Tagged Steel (Men of Steel #6) - MJ Fields
Part One
Prequel
One
Being the daughter of Jase Steel
Sunday dinner is a Steel family tradition. We rotate between Momma Joe and Thomas’s, Cyrus and Tara’s, Zandor and Bekkah’s, Xavier and Taelyn’s, and our house. Today, it’s at our place.
Eleven of us are at the regular dining room table, with the eight youngest Steels seated at the kids’ table. Salad and garlic knots have been served, and lasagna and roasted vegetables are being plated and passed around.
Like Garfield, lasagna is my father’s favorite, so I decide this is the absolute best time, and safest place, to tell my father, at sixteen, that Chad Wentworth asked me to a movie the following Friday night. My very first date.
The normally, noisy room falls silent, even the kids’ table decides to follow suit, and that didn’t even happen when Momma Joe said the blessing.
Uncle Cyrus, the oldest of the four, is the first to speak. “You shoot the first one, word will spread.”
His wife, my aunt Tara, covers her face and shakes her head.
“That’s enough, Cyrus,” Momma Joe scolds him.
“Tell him, whatever he does to our Little Bell, Zandor will do to him.” Xavier chuckles and so does his wife Taelyn.
I look at Uncle Zandor as he smirks, shrugs, looks at his wife Bekkah, and then asks, “You okay with that?”
“None of y’all are right,” she replies, sitting back and taking a healthy drink of her wine.
When I look back to Dad, I realize that his eyes haven’t left me and there is no expression to be read in them … at all.
Then he simply states, “No.”
I hear a large thud, then he whips his head left. “What the hell, Carly?”
“She’s sixteen, for God’s sake,” she whispers like no one will hear her.
We all do.
They have a stare off until he finally looks over at me. “Let’s talk about God, shall we?”
“Really?” I roll my eyes.
“Jase,” Momma Joe snips quietly.
“With all due respect, Momma, you raised four amazing men, but girls, well, they’re nothing like boys.”
“You don’t say?” Momma Joe slowly raises an eyebrow.
“I know you’ve helped us the whole way, but this is my little girl.”
“She’s sixteen,” Momma Joe and Carly say at the same time.
I figuratively raise a victorious fist in the air, and then I just sit back and listen to them bicker.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice my sister Kiki and my cousin Truth watching it all go down, eyes darting back and forth like they’re watching a tennis match. When Kiki looks at me, she smirks, and I give her a wink.
It’s a win.
It’s Thursday or, as I am secretly deeming it, first date eve.
After Kiki’s piano lesson, Carly, Kiki, and I got haircuts. When we started walking out of the salon, Momma Joe was walking in.
“Three of my favorite girls.” She hugs us all. “Would you care to join me for mani/pedis?”
“Heck yes!” Kiki squeals. “Perfect idea! Tomorrow’s date night, Momma Joe.”
The wink shared between my seven-year-old sister and my grandmother makes it obvious this was planned, even before we are greeted by the staff and brought back to the four pedicure chairs already waiting for us.
“I think she’s more excited about your date than you, if not even more so,” Momma Joe says with a laugh as we sit.
“Don’t let her fool you,” Carly whispers. “She has an ulterior motive. She’s just hoping you break him in so it’s not as difficult when it’s her turn.”
Kiki smiles. “I already have a boyfriend.”
“You do, do you?” Momma Joe asks.
She nods. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”
“Dad doesn’t or the boy doesn’t?” I ask my bright-eyed little sister.
“Neither!” She laughs hysterically at herself.
After we’re finished, Carly asks Momma Joe to come over for dinner.
“I would love to,” Momma Joe replies.
The look exchanged between them also tells me that this was planned.
When we pull up the driveway, Dad is filling the doorway, my brother Max beside him. As Momma Joe rolls up behind us, he narrows his eyes, and Carly smirks as she waves.
All week, he’s been extra. Extra edgy, extra stress-y, extra … just extra.
Carly has been keeping me close, and when they don’t think I’m in earshot, she’s keeping him in check, telling him, “I see what you’re doing.” Or, “You better check yourself, Steel, or you’ll be on the couch.” Or, “She’s sixteen, Jase, and she’s a hell of a lot more street smart than I ever was. She’ll be fine. It’s him you should feel bad for.”
When we walk up the front steps, he looks at