Rapture 2: a BWWM, Alpha Male Romance (12 page)

“And I don’t either. I’ll do everything that I can to make sure that she’s protected, Janae. That, you can take my word on.”

There was a long moment of silence between us. There wasn’t much else to say, but there were many ways to feel. I felt helpless, and I hated feeling that way. Hated it! But regardless of how I was feeling in that moment, this situation would be dealt with.

“Am I still seeing Michaela today?”

There was no immediate answer from Janae, and it made me nervous, because at that point, I had no parental rights and the ball could be forever in her court if she so chose. Though I didn’t think she’d bring Michaela so far only to snatch the rug from under her.

“Janae…” I stated firmly. “I’m still seeing—”

“Yeah, Rush. I’ll be bringing her by shortly.”

“Okay, cool, because I’ve already made plans for her. Don’t worry about this shit. I’ll get somebody on it right away. I might even handle this one myself.”

“Alright,” she responded, seemingly relaxed. “I guess we’ll see you a little later.”

“Okay. Thanks, Janae.”

After I hung up the phone, I shook my head left to right in disbelief and slammed the laptop closed.

“Baby, I’m so sorry,” Alika said, as she watched me abandon my seat and start to pace our bedroom floor. “But I already know that you’ll do what needs to be done. The date for the article is marked for last night, so it
just
went up.”

“Yeah,” I responded, bending down to kiss her on the cheek. “I’ll be back in a little bit,” I informed her, before storming out in my running clothes.

SEVENTEEN

Lafayette, CA

Home of Lance Michael Cambridge

“Dad!”

Jamie called out to her father as she walked down the long stretch of hallway headed to his office. She hadn’t been her normal, vibrant self in days. She had tried unsuccessfully to reach her brother, and it was beginning to take a serious toll on her. All her life, Rush was the one person who was there for her. Growing up, he would beat up anybody who referred to them as half siblings. Now she was sure that he wouldn’t give a damn whether anybody referred to them as siblings at all. He’d been overly protective when they were teens to the point that boys were afraid to even ask her out, or be seen walking with her. They all knew that Rush didn’t play any games when it came to his lil’ sis. But that was no more. He wouldn’t take a single call from her, answer a single text from her, and neither Alika nor Gigi could or would convince him to. At first she thought that Rush would just need a few days to cool off, but it had turned into something way longer than that, and she was starting to fear that things were just over between them.

“Dad, have you talked to Rush
at all
?” she asked, bursting into her father’s conversation with his personal assistant. “Penny, I need a moment of my father’s time,” she stated, dismissing the forty-something, curvy brunette.

“Of course, Ms. Cambridge,” she responded, as she scurried out.

“No, Jamie, I haven’t,” her father replied. “Don’t tell me that he’s still not speaking to you? That’s ridiculous. He has no right turning on you for this.”

“Yes, he does, Dad. He absolutely does!” she cried.

“Well, you know he and I go weeks…months even without talking, so this isn’t anything new.”

“
This
is new, dad. I wish you wouldn’t be so nonchalant about this. I really do. This is
huge
. A friend called me this morning to tell me about an attack piece that went up on
Illusion
this morning—about Rush’s paternity on that little girl!”

“
Illusion
? Give me a break,” he remarked, dismissively. “Who believes that rag anyway?”

“Is that really all you can say, Dad? What the fuck!”

“Watch your mouth, Jamie!” the elder Cambridge yelled, bringing his fist down atop his desk. He stood from his seat, and reiterated, through clenched teeth. “
Watch your goddamn mouth
!”

Jamie saw the pierce of his green eyes bearing down on her the same way they did when she was younger and did something he disapproved of. And as monstrous as he looked in that moment, Jamie stood her ground, and returned his stare down. Her desire to mend fences with her brother was much more potent than her fear of her father.

“I…am…
not
a child. I have
every
right to feel the way that I feel. You’ve turned Rush against me with your bright ideas of what the future
should
hold. And now, family as I once knew it, is no more,” she retorted through a clenched-teeth response of her own. “I can see why Rush doesn’t try with you. It’s a lost cause unless someone thinks, acts, and feels the way
you
want them to. It really is your world isn’t it? We’re all just pawns in your one-sided game of chess.”

With direct eye contact still in place, Jamie rose from the seat across from her father, tossed her blonde tresses over her shoulder, and then prepared her exit.

“Be well, father,” she spat sarcastically, without looking back.

~*~*~

Minutes after Jamie stormed out of Lance’s office, Penny walked back in.

“Is everything okay, Mr. Cambridge?” she questioned.

“Everything is fine. Where were we before my daughter barged in on us?”

“I was updating you on your request to have
Illusion
shut down.”

“Okay, perfect. Shutting them down won’t happen immediately, but—”

“Right. You wanted Titan McKinney terminated, correct?”

