Coming For What's Mine pt 2: The Politician (Law Boy's Series)

by Edwina Fort

  Oh my God!!!

  I put my hand on my chest trying to calm my breathing. He smiled down at me, lifting his finger to push one of my locs that had fallen in my face behind my ear.

  “Because it’s true.”

  I opened my mouth to say that it wasn’t, but never got a chance because a booming voice came from within the restaurant.

  “Joseph Warren, just the man I came back to Washington to see.”

  “Bill, you son of gun. Where have you been? The Hill has been a boring place without your theatrics.” Jo said shaking the older blond man’s hand.

  Bill chuckled. “I heard about the accident. Is your foot okay?”

  Jo waved away his concern. “I’m faking it to get all of this one’s attention.” He said reaching for my hand bringing it to his lips.

  Bill laughed again, taking Jo’s words for the joke they were attended to be. Only I knew that the scoundrel was actually telling the truth. When I looked at him skeptically he had the nerve to wink at me.

  This man is a trip. He is such a damn politician!

  “And who might this lovely lady in the yellow dress be?” Bill asked reaching for my hand lifting it to his lips.

  “This is the woman I hope to someday soon make my wife.” Jo said easing my hand away from the older man’s before his lips could touch it. “So, keep your lips to yourself, you geezer.”

  This caused Bill to hold his head back and roar with laughter. He patted Jo on his back. “This is why I love you, kid. Come, join me for lunch. I would love to get to know the woman that has captured the heart of a legendary rake like yourself a little better.”

  Jo opened his mouth to refuse his offer.

  “Oh, come on man, I’ve come all the way back to Washington with a blank endorsement che—” He didn’t even have to finish.

  “You know, Bill, I think my lovely lady and I will join you for lunch to catch up on old times of course.”

  My goodness! See what I mean? Politician…

  “Sorry about this, my love, I will make it up to you later.” Jo said low as he guided me through the restaurant to Bill’s table.

  “No problem, do what you have to do.”

  He looked down at me for a moment before he nodded once. There was something else in his eyes that I couldn’t quite peg.

  He pulled out my chair and as I went to sit, he leaned over till his lips gently brushed my ear. “I appreciate you understanding.”

  I sucked in my breath at the feel of his tongue against my lobe. A shiver ripped through me from the unexpected caress. I looked around with startled eyes to see if anybody had noticed what he’d done.

  Nobody had, not even Bill, who was still jovially going on about how good it was to be back on the Hill and how he’d missed everyone. But at that point I was having a hard time focusing on anything he was saying.

  Yeah sure, I was smiling and appearing to give him my undivided attention, nodding here and there, but something had shifted in the air between me and Jo, and I ain’t gon’ lie, I was losing hold of my willpower to fight.

  The lines were beginning to blur. I didn’t even know what I was fighting anymore. Ever since he’d laid his head against my warmth and slept there last night…

  Ughhhh!!!

  Now, I had to force myself to think about something other than sex, which was hard to do because everything Jo did made me think about sex. He had a way of licking his lips sometimes before he spoke, and there was the way he opened the button on his suit before he sat, revealing just how well his shirt fit against his well-muscled stomach and chest.

  And whenever he laughed his Adam’s apple moved up and down in his strong neck, making me just want to crawl in his lap and lick it. I groaned biting my lip.

  Dang it, I’m in a tight spot.

  Jo looked over at me and smiled. It was as if he could sense what I was going through because right then, he put his hand on my thigh, gently moving my dress aside so that his warm palm was against my flesh.

  As the lunch progressed his hand got higher and higher and I knew I should stop him or push his hand away, but for the life of me I couldn’t.

  However, I did manage to get through lunch without jumping Jo, thanks to Bill, who was hilarious. Jo and his son had attended college together and were pretty close in those days. Like Albert, he had plenty of wild stories about Jo’s shenanigans that had me in tears. And of course, Jo shook his head denying the things Bill said were true.

  Several people stopped by our table to talk to Jo. I was amazed at how many people wanted to be a part of his world.

  “It’s always been that way.” Bill muttered to me reading my mind as Jo stood to shake hands with the Supreme Court justice. “The kid has charisma.”

  I nodded and was going to tell him I was beginning to see that, but right then Jo reached for my hand and introduced me as the love of his life, the woman he soon hoped to make his bride.

  You see, this had been the fourth time he’d said this today. I didn’t want to read more into this than what it was. Jo was a smooth talker; he would say anything to get what he wanted, but what could he possibly want from me that he hadn’t already gotten?

  So why keep saying that he wanted me to be his bride if he didn’t mean it?

  The one time he’d said anything about marriage had been the night of his party. He hadn’t uttered another word about it till today. Now I couldn’t tell if it was something he really meant or something he was just telling his peers.

  And oh my goodness! These were his peers. He was introducing me to them and that just confused me more. Could I have made a mistake by assuming all those things about him?

