Temptation's Kiss (14 page)

Now that she'd behaved in this manner, she would have to be tracked down and dealt with, and perhaps Mira would have to be taken away from her mother for safety's sake.

But he hadn't initiated all this; Aisha had.

To be honest, Aisha had given him the impression that she didn't want to be a mother. She'd tried to force him to marry her so she could live in the lap of luxury. Then when he'd refused, she'd griped about being out of shape, and no man would want her and certainly wouldn't want her once they found out she had a kid. That hadn't sounded like a devoted mother to him. “All right,” he told Saul Abraham. “Get a good detective on her trail as soon as possible.”

He hung up, and that's when he remembered that Patrice had told him the same thing as his lawyer had just told him.

He looked around and realized he was alone in the kitchen. Where was Sam?

 

Patrice wiped at tears as she drove T.K.'s SUV across town to her bungalow. Sam sat in the passenger seat with his head out the window. He had followed her to the car and climbed in and had refused to budge. To be honest, she welcomed his company. “This is so wrong,” she said to him. “I'll have to phone him when I get home and tell him you came home with me. I'll take you back in the morning. But for now, I don't think I want to see him.”

Some part of her knew she should be making allowances for T.K.'s behavior. He was under a great deal of stress. However, some other part told her that no matter what kind of stress you might be under you didn't ostracize the people you loved.

She stopped at a market near her house to get Sam enough food to last a couple days. Then she drove on to the house. At the house, she let Sam into the fenced-in backyard so she wouldn't have to watch him while she got her luggage out of T.K.'s car.

After giving him something to eat and filling a bowl with fresh water for him, she left Sam in the kitchen while she went to the bathroom to shower. She hadn't been tired before her confrontation with T.K., but now she felt drained. After her shower, she went out to her bedroom and changed into pajamas and a robe. Sam came into the room, whining pitifully. Patrice should have known he would need to go out once more before
they retired for the night. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was only 7:45 p.m. It was not exactly the time she usually turned in for the night, but she couldn't think of anything more enticing right now than her bed. She wanted to sleep away this dreadful day and wake up tomorrow to find it had all been a bad dream.

She walked into the adjacent closet and changed into jeans, a long-sleeved shirt and leather slippers. Going back out to the room, she snapped her fingers at Sam. “Come on, boy, and don't give me any problems. I don't have your leash, and I don't feel like running all over the neighborhood looking for you. That's all I need, to lose his dog.”

Oh, God, she'd forgotten to phone T.K. about Sam. She went to the get her cell phone from her purse on the bureau in her bedroom. She quickly dialed T.K.'s number. He didn't answer. After the beep, she said, “Don't worry about Sam, he's with me.” That was all she said. It was all she felt like saying to him. As soon as she hung up, she felt guilty for being hurt. Was it childish on her part? Should she be self-sacrificing enough to forgive him his tone of voice, and that dead expression with which he'd regarded her? The man was hurting.

The man was hardheaded, intractable and arrogant. She loved him, but she didn't have to be in his presence while he was channeling Satan. She went to take Sam for a walk.

Her neighbor, Kay Schuster, an elderly woman who walked her schnauzer, Rolf, every evening about
this time, called to her as soon as she and Sam hit the sidewalk. There was a park at the end of the street, and that's where they were headed. “Hi, Patrice. Did you adopt recently?” Sam let her rub his head. Rolf barked once with no enthusiasm, just to let Sam know that Kay was his human and not to get too familiar.

“No, he belongs to a friend. I'm just keeping him overnight,” Patrice told her.

Kay, short and stout, with warm brown skin and long wavy gray hair that she wore in a ponytail most of the time, grinned at Sam. “Oh, he's handsome. What's his name?”

“Sam,” Patrice said.

“He looks like a Sam,” Kay said. They walked on. The evening air was cool but not cold. Neither needed a jacket, but a sweater would be welcome. “How was your Christmas?”

“Great,” said Patrice. “I went to Albuquerque.” She didn't feel she knew Kay well enough to tell her that not only did she go home for Christmas but she took her boyfriend home to meet her parents and had gotten engaged on Christmas Eve. They were hello-how're-you-doing neighbors, not intimate friends.

