“But you want the full package—the three Hs . . . somebody who’s gonna be honest, honorable, and hetero . . .”
“Yeah, I do,” she murmured, allowing her shoulders to sag.
“You don’t want to give it away and then find out he lied . . . or some other mess, right?”
Jessica just nodded and released a sad sigh.
“But since you see so much . . .”
“I see the drama coming before they open their mouths.” She sprawled out in the chair with her eyes closed, needing to hear her brother’s comforting wisdom. “The older I get, Raph, the more I can see—the more I can see in advance, the lonelier it is.”
“That’s why you need to get out of Port Arthur. Ain’t nobody there for you . . . That’s why I had to leave.”
“But I don’t know if I can do the third thing you asked me to do while just on a weekend, you know?”
“I love you, too, boo . . . I know you ain’t like me . . . and I appreciate the delicate way you tried to put that. I was just messing with you—you are definitely not a booty-call kinda girl.”
“It’s not like I haven’t thought about it over the last four years, trust me.”
“Say what!”
Jessica cringed. The last thing she’d meant to tell Raphael was that! “I mean—”
“Don’t even try to clean it up; you cannot take that back. I at least hope you’ve got a pocket rocket or something that takes batteries!”
“Raph, don’t start, okay . . . I’m embarrassed enough as it is.” Jessica let out a hard breath, opened her eyes, and stood. “I’ve gotta go.”
He laughed gently into the phone. “All right—I’ll mind my business, but I don’t want my sister losing her mind or becoming some old, dried-up prune. You go have fun in New Orleans and register for class. Maybe some tall, fine hunk who’s trying to get educated might find his way to school with you, who knows?”
“That would be a hopeful thought,” Jessica said, smiling, glad that her brother wasn’t going to continue to rant. “But, seriously,” she added in a quiet voice, “I don’t know how to thank you enough.”
“That’s what family is for,” Raphael said, his tone somber and holding a tinge of wistfulness in it. “You always had my back, sis . . . You never outed me, never judged me, and always loved me—no matter what. If people talked about me, you’d come home with your nose bloody and knees all scraped up from fighting for me. Hair all wild . . . Remember those days?”
“Yeah, I do,” Jessica said, blinking back fresh tears.
“Well, that was what I needed, somebody who loved me regardless . . . so now helping you with what you need is the very least I can do.”
“But—”
“Jess, no buts. Let somebody give you something, for once.”
“All right,” she finally said, knowing her brother would not be moved.
“I love you,” he told her and then made a kiss sound against the cell phone.
“I love you right back.”
Three
HE tried not to stare when she walked up to his spiritual paraphernalia store window and stopped. Her gaze was fastened to the silver objects that glittered in the late-afternoon sun. Golden-rose light spilled over her warm brown skin and caught in her freefall of shoulder-length braids. Her yellow tank top clung, giving his imagination help as his gaze slid down her curvy frame . . . He just wished she would step back so he could also see her legs. But he didn’t dare move, lest he frighten her away. Maybe, if God was listening to quick prayers, she’d come into the store.
He’d never seen her around New Orleans before, and she didn’t have the carefree look of a college student on break or the relaxed vibration of a tourist. Her pretty face was cast over with anxiety, her eyes holding a hungry quality of someone hunting for something but not sure what.
“Justin,” his grandmother called out from the back of the store just as the pretty woman in the window looked up.
He hadn’t realized that he’d nearly been in a trance until he heard his name. But now as a pair of gorgeous, intense dark brown eyes studied him, he couldn’t move or speak.
“Justin! Do you hear me calling you, son?”
“Yeah, Grand . . .”
But the moment he turned his head to answer and looked back, the girl was gone. Panic shot through him, although