Eric (Men of Honor 2)

Every time I looked at Janine, she looked close to boiling point, and though I’d envisioned something like this, it was certainly not on this scale. It’s as if everyone forgot she was here. It was her meeting, her setup. She’s the one who’d invited all these people here, but within seconds of us walking through the door, they’d all shifted their interest. Fickle is right!

Janine was giving me the evil eye, and I could see that she was really hurt. I couldn’t feel sorry for her, though, not after what she’d done to Tyler. In a way, wasn’t this tantamount to what she’d done to him? The third or fourth time I looked in her direction, she gestured me over.

I walked over to her, gearing myself up for confrontation. It was bound to happen sometime, might as well get it over and done with.

“What’re you doing here, you bitch? And why did you bring that, that…” She flung her arm in Janelle’s direction as she gritted more words of venom through her teeth. It was the look of disgust on her face when she looked at Janelle that did it for me.

“Isn’t this a meeting for the more prominent women in town? My husband happens to be one of the wealthiest men here, even more so than yours last I heard. What’s more, I saw on the roster that it’s like some sort of mommy group as well, why are you here?” I knew why she went with the mommy angle; this set is either into their kids or their pets; at least they pretend to be.

“What do you mean, why am I here? I have a son.”

“No, you don’t, I have a son and a daughter, and according to Eric, another one on the way.” I patted my tummy knowing damn good and well that I could be lying. What’s going to happen in a few months when there’s no baby? I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Her face turned red, and she looked ready to kill. I felt safe confronting her like this because the other people in the room were preoccupied with Samantha, and though I was tempted to knock her on her ass, I doubted either of us would cross the line with so many witnesses here. Wrong!

“You’re pregnant?” She screeched the words like a demented owl and came at me. I was too shocked at first to react and didn’t get out of the way fast enough to avoid taking one to the face. It was open palm, so not much damage was done, just the shock of it and the way the sound reverberated around the room, which brought everyone’s attention back to us.

It was pure instinct that had me raising my hand to return the favor. I slapped her hard enough to knock her back a few steps. It’s only when she bumped into the table behind her and straightened herself up with murder in her eyes that I questioned just what the hell I was doing. I was suddenly worried for the baby that Eric was sure he’d given me the other night as silly as that sounds.

I braced myself for the attack when she came flying at me, hands raised ready to rain down blows on me, my only thought to protect my middle, but before she could even reach me, an arm shot out between the two of us and planted itself in her chest pushing her back away from me.

I looked slightly behind me in shock, expecting to see either Janine or Samantha coming to my rescue, but it was Tyler. The look on his face was one I’d never seen before, not on his anyway. “Tyler, how dare you?” Janine seethed and rubbed her chest where he’d pushed her.

“You don’t touch her, ever. You try it again, and I’ll make you wish you’d never birthed me. Like all those times you told me you wished you’d flushed me down the drain.” There were a lot of exclamations from the women who were now totally focused on the melee taking place in front of them.

“I’m your mother; you’re going to defend this…this trailer park trash instead of me?”

“Justine wasn’t raised in a trailer park, but you were. And even if she was, she has more class than your idiot husband’s money could buy you.” Uh-oh. Those words to Janine, I’m guessing, was like waving a red flag in front of an already angry bull.

She made some sort of noise in her throat that sounded like a teakettle just before the boil and started to charge. Two things happened at once. I placed myself between her and Tyler, and there was a loud noise from somewhere near the door and then a roar. “JANINE!”

She stopped midstride, and all of us looked in the direction to see a very pissed off Eric standing there.