“Ah, yes,” said Kay, “that's where you're from. I hear the city's really beautiful during the holidays.”

“It is. It's magical,” said Patrice. She told Kay about the luminarias.

They arrived at the park and the dogs ran off, circling one another tentatively at first, then engaging each other
in a friendlier manner as the game progressed. “Do you think they ever worry about anything?” Patrice wondered aloud.

“Sure, they do,” Kay said. “When they'll get their next meal, whether or not their mistress will be kind or cruel to them, things any living being worries about.”

The two dogs were expressing so much joy that Patrice found it hard to believe they worried about anything.

Later, she made Sam a bed on the floor out of an old comforter she didn't use anymore. She left it in the living room, but when she turned her back on him, he took it between his teeth and dragged it after her. She wound up putting the makeshift bed in a corner of her bedroom, and he settled down atop it. He didn't go to sleep though; he simply watched her. She lay on her bed; he lay on his and they looked into each other's eyes. “What are you looking at?” Patrice asked. “Do you think I was unreasonable with your master?” Sam's expression didn't change. “He's the one who threw me out.”

She needed to talk to someone besides Sam—Belana or Elle instead. Sitting up in bed, she tried Belana's number first. It went to voice mail. Because she didn't want to announce she was engaged over the phone, and at this point wasn't feeling too confident about her engagement anyway, she didn't leave a message. She dialed Elle's number.

Elle answered with an enthusiastic, “Patty, how are you, girl?”

Patrice burst into tears. “Awful,” she said, sniffling.
Between sobs, she told Elle all about it. “I'm just praying that Aisha shows up. He looked like he was ready to kill somebody. He was so angry.”

“He didn't threaten you?” Elle asked, concerned.

“Oh, no,” Patrice was quick to deny. “I've never seen him so angry before. It scared me. But the anger wasn't directed at me. It was all for Aisha. I know he thinks she did this to spite him, as some sort of payback because he rebuffed her advances.”

“She sounds really sad to me,” said Elle. “I mean, her hold on Malcolm was tenuous at best because of his mental state. He probably couldn't have married her without his family's support, and they don't seem to like her. Then he died, and she was left alone to raise their baby. I would be going nuts, too.”

“That was my point,” Patrice told her friend. “But T.K. only thinks she's trying to manipulate him. Yes, she was a user, but from her point of view it was out of necessity.”

“On the other hand,” Elle said, “some users never learn their lessons and continue to use people even when they've been given the benefit of the doubt. T.K. is highly upset because she used his brother. He's not going to let her do the same thing to him.”

“Oh, believe me,” said Patrice, “that'll never happen. At the first sight of her, he's going to try to have her thrown in jail.”

“If she does anything to jeopardize that child's safety, that's where she belongs,” said Elle.

Patrice heard a baby's cry in the background. “How is Ariana?”

Elle laughed softly. “She's doing beautifully. She's crawling all over the place and pulling up. She'll probably take her first steps any day now. She's with her papa right now.”

“As I recall, he dotes on her,” Patrice said fondly.

“Sweetie, it's as if he's discovering love all over again. Seeing him with Ariana makes me miss the daddy I never had.”

“He missed out on
you,
” Patrice told her. “Anyway, you've got a stepfather who loves you. That makes up for it a bit, doesn't it?”

“It does. John is a wonderful man, and he adores Ariana, so that's good enough for me. She deserves to be cherished.”

“Yes, she does,” agreed Patrice.

“But back to you and T.K.,” Elle said. “Don't let this cause a rift in your relationship.”

Patrice sighed. “What can I do? He asked me to leave. I've never been so hurt.”

“Lick your wounds and try again. You love him. I don't believe you've ever loved any other man in the way you describe how it is between you and T.K. You have to give it your best shot.”

Patrice paused a long time before saying, “I will. Thanks for listening. I'd better go. Sam is still looking at me as if
I'm
the one with issues. Why'd I bring this nutty dog home with me?”

“Because you didn't want to be alone,” said Elle, wise and wonderful as usual.

“Bye, sweetie, love you,” said Patrice.

“I love you, too,” Elle said with a note of a smile in her tone.

After Patrice hung up the phone, she lay down in bed and closed her eyes. Sam was still watching her. “Go to sleep, Sam.”

