“I’ll have the dinner portion of the steak medallions with the potatoes and salad. Add a coke to that, please.” Blaine handed the waiter his menu as well.
Belinda hid a grin at the surprised looks on her sons’ faces. The twins always had large appetites, it was good to see that had not changed.
“You gonna eat a steak at one o’clock?” Abe asked Donnie.
“Yes. Why not? I like rib-eyes.”
“It’s your stomach,” Abe muttered.
“Yes… yes, it is,” Donnie said, surprising her and Abe as well with his quick comeback.
“Mom told me you were my dad,” Adam said to Blaine. And to his credit the man didn’t react. She hadn’t had a chance to discuss paternity with her former lovers, but since her sons were not identical, she was comfortable making assignments.
“Your mother is right,” Blaine said immediately, returning Adam’s gaze.
Her face warmed as Donnie and Abe stared each other down.
“I don’t have a father,” Abe said in a low voice. “A father is someone who is there for his kid when he needs him. Mom says I have to respect the position of paternity and I will try to do that, but nothing else. Granted, if it were not for you I wouldn’t be here, and for that…thanks, I guess.”
Belinda coughed and took another sip of her water. Of her two sons, Abe favored her side of the family more, but had the same color hair and eyes as his brother. She wondered what Donald thought about that.
“I appreciate you being a straight shooter, Abe. That makes this easier for me, because I call them as I see them too. I had no idea the love of my life was pregnant. Blaine and I had a fight, and were grounded for a few days. During that time, your mom made a trip to visit her godmother.” He paused. “I waited to hear from her and never did. She never returned, and as far as I knew, never called or tried to contact me again. Her family wouldn’t tell me a damn thing, and none of her friends knew anything. I was crushed…for years.” He paused, glanced at her and then returned his gaze to Abe.
Belinda saw the pain in his eyes. Her heart jumped a beat at the familiar heat there as well. Oh hell.
“I just learned yesterday that your mom had tried to contact us. She talked to my dad and he lied when he told her he would tell us. So we never knew about you or where she was.”
Abe snorted. Belinda read the confusion in his eyes behind his tough veneer. “Why would he do that? Because mom’s black? Or she didn’t have money like you guys? Is he racist or something?”
“Hold up,” Donnie said, leaning forward. “Race has nothing to do with my family. My mom is so mixed she calls herself a mutt. I loved your mom because she was a strong, beautiful woman who brought joy and sunshine into my life. Problem was my twin.” He tipped his head toward a silent Blaine. “He was in love with her, too. And my da…father, didn’t like that we fought over her.”
“You had a fight? Over mom?” Adam asked as he leaned back in his chair so the waiter could place salads on the table. Belinda’s face warmed at the interested look she received from the server.
Blaine nodded. “The green monster, we had it bad.” He looked at Belinda. His heated gaze singed her and sent zings of remembered pleasure to her core. “But hey, look at her. She’s beautiful.”
Feeling her son's gazes, heat filled her neck and face as she patted her dry lips.
“Yes, she is very pretty, she’s our mom,” Abe said defensively. “What I don’t understand is how each of you fathered one of us. Mom said she talked to a doctor after we were born and he explained about two eggs being released and how sperm remains alive inside a woman for a certain amount of time.” His gaze narrowed. “So that would mean –”
“Abraham Victor Moore,” she called his whole name sternly. “We have been over this already. Too many times. This conversation is not about conception, son. You are here. I have explained as much to you about the how as you need to know. You had questions for your father, he’s here. Now is the time to ask. Stay focused. No more sperm talk,” she hissed.
After a moment, he nodded and ate his salad.
Adam snickered.
Face on fire, she absolutely refused to look at Donnie or Blaine. There was no real conversation for the next fifteen minutes as everyone ate, and she was grateful. Being so close to the men she had lost her heart to and seeing them in the faces of her sons took a toll on her. As necessary as this meeting was, it was not a good idea… for her.
