Evidence of Desire: Hero Series 3 (6 page)

“I think surviving some deadly illness would have topped it for me too.”

“You would never have gone.” He chuckled.

“You got that right.” She aimed the tines of her fork at him and gave a sharp nod.

“Did you ever take a trip to Africa? You used to talk about going one day all the time.”

“I did. A couple of years ago. I went to Johannesburg for about three weeks. Touring in and around the country.” She was so excited talking about it, her eyes were practically glowing.

“Talk about someone in heaven.”

“It was wonderful, Parker. I mean being able to see the people, learn from them. And walking through places like The Apartheid Museum, Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site and the Nelson Mandela House and so many others. Frequently, I was awed and speechless.”

“I know what you mean. Being immersed into something that your passionate about changes you, gives you drive to show the world.”

She leaned back in her seat as she set her fork down along the side of her plate, meal forgotten. “That’s exactly how I felt. When I got back I started putting in for the grant for the African Arts wing. There’s so many artifacts there that a lot of it just sits in vaults. They could cover Johannesburg with ten more museums and there would still be more pieces.”

“How is the grant process going for you?”

Exhaling, she began, “Not going is what it is doing. Kravers is the hold up. In order to get my grant approved he has to sign off on it. But, for some reason he is dragging his feet.”

“You want me to lean in on him?” He flexed his muscles.

Tipping her head back she laughed. “I appreciate the Don Corleone tactics, but I’ll just wait him out. He has to budge sooner or later.”

“Why did you go from field research to walking around the hollowed walls of museums?”

“When I returned to California I wanted to do some kind of educating on insects. I think people for the most part see a bug and all they think about it smashing it. They don’t understand what the purpose of it is in the environment or the history of its origins. These insects have been around for centuries, surviving and thriving.”

“I will admit I don’t care to know anything about them.” She rubbed and scratched at the side of her neck, her expression more distant then present. “I’ve had enough encounters with them in my life that I can do without anymore.”

“That’s understandable.” He knew the story of her childhood, if anyone had a right to fear bugs, Sonya did. “Maybe one day you will feel safe enough and trust me to tour you through my exhibit.”

“Um, maybe.” The tight expression on her face, declared that wasn’t going to be a possibility anytime soon.

Lacey came with the check and to clear their plates. “You all take your time. If you want to see the desert menu let me know.”

“Thank you.” He pulled his wallet out of his pocket then flipped over the bill. Seeing the amount he place the appropriate total, including tip, on top of it before he pushed it to the center of the table. “Are you still eating?”

She glanced down at the remainder of her tomatoes & cucs and the sweet potato tots. Her salmon was gone. “I couldn’t swallow another thing if I tried.”

“I’m with you. Thanks for the recommendation.” He rose then waited for her to get up from the booth and precede him to the door.

“You’re welcome.” She brushed her fingers down his arm as she passed him.

Just that simple courteous touch caused his heart to thump harder. She was what had been missing in his life.

“I really enjoyed sharing brunch with you.”

“So, did I. Catching up was nice.” Sonya held her keys to her door in her hand as they stood on her porch.

“I’d like to do it again sometime. Maybe dinner, a movie?”

Parker was standing close to her, not so close that their bodies touched or that she would feel crowded, but near enough that if she took one good step it would place her in heat contact.

She rubbed her thumb along the rough edge of a key. “Um, sure. We’ll see.”

Fear, rose up in her core. She didn’t want to commit to anything with him. Breakfast had been too nice, enjoyable. It felt like old times. That was risky for her.

“I can respect that.” His gaze moved from her eyes to her lips, and it seemed for a moment as if he’d leaned forward all of a sudden he took a step back.

Maybe I had been seeing things. “I really should get inside so I can get going.”

“Of course. Thanks again. I’ll see you around at work, Soni-love.”

Backing up toward the door, she shook her head. “Probably not. We both have so much to do in our departments. It was good seeing you though.” As she faced the door, jammed the key in the lock then opened it.

When she turned to give him one last look, he was standing at the bottom of her steps looking at her. There was a secret smile on his lips, as if he knew his nearness was making her nervous and uncomfortable.
Caught
.

He gave her a short wave then was off.

Closing the door, she pressed her back to it and groaned. “Parker why did you have to come to Charlotte.”

During lunch she’d felt the first few bricks of the wall she’d built around her heart begin to shift. If she didn’t keep away from her ex and his new found confidence and charm then soon those bricks would start to fall and bring the others down with it. Because he was not the hot, science nerd who fumbled his way around her body the first time they had sex after he proposed on New Year’s Eve. She hadn’t been much better, just as inexperienced. However, it had been a sweet, romantic night. Oh, yes, she’d seen in Parker’s heated gaze today when they spoke about Jill Scott, he recalled everything about that night. The two of them had gotten better in all aspects.

