Enchanted Heart

by Felicia Mason

  “What about Tarique?”

  Lance stilled. “He’s a part of me, Viv. I’m a package deal now.”

  She smiled and placed his hand on her stomach. “We’re a package deal.”

  “You really are pregnant?”

  She nodded.

  Lance answered with a grin and a quick kiss, a kiss that turned into a lingering taste of sweetness he’d missed.

  “Excuse me, folks.” One of the officers led a snarling Dean Khan away. “We’ll need to get formal statements from you.”

  Viv nodded. “With pleasure,” she told the cop.

  Lance’s first stop in the hunt for Tarique was the cemetery, just in case. But the boy wasn’t at his mother’s grave.

  “Where do you think he went?” Vivienne sat in the passenger seat of the Escalade as Lance took the interstate exit that would dump him in downtown Newport News.

  “He’s lived with me since Gayla OD’d, but my guess is he’s at his own house.”

  Tattered police tape still hung from the railing of Gayla’s unit at Granger Shores. A housing authority notice had been tacked to the front door that was sealed with eight strips of heavy sealing tape.

  “If he’s here, he didn’t come in this way.” Lance took out a small pocket knife and cut through the seals, then fished for the key that he’d found in Gayla’s belongings and opened the door.

  Music and intermittent booms pumped from the back bedroom.

  He looked back at Viv. “Bingo.”

  He led Vivienne into the apartment. “It’s not . . . well, here,” he said, pulling out a vinyl topped chair. “Wait here. I’ll go talk to him.”

  Viv nodded. He stepped away. “Lance?”

  She closed the distance between them. “No matter what happens between you and your son, I’ll always be by your side,” she said. “It’s taken me a long time to realize what love really is. I don’t want to lose it now that I’ve found it.”

  He pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her waist, one hand trailing along her derriere, which he squeezed through the jeans she wore. “You’re my heart, Vivienne la Fontaine. Together we’re going to be lingerie moguls and terrific parents.”

  “It’ll take practice.”

  He thrust himself against her, a naughty smile curved his mouth. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  She swatted his behind. “Go to your son.”

  With a final kiss, Lance headed down the hall. He knocked once, but didn’t wait for an answer.

  Tarique sat on his shabby twin bed, its dingy sheets barely covering the mattress. His back propped against the wall, he balanced the video game control in his lap while a fiery battle in Terminator III raged on the television.

  “What’re you doing here?”

  Lance turned the sound down on the music and picked up the remote for the TV. “I came to talk. About us,” he added. He muted the sound of the film.

  “There ain’t no us.”

  Ignoring the filth around him, Lance sat on the edge of the bed. What he said in the next few moments would determine his destiny with this son so recently acquired.

  “I loved your mom,” he started. “We fell in love in high school.” He told Tarique the story, not sparing any of the details. The boy remained quiet through it all, including Virginia’s role in keeping Gayla and Lance apart and how Lance had reacted to Gayla leaving him all those years ago.

  Tarique listened then rolled his eyes.

  “That ain’t got shit to do with me.”

  “It has everything to do with you,” Lance said. “I want the chance to make it right with you. I can’t get back the first ten years of your life. But I hope you’ll let me learn how to be a father and maybe a friend for the next ten or twenty.”

  Tarique considered that for a moment. Then, “Can’t we live here?”

  Lance breathed an internal sigh of relief. If Tarique was negotiating living quarters, maybe he was willing to give Lance a chance. Lance shook his head. “No. But you can get a vote in where we do live.”

  “How many votes do you get?”

  Lance smiled. “A lot. But I want you to grow up knowing that there’s a legacy waiting for you.”

  “What’s my legacy?”

  Lance touched his heart. “Truth,” he said. “And heart.”

  “I’ve got heart.”

  Lance put his arm around his son’s shoulder. “I know you do, man. If we’re gonna make this work, you gotta promise me some things.”

  Wary, Tarique shrugged out of the embrace. “What?”

  “No more stealing. No more shakedowns. And no more running away.”

  Tarique thought about the conditions for a moment. “Can I drive the Escalade?

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool.”

  “When you’re sixteen,” Lance added.

  The smile fell off the boy’s face.

  “Can I at least see what it feels like behind the wheel?”

  Lance smiled. “We’ll talk about it.”

  Tarique cocked his head and Lance was struck with just how much the boy looked like him. “I got a question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “That night you came in here. You said I could make my money grow for me. How?”

  Lance grinned. “Investments, Tarique. Investments.”

  “And you’ll show me how?”

  “You bet.”

  Tarique nodded, then grinned at his father. He stuck his hand out to shake on the agreement. “Deal.”

  Lance took the small hand in his own larger one. “A man’s word is his bond.”

  Tarique nodded. And they did a shake on the pact.

  “Is Sonja gonna live with us?”

  Lance shook his head again. “She lives with her husband, my brother.” He realized he liked those words. A lot. In no time at all he’d gone from being a trust-fund bum to a man with true roots, true love and a true future. “Cole is in Brazil now, but you’ll get to meet him. There’s someone special I’d like you to meet right now though. Her name is Vivienne.”

  “What a babe,” Tarique said a few moments later, as if Vivienne weren’t standing right there in front of them in the living room. “You gonna marry her?”

  Lance looked at Viv. “I’m working on it.”

  Tarique’s sharp gaze cut between them. “I’m not calling you Mom.”

  “That’s good since my name is Viv.”

