“Yeah.” I told her not really wanting to chit chat right now.
The lie came easier every time I told it, and that was probably the scariest part because I was never fully okay. Between Rome sitting outside waiting on me, Marvelous asking about his missing belongings, and Lev standing a few doors down asking questions I had no business answering because the peaceful little life I was trying to build suddenly didn’t feel as far away from all this mess as I thought it was.
CHAPTER 12
E’Levyn ‘Lev’ Laurent
The gates opened before I had to reach for the keypad, and I eased the Range Rover onto the long driveway leading up to the house I bought Barbara Jean a few years ago. The property sat back far enough from the street that the traffic along the Grove didn’t sound too bad behind the palm trees and thick hedges surrounding the place. She had complained about the size when I first brought her here, swearing she didn’t need six bedrooms, a pool, or enough backyard space to host the whole damn family reunion, but that ain’t stop her from filling every corner with plants, family pictures, and furniture nobody was allowed to sit on.
The house fit her now, even if she’d never admit it with cream-colored stone wrapped around the front while tall windows reflected the late afternoon sun, and the fountain in the middle of the circular driveway pushed water into the air. Her white Cadillac was parked near the front steps with the trunk open, which let me know she was already running late for whatever bingo game she’d been talking about all week. BarbaraJean, or BJ as a lot of people called her was never in a rush until the very last minute, then suddenly everybody around her needed to move faster.
My phone vibrated in the cupholder before I could cut the engine off. I looked down at the screen and saw my assistant’s name, followed by three unread emails and another call coming in from a number saved under one of the developers I’d been negotiating with for the past month. I declined both for the moment, grabbed my keys, and climbed out.
I had barely made it halfway up the walkway before the front door opened and BJ stepped outside with her purse hanging from one shoulder and a large bingo bag hooked around the other arm. She wore a navy-blue two-piece outfit with gold buttons, some low comfortable heels, and a lot of perfume. Her silver hair was freshly curled, and the color of the lipstick on her mouth matched the scarf tied around the handle of her bag.
She stopped on the top step and looked at me like I was the one holding her up. “You took long enough.”
“I just pulled up.”
“And I’ve been waiting.”
“For what?” I asked, continuing toward her. “You already got your keys in your hand.”
She looked down at the keys like she had forgotten they were there, then shifted both bags farther up her arm. “That don’t mean I wasn’t waiting on you.”
I smiled and leaned down so she could kiss my cheek. She held onto the side of my face for a second before looking me over from my head down to my shoes like she was checking to make sure everything was still attached. “You look tired baby. I told you about working so hard boy. When you die, you can’t take all that money with you.”
“I’m good.”
“That ain’t what I said.”
“I know BJ, I heard you.”
She dropped her eyes into tiny slits, but before she could turn it into a whole conversation, my phone started ringing again. She looked toward the sound and sucked her teeth.
“See there, that phone always ringing.”
“That’s how I make money.”
“You got enough money.”
“Ain’t no such thing.” I winked.
“That’s exactly what somebody with too much money would say.” She turned around and headed back through the front door without telling me to follow because she already knew I would. “Come get this food before I leave it sitting on the counter.”
“I told you I wasn’t staying long.”
“And I told you to come get this food.” She snapped.
The cool air inside the house hit me the second I stepped through the doorway. Everything in my grandma’s house looked expensive because it was, but she had somehow made it feel like the same little house she raised us in back in Liberty City. Family pictures covered the entryway wall from the floor almost to the ceiling, and most of them were old with school pictures, football photos, birthdays, graduations, all the cousins and my siblings squeezed together on couches, and one picture of me and Marvelous standing beside her in matching Easter suits with both of us looking mad as hell about it.
The smell coming from the kitchen made me look away from the wall because she had the whole downstairs smelling like Sunday even though it wasn’t. Barbara Jean moved around the kitchen gathering her last few things while a foil-covered plate sat waiting near the edge of the island.
“You cooked all this before bingo?” I asked.
“I cooked because I was hungry.”
I glanced around at the pots still sitting on the stove. “You cooked enough for twenty people BJ.”