But, there was something greater, something more uninhibited and intense about him. Maybe being among wild animals changed a man.

“I can’t risk my heart to you Parker Hayden, not again.” She pushed away from the door and went toward the end table to drop her purse, phone and keys.

Looking at her remodeled, turn of the century style home, what she’d had designed and built to her specifications and saw her perfect life. The life she had constructed when her husband didn’t love her enough to fight for them. Didn’t love her enough to come to DC for her. By his own information this morning, he’d jump on the first bug expedition that came his way after completing his doctorate.
Not to me.

She didn’t begrudge him his thirst for more knowledge and experiences involving his career. It was why she’d always wanted to take a trip to Africa. Parker had settled into a life for two years in Australia. She figured his government funding must have run out and that’s why he’d returned to the states.

His being in Charlotte where she lived was a fluke. She’d have to keep reminding herself of the fact. As soon as something else big fell into his lap, he’d be off and running.

Entering, she went to her dresser for her dance gear. Earlier she had planned to go to the studio out of boredom. Now, she really needed the physical exertion that it would bring since being around Parker. As she began to change, she kept repeating to herself, “Guard your heart, Sonya.”

~ML~

“How is operation Get My Wife Back, going?” Jessie his older sister asked helping him unpack his kitchen.

“Stalled.” Parker pulled out a wrapped bundle and set it on the counter to open it and find out what it was. Movers had come in to his and Sonya’s apartment a few months before he had left for Australia and packed up everything except for his small amount of personal items he was taking with him.

“How can that be, you live in the same city and work together. Haven’t you asked her out again?”

“Haven’t had the chance.” He carried the silverware to the drawer next to the stove and started to dump it all from the paper.

“What are you doing?” His sister rushed to him and snatched up the items from his hand and the few out of the drawer.

“I’m putting them away. Isn’t that what unpacking means? Why you harped on me when you got here two hours ago?” He placed his hands on his hips, frustrated as he watched Jessie take everything to a drawer beneath the cabinet where she was stacking dishes and set them down on the counter.

“Well, baby brother, you have been in this apartment for almost five months now. You should have unpacked a long time ago.” Turning she searched one open boxes after another until she pulled some kind of wooden tray out. She went back to her workstation and placed it into an open drawer then loaded the silverware into it. “Also, you have to put things in a reasonable place when it comes to the kitchen.”

“Well, I unpacked what was necessary.”

“That means your office at the museum.” She wagged a finger at him. “Not even your bedroom. Since you put me in the only room in your place for the night I’m here, don’t think I didn’t notice that you’ve only made your bed and hung up your clothes for work.”

“Hey, I put away my jeans and underwear too.” He tossed an oven mitt at her then moved to an open box that had pots and pans figuring he couldn’t go wrong with that.

He was wrong.  Apparently, they should go by the stove not beside the dish cabinet.

“You really need a wife,” Jessie teased.

“I’m trying to get my ex back.” He squatted before the space his sister had directed him to put the cookware.

She peered down at him. “Now, why haven’t you asked her out again?”

“Because even though we work in the same facility, Sonya manages to be either locked in her vault or out to lunch. She won’t answer any calls or text messages from me either.”

“What’s the problem? Go to her a few minutes before she takes lunch and wait.”

He glanced up at his sister. “Really, Jessie, I have a PhD and you don’t think I could come up with that on my own? She keeps changing her lunch hour.”

She slapped a hand on her hip. “Well, Dr. Hayden, how are all your bright ideas working out for you?”

Snarling at his sister, he reached for the last pot and put it away. Rising, he asked, “So, what do you suggest oh Relationship Guru?” He gave her a mocking bow.

“Keep it up and I’m going to call in your mother.” She poked him in the shoulder as he came up.

“Did you stop in to help me or threaten me?” He loved his mother and one thing he knew about Ida Hayden was that she cared about Sonya a lot. His mother had been the one that berated him about going to the Rainforest instead of finding Sonya.

However, then he’d been hard headed and believing Sonya’s words. They had been young and had rushed into marriage not knowing what they were getting themselves into. He’d let her go and drowned himself in his degree to mask the pain of loss.

“To help. First your apartment then your marriage.”

“Ex marriage.”

Jessie smiled and shrugged. “Semantics. She’s still your wife in your heart and that’s where it counts.”

He hoped his love for Sonya counted for something even though she was playing hard to get.

