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the class to the firehouse, I felt weird. I wanted to keep looking at her. So I hung around for a little while as the rookie gave the tour and I even went out afterward and asked her on a date.”

      “Playa, playa…” Jason offered with a smirk. “So when are you taking her out? Is that what you need advice on, where to take her and how to impress her? It’s been a minute since I’ve been in the game, but in my day, you know—”

      “I’m not taking her out. Yet. She said she doesn’t date.”

      “She doesn’t date? What?” Perplexed, Lawrence frowned. “Wait…Was this a Catholic school? Did you hit on a nun? You know they don’t always wear those habits and stuff anymore—” Lawrence started.

      “It was a public school, and she wasn’t a nun! And I’m not asking for advice on how to woo her once I get her to agree to a date.” Disgusted at the thought that his younger brothers would even deign to think that they had more skills that he, Patrick grimaced. “I’m the reason you scrubs had any game to start with, and the last thing I need is advice about that from y’all. Advice? Please! When I taught y’all everything you know?”

      “So what do you want?” Jason asked.

      “I want to know if this urge to break out into a smile every time I picture her face, if the serious and steady thump in my chest every time I think about her, and this urge I have to find a way, any way, to see her short of stalking…” He shot Lawrence a glance. “I need to know if that’s what it feels like when you meet her…when you’ve met the one. I think that’s why I’m feeling this way and I don’t want to be slow on the uptake like you three clow—I mean, you guys. So—”

      “Yes. He’s got it bad,” Jason said with a chuckle.

      “And it appears the last Hightower brother has been bitten by the love bug.” Lawrence grinned.

      “I don’t know if she’s the one. But it seems like you are recognizing her as the one. That’s for sure. That’s what it feels like. At least that’s what it felt like to me,” Joel offered.

      “Me, too,” Jason said.

      “Yep. Me, too,” Lawrence added.

      “Didn’t you feel like that with Courtney?” Joel asked.

      Patrick thought about it for a full minute. He couldn’t recall ever feeling like that from the first moment he had met his ex-wife. He remembered his aunt always pushing them together and he remembered slowly coming to enjoy her company and coming to love her. But he never felt anything like he felt now back then with Courtney.

      “No. I didn’t feel like this with Courtney.”

      Then, for the first time since his divorce, he started to think that maybe the failure of his marriage wasn’t all Courtney’s fault after all.

      Chapter 3

      “Did you finish your homework?” Aisha folded her arms across her chest and smiled at her son as he plopped down on the sofa and flipped on the television.

      “I didn’t have that much homework,” Dillon offered after the short pause that had always been his tell sign.

      Her ten-year-old son was a joy on most days. But morning cartoons made it difficult to get him dressed and out the door for school. And afternoon cartoons distracted him from his homework.

      The copper-brown-complexioned child looked like a little male version of her, with the exception of the black curly hair he’d gotten from his dad. Her own hair reached the middle of her back and was chemically straightened. She seldom did more to it than curl the ends and pull it back with one of her many-colored and many-styled headbands. When she was feeling really adventurous, she pulled it back in a ponytail with a scrunchie. One day she would work up enough nerve to cut it all off into one of those funky hairstyles her teaching assistant, Toni, wore. But for now, she had a ten-year-old trying to get out of doing homework to deal with.

      “You didn’t answer the question, Dillon.” She added extra inflection in her voice, walked over to the television and stood in front of it.

      Sulking, Dillon turned it off and got up. “My favorite show will be off by the time I’m finished.”

      “Then maybe you should have started earlier and then you would have been done, huh? You were messing around back there doing everything but your homework. So get to it so that you can be done by dinner.”

      A spark of hope gleamed in his big brown eyes. “I could skip dinner and do my homework during dinner and watch my show now. Today we find out if the super ninja spider will—”

      She had to cut him off. “Are you trying to say you’d rather watch those silly ninja spiders than eat one of my wonderful creations?”

      Aisha knew she wasn’t the greatest cook in the world—nowhere close. She experimented often with recipes that she saw being prepared on TV. But she also tried to make sure she put together simple healthy meals for her child and the little cartoon addict was going to eat his dinner.

      “Well, Mom…” Dillon gave her one of his sly, playful grins. “You could stand to watch a little less Food Network.” He backed away as he spoke and his lanky body took off running when she picked up a pillow and tossed it at him.

      “Just for that I’m not going to try the new recipe I found for a cool dessert.”

      “Yay! No test recipe this week!” her darling child yelled from his back bedroom.

      “Oh, do your homework, you little prankster!” She laughed as she plopped down on the sofa and turned on the Food Network. One of these days she was going to get one of those recipes to turn out the way they did on TV.

      Watching the cooking shows always soothed her mind and gave her something else to think about. She had never been a great cook and barely made the basics. It hadn’t been a problem when she was married to William “Bill” Miller. He had always been fond of telling her he hadn’t married her for her cooking or her brains.

      The moment her verbally abusive former husband decided to up the ante and actually put his hands on her, her life took a detour. She only followed her desire to really learn to cook once she had gotten the courage to leave her husband, go back to school, finish her elementary education degree and got a job with the Paterson public school system.

      Life was good now. She just had to make sure she resisted temptation and didn’t let any man try to seduce her into giving up her new path. No matter how sexy and smoking hot he was…

      Now that looks good. I bet I can totally make that.

      She let her mind think of safer things as she watched the Barefoot Contessa whip together the mocha buttercream frosting. How hard could that possibly be? It looked easy enough. She grabbed the notepad she kept by the sofa and started jotting down the ingredients and directions. She might have missed some, but she was sure she could wing it. She would try the dessert soon. At least she could clear her mind of thoughts about the sexy fireman.

      Then, despite her best efforts, she suddenly envisioned herself feeding the fireman delectable morsels of her own mocha buttercream-frosted chocolate cake. The vision looked too good to vanquish from her head right away. So she let it linger. And then she had the nerve to start daydreaming about mocha buttercream frosting and that muscular frame of his. That’s when she knew she had to stop. Too bad she couldn’t….

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