Two things were immediately obvious. One, Malik had come out to his family, given the casual way he described our relationship. Good for him. Two, Grandma hadn’t yet shared the little nugget about our marriage with him.
Oh, and three, Malik had aged like fine wine. I mean, good goddamn. The specks of gray around his temples really gave him that whole distinguished gentleman look, and as I let my gaze travel over his body, across those broad pecs, those thick arms barely constrained by the plain white button-down he wore, to the gray slacks and simple black loafers, he was every ounce as delectable now as he’d been ten years ago. He had the slightest paunch in his belly now, and honestly, I loved it. I wanted to nuzzle it before I went on to...other things.
My eyes met his and he fidgeted, taking a step back, the sheaf of papers he held in front of him fluttering. Malik crossed his hands in front of his waist and glared at me. Huh. That was sexy, too. I raised a brow at him, wondering what he was trying to hide.
“Wayment, wayment, wayment.” The guy who’d yelled when I walked in, the spitting image of Malik a decade younger, pointed at me, his eyes wide and mouth hanging open. “DeShawn Franklin is your ex-husband? How in the hell did you not tell us you were married to the DeShawn Franklin?”
Malik’s frown deepened, his spine went poker straight, and he took a deep breath before blowing it out and looking out the window.
“Our relationship wasn’t something we were all that open about,” I said, giving him a chance to gather himself.
“You were married, but not open about it?” the woman who’d run down the hall with him asked. Her voice was careful, considering, like she was putting together pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
I shrugged. “I mean, my family knew.”
She hissed, and the guy went silent. Yeah, I’d said what I said, and as we stood there in a wretchedly uncomfortable silence, I knew they got my meaning. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut, but the stiffness with which Malik was holding himself made me hyper-protective, a now foreign emotion.
The woman, who looked enough like Malik that I hazarded a guess was his sister Sheila, cleared her throat. “I see.” Then she tilted her head to the side and smiled at me. “It’s ironic, really.”
My eyebrow raised on its own. Really. I fought to keep my posture loose, purposely not crossing my arms as I looked up at her. “What’s that, ma’am?”
Her nose crinkled at the ma’am. “That my brother married someone with the same last name.”
I laughed, long and loud. This definitely had to be Sheila. And Malik had told me enough about her—namely that she was the smartest woman he knew—that I knew she didn’t believe what she’d just said for a minute. Something that thawed my inherent defensiveness. “Not quite. My former name is Moore.”
“Oh, for chrissakes,” Malik muttered, the first words he’d uttered since his original declaration, then stomped off down the hall, slamming the door shut behind him. I took a step in that direction, but the younger version of him stopped me. I racked my brain for a minute. James, the baby of the family.
“Are you telling me that Franklin is our family name?” He bounced like an excited puppy, and I vaguely wondered if I’d ever seen Malik with that look on his face. Memories of our time dating and the early years of our marriage swamped me, and I had to suck in a harsh gulp of air so I wouldn’t drown in them. Yes. The answer was yes.
I smiled at him and laid a hand on his shoulder, looking him square in the eyes. “I married your brother, I took his name, and when we separated”—not divorced—”I kept it.”
“Holy mother of god,” he whispered. “We’re related to DeShawn Franklin.”
“Were,” Sheila spat out. “We were related to DeShawn Franklin, and we didn’t know because Malik didn’t trust us enough to come out. If we’re going to tell the story, we need to tell the whole story.”
I turned to her. “That’s pretty much the whole story.” I stuck my hand out. “DeShawn.”
“Sheila,” she said, confirming my suspicions. I couldn’t stop my smile. Malik had crowed about her. Young, vibrant, an absolute beast in the kitchen who would be an amazing CEO. I wondered if she’d taken up that mantle.
“I would love to get to know you,” I said, dropping her hand and looking at James, “but I’m actually here on some business.”
Sheila’s eyes widened and she nodded, like she knew exactly what I was talking about. “Grandma. Moore. That’s your grandmother, isn’t it?”
I huffed. “Yes, she is.”
“Malik just got some paperwork. Why don’t you go talk to him?”
Dammit. Malik had been served before I’d manned up and gotten here, and Grandma was going to have my ass when she found out. I thanked Sheila, nodded at James, then took off in the direction of the closed door I’d seen.
