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  Nina shook her head. “Um, Robin isn’t here and neither of you can fry chicken like Robin.”

  Yolanda and Alex rolled their eyes at her. “Oh, that child has a nerve,” Alex quipped.

  “Where’s the wine, Yolanda?” Nina asked, then stuck her tongue out at Alex.

  “How about we have cranberry juice tonight,” Yolanda said as she set the collards on the counter and crossed over to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of juice.

  Alex and Nina exchanged questioning looks. “That’s good for you,” Nina said. “But where’s the wine?”

  “At the store.”

  Alex sighed. “Fine, I’ll go and . . .”

  “No,” Chuck said, holding up his hand. “I’ll pick up a bottle of wine for dinner.”

  “Two,” Nina called out to his retreating figure. “Because Yolanda is going to have a glass as well. Juice. Yeah, right.”

  “Nina,” Alex said, shaking her head.

  When Chuck left and Alex headed into the living room to check in on the bed-and-breakfast, Nina leaned against the counter while Yolanda heated the collards in a pan.

  “Tell the truth and shame the devil, you and Chuck have fu—”

  “We have not but we’re going to, and you don’t get to ask any more questions about him since you’re the reason he’s here.”

  “Did you tell Alex what’s going on?”

  Yolanda shook her head. “Can you guys just let me figure this out? After your wedding, Chuck and I have a plan. But I’m not doing anything to ruin your day after all you’ve been through.” Yolanda closed her eyes and remembered watching her sister battle for her life after that horrific accident in Charlotte. When she’d heard about Nina’s accident, she thought it was the people after her trying to stop her from talking and not just an accident because she and Clinton had had an argument. Turning around to face her, Yolanda pointed her fork at Nina. “If you bought another Mustang, we’re going to fight.”

  Nina furrowed her eyebrows. “Where did that come from?”

  “Nowhere,” she said. “But what are you driving these days?”

  “Clinton’s car,” Nina said, then started out of the kitchen.

  “But doesn’t he have a . . .Y’all make me sick. You need a Buick.”

  Nina turned around and shook her head. She was about to say something when the front door opened and Chuck walked in. “Saved by the bodyguard,” Nina whispered as he headed for the kitchen.

  Chapter 16

  Chase was getting bored with this stupid assignment. How many people did this woman have in and out of her life? She had a house full of people and that man was still there. Chase was sure that he’d seen the green-eyed giant spot him in the tree line where he was hiding. That woman knew someone was after her and this was going to make eliminating her that much harder. Dumb-ass Danny, he thought as he moved from his spot once the man entered the town house. Since North Carolina was an open-carry state, he calmly walked to his car with his rifle on his back. Just as he’d secured it in the trunk a police cruiser slowly drove through the neighborhood. He had seen him. Shit! Chase climbed into the car and called Danny.

  “Is it done? Finally?” he asked when he answered.

  “No, you goddamn idiot. Her bodyguard saw me and now the police are riding through the neighborhood.”

  “No one told you to take this long to handle the situation.”

  “And no one told you to create such a fucked-up situation. What were you thinking, Danny?”

  “Do your fucking job.”

  “Fuck you.” Chase ended the call and tossed his phone in the glove box. He watched from the car as the man walked out of the town house and talked to the patrol officer. He groaned, knowing that he’d been seen. This didn’t happen. Who in the hell was this man?

  * * *

  “Thanks for coming out. And you didn’t see anything?” Charles asked the cop.

  “No. And you said you saw her stalker in the woods?” she asked as she stared at Charles and not the area where he’d seen the white man.

  “Yeah,” he said, turning toward the woods. “Right over there.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said as if she’d fallen back into the reason why she was on the scene. “I’ll check it out, and if I find anything I’ll let you know. Do you know if she has reported that she has a stalker?”

  Charles folded his arms across his chest and shook his head. “If she thought the police could handle it, then I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Well, how do we know what to be on the lookout for?” she said as if she was offended.

