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  Regina set the cones and started filling the kiln. Nigel had had the nerve to throw money at her like she could be bought.

  “It’s set. Let’s lock the front door and head out back.”

  Gathering Tenisha in her arms, she climbed up the back stairs and let her down to unlock the apartment. She was glad for the company but couldn’t keep her mind focused on the random conversations that popped up between them.

  Keeping her hands busy wasn’t a problem. She heated up and dished out the lasagna, got them all soda and bread, got the adults salad, found an animated movie that the kids could watch and ran down to check on the kiln.

  Quieting her mind was another story. What had happened when he’d started to kiss her? Why hadn’t she thought to push him off right away? It was because she hadn’t known what he was going to do. But that would not happen again.

  She heard a car pull up out back, and her pulse quickened. But it was only Tenisha’s mom, as expected. Get a grip, girl. He won’t have the nerve to just show up again anytime soon, and if he does, I’ll be ready for him.

  While Jason opened the door, Regina moved into the kitchen to fix another plate of lasagna. She stopped and pulled out the business card from her pocket. It was a local address. Damn.

  That was okay. She had what she needed to send him the item. No use worrying about it now. In fact, she would be rid of him for good soon enough.

  Chapter 2

  “Get out. Get out, and don’t come back here.”

  He knew the moment she opened her mouth that he shouldn’t have gone. And though he’d taken his time leaving, it was clear that he’d been outgunned.

  If he had any hope at all, it was that fraction of a second during his kiss when he felt her lips part beneath his, felt her body arch ever so slightly against his chest. But her arms never came around him, and then he saw the reason why.

  He had heard the little boy call out “Daddy” and come running, wrapped in a paint-splattered garbage bag just like the little girl. It had gotten dark outside while he’d been there, so in the glass of the front door, he had been able to see over his shoulder. He could see the little boy jump into the man’s arms, talking a mile a minute about whatever it was that he’d made.

  He hadn’t lost his stride, but his heart just about broke. He never imagined that when he was ready, it would be too late.

  “I don’t need you. Now get the hell out.”

  Inwardly, he was shaking his head. Her hair had been longer, but still smooth and shiny, and her almond eyes had been as piercing as ever. She had been as beautiful and as sensuous as the day she had driven him away, and things could not have gone more badly.

  Nigel Johns sat behind his mahogany desk with spreadsheets piled up on his right and a keyboard in front of him. Today, he was off his game. This wasn’t like him, and it wasn’t good.

  He worked in the accounting department of an investing and accounting firm. He hadn’t been there very long, but he was doing well, thanks to what he was able to do for his clients and what he’d done with his own portfolio.

  “We don’t need you, so just leave, and don’t come back.”

  He hadn’t expected her to fall into his arms, but he’d thought they could talk like two rational adults—now that he was an adult. But that was admitting that he hadn’t been before. Well, it was true, he hadn’t been. Their breakup had been his fault, and now maybe it was too late.

  He’d decided to crunch numbers for the rest of the day—something simple he could do without too much thought. He always double-checked every calculation, but today he was having to triple and quadruple check because his mind just wasn’t where it should be.

  “I don’t need you. Now get the hell out.”

  He should have sent her the money, laid out a plan and put the plan fully into place before entering the picture himself. If he hadn’t gone there...

  He wasn’t getting much done. He pushed the keyboard away, shaking his head. He had clients coming in within the hour. At least their folders were ready, and the review of the accounting figures would be easy. This was a good thing, because where his head was right now didn’t leave him a great deal of concentration.

  “...so just leave, and don’t come back.”

  He’d allowed himself to be chased off once. It was the last time that they’d seen each other six years ago. It was in college, and he was in her apartment. They’d been arguing more, but he didn’t expect her to actually call their wedding off and cast him to the wind. She’d used the same kind of language.

  “Now get the hell out.”

  No way was he going to be run off again. If he hadn’t gone there, things might have worked out differently. But in for a penny, in for a pound. Now that he’d shown himself, he wasn’t backing down, and she wasn’t keeping him from his child.

  Children? Was it one, or was it both of them? The girl was bigger, but then girls grew faster. Right? He wasn’t sure, but he sure as hell was going to find out.

  He’d only found out a few months ago that there was a child—or children. He’d been working, saving, building a life that he could offer Regina. He didn’t want her to see him until he had made it—made something of himself that contradicted the waste of time he’d been in college. The news had hit him square in the gut.

  “You ever see Regina? You been in touch with her since then?”

  He was visiting his parents at home when he’d run into one of his college buddies—the one who used to date Regina’s roommate. The question put him on guard because it pried into places he didn’t want opened.

  “Why do you ask?”

  He wanted to skirt the issue and let it die, but his friend persisted.

  “Because I need to know if you ever found out.”

  “Found out what?”