  I know what I saw at his retirement dinner. But how can I explain this?

  “Jo, my wife is driving me crazy.” Bill said after the Supreme Court justice had moved on. “She’s really concerned about climate change.”

  His words drew me out of my thoughts.

  “I don’t know what nonsense she’s been watching, but she’s convinced the damn planet is dying. Claims she can’t grow anything in our soil anymore without adding crap to it.”

  I wiped my mouth with my napkin. “With all due respect, sir, she is not speaking nonsense. What she said is a fact. You only need to study any data collected by the Unites States Department of Agriculture of the nutrient reduction in the soil from 1981 till now to know she speaks the truth.”

  Bill looked at me surprised, up until this point, I hadn’t said much. I had been too busy trying to hold my composure and not start doing a happy dance because Jo was telling all his peers that he loved me.

  “Journey received a scholarship to Georgetown for their Botany program. She was single handily courted by the head of the department. So, if anybody would know whether your wife speaks the truth, it would be her.” Jo surprised me by saying, I wasn’t even aware he knew that information.

  Bill exhaled. “Okay, young lady. Give me the spill. Should I be as worried as my wife says I should be about the condition of our planet?”

  “Mr. Bill, you should be more than worried. In fact, you should be terrified.”

  Then I spent the next thirty minutes telling him about my studies and the studies of others in the field. When I was done he wore a look of astonishment on his face.

  “You marry this woman and you’ll have my endorsement.” Bill told Jo as we were leaving.

  “Okay now, I’m going to hold you to that.”

  Bill chuckled as he patted Jo on the back. “I’ve always told you, I’d rather see you sitting in that seat.” He paused for a moment as his eyes grew sober.

  “If you choose to run, young man, you don’t have to worry about finances. There are a lot of us waiting to back you.” He patted him on the back one more time. “We believe in you, kid.”

  “Thank you, Bill, that means a lot.”

  Bill took my hand and brought it to his lips before Jo could stop him. “It was an honor meeting you, Journey. You’re good for him. Out of all the years I’v
e known him, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in love. You make him want to be a better man.” He nodded.

  “With you by his side, he will succeed in whichever path he chooses.”

  Tears burned the back of my eyes. “Thank you, Bill.” My words were barely over a whisper.

  Like yesterday, my emotions were on overload. I couldn’t quite compute all that had happened in the last few hours, although God knows I was trying. I had been so lost in my thoughts when we left the restaurant that I didn’t even pay attention to the fact that Jo was driving till we were halfway home.

  You see, there was something I needed to know before he and I went any further.

  “Jo?”

  He reached over and turned down the music. “Yeah, baby.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Chloe?”

  He exhaled, shaking his head slightly. “I was stupid. I let my anger rule me. I told myself the only thing I wanted from the woman who had ran away from me without telling me she was pregnant with my child was sex. There would be nothing more. I got the house for Ayana, the money…it was all for her. I—” He paused, shaking his head again.

  “I didn’t think I would fall in love. It’s never happened before. I didn’t know…” I turned to look at him, amazed he was telling me the truth, his anguish was real. It was like he was trying to figure it out as he answered my question.

  “I don’t know when I started loving you, but I did. And at that point I didn’t know what to do. On one hand, I had my parents pressuring me to fulfill an arrangement that was made when I was in grade school and on the other hand, I have the woman who brought warmth and color into my life. This woman in the yellow dress, who takes a moment out of her day just to give thanks for her blessings and taught me how to do the same thing. This woman, whose laughter makes me feel like the luckiest man on earth.”

  He rubbed his hand over his head. “I really didn’t know how bad I’d messed up until I lost you and realized I’d lost my heartbeat.”

  He turned to look at me. “How can a man survive without his heartbeat?”

  His gaze searched mine, looking for an answer to his question.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.” My words were low.

  “He can’t, J…he can’t.”

  “What about now? What about your parents and Chloe?”

  It took him a little while to answer that. “You know, I was raised to follow a certain pattern. It seems like my whole life has been about me trying to rebel against it. When I was a kid my parents couldn’t handle me, so they brought in Albert to do their dirty work for them. I didn’t feel free till I went to the military. There, I felt like I could be me, like I could release all the frustration and the anger that’s been building up in me.”

  “What were you angry about?”

  He shook his head. “I was angry because I was moving in a direction I didn’t want to go, and no matter how I bucked and protested against it on the inside, my body continued to go in that direction. But something happened when I met you. For the first time, I saw a different way and I wanted it…I wanted it so bad I could barely think about anything else. You became the light at the end of the tunnel.”

  He paused for a moment. “I told my parents and Chloe the night of my party that I couldn’t marry her. I called it off. And it felt great. For the first time I strayed away from the path that had been set out before me and it felt great.”