“What grade are you in Abe?” Donnie asked.
“Tenth.”
“Do you play sports?”
“Yes.”
“What sports do you play?” Donnie asked when Abe didn’t elaborate.
“Football, baseball.”
“Do you play sports, Adam?” Donnie asked.
“Nope. Not my thing.”
“Really? What is your thing?” Blaine asked.
Adam lifted his hands. “I like working with these. It’s easier for me, I was diagnosed with ADD when I was younger. Damaged. Sorry, you didn’t get a bargain with me.”
“I believe I did,” Blaine said before Belinda could chastise Adam for his remark.
Adam snorted. “Abe’s the smart one, good in sports, hardly ever gets in trouble. He’s the good son. You got the short stick…Dad.”
“No, I got the right son. My son. No matter what happens or what you consider your shortcomings, does not change that. So suck it up and realize that I am a part of your life now…son.”
Belinda hid a smile at Adam’s surprised expression. Blaine was the perfect choice for Adam, he was strong and the more patient of the two men.
Adam shrugged. “Okay, I warned you.”
Blaine nodded and glanced at her.
She smiled, pleased with how he handled the situation. His eyes dropped to her lips and the smile he had worn moments before disappeared. When his gaze met hers again, humor had been replaced with a primal need that sent off warning bells throughout her body. Her nipples hardened and her skin felt prickly.
“Mom?...Mom?” Abe said, touching her arm.
“Hmmm?” She dragged her gaze away from Blaine’s and met her son’s.
“You have this rule that we don’t call adults by their first names. But he said I could call him Donald, is that okay?”
She met Donald’s gaze as she shook her head. “No, that’s not okay. You can call him Mr. O’Connor or Mr. Donald, but not by his first name. Remember our discussion on respecting the position.”
Abe nodded. “Thought so.” He returned his attention to Donnie. “So your dad blocked all communication with mom. Why didn’t you try to find her anyway? If she was the love of your life, seems to me you would’ve gone that extra mile and searched for her.”
Donnie nodded, glanced at her, and then returned his attention to Abe. “We took a road trip to Georgia during spring break after my first year in law school. All we knew was her godmother lived in a small town outside of Atlanta. No one would tell us more than that. We spent five days asking questions and talking to people. Even showed them her picture, no one had seen her.”
“Of course we circled Atlanta, tried to stay within a ten to fifteen mile radius and even then we couldn’t get to every community,” Blaine said. “Plus, the people were skeptical when they saw her picture. I finally had to show a picture she and I had taken together.”
“Which made it worse in some areas,” Donald said, sounding disgusted. “Bigotry is alive in the south, that’s for sure.”
Belinda sat shell-shocked. They had come looking for her? Never in a billion years would she have guessed that.
“That don’t make sense to just go driving around looking for someone when you don’t know where they are,” Adam said into the silence.
“It does when that person is the love of your life,” Blaine said softly. “We didn’t know what happened to your mom. She just disappeared. What if she had been in an accident or something? Not knowing haunted us every day. It got to the point it was all we could t
alk or think about.”
Donald nodded. “So we had no choice, we had to look for her. If we had found her back then, we wouldn’t have missed all this time with you guys.”
Belinda’s heart soared with the knowledge she hadn’t been wrong about them all those years back. If only her godmother hadn’t kept her tethered to that church, which was no more than a cult, more people would’ve seen her around.
“Mom didn’t know, that’s for sure,” Abe said, sounding more like her level-headed son.
She shook her head. “No…I didn’t know.”
“Soooo….O’Connor? We’re part Irish?” Abe asked.
Belinda frowned. She had never thought about bloodlines and cultural differences, but the question had her thinking. Once again the speed with which she had fallen in love with these two amazed her. When she was with them, there were no cultural barriers. Race never entered their equation. Despite what Donnie said, she wondered if his father would’ve reacted the same way if she hadn’t been African American.