  Charles snorted. “I just told you.” He turned back toward the entrance of the town house and saw Yolanda standing at the door.

  “What was that all about?” she asked as he walked inside.

  “Thought I saw something outside,” he said truthfully.

  “Something, or someone trying to . . .”

  Charles pressed her against his chest. “You’re safe, all right? Where’s that dinner you and your sisters invited me to?”

  Yolanda pushed away from him and glared at him. “Was my killer out there? Are we in danger?”

  “No. At this moment, no one is out there.”

  He watched her shiver in fear. “But he’s here?”

  “Let’s eat.”

  “Don’t do this.” Her voice was low and filled with fear.

  “Yolanda, no harm is going to come to you while I’m here. I got you,” he said.

  She dropped her head in her hands. “But my sisters are here and . . .”

  “This is why we have to go to the police. Yolanda, I know you’re afraid, but . . .”

  Alex walked into the living room. “Hey, are we going to eat or what?” She looked from Yolanda to Charles. “What’s going on?”

  “Everything’s fine, ma’am.” Charles knew Alex didn’t believe him by the scowl on her face.

  “Sure it is,” Alex said. “The food is getting cold.”

  “Thanks, Alex,” Yolanda said. “We’ll be right there.”

  Alex turned on her heels and headed for the dining room.

  “This, this is what I’ve been afraid of. I don’t want my family hurt because . . .”

  “Yolanda,” he said softly. “We have to fix this. Right now we have a Band-Aid on the situation. Let’s just eat.”

  She sighed and walked toward the dining room. Nina and Alex were seated at the dining room table with the shrimp and grits and collard greens in the middle of table. “It’s about time,” Nina said. “I’d be eating right now if Alex wasn’t Alex.”

  “Am I the only one in this family who has manners?” Alex asked as Yolanda and Charles took their seats. Yolanda rolled her eyes as they started passing the bowls of food. “You eat once everyone is at the table. Daddy would be so disappointed in y’all.”

  Nina piled her plate with collard greens. “Daddy also says no fighting at the dinner table, but there you go starting.”

  Normally, this would be the moment when Yolanda and Nina would tag team Alex, but all Yolanda could think about was how close to death they had been. And how much Chuck wasn’t telling her.

  Everything just clicked as to how serious everything really was.

  “Yolanda? You all right over there?” Nina asked.

  “Yeah, I’m good. Just not as hungry as I thought I was.” She rose to her feet and gave her sisters a nod before heading upstairs. Chuck grabbed his plate and followed her into the studio.

  She turned around and shook her head at him. “I said I wasn’t hungry.”

  “I know, the food is for me,” he said as he set the plate on an empty spot on her desk. “What made it click today?”

  “They’re here and because of... I know this isn’t my fault because I was at work, doing what I loved. Those men invaded my peace and robbed me of being safe.” Tears poured down her cheeks and Chuck drew her into his arms.

  “You know what you have to do to stop this,” he said calmly. “And I know you don’
t want to go to the police, but you have to. I have someone working on finding an officer we can trust. That’s the only way to get your peace and safety back.”

  She held on to him tightly. “I just can’t keep you around forever?” she quipped.

  “It doesn’t work like that. And you’d get tired of me. To hear you tell it, you’re already tired of me.”

  Yolanda looked up at him and the gleam in his eyes ignited something in her chest. What was this all about? She needed to focus on staying alive and not the wanton need she had for this man.

  “That deal we made,” she said. “Let’s just call it off.”

  Chuck smiled. “But you’re still learning to shoot, right?”

  “Yes, but I’m not going to the police until Nina’s married, like I said before. And now that you know what kind of people we’re dealing with, maybe you can stop judging me for the decision I made.”

  Chuck nodded and stroked her arm before letting her go. “You should eat. This is pretty good and your sisters are concerned about you.” He reached for his plate and took a big bite of the collard greens. There he was again showing those dimples and an appreciation for her food. She’d made the greens and she knew they were amazing.

