by R. R. Banks
A shelf on one wall held a few of the diapers, powder, and decorations that had been in the original nursery. On the wall at the end of the crib was a new touch added specifically for her. I carried the baby over to it and lifted her so that she was looking at it. I doubted that her brand new eyes could even see the picture, but I would continue to bring her to it. I would continue to show it to her every day and soon it would begin to settle in and become a part of her heart.
"This is your grandfather," I whispered, pointing to the smiling face of my father through glass no longer coated with dust. "This is your grandmother. This is your Aunt Lessie. And this is your mama a long time ago."
I touched the image of my face, innocent young eyes that looked back at me with trust that had not yet been shattered and a heart that had not yet been broken. I knew what was to come and I wanted to reassure her, to comfort her, and tell her that even in the darkest moments that were to come, she should never feel hopeless. I wanted her to know that a day would come when that heart would be mended and that trust restored.
"Are you ready?"
I looked toward the nursery door and saw Jude smiling at us.
"I just need to get her dressed."
He walked up to us and touched a kiss to the baby's head.
"Choose something pretty. She wants to look beautiful when she visits her brother."
Half an hour later we drove down a familiar street and pulled up in front of a house brimming with light and life. Michael stepped out onto the porch and waved at us, his face bright and happy. As Jude took the car seat out of the backseat, I walked up the sidewalk and hugged him.
"The flowers are coming in nicely," I said as we parted.
He nodded and looked at the flower beds to either side of the porch.
"The team does a good job."
The purple flowers that created what looked like a thick carpet across the ground, accented by larger blooms that filled the space with color, had been Nana's favorite. She would be so happy to see that they were still finding their place in these beds each year.
"Hey, Pop," Michael said as Jude came up onto the porch.
They leaned against each other in a modified hug in deference to the car seat that Jude held, and then Michael opened the front door again so that we could step inside. I looked around at the changes that he had made to my grandmother's house and realized that I no longer needed to think of it that way. This was his home now, a place for him to consider his own and where he could dig down the roots denied him by the largely nomadic lifestyle he had experienced as a child as they eluded police he never knew were after them until the day the man who raised him handed him the letter and walked away.
Jude set the car seat on the sofa and put the handle back before releasing the harness that held the baby. Michael grabbed her toes and bounced them, then turned to smile at Jude. Warmth tingled in my chest and filled me with happiness. Watching their relationship grow and deepen had been one of the most beautiful things that I had ever seen and I knew that the future ahead of us was one that we would share as a family.
Michael would never forget the man who raised him.
Jude would never forget Ellery.
I would never forget my parents, sister, or grandmother.
But we could move forward.
I was taking some time to be with the baby before I went back to dancing and Jude said he was teaching with greater passion and a fresher perspective than he had had since he first started. Michael had settled in and was slowly unraveling what had happened and trying to reconcile the two halves of his past.
Together, we were healing.
We acknowledged that we would never be able to get back all that we had lost, but we were doing everything that we could to make up for lost time. All that had happened to us was a part of who we were and though we respected all that we had gone through both on our own and together, we were ready to make the most of everything that we had now.
Jude came up to me and wrapped his arms around me, ducking his head to kiss me. I felt the rush through my body that happened every time he touched me. I could never get enough of him.
"I love you," he murmured to me before patting me on the butt and following Michael toward the kitchen.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
THE END
A Note from the Author
Thank you for reading Forbidden. I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, may I ask you to please write a review? I would really appreciate it and be forever grateful. Reviews are very important and allow me to keep writing the books that you love to read!
Flip this page to read another one of my books. Included here as a special treat just for you is an Exclusive Full-Length Novel you won’t find anywhere else and some fan favorites.
Thank you for reading my books and letting me serve you doing what I love!
R.R. Banks
EXCLUSIVE – Baby 4 the Brothers
(A Full-length Exclusive not available for sale separately, enjoy!)
Chapter One
Gabrielle
"No, you lowlife son of a bitch, asking me if you can be my nougat filling is not a compliment and if you ever try to touch me like that again I would be happy to boil down your inadequate dick and turn it into gummy bears."
********
When I was five years old I poured all the M&Ms out of my bag and lined them up in a Barbie shoe rack, arranged by color, so I could sell them to all of her plastic friends that never would have tolerated the calories and G.I. Joe who was too busy defending the country and convincing people to stay in school to appreciate the gourmet dessert.
When I was in high school I set out to create the world's most perfect peanut butter cup, was single-handedly responsible for the Great Orthodontic Caramel Tragedy that spread through my class, and beguiled my Home Ec teacher with a maraschino cherry embedded in homemade marshmallow dipped in dark chocolate that I called my Sundae Bite.
