Diamond In The Rough
Part 8 (Genre:Romantic Suspense)
A story of chances, stealing, and love inside a city & man where all hope is gone. Can one woman change his destiny? Or will loneliness take over and leave him hopeless?
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It was almost as if he’d gotten hit in the stomach again. “Your what?”
She blushed as if caught in an embarrassing situation. “He’s my step-brother. We… Ah, dated before our parents met and decided to get married. I was only 13 and that just ended it for me, but not for him. He didn’t care that our parents were married. He still wanted to have relations.”
“When you say relations, you actually mean you were sexually intimate with him at thirteen?”
Her blush became worse. “I’m not professing to be Mother Teresa. And I wouldn’t call a girl of thirteen and a boy of fifteen knowing anything about being sexually intimate. I believe at those ages we can only call it fucking.” She walked up to him never taking those sensuous hazel eyes off of him. “Don’t you agree, Rob?”
“Don’t I think what?” Hell, he could barely think straight hoping she didn’t see the semi hard on in his pants. Good thing he had a jacket on.
“That people that young don’t know anything thing about being sexually intimate.”
How the hell had they started on this subject again? He only shrugged.
She smiled mischievously. “So how old were you before some gorgeous young babysitter seduced you?”
“Old enough not to know better,” he asked trying to sound offended. Rob guarded his expression and reaction to her proximity well, pretending as if she didn’t smell so damn good.
She continued, “By the orders and respect for his father, Rube kept his distance until Friday.”
“What was so significant about Friday?” Rob asked.
“Rube’s father died Thursday night. I’d been going back and forth to Canada trying to wrap my entire Mother’s estate, while his father was in the hospital. And now Rube’s super pissed because he knows everything now belongs to me. He’s father claimed no assets when he married my mother and made sure I got everything back before he died.”
“Why’d he leave his son out of everything? The man had to have something.”
“Rube’s father had just gotten out of jail when he’d met my mother. He’d served a stretch at Rikers for Robbery. Soon as he got out, he came here to Detroit. Rube’s real mother was dying in the hospital the same day my father was dying at the same hospital.”
“Interesting love story.”
She smiled tenderly. “My mother liked to think so too. But honestly Rube isn’t after me to start a relationship again.” Reaching over to him, she used his broad shoulder to steady herself and step out of her heels.
She motioned him to follow her to the kitchen, not even looking back to see if he was following her as she talked. “I broke it off with Rube the day our parents went on their first date, but it took until the time they were walking down the aisle and his father made him swear on everything holy not to bother me anymore. Rube always thought it wouldn’t last, but he didn’t know my mother. She loved to be married. And his father really loved and appreciated my mother.” Solemnly, she admitted, “On his death bed, he told me he probably wouldn’t have appreciated her if he hadn’t gone through all he had gone through. He said a man’s got to go through the worst storm in order to see the rainbow.” She poured them both a glass of lemonade. “That how I know there’s nothing for Rube because he’s never been through his own storm. He’s living on his father’s rainbows.” She passed him the glass of lemonade.
Rob took it amazed how she seemed so comfortable with him. “My stomach muscles say differently.”
“I don’t think Rube attacked you just because of me.” She walked past him to get out of the kitchen.
Rob clearly noticed she had to brush him and quickly pushed his thoughts to dark places he had not dared to venture in over a decade. To take his mind off, he drunk down his lemonade quickly before following her to the dining room. She was getting a thick dusty scrapbook off of a shelf that hadn’t been touched in a while.
Rob stood next to her trying not to notice how good she smelled.
Focus!
“You never told me how you found me,” she said as she looked through the book.