AllFreeNovel
Share Us
h triplets that were supposed to be just twins. I couldn’t help myself—she was as big as whole trailer park. Picking on Malisa might be why I’m catching so much hell from Mahogany. Too bad she didn’t find a good man like Malisa’s husband, Apollo Nordic-Ford, who would stick beside her and Majestic. You can hardly pry Apollo from his boys, Sebastion and Savion, nor Malisa from Salon.
I’m seriously considering sitting with Majestic at the hospital myself, so her mother can deal with the damnable computer system that I paid Mahogany an exorbitant fee to create, since I can’t make heads or tails of it. I think she made it complicated on purpose so I couldn’t fire her. Yeah, that just pisses me off, again.
“And hell no, Mahogany, I’m not through raising hell! What’s the point of having you on the payroll if I have to flip the paperwork and file the burgers myself? Please tell me so we both know.”
“Flip the what and file the who?” she asks, completely confused.
“You know what I meant. Mahogany, I’m telling you, I can’t keep you on, if you only work at night. I don’t have a graveyard shift, woman!”
Just because my team is unscareable doesn’t mean that I don’t try to put the fear of Tommy into them on a regular basis.
“I hear you, Mr. Tommy. I’ll be in tonight at least by eight to do the bookkeeping and I’ll clean the floor so Nevaeh can get off early. The hospital is quick about getting Majestic in now with her condition, thank God. Shouldn’t take me but a couple of hours to straighten out the invoices.”
A couple of hours. It would take me a couple of years just to enter the numbers. That doesn’t mean they would be in the correct place when I’m done. I’m completely at Mahogany’s mercy. Oh, let’s not forget Majestic’s mercy, too.
“Fine!” I slam the phone down in its cradle.
If one more thing goes wrong today, I swear to God I’m killing someone. Or deep frying them. Maybe even filleting their ass, then feeding them to somebody. Might as well go all out and do all of it since I’ll never see this side of the jailhouse’s bars again after committing murder. I am a black man, after all. By the time the cops, judge, and then prisoners get through with me, I’ll be fried, filleted, and fed to somebody else, too. Should get mine in first. Definitely.
I get up to go relieve Foreign and open my office door to her as she is just about to knock… on my forehead. She is as beautiful as Katara in two totally different ways. Katara is completely African American. Whereas, Foreign is mixed with a Filipino mother and African American father—both ousted her from the family when she wouldn’t agree to an arranged marriage.
Who does that shit anymore?
Apparently, Foreign’s family does, even though they live in the states.
“Put your hand down before you hit me, Foreign. I know you’ll do it on purpose and call it an accident, but I’ll have you locked up for it. You’ve been warned.”
She closes her eyes and shakes her head, not giving me her easy smile strangely. “Mr. Tommy.”
I snap, “What is it, Foreign?”
Nevaeh Lomax rounds the corner, coming from the staircase into the cream-painted hallway where Foreign stands. One corner of Foreign’s delectable mouth rises, finding my indignation comical. She’s the only one that makes me consider settling down after Katara. Usually, I date sparingly. As in, I spare myself the drama of finding a woman that wants a long-term relationship. Katara broke something in me: my trust in the opposite sex. Her not trusting me completely, or at least enough to listen to my side of the story before she became judge, jury, and damn near executioner, slayed me. It took a couple years before I would do anything besides work myself to death. She left with my heart. I do not want it back under any circumstances.
Dammit, I don’t want to think about her.
“It’s almost time for me to get off and Mahogany isn’t here, which is why you’re snapping at me like an animal when I haven’t done anything to you,” she informs, while I stuff painful memories of Kat into the locked box in the back of my brain.
I don’t know why they’re emerging fully today, of all days. Normally, I can force them back before the lid springs all the way open on the box that’s supposed to safely guard them from me.
I could snap at Foreign all day. She always just gives me the same half-cocked grin she’s giving me now. She has already learned that I’m harmless. “Foreign, I know when you get off. I make the schedule, remember? And I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
Nevaeh stops short on her trek towards us, then executes a sharp and probably illegal U-turn in the hallway, knowing what’s coming. “Nuh uh, he won’t get a two-for-one butt for his jokes today. I’ll come back later to ask for a vacation day next week.”
“Denied, Heaven spelled backwards,” I hurl down the hall after Nevaeh. “With all the calling-in going on lately, there is enough days being taken off already.”
“Man!” she retorts just before vanishing in the stairwell in khakis, a white polo shirt with Tommy’s written in green across her left breast, and a ponytail that reaches below her shoulder blades. A twenty-five-year-old about to graduate community college right here in Arrow, she has the rest of her life in front of her to do what she wants with no obstacles (like single-parenthood, domineering parents, and an abusive boyfriend). The girl nearly severed her ex’s neck from between his head and shoulders when she decided he’d hit her for the last time. She’ll step in as bouncer before I even know I need one after the drinks have started flowing from my bar, or rather her bar when she’s behind it.
When she moves on to bigger and better things than Tommy’s, I’ll missed the dark-skinned, dark-eyed, Amazonian mixologist who works her ass off for her independence.
Foreign is more of the kind who stands her ground once her mind is made up, like she’s doing now, willing to fight if something’s about to pop off. A blank mask on her face, ready for anything. She would be unreadable if her eyes weren’t always lively, as if they’re dancing to some unknown music or entertaining a thought in her head. Suppressed get-up-and-go wafts off her like her subtle perfume. If she isn’t a younger version of Katara Johnson, I don’t know what she is.
“What are you going to roast me about today, Mr. Tommy?” She knows what’s coming too.
“Walk with me.” I slip past her into the hallway, careful not to even let my arm touch hers. “Looks like I’ll be filling in your position for second shift… again! And I want to make sure my station is stocked before you go, but I’m sure you have taken care of that already. Anyway, who in the hell names their kid Foreign? Why not Domestic? One doesn’t sound much better than the other if you ask me.”
If someone really did ask, I’d have to own up to the lie I just told. ‘Foreign’ sounds just as exotic as the woman looks. Philippine born but California bred with silky-black hair under her chef’s hat. Slanted, milk-chocolate eyes behind thick eyelashes that even I’m jealous of, and I have no need for more eyelashes. Especially when it’s not hard on my eyes to look at her full, shiny lips surrounded by smooth, blemish-free, pale skin. She has no drawbacks whatsoever, well, not in the looks department.
Even standing next to her, five-two on a slim but curvaceous frame, I feel tall at five seven. Not an easy feat when most of the men in my family, blood-related and otherwise, are six feet tall at least.