When I was looking for a college I used up three pink highlighters picking out the options with the best chocolate and pastry arts programs, trying to determine which one had the most appealing balance of renowned instructors, state-of-the-art kitchens, and dorms, along with their proximity to my hometown so that I wouldn't be too far away from my family.
Two years out of college and I was exactly what that very family had always expected of me...an executive assistant.
I love my family dearly and never once questioned whether they love me, but apparently, that wasn't enough to make "gourmet chocolatier" a legitimate career path. At least not for my parents who both took the "American Dream" concept deeply to heart but focused heavily on the success part and not so much on the dream part. In the giant game of LIFE that my family was playing, my parents had filled their little car with two tiny pink plastic babies and gone about their way, getting careers, paying taxes, occasionally doing the fun things that we got to do because they got careers and paid taxes. When it was our turns to start back at the beginning in our own little cars, my sister didn't go for the career card. Instead, she immediately got married and had a baby. Then another baby. She had made it to her third baby in three years and I was getting more and more of the pressure to start climbing the corporate ladder and make a more successful path for myself.
Which is probably how I ended up crouched behind a ficus tree in the gleaming marble lobby of the consulting firm of Boring, Pretentious, Bigoted, and Bland. I had been the executive assistant for Mr. Pretentious himself for a little more than a year, sitting behind a desk that could only be compensation for something and running errands I was sure were mostly concocted to impress me, like some strange rich man mating dance. When I first got this job I thought that it was going to be the perfect way to make my parents proud with my impressive title and legitimate office work during the day, while still soothing my soul and keeping in touch with who I really was making chocolates at night. There were times when my parents would come over to my apartment unannounced a
nd I would find myself shoving bars of gourmet chocolate and bowls of ganache into cabinets, the oven, and any other available space I could like I was trying to hide a meth cooking operation. But I kept it up because I knew that it was what they expected of me. They had gone through so much to make sure that I had all of the opportunities that I possibly could, and I felt like I owed it to them to at least pursue a successful career so that they could feel confident, so that they could stop worrying about me.
But that was before my boss had started supplementing his list of errands for me each day with a periodic chase around the desk or an elevator ride that was just a bit too close for my comfort. I tried to ignore it. I tried to pretend that I was just being too sensitive and was misinterpreting things that he said or the way that he looked at me. Maybe watching one too many of those horrifically shot corporate training videos about sexual harassment had indoctrinated me to believe that anytime a male blinked in my general vicinity I should be offended. It wasn't until he had brought me into his office under the pretense that I would be taking dictation from him and brought along the plate of chocolates that I had brought in that morning that everything went to hell.
Him throwing around the word 'dictation' probably should have been a red flag.
After trying to ignore him doing things with his tongue that no chocolate should ever have to be subjected to, I was shocked by him actually coming around to the chair that I was sitting in and picking me up out of it, turning me around, and sitting me on the edge of his desk. He had no sooner muttered his fateful words about nougat that his hand was up my skirt on my thigh and the heel of my shoe was in his crotch. He hit the floor faster than a bikini at Spring Break, knocking over the chair that I had been sitting in in the process. I managed to get off the edge of the desk and snatch the little clear plastic container of thumbtacks that he kept in the corner of his desk before he rolled over and climbed up on his knees. I never knew why he had those thumbtacks. He didn't have a cork board in his office, and this was not exactly the type of firm that had staff lounges filled with bright, encouraging inspirational quotes and bulletin boards.
Right then, though, I was glad for whatever the reason was that he had them. I pulled one out and tossed it in his direction. He ducked out of the way and I threw another. All of the built-up frustration and anger that I had been feeling in the time that I had worked with him was starting to come out, and the thumbtacks were flying. Most of them are just bouncing off of his suit or not even getting to him, but finally one seemed to poke him right in the neck and he let out an angry growl, swatting it away. His eyes narrowed at me and I wondered what the chances were that the other three men would back him up in a murder case, but then he opened the door and stormed out. I could have just left. I could have taken my indignance and anger right to human resources and filed a complaint. Instead I poured the remaining thumbtacks on his chair, emptied the bottle of white out, that I was fairly certain dated back to his college days, into his mug of coffee, and used the biggest permanent marker that I could find to spell out, in no uncertain, and also fairly unladylike, terms that I was no longer interested in continuing my employment with him, across the surface of his desk.
When I was finished, I walked out onto the floor and shouted my evaluation of him out to anyone who could hear me. This, admittedly, was probably most of the building considering I had done it at the top of my lungs. It involved several words that my mother would've probably liked to pretend that I didn't know and may have also included a critique or two of his anatomy that might have suggested that I had gone along with his advances.
