“Well, what do you eat?” A male voice chimed in.
Not just any man. It was Spencer.
Juniper ducked her head. “Hey, what are you doing here?”
“I just left a client in the office park down the street and I decided to bring you something.”
What would that be? “What?”
And how did he know that she would be here anyway? The admin office wasn’t open until nine and it was about a half hour from that.
“This.” He took his hand from behind his back and extended a single blush colored rose.
“Wow. I don’t know what to say.” Despite the fact it was a single rose, the blossom was extravagantly beautiful, not to mention perfect. Every petal was fresh and the bud had barely unfurled.
“Say you’ll have lunch with me. Not being disrespectful to your assistant, but I can promise to do better than the dollar menu.” He winked and Ebony stumbled over, almost the same way bees bumbled onto flowers.
But instead of stopping there, Ebony joined in on the fun.
“I’m sorry about our friend here. She’s just tongue tied, but yes, she will be happy to have lunch with you.”
“Ebony!”
“What?”
“I planned on working through lunch today.” The excuse was pathetic, but she couldn’t go out with him just yet. She was working up to that.
“Well, how about you tell me what you’d like to eat and I would be happy to make a delivery around noon.”
Before Juniper could get a word in edgewise, Ebony butted back in yet again. “We like Dirty Dick’s Crab Pot.”
“I can’t eat that today. It’s not my day off.” Everyone at the villa knew of her lifestyle and helped her to stay on track with little gifts like fruit baskets and pedometers.
“Come on, live a little, Junie.”
“I hate when you call me that Ebony and you know it.”
“Everyone deserves a nickname.”
“If my mom wanted to call me Junie, she would have named me that.”
Ebony grinned. “I like it. Suits you.”
Juniper picked up the mountain of paper on Ebony’s desk and tried to arrange the mass. “Spencer, thank you for the beautiful flower, but I have work to do today and I can’t have lunch with you.”
“I can understand that. There’s nothing wrong with having priorities. But I think you have to eat eventually, so just let me do this for you.” He apparently was only going to accept yes for an answer.
She had wasted too much time in search of the missing statement to argue the rest of her early start away. “Fine. Ebony knows what I like.” Juniper liked Spencer, but she didn’t know him. There were too many crazies to be careless about who she allowed into her life.
Juniper gave Ebony the most scathing glare she was capable of, although with Juniper’s personality and cute face, that wasn’t much. Nor was it likely to be very scary. And with Ebony’s sunny demeanor, it would be forgotten in fifteen seconds anyway.
Juniper walked back into her office, her nursing shoes squeaked on the floor the entire way back and made her proud exit comical.
Several hours later, she had completed the bulk of her day. But to get to that point, she had to deal with two staff meetings, another meeting with the owner by phone and a stack of paperwork that seemed taller than she was.
The electronic era had disposed of most of the paper, but it seemed that for every digital signature she made, there were three more to take its place. By twelve, it seemed like she had kinks on top of kinks.
There was a masseuse on duty, but she hated to take the man away from the residents especially on the days that weight lifting was offered on the grounds. It seemed based on her empirical data that those were the busiest days for the small spa on site.
Juniper was used to dealing with her own achy muscles and she had just the thing. It was a small handheld massing wand and combined with a heating pad, she would be good as new in twenty minutes. But no sooner than she turned the wand on, the door opened.
“Anyone order delivery?” Spencer’s arm held a bag in the doorway, though the rest of him was hidden by the wall.
Juniper laughed and felt a twinge along her nape. “No, but I’m guessing you will drop it off anyway.”
“That is very true.” Spencer walked over to the desk and began to unpack boxes of something that smelled beyond good. It wasn’t packed in Styrofoam, but plastic storage containers and she was taken aback for a moment.
“What’s that?”
“I decided to cook something for you.”
“Okay. I’m guessing that Ebony told you she wanted the special huh?”
“Yeah, about that? I would prefer not to order something called I love cock and balls. But I did leave her the money to pick up her order.” He smiled and Juniper flashed a grin of her own back.
“Can’t say that I blame you. I won’t even call it in myself. Whenever we do take out there Ebony has to call it in and pick it up.”
Juniper laughed whole heartedly. It was a guilty pleasure. The food at Dick’s was stupendous seafood, but she couldn’t bring herself to order a single thing off of the menu and she definitely wasn’t bringing her kids there either.
Come on, who wanted hear their child ask for blue balls?
Mattress mambo?
Or an order of Eunuch?
Not on my watch.
As he unpacked tub after tub, Juniper wondered just how much he thought she would eat.
“What’s that sound?” He asked as he shuffled brown rice onto two plates.
“What sound?” Juniper heard herself ask even as she listened in.
It was then she realized her heating pad had fully warmed up and left her knees sweaty. And the massager was still going strong.
“Uh, this I think.” Juniper hastily snatched the cord out of the strip along the edge of her desk.
“Really?” Spencer grinned wickedly.
“Yeah, I have a little kink in my neck from being cooped up all day. No biggie.”
