Free The Choir Director 2 by Carl Weber Page A

will be over. He’ll be left with nothing—and so will we.”
    Her eyes opened a little wider. She had given up her job to get ready for the baby, and if I lost my biggest client, we could be in a really bad situation.
    “Babe, what are you going to do? You have to get Aaron back on track,” she said.
    “I’m working on it,” I said, then told her about my idea to meet with Jackson Young.
    “So, you really think this guy can take Aaron to the next level?”
    “I do. He might be just what Aaron needs to take his mind off Tia.”
    She gave me a hug. “I’m proud of you, honey. If anyone can get Aaron back to work, it’s you. Everything is going to be fine. I just know it.”
    Her confidence in me felt good. If things with work were a little crazy right now, at least my home life was improved. Slowly but surely, the tension was leaving my body.
    Selena noticed it, and gave me a devilish smile. “Looks like you’re feeling better. Let’s see if I can help you relax some more,” she said as she slid to her knees and reached for my zipper.
    Damn, I love this woman , I thought, grateful as hell. Yep, despite how it had started, this turned out to be a great day for me.

Tia
    9
    “Thank God,” I said, standing up to wipe the sweat off my forehead.
    I’d been picking up rocks in my brother Kareem’s garden for almost ten minutes before I finally found the one that hid the key to his house. It was the same house we’d grown up in, and until a few years ago, we’d lived there together, big brother taking care of little sister. After he kicked his last girlfriend to the curb, he’d changed the locks. Luckily, he always left a key hidden in the garden just in case I needed to come home.
    “Kareem!” I called out to him as I walked through the door. The silence that followed was welcome, letting me know that I had the entire place to myself.
    I stood there in the foyer and looked around at this place that had always been my refuge, my safe haven; but not anymore, not since I saw him in the bar that night. Now, no place and no one felt safe—not this house, not Kareem, not even Aaron. I felt so raw inside, so violated. The image of his face invaded my thoughts almost constantly.
    I forced thoughts of the rapist out of my head as I checked my watch and realized I only had two hours to do what I needed to do and get out of there. I wanted to be gone before Kareem got home. I loved my brother, but I really wasn’t ready to play twenty questions with him about my whereabouts and my reasons for bolting from the wedding. He’d been nice enough to give me the benefit of the doubt when I told him I couldn’t go in the church and go through with the wedding; however, he’d been blowing up my phone almost as much as Aaron. I just couldn’t bring myself to face him, because I knew I’d be forced to lie, and I wanted to avoid that for as long as I could. My brother and I had always been close, and there was a good chance he’d see right through me.
    I headed down the hall to my old bedroom and opened the bottom dresser drawer, which still held some old jeans I hadn’t bothered to throw out when I left. I reached underneath the piles of pants expecting to find what I’d come for, but it wasn’t there. I pulled everything out of the drawer and threw it on the ground, and still I came up empty-handed. A search of the other drawers had the same result.
    What the fuck! Where the hell is it?
    Trying to remain calm, I turned to the closet and started pulling shoe boxes off the shelves. Maybe I’d put it in the closet and forgotten. There was nothing in the boxes, though, except for shoes I no longer wore. Leaving everything in total disarray, I headed for Kareem’s room, thinking that since he’d been the one to give it to me in the first place, maybe he’d taken it back.
    Stepping over piles of dirty clothes on his floor, I made a mental note to suggest to Kareem that he should get a cleaning lady. The mess in his room