At his refrigerator getting out a can of soda, Jessie frowned at him. “How do you plan to feed your company if you have no food?”

“Take out.” He opened the narrow drawer beside the refrigerator. “Here are all the local places that deliver, take your pick.”

She fanned out the thirty different menus. “This is ridiculous. You know—”

“I need a wife. Got it.” He shook his head as he took some of the empty boxes out of the kitchen.

An hour later, the kitchen was in order and he and his sister had made a space at his small round table to eat their Chinese food.

“How long is the seminar your teaching in Atlanta?” he asked, digging into his container of egg
fou
yung
with disposable chopsticks.

“A week. It’s the annual youth enrichment training. Counselors and teachers of various college youth programs will be in attendance, as well as summer hiring managers. It keeps everyone on the same page. There will be a semi-annual one in April right before at risk youth applications are due in from high school counselors.”

His sister had driven down from Lynchburg, Virginia where she lived with her husband and three children.

“Is Gary going to be alright with the rug rats alone until you return? Or did you send mom to him?”

“Uh, no.” She speared a chunk of dripping sweet and sour chicken with a plastic fork. “My husband will be fine. I taught him how to cook simple food with the first child so he wouldn’t kill them off the times I had to be away.”

“Well, if he can write software programs, I’m sure he had no problem following all the instructions you left him.”

She laughed hard. “You know me so well.”

He winked and joined in on the laughter. “Like mother like daughter.”

Jessie tossed a handful of take-out napkins at him.

They littered around him on the table and floor. “Really, Jess? Now that’s just something else we’re going to have to clean up.”

“After we finish eating, I’ll pick up the napkins and you take care of unpacking the bathroom.” She broke a part and egg roll.

Their teasing and laughter went on through the night as they made his house look lived in and presentable before they crashed late in the night.

“Where did you find pancake mix?” He frowned at the pan the next morning when he made his way into the kitchen after brushing his teeth and washing his face in his newly decorated guest bathroom. “I don’t recall having any.”

“You didn’t. I went out and got mix along with a few other items. You were sleep like the dead on the couch.” Jessie continued to stir the batter that had plump fresh blueberries in it.

My favorite.

“You’re the best.” He crossed to his sister at the stove and kissed her on the cheek. “Can I keep you?”

“No.” She hip checked him away from her as she smiled. “What you can do is get the table set and start squeezing oranges.”

“For the pancakes?”

“For juice, bug-boy.” His sister had called him that since his parents found him in the backyard one morning in his Spiderman pajamas digging in the ground after a rainstorm collecting warms.

His mother had been angry with him for getting muddy. Their father, Xavier, a general manager at a factory, had taken him out after breakfast to buy all the supplies he needed to set up a tank in his room.

He looked around for oranges, when he didn’t see them he went to the refrigerator. “I have oranges, apples, pears, lunch meat and cheese.” Glancing at his sister he smiled. “Do I smell bacon?”

“You do.” She poured a ladleful of mix onto the flat skillet then went to the microwave when it beeped. She pulled out a tray with crispy pieces of pork. “Now, grab those oranges and start squeezing.”

“I’m really going to kidnap you.” He set the bag of oranges on the counter before grabbing a knife and glasses.

“No, what you’re going to do is start to court Sonya.”

“How, when she’s purposely being elusive. I don’t want to show up at her house again and invade her privacy. I want her to feel safe at home, not like any day I’m going to come there.”

They’d had a great time at brunch that day and even though Sonya hadn’t said anything about him not coming by again, he knew she’d been uncomfortable with him at her house. He saw it in her nervous gestures when he got there and dropped her off. He wanted her to want him to be there. To invite him over and into her life.

Jessie took out the first pancake and set it on a plate beside the stove. “Parker, women like to be romanced, seduced.” She added another scoop of raw mix into the pan. “You know where she works and where she lives. Send her some things like flowers, cupcakes, wine and sexy notes with poems on it.”

“I can’t write poetry.” His mind went to invertebrates not rhythmic words. He finished squeezing the seventh orange into the glasses, shocked by how little juice one orange produced.

She pointed the spatula at him. “Then find a poetry book. Make her come to you, bug-boy. She fell for you once, she will do it again. You just have to remind her of it.” Jessie flipped the pancake. “Unless she’s found someone else.”

He snarled at his sister as he recalled Daryl Marcs. The attention the Councilman paid to her the night of the masquerade.

Squaring off at him, Jessie folded her arms over her chest. “Even if she does have someone else, she’s not married or engaged. So, if you want her, win her.”

Taking everything his sister said to heart, he began to plot and plan his strategy as he had when he used to catch and study elusive nocturnal arthropods.