I knocked on it, waited a beat, then poked my head in. Malik sat behind a big mahogany desk, his elbows on the table, his head in his hands. I stepped in and clicked the door shut, then frowned. The big, grotesque, overstuffed chair I’d bought him as a gag gift when we were first married sat opposite the desk. For reasons I’d never been able to figure out, he’d wanted to keep the damn thing when we divorced. I’d assumed it was so he could burn it in effigy, so seeing it here? Now? All these years later? I honestly didn’t know what to make of that, but something inside me unfurled. Probably my common sense taking flight.
I sank into the seat across from him and cleared my throat. “Your sister told me you got served.”
Without looking up, Malik took one hand and shoved the paperwork across the table, then went back to holding his head.
I scanned the paperwork and scowled. Uncle Robert was a piece of fucking work. He’d hated Malik, and for a long time I thought it was because of our relationship. Even back then, though, that hadn’t made a ton of sense, because Robert had known I was gay since I was thirteen and had never cared. Multiple boyfriends had come and gone in high school and college, and he’d treated them like any other kid in the neighborhood. Hell, he’d gotten along better with some of them than I had. And in the beginning, now that I was really thinking about it, he’d been like that with Malik, even though Malik had always been cautious around him. I’d chalked it up to his issues with his family, but in retrospect, maybe he’d seen something in Robert early, because the closer we got, the more withdrawn, distant, and frankly hostile Robert’d become. He’d skipped the engagement party and we’d joked that he might object at the wedding. He’d no-showed instead.
Now, however many years later, the reason hit me like that gif of the boombox smacking someone upside the head. Robert had known, way before me or Malik or probably even Grandma had figured it out. Malik was a replacement, the son Grandma always wanted. I knew she loved Robert despite his flaws, but she had pulled back from giving him money hand over fist. That’s probably why he’d barely been able to contain his glee when I’d confessed Malik and I were divorcing, and while our relationship had never recovered from how he’d treated Malik, it had gotten more cordial over time.
Well, this nipped that shit in the bud. I read the pleading, then threw the pages on the table. “I’m sorry, Malik.”
At that, he dropped his hands and sat back in his chair. From here, I could see crow’s feet around his eyes, and crease lines around his mouth. I loved those lines, because they were proof of him employing that nearly infectious laughter. But the lines around his eyes? Sure, they may have been from crinkling while smiling at people not named DeShawn, but there was a weariness in them, and in the lines on his forehead. Like he was tired and worn down about something beyond the bombshell Robert had dropped on us.
“Sorry about what?” he asked, his voice so quiet I had to strain to hear it.
“I was supposed to reach out to you sooner. I should’ve, but...” I trailed off, not knowing what to say.
He shook his head just a fraction. “Don’t be. Grandma gave me your number, too.”
“Yeah?”
“I deleted it.”
At a different point in time, I’d have been offended by that. But that action was so Malik, so indicative of how hard he’d tried to sever our ties, that I couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, that’s one way of handling it.”
“Nah. I’d memorized the damn thing by then.”
And with that, I sobered, my grin fading. “Yeah. I get that. I—” How the hell did I bring up the real issue? How did I explain that, somewhere along the way, we’d screwed up the paperwork?
I ran a hand over my face, then gripped my knee to keep from bouncing it. “Malik, there’s something else I need to tell you.”
“I assumed it was this,” he said, gesturing vaguely to the paperwork.
I dropped my head and massaged my closed eyelids with my thumbs. “That’s not all, unfortunately.”
Malik inhaled deeply, his chest expanding, before he blew out a breath so deep his shoulders hunched over. What was one more straw on his back, when he clearly already carried the weight of the world? “What is it, DeShawn?”
Damn. He sounded so much like he had when we were married. Not those happy times, but at the end when we were trying, flailing, failing, to save what we had. I hated it. I hated feeling I couldn’t do anything right, and since I was the one who’d submitted the paperwork, this would just be one more in a long list of things I fucked up with this man.
“The divorce paperwork didn’t go through.”
Malik cut his eyes to me. “What do you mean?”
