A Heart Not Easily Broken
Page 38
Chapter 28
My bedroom never looked so inviting.
After three months of sleeping in the cramped quarters of the tour bus with six grown men and crashing in hotels, this was paradise. Well, not exactly, because my Eve wasn’t here.
Ebony and I made the most of our weekend. The establishment run by Yasmine’s family had been the perfect place to reconnect.
Once she’d stopped crying.
We spent most of our time in that room. Oddly enough we were in the Honeymoon Suite, the perfect backdrop for my future intentions. We lived off of room service, wearing nothing until our last evening. We’d walked hand in hand in the rose garden outside of our room. Ebony posed for some beautiful pictures I took with my cell phone. By the end of our stay, her smile and the glow in her eyes returned.
But that was on the surface. I still hadn’t found what problem lay beneath.
All of my attempts to ask failed. Ebony knew exactly how to redirect my intentions with a flash of skin. After three months without her, it didn’t take much to lose my desire of intelligent conversation.
Now it was time to jump back into the real world.
First things first, open up the window and let in some fresh air. The room smelled like a closed up tomb. No doubt the door remained closed the entire time I was gone. Everything was just as I left it. Including the clothes hamper holding what I’d worn my last time here. They needed to be washed just like the ones held in my suitcase.
Maybe my mom would be so happy to see me, she would do my laundry. I chuckled. Yeah right. My mother stopped washing my clothes when I was in college. She’d found a thong as she pulled clothes out of the drier. It wasn’t mine of course, but she decided quickly she had no interest in what I did outside of her house.
I emptied my clothes from my suitcase into the basket. I could wash clothes when I visited my mom. My family knew I’d returned and respected the fact I needed to spend time with Ebony first. Her red thong fell out of the bag and onto the floor. I smiled and stuffed it into its new home in my nightstand. She wasn’t getting them back.
Which reminded me, the sheets needed washing. I stuffed those in a bag too. I planned to have her over as soon as possible and didn’t want her lying on sheets that had been on the bed for months.
Everything needed to be perfect. I intended to get to the bottom of things the next time we were together. By the end of our first night at the hotel, I’d realized expecting a straight answer about what was on her mind was foolish. Reconnection on a primal level was the one thing both of us needed. We held conversations over the phone for months. We were aware of what was going on in each other’s lives. There was nothing else to catch up on except the basic human need of physical contact. Long, lustful, erotic as hell sinful contact. We’d got that one down in record time.
My stomach growled reminding me of another basic need, food. I scavenged the fridge and came up with a bottle of beer. Javan always kept beer, but the pickings for something edible were slim. I was the one who kept the refrigerator full. He tended to eat out or pick something up on his way home. I glanced at my watch. Javan wouldn’t be off work for another five hours. I made note to grab some wings and fries from the Hot Wing Café on the way back from my parents. We’d catch up over dinner.
In the living room, I walked over to my CD collection in search of music to listen to in the truck.
Strange, the disks were out of order. My CDs were kept in alphabetical order by genre.
Ebony. She probably grabbed a few disks when she’d come for her ID. It was the only explanation that made sense. Javan never touched my music.
After thirty minutes of reorganization, two disks were missing. I decided to worry about it later.
My cell phone chimed, alerting me to an incoming message; Peter confirmed our scheduled meeting for this evening. After replying, I grabbed my clothes basket and headed for my truck.
My cousins had done a good job of running the business. I felt like a proud papa. They’d rarely called to ask questions, and my customers continued to be satisfied. They didn’t know I kept tabs.
I checked my business account weekly. Peter made sure deposits were made on time and in full amounts. They’d done such a good job I planned to let them run the business for a while longer.
After returning to L.A., B and D Records offered a paying studio job. Accepting the offer had been a no-brainer. The only problem was it hindered my ability to run my business effectively. My schedule needed to be clear as much as possible. I could be called in at any time during the day or night. My routines would revolve around whatever artist they assigned me to work with. I could not afford to be in the middle of cutting grass, hot and sweaty when I got the call. I had to be sure I had time to shower and change before reporting to the studio.
My cousins, on the other hand, could manage the business around their school schedule. I would let them keep the lawn tools and customer base. Thanks to their father, Dylan inherited an old work truck. It was perfect for a teen with no wheels, plus they could use it to get from job to job.
If they accepted my offer, I would officially have two full-time employees.