  “At least you know good food,” she said. “But I don’t allow food in my studio.”

  “Is that your not-so-subtle way of telling me to get out?”

  “Are you sure you haven’t missed your calling as a comedian?” Yolanda quipped. Though she wanted him to stay, she needed a minute to put her mental armor on and pretend she wasn’t scared out of her mind.

  * * *

  The next morning, Yolanda woke up with a start, then smelled sausage. Alex must have been up cooking. She glanced at her phone and it was early, even for Alexandria Richardson standards. “What in the hell?” She hopped out of bed and headed for the kitchen. When she saw Chuck standing at the stove—wearing gray sweatpants and shirtless—she had to stop herself from whistling at him.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  Chuck turned around. “Good morning. I was trying not to wake you,” he said.

  “You didn’t; the smell of your breakfast did.”

  “Hmm, you don’t usually smell it,” he said with a smile, then returned to the pan. Yolanda crossed over to the stove and wondered what she wanted to taste more, his egg, cheese, and sausage scramble or his sexy mouth. “I guess I wasn’t sleeping as deeply as I normally do or this is what happens when you skip dinner? You do this every morning?”

  He nodded as he turned the heat down on the pan. “Right after my workout.”

  “My God, when do you sleep?”

  “When I’m tired. You want some?” Chuck asked.

  Oh, she wanted something, but she was supposed to act as if she didn’t. What was he thinking cooking half naked? “I’ll just have a banana.”

  “You’re going to need your energy at the range. The first time you hear gunshots it might be jarring.”

  Yolanda shivered. The first time she’d heard gunshots had been jarring, like bombs going off in her ears. “Yeah, it is. But at least I’ll be ready for it this time,” she said.

  “At least let me make you some toast and honey to go with the banana.”

  “You got coffee?”

  “That’s what I don’t make this time of morning because I know the coffee will wake you up.”

  She glanced at the steaming mug next to him. “What’s that?”

  “Promise not to laugh?”

  Yolanda shook her head no.

  “Then I’m not telling.”

  She crossed over to him and picked up the mug. It looked like coffee. And it smelled like coffee. “Is that instant coffee?”

  “It is. Now, if you want to wake up this time of morning every day, I’ll brew a pot for both of us every day. And instant coffee isn’t as bad as you think. Taste it.”

  She looked down at his mug, thinking that sipping his trash coffee was probably the only way she’d taste his lips, then took a sip. And. It. Was. Trash. She coughed as she poured the swill down the drain.

  “Hey, I was going to drink that,” Chuck said behind his laugh.

  “I can’t allow you to do that,” she said as she began prepping the coffee maker. “I may have been giving you a hard time, but that coffee is torture.”

  Once the coffee started percolating, it didn’t take long for Alex to come downstairs. She and Nina had decided that Yolanda’s studio was the best guest room ever and slept there.

  “Why are you two up so early?” Alex asked as she walked into the kitchen.

  “Oh,” Yolanda said. “Now you know how it feels. But isn’t it obvious that we’re having breakfast?”

  “This is even early for me. But the smell of the coffee made me think of home and how Nina and I need to get moving. I know our sister will sleep until ten, but I want to get into the office before noon today.”

  “I’ll bet you’re wondering how the bed-and-breakfast made it twenty-four hours without you being there,” Yolanda said as she poured the coffee.

  “I’m not doing this with you this early in the morning,” Alex said as she rubbed her eyes. “As a matter of fact, I’m going back to bed and y’all can do whatever you were doing before I came down here.”

  “See!” Yolanda hissed. “We were just having breakfast before we go to the . . . gym. Yeah, the gym.”

  “Um-huh,” Alex said as she waved her hand and headed toward the stairs.

  “We should take her to the range with us,” Chuck said when Alex was out of earshot.

