Legacy of Love (12 page)

Z
oe had just gotten out of the shower and into some comfy gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt when the front doorbell rang. Jackson was just the remedy she needed after that unsettling phone call from Lang, she thought. She stuck her feet in a pair of flip-flops and went to the door. She peeked through the curtains covering the side window. Her insides smiled when she saw Jackson standing on the porch with a huge bouquet of flowers. Quickly she opened the door and immediately found herself wrapped in his arms and her mouth covered with his.

She moaned against his lips, oblivious to the fact that they were standing in her doorway, making out like two teenagers.

“Hmm, just as sweet as I remember,” he said against her lips.

“Are those for me?” she asked, taking his free hand and leading him inside.

“Absolutely. Where should I put them?”

“I'll get a vase.” She took the flowers, gave him a quick kiss and went into the kitchen for a vase.

“Something smells good,” he said, following her into the kitchen.

“Roast chicken.”

“Can I help with anything?”

She reached up and took a vase down from the top shelf of one of the cabinets. “Hmm, don't think so. Everything is almost finished. Want something to drink?”

“What do you have?”

“Hard or soft?”

He gave a half grin. “That's a loaded question that I could answer one of two ways.”

Zoe put her hand on her hip and her right brow arched. “Okay, let me rephrase. Are you thirsty?”

He walked slowly over to her, dipped his head and brushed his lips across her neck.

She shivered, delighting in the heat he stirred. “You're making this very difficult,” she said, her words catching in her throat when his tongue flicked along the soft skin of her neck. “We'll never have dinner if you keep that up.”

He gave her one last kiss. “I would hate for you
to have gone to all this trouble for no reason,” he said, backing off with a wicked smile on his face.

Zoe laughed. “I have some of that raspberry rum. Can I fix you a glass?”

“Show me where you hide your stash and I'll fix one for both of us.”

“Living room, in the cabinet, under the television.”

“Be right back.”

Jackson sauntered out and Zoe added a capful of olive oil to a pot of boiling water. She added fresh string beans and diced red pepper to the pot, lowered the flame and covered it. The seasoned yellow rice was simmering and the chicken was almost done. She listened to Jackson humming in the living room. It would be so easy to totally give in and let go—just feel. According to Nana, everything in her life had been leading to this time. But logic resisted and her heart remained wary.

“What do you want to mix with this?” Jackson asked, holding up the bottle.

Zoe turned from the stove, storing her thoughts away as she wiped her hands on a black and white striped kitchen towel. She put it down on the granite counter. “Hmm, iced tea works for me. You know where the glasses are.” She turned off the flame under the rice.

“Do you always cook like this in the middle of the week?”

“Actually, no. I'm trying to impress you.”

“Is that right?” He put some crushed ice from the dispenser on the fridge in the glasses, splashed the rum over the ice then added the iced tea. He handed her a glass. “I was impressed a long time ago.” He tapped his glass against hers.

She took a sip and then looked at him above the rim of her glass. “If I would have known that, I would have ordered Domino's instead.”

Jackson sputtered. “No more compliments for you.”

Zoe laughed. “Dinner is almost done. Do you want to eat inside or outside?”

“I vote for out back.”

“Okay. Can you get the plates? I'll clean off the table.”

They worked in tandem, adding and subtracting what they needed for their dinner under the stars. Shortly they settled down and dug in. Music from the stereo filtered out onto the deck and votive scented candles on the railing gave the whole area a soothing setting.

“Humph, delicious,” Jackson said, finishing off his last forkful of seasoned rice.

“Old family recipe. Had enough?”

“I'm stuffed.”

Zoe started to get up and clear the table. Jackson covered her hand to stop her. She gave him a questioning look.

“Sit, relax for a minute. We can do that later. How was your day?”

She laughed at the clichéd line.

“What? Did I say something funny?”

“It just struck me as funny. Sounds like a conversation couples have after they've known each other for ages.”