She was drifting off to dreamland when her cell phone rang. She picked it up and checked the display. It was T.K. She let it go to voice mail.

T
he next day Patrice was prepared to drop Sam off, give T.K. back his car keys and leave. She would phone for a cab as she walked down the street on her way back home. She was still upset with T.K.

However, when she arrived at the house, she was met by Rose McKenna, who grasped her by the arm and pulled her into the house. Sam ran inside and disappeared into the back.

“Patty, how nice to see you,” said Rose, smiling warmly. Patrice noticed dark circles under her eyes and a sallow cast to her normally glowing complexion. She had lost a lot of sleep.

Rose was where T.K. had gotten his golden-brown complexion from. He also had her eye color, but the rest—his build, his height, the shape of his nose and
mouth—were more similar to his father's, who was still a handsome man in his late sixties.

“It's nice to see you, too, Mrs. McKenna,” said Patrice sincerely. Rose was five-four to Patrice's five-seven, and she was on the stout side, like Patrice's mother. She was still in her robe and slippers.

“Have you heard anything?” Patrice asked.

Rose gestured for Patrice to follow her. Patrice assumed she was going to the kitchen, but Rose turned and went down the long hallway that led to the sunroom on the east side of the big house. It was considered Rose's room because that's where she kept her books and her desk. She considered herself a writer, and she loved to come in here every day and work on her stories. She had never been published. She said she didn't need the money or the notoriety, should success follow. She wrote for the sheer pleasure of writing. Patrice envied her just a little. To feel that passionate about her chosen avocation but not to seek payment for her efforts was either crazy or noble. In Rose McKenna's case, it was noble.

A tea service sat on the coffee table in front of the couch. “No, we haven't heard from Aisha. Please sit down,” Rose said. She poured them cups of steaming tea and handed a cup to Patrice. “This always calms me when I'm under stress,” Rose said softly. She sipped her tea and regarded Patrice with warm brown eyes so like T.K.'s that Patrice felt her stomach muscles contract painfully with regret.

“I heard how T.K. spoke to you last evening,” Rose
said without preamble. “I hope you don't think that was really him talking. He was angry. It's not a state he's been in a lot. He usually handles things better. Well, you've spent time with him. You know how he is most of the time—a very sweet person.”

Patrice nodded in agreement. “I was shocked to see him that way.”

“I know you were. That's why I wanted to talk to you today.” Rose set her cup down

She looked Patrice in the eyes. “Let me tell you about T.K. and Malcolm. T.K. looked out for Malcolm from the time we brought him home from the hospital. Malcolm was mentally challenged. He'd been that way since birth—a lack of oxygen. Growing up, T.K. protected him from neighborhood bullies, ignoring taunts from people who called his brother names, hateful things that no boy should have to hear. When T.K. started having some success as an actor, he sent for Malcolm even before he convinced me and his father to move here. Knowing we were aging, he wanted to take some of the responsibility of looking out for Malcolm off of us. I'm sure it cut into his personal life, but he didn't care. He wanted his brother out here with him. After we moved here, we wanted Malcolm to come live with us, but T.K. insisted that his brother was a man and shouldn't have to live with his parents. Malcolm liked that about T.K. He helped him feel independent. When Malcolm met Aisha and fell in love, we all hoped that it would work out. Yes, we noticed that money was going out of his
accounts at an alarming rate, but if he was happy, we didn't want to step in and tell him to quit seeing Aisha. That's where T.K. thinks we were wrong. He blames himself for Malcolm getting involved with Aisha, and he blames himself for not being there when Malcolm got drunk and tried to drive while intoxicated. You see, Malcolm and Aisha had argued, he drank to forget and then in his drunken state he was going to see her.”

“From Malibu to Los Angeles,” Patrice said.

“Yes,” Rose confirmed. She sighed sadly. “Fortunately, no one else was injured that night. Malcolm would have been devastated if he had hurt anyone. He was very kindhearted.” Tears fell, and she wiped them away with a corner of a cloth napkin.

Patrice found herself crying in sympathy. Rose handed her a cloth napkin. “I like you, Patty,” Rose told her. “I believe you're good for my son. He's not without his demons. We all have them, but he has a good heart, and I think he regrets how he spoke to you yesterday. Please try not to hold it against him.”

