

  He plopped down on the sofa and dropped his head in his hands. Flashes of Hillary clouded his brain and guilt filled his soul. He loved that woman and allowed her to die. He couldn’t let lust make him fall into that same trap again. Tomorrow, he’d felt that lush body against his and had the chance to do what he’d wanted since the moment he’d met Yolanda Richardson. For the next hour, he’d dream about what could’ve been.

  Sunlight seeped inside the living room and Charles realized that he’d overslept. He woke up with a start and a hard dick. This was bad, because he was distracted by a fantasy that could never be real.

  Sitting up and swinging his legs on the side of the sofa, Charles yawned and threw his head back. When he heard Yolanda’s bedroom door open, Charles snapped to attention.

  “Good morning,” he said when he locked eyes with her. She had a look of don’t talk to me until I’ve had coffee on her face.

  “That’s debatable,” she said, then padded toward the kitchen. Charles waited until he heard the coffee bean grinder start up before going into the kitchen.

  “We need to talk about last night,” he said as Yolanda poured the grounds in the coffee maker’s basket.

  “No we don’t,” she said as she reached for two coffee mugs. “I get it. This is a job for you and I need to stop looking at you as more than a blunt object who’s here to keep me alive.”

  “That’s harsh.”

  “But it’s true. I won’t apologize for being attracted to you, but I will get my hormones under control so that we can find the person who wants me dead.”

  To say he was surprised by her brutal honesty would’ve been the understatement of the decade. Her realism should’ve given him peace, not pause. This is what he wanted and how he needed them to interact. He should’ve been a lot happier, but he wanted to know more about her attraction to him. Wondered if he should open up about what was giving him pause. Nope, he was going to do his job and they could both move on.

  “So, what do you want our next steps to be?” Charles asked.

  “I’d love to hold off on anything until my sister’s wedding.” Yolanda slumped her shoulders. “She deserves to be happy without my black cloud hanging over her.”

  He wondered if now was the time to tell her how much trouble she was in. Madison made this Danny character seem as if he was someone whom the law didn’t apply to.

  “I have to go into my shop this morning and wait for some deliveries,” Yolanda said, cutting into his thoughts. “Breakfast is going to be bananas and strawberries if you want some.”

  Oh, he wanted something, but it wasn’t what she was offering. “I’ll stick with coffee,” he said, turning away from her. Yolanda had on a pair of white cotton shorts, a blue tank top, and no shoes. Her small feet looked as if they were made of satin. He was a foot man, and like everything else about Yolanda Richardson, her feet were perfect.

  She moved around the kitchen in silence, grabbing the banana and strawberries from the fridge and slicing them into a bowl, then filling their coffee mugs. She slid Charles his coffee and smirked at him.

  “What was that for?” he asked, then took a sip of his coffee.

  Yolanda plucked a berry from her bowl and shook her head. “How do you do it? Just turn your emotions and feelings on and off.”

  “I can’t afford to let emotions cloud my judgment,” he said wistfully. He knew how that turned out and it wasn’t pretty. He couldn’t allow history to repeat itself. Turning his emotions off would be a wonderful skill, but last night showed him that he couldn’t do that, no matter how hard he tried.

  Charles wanted to kiss her and that was going to haunt him.

  “Okay, then why . . . I get it. You’ve made that mistake before, someone fell into hero worship with you and then when she was safe, she broke it off with you?”

  Charles snorted. “Nope.”

  “Just so we’re clear, I’m not looking for anything other than your body,” she said.

  He snapped his head up and locked eyes with her. “What?”

  “I think I was really clear,” Yolanda said, then popped a strawberry into her mouth.

  “Yolanda,” he said, trying to wrap his mind around what she said.

  “What? I’ve laid it all out on the table. You can take it or leave it.”

  Before he could reply, Yolanda’s cell phone chimed. “My shipment has arrived.”

  “Let’s get dressed and go, then,” he said as he rose to his feet. Yolanda sauntered out of the kitchen and looked over her shoulder at him.

  “I meant what I said,” she cooed. “And you know you want me as much as I want you.”

  Was he that obvious?

  Richmond, Virginia

  Danny smiled at his new investor, Vanessa Blades, a writer who had just made the New York Times bestseller list and was looking to diversify her portfolio and double the advance she was given for her next book. She was the kind of client who added credibility to his company. And it did
n’t hurt that she was beautiful.

  “You have to forgive me for being unfamiliar with your book,” Danny said. “But it is on my list of books to read when I finally get to take a vacation.”

  “I can forgive you for that. At least you have a copy,” she said with a smile.

  “And, I understand what a feat it is to make it on the bestseller list.”

  She nodded and was about to reply when Danny’s throwaway phone rang. He cursed inwardly as he reached into his desk to silence the phone. As much as he hoped this was the call he’d been waiting for, that Yolanda was dead, he couldn’t pull out that flip phone in front of Vanessa. And if he rushed her out of the office, he wasn’t going to be able to ask her out to dinner. Well, dinner would be the excuse; he wanted her on her knees with a mouthful of his dick. Her lips looked like they would cuddle him until he unloaded down her throat.

  Danny shifted in his seat. He needed to focus on two things right now: getting her to sign the papers and what the phone call was about. He slid the papers to Vanessa, focusing on her lips as she read over the investment agreement. She read each page of the five-page agreement. While this type of behavior nearly always sent him over the edge, this was just what he needed. Now he could pull the phone out and find out what was happening in Charlotte.

  The text message he read didn’t bring him joy.

  We got a problem. Package has a guard.

  “Is everything all right?” Vanessa asked, reminding Danny she was still in the room.

  “Yes, just a bit of a family matter. Have you signed?”

  “I want to have my husband look over this first. I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said as she rose to her feet. Danny nearly shooed her out of the office. He needed to call Chase and find out what his fucking problem was with wrapping this bitch in a dirt nap.

  Closing the door behind Vanessa, Danny stalked over to his desk and grabbed the burner from his desk.

  “Chase, what in the fuck is going on?” Danny howled when his hit man said hello.

  “I can’t kill that woman when I’m being watched. You made this a lot more difficult than it needs to be.”