Blaine nodded. “Yes. You are part Irish. We have a large family. Our parents live in Pennsylvania. I have an older brother, Frank. He’s married. I have two other younger brothers, Roark and Benjamin.”
“We also have one sister, she’s with her husband in Germany now, I think. Military,” Donald added. “Lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Large family… hopefully both of you will be able to meet them soon.”
Abe pursed his lips. “What do you do? Where do you live? City or country? Big or small? Ever been married? Got any more kids?” He fired off his questions like a semi-automatic.
Blaine smiled.
Donald laughed. “No. Never married.” He tipped his head toward Blaine. “Neither of us. And as far as I know, you are the only child I have. We live in a five thousand square foot home in a small town in Pennsylvania, Leedsville. The closest major city is Pittsburgh. I am an attorney and Blaine is a financial analyst. We both own our own companies.” He paused. “Anything else?”
“Wait. You said we…y’all live together? Work together?” Adam asked the question Belinda had been thinking.
Blaine nodded. “Yes, we do. We own an office building and work out of it. And at home, he has a section and I have a section, and then there are shared areas.”
“But…why?” Adam asked frowning. “I mean Abe and I are twins, and close, but I don’t plan on living with him forever. I want my own space, be my own man.”
“I don’t plan to live with you either,” Abe muttered.
Blaine met her gaze before answering. “We are pretty close. Once, in our entire lives we have only…seriously disagreed on one issue. For some reason, being too far apart does not work for us. Believe me, we tried. Our freshman year of college, we went to separate colleges and almost flunked out after the first semester. I transferred to Donald’s university and graduated in the top one percent of my class.”
“Huh? What are you saying?” Abe asked, sounding confused. “That you two have to be together in order to function? That…that does not make any sense.”
Donald leaned forward with his fingertips steepled beneath his chin. “It’s difficult to explain… and we rarely try.” He paused as his words settled. “But in this instance we’ll give it a shot.”
“Thanks,” Adam said in a dry tone.
Blaine smiled.
“I will explain it to you the way my mom explained it to us. She claims we have some sort of symbiotic or dependent connection. As babies we had to be close to each other to sleep. If one was sick the other could calm him. Although we had other siblings, we were not content unless the other twin was nearby. She said it was like that in school. The first day in kindergarten the teachers put us in different classrooms. Mom said we wailed so loud that they never separated us again.”
“That must’ve sucked in high school,” Abe said.
“No. By the time we reached middle school we were better as long as we were at the same school. Same as college. Like I said it’s hard to explain, but we’ve always been this way,” Blaine said into the silence.
“But mom is the only woman you both dated?” Abe asked.
“Yes. We both fell in love with her and that had never happened before or since,” Blaine said.
Belinda swallowed hard at the solemnest of his voice. Even though she sensed that to have a deep relationship with one, you’d have to love the other, she hadn’t known about their challenges growing up.
“Gee Mom, you sure are lucky,” Adam said, his expression sarcastic.
“Yes, I am. Because of Blaine and Donnie, I have you and Abe. That makes me the luckiest woman in the world.” She held his gaze until he nodded and turn away.
“Belinda?”
She caught Abe’s frown, praying that her ears were playing tricks on her. Robert was the last person she needed to see right now. But the expression her son wore whenever Robert was around was plastered on his face. Without glancing at Donnie or Blaine, she turned slightly in the direction of the voice. After clearing her throat, she spoke. “Hello Robert, how are you?” She tried to add warmth to her tone to mask her annoyance over his sudden appearance.
The handsome, older black male moved closer to her chair while looking at all the males at the table. Robert Damascus didn’t handle drama or controversy in his private life well at all. The numerous discussions they'd had in the beginning of their relationship had laid the groundwork for the path they were now on. It was one of the reasons she hadn’t contacted him about any of her recent challenges with her son.