  “Absolutely not,” Yolanda said as she passed him a mug of good coffee. His fingers briefly danced across hers, and she imagined that it was around nine in the morning and he was making breakfast after making love to her thoroughly the night before. They were alone in the town house and he’d decided to make her his breakfast on the marble counter. She wondered if he would use his fingers first or dive right in with those lips and his marvelous tongue.

  “Yolanda,” Chuck called out. She snapped back to reality and saw that she was a couple of pours away from overfilling her mug. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m good. Just thinking about the range.” Yolanda gulped her black coffee and decided that she needed a shower. A cold one.

  “What time are we leaving?” Yolanda asked.

  “I thought six-thirty would be good. I talked to the owner of the gun range we’re going to and we’re going to have the place to ourselves.”

  “Okay, I’m going to take a shower.”

  “And I’m saving you some of my scramble. That banana just isn’t going to do it.”

  Yolanda dashed out of the kitchen and ran into the bathroom. She spent about fifteen minutes standing under the cold spray trying to get the image of that man out of her head.

  She shut the water off after realizing it wasn’t working. Yolanda dried off and put a robe on before heading into her bedroom to get dressed.

  What do you wear to a gun range? she thought as she stood in front of the closet.

  * * *

  Charles made two plates for him and Yolanda. Then he downed another coffee before washing the dishes. When he heard footsteps, he expected to turn around and see Yolanda, but Nina was standing there.

  “You all sure get up early,” she said through a yawn.

  “I really wasn’t trying to wake you guys up,” he said. “Coffee?”

  “No, because that means I will officially have to be awake. I’ve got a question for you,” she said as she slapped her hand on her hip.

  “All right.”

  “How are you going to keep my sister alive if you are sleeping with her? That’s what this breakfast is about, isn’t it?”

  Charles shook his head. “I’m not sleeping with your sister and this breakfast is for our training this morning.”

  “Training?”

  Charles nodded. “I’m going to help Yolanda protect herself.”

  “Thought that was your job.�
��

  “It is, but I’m a personal protection agent and part of my job is teaching my clients how to react if they have to.”

  “What’s going on with you and my sister?”

  “I’m here to protect your sister, that’s it.”

  Nina tilted her head to the side. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Why do you think something . . . Nina, I’m doing my job and that’s it.”

  “What are you doing up so early?” Yolanda asked her sister as she walked into the kitchen.

  “I smelled coffee.” Nina gave Yolanda a slow once-over. “Why are you dressed like Catwoman?”

  Charles drank in Yolanda’s image: form-fitting black jumpsuit, black and white sneakers, and a black ball cap. Catwoman was a fitting description.

  “Because I’m going to start my . . . What’s going on in here?”

  “Nothing,” Charles said. “Your sister said your coffee woke her up.”

  Nina nodded. “Coffee is the alarm clock,” she said. “But I’m going back to bed so you two can get ready for your training or whatever. Knowing Alex, she’s going to be up in fifteen minutes.”

  Once Charles and Yolanda were alone in the kitchen, he smiled. “Your sisters are something else.”

  “Like yours?”

  “Nah. My sisters leave me alone these days.”

  “Did you make this for us?” she said as she nodded toward the plates.

  “I told you that a banana wasn’t going to be enough for the range,” he said. “And after you saved me from instant coffee, I can’t let you go out like that.”

  “You’re too sweet,” she replied with a smile.

  Charles handed her a fork and Yolanda took it from his hand. “I hope you like it.”

  She closed her eyes for a brief second and then stroked the back of his hand. “I’m sure I will. It smells great.”

  Charles moved his hand from hers and watched her as she dug into the scramble. When Yolanda moaned as she ate, he wondered what she would sound like if they had kept their original plan. Would she make those sounds when he was deep inside her?

  Wait! What? Why was he having these thoughts when he’d just told her sister that there was nothing going on between him and Yolanda?