Queen Move

“Ez,” I say, my heart racing with the possible implications of what I’ve found. “You said you never came here before, right?”

“Right.” He leans against the car and studies me. “What’s up?”

I hold out my hand, palm up, with the Star of David charm, a little tarnished, but still gleaming. He stiffens and then lifts it from my hand.

“This looks like my mom’s, but I haven’t seen it in years. She lost it.” He looks from the charm back to my face, his expression reflecting the same speculations.

“If you never came with your family, then how would that be here?” I ask. “We just knocked out some walls when we added a laundry room. Maybe the charm got dislodged or shuffled around in the commotion. I found it in the laundry room. Your family never came here, so why would your mother’s charm be in this house?”

Everything I believed about my father goes out of focus, blurred through a sheen of tears. “Do you think… Ez, do you think they came here together? How would it be here unless she was?”

“I have no idea.” Ezra’s fist closes over the charm. “But I will find out. I promise you that.”

The silence between us on the ride back to the city throbs with our unspoken thoughts. My heart is too heavy for words. Disappointment in my father. Hurt on my mother’s behalf. I’m disillusioned that the man who guided me more than anyone else at one point may have lost his way. I know he was human. Despite what Mama thinks, I wasn’t deceived that Daddy was perfect, but this?

While Ezra drives, my phone starts ringing, wresting me from the chaos of my own thoughts and plunging me into chaos of another kind. One I know how to manage.

Work.

I texted Carla and Piers with the news about Ruiz, and my phone has been pinging ever since. Carla’s already projecting what it will take to make Georgia our base for the foreseeable future. In addition to celebrating, Piers wants to discuss new findings about the author of the biography. I tell him to get me a number so I can confront this person myself. Even if the charm does raise the possibility of my father’s infidelity, I don’t want a sensationalized book and the inevitable media circus that will come with it—the reexamination of all the good my father did through the lens of one mistake. If I can protect my mother and my family’s legacy from that scandal, I will.

We pull into Ezra’s driveway, and I’m on the phone with Carla when he lets us into the house.

“My clothes are still in the master,” he whispers.

I nod, half-listening to Carla, and follow him up the stairs.

“Yeah, I need that info,” I tell her, sitting down on the bed and glancing around the room again. The photos of him, Aiko and Noah prick the smallest drop of jealous blood in my heart. He has a past. He has a family. I already love Noah and can see how being his father helped shape Ezra into the man he is today. Aiko? I hope she and I can be friends and things can be amicable in the transition ahead.

I’m momentarily distracted by Ezra’s chest, abs, and ass as he changes clothes. His muscles contract and flex with the simple movements. He’s so big now. I never would have forecast that Ezra would be as physically imposing as his father, but he is. And he’s oblivious to how horny it makes me—not that it takes much where he’s concerned.

“Did you hear me, Kimba?” Carla asks.

“Huh?” I sit on the edge of Ezra’s bed, devouring every inch of sleek, naked skin before he covers it up. “What was that, Carla?”

“I said when will you come back to the city?”

“Soon.” I know I’ll have to at least once before we set up shop here, but I’m reluctant to leave Atlanta.

For years I only came home for rare visits and holidays, but this trip has reminded me of all the things I love about the city and given me new things to embrace. I’m glad to make Georgia my base for a while. For the first time in years, I want to be close to home.

I disconnect the call and walk up to Ezra, kissing the granite line of his jaw. He dips, angles so he can catch my lips. The kiss catches fire and he sits on the edge of the bed, pulling me down to his lap. This is happiness. Passion. Contentment in a way I’ve never known it before. Even the shock of what we found at the lake house, the problems that still lie ahead, can’t diminish that.

“What the actual fuck, Ezra?”

I nearly fall out of Ezra’s lap at the angry question but catch myself and land on the bed beside him.

“Who the hell are you?” Aiko demands, glaring at me and walking fully into the room.

I’ve only seen her in real life once, at my father’s funeral, and that was from a distance. The photos on the bedroom walls didn’t tell the full story of her beauty. Her face is a pale oval, her lips red as cherries, and her hair swings in a dark curtain to her waist. The expression on her face belies her fragile petiteness. She’s delicate and steely, a lovely weed in my garden.

“You have two seconds,” she says, venom dripping from her words, “to get this bitch out of my house.”

Bitch?

Hold up.

“What are you doing here?” Ezra stands, his expression strangely calm in the face of her obvious rage. “You aren’t due back until next week.”