And that's what brought me to my hiding place behind the ficus tree. It would have been a much less cowering exit from the office had I remembered, before the thumbtack throwing incident, that my car was at the mechanic and my sister had brought me into the office that day. As it was I was stuck there until she was able to come get me and I wasn't interested in talking to any of my co-workers about my untimely exit. Or facing the security guards that I was sure were going to be after me at any moment. At least this was giving me plenty of time to figure out how I was going to explain to my parents why I no longer had my office job, and why I may end up having a visit or two to the courthouse in the coming months.
Fortunately, I soon learned that the courthouse was off the table. It turned out that Mr. Pretentious wasn't picky when it came to his potential office dalliances. He had already made his way through the vast majority of our floor of the building and had even ventured a little bit into the staff pool of the other partners. I had been on his radar since the first day that I started working there, but that hadn't stopped him from trying to dip his quill into as many of the office inkwells as he could. There had been a few complaints, but not enough to substantiate anything. My outburst had been too much to deny, however, and the board quickly agreed to not press charges on me and secure me a handsome severance package, sourced from his personal bonus from the year, if I didn't move forward with a sexual harassment suit against him and the company. I found it fairly sickening that he was getting to go right back up to his cushy office and continue on about his life with only a meaningful glare from HR, and a chunk missing out of his bonus for the year, and I was the one booted out on my butt. That was really all that they had to offer, however, and once they had made it clear that I either take that offer and run or face the humiliation of charges being pressed against me, I decided that I was just not the one to start the revolution in the office and bowed out.
I wondered if there might be one day when I regretted that choice. Maybe someday I would think back and wished that I had stood up for myself more or demand that there be more action against him, but in that moment I needed to just put it behind me and move on. I could only hope that the mysterious anonymous postcards that showed up at the firm, but couldn't be tracked to anyone, and that warned against his proclivities towards the women who worked in the building, would help to keep his future executive assistant and anyone else sitting behind those desks out of his office and away from his dictation.
What really mattered was that the severance package that they offered me was enough to add to my savings and start the gourmet chocolate shop that I had been holding in my heart for so many years. It was tiny and it wasn't in the location that I would have always wanted it to be, but it was mine. I didn't have to show up to the shop at the time that anybody told me to and I could close it up whenever I wanted and go home. Of course, when I consider the fact that most of the time I was at the shop before the sun rose and didn't leave until it was almost time to be up to come back the next day, it wasn't nearly as liberating as it sounded.
Now it had been just over six months since the ficus tree incident and I was doing my best to keep my shop afloat. Business wasn't as booming as I had hoped it would be, but I had begun to get a trickle of customers and I still had enough from my savings that I was able to keep myself going. I didn't know how much longer that was going to last, however. The one ray of hope came from the fact that Valentine's Day was just around the corner and nothing screams 'prove that you love somebody' like a box of handcrafted chocolate. At least, I hoped that the people would hear that particular scream and make their way to the shop. Keeping myself optimistic, I had been devoting much of my time to coming up with new truffles and treats specifically for the holiday. I was in the midst of trying to figure out how to make the inside of one of the truffles pink without resorting to the cliché and predictable raspberry when my sister hurried into the shop. She smiled at me as she rushed past into the back, and then returned a few moments later without her coat and purse, tying an apron around her ample waist that hadn't quite yet recuperated from the third pregnancy.
"You know," I said, "you can come in through the back door. It would be a lot easier than coming through the front, coming behind the counter, going through the kitchen, and then into the office."
Skylar nodded as she swept her thick dark hair back into a ponytail at the back o
f her head.
"I know," she said. "You go over this with me every time I get here."
"So why don't you do it?" I asked.
"Like I've gone over with you every time that I have gotten here, I'm not going to park my car behind the building and run down an alley to get into the shop."
"You don't have to run," I said.
"That's true," she said. "But if I don't run, that just means that the scary people have more of a chance of getting me."
I shot a glare at her.
"When have you ever seen a single scary person anywhere near the shop?" I asked.
"Just because I haven't seen them, does not mean that they aren't there. Besides, there were some pretty suspicious people gathered on the corner just a couple of months ago. That totally counts."
"They were collecting money for the Salvation Army," I said. "Did the Santa hats and the giant bells that they rang incessantly not stand out to you?"
Skylar looked like she was trying to come up with something to say, then gave an exasperated sound.
"Whatever. So those people might not have been doing anything nefarious, but you never know. It's better to be safe."
"Safe from what, exactly?" I asked. She was busying herself rearranging the pieces of chocolate that I had already arranged in the display case, purposely not meeting my eyes. "You sure have gotten boring," I said. "What happened to my sister who lost her high heel on the roof because she was sneaking out of her bedroom window to meet her boyfriend and couldn't get it back before our father cleaned out the gutters? What about my sister who convinced our father not to tear down the tree house outside because it was so nostalgic and meaningful, just so that you could sneak the same boyfriend into it? What about my sister who hopped a bus to go downtown and see a concert with, wait for it, her boyfriend when she was supposed to be studying?"