Free From One Night to Forever by Synithia Williams Page B

your sisters. Not for anyone else.”
    “I know, Momma.”
    “And if you want to spend a night with a sexy trucker, fine. Just don’t get your mind all wrapped up in happily-ever-after. Go in, scratch that itch, and move on. As long as you keep your heart out of things, you’re fine.”
    A lecture she’d heard repeatedly since her ill-advised teenage stint with love. “Momma, I didn’t hook up with that guy. I stayed out late and went out early. That’s all.” She walked away and flipped the pages of the magazine on the table. Mostly because she couldn’t lie and look her momma directly in the eye. “Good thing, too. Turns out he’s Reggie’s friend Aaron Henderson.”
    “The guy Reggie is always bragging about?”
    Kacey nodded and turned away from the magazine. “One and the same. Reggie’s letting him stay in the apartment upstairs while they work out the potential merger.”
    “That was nice of him.”
    Nice
wasn’t the word Kacey would use to describe her brother’s actions.
Rash
and
inconsiderate
topped the list. “Yeah.”
    “Well, if that’s the case, then I hope you didn’t sleep with him.”
    “I didn’t!” she said with enough emphasis to almost convince herself.
    “Good. Reggie will cancel the entire deal if he thought his friend was sleeping with one of his sisters.”
    Cancel the deal was an understatement. When Reggie found out about her “relationship” at seventeen, he’d come home and beaten Dewayne to a bloody pulp. So much so her momma had almost not called the police to report the guy for having sex with her underage daughter. In the end she did, and the police had ignored the bruises after everything was explained. Reggie had become hypervigilant about Kacey and her sisters’ reputations and the guys they dated ever since.
    Boyfriend cheating: Reggie handled him. Guy at the bar being too handsy: Reggie handled him. Falling in love but not quite sure the guy felt the same: Reggie would force the confession or get him to break things off. Kacey thanked heaven for Camila every day. She’d kept him busy since they’d gotten married so that his warden-like tendencies hadn’t been as bad.
    “Reggie can stop defending our honor,” Kacey said. “None of us are virgins waiting on marriage.”
    Sabrina chuckled. “True, but your brother is old enough to remember the way people talked about me after I had your youngest sister. Add to that the fights he got in over you girls, and I guess he has the right to be overprotective.”
    “Fights he started.”
    “You’d rather he didn’t try to look out for you, Monique, and Ashlei?”
    Kacey huffed, but she didn’t contradict her momma. Reggie was overbearing and way too protective, but he’d kept a lot of assholes out of her and her sister’s lives. “He’s not our daddy.”
    “No, he’s not, he’s just your big brother. Speaking of daddies, did you call yours?”
    “No, is he okay?”
    “Yeah, I think Brenda is sick again. Or at least that was the word in the restaurant last night. You might want to call and check on her.”
    Kacey would rather summon the dead than talk to her dad’s wife. Brenda had long stopped blaming Kacey for the brief affair he’d had with Sabrina. Now her momma, dad, and his wife had formed a tentative alliance. Her dad refused to stay out of Kacey’s life, something her brother and sisters didn’t have. So even though Kacey was uncomfortable with the
friendship
,
she wouldn’t begrudge what her siblings didn’t have.
    “Brenda doesn’t want me to check on her.”
    “Then call your daddy and let him know you’re checking on her. He’ll appreciate that.”
    “Fine, I’ll call Daddy.”
    “Good.” Sabrina handed Kacey a few papers that were on the counter. “I also came by to drop off my answers to your interview questions.”
    Kacey skimmed through her momma’s handwritten answers to Kacey’s questions about why she’d started Momma’s Kitchen and her ideas for the second