Don't Ever Tell by Brandon Massey Read Free Book Online Page B

her?” “What do you think I’m going to do to her?” Dexter said. “I...I guess I don’t wanna know, boss.”
“The bitch better have my money—down to the last dol-
lar. After she gives it to me, I’m gonna make her wish her
mama had used the fucking coat hanger.”
    9
    That evening at home, Rachel cooked dinner. She was an excellent cook, and Joshua loved to observe her at work. As he sat at the dinette table, skimming the newspaper, he watched her.
    Dressed in a flannel shirt, lounge pants, and slippers, she flitted around the kitchen like a hummingbird around a flower garden, adding a sprinkle of spices here, tasting the sauce there, all the while singing in a soft, soothing voice. Under normal circumstances, she derived great pleasure from cooking, and that night, she seemed to be in an especially buoyant mood.
    It puzzled him. Earlier, he’d been convinced that she was keeping something important from him, and he’d planned to watch her closely at dinner, just to be sure nothing was wrong. Eddie had advised him to let it go, and he wanted to—but he couldn’t. Not while the uneasiness lingered in his gut like an undigested meal.
    “Dinner’s ready,” Rachel said, taking silverware out of the drawer. “Go wash up, baby.”
    He pushed away from the table. He nearly knocked over the chair, and caught it before it hit the floor. Coco, who’d been resting nearby, scurried away and hid between Rachel’s legs.
    “Sorry, Coco,” he said. “Scared you half to death, didn’t I?” He glanced at Rachel, habitually expecting a rebuke for his clumsiness, but she only smiled—a smile of unconditional love and infinite patience. Not the smile of a woman who nursed deception in her heart.
    Maybe his suspicions were totally off-base. There was a pleasant evening ahead—good food, lively conversation, perhaps tender lovemaking—and it seemed foolish to spoil it by dwelling on theories of how she might be deceiving him.
    Eddie was right. He needed to let it go.
When he returned to the kitchen after washing his hands, Rachel was setting dinner on the table: shrimp scampi over linguine, sautéed zucchini, and garlic bread. Coco followed at her heels, waiting for a morsel to drop.
“Need any help?” he asked.
“You could turn on some music, light a few candles.”
“Special occasion?”
“Maybe.”
He turned on the satellite radio system and tuned it to one of their favorite R&B channels. Then he got two candles out of a cabinet, placed them inside the frosted glass hurricane lamps on the table, and carefully lit them.
They often drank wine with dinner. But after Rachel dimmed the recessed lights, she took a bottle of sparkling white grape juice out of the refrigerator.
“You mind doing the honors?” She handed the bottle to him. “I would’ve gotten champagne, but...”
“We are celebrating something.” Sitting, he twisted off the cap and filled the two wine goblets on the table.
“We’re celebrating us,” she said.
    DON’T EVER TELL 63
    “Us?”
“Us finding each other. Falling in love. Getting married. Being happy. Do we need a special occasion to celebrate those things?”
“Not at all.”
They bowed their heads and said grace. Then they heaped their plates with food and began to eat.
“This looks delicious.” He spun linguine around his fork and speared a shrimp. “My mom’s a good cook, but she can’t touch you.”
“Please, don’t ever say that around her. She hates me enough as it is.”
He winced. His mom had been nasty toward Rachel from the beginning, considered her a corrupting influence on him. He had never understood why his mother felt that way toward her, but there was much that he would never understand about his mom.
“Hate is a pretty strong word,” he said.
“How about ‘intense dislike’? She has an intense dislike for me. She thinks I stole her precious little baby away from her, to corrupt him.”
“She’s a little overly protective, that’s all.”
“A