  I wanted to tell him about what his mother had done in the beginning when she found out I was pregnant and the afternoon of his party, but for some reason, I held my tongue. She was evil, but maybe she was just trying to do the best thing for her son. I mean, should Jo decide to run for office, I’m not really first lady material. I could be the reason America would never accept him.

  Maybe that’s why his parents were so set on him marrying Chloe. She was definitely first lady material. It was clear she was mixed raced. She didn’t have natural hair like me; she had long processed hair, not a curl in sight. And she didn’t favor the loud bright colors I did. She was definitely a black and navy-blue suit kind of gal.

  “Did they choose her because she would make a good first lady?”

  He chuckled. “Hell no. They chose her because she’s Jeff’s daughter.”

  “Who is Jeff?”

  “The head of Macon Technologies. The man whose money put my father in office. Jeff is the puppet master, that’s who he is.” He paused for a moment.

  “He’s also the man that’s going to try and put me in office. The man whose noose is around my father’s neck and soon will try and be around mine, if I allow it.”

  As a woman in a man’s life, you must be careful what you say to him. Your words can impact him to be great or to be a failure. My mother said that no matter how angry she got at my father she never said words that degraded him, because life had degraded him enough. The job he’s forced to work to get paid less than he deserves.

  When he walks out the front door he’s faced with the knowledge that depending on the whelm of the authority of this land, this could be his last day alive or able to support his family that depended on him to be the lead and the head.

  She said the Heavenly Father has given her a super power. She had the power to build him up and the power to break him down.

  So, here I sat while my man, the man that so many wanted to one day become president of these United States, spoke to me of the agony of his life. What was I to do? A simple word from me would encourage him to continue on the path that is causing him anger and rage. And a simple word from me could help him choose the path that leads to his freedom…

  “If this path that has been chosen for you upsets you so, why do you continue to walk it? It seems to me that you have been chosen to help people. Maybe the way in which you always assumed this mission would be accomplished is not the way the Heavenly Father prepared for you.”

  He turned to look at me then. He didn’t speak, he just studied me, taking in my words and digesting them. See what I mean?

  “Sometimes we do a disservice to ourselves when we try and buck against his will.” I chuckled. “My mama calls it the vanity of man. She says it’s completely vain of us to assume we have our whole lives figured out when there is one that sits high and looks low.”

  I took his hand that rested on the seat next to me.

  “It’s okay Jo, you’re going to know soon enough which path you should choose. And I have all the confidence in the world that when you find your path, you’re going to make a difference in a lot of folks’ lives, including me and Ayana’s. But no matter what you choose, we got your back, bro.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sweet Surrender

  “There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God.”

  ~~~Toni Morrison

  Journey

  A week later I was in a desperate state. Jo was torturing me! I wanted sex! And the man pretended as if he couldn’t even tell. He continued to sleep in my room, in my bed, holding me close to him, giving me just a gentle peck on the neck and nothing more. He was always touching me just outside of the places I needed him to touch most.

  He’d palm just underneath my breasts or rub his hand on my thigh just outside of my hot center.

  Oh! Oh! And this one takes the cake; he’d placed his hand at the base of my back, just above my butt. He was going to force me to jump on him and just take what I wanted!

  Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest…like I said, it’s been a rough week. Let me tell you guys that I have been fighting fire with fire. That fake cast was driving him mad. He was scratching at it and kept banging it against stuff. The other day he went into a full cursing fit about how stupid the thing was. He cursed that cast out like it wa
s a grown man that had robbed him or something.

  I know he wanted to take it off for a minute, but I never gave him a chance. He knew what he was doing to me, those little kisses on my neck and never on my lips, and those little gentle brushes of his hand.

  And yes, I knew what I was doing as well. He’d try to go into his office, claiming he had work to do, I would wait a minute and then just barge in. Several times I caught him in the act of taking the cast off.

  “Jo, your leg needs to heal; you had a big operation on it, one that caused you to see the light. You can’t pull at the cast like that. You don’t want to end up flatlining again, do you? Here, let me help you get it back situated.”

  “Thanks baby, you’re so good to me.” He’d mutter dryly.

  I would have to bite my lip to keep from laughing. I could tell he wanted to pick me up and physically throw me out his office.

  I had gotten to a point where I was tired of playing games with him. I was ready for us to come clean about everything. Him and his fake injury. And me that I forgave him and was ready to have a good round of makeup sex.

  The perfect opportunity presented itself that Tuesday when he informed me a few of his brothers-in-arms were going to come over to work out with him. He said it was something they did at least twice a month.

  “That’s perfect, I need to go and speak with my professor about some new data I’d gathered. Once she and I get going we can go for a minute, so I probably won’t be back to just before dinner.”

  I could tell he didn’t want me to go; of late, he’s barely let me out of his sight.

  “Okay, as long as you take Albert with you. If you want, you can leave Ayana here, I’m not going anywhere.”

  I nodded, my mind already putting together my plan. “That will work. Have fun with your friends.” I told him.