“Yeah, I don’t know what I got.” Jamison looked through Val.
“Oh,” Val said, walking toward Jamison. “So you don’t know me now? You used to.”
“I used to know a lot of things.”
Val stood in front of Jamison. Her stomach was getting larger, but still it was smaller than he thought it should be for a woman who was well into her second trimester—well, that was what Jamison’s mother had said when she pressured Jamison to find out more information about the pregnancy.
“Tell me something I don’t know, Val. How many months pregnant are you?” Jamison asked.
“What?”
“Just answer the question.”
“Why?”
“Val!”
“Why?”
“I’m the father. I should know when the baby is coming. And you know what the publicist said, we need to make an announcement soon. What are we going to announce? Is the baby coming in January? February? March? July? When?”
“I don’t remember the exact date,” Val offered.
“Don’t remember?” Jamison grinned like he was solving some mystery. “How don’t you remember something like that? When your baby is due?”
“Well, if you were coming to any of the doctor’s appointments with me, you’d know when our baby is due,” Val said.
“Whatever.” Jamison tried to turn again.
Val stopped him again. This time with her hand on his arm.
“Just talk to me. We have to talk to each other. Not this arguing all the time. That’s not getting us anywhere.” Val’s every utterance sounded like groveling.
Jamison heard a disruption in her he wouldn’t have thought could be there. Not the girl in the platform high-heeled stilettos. The girl with the fire in her voice. The attitude that always sounded like she was in charge, or thought she was. When they’d met that was what had kept Jamison watching her. She was beautiful. Had a body. But so did so many other women who were making themselves available at all hours since his divorce from Kerry was final. But there was something about Val. Her attitude. Even when she was serving him, she was a feisty bird. And here she was now sounding like her wings were clipped.
“Tell me what you said the day we met at the club,” Val said softly, invoking an exchange they’d often reminisced about when times were easier and Val was wearing lingerie or making Jamison fried chicken in the middle of the night in her thong.
“I don’t want to do that right now,” Jamison said.
“Just do it.... Just say it. Say what you said to me. What you asked me. That’s all I’m asking.”
Jamison relaxed his jaw and tilted his forehead toward Val. “I asked what a beautiful girl like you was doing trying to get a job working in a strip joint.”
“You followed me outside to my car. You opened the door for me. I told you I was about to get evicted. I needed someplace to stay. Or a way to pay my rent.” Val looked at Jamison for the next line in the story. It was a smooth line she knew he liked repeating.
“I told you it was your man’s job to make sure you had someplace to stay.” Jamison’s ice dissolved to the floor. He grinned in an honest way.
“And I said maybe you should be my man.”
Jamison caught and held Val’s stare. He stayed there with her in the memory for a few seconds and then tried to look away from her, but she caught his chin and turned his eyes right back to hers.
“And then you gave me money for my rent. And then you gave me a job,” Val said. “All so I would promise you that I wouldn’t be a stripper.” Val pulled Jamison’s body to hers by his chin and her voice went lower. “You were my hero. My knight in shining armor.” The hand on Jamison’s chin went to his belt buckle.
“What are you doing?”
“Thanking you.”
Jamison’s pants fell from his waist with a clank from his belt buckle as it hit the floor.