“There was an error in it. I don’t even know what. And we didn’t catch it and the file is closed and—”
“DeShawn, what are you saying?”
I sucked in a breath, closed my eyes, then let it all out in a rush. “I’m saying we’re still married.”
The beautiful thing about being an adult was having options. Option one, I could sit on my ass and drink until I erased the memory of everything I’d learned this afternoon. Option two, I could gorge myself on sweets until my stomach cramped, then go for the alcohol.
But I was a professional. So I naturally went for option three: stress baking alcohol-infused desserts that I would then gorge. Best of both worlds.
Chocolate raspberry whiskey truffles? Tell me they didn’t sound divine. Lemon vodka cream tarts? Who could say no? Grand Marnier vanilla cream cake pops? Who would deny themselves? Certainly not me. I baked two batches of Bruno’s favorite biscuits first, though, so we could indulge ourselves together.
So there I was, after taking Bruno for his nightly walk, forcing myself not to call Grandma and ask how she could have kept something so important from me, baking my ass off instead. And when the doorbell rang, I jumped like hares did when they spotted Bruno.
Now, Grandma might be pushy, but she had boundaries, so I knew it wasn’t DeShawn. I wiped my hands down the front of my apron as I walked to the front and glanced through the peephole. See, I was right. Sheila.
“I come bearing gifts,” she said as I opened the door.
No, Sheila looked like she’d gone to our distributors to stock up on liquor for the restaurant. “Dear god, what are you doing with all that?”
“You looked like you needed it.” She winked, then nudged me aside. She set it on the floor next to the island and looked around, hands on her hips. “What in the world is all this?”
I shut the door behind her and squared my shoulders. This was my dirty secret revealed. “I bake, okay?” I said, ignoring the way she followed me with her eyes. “And right now, I’m stress baking. You going to help me, or you going to gawk?”
“A little bit of both, I think.”
I was the non-cook in the family. Sheila put her entire foot in everything she made, and when it came to the dead of summer? No one, and I do mean no one, could fuck up a grill the way James did.
I was more than passable, and in a family of non-cooks, I would reign supreme. In this one? They kept me out of the kitchen and in the back office handling money. So my fascination with baking? Yeah, I’d kept that shit under wraps the same way I had with my DeShawn. And dammit all to hell, I was thinking of him as mine already. That was a dangerous path to go down.
I stepped back and shook my head. “If you’re here, you’re working. Check and see if the dough is ready to roll out so I can make these crusts.”
After a beat of silence, I heard Sheila’s feet move toward the fridge. “Yeah, it’s ready to go.”
“Great.” I reached underneath the cabinet and pulled out a bunch of mini tart pans. “You want to make the crust?”
“Egg glaze?”
I nodded.
She went to work, and we were silent for a few beats. “You really weren’t going to tell us about DeShawn?”
I shrugged, trying to feign nonchalance. “Wasn’t much to tell. We were divorced before I came back home.”
“Didn’t look like he much cared about that, the way he was watching you.”
I’d noticed that, too. It’d been like being twenty-three again, the way his eyes roamed over me like he wanted to devour me, and no one had looked at me like that since, well, DeShawn. Oh, I’m sure there’d been some mutual attraction with other men, but not enough to do anything about it. After DeShawn, where everything was so easy and comfortable—until it wasn’t—I just hadn’t had the energy to try again.
“So,” Sheila went on, ignoring that I hadn’t responded, “DeShawn confirmed that Grandma is his grandmother.”
“Yep.”
“And...you weren’t going to explain that relationship?”
I braced my hands on the counter and rocked back slightly while I put my words into place. “If I’d explained who Grandma was, you guys would want to know how I knew him, why I spoke to her, everything. James would have been relentless.”
“Ugh.” Sheila shook her head. “You should have seen him after you left. He was already making plans.”
Of course he was. James didn’t care about people. James cared about profits. “I was not using my ex”—not my ex, and boy, I wasn’t touching that with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole—”that way. Or our connection. Or anything.”
Her smile was soft, sweet. Sympathetic. “I get it, I do. You don’t have to explain it to me. Except...”
When she trailed off, I glanced at her. “Except what?”
“Malik. You. Were. Married. How could you not tell us you’d been married?”
