Queen of His Heart

by Adrianne Byrd

  Dee Dee scanned her clipboard. “A pediatrician. Says he loves children. He even has full custody of his two daughters.”

  “Custody? He was married before?”

  Another glance at the clipboard. “Yep. Lasted four years.”

  “No divorcés,” he ordered.

  “What?” Nitara glanced at the other two women, who were watching their fight with great fascination. “Why would you have a problem with divorcés?”

  Okay. He didn’t have an answer for that. “I mean…” He bit his lips for a moment, but no ready explanation came.

  All three women crossed their arms.

  “I’m waiting,” Nitara said.

  “Well, we have a bachelorette who’s never been married and I just think that, uhm, maybe we should fix her up with someone who hasn’t been married as well. Less baggage.”

  “I kinda see where he’s going,” Dee Dee said, rescuing him.

  “Yeah.” Martina bobbed her head in agreement. “Who wants someone’s leftovers?”

  “Thank you.” Keenan puffed up his chest.

  Nitara rolled her eyes, signaling that she wasn’t buying it. “All right. All right. We’ll cross out all the divorcés. Anything else, your highness?”

  He reached for Dee Dee’s clipboard. “Well, let’s see who else you have on the list.” He scanned the forms. “First of all, we can cut out all these short dudes. Five-five, five-seven…What is this? Most of these guys wouldn’t be allowed to ride half the rides at Disneyland.”

  “Are you serious?” Nitara snapped.

  Keenan tried to ease the tension by softening his tone. “I’m just saying that Jalila is what—five-ten, six feet in heels? It doesn’t seem right to match her up with some jerk that might have a Napoleon complex.”

  Nitara stared at him—hard.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m just saying.”

  “Then I’m just saying that you’re working my last nerve.”

  “Actually, I think he makes another good point,” Martina interjected.

  “What?” Nitara turned on the woman as if she’d just planted a knife in her back.

  “Welll…” Martina glanced over at Dee Dee for backup, but saw that the woman was content to let her bosses duke it out. “Jalila does tend to date more tall losers than short ones. I personally don’t date short men. It’s too much like dating a little brother or something.”

  “Then why didn’t you say something before now?”

  “I didn’t think about it until he brought it up,” Martina said simply.

  Nitara gave them all a mutinous look. “Fine! No short guys.”

  “See?” Keenan threw his arm around Nitara’s shoulder. “I’m already helping. Now let’s go see who else we got.”

  Nitara groaned. “Something tells me that this is going to be interesting.”

  An hour later, Keenan had pared their hundred potential candidates down to twenty-five. The three women sitting around him at the makeshift interview table had long ago tossed up their hands and folded their arms at Keenan’s seemingly incomprehensible reasons for eliminating candidates. Most were either too tall, shifty-eyed, too nerdy, too muscular, too lean and Nitara’s personal favorite—Keenan’s insistence that one of the guys he’d seen on America’s Most Wanted.

  “Great. That wasn’t so hard,” Keenan said, handing Nitara her marked-up list.

  “Piece of cake,” she agreed sarcastically.

  Martina was the only one who perked up and smiled adoringly at him. “I, for one, am impressed with your instincts.”

  Nitara glanced at her watch. “It’s five o’clock and I’m calling it a day.” She jumped out of her seat.

  “Going home to cook?”

  “Don’t start with me. I’m not in the mood.”

  Martina stood and forced her way into Keenan’s personal space to the point that he had to take a step back. “You know I’m a good cook?”

  His eyebrows arched in amusement. “Is that right?”

  “Yeah.” She closed the distance between them again. “Maybe I can make you a nice home-cooked meal?”

  “Uhm, er…” He stole a glance over at his business partner, who looked on the verge of cracking up. “I’m going to have to take a rain check on that.”

  Martina twirled a finger through her bright red hair. “All right. But I’m going to hold you to it.”

  Keenan’s cell phone rang, rescuing him from this awkward conversation. When he answered the call, he received the news that he’d been waiting for.

