Page 19 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

“She’s got an opinion in advance. It’s a gift she has.”

I stepped inside, and the smell hit me the way it always did—onions, celery, and bell pepper sweating down in a pot somewhere; cornbread; something fried. The house was small enough that you could hear every conversation happening in every room, which for a man who’d spent his whole life in houses built for silence, still felt like stepping into a wall of sound.

“There he is.” Raven appeared out of the kitchen doorway wiping her hands on a dish towel, already grinning at me like she’d been waiting all day for this exact moment. “Landry. You bring the good wine this time or that mid shit you brought last time?”

“It wasn’t mid.”

“It was mid. I looked it up. Twelve dollars a bottle, mid.”

“I don’t be looking up prices on wine, Raven. I bought what the store had.”

“That’s the problem right there. Man got more money than the governor, and he shopping wherever’s closest, knowing damn well we seen his wine cellar at his house.”

“I know wine.”

“You know expensive. Don’t be coming over here cutting corners.” She took the bottle out of my hand, read the label, and made a face that told me I hadn’t improved much since last time, but she carried it toward the kitchen anyway, which I took as a win.

Honor came around the corner next, drying a baby off with a towel that already looked defeated, her youngest squirming against her hip. “Look who it is. Mr. Six Bodyguards Outside.”

“It’s two.”

“Two’s still a lot for a Sunday dinner, Amai.”

“It’s a lot less than usual.”

“That supposed to comfort me?” She shifted the baby to her other hip, glancing at me sideways with the particular tired amusement of a woman who’d stopped being impressed by anything a long time ago. “Terrance is at his mama’s with the boys, so I got a whole three hours when nobody needs nothing from me but Mama’s cooking. Don’t ruin it by bringing drama to my one good afternoon.”

“No drama. I promise.”

“You always say that.”

“I mean it every time.”

“Uh-huh.” She wasn’t buying it, but she wasn’t fighting me on it either, which from Honor, I understood to be its own kind of welcome.

Saroya came out last, wiping flour off her hands onto an apron that had definitely seen better decades, three kids trailing her like she was the sun and they were orbiting bodies. “You eat today?” she asked me, which threw me for a second because it wasn’t a joke. It was a real question; the kind you asked somebody you were keeping track of.

“I ate.”

“What’d you eat?”

“Saroya—”

“I’m asking a question. What’d you eat?”

“Eggs. This morning.”

“That’s not enough for a grown man, but that’s a conversation for another day.” She turned and disappeared back toward the stove before I could figure out whether I’d passed or failed whatever test that had been.

Truth was watching all of it with her arms crossed and a look on her face like she was enjoying my discomfort a little too much. “You good?”

“I’m good.”

“You don’t look good. You look like you’re about to get jumped.”

“I might get jumped, shit, the way they talking.”

“You might.” She laughed, and the sound of it, easy and unguarded, was worth every minute of standing on that porch dreading it. “Come on. Mama wants to talk to you before dinner. Says she’s got questions.”