Should’ve known she’d dropped the matter too quickly for it to be truly over. I stuffed a truffle in my mouth while I figured out how to string together words that made sense. Finally I sighed and said the hell with it.
“The only thing worse than coming home with your tail tucked between your legs, having to finally explain why you’ve been gone so long, completely incommunicado except for the annual Christmas cards, is to explain that, not only did you get married—and divorced—in the interim, but the guy you left is ballin’ out of control as a result. It was bad enough dealing with the fallout from being gay and not trusting Mom and Dad enough to tell them sooner. Adding that I’d been married, to someone they’d never meet, and that a big—huge—part of why we got divorced was because I wasn’t ready to come out?” My stomach twisted on itself at the memories of how screwed up I’d been then.
Across the island, Sheila frowned, scrunched up her nose, and started chewing on her lower lip. Mom never could break her of that habit. I sighed. “What is it?”
“I mean,” she started, then paused. “Why would you have had to come out? I guess that’s the part I’m missing.” When I opened my mouth, she hurried to add, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you did. But...” She trailed off and rolled that lip in.
I grabbed a stool and one of the mini tarts, then waited while Sheila got one for herself. “D was a sous chef at a hotel restaurant. Nothing big, just getting his foot in the door. He liked to fool around and make concoctions after hours, and the head honchos didn’t care as long as it didn’t mess with their supplies for the next day. A group of them were eating at the bar when some guy came up and asked for a plate, and it was love at first sight. Turned out the guy was a restaurateur, and was opening restaurants in Spain and Italy.”
“And he wants DeShawn.”
“Yep.” Even that one word sounded bitter to my ears. “He was so fucking excited. This was it, his big break. And that guy was the real deal. Wanted him to head up the damn restaurant from jump. Wanted magazine spreads and home interviews and shit.”
“And naturally they’d mention his husband and home life and boom, you’re out.”
“The first magazine that wanted to do an interview was Family Restaurant Enterprises.”
Her eyes widened and I didn’t have to say more. We’d had a subscription to that magazine since it’d been founded. Mom read it cover to cover every month like clockwork. Put a Black man on the cover of that magazine? Hell, Mom would’ve bought multiple copies of it. And she would’ve learned that her oldest son was gay by reading it. That I wasn’t in contact with them? Would have meant diddly squat. I would have been bombarded with calls and conversations I couldn’t handle, and I’d had my first and only panic attack at the thought.
I’d been terrified. So damn scared I hadn’t been able to muster up an ounce of enthusiasm. It’d gotten so bad D had said he’d turn the guy down, and that was even worse. Giving up his dream because I was scared to come out? Absolutely not. Divorcing had been the lesser of two evils, and I’d spent seven years convincing myself of it. “Yeah. Grandma hated it, us divorcing, especially over something she felt we could overcome. She called the day after he submitted the paperwork, and we’ve talked weekly since then.”
“About everything except DeShawn, I’m guessing.”
“We were divorced. There was nothing to say, and even mentioning his name was a surefire way to make me defensive. She hadn’t mentioned him in years, until a few weeks ago, when she said I needed to call him.”
“She say why?”
“Of course not,” I grumbled. Sheila huffed and I rolled my eyes. “She just said we needed to talk. Never thought I’d actually see him, and I wasn’t ready.”
“Which explains why you skipped out. You’re usually pretty stalwart. I was kinda surprised.”
Yeah, Bruno had been, too. When I’d come home, hours earlier than normal, I’d almost had no choice but to take my baby for a walk. And when I’d come back, taken a quick shower, then collapsed on my bed, that had apparently been so unusual that Bruno hopped on with me, a big no-no, and fell asleep right there next to me. Trust me, waking up next to doggy breath? Hadn’t been on my agenda.
I didn’t have much of an explanation for Sheila, so I just shrugged and we went back to work. The silence was comfortable and gave me time to think. Which, to be honest, wasn’t my brightest idea.
