The Other Sister Page 4

  She’d told him her name and before she fully grasped what was happening, he’d gotten her number and they’d set up their first date that very weekend. When he’d come to pick her up, she felt that same sense of peace mixed with a tingling every time he touched her, looked at her as if she were the most incredible thing he’d ever seen, listened to every word she’d said, and laughed at her jokes. Making love with Jackson was the most natural thing in the world. That first time was surreal. It unmoored her, dismantled any emotional barriers, even as they had to temper their moans and cries of passion from the prying ears of her family a bedroom away. “We can do this,” he’d whispered in her ear. “I want you totally in my life, whatever it takes.” Jackson had wrapped her in the strength of his arms and promised to always be there for her, to listen to and support her dreams, to love her for as long as she’d let him. What choice did she have but to tumble headlong into love and lust with Jackson? Yet, it was all the reasons that she fell for him that caused the constant combustible episodes between them. Jackson’s devout, often blind loyalty, and his unwavering central pillar of family always, and his non-confrontational personality continually reared its head. He could not wrap his mind or heart around her dysfunctional relationship with her mother, no matter the issue, no matter how many times she tried to explain it. He admired her tenacity when it came to her love for journalism and digging up the details of a story, but he couldn’t condone her ‘at any cost’ mantra. They argued, they loved, they argued, they made up, ‘we can do this,’ and round and round it went, until finally she knew that the only way to flush her soul and get off the merry-go-round was to leave Louisiana, and Jackson.

  Her throat clenched and her eyes burned. “I can’t risk,” her voice broke, “falling any harder for you, investing in you, in us and then . . .”

  He squeezed her hand. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “You don’t know that!” Tears spilled from her eyes. She snatched her hand away and swiped at her wet cheeks.

  The waitress appeared with their dinner.

  Jackson glanced up, whispered his thanks.

  For several moments they avoided eye contact, focusing instead on the steamy bowls of gumbo in front of them.

  Zoie pushed the spoon around in her bowl. She’d been through this emotional minefield before. She realized long ago that she would never ‘get over’ Jackson. Of that she was certain. She’d tried; other men, inhuman hours at work. But always in the back of her mind, sitting inside her soul, was Jackson, nudging her, reminding her of what could have been if she’d let it. Being away had dulled her need for him but didn’t erase it. When he looked at her, she was putty, when he touched her she exploded inside, when he made love to her she lost her mind, body, and spirit and turned it all over to him. No one should have claim to that much control over another. She knew what it was like to have love turn on you. To want love so desperately that you were willing to snatch whatever crumbs fell from the table. She could not risk losing herself to him again only to find out six, seven months from now that he was going to be with his baby’s mama. It would crush her and she wasn’t sure if she would recover this time.

  “Z . . . I’m not asking for you to commit yourself to me. But I am committing myself to you! No if, ands, or buts. You need to believe that. Baby, I wasn’t the same man after you left.” He drew in a long breath. “I tried to understand why you needed to leave, to do your thing to get away. I made my peace. And to be honest I wasn’t sure if you were ever coming back. But I never, never stopped loving you.” He reached across the table and held her hand. “Yeah, I got involved with Lena. She is an incredible woman. I cared about her. I still do, but I was never in love with her, and I think she always knew that. Lena is not a vindictive woman. She’s as adamantly independent as you are. She doesn’t need a man to make her whole. Not even the father of her child.”

  “I get all that, but—”

  “No. I need you to hear me and not all the doubt that is running around in your head. I need you to put aside your investigative instincts and stop looking for a shoe to fall. This one time I’m asking you to trust your heart, Z.” He squeezed her hand. “What is your heart telling you?” he quietly asked.

  Zoie’s lashes fluttered like butterfly wings over her eyes as she fought back tears. She dared to look at him and was immediately drawn into the dark warmth of his eyes, cocooned there in that secret place inside of him where she’d always sought solace. A tear slid down her cheek.