“Don't you feel like that sometimes?” He stared at her until she looked away.

“Sometimes,” she finally admitted. “We really should get this stuff cleaned up, it's getting late.” She jumped up from her seat before Jackson could stop her this time.

Jackson watched her walk away and instinctively knew that something was wrong. Maybe he needed to give her some space. Things were happening quickly between them, maybe too quickly for Zoe. He believed deep down in his gut that she was what he'd been waiting for, looking for and now that he'd found her he didn't want to waste a minute. Zoe didn't seem to feel the same way and being the very determined woman that she was, he knew pushing her when she wasn't ready wouldn't work. Even though they'd shared their bodies in the most intimate ways and experienced something that had never happened to either of them, he knew that Zoe had not shared her heart. He brought the last of the dishes into the kitchen.

Zoe was loading the dishwasher and putting leftovers into plastic containers. She gave him a short glance.

“Did I tell you that I lost my teaching assistant?”

She snapped a blue plastic lid onto a container. “No, what happened?”

“That's the crazy part, I'm not sure.”

She put the containers in the fridge. Jackson turned on the dishwasher.

“I don't understand.”

He leaned against the stove and crossed his arms. Zoe lowered herself into a chair and crossed her legs at the knee.

“Before the semester began, I'd put in for a teaching assistant to help with the research that I'm working on and to cover some of my classes if necessary. Fast forward, I got Victoria. I had my issues with her in the beginning, but she actually seemed to work out—as far as her work was concerned. So I tried to put aside the fact that she was a little
too
eager.”

“Too eager. What do you mean?”

He told her about her enthusiasm to go above and beyond what was required for her position. “Like what?”

“It's hard to explain. On the surface it doesn't seem like anything, the extra hours, always prompt always
there
.” He looked at Zoe hoping that she understood what he was making a mess of explaining. “It started making me uncomfortable.”

It took Zoe a minute and then her brows rose in understanding. “Ohhh.”

“The thing is I was completely wrong.” He went on to tell her about Victoria coming to him and
telling him that she was leaving and then showing up at his door.

“Someone at the college is trying to screw up your chances at getting the department chair? But why? And who?”

He slowly shook his head. “I have no idea.”

Zoe got up and came to stand in front of him. “Maybe it's all just some crazy drama she cooked up. Maybe she really did, or rather does have feelings for you and this was her way out.” Her gaze glided over his constricted expression. She stroked his cheek. “You have no reason to believe that there is some ulterior motive on the part of one of your colleagues—just the word of a teaching assistant who didn't give you any proof whatsoever.”

He took her hand and kissed the inside of her palm. “You're probably right.”

“I had a pretty strange day today.”

“What happened?”

“I got a call from my mother.”

He laughed. “Is that strange?”

“Humph, you don't know my mother,” she said.

“Okay, you got me on that one. So what happened?”

They walked together into the living room and sat down on the couch. Zoe tucked her feet under her and rested her arm on the couch back.

“She wants to give me a birthday party.”

Jackson frowned in confusion. “Hmm, and that's a bad thing?”

“Not a bad thing, just a weird thing.” She sighed trying to get her thoughts in order so that she didn't come off as some ungrateful daughter. “My mother and I haven't always had the best relationship. To be honest, we didn't have one at all until a few years ago.” She rested her head in her palm. “My grandmother raised me while my mother ‘toured' the country singing.” She shrugged slightly. “I didn't know her. She was just this woman who showed up every few months in fancy clothes, brought gifts and then went off again. She was never there. She wasn't there for school trips or when I acted in my first play. She didn't sign report cards or tell me about boys. She missed my senior prom, birthdays, holidays. Oh, she'd send a card or a present from wherever she was at the time, but…”

“You wanted
her,
” he said softly. He stroked her hair.

She felt her throat tightening and her eyes begin to burn, which surprised her. She thought she'd long ago put all those feelings to rest.