But dear god, one look at DeShawn today proved the cameras didn’t hold a candle to his beauty. He always looked taller on camera, which was probably why they often paired him with women. But DeShawn was five-six, five-seven on a good day, and looked like he still worked out regularly. His body was slender, the kind that stayed naturally slim but showed impressive muscle definition. Two full-arm sleeves now, something he’d been working on when we were together. I’d tried valiantly not to stare, not to try to see if our initials had been covered up. His locs were longer, nearly to his waist, whereas when we’d divorced, they had just passed his shoulders. The bottom half were blond, but the top were his gorgeous naturally dark brown color. Not black, very obviously brown, and I’d started baking years ago trying to create something sweet that matched his color.
When I’d seen him in the doorway, that hair pulled back into a long braid, that little filthy grin on his face, one that looked almost like he couldn’t help it, my first instinct had been to wrap my hands around that braid and hold him in place while I took him the way he’d always liked. That same desire made me scurry like a rat back to the sanctuary of my office.
“So,” she asked, after putting the tarts in the oven to bake, “what are you going to do about the lawsuit?”
That was another excellent question. One I hadn’t even considered yet. The attorney we kept on retainer was a business one, not...whatever this was. And Lord knew I didn’t have enough money to afford the big guns I’d need to fight this. Never mind that I still needed to call Grandma and ask her what in the heck she’d been thinking, making me a beneficiary. Yeah, that was high on my list of things to do.
“Malik. Earth to Malik.”
Sheila snapped her fingers in my face. I swatted at them, then shoved a truffle at her. She accepted it, sniffed it like Bruno did the trees on our walks, then took a bite. “Holy crikeys,” she garbled, her hand in front of her mouth, “what is this? This is delicious.”
I smiled. “Chocolate raspberry bourbon.”
“Oh, I’m down to get fucked up off these.”
I laughed and rolled my eyes. We were definitely family. She finished that truffle, then snagged another one and shoved it into her mouth as well. When she finished, though, she looked at me with those same worried eyes. “Malik, you know you have to talk to him again, right? You guys have to figure out how you’re going to fight this.”
I pulled out one of the stools behind the counter and sank onto it. “That’s the thing, Sheila. I don’t know if I want to fight it. Maybe it’s better just to let Robert have the money. I don’t want him and DeShawn fighting.”
Sheila sat on the other stool and leaned forward. “You can’t do anything about that. Robert knew what he was doing. He had to know DeShawn would find out. And, whatever happened with you two, that was your husband.”
“Is.”
She frowned, like she was replaying our conversation, then looked at me with wary eyes. “What do you mean, is?”
I groaned, arching my neck up toward the ceiling to avoid her stare. “That was the other thing DeShawn told me. Our divorce didn’t go through.”
“You’re still married?”
“I’m still married.”
“You’re married to DeShawn Franklin?”
“I’m married to DeShawn Franklin.”
“Want to trade?”
I snickered, then bust up laughing. “You’re sickeningly in love with Bryan, and while he and I are cool, I’m pretty sure he’d veto the suggestion.”
Sheila fluttered her lashes. “I can’t imagine what you mean. You’re an accountant. He’s an accountant. You two would be as interesting as watching paint dry.”
I appreciated her attempts to keep me from withdrawing back into my own head. “It’ll be fine,” I said, getting us back on track. “It’s just one more thing we have to get resolved. I’ll decide if I want to contest this at all, then resubmit whatever paperwork we need to get this divorce finalized.”
I was sure DeShawn thought I was angry with him about it, since he’d been the one to submit the final paperwork. But DeShawn was meticulous. He reviewed things two, three, four times. I did the same as an accountant, but when it had come to the divorce, I’d made the decision, then put the onus of it all in his hands. I couldn’t be upset with him now for missing something when neither of us had wanted to hire attorneys. If anything, I felt a nagging guilt that I’d made the decision and left him to do the work.
“Are you sure you want to do all that? Why don’t you talk to DeShawn first? I mean, you really have to talk to Grandma. Figure out why she did this, before you make these grandiose plans.”
She made an excellent point. I shrugged. “I’m going to need a real drink to have this phone call.”
The timer dinged then, and Sheila hopped up from her seat. “That’s what I’m talking about.” She pulled the tarts from the oven and set them on the cooling rack, then pointed at them. “And this? You’re going to explain how you’ve been hiding all this from us and the store. These, sir, could be a game changer.”
Any other time, that would have been exactly what I wanted to hear. Right now, it was just one more secret I’d have to come clean about.