“Yes.
That
needs to happen
today
. Any fool who would go and publish some information about
my family
without first confirming doesn’t even deserve the minimum weekly payment from unemployment. It’s poor journalism.”

“I agree. It’s already in progress,” Penny reported.

“Good. Now, my primary concern at this point is whether or not we’ll be able to find out if other media outlets have gotten hold of the published article. Because—”

“No worries there, sir. I’ve already activated six social media monitoring tools that will notify me, at once, of any mentions having to do with your son.”

Lance tapped his forefinger on the top of his lacquer desk, then cocked his head in confusion. “You need to monitor
my name
primarily, Penny. This has a huge impact on
my
business dealings. There are implications there that point to me being a racist, and I can’t have that. The media will run with that news. They could care less that another athlete fathered a child with a random piece of ass.”

“O…kay,” Penny hesitantly responded.

She really wanted to say something about the situation, but she knew better. She’d heard enough about the sins of the mother rubbing off on the son, to last her an entire lifetime. But she still never understood. In fact, she happened to be quite fond of Rush and both her son and her husband watched diligently when he played baseball, and still spoke highly of him. Her husband still frequented Chaos ever so often.

“Do we have a problem?” Lance challenged, when he noticed Penny’s hesitation.

“No sir, we don’t.”

“Good. Well, in that case…” he started, with a crooked smile. “You can leave now. I need to prepare for my outing with the guys this evening. I just needed to know that everything I needed handled would be handled properly before that time.”

“And it is, sir. All is handled, sir,” Penny reiterated. “Enjoy yourself this evening.”

“Oh, I plan to.”

EIGHTEEN

Alika

After Rush left to go see what could be done about the trash piece, I hopped in the shower and prepared for the day. The moment I saw my braids, I cursed myself because I should’ve already taken them down, but I hadn’t. Luckily, the hair was human and had a deep wave so there was still a little life. I figured I could treat the hair and apply a really cute style. But after today, I would be taking them down immediately. I would much rather greet the mother of Rush’s child in my cute haircut and something nice and fitted.

You’re being petty, Alika
, I scolded myself.

But even with that, I made no excuses. Although I wasn’t planning to stick around while Rush had his visit with Michaela, like any woman, I wanted to look my very best when they showed up. I didn’t know what Janae’s intentions were, but she needed to know that mine weren’t to abandon my spot any time soon—at all. She hadn’t displayed any shady behavior yet, but I still needed to be on guard. I knew all too well what other women were capable of and as strong and intuitive as my man was, I also knew that his focus was on establishing a bond, so he might miss some things.

Stay one up
.
She is Jacob’s sister, after all
.

I knew that I shouldn’t have, but I found myself wondering what she looked like all the time. This morning when I had seen the picture of Michaela side-by-side with Rush, my mind kicked into overdrive. She had green eyes that I knew didn’t come from him, so that let me know that her mama had them. So, she was probably one of those light-skinned black chicks with the colored eyes like her brother. Thank God I had grown into my own beauty because her look was the very look that I was intimidated by all during my youth. Now, in the present, I was unbothered by that. But the fact that she had birthed Rush’s first born…
whew
! Words couldn’t describe.

After I moisturized my face, and applied a light application of makeup and gloss, I took out the oversized plaits I’d put into my hair and allowed the waves to fall where they might. I then pulled a portion of the front up into a small rubber band so that the hair would be off my face, and loosely pulled on the band and allowed the hair to fall into a wild mass around my shoulders and down my back.

I smiled at myself in the mirror. “That’s cute, girl!” I grinned.

I went to my closet and pulled a pair of ripped jeans, a v-neck charcoal-colored Tinkerbelle shirt that I’d gotten from Disneyland, and a pair of all-white tennis shoes. I had hoops in my ears and a thin bracelet around my wrist. I was chic, but casual. I didn’t want to overdo it, but I wanted to make enough of a statement.

Minutes after I had finished prepping, Rush came into the house. His mood was better than when he had left. He breezed in, kissed me on the cheek and took off for the shower.

“Gotta get dressed, baby. She’ll be here soon. Shit went longer than I thought it would, but it’s all taken care of now.”

As he undressed, I walked behind him toward the shower. “What does that mean, babe?” I asked, trying my best not to lust after the extremely toned, bare ass facing in my direction. “Did you beat the man up?” I kidded.

“Nope!” he sang out. “The man wasn’t there when I got there. Today was his last day on the job, apparently. So maybe he wanted to go out with a bang. That worked out for him, but I’d hate to see him on the street because despite the fact that it’s now been removed, he ran it in the first place. He deserves his ass kicked for that, and I’m just the person to give it to him.”

“So, you didn’t see him at all, and couldn’t ask any questions about who the source was?”