“I'm well, you are looking lovely as always,” he said as his gaze swung to meet hers. Inwardly she sighed at his pursed lips. The relationship she had with Robert had been comfortable. Her heart was safe. There was no sizzle, no burn. Seeing the question in his eyes, she knew that their time was coming to an end.
Smiling, she nodded while praying both sets of twins would allow her to handle this awkward situation. Her mind swirled with possible explanations, and short of denying Donnie and Blaine she drew a blank.
“Hello, Adam and Abraham, how are you boys doing?” Robert said into the silence.
“I’m good,” Abe mumbled and stuffed a fry into his mouth.
“Me too,” Adam said, not bothering to hide his amusement. He sat back and folded his arms across his chest with a grin. He and Robert hadn’t got along from day one. Robert thought she coddled her sons, and Adam had heard him. From that point on, the two avoided each other.
“Hello, I'm Robert Damascus.” He looked at Donnie and Blaine expectantly.
Blaine nodded. “Blaine O’Connor.”
“Donald O’Connor, attorney.”
Robert’s eyes widened a bit and then he looked at Adam. “You in trouble again?”
Adam’s nostrils pinched as he straightened in his seat.
“No, he’s not in trouble, why would you say that?” Blaine asked in a bland tone that might fool anyone who did not know him. Funny, she remembered hearing him ask that same question to a bartender when he'd asked him something about her. She straightened in her chair remembering the bloodied nose of the bartender from that event.
“Adam is fine. He’s not in any kind of trouble,” she said in a hard voice, gaining Robert’s attention.
His brows shot up as he met her glare. “I didn’t mean anything by that. I was just wondering why you’re speaking to an attorney with the boys here.”
“Then you should have asked me that instead of embarrassing my son like that.”
“But I didn’t –”
She threw up her hand to cut him off. He wasn’t that good in bed that she would put up with him calling her child out like that. “Excuse me,” she called over her shoulder as she stepped away from the table to deal with her now ex-boyfriend.
When they were a short distance away, he spoke. “Listen, I realize I was out of line back there, I apologize. Let me make it up to you. Dinner tonight? A weekend trip to the mountains? You name it and I’ll do it.” He stood close
to her, the subtle fragrance from his cologne stroked her nostrils. The man had always smelled so damn good.
Inwardly she sighed as she gazed at his smooth mocha complexion. It had been a good ride while it lasted. But once again his insensitivity to her circumstances shone through. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she released a slow breath.
“My father just had major, life-altering surgery.” She paused to keep from snapping at him. “I cannot leave town. You know this. You also know how hard it is for me to find time to break away from the house –”
“But you’re here.” He tipped his head toward the table. “With them, having lunch. You had time for that and yet…. Every time I’ve asked you out in the past month, you’ve had an excuse or an emergency come up at the last minute. So I am not sure how hard anything is for you Belinda. I haven’t seen or really talked with you in days. That’s why I'm surprised to see you here now.”
She blinked.
Staring at his earnest expression, she checked her memories, comparing them with his words. Surely they hadn’t gone a month…. Had it been that long since they were together? She couldn’t remember. Damn. When had she started avoiding him?
“Robert, I…”
“What? You’ve been busy? So have I. Maybe you’re too busy.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the table and then sighed. “Yeah, you are.” He ran his hand over his low-cut hair that showcased his salt and pepper waves. “Look, you’re a wonderful woman, but this isn’t working. Maybe it’s just the timing or something, but your plate is already full and I don’t need to add to it.” He leaned forward and brushed his lips across her forehead. “Take care of yourself and your sons. You’re a special lady and a great mother.” He smiled, stuck his hands in his pockets and strode out the restaurant.
Stunned, she remained rooted to the spot. Did he just break up with me? She wondered as she replayed his words.
“Mom?”
She turned slowly toward Adam’s voice and met his concerned gaze. “Yeah?”
“We’re ready to go? You gonna finish this here or take it home?”
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