Patrice was touched. Tears continued to fall, and she knew that was as much because she felt heartbroken over her altercation with T.K. as it was because she felt sympathy for a grieving mother.

Realistically, however, she knew his mother couldn't speak for T.K., so she took Rose McKenna's words with a grain of salt.

 

“Would you please shut that brat up?” shouted Kinesha Jackson, Aisha's mother. Kinesha had to be at work at
eight o'clock, and it was five in the morning. The little apartment didn't have soundproof walls, so she heard every whimper from Mira. Aisha sat up on the lumpy couch. She and Mira had to sleep there because her mother wasn't about to give up her bed for them.

She held Mira in her arms and rocked her. “Shh, baby girl. It's okay. That mean, big-mouthed woman isn't going to get you.” Mira continued to wail.

“I heard that, Aisha. You'd better mind your mouth or you and that bastard will be out on the street.”

“You'd really put us out?” Aisha asked, incredulous. “You've never done anything for me and you'd put me out when I need your help the most?”

“Hell, yeah, I'd put you out. Now quiet down that rug rat,” said Kinesha. “Somebody's got to work in this house.”

“I told you that I'll get a job as soon as I find a day care for Mira,” Aisha reminded her irascible mother.

“Sure, you will,” said Kinesha. “The only job you ever kept was being kept.” She laughed. “Too bad that stupid boy killed himself.”

That was it for Aisha. She had taken her mother's snide remarks for eight days. She had put up with them because she didn't have anywhere else to go. But when she started talking that way about Malcolm, she had to speak up. “He was the nicest man I ever knew!” she screamed at her mother. Mira suddenly stopped crying. She looked up at her mother with beautiful black eyes in her brown face and smiled. Aisha smiled back. “That's
right,” she cooed. “Your father was a good man. And you know what? You look just like him. He didn't have an easy life. And it was his unlucky day when he met me because all I wanted was a meal ticket. But you know what? After a while, I fell in love with him. I really did.” Now that Mira had stopped crying, she started. “I could have been nicer to him. I made him think he could never please me. I made him jump through hoops just to watch him jump. I was so selfish. It's my fault he's dead. I don't deserve you, little Mira. I really don't. I don't have my head right yet—not enough to be a good momma to you.”

“Quit blubbering so I can get some sleep,” Kinesha yelled.

Aisha lay back down with Mira cradled in her arms. “Soon, sweet girl, I'm taking you back where you'll be safe. That wicked witch is going to make me commit murder, and then where will you be?”

Mira smiled at her.

 

T.K. rolled over in bed and grabbed his cell phone from the nightstand. He dialed Patrice's number and listened to her voice on voice mail. Then he hung up. Yes, she would know he had phoned. He'd phoned plenty of times over the past nine days and either left a brief, impersonal message or had left no message at all. She wasn't returning his calls, and he couldn't blame her. Maybe she was giving him space, or maybe she had washed her hands of him. He'd never know unless he
went over there, and he was still too embarrassed to do that. His mother had told him she'd come by to drop Sam and the car off and ask if they'd heard anything from Aisha.

He had still been reeling from what he perceived as her abandonment of him to notice that his mother was looking at him strangely. “Do you love her?” she'd abruptly asked him.

“I thought I did, but she's not who I thought she was,” he'd said, sounding like a spoiled child now that he thought about it.

“Don't act like a fool,” his mother had warned him. “Love doesn't come around that often. If we find it once we're lucky. If she's your once, you'd better stop being stubborn and ask her to forgive your asinine behavior.”

“Must you talk like a schoolteacher?” he had joked, trying to lighten the mood.

“Oh, that word's meaning is easy to ascertain, it just means someone who's acting like an ass!” his mother had said, and left the room.

Now T.K. got out of bed and went into the bathroom. After using it, he washed his hands and went back to lie down. It was only seven in the morning. When he had phoned Patrice earlier, he'd had no fear of waking her. She got up and jogged at around this time. He lay with his hands locked behind his head. He was still at his parents' house. He would remain here until they found out where Aisha was.

