Ready for Love. Gwyneth Bolton

It hadn’t helped that she was also a tomboy until she started getting the curves that would one day make her a famous video vixen and the rest was history. She realized she might not be as fine as her brothers, but many men considered her looks and build eye candy.

      She knew that her best attributes were her shape—for which she owed thanks to her mother—and her hair. But her long black curls could easily be attributed to both parents. Like that of many African-Americans, her mother’s heritage had a mix of some Caucasian and Native American. And, as a native Puerto Rican, her father claimed Black first but also had a mix of Spaniard and Indio in his lineage. Maritza liked to credit the hair to the Native peoples on both sides of her family tree and made jokes about having Indian in her family whenever people commented on her looks or hair. When it came down to identity though, she claimed her Black and Latina roots proudly.

      She looked at her fine brothers and smiled as she thought about the various ways she and her brothers had found to rebel. Most people would think that having former nationalist parents who had protested the status quo and spent time in jail for their political beliefs would leave little room for kids to actually do anything that would shock their parents. But Maritza and her brothers each found ways.

      Manuel Junior, the oldest, was a conservative talking head on the most conservative news channels on television. And for liberal, left-leaning progressives like Sharon and Manuel Sr., that was probably the ultimate act of rebellion. Victor was a cop and, for former nationalists who used to scream “off the pigs,” having a son decide to become a cop was probably just as bad as a fundamentalist preacher having a rock ’n’ roll artist as a child. Louis, at least, was leaving the corporate world that her parents believed was bleeding the country dry to become a professor. Too bad he was becoming a professor of practice in the business college of an Ivy League university and training more corporate sharks.

      And then there was Maritza…Maritza Morales, the only daughter of famous Black feminist Sharon Morales, a former video vixen with a sexual past that would probably make her father have a stroke—even if he had grown up in the free love 1960s.

      Yes, the Morales bunch proved that those other PKs—preachers’ kids—had nothing on professors’ kids when it came to acting out and breaking expectations.

      “Niña bonita, you had better come clean. We need to know the truth about what happened and why.” Manuel Sr.’s voice was extra stern now and Maritza knew that it would only be a matter of time before he was no longer using his pet name for her and he started calling her by her full given name, Maritza Diane Morales. Once he went there she would have to work extra hard to make it back to her perfect little daddy’s girl place.

      “We’re waiting,” Sharon added as she crossed her arms and tapped her foot.

      Maritza sighed. There was no getting around this. She would have to tell them everything. She eyed the Hightower wives, Penny’s parents, Carla and Gerald, and her own parents and brothers. All of them had traveled to Los Angeles to meet her future husband and to celebrate her engagement.

      An engagement that really should have never happened…

      If only she could have one of those Being Erica do-overs…

      But what would she go back and change? Would she not accept Andrew’s proposal? Or would she find a way to stop Terrill from kissing her and turning her nice, orderly life upside down?

      She shook her head because she knew which one she would have changed and there was no way in hell she wanted to live in a world where she didn’t know what a kiss from Terrill felt like.

      It was time to come clean.

      She cleared her throat. “See, what had happened was—”

      “Oh Lord! Here she come starting with some ol’ what had happened! That means she ’bout to drop ol’ okey-doke crap. Anytime they start with see, what had happened, you know you ’bout to hear some ol’ convoluted mess.” Carla shook her head, all the while stretching and getting into a comfortable spot to hear what she was deeming a mess.

      “Carla, hush up and let the girl tell her story. Go ahead, Maritza. And make it plain.” Celia Hightower gave both Carla and Maritza a stern look.

      With that admonishment from the matriarch of the Hightower clan, she decided beating around the bush and hemming and hawing weren’t going to work and she needed to just tell the truth.

      “Okay, it started back when Big Mama passed away…”

      “Now that’s what I call a shiner! Da–mn! Man, you got knocked out!”

      Terrill Carter held the ice pack over his swollen black eye and glared at his best friend, Jason Hightower, with the other eye. On any other day he would be able to take Jason’s ribbing, but not today.

      It was nice to have company in his normally empty—except for when he had a work-related event or party going on—place. His Bel Air mansion was more a sign of status, and an affirmation that he had made it, than anything else. It certainly didn’t become a home until it was filled with his friends and since his closest friends, the Hightowers, lived in the city where he was born and raised, Paterson, New Jersey, the mansion didn’t feel like a home very often.

      “Yeah, man! They almost jacked you all the way up! Just imagine how much worse it could have been if we hadn’t been there to pull dude’s crew off of you. What in the world possessed you to crash the engagement party anyway?” Joel Hightower had his usual expression—on the verge of laughter—on his face as he leaned against the door in the entryway to Terrill’s state-of-the-art kitchen.

      “That’s not the most important question. As usual, you guys are slow on the uptake,” Lawrence offered wryly as he twirled a toothpick in his mouth and studied Terrill.

      Terrill could feel the third degree coming and he didn’t like it one bit. Not with a swollen eye and the knowledge that he had only put a temporary stall on the love of his life’s wedding plans. He had only managed to break up the engagement party. There was still a chance that Maritza might be marrying another man in six months or so. How was he supposed to cope with that?

      “The most important question is—” Lawrence leaned forward and arched his left eyebrow and gave Terrill his most intense cop stare “—when exactly did you and Maritza become an item? And how long have the two of you been seeing each other? Because no man comes up into an engagement party the way you did without having a really good reason.”

      “Word,” Jason agreed.

      “Right!” Joel exclaimed.

      “Co-sign,” Patrick offered with a halfway bored shrug.

      Things had not turned out the way he expected them to, that was for damn sure. He was supposed to waltz up in there and claim the woman he loved and leave with her. He and Maritza were supposed to be making love right now instead of him nursing a black eye and explaining anything and everything to the Hightower brothers.

      The Hightower brothers were all tall, in shape and handsome with mahogany complexions and killer smiles. Terrill loved these men like they were his own brothers. But damn if they knew when to just leave a brother alone and let him sulk in silence.

      “Come on man, you might as well come clean now. You and Maritza have been doing that I-hate-you-but-I-might-really-love-you dance for years. And we saw the way she looked at you when you bum-rushed the spot—” Jason started.

      “True,” Joel added. “Love was all in her face. I never would have believed it unless I had seen it with my own eyes.”

      “Word. And the way ol’ girl screamed when Speed-Lo’s bodyguard punched you and knocked you the hell out! Man, you can’t tell me she didn’t give a damn what happened to you,” Patrick added.

      “So you might as well come clean, man. How long have you and Maritza been kicking it and what do we need to do to help you get your woman back?” Lawrence had a cynical smirk on his face.

      Terrill winced and figured he could also add can’t-leave-well-enough-alone