  “I love you, baby. We can make this work. I know we can.”

  She bit down on her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. Her nostrils flared and she swore he could hear her heart hammering in her chest.

  “I . . . I deal in facts, things I can prove,” she said, her voice thready. She reached for her glass and took a swallow of her drink. “That’s what scares me, Jackson. What’s always scared me. Emotions, love, there is no explanation, no evidence, to prove that it’s real or will last, or that it’s the right person. It’s all feelings.”

  “Whatever kind of proof you need to let you know that I’m all in when it comes to us, that you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, I’ll find a way to prove it to you.”

  She sniffed hard. The ember of a smile flickered around her mouth.

  “Your mother and your aunts are my secondary sources,” he added.

  Zoie chuckled at the journalism reference. “Hmm, they’re all biased when it comes to you. Don’t know if I can trust their judgment.”

  He leaned forward and brought her hand to his lips and kissed the inside of her palm.

  A jolt shot up her arm. The air hitched in her throat.

  “They’re biased toward the truth. They know how much I love you. Always did. Nana Claudia especially.”

  She heaved a sigh and puckered her lips. “If we do this . . . and you hurt me—”

  “I won’t.”

  Moments of pounding silence hung between them.

  Slowly her gaze moved across his face. “All right,” she finally whispered.

  Jackson’s warm brown complexion lit up from inside. His eyes widened along with his smile. He got up, came around the table and slid onto the leather bench seat next to her. He cupped her cheeks in his palm, leaned in and kissed her as if they were alone in his bedroom and not the middle of a busy restaurant at dinner hour.

  With great reluctance, he eased back even as he held her face in his palms. Zoie’s breath skipped and ran in circles in her chest. She tugged on her bottom lip with her teeth.

  “All right,” he murmured against her mouth, reconfirming her words.

  ” Thank you so much for doing this, Grace,” Kimberly said to her friend and neighbor.

  “I love having the girls over, and Samantha is in heaven.” She laughed, then lowered her voice for only Kimberly to hear. “I know how it is when we need a little husband and wife time.” She winked.

  Kimberly forced a smile. “Absolutely.” She looked down and placed her hands on the shoulders of her twins. “Remember your manners and you listen to Ms. Grace.”

  “We will,” they chorused. Their slender young bodies vibrated with energy.

  In the background, Samantha squealed and jumped up and down with delight.

  “Thanks again, Grace. I’ll be by to pick them up around noon.”

  “Whenever is fine. Enjoy yourself.”

  Kimberly walked down to the other end of the carpeted hallway and returned to her apartment. There were only two units on her floor: hers and Grace’s. Grace’s unit however was a coveted duplex. She and Rowan, and Edward and Grace Harrison, applied for occupancy at the same time. When Rowan saw the floor plan, he was set on having the duplex. It took Rowan quite some time to accept that someone had actually outbid him for a thing that he wanted. Eventually, Rowan and Grace’s husband Edward became fast friends. Now after nearly five years of sharing the same floor, you couldn’t tear the two men apart. Having Grace as a friend who was also a mother of a young girl was an added bonus.

  Kimberly quietly closed the door behind her. Rowan should be home in about two hours. That gave her enough time to finish the meal, take a nice hot shower, and change. She needed everything to be perfect. The food, the atmosphere—her. Instead of feeling the ease of a wife making a special meal for her husband, she felt the uncertainty and jitters of a woman trying to impress a man with a home cooked dinner with her as dessert.

  She wasn’t a praying woman, or particularly religious, but she found herself saying little prayers that Rowan would understand, that he would forgive her, that they would make it through, that all the side comments and racial innuendos would be forgotten. He loved her.

  It was well beyond the two hours when she heard the front door open and close and Rowan’s steady footsteps crossing the glossy hardwood floors. She stood from her seat in the dining room and re-lit the candles. He stopped at the entrance, frowned for a moment as if he could not quite make out the scene in front of him.

