The Hot Spot Read online

  Kaleb tried to keep up with her with his little two-step, but Zaria had his mouth opening more and more in shock as she did all the current dances. When she did the Dougie with the energy of a fifteen-year-old, he knew he couldn’t keep up with her. She liked to party, and he could look around the dance floor and see that a lot of men—young, old, and pretending not be old—were watching her.

  She made a sight with her waist-length weave, flashy makeup, and dangling earrings. Her gold satin skirt showed off her legs as she did the wind and grind like she was on a job.

  The skirt was so short—and the men were looking so closely—that he wondered if they were catching an occasional glimpse of her hidden pleasures.

  Zaria danced up to him and then turned to press her buttocks to him as she pressed his hands to her hips as she worked them back and forth enough to make a belly dancer check her skills. She wrapped her arms around his neck, but Kaleb was too busy worrying that raising her arms was also raising her clothes higher.

  He knew he had no right to feel jealous. Zaria wasn’t his girlfriend, and she even encouraged him to still be on the lookout for a nice girl to get serious with, but the thought of Zaria dancing that way in clubs, with other men, dressed scantily, and maybe even taking one of them home like she did him made his entire chest burn like he had a furnace in his chest. A furnace fueled with jealousy and possessiveness.

  Two things he had no right feeling when they both agreed to enjoy it for what it was while it was still fun.

  “Ohhhh, that’s my jam,” Zaria said, cupping her hand to her mouth as she rapped along with Biggie’s classic “Juicy,” word for word.

  That made him smile as he watched her making the hand motions and all like she was onstage. Forty-two really wasn’t that old, he thought, still doing his two-step and trying to keep up with her.

  Two hours later, Kaleb begged off another dance and claimed a seat. He glanced at his watch and did a double take to see it was close to three in the morning. He ordered a shot of vodka on the rocks from the waitress walking around the crowded club, carrying it with him outside for some fresh air.

  As soon as he stepped onto the sidewalk, he felt a million times better. The air wasn’t filled with different colognes and perfumes mingling in the air with body funk, alcohol, and body odors. But the steady thump-thump of the music’s bass still sounded loudly.

  He sipped from the clear plastic cup, wincing just a bit as it went down.

  “Just please come get me.”

  Still holding his cup to his mouth, he turned to see a pretty girl with a short hairdo of mostly flips pacing as she talked into her phone. He was curious as he watched her.

  “We went to the concert, and when it was over, she said she was stopping by here for a quick drink. That was damn near three hours ago,” she said, her voice filled with annoyance. “I’m ready to go and she talking about shutting the club down.”

  Sounds like my night, he thought.

  “Just come and get me,” she pleaded with someone, eventually sighing and flipping her cell phone closed before she tossed it back into her clutch with the speed a pitcher would lob a fastball.

  “I hate clubs,” she said, looking up and seeing Kaleb’s curious eyes on her. She sounded slightly apologetic.

  He nodded in understanding before tossing the rest of his drink onto the brick-paved street. He balled the cup up with a strong hand.

  “I guess your girlfriend is still in there dancing, too, huh?” she asked, stepping up to stand beside him.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” he said, but quickly added, “but we’re here together.”

  She nodded. “I saw y’all at the jazz concert and then inside,” she told him.

  Kaleb eyed her. “Did you like it? The music? Did you enjoy it?” he asked.

  “Yessss,” she said, her smile spreading. “I bought the ticket and since I’m single, I brought my cousin. She drove and now we’re here.”

  She said “here” like it was akin to the plague.

  “Did you like it?” she asked.

  Kaleb tossed the balled up cup into the air and caught it several times. “I love jazz.”

  “Yeah, me too. In fact, I play the piano.”

  Kaleb looked impressed. “Wow, that’s cool.”

  “Yeah.”

  They fell silent.

  Kaleb thought of Zaria. “I better go in and check on her,” he said, turning to head back into the club. The feel of a hand touching his arm caused him to look back.

