Page 239 of The Sweetest Return

Downstairs, Tasha packed leftovers while I poured wine into the decanter. She gave me reheating instructions for food we were about to eat, then looked at me too long.

“What?” I asked.

“You got that thinking-too-hard face.”

“I think.”

“Not like that.”

I set the bottle down.

Coach Price needed an answer tomorrow. Marcus had called three times, and his last voicemail didn’t leave much room for me to pretend the clock wasn’t running. The businesses could handle the shift. My people had made that plain. Pops had too.

But Imani was upstairs in my shower.

Her career was opening wider.

Mine might be doing the same.

Tasha snapped a lid onto a container. “Talk to her before you get quiet and make her guess.”

I stared at her.

She smiled. “I said what I said.”

“I don’t remember asking.”

“Men rarely do.”

Then she picked up her bag and left like she had not stepped all in my business with clean shoes on.

When Imani came back downstairs, I had to take a second.

She had let her braids down. They fell over her shoulders and down her back, still a little damp at the edges from the shower. Her face was bare except for lip balm, skin warm brown under the kitchen lights. She wore one of my black T-shirts, of course, the thing hanging loose and stopping mid-thigh. Her legs were bare. Toenails white. Thin anklet at one ankle. A quick flash of her navel ring showed when she pushed her braids behind her shoulder.

Something in my chest settled and stirred at the same time.

Imani was stubborn, funny, sensitive beneath all that lipstick and attitude, too fine for peace, and nebby as hell when she thought somebody had a story.

She was also standing in my kitchen in my shirt like she belonged there.

Like my life had been waiting for her to walk through it barefoot.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re trying to make a decision.”

I handed her a glass of wine. “I’m looking at your toes.”

“My toes?”

“White polish.”

“You noticed my toes from over there?”

“I notice everything on you.”