  “What’s all this?”

  “I wanted to make a special dinner for you. And . . . talk.”

  His cheeks flushed. His perfect mouth tightened.

  “Talk about what, Kim?” He shrugged out of his dark blue jacket and hung it on the back of the chair and sat down. He loosened his maroon striped tie.

  “Fixed your favorites,” she said, her voice rising to a cheery octave. She hurried out of the dining room and returned shortly with the platters from the kitchen that had been on the warmers. She smiled hopefully while she set the platters down. She prepared his plate then hers.

  Rowan poured himself some wine then took a long swallow, nearly finishing the glass before setting it down. “Talk about what?” he repeated.

  Kimberly slowly lowered herself into her
chair opposite Rowan. Her heart banged in her chest and seemed to rise and stick in her throat. She drew in a breath and slowly exhaled. “I know what I did . . . pulling out of the race without talking it over with you . . . was wrong. I know that. But I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Oh, now it’s you didn’t have a choice? You told me it was because it would break down the family, that it wasn’t worth it.” He flung his cloth napkin across that table. “That was bullshit and now this ‘other choice.’ Okay explain. Let me hear it.” He stared across the table at her, his blue eyes nearly black.

  “I’m not who you think I am.”

  Rowan grumbled something under his breath. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Her gaze drifted away. “My entire life has been a lie.” Her eyes swung toward him. “It wasn’t my fault, Rowan. You have to believe me.” She pressed her fingertips into the table. “Everything my parents told me was all to hide their secret, a secret that could have ruined my family.”

  “You’re not making sense, Kim,” he said, his tone softening as he listened to real distress filter through her voice and register patches of red on her pale skin.

  Tears slipped from her eyes. She sniffed and wiped the tears away. “You see . . . my parents,” she swallowed, “aren’t my real parents.”

  Rowan’s sleek black brows drew together. His eyes cinched in the corners. “What? What are you saying? You were adopted? So what, baby? Big deal. Is that the ugly secret?” He rose and came around to her side of the table, and pulled her to her feet. He tilted her chin upward with the tip of his finger. “That’s nothing. Your folks loved you enough to choose you.” He smiled down at her. But his smile quickly dissolved.

  Kim tucked her lips for a moment, looked at her husband, silently praying that the next words she spoke would not destroy them. “I need you to really listen, hear me out and not make any judgments until you’ve heard what I have to say.” She took a step back, but held his hands, tightly, as she hesitantly revealed the decades-long secret of the Maitland family: how her parents were really her grandparents, that her biological mother was the black daughter of the Maitland’s housekeeper who’d conceived her with Kyle Maitland, the man she’d grown up believing was her brother, who in fact was her father. “They forged my birth certificate,” she whispered, her voice ragged with emotion. “They told Rose—my real mother—that I’d died at birth.” She swiped at the tears running down her cheeks. “She . . . she was going to tell the world. Ruin everything. I couldn’t let Zoie Crawford do that to us,” she said her voice bordering on panic. Her eyes widened, pleading with Rowan to understand. “I had no choice. Don’t you see that?” She reached out to him.

  Rowan’s body tensed. His expression morphed from its initial empathy, to confusion, horror, then outrage. He nearly pushed her to the floor with the force of his retreat.

  “You’re lying! Why are you trying to hurt me like this? Haven’t I been a good husband and father, provider?”

  She made another move toward him. He recoiled.

  He threw his hands up. “Don’t touch me!” He looked wildly around the room like one awakened from a nightmare only to discover that it was real. “Everything between us . . . has been tainted. I . . . I made love to you,” he said with revulsion. “My god, the girls!” He tore at his hair. “What have you done!” He came storming toward her with such ferocity that he pinned her against the wall. “What have you done!” His own eyes filled with tears.

  “Rowan! Please!” she wept. “I didn’t know. I swear to you.” Her body shook with the force of her sobs even as his fury gripped her.