  She pressed a business card into his hand. “I hope I’m not being disrespectful to your friend, but, um, if things don’t develop . . . maybe you can call me?”

  Kaleb looked down at the business card but he didn’t take it. She pushed it into his hand before walking past him back into the club. He looked down at it.

  HEATHER LONG ATTORNEY-AT-LAW 843-555-1212

  There was no future for him and Zaria. She made it plain that marriage and motherhood wasn’t a part of her future. And he told her that if he met someone he thought could be the woman for him, he would end things with Zaria and pursue his future. Still, it didn’t feel right taking numbers from another woman while he was on a date with Zaria.

  Even though Heather could have been a good candidate for compatibility.

  Even though he saw more and more over the weeks that outside of the bedroom, he had nothing in common with the sexy older woman.

  Even though his desire to be a father seemed to be increasing every day.

  Even though he knew that his days with Zaria were numbered.

  Kaleb folded the card and then balled it up in his hand with the cup. He turned and found Zaria standing there watching him closely, her hair slightly plastered to her head and her face damp with sweat.

  Zaria’s eyes darted down to his hand and he knew that she had seen the other woman give him the card, but she said nothing about it.

  “That club was packed,” she said, walking toward him to press a hand to his chest and look up at his handsome and strong square face. “Thank you for bringing me even though I can tell it was the last place you wanted to be.”

  Kaleb nodded as he moved past her to throw the cup and the card into the large trash can on the side of the building. He looked at Zaria with clear intent.

  She just shifted her gaze away. “If it’s cool with you, I’m just going to head home alone. I’m pretty tired,” she said.

  Kaleb nodded even though he felt disappointed. “I’m going to follow you to make sure you get in safe,” he said, sounding casual and normal.

  He was surprised when she didn’t even kiss him before she climbed into her VW and started the engine. Pausing for just a second, he climbed into his SUV and soon he was pulling out of the parking lot behind her.

  As he followed her the short distance to her house, he was deep in thought. He had to admit that although he had no regrets about tossing the card, it did make him wonder if he would ever find the one he could settle down with if he was giving respect to a woman he was casually involved with.

  As their time together went on, the fiery passion between them remained just as strong as their first night together—if not stronger. But the differences between them were becoming more and more clear. And more than the fact that he wanted to settle down and Zaria was enjoying the second half of her life being free.

  But mostly—and most importantly—even if they got beyond their age difference and the fact that her kids had shown him nothing but cold indifference any time he encountered them, what kind of life would they have if he grew to resent her for the children she wouldn’t have? Would she spend some weekend partying in the club while he was home worrying that her gyrations drew the leers of men?

  Kaleb sighed. Zaria had never turned down a chance for them to be intimate. Never. And that let him know that she felt some kind of way about seeing him talking to that woman outside the club. Still, he refused to make himself believe she was jealous because she cared deeply for him. The most
Zaria Ali wanted from him was hanging between his thighs.

  Maybe it was time to leave it alone and focus on his future. He couldn’t dwell in these shades of gray with her much longer. He was more than a damn sex toy for an older woman out looking for nothing more than fun.

  Zaria stood at her window and watched Kaleb reverse his SUV and then pull out of her yard. When his brake lights flashed like a pair of angry red eyes, she pulled the curtain back. Her heart stopped in her chest, and all of her conflicting emotions raced through her as she waited for his next move.

  Come back.

  No, go.

  Come to me, Kaleb.

  No, go home. Just go home.

  She closed her eyes, leaning her head against the windowpane. When she opened them just a few seconds later, he was gone.

  Kaleb sat propped up on pillows, flipping through the cable channels barely long enough to recognize a familiar face of a show he wanted to see. The digital box said it was four in the morning, and after a long day on the farm, the jazz concert, and a few hours in the club that felt like time wasted out of his life that he couldn’t get back, he still wasn’t tired.