  It was never a good idea to feed dogs table scraps. It could spoil the dog so that he’d refuse to eat dog food and constantly beg for yours. But once a year, Jalila broke her own rule, on Cujo’s birthday. She fired up the grill and threw on a big, fat, juicy steak.

  Just the smell of the grilling meat excited Cujo to the point that he ran around the yard like a frantic jack rabbit. “I bet you know what day it is,” Jalila sang while capturing Cujo’s reaction on video.

  Woof! Woof!

  Minutes later, he returned to her side, carrying his large metal bowl between his huge teeth.

  “Are you a little impatient, boy?” She took the bowl from his mouth and then lifted the large steak from the grill.

  Cujo leaped into the air in an almost perfect pirouette. Jalila laughed and served Cujo his birthday dinner, singing, “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Cujo. Happy birthday to you.”

  Woof!

  “Good boy!” As she leaned down and rubbed the side of his belly, a sound caught her ear. Jalila stood still until she heard it again. The doorbell, she deduced, and headed back into the house. “Coming!” She wasn’t expecting anyone, and when she opened the door, she was rendered speechless.

  “Hello. I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time,” Keenan said, smiling.

  Chapter 8

  Jalila blinked and tried to get her bearings. “No. No. Come on in,” she said, stepping back and allowing him to enter.

  Keenan’s smile broadened as he crossed the threshold into the foyer. His gaze swept around the room while he nodded appreciatively. “Nice place.”

  “Thanks.” Jalila closed the door and stood before him, waiting. His brief inspection completed, Keenan’s dark gaze finally landed on her. Instantly, her body temperature rose a couple of degrees. Nervous, she cleared her throat. “So, what brings you by?” she asked.

  Keenan lifted his arms to indicate the gifts he carried. “Came to celebrate.”

  “Celebrate?” Had she told him about her dog’s birthday? She glanced down and noticed the bouquet of flowers and bottle of champagne. Cujo didn’t drink champagne. “What are we celebrating?”

  “Queen of Hearts has been green-lighted. ABC bought thirteen episodes. Filming starts in two weeks.”

  “Wow.” Her eyes bulged. “That was…fast.” This was really going to happen. Suddenly it was hard for her to wrap her brain around actually going on national television to find a man. This would either be one of the best things to ever happen to her or the worst. Judging by the track record of most reality shows, she was beginning to think that it was probably leaning toward the latter.

  Having expected a bigger or even better response, Keenan rocked on his feet, searching for something to say. “You wouldn’t happen to have a couple of champagne glasses, would you?”

  “Uh, what?” She snapped out of her reverie.

  “Or we could just drink it straight out of the bottle. I’m game if you are,” he joked.

  “Oooh.” She shook her head and cleared her muddled thoughts. “Let me take those.” She reached for the flowers. The bouquet was a carnival of color: orange day lilies, purple asters and blue irises. “They’re beautiful. Thank you.”

  Without thinking, she stepped forward and placed a kiss against his left cheek. The moment her lips touched his face, a spark flared between them and she quickly stepped back in surprise. To her amazement, his warm gaze darkened. Was it her imagination or h
ad she seen desire?

  Definitely your imagination.

  “I guess I’d better go put these in some water.” She turned to head for the kitchen, but she hadn’t taken more than a few steps when she looked up and saw Cujo rounding the corner at a full gallop.

  Jalila panicked. “Cujo, no! Cujo, stop!”

  Cujo paid her absolutely no attention as he continued his race toward them—more specifically toward Keenan.

  “Cujo,” she shouted one last time before she watched her two-hundred-pound Great Dane launch into the air. “Nooo.”

  Time crawled as Jalila witnessed Cujo’s full-body tackle, his front paws hitting Keenan squarely in the center of his chest.

  Keenan reeled backward. His feet were swept up in the air as total shock covered his face. Dog and man hit the hard wooden floor with a loud and resounding thump.