  The silence and the cryptic way his friend was treading around the subject told him that whatever it was, it was serious.

  “Found out what?”

  “Look, I’m not supposed to know, but I’ve never stopped thinking that you should have known.”

  “Known what?”

  “Regina was pregnant when she graduated.”

  “Pregnant?”

  “She was pregnant, and it was yours, and that’s all I know.”

  This was all the information he could get out of his old friend, but it sent him reeling.

  Regina had called things off between them just before she graduated. They were supposed to graduate together from Howard University and then get married. Except that, by the end of senior year, he was still a year behind on his classes because he’d been partying too much.

  His parents had never given up on him, even after his near-failing grade reports. When Regina put him out, he’d felt like nothing. He’d decided not to come back until he’d made something of himself, until he could show her that he could take care of things. Although he tried, he couldn’t do much about that semester, and he mourned the whole summer over their breakup. But the following semester, after she’d already finished and moved on, he was back with a vengeance, determined to prove himself.

  He finished his undergraduate degree in accounting and did an internship within the year. Then he went on to an MBA in accounting and finance. He couldn’t get into an accelerated program because of his grade point average, but he used the two-year program to take real-estate and investment classes. He graduated at the top of his class and then sat for the CPA exam.

  In a way, his goal had become money. He joined an accounting firm and used all his degrees to start amassing a bank account. Then he made a vertical move to the position he was in now so that he could move back to the DC area, where Regina still was.

  But it wasn’t just money; he wanted everything that came with real success, real responsibility. And he wanted to be more cultured, too. No
more baggy pants, no more ghetto fashion, no more looking like the hood. Everything about his life was bent on making it, looking the part, being professional, working hard, getting it right.

  She’d gone to study with some artists for a year—or so he’d heard. But other than that, she had stayed in the area after their Howard years. He didn’t have many details; after a while people had finally started to get the message and had stopped telling him her activities. By the time she got back to DC after her year away, he was immersed in his own MBA program down home in South Carolina, trying to catch up. What his buddy had said fell into place. That year away would have been when she’d had their child.

  Was it one child or two? Yes, he would be finding out.

  He just had to get through the day. Then he had to get his game back and make it through the rest of the week. This weekend he would stake his claim.

  * * *

  Regina turned the car off and grabbed her purse. She’d had an errand to run for her morning office job, and then she had to drop off some of her pieces at a gallery downtown that was having a showing of local artists. By the time she got to the studio, she was running late.

  She found Amelie finishing up with a customer. She had sold one of her large, bead-covered bowls and had a new beadwork project in process on the back table in the bead section.

  “Sorry I’m late. I hope that means we’ve been doing well today.”

  “No problem, and yes—relatively speaking. We’ve sold one of yours and one of mine. Whoo-hoo.”

  There was no one else in the shop, so Regina started pulling out her project. “I don’t know if that’s anything to whoo-hoo about. But it’s good. We have to get our front fixed up soon.”

  “I know. I registered us for the seminar you were talking about,” Amelie said, “the one at the community center on starting up a small business.”

  “Oh, good. I’ve been working on our paperwork from the books I found.”

  And she had been. It was like having another part-time job. Regina pulled out her tiles and began setting up her workstation.

  “I didn’t make it to the post office today,” Regina said.

  “I’m going to leave early to get some of my jewelry to the consignment shop. Is there anything you want me to take to the post office for you on my way?”

  “No, I haven’t even wrapped the package yet. I’ll get it tomorrow. You take off.”

  “Okay. I put out two new pieces. This one—” Amelie pointed to a necklace “—is made of yellow jasper beads with cowrie shell accents, and this one—” she pointed to a jewelry box “—is made with rose quartz and Czech glass.”

  “They’re beautiful. You keep getting more elaborate.”

  “That’s the point.”

  After Amelie left, Regina sat down to her project. She was on the sky section and needed to break some more light blue and white tiles. It was the act of hammering the pieces under a cloth that made her think of Nigel. That fraud.

  She replaced the cloth and banged the center of a large blue tile, splitting it into triangles. It had been almost a week since he’d appeared out of the blue, and she’d finally stopped worrying that every stranger who turned up might be him coming back for round two.

  She straightened out the cloth and went for the triangles, smashing them into small trapezoids. She would get him his item and be done with him. She had too much going on in her life that she wanted to get done. She didn’t need one more thing to distract her.

  * * *

  Nigel checked the inside pocket of his sports suit to make sure he had everything. She wouldn’t be flinging his check back at him this time. He took a breath. No need to go there yet. He hadn’t gotten anything in the mail, so maybe her bark wasn’t as bad as her bite.

  He got out of the car and started unloading the packages from the backseat. It was after 8:00 p.m. on a Sunday, and the studio was closed, so he assumed they’d be home, tomorrow being a school day. He’d get all the packages up the back steps before ringing the buzzer.

