“Whatever,” she said sitting back in her seat. “We won’t be losing any more games. I can’t stand losing.”
As Mya directed her attention to Cyd, Malik wondered if she had any idea she’d just implied that they would be playing together again.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Shawn said looking from Mya to Malik. “I guess you’ll live to fight another day.”
Chapter 7
“Come on,” she pleaded to her curling iron as she waited for the device to heat up. She checked the time on her cell phone for the third time in the past few minutes. She had to be ready in ten minutes and she still hadn’t added the curls to her hair that had been on her agenda to do all morning.
After losing the spades bridal battle over the weekend, everyone in the bridal party, with the exception of the winners, had been given a plain white envelope with duties and instructions printed on a sheet of paper.
One of her many duties was to drive to a bakery in Wisconsin not far from the Illinois border on Tuesday when she still had so many things to take care of for the auction. But when she called the bakery owner, she had the great idea to ask them if they could offer any goodies for the auction. So a one-person trip turned into a duo when she asked Malik if he wanted to take some time away from the office and accompany her. If she had to be forced to keep him updated on the auction, he could at least help share the responsibilities. At least, that’s the reason she told herself.
Since she didn’t have time to curl her entire head, she opted for throwing a few curls in random places to add volume. Her light makeup routine was already complete so the only step she had left was to throw on the casual white summer dress she paired with a slim teal belt and matching teal sandals.
They agreed to take Malik’s SUV as opposed to Mya’s car, so he also decided to pick her up. She did a once-over in her large bedroom mirror before picking up her purse and the notes she had for the wedding and the date auction. When she heard her buzzer ring, she knew it was Malik. She quickly turned off all the lights before speaking into the intercom that she would head down to meet him and then she locked her door.
She’d had a lot of friends over to her home before, but Malik wasn’t just any friend. He was a friend she was really attracted to and a friend who would soon know more about her past before even she did.
When she got off the elevator, she didn’t see him right away. As she got closer to the door, she spotted him in the turnabout of her building leaning against his SUV wearing khaki shorts, a white polo and white gym shoes. She’d never seen him look so casual before and she knew she could definitely get used to this look.
His well-built arms were in the pockets of his shorts and he was staring at the street, oblivious to her approaching him. She slowed her steps so that she could admire him for a little while longer. Good lawd. The man’s profile was just as sexy as his frontal stance. His strong jaw line, angular nose and nicely shaped lips were features that she’d instantly noticed when she had first met Malik. She missed his glasses today, but without them, she would be able to focus on other details in his facial features that she hadn’t quite noticed before.
Over the weekend, she’d observed a slight after-five shadow and today she saw the outlines of a well-lined goatee that spanned the length of his jawline and symmetrical cheekbones. His overall physique appeared strong and fit without being overly muscular, while his skin glistened a slight shade or two darker due to the approaching summer heat. His looks were the perfect combination of rugged and sophisticated.
When she was almost near him, he finally turned toward her and mirrored the friendly smile she wore.
“Good morning,” he said as he quickly admired her outfit before opening the passenger side car door.
“Good morning,” she replied as she slid in the seat and noticed two cups in the cup holders. “Are one of these cups for me?” she asked when he sat in the driver’s seat.
“Yes, it’s tea from the café down the street.” He pointed to the cup closest to the passenger seat and grabbed a small bag from the backseat. “And here’s a bagel in case you’re hungry now. I also packed a cooler of water and a few snacks for us.”
“Guess you’ve thought of everything,” she said. She then smiled at the fact that he had remembered she was a tea drinker and didn’t care for coffee. “But the drive is only two hours, right?”
“It is, but the GPS said it’s more like two and a half to three hours in traffic. We should be there between noon and one.”
“Thanks for the tea, bagel and snacks,” Mya said as she took a sip of the hot tea.
“You’re welcome,” he said glancing over at her. “So I was wondering, do you want to chat a little more about the investigation on the drive up?”
Mya stopped sipping her tea. “We can talk about it today. I know you need to get started.”
“I do,” he replied as he got on the expressway. “Beginning with the number that called you. You mentioned it was private.”
“Yes, she called me on a private number on my work cell, which is why I almost didn’t answer. But sometimes, my clients call me privately so I answered.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Malik said. “Even when people call from a blocked number, there is always a way to track the call. I’ll just need your phone for a few hours.”
“Okay,” she replied finally taking another sip of her tea. “What else do you need to know? There isn’t much to tell you that I haven’t already. The call wasn’t really long.”
Malik looked to her before looking back at the road. “Sometimes, people assume that they remember everything but when they retell the story, they leave out details that they may have deemed unimportant.”
“I see. That makes sense, but I was in shock, so who knows what else I know.”
“Well, you’ve already given me a clue that you hadn’t before.”
She looked to him although his eyes remained on the road. “And what might that be?”
“The caller called your work cell, not your personal cell. Your work cell is listed publically somewhere, right?”