  Jalila watched as the air exploded from Keenan’s chest, but miraculously he managed not to bang his head or drop the champagne bottle. She couldn’t say the same thing for the flowers. She immediately dropped them and rushed over to the scene of the crime, praying that Cujo wouldn’t emulate his fictitious namesake and maul the Hollywood producer’s face off.

  Just as she reached for her dog’s collar, miracle of miracles, Cujo began licking Keenan’s face as though he was his favorite lollipop.

  Keenan laughed while trying his level best to ward off the dog’s impromptu spit shine. “Well, aren’t you a rambunctious boy? Good boy. Good boy.”

  Confused, Jalila finally pulled her dog away. “Cujo, stop. Get off him.”

  Woof!

  “I’m sooo sorry,” she moaned, horrified and embarrassed. “What on earth has gotten into you?” she scolded the dog. “Please forgive him, Mr. Armstrong.”

  “It’s Keenan, remember?”

  “That depends, are you planning on suing me?”

  He laughed. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Then Keenan it is.” Seeing that he was genuinely amused, Jalila relaxed and laughed at the situation. “I’ll go and put him outside.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” he said, pulling himself off the floor. “I’m sure that was just Cujo’s way of saying hello. Beside, I own a Great Dane, too. I’m used to getting knocked down.” He walked over to Cujo and, to complete this stunning phenomenon, her dog allowed him to scratch Keenan behind the ears. “My, my. Aren’t you a handsome boy?”

  Jalila shook her head. “Now I think I’ve seen everything. He usually doesn’t like men. Up until now, my father is the only man Cujo doesn’t bark his head off at. And even he can’t make any sudden moves.” Keenan’s rich laughter deepened and something wickedly delicious stirred within Jalila.

  “In that case, I’m going to take it as a good sign that he likes me.”

  “You should.” She went and picked up the flowers, pleased that she’d lost only a couple of petals.

  “Is there somewhere I can wash up?” She turned.

  “Uhm, yeah. You’ll have to go upstairs.” Jalila fought back the feeling of déjà vu. “The first-floor bathroom is still being renovated.”

  He handed over the bottle of champagne. “I’ll be right back.”

  She nodded and gave him directions to the bathroom. When he took off up the stairs, she went into the kitchen to put the flowers in a vase. After that she forced herself to return to grilling her dinner. While waiting for Keenan to return she kept praying, “Please stay out of my closet. Please stay out of my closet.”

  Jalila exhaled a sigh of relief when she heard the back door slide open.

  “Now what do you know about grilling?” he asked, his voice a light tease.

  She flipped over her steak. A few flames licked but missed her hand before she glanced back over her shoulder at him. “Please. I know my way around a grill.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” he said dubiously.

  “Join me for dinner? I have another steak marinading.”

  He hesitated. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

  “No trouble at all. In fact, I took out some vegetables in the kitchen earlier. Maybe we can make some kabobs?”

  “I’ll do it,” he offered.

  She lifted an eyebrow at him.

  “Just because I have a cook doesn’t mean that I don’t know my way around a kitchen. I’m a progressive kind of guy,” he bragged. “You hold down the grill and I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  “Well, all right then.” She laughed.

  It took Keenan no time at all to skewer the kabobs and bring them out to the grill. A half hour later, the two sat at the patio table with a hearty meal in front of them. Since the champagne didn’t exactly go with the meal, Jalila made some margaritas. Music was playing through the outdoor speakers.

  “Now this is the good life,” Keenan said, easing back from the table and his now-empty plate. “I have to say that I had my doubts about you manning the grill, but you knocked this out of the park.”

  “Well, thank you very much.” They clicked their glasses and then she lifted her chin proudly into the air. She loved the way the evening breeze was blowing through her hair and the tequila gave her a nice buzz.

  The sun was setting and the sky was a beautiful palette of indigo, lilac and dusty rose with flecks of gold.

