More Than He Can Handle by Cheris Hodges

Author:Cheris Hodges [Hodges, Cheris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2014-12-30T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

After breakfast, Cleveland had to go into the fire station for his first shift since his vacation. Freddie decided that she was going to spend the day with Lillian, since Cleveland was going to be gone for the next twelve hours. She knew that her friend was going to have a lot of questions about her being with Cleveland. Questions that Freddie wasn’t sure she had the answers to.

Listening to him this morning really made her wonder if she had pegged him all wrong. Was he different? Was he the kind of man that she could actually fall in love with?

“No,” she said to her reflection as she stepped out of the shower. “He could’ve been saying what he thought I wanted to hear.”

She dressed quickly and headed downstairs. Cleveland had left his house key so that Freddie wouldn’t be stuck in the house all day. As she locked up, Freddie was amazed at how comfortable she was in Cleveland’s house. And a small part of her, a part that she desperately wanted to ignore, felt as if this could be the start of something good and fresh. That tiny part of her said she was falling in love with Cleveland Alexander.

Shaking her head and hoping to push those notions of love away, she got into her car and headed to Lillian’s. Maybe she needed to hear her friend’s voice of reason to get her back on track. This thing with Cleveland was just about sex and just about pleasure. There was no substance, no future, and no way she was going to give in to that tiny voice.

As she drove, Freddie called Lillian. “What’s up girl?” she said when Lillian answered the phone.

“I should be asking you the same question, Flavor.”

“Flavor?”

“That’s what you are, Cleveland’s flavor of the month.”

“Oh will you stop it?”

“Not until you tell me when you lost your mind,” Lillian said. “I mean really, even if this wasn’t Cleveland ‘Playa, Playa’ Alexander, you guys don’t even live in the same city or state for that matter.”

“Stop yakking my ear off, I’m in your driveway.” She hung up the phone and looked up as Lillian opened the front door to her Stone Mountain home. Freddie had to admit it, Lillian had come a long way from the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Sometimes she wondered how her life would’ve been different if Loraine had followed the Thomas family to Georgia.

Can’t change the past, can’t control the present, she thought as she stepped out of the car. “Lillian, aren’t you at least happy to see me?” Freddie said as she bounded up the steps.

“I saw you last night, remember. Anyway, Cleveland is not the man for you.”

Freddie shook her head. “Did I say I wanted to marry the man? And just for argument’s sake, how do you know he isn’t what I need?”

Lillian threw her hands up like an African dancer. “You’ve really lost your damned mind. The only difference between Cleveland and Marcus is that Cleveland doesn’t know that finding your daddy would make him a millionaire.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.