“That sounds like something big. You have a lot of responsibility around here and it’s easy to get stiff.” Spencer walked around the desk and Juniper slid her chair over.
He was too close into her personal space and she wasn’t ready for all of that yet. She leaned away from him.
“I won’t bite, but I can make you feel a bit better if you want me to.”
It wasn’t his fault, but she immediately thought of dozen ways he could make her feel better. Why did she feel so at ease with him?
“I know you’re not comfortable with me enough to take your shirt off yet. But I am a licensed masseuse, and I’ll just relieve some of the pressure. It won’t completely take the pain away, but the heating pad should get the rest of it.”
“But the food—”
“Can wait.”
At that moment, he laid his warm hands on her shoulders. The moment his palms touched her, Juniper jumped. Even though she was expecting his touch, the way it made her feel was foreign. As if she didn’t know herself.
But on the other hand, she felt safe.
His fingers slipped over her tense neck and pushed south, over and over again. Then he rubbed over the knots along her shoulder. Juniper had to admit, the man had some magical hands. In ten minutes she felt a million percent better.
Wonder what those hands could do with other parts of me.
“How’s that?” He asked as if he already knew the answer.
That was little surprise as she had melted like a pile of goo under his fingertips.
“Wonderful, thank you.”
He leaned over her shoulder and she could feel the heat of his cheek as it grazed past hers. She assumed he wanted to kiss her and honestly? She had no objections whatsoever. And she was the one who always had reservations.
It was part of her nature to be wary.
And here she was, halfway thawed under the heat of his allure with a single phone call, a rose and a ten minute massage.
> Oh, and she couldn’t forget lunch, even if they hadn’t partaken yet.
But instead of the kiss she assumed he was going to sip from her, Spencer’s large hand wrapped around the picture she had in a silver frame with “memories” written along each side with varying fonts and her children’s birthstones in a double trim around the edges.
It had a picture of the three of them at a goofy theme park from last year. She knew her babies were too old for the kitschy rides, carnival dining and ridiculous souvenirs. But she wanted to have one last year with them that way, the tiny babies that oohed and ahhed over the simple things and bright colors.
Malik as usual was happy to go, Paris not so much. But they still were together, although this year she promised them a cruise to the Bahamas instead.
“These are your children?”
“Yeah. Malik and Paris.” Juniper couldn’t help the grin that took over her lips.
“I can imagine you’re a great parent.”
Juniper couldn’t help the sense of pride that welled within her at the statement. “Thanks, I try.”
“Not try. Do.”
“That too.”
He sat the picture down carefully in the same spot he’d moved it from. Then just as soon as the photo was back where it belonged, he stepped away from her. She missed his warmth almost immediately and shivered.
Spencer must have noticed. “Still bothering you?”
He took the heated pad away from her sweaty knee caps thankfully covered in ugly scrub fabric and laid it over her shoulders. Then he offered her a plate with still warm rice topped with a variety of things, some she readily identified and some that she couldn’t determine the providence of.
“Thanks. What are we having?”
“Well, I can give you a hint.”
“Okay, what’s that?”
“It’s not I love cock and balls.”
She looked him in the eye and their laugher released simultaneously, then didn’t stop for long moments later, until her eyes watered.
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“But it’s just rice and stir fry essentially. Though you want to bear in mind that I have a hot sauce I make, it’s on the side if you’re not into heat.”
“I like heat every now and again.” Juniper immediately wished she could retract her foot from her mouth.
But instead of the childish jokes she had heard before?
“Me too.”
So she dug in and let the kick of flavors roll off of her tongue. It was damn good and much better than any burger or special from Dick’s. There were so many flavors she wanted to just hold the food in her mouth until she could figure them all out.
“Mmmm.” Juniper couldn’t help it, the sound slipped out unbidden somewhere between the first mouthful and the tenth.
“Like it?”
“Yeah.” Juniper licked her lips and wished she had the space for more. But she was full as is and she couldn’t afford to get sluggish.
“I brought enough that you can take it home with you. That is if you want—”
He was cut off, not because Juniper said anything. When he said she could take it home, she embarrassed herself by snatching the tubs and stashing them on her side of the desk.
“I guess you need the bag too huh? Now, I want this back.” Spencer smiled and opened the bag up, stacked the plastic ware back inside.
He stood up and took the heating pad away from her shoulders. “I can’t let you get burned.” Wow. If only he knew just what burned really meant.
Spencer winked and strode out.
Yet again, she had the urge to fan herself.
God, the man was beautiful. She had never been one for red hair, but there was something about this guy that really got to her. She couldn’t understand why. It wasn’t as if her head was easily turned by a good looking face or tight body.
I’m not that superficial.
But apparently, she was. Spencer wasn’t what she had imagined she would finally succumb to when she met the man she would date after her long hiatus. Juniper had envisioned someone older, as in seven to ten years older. He was supposed to be a homebody and likely wore glasses from too many years of reading newspapers in the morning.