  “It looks like a painting,” Jalila whispered, gazing up at the sky. “I love this time of day.”

  “Me, too,” he said.

  She glanced over and they shared a smile. “Usually I’m too busy to stop and just appreciate the setting sun, but the times that I do, I just feel this wonderful calm.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  For a long while, the two of them, Cujo at their feet, remained silent, watching as the sun disappeared and the night fell like a curtain, leaving only the patio light to shine on them.

  “Mind if I ask you a question?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “How did you get into the television business?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I’ve always loved movies and television. Who didn’t, living in this town, right?”

  She nodded.

  “But growing up, I first thought that I was going to become a car dealer like my father.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “It’s probably where I inherited my salesmanship skills. It comes in handy in this business. But then, somewhere in high school, I liked the idea of becoming a lawyer, then in college I got this chance to intern at NBC—even got to work on The Late Show with Jay Leno in the early nineties. Once you’re around it, it’s easy to get bitten by the bug.”

  “Do you still like what you do?”

  “I love it,” he admitted honestly. “Despite the long hours, the headaches, the ulcers and the prima donnas. There’s a certain energy in this business, wheeling and dealing and whatnot. It can consume you.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you have much time for a love life.”

  He frowned.

  “I mean—personal life.”

  He cocked a grin at her. “No, you’re right—on both counts. At least, that’s what my ex-wife thought, too.”

  Jalila waited, not daring to speak for fear that he wouldn’t continue. Something flickered across his handsome face. Had his marriage dissolved from more than them simply outgrowing each other as he’d previously claimed? Had he been hurt?

  “Anyway, I don’t want to bore you.”

  “Nooo,” she said eagerly, and then realized that she needed to tone it down a bit. “I mean, you’re not boring me at all.”

  Still he remained quiet.

  “In fact,” she added, “my friends say that I’m a pretty good listener.”

  He nodded. “I agree with them.”

  Jalila was flattered by the off-hand compliment, but knew that he wanted to move on. “We’re out of margaritas.”

  Keenan glanced down at his empty glass. “So it appears.”

  Just then the Fugees’s “Killing Me Softly,” the extended instrumental version, b
egan to play. The song triggered a memory and Jalila closed her eyes and smiled to herself.

  “Ahh,” Keenan said.

  She opened her eyes to find him staring at her. “What?”

  “That’s what I want to know. What’s that smile about?”

  She shook her head, embarrassed to share.

  “No, no. Give it up. When a woman smiles like that she is definitely remembering something good.”

  “Well…” Jalila’s face warmed with embarrassment. “It’s just that…my high-school sweetheart and I danced to this song at our prom.”

  “Was this the gay guy?”

  She drew a deep breath. Of course, he’d know about that. “Unfortunately.”

  Keenan stood and then held out his hand.

  Confused, she glanced up.

  “C’mon. Let’s dance. Who knows, maybe after tonight you’ll think of me whenever you hear this song.”

  There was a look on his face that said he was just as surprised by his words as she was, but still she placed her hand in his and stood. He draped one arm around her waist, creating a sphere around them where the world had drifted away and an undeniable heat simmered. Their bodies brushed against each other while they rocked in time to the beat. Jalila felt like she had a high-school crush, especially the way she had trouble meeting his gaze.

  Was he feeling what she felt right now or were her overcharged hormones and sex-starved body making a fool out of her once again?

  “I bet you’re dangerous on the dance floor,” he mused with a crooked grin.

  “I manage to stay on two feet.” Just as the words left her mouth, Jalila stepped on Keenan’s foot. “Oops. Make that three feet.”

  He laughed, his firm body quaking and rubbing against her. Now she couldn’t decide whether she was experiencing pleasure or just going through pure torture. At long last she lifted her eyes and found his intense gaze drinking her in.

  “I’ve been trying to figure it out,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “How a woman as beautiful, smart and kind as you are could have any trouble in the man department.”

  “It’s not about getting a man—it’s about finding the right one.”