Mya thought about all the different documents and advertisements that her work cell was listed on. “That’s right. And I give out that number if a client calls the main office number and asks to speak to me directly.”
“Then I assume that the caller found you through your job, not by your name.”
Mya’s eyes briefly dropped to her lap, before she lifted her head again.
“What is it?” Malik asked. She placed her tea back in the cup holder.
“You’re right, there’s no way the caller could’ve located me by my name.”
“Why’s that?”
Mya let out a big sigh. “I’m confident my birth mother or parents named me Mya because the only thing that the pastor of the church found with me when I was left at the doorstep was a piece of paper that had the name Mya written on it.”
Malik peeked over at her again. “I remember you mentioning that before,” he said. “So, Winters is the last name you chose?”
“Not exactly. It’s the name that a lady on the staff of the orphanage picked out for me when I was still a baby. When I was ten, I heard one of the other foster kids talking about how their entire name was chosen from someone on staff at the orphanage. It’s apparently a common thing.”
“Did you ever think about changing your last name to something you want?”
“All the time.” There were days that Mya still contemplated changing her last name, but it was a part of her now. “Then I thought about the fact that even if I got my last name from an employee of the orphanage, at least they had a decency to give me a last name, which is more than I can say for my birth parents.”
Malik reached over and lightly gripped her hand before placing it back on the steering wheel. “How about we continue the r
est of this conversation on the way home?”
“That’s a plan,” she said with a small grin. “Besides, I need to go over the list that was in the envelope I received.”
Mya pulled out her mininotebook that detailed what they needed to discuss with the baker for the wedding. “So, on top of having a cake, Lex and Micah also want a sweets table. The list she gave me is very detailed. She’s already talked to the head baker, but she needs me to make sure that the bakery understands everything they want. The right flavors. The right designs.”
“And why in the world did they have to pick a bakery so far away?”
Mya laughed. “Lex is a food connoisseur and the bakery we are going to is the best around. They specialize in sweet tables and everything is personalized. And lucky for us, the owner of the bakery was a former Chicago Public Schools student so she is willing to donate sweets for the date auction.”
“Very impressive,” Malik said to Mya with a smirk.
“How’s so?” she asked as she pushed down the automatic button on the door to let some air seep through the crack in the window.
“You just are,” he said as he looked at her and held her eyes. There it was again. That penetrating stare that made her want to open up even more than she already was.
Mya pulled her eyes away from his and stared out the window just as they were leaving the city and entering the suburbs. If she wasn’t careful, she would slowly start letting him in. Although she had to discuss her past with him in order to help with the investigation, she had to try not to cross the thin line between trusting him with information versus trusting him with her heart.
* * *
“I can’t believe you don’t eat sweets,” Malik said as they headed back to Chicago.
“That’s not true,” she said as she slipped off one sandal. “I eat candy every now and then. I’m just not a huge cupcake, brownie, cookie type of girl. There are just some sweets that I like more than others.”
“You don’t like coffee. You barely eat sweets.”
“And I hate working out,” she said with a laugh as she lifted a foot to take off her remaining sandal. “All that walking we did has my feet aching.” Malik’s eyes traveled from the road to her legs. When she reached the strap, she stopped as she followed Malik’s gaze.
“I’m sorry, is it okay if I slip off my sandals?” Is it okay? He wanted to tell her she could take off anything she wanted to in his car, but instead, he opted for a head nod in agreement before casting his eyes back to the road.
After she removed her shoes, she curled her feet into the passenger seat and let her arm drape over the open window. The night wind blew her moon-kissed hair over the headrest and she softly closed her eyes as the breeze teased her face. Malik liked seeing Mya so relaxed and he’d enjoyed spending the entire day with her.
After they’d arrived at the bakery, the owner had enthusiastically shared small portions of all the desserts she was going to provide for the date auction. Then she went through a detailed list of all the goodies she was making for Lex and Micah’s wedding.
After stuffing their faces with more calories than Malik had ingested in a long time, they had decided to tour the small town before heading back to the city. Neither one of them could have predicted they would have spent an entire day away from work.
“It was nice taking a day off away from everyday responsibilities, wasn’t it?” she asked as if reading his mind.
“It really was,” Malik agreed. “I haven’t taken a day off in so long, I almost forgot what it felt like to spend most of the day not completely focused on my work.”
“Neither have I,” she said as her eyes remained closed. They drove in comfortable silence for a few more minutes before droplets of rain began to fall. Mya opened her eyes and pulled her hand inside before closing the window.
“I didn’t think it was going to rain tonight.”
“It wasn’t in the city, but I suspect we’re going through a rain cloud,” Malik said as he turned on his windshield wipers.
“It’s coming down pretty hard,” Mya said as she leaned closer to the front window before sinking back in her seat. Malik glanced over and noticed she didn’t have on a seat belt. He glanced at his dashboard, wondering why it didn’t beep.