He would be settled, like a pair of comfortable slippers.
And she assumed he would be black.
Of course, she had no issues with interracial dating, but she’d certainly never imagined it was for her again. Javier was a teenaged mistake that life parleyed into two beautiful blessings. And because of the Spanish ancestry, her children still appeared black for all intents and purposes.
That night, Juniper ate the wonderful food Spencer made for her and shared it with her children. It said a lot, but she had to squelch the urge to hoard the meal all to herself. But in the end, she couldn’t refuse them the moment she heated the stir fry up.
“Hey mom! What is that? It smells wonderful.” Malik ran down the stairs, an uncommon feat for him. The teen rarely rushed anywhere.
Juniper opened the fridge and pulled out a bag of spinach for a quick salad. It looked like she would have to share her Yum Yum and needed the bit she had to stretch as far as possible.
Even Paris followed her nose downstairs.
“Mom, what’s that?”
“A friend brought me lunch today. This is what’s left over.”
“Is there enough for us?”
“Of course.”
For once, there was precious little conversation held at the dinner table. Everyone was too busy eating. Juniper had just enough to fill her up, but not enough to satisfy her desire for the flavors.
“Mom?”
“Did the guy from last night make this?” Paris had gotten so snotty in the last few years that she had forgotten just how perceptive the girl really was.
“Yes, he did.”
“You plan on letting us meet him?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead Paris. I’m kind of taking this one day at a time. Eventually, I guess?”
“Hmm.” Paris curled a lip that looked just like Junipers upwards and raised her left eyebrow the same way her father did. It was a funny contradiction, seeing the individual traits on a single face.
Her phone rang and this time Paris nodded. “Answer it mom.”
“Just give me a minute okay?” Juniper chewed the salad for so long, she felt like a cow with a cud.
Juniper took a deep breath as the phone rang the third time, but Paris beat her to the punch and impatiently slid her finger over the screen.
“Paris!”
The girl grinned impishly. “You were taking too long.”
Juniper sighed. “You’re too grown, child.”
Paris pushed another button on the glass front. “Hi, can you hear me?”
“Yes, I can. Is Juniper available?”
“She certainly is.” Paris retorted.
“Hi Spencer, my daughter has grown much too big for her britches. In fact, she’s lucky that I don’t beat her like Harpo.”
Malik burst out laughing.
Spencer joined in.
Juniper had to ask. “What do you know about The Color Purple?”
Paris looked at the phone and giggled as she waited for a response.
“I know that Celie told Harpo to beat Sophia.”
Well, he knew a bit then. “Okay, then you I’ll give you an honorary pass. But it’s only good for the day.”
“Mom, stop being mean to him before he refuses make us anymore of that rice stuff.” Paris interjected.
Spencer’s laughter was apparent. “So you got to taste the Yum Yum, huh?”
Paris made a scrunched up face at her mother. “Yes, and she didn’t want to share it. She thought she was going to get away with not giving us any.”
“Well, how about I make a batch just for you then.” Spencer offered.
“Really?” Paris looked as if she were halfway to the moon.
“Of course.”
Juniper wasn’t sure if
she wanted him to meet her children yet. It was just too soon for that. So she picked up the phone and took the device off speaker.
“Enough of that. Paris, Spencer doesn’t have time to deliver meals.”
But he had to throw in his two cents. “Of course I do. It’s my time and I have plenty for people that appreciate my culinary skills.”
“You’re not helping here. I’m trying to save you from the Spanish Inquisition, you could at least let me do my job.” She joked.
“Juniper, I want to get to know you. And eventually, that means getting to know your family as well.”
She didn’t want to go there yet. Maybe in a few months she would be comfortable introducing Spencer to her kids, but right now that was not on the agenda.
Instead of responding to the unspoken query, she deflected. “Can we chat later? We’re in the middle of having dinner.”
“Sure. Nine sound okay?” For some reason, his easy acceptance felt odd. I’m too used to men not appreciating being on the back burner.
“Yeah, that’s perfect.”
Juniper hung up the phone and Paris made a mock scowl in her direction. “Why did you do that mom? We already finished eating.”
She didn’t answer, ignored her youngest and started to clear the table of the vestiges of their meal.
“Because he makes her uncomfortable, Paris.” Malik said.
Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner!
Paris’ confusion was apparent. “How? He seems really nice.”
“You won’t get it until you’re older. Getting to know someone can be scary sometimes, especially when you like them too much.” Malik was much too smart to be an average seventeen year old.
“I don’t see how, if I meet someone I like, then I talk to them.” From the mouth of babes.
“Yeah, but mom hasn’t dated in a while, she’s probably rusty.”
Juniper had enough of her children dissecting her nonexistent love life. “You two need to stop talking about me like I’m not here.”
“Fine mom, stick your head in the sand if you want to.”
No way was she going to allow her daughter to call her an ostrich. “Paris, enough.”
The girl looked as if she wanted to say something else. But Paris, brat or not, understood there was only so far she could go with the backchat.
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