  His thoughts were filled with Zaria as he went back and forth like a swinging pendulum between leaving her alone to move on with his life and enjoying whatever time they had together.

  Still . . . although he hadn’t been looking for a woman like Heather, it did remind him that his goal was to find a woman who was the total package and more than just incredible sex.

  The more he weighed his options, the less he knew what he wanted to do. He was just as confused and undecided as before.

  That next morning, Zaria was surprised to find she couldn’t sleep. She had tossed and turned all night, plagued with dreams of Kaleb and the cutie from outside the club running down their wedding aisle hand in hand with smiles on their faces. She was glad when the sun finally glared against her face and she was able to kick off the covers to start what she hoped would be a better day.

  It went from bad to worse.

  She usually had her mound freshly waxed, but in the days of being caught up in Kaleb and him telling her he liked the slight peach fuzz, Zaria hadn’t been for her monthly trip to the spa. She was studying her body in the mirror when she caught the glimmer of something in the short curly hairs between her thighs. She brushed it, thinking it was a piece of string from her towel, but when the white fleck remained, Zaria made a face filled with horror. “Oh, hell no!” she snapped, grabbing her makeup mirror that magnified everything ten times.

  She inhaled so deeply in shock that she knew she had sucked dust particles and everything else into her lungs. “A gray hair . . . down there! What the hell?”

  Zaria dropped the mirror onto the sink and closed her eyes to force herself to breathe slowly and calmly. She eyed her tube of mascara but pushed the crazy idea of dying that hair.

  There was no way she would let Kaleb eyeball that. She hurried from the bathroom and grabbed her cordless phone to make an appointment for a full body wax—she wasn’t taking any chances. Next she dialed Hope. When she got no answer, she called the more rambunctious Chanci.

  “Hey you,” Chanci said.

  “Girl, how ’bout I’m going silver down below,” Zaria drawled sarcastically, reaching for her robe to pull on and tie securely.

  Chanci laughed and laughed like she had Kevin Hart doing stand-up just for her.

  Zaria arched a brow. “This is not funny, Chanci. Wait until you get one or two or a few.”

  “Girl, please, been there and done that. No biggie,” she said.

  Zaria could just see her friend waving her hand like she didn’t have a care in the world. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because it’s no biggie and you wouldn’t be so shell-shocked if you stopped dying the hell out of the few gray hairs you got on your head.”

  Zaria sucked air between her teeth and plopped down onto the commode. “Well, I have already made an appointment to have that baby removed.”

  “Girl, you are conceited.”

  “Yes, I know,” Zaria said, imitating J. J. Evans from the 1970s sitcom Good Times.

  Chanci just laughed. “So how’s Lover Boy?” Zaria thought of Kaleb and she smiled. “He . . . he deserves to fall in love with a woman his age who wants to get married and have his beautiful babies,” she admitted.

  “So you still don’t want to get married to him . . . one day and have his beautiful babies . . . one day?”

  Zaria shook her head. “I am forty-two years old. Are you kidding me?”

  “What? I’ll have you know that Jennifer Lopez and Halle Berry had their first children after forty. Vivica Fox did an interview saying she wants a baby with her younger man, and you are way younger than Auntie Viv, boo-boo. Girl, get with the time. Your eggs are far from dried.”

  Zaria shook her head. “Listen, I am too old to even think about putting myself into one of these baby daddy situations. I have raised my kids. No more babies for me.”

  “So are you going to end it and get out of the way of all these young girls willing to snatch him up in a heartbeat, or are you going to realize that you really care for this man? And when you admit that to yourself, it changes everything. Trust and believe that.”

  Kaleb enjoyed the feel of the wind beating against his face and upper body as he used his thighs and the reins to control his horse. He barely saw the great expanse of trees and flatlands he passed as he galloped at full speed. He left his brothers behind with ease.

  Of all his brothers, Kaleb loved riding horses the most. At times he could be seen on one of his horses throughout Holtsville, preferring it to cars or ATVs. Growing up, he had been the one most likely to be found in the stables with the horses. He loved their quiet strength.