“Is your seat belt jammed? Maybe you should buckle back up.”
“Yes,” she said as she pulled the strap and tried to lock the buckle in place. “It jammed like this on me earlier too.”
“Damn,” Malik muttered under his breath. “When I went to Detroit last weekend, I had my little brother in the car and I think he jammed it. I told that kid not to stick things in the lock.”
Mya lifted her head and gave him a curious look. “Umm, I thought all your younger brothers were adults, not kids.”
He laughed at her statement. “I meant my little brother from the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization. He’s nine and every object that has a hole, he sticks something into.”
“I’m part of BBBS too,” she said with a smile. “My former little sister is in college now so I figured after I got the after-school program underway, I’d let the organization know I was ready to be assigned another young girl.”
Malik returned her smile, not at all surprised that they both were part of the same organization. But by the way Mya was looking at him he assumed she was surprised.
“Are you amazed that you and I happen to have something in common?”
“No, that’s not it,” she said. “It’s just, I didn’t grow up with any siblings so being able to be a big sister and make an impact on a young child’s life is really rewarding and a feeling I never had before. What about you? How does it compare to the big brother you are for your actual brothers?”
“For me, there’s no comparison,” Malik said with a laugh. “Although I will always be the oldest, my younger brothers and I aren’t that far in age. Micah and I are much closer now than we ever were growing up. While I was into studying and making sure my grades were at the top of the class, Micah was off fooling around in the streets getting into God knows what.”
“Ha! Yeah right,” Mya retorted. “I’ve been to your hometown of Cranberry Heights, Arkansas. Didn’t exactly strike me as the type of place you could get into much.”
“That’s not where we grew up,” Malik replied. “My parents live there now, but we spent most of our life in Little Rock, Arkansas. Trust me when I say that unlike Cranberry Heights, there is nothing cute and quaint about the area we grew up in.”
Malik was used to people assuming that because he graduated from Princeton and was a former profiler for the FBI who was now a private investigator, that he’d lived a cookie-cutter life without many hardships, but that was far from the truth.
“I didn’t know that,” Mya said softly. “What was it like growing up there?”
“It wasn’t always bad,” Malik responded. “Back then, we didn’t know anything besides Little Rock and with six sons, you can imagine how hard my parents had it sometimes. Believe it or not, one of my fondest memories was that every meal I had always tasted like bacon. That’s probably why my brothers and I love bacon so much now.”
“Bacon,” Mya replied with a look of disbelief. “Am I missing how everything tasting like bacon is a good thing?”
“For us, it was a family bonding moment,” he said with a chuckle. “Sometimes we couldn’t afford to buy Crisco or cooking oil, so my mom always had to reuse oil we’d used to cook other things. So every day at dinner, we played guess that food.”
“Oh wow,” Mya said with a laugh. “That’s interesting.”
“It was,” Malik said as he reminisced about his childhood. “And you’re looking at the king of the name that food game. Bacon stood no chance against my taste buds.”
Mya began laughing hysterically when he pointed to himself and brush
ed off his shoulders making sure he kept one hand on the wheel as he did so.
“I’m learning quite a few things about your personality that are surprising me,” she said when her laughing began to subside.
Malik stopped laughing and glanced from her to the road. “There are still a lot of things you don’t know about me, Mya,” he said as he increased the speed of his window wipers. And if I have my way, all of that will be changing sooner than you think.
Chapter 8
“I bet,” Mya said as she turned to the passenger window and masked her smile. She didn’t miss the astute look on his face, nor did she miss the meaning behind his statement.
“It’s getting pretty bad out there,” he stated as he turned on his bright lights to see through the rain. “Any luck with the seat belt?”
Mya had forgotten all about the seat belt and when she tried to lock the buckle again, she still couldn’t get it to securely click. “I’m having trouble,” she said, wiggling the buckle.
“Let me try,” Malik said as he reached over Mya and took the seat belt from her hand. As his arm brushed against her upper thighs in an effort to secure the buckle, Mya tried her best to ignore the sensations she felt.
She watched him look from the road back down to the buckle, hoping that he didn’t notice the rise and fall of her chest had quickened. Brush it off, Winters, she thought, giving herself a quick pep talk. She’d already established that Malik had sexy arms. And earlier at the bakery, when they were both sampling one of the desserts, it had taken all her efforts not to focus on the enticing scent of his cologne, but rather the task at hand of tasting the sweet concoction. I bet his lips taste sweet, she thought before she could force her brain not to go there.
“Damn it, it’s really jammed,” he muttered. “See if you can pull a little more slack.”
Mya did as she was told, pulling as hard as she could and barely getting any additional slack in the strap. “That’s not working.”
“I’ll try one more time,” he said as he pulled the car over to the shoulder of the highway. He used the slack he had to try and force the buckle once more. Mya squeezed her lips together when his hand went even higher up the side of her thigh than it had before. She let out a soft moan when his hand stayed there for a while.
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