  For a moment, the three stood in an awkward triangle, waiting for Tarique’s response to that.

  He nodded. “All right. But I want . . .”

  Lance laughed. “Hold up, youngblood. We’re the adults and we set the rules. First up, your room.”

  Tarique groaned, but it wasn’t a sound of true protest. “I thought we were done with the deals.”

  Laughing, Lance took Vivienne’s hand. “Nope. Every day of life is a deal. Right, Viv?”

  “Right.”

  Together, the three of them left the Granger Shores apartment, closing the door on the past and its problems and walking into the future they’d carve for themselves.

  EPILOGUE

  Six months later

  The bride wore Vera Wang. The groom wore Versace. As the sun set behind them, Viv and Lance declared fidelity and forever love to each other. The minister then presented the couple to the small party assembled on the beach. Behind their well-wishers Lance spotted Virginia Heart at the boardwalk railing several yards down. She stood with a distinguished-looking older man at her side. He saw Virginia slip her hand from the man’s and come forward.

  “Let’s get this party started,” Lance called.

  With one hand clasped in Viv’s, he directed the rest of the group to three white limousines waiting for them then turned to face Virginia.

  “What are you doing here? I don’t recall your name being on the guest list.”

  “I heard about your wedding. I just wanted . . .” Her words faded away.

  “To crash it?”

  Virginia winced and closed
her eyes for a moment as if gathering strength. Then she glanced up at the man beside her who nodded, apparently encouraging her to go on. “Lance, this is Malcolm Grant.”

  Lance didn’t shake the man’s outstretched hand, but he did peer closely at Virginia. She seemed different somehow.

  He knew people could change. Tarique was one example. The boy truly had a keen mind for business and was taking advanced math and science classes. He still missed his mom, but every day was better than the one before.

  Lance had changed, too, but seeing Virginia again made him realize he still harbored a degree of resentment.

  “I figured you’d be less likely to make a scene on your wedding day,” Virginia said.

  Lance waited for her to say whatever she’d come to say.

  Virginia swallowed. “It may be too late to ever make things right with Cole, but I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry, Lance.” She glanced up at the man again, then added, “I’m sorry about the way I interfered in your life.”

  Lance wondered if she knew about Cole and Sonja’s latest venture. They’d renewed their vows and their commitment to each other on a beach in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. Then, after launching the Bahia project and giving a deposition on Dean Khan that helped put him back in prison where he belonged, Cole closed up his operation in Bahia. He and Sonja were now setting up a small business incubator for minority firms in Virginia.

  It wasn’t Lance’s job to heal the relationship between Cole and Virginia, but he could do something about his own relationship with her. Willing to acknowledge the olive branch she now offered to him, Lance nodded. “Apology accepted.”

  He formally presented a very pregnant Vivienne. “This is my wife, Vivienne la Fontaine Smith.”

  The two women nodded at each other.

  “And this is our son,” Lance said, presenting Tarique.

  The boy glared at Virginia. “I’m going to the limo.”

  “Tarique.” Lance’s sharp tone stopped the boy.

  He looked at Vivienne, then he looked at Virginia. Everyone waited to hear what he’d say to the boy.

  Lance had learned some lessons in the last six months. One was about the healing power of love. The other was about forgiveness. Today was the first day of the rest of his life with Vivienne and Tarique. Today could also be the first day of a healed relationship with his relatives.

  Building relationships, not tearing them down, is what families were made for. That insight, he now knew, came only with the personal growth he’d experienced since Vivienne and Tarique had come into his life. The past was where it belonged. Wrongs made then could be rectified. But to make it happen, there had to be surrender and reconciliation.

  In his heart, Lance had already done both. In coming today to a place where she wasn’t wanted, Virginia had taken a first step. Lance could take one, too.

  With one arm around his bride’s waist and the other across his son’s shoulder, he turned to the boy.

  “Tarique, that’s no way to speak to your great-grandmother.”

  Author’s Note

  Sometimes it’s necessary to complete unfinished business. For me, that’s what Lance’s story was all about.

  In this book, I’ve taken a few liberties creating places in Hampton Roads, Virginia, a region comprised of about 1.5 million people and quite a few localities. The restaurant Cloud 9 doesn’t exist; and although Newport News has several public housing complexes and youth centers in its East End, Granger Shores Homes and T.J. Joplin’s rec center aren’t among them. Good work is, however, being done in the Southeast community by people who care as much as the fictional T.J.

  Some readers may remember my first Heart books. I wrote those as romances for the ground-breaking Arabesque series. They’re still in print and available if you’d like to see how Cole Heart initially won Sonja Pride in Foolish Heart, and how Cole’s high-maintenance cousin Mallory Heart found a blue-collar love with Ellis Carson in Forbidden Heart. Lance Heart Smith had roles in both of those novels. As a character he continued to speak to me (pester me, really) demanding that he get to have his own bad boy say. (Hence, the unfinished business.) Though this novel differs from the spiritually based thematic ones I now focus on, it was a story that had to be written. So thank you for indulging me another visit with the Hearts.

  Family dynamics have always intrigued me and the Hearts are a study in complicated relationships. My next Dafina novel returns to the complex world of church members with secrets.

  Thank you again for reading.

  If you’d like to know more about my novels, check out my Web site: www.geocities.com/Paris/Gallery/9250/

  Joy to you,

  Felicia Mason

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  Copyright © 2004 by Felicia L. Mason

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  ISBN: 978-0-7582-0572-8