The detective agency his lawyer had hired had not had
any luck. They had been on the job for a week now. He was disappointed, to say the least. He wanted to fire them and hire someone else, but his lawyer had told him they were the best on the West Coast. Somehow a woman with a two-month-old baby in tow had eluded them. Obviously Aisha had gone where no detective agency had gone before.

He fell back to sleep and was awakened two hours later by the ringing of his cell phone. He saw that it was Patrice. He answered instead of letting it go to its message function. “Hello,” he said simply, his tone soft.

He heard a sharp intake of breath and nothing else. She had not expected him to answer. Nor had she been prepared to say anything. She was probably going to listen to his voice on voice mail and hang up just as he'd done. She sighed. He melted at the sound of her voice with only that one exhalation. “Have you heard anything from Aisha?” she asked.

He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “No, we haven't heard from her.”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Um, I'd better go then.”

“Wait!”

“Yes?”

“How are you?”

“I'm fine,” she said.

“Were you out running when I called earlier?”

“Yes.”

She wasn't going to make this easy for him. He cleared his throat again. “May I come over?”

“For what?” she asked, her tone inquisitive.

“To see you,” he said.

“I have your email address. I'll send you a photo.”

“For God's sake, Patty. I made a mistake. I've been a fool. I shouldn't have spoken to you that way. I panicked, and I wasn't thinking clearly. I thought that if you weren't with me, you were against me. I was wrong, as my mother has pointed out to me on numerous occasions. My lawyer gave me the same advice you did, not to contact the police.”

This came as a surprise to her. “You haven't had the police out looking for her all this time? You hired a private detective?”

“That's all I could do,” he said. “She's Mira's mother. She had every right to take her.”

“She could still come back,” Patrice told him, her voice hopeful.

He sighed deeply. “I hope so. It would kill me not to know what's happened to Malcolm's daughter.” She heard his anguish, and her heart went out to him.

It was the same heart he had crushed though, and she knew if she saw him the next move would be to make love to him. “No, we shouldn't see each other right now,” she told him. “Our emotions are still too raw. Come when you're positive your head and heart are in the right place—when your demons are dead or at least silenced. I'll wait for you.”

 

Rose heard the doorbell while she was writing. She saved what she had written and slowly got up from the
desk. Her arthritic knee was giving her some trouble today.

“Alma,” she called as she walked toward the front door. “Are you getting that?”

There was no sign of Alma. She supposed she was downstairs in the laundry room. By the time she got to the door and looked through the peephole, whoever had been there was gone. They lived in a gated community. The guard at the gate wouldn't allow anyone to come in unless they were on the list of authorized people. She felt safe to open her door and peer outside.

When she opened the door, there was Mira in her car seat, smiling up at her. Rose cried out in joy, “Mira!” She picked Mira up. She looked along the driveway and across the expanse of lawn, searching for Aisha, but there was no sign of her. “Aisha! Aisha! Come back! We're not angry! We're just happy to have you back!” She was hoping Aisha was hiding somewhere, but if the girl was still here, she didn't want to show herself. “If you can hear me, Aisha, thank you! We'll take care of her until you decide you're ready to come back for her.”

With that, Rose McKenna took her granddaughter inside.

She placed the car seat on the foyer table and reached in to remove Mira from it. Her granddaughter was clean and sweet-smelling. Aisha had taken good care of her. She kissed her sweet face repeatedly. “Where have you been?” she asked, grinning.

Rose was at a loss. Her husband and her son were out.
She would have to call them with the news. The only person there to share in her joy was Alma. “Alma,” she called. “Come see who's come back home after twelve days!”

When Alma showed up, she took one look at Mira and shouted, “Praise God!”

T.K. was pulling through his parents' front gates when he saw Aisha getting in the back of a taxi parked near the guard house. He gunned the motor and sped across the lawn, turned the car around, went up over the curb and arrived in time to block the taxi's exit. He jumped out of the car and slammed the door behind him. Going to Aisha's side of the car, he yanked her door open and pulled her out. “Hey, fella,” the cab driver shouted, getting out of the car himself, “you can't do that.” Then he saw whom he was addressing and grinned broadly. “Hey, you're T. K. McKenna. I've been drivin' people to Beverly Hills for years and never saw a star. You're my first.”