he knew what was happening to him. He had an inkling of a feeling as to why he couldn’t get a prim, proper and prissy kindergarten teacher out of his head. But there was no way to know for sure. He had never felt these oddly fluttery…
What kind of man feels fluttery, anyway?
Just picturing her face made him want to burst out into a wide grin. He was laughing at the corniest jokes and in a damn good mood to boot.
He was hardly ever in a good mood. He typically avoided good moods like the plague. Good moods left people wide-open with their guard down, no defenses. Gruff suited him better. Gruff should have been his middle name. But something was going on with him that was making him, dare he even think it…happy. And fluttery.
Picking up his cell phone, he made three calls to the three men who would best be able to fill him in on the these weird feelings. His younger, married and in love brothers had all made the plunge into matrimony within the past three years.
Once he had two of the three of them at his house, he was beginning to think it wasn’t a good idea after all. His brothers, Lawrence and Joel, both seemed as if they would rather have been anywhere but there. All the Hightower men took after their father in looks, and his father, James Hightower, was almost an exact body double for Richard Roundtree, the original Shaft. They were all tall, in shape and handsome, with mahogany complexions and killer smiles.
Patrick’s younger brother, the second oldest after him, Lawrence, lounged in Patrick’s favorite black leather recliner with his typical nonchalant stare. Lawrence was a narcotics detective with the Paterson Police Department and very little seemed to faze him.
Patrick had only seen Lawrence’s cool, calm demeanor crack once. That was when Lawrence had met the woman who was now his wife. Lawrence had darn near turned himself into the woman’s personal shadow and walked around like he couldn’t figure out right from left for at least three months. And when he finally realized that it was love that had taken him out, he almost blew that.
Patrick frowned. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea talking about any of this with his brothers after all. They probably wouldn’t have useful advice, since they had each struggled in their situations. But they all had their women now and they were all happy….
“Are you going to sit there all night twisting up your face, grunting and mumbling to yourself, or are you going to fill us in on why we had to pull ourselves away from our very beautiful wives? I knew you’d turn into a grumpy old man one day, big bro, but the grumbling and mumbling is a bit much even for you.” Joel, the family prankster, always had a joke or wisecrack ready to go.
There was always one jokester in every family. And, unfortunately for the Hightowers, their one had gone and found the other pea to his pod. Between Joel and his spitfire wife, Samantha, no one was safe. If one didn’t have a joke or a wisecrack, the other one was more than willing to comply.
Joel sat on the black leather sofa, constantly checking his watch, with a wiseguy smirk on his face. He had finally gotten over his bad feelings about his career-ending injury and was content working at Hightower Security and no longer being a firefighter.
“I’m waiting for your baby brother to get here. I need all of you clowns here so I can do this once and only once.” Patrick wondered what was keeping the youngest Hightower.
Even though Patrick had been the first to get married out of the bunch and the first and only one to get divorced, Jason Hightower had been the first to fall in love. He lost his heart to his wife, Penny, when he was barely ten years old. The childhood friends and teenage lovers had broken apart for fifteen years, but they were back together now, married and the parents of the cutest two-year-old girl and the most handsome seven-month-old little boy Patrick had ever seen, with the exception of Joel and Samantha’s little ten-month old son.
Patrick was very biased when it came to his niece and nephews. He was becoming the world’s largest Mr. Softie and those three blessings were the main reasons why. Being an uncle brought him a happiness he couldn’t describe. It also brought a deep longing for a family of his own.
“You know Jason can never pull himself away from his family whenever he has time off. Little Cee Cee has him wrapped around her pudgy two-year-old finger. And he dotes on Jason Jr. so much, we’re gonna have to take the little boy out every now and then when he gets older to toughen him up. Jason is almost as bad with his kids as Joel and Samantha are with Joel Jr.” Lawrence shook his head in mock disgust.
“Like you’re gonna be much better when Minerva has your baby. She’s barely showing and you already can’t stand to be away from her.” Joel let out a hooting laugh.
“No, Joel. He could barely stay away from her from the first moment he set eyes on her. My brother the police officer officially became a stalker. I was worried about you, bro. I’m glad Minerva made an honest man out of you and gave you a legal reason to hang around her all the time.” Patrick joined in Joel’s laughter.
“Now both of y’all got jokes, huh? I’ll tell you what. How about you get to whatever—” Lawrence’s ringing cell phone stopped him midsentence.
“Hey, baby…” Lawrence’s normally tough-guy tone went down a few octaves and Patrick immediately knew who was on the other end of the line. If the loving tone of voice didn’t give it away, then the ear-to-ear grin certainly did. It had to be Minerva. And whatever she said had to be bad because his brother’s grin fell into a deep frown and he cut Patrick a glaring look.
“That’s cool, baby. You have fun with the girls. I’ll see you when we both get home. I can just pick up something quick from the diner.” Lawrence gave Patrick another angry scowl.
Food! How did Patrick know Lawrence’s sour mood had something to do with food? Because Lawrence’s mood could always change when it came down to him getting a good home-cooked meal.
Lawrence hung up his cell. “You owe me big-time, man. What do you have to eat in this dump? Apparently, Mom and Dad decided they wanted to spend some quality time with all their grandchildren and this freed Samantha and Penny to kidnap my wife and take her shopping for all the ‘cute little maternity clothes she’s going to need.”’ Lawrence mimicked the high-pitched, gleeful sound his sisters-in-law made when they talked about clothes and shoe shopping. “So the wonderful home-cooked meal that my wife was going to make for me is no more and you have to feed me.”
The doorbell rang and Patrick shook his head as he went to answer it. “Joel, order a pizza and some wings for your always hungry brother while I let baby bro in.”
The pizza and wings came and they sat in the living room with a basketball game on the flat screen as white noise.
They didn’t get a chance to hang out nearly as much as they used to before his younger brothers all got hitched. Patrick missed that sometimes, but what he got in return—with wonderful sister-in-laws, a niece, two nephews and a new baby on the way—more than made up for the male bonding time he was missing with his brothers. Still it was moments like these when they did hang out that made him happy to have them.
“So.” Lawrence leaned back, rubbing his now full stomach, content for the moment, with a hint of a smile even. “What was so important that we all had to get over here tonight?”
“I think I know what it is.” Jason shook his head. “Aw…man…did you find out that Courtney was moving back to Paterson?”
His ex-wife? Moving back to Paterson? Say what?
“What