  As he slowed the stallion down to a trot, he lightly patted his neck, feeling his racing pulse mirror his own. He came to a stream running through his acreage and dismounted to walk him toward it to drink. He heard the hoofbeats of his brothers’ horses nearing and turned to watch them dismount and lead the horses to the water as well.

  “You have something to prove?” Kade joked, taking his hat off to wipe some of the sweat from his fine silver curls.

  Kaleb just laughed before taking a seat on a large flat stone. “Just some stuff on my mind,” he admitted, looking up at Kade and Kahron as he squinted his eyes against the sun. His youngest brother, Kaeden, was happily ensconced in his office, busy with facts and figures as an accountant. He missed the farming gene completely.

  “Is this about your woman drama?” Kahron asked, shifting his ever-present aviator shades on his face.

  “No, it’s about those damn shades. Do you wear them when you sleep?” Kaleb snapped, reaching for a pebble to toss into the river with a plop.

  Kade looked between them and shook his head. “Go ’head, Kaleb,” he urged.

  He shook his head and remained quiet, keeping his thoughts to himself. His brothers knew him well, and they left him to his thoughts, turning their conversation with each other to the upcoming livestock auction.

  Reaching for another pebble, Kaleb skipped it across the water with the skill taught to him as a youth by his father. Kaleb thought of his parents, their family, their love and happiness. Even through arguments and petty squabbles, the Strongs always had each other’s backs. It was one for all and all for one.

  Kaleb had faced the fact that somewhere along the line of fun and frivolity, his feelings for Zaria had become quite serious. Everything had changed for him, and that meant he had even more to lose.

  CHAPTER 9

  There was a disconnect. They both felt it.

  Zaria sat up and covered her breasts with her arms as she looked down at Kaleb with his hardness still deep within her walls. “This is the end of the road, huh?” she asked, her voice husky and soft.

  Kaleb covered his eyes with his forearm. “I have never wanted any woman as much as I want you, Zaria,” he admitted.

  “But . . . i
t’s the end of the road?” she repeated.

  Kaleb remained silent.

  Zaria laughed bitterly. “So what was this? One last good screw for the road?” she asked.

  Kaleb removed his arm to look up at her in disbelief. “Get off, Zaria,” he said, moving to roll from under her.

  Zaria locked her knees to his side and began to roll her hips. “No, I wanna make sure you get this happy ending.”

  Kaleb reached out and grabbed her upper arms. “Get. Off,” he ground out between clenched teeth before he literally lifted her off of his dying erection and then sat on the side of her bed to drop his silver-flecked head in his hands.

  Zaria pulled her knees to her chest, watching him. “Is she the one?” she asked, sounding casual and friendly . . . and phony.

  Kaleb looked at her over his broad shoulder. “Who?”

  “The little cutie from outside the club that night. Is she the one?” Zaria asked, reaching for her wrinkled top sheet to pull up around her nudeness.

  Kaleb rose from the bed, his buttocks flexing as he walked over to grab his clothes from the floor. “I wouldn’t disrespect you like that, Zaria,” he said.

  She watched him jerk on his clothes roughly. “Why? I’m not your lady,” she said.

  Kaleb’s eyes flittered over her face as he stood there with his shirt in his hands and his jeans slung low on his narrow hips. “That was your choice, not mine. Remember?”

  “Maybe she can give you all them babies you want,” she said. “And go to the jazz concerts and complain about clubs with you and just be nice and boring with you.”

  He locked his eyes on her. She’d heard their conversation.

  “Don’t insult me, Zaria,” he demanded in a hard voice.

  “So is this it, then? You sure you don’t wanna have one last fuck for the road?” she asked, her voice low.

  Kaleb frowned and squinted his eyes at her. “I would hope sex wouldn’t be the last thing you offered me after close to six months dealing with each other, Zaria,” he told her coldly.