Laid across the bed sideways, one leg hanging off the edge, still in her clothes from yesterday. She hadn’t even gone under the covers. She’d probably cried herself to sleep and landedwherever she landed. I stood there for a second then walked straight to the window and yanked the blinds open.
Dallas morning sun was coming through that room like it had somewhere to be.
She shot up gasping like I’d thrown water on her. Looked around wild eyed, disoriented, and then her eyes landed on me and everything on her face settled back into that same hard look she’d been wearing since yesterday.
“Get up,” I said.
“Are you serious right now—”
“I told you about asking me that.” I walked to the closet and went through what my staff had stocked in there. I pulled out a white floral dress and laid it across the foot of the bed. “Put that on. We got breakfast with my parents in less than an hour.”
She looked at the dress. Then looked at me. “I need my phone.”
“You don’t.”
“Kaseem.” She said my name like she was trying real hard to stay calm. “Every Sunday I check in with my family. I can’t miss that. I need my phone for that one thing, that’s it.”
“You haven’t earned that back yet.”
“I’m not talking about keeping it. One call. That’s all I’m asking for. Damn! You already have me here against my will.” She stood up from the bed and crossed her arms. “Please.”
I looked at her for a second. She wasn’t performing. She wasn’t trying to manipulate me into something. Whatever this Sunday check in was, it meant something real important to her and she needed it bad enough to say please twice to a man she couldn’t stand.
“You behave at breakfast,” I said. “You act right, you smile, you answer whatever my mother asks you, you make it through that table without embarrassing either one of us — you get your phone for an hour. Somebody will be in the room with you the whole time to monitor it and assure you not trying nothing funny.”
Her jaw tightened. “You’re going to monitor my call?”
“Every word.”
She wanted to go off. I could see it moving across her face. She pushed it back down and nodded once. “Fine.”
“Good.” I pointed at the dress. “Get dressed.”
She looked at it, walked over to it, picked it up and looked at it for about three full seconds.
“This is ugly.”
“It’s a dress.”
“It’s an ugly dress.” She put it back down on the bed and walked straight into the closet. I heard her moving things around, hangers sliding, and then she came back out holding something else. A fitted sundress that she’d pulled from the back of the rack. She held it up and looked at me like she was daring me to say something about it.
I didn’t say anything about it. She wanted to be in control so damn bad, I was going to let her think she had this one.
“Thirty minutes,” I said, and walked out. This girl was a damn headache. I noted that she valued her family and checking in with them. So now I knew what to withhold if she got out of line.
I could hear the shower water running as soon as I was outside the room door.
—
She was ready in twenty-eight minutes and I liked that she knew how to listen.
I didn’t say anything about that either. She wouldn’t get no praises from me. Not yet.
I led her to the front of my house, then opened the door to the truck for her to get in. She looked at me like she couldn’t believe that I was being a gentleman. We pulled out in the truck, just the two of us in the back with my driver up front and one of my men riding passenger. She sat on her side, I sat on mine, and for the first five minutes neither one of us said a word. The compound was big enough that getting from my house to my parents place took a few minutes of driving through private roads lined with trees on both sides.
I watched her out of my peripheral the whole time.
She was looking out the window. At the land, the property, the size of everything she was seeing for the first time. Her eyes moved slow, taking it all in, and whatever she was thinking about, she kept to herself. She didn’t ask questions. Didn’t make comments. Just looked.