  One last scathing look scorched her face before he whirled away and stormed out. The apartment vibrated in the aftermath of the slammed door and seemed to echo forever in Kimberly’s ears.

  She slid to the floor in a heap of debilitating sobs—for how long, she was not sure. When she was finally able to get to her feet, her entire body ached and her eyes were nearly swollen shut. Her temples throbbed. She glanced around, dazed. The antique clock atop the china cabinet showed that it was after two.

  She moved through each room, ghostlike, hoping to find that Rowan had returned. She was alone. Finally, she collapsed across the bed—spent.

  At some point, she drifted off and only realized that when she was roughly shaken from a troubled sleep.

  She blinked rapidly against the light and brought her husband into focus. She pushed to a sitting position. “Rowan. . . .

  “I’m taking the girls away for the rest of the weekend. When we get back I want you gone. I want you out of my house and out of my life. Take your things with you. You are not to contact me or try to contact the girls. If I have to get the courts involved to keep you away I will and you know that I will. Don’t test me.”

  “No! Rowan. Please. You can’t do this. They are my children, too!”

  His stare stopped her words and froze her in place. “I’ve packed their bags and I’m picking them up from Grace. We’ll be back Sunday night. Don’t be here, Kimberly. I’m warning you.”

  Without another word, he spun away.

  Kim jumped up and ran behind him, catching him at the door. She gripped the back of his jacket. “Rowan,” she pleaded. “Please. Not my babies. Not my babies!”

  He didn’t even turn around. He opened the door and keeping his back to her said, “Don’t make this any uglier than it already is. If you think you’re miserable now, try to imagine what I will do to you if you cross me.” He pulled the door open and walked out with a small suitcase in each hand.

  CHAPTER 3

  “So, we’re going to do this?” Jackson stated more than asked, as they finished off their meal with a cocktail—his usual bourbon and her martini.

  Zoie slowly turned the glass on the table by its stem. She tugged in a breath and rested in the cocoon of his eyes. “We’re going to do this. Cautiously. I need you to really understand that no matter what, I am not coming between you and your child or what Lena may eventually want. That has to be clear.”

  He tipped the shot glass to his lips. “In the words of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, ‘crystal.’ ”

  Zoie snorted a laugh. “Now that we have that moderately settled, what’s been going on with you and your development project?”

  His eyes widened with excitement. “It’s going extremely well, actually. With the added funding from the Maitlands, we’re right on target for completion this fall.”

  The housing development project was close to his heart. The plight of the 9th Ward residents living in substandard housing was an environmental issue that he was determined to tackle. The development was a gated community with three low-rise buildings that housed ten apartments each, along with a half-dozen single family bungalows, a supermarket, and a recreation center—all for low-income families. An added perk was that the residents of the bungalows—in partnership with Habitat for Humanities—helped to build their own homes, ensuring a true sense of ownership. Along with his own team of construction workers, he made it a point to hire as many able-bodied residents as possible. Not only was he bringing housing, but also jobs, and boosting the local economy as well.

  Zoie’s smile radiated pride. “That is absolutely amazing, babe. I am so happy for you, and for the folks in Louisiana.”

  “Yeah,” he said on a sigh. “It’s been a long hard fight, but we made it.” He finished off his drink just as the waitress approached.

  “Can I get you anything else?” she asked looking from one to the other.

  Jackson gave Zoie a quick, questioning look. “No. We’re good. If you could bring the check, please.”

  “Sure. I’ll get it prepared right away.”

  “Speaking of the Maitlands,” Jackson began, “have you heard anything from Kimberly?”

  Zoie slowly shook her head. “Not a word. I’ve called several times and left messages.” She sighed and linked her fingers together. “I feel so guilty.”

  “The truth was sure to come out at some point,” he offered.

  “I only wished it hadn’t been me. I mean, in hindsight, I should have done things differently. I shouldn’t have been so hellbent and determined to prove my point.”