  It was beginning to get dark outside, so when she opened the door, the warm, yellow light from inside haloed behind her and made her look like an angel—his angel. She had on white leggings and a summer camisole, but the soft fabrics hugged her curves in a way that made his mouth water.

  Except that her hips were deeper, she hadn’t changed from the girl he loved. She had natural dimples in the curve of her cheeks so that she looked always on the verge of a smile, and her tapered waist flared out into the most luscious behind he’d ever seen. Even in the simple leggings that she had on now, she made his knees weak.

  Her hair was different this time—pulled back in a ponytail at the nape of her neck in a way that emphasized her umber eyes. The anger he saw form in her eyes at the sight of him in the doorway snapped him back to the present, to the fact that they were torn apart.

  “Hello, Reggie.”

  “Don’t hello me. What on earth are you doing at my house?”

  The moment she opened her mouth, his calm was shattered, but he didn’t show it. There was no mistaking the animosity in her voice. She didn’t want him in her private space. She didn’t want him anywhere near her at all.

  “I still need to speak with you. Can I come in?”

  “No. No, you cannot. And I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  He didn’t want to force things with her. He’d let her cut him off time and again in the studio, intentionally giving her the upper hand so that she could see that he wasn’t there to threaten her. But this time, he wasn’t going to back down. This time, he wasn’t going to be sent away.

  “Look, Reggie. You and whoever you’re with will not keep me from my child. Or children. You don’t have the right to do that.”

  “What?”

  “I want to see my children. I know I haven’t been there for them so far, but that will not be the case from here on out.”

  She sighed, and he saw some of the fight go out of her—not the rage or the anger that he saw in her eyes, but some of the fight. Her shoulders slumped, and she turned into the apartment, walking away from him.

  He gathered up the packages from the stairwell and followed her inside. She had her back to him and seemed to be staring at the wall or at nothing, so he shut the door behind them.

  He had been gone a long time. He knew that. Perhaps she had to decide if he was safe or if she was willing to share their children. Or perhaps she just needed to get her mind accustomed to the idea.

  He was standing in what turned out to be the dining area, with a kitchen off to the side. There was no partition separating it from the living room, where she now stood.

  The first thing he saw was the art. It filled her rooms with color, and she’d even painted the chairs and cabinets and bookshelves to make them pop. All of her touches filled the room—the African masks and dolls on the walls, the embroidered cushions on the sofa, the framed paintings and mosaics covering the walls. So much claimed his eyes that he almost missed how worn down the permanent structure underneath was.

  The kitchen and dining nook seemed to have come straight out of the ’60s—battered wooden cabinets, ancient countertops, worn linoleum flooring—and the rest of the place didn’t fare much better. Downstairs, everything that they’d added stood out as new against the old.

  Her voice tore him away from his perusal.

  “How did you find out?”

  He put his bundles down.

  “I found out from someone who’s not supposed to know.”

  “Please tell me.”

  The resignation in her voice pulled at his heartstrings.

  “I ran into your roommate’s ex-boyfriend a few months ago. But it shouldn’t have taken finding that out to make me come look for you. I just wanted to make something of myself before I did. But when I fou
nd out that you were pregnant when...when you called things off between us...Reggie, why didn’t you tell me? Why did you send me away without me knowing?”

  He took a step toward her, but she took a step back.

  “What would you have done? You were too busy hanging with your friends and blowing off school. You might have stayed, but it would have been for the wrong reasons. And I didn’t need you to make a life for...”

  She shook her head, trailing off.

  “But I should have known. I had a right to know. And if—”

  “Let it go.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Her jaw was set in a rigid line that told him she would not be offering any answer to that question.

  “Where are they, Reggie? I want to see them. And I plan to be there for them from now on. It doesn’t matter if you’re with someone else. I’m still their father.”

  He pulled the check out of his suit pocket.

  “If you don’t want it, that’s fine. But they deserve it. And so do you. Where are they?”

  She looked at him as he put the check down on the dining table, and what he saw in her wet eyes was a combination of sadness and hate.

  She turned away from him again and buried her face in her hands. When she spoke, it was through tears, but it was with rage.

  “There is no they.”

  He didn’t understand. “What?”

  “Don’t you get it? There is no they. There was no child.”

  He wondered for a split second if she had...let go of it...after they had broken apart. But then he looked at her shaking shoulders. He knew her better than to think that.

  “No child?”

  It started to sink in. He wasn’t a father. The little boy he had seen wasn’t his. Nor the little girl. His child had not made it. His heart fell. He crossed over to her but stopped just behind her without touching her, not knowing how to comfort her, not knowing if she would receive his comfort.

  “There was no child,” she said again, stammering. She whirled toward him, ready to strike, but didn’t. She just stopped and stared at his face, her own face crumpling.