“Nope!” he shouted over the shower water. “But baby…I got everything that he had. They used some fake ass email address. But case closed. We already know this was Jacob. Right now, though, I’m more concerned with getting my ass washed and being able to be nice and clean for the visit. You look
really
nice, by the way!”

I smiled. “Thank you, baby.”

“You’re gonna stick around to meet them, right?”

I smiled again. I had no idea that he was going to ask me to do that yet, but I was going to find a way to do it anyway. So, now it was even better.

“Sure, if you want,” I replied.

“Of course I want. At least stay for a meet-and-greet, and then when things settle a little bit more—”

“I get it, handsome. No worries,” I said, leaving him to finish his shower.

I was headed down the stairs to hang out in the enclosed patio. As if time was on my side, the security phone rang out, and Hannah announced that a Miss Lawson and her daughter had arrived.
Life just kicked up an entire notch
.

I rushed to the front door and then stopped in my tracks to take a few deep breaths before pulling it open.

“Hi,” the woman said, extending her hand to me. “I’m Janae. And you are?”

“My name is Alika,” I answered, looking from her to Michaela.

I’d be lying through my teeth if I didn’t say that the chick was pretty. About my height, but not as many curves as I had, as evidenced through the dress she wore. A dress that was much too tight, in my opinion and that was definitely not for a friendly visit.

Stop Alika. Maybe she’s coming from an outing or something.

She was, as I thought, a lighter shade of brown, with the same green eyes as her brother. In fact, looking at her was like looking at his crooked ass all over again. The resemblance was uncanny. They were like girl and boy versions of each other.

“And you must be Michaela,” I remarked. “It’s very nice to meet you both.”

“You as well,” Janae stated, as they entered the house.

“I’m going into the media room, if that’s okay,” Michaela stated, gleefully.

“Of course,” I responded, smiling at the fact that she was already getting familiar…and comfortable with her father’s surroundings.

“Janae, you can have a seat,” I offered. “Rush will be down shortly. He had a meeting that went over and had to rush back and take a shower.”

“I understand,” she stated, smoothing her dress down around her form, and taking a seat.

I went and took a seat across from her and could tell that she had no interest in having any type of conversation. And that was fine. I wasn’t there to converse with her, only to establish that she was treading upon my territory. However subtle or overt I needed to do that, I would.

“Thank you,” she said, with a faux smile affixed. “I can wait it out on my own from here.”

Her snide comment was the perfect opening for me. “I’m sure you can, but I don’t mind keeping you company until the man of the hour arrives.”

“I’m good,” she replied, settling back into the sofa’s seating. “I don’t need company.”

“Right. I’m sure you don’t
need
any company, Janae, but I figured we could spend a little bit of time before you all reconvened.”

She chuckled lightly, and then shook her head a little bit. “That’s cute.”

“What’s cute?”

“You…trying to stake your claim. I get it. You’re his girlfriend, right?”

“I
am
his girlfriend.”

“A very threatened
girlfriend
. I can only imagine how you must be feeling. Let me guess. You’re brand new, and now you’re just a little worried that he’ll want to readjust his priorities and that you just may not be included in that once the dust settles. So, you’re trying to assess the competition and secure a spot—a spot that you’re not even sure about.”

“I’m not threatened, Janae. I’m very secure in my place in Rush’s life.”

“That’s a trip. I never saw such a confident girlfriend.
Wife
maybe, but girlfriend? Not so much,” she cryptically stated. She looked down at her stiletto manicured nails and then back up at me. “My baby is pretty taken with her daddy. Seems we might need to move back up north so that they can really establish that father-daughter relationship that they missed out on. It’s a tragedy, isn’t it?”

“I see you two have met,” Rush remarked, as he made his way down the stairs, two at a time. “Where’s my girl?” he queried, looking around to the other end of the living room.

“She’s in the media room. It’s all she’s talked about since we left here,” Janae smiled. “You should go get her. I’m sure she’ll be excited to see you,” she commented, making sure to turn her gaze to me in the same moment.

“Okay. I’m gonna do that. But come here, baby,” he requested, palming the back of my neck and pulling me into a kiss. “You’ll probably be gone when I come back. Love you.”

“I love you too, baby,” I smiled.

After he was out of sight and earshot, I looked over at Janae, and saw that she had a trained stare on me.

“That was adorable. You guys make a really cute couple.”

“We do, don’t we? Thank you for the compliment.”

“You’re welcome, Alika. You should probably get to running along. Family time is upon us, and I’m sure they’ll be back soon. Since Michaela doesn’t know you yet, kinda don’t want her to be confused about anything.”

“You mean more confused than realizing that her mother was a one-night stand with a childhood crush? Yeah, Janae…I think you’re right. I should probably get going. Have yourself an awesome day.”