“When she came back for the last time, we were practically strangers. She had no idea what I liked or disliked or even what I did for a living.” She glanced away. “My grandmother told me that I had to be the bigger person and to give her a chance. We all deserve a second chance, she said. So, I tried. And over the years we've moved from strangers to acquaintances. There's no way she can catch up on all the years that she missed.”

Jackson took it all in, heard the hurt in her voice that she tried to hide. But she couldn't. It was in the words that she
didn't
say. It was in her eyes. She wanted her mother's love, as any child does no matter how old they are. And at the same time she was rejecting that love because it had done nothing but hurt and disappoint her all of her life.

“Are you afraid to care because you think she might leave again or not live up to your expectations?” he asked gently.

She looked into his eyes, seeing the compassion there. She bit down on her lip to keep from crying. How could he know what was in her heart? But of course he would.

“It's made you cautious. It's made you hesitate to open your heart completely. Everyone is not like your mother, Zoe. Your grandmother proved that.”

“But if you love someone, how can you just leave them?”

He gently toyed with a few strands of her hair. “I wish I knew. People are complicated.”

“You got that right,” she said drolly.

“And some things you can never explain. They just are.”

“You're sounding very philosophical.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners. “It was my second major.”

Zoe's mouth dropped open in surprise. “You're kidding?”

“Nope. Double major, Art History and Philosophy.”

She bobbed her head in admiration. “Great combination! I'm sure understanding the thinking during a certain period in time and among groups of people helps immensely in relating to the art.”

“Absolutely. And in life. It's all relevant. But back to this party… I'm always looking for a reason.” He moved a little closer. “What do you want for your birthday?”

Zoe glanced up slightly, catching the supportive look in his eyes. All she wanted was to stop being afraid to believe. “Nothing special. I'm easy.”

 

They spent the rest of the evening talking, laughing, listening to music and sharing stories about their childhood growing up in New Orleans, still amazed that they'd lived so close to each other and had never met.

“We went to the same school in N.O. I was just ahead of you by a few years,” Jackson said.

“Exactly, by the time I got to Montclair you were out. Besides, even if we were in school at the same time, you wouldn't have paid me any attention.”

“And why not?”

“Trust me, I was long and lanky, no meat on my bones. My knees used to knock when I walked. My grandmother use to braid my hair in a million braids, and I had braces until I was sixteen.” She chuckled at the memories. “I was a hot mess.”
She popped up from the couch and went to the end table. Underneath was an album. She pulled it off the shelf and came back to sit beside Jackson. She flipped the book open until she found the picture she was looking for.

“That's me in the middle.”

She pointed to a reed-thin girl in hot-pink shorts with the knobbiest knees he'd ever seen, a head full of thick black hair and braces that were obvious when she smiled into the camera. The black-rimmed glasses were the icing on the cake. She was standing between two elegant older women, the color of honey, dolled up in wide-brimmed Sunday-go-to-meeting hats and pastel dresses.

It took all of his good home-training not to crack up laughing. “This is you?” he asked, in equal parts question and accusation.

“Yep.” Zoe pinched her lips together to keep from snickering.

“Wow,” he managed. “You were a cute kid.”

She slugged him in the arm. “Stop lying.”

He howled with laughter. “Let's see some more.”

She slowly turned the pages, pointing herself out at her different stages of awkward development. “This is Aunt Flo, she's the oldest. And that's Aunt Fern.”

There were dozens of photos of her and Sharlene from serious to comical during various stages of their growing up and friendship.

“Where's Nana?”

Zoe turned toward the back of the album that she had reserved for her grandmother.

Zora Beaumont was a stunning woman, regal-looking, Jackson observed. It was clear in her strong African features, the smooth dark skin taut over prominent cheekbones and full lips, and her bold but sharp nose. Her daughters resembled her in degrees, each one possessing one or more of her features. But it was Zoe who was her incarnation—a young version of Zora.