BWWM Interracial Romance 5: Love After Halftime Read Online Free PDF

them – before clicking her keychain and letting him in.
    “What’s in the bag?” he asked as they drove away from campus.
    “It seemed like a wine night,” she said.
    “Sure is,” he agreed, inspecting her two bottles of red with an appreciative eye.
    Marlene drove in silence for a few minutes, letting Joe begin to relax, thinking he was off the hook. Then she asked, “So who were you meeting, Joe?”
    He crossed his arms and struck a self-righteous pose. “For your information, Cara works at Time Out, so I went there to check on her.”
    “The sports bar? I didn’t know she worked there.”
    “Me either, until tonight.”
    She smirked, watching him squirm. “Uh huh, I thought you said you were going there to check on Cara.”
    “Did I?” His voice, like his face, was boyish, a combination she suddenly found adorable.
    “Just admit you were chasing college tail and let’s have an adult discussion about how wrong that is,” she laughed as they hopped on the interstate for the quick trip downtown, where his penthouse resided high atop the ritzy Temptation Towers.
    “I wasn’t chasing college tail,” Joe sighed and explained. “Brad was.”
    “Oh, it’s Brad’s fault was it?”
    “That’s why I needed a ride,” he explained, slumped in the passenger seat with a bag of wine on his lap. “He dragged me along on some double date with a girl who likes to have sex in bathrooms.”
    “You had sex in a bathroom?”
    “No,” he laughed. “That’s why she dumped me. Or, technically, I had to dump her and…”
    “Can I make a suggestion?” Marlene asked as she took the turnoff toward his street. “Maybe stay away from Brad in the off-season?”
    “Point taken!” he said, handing her his security key for the parking garage. She swiped it, handed it back and found his spot, by memory, though it had been months since she’d visited his magnificent condo in the sky.
    He held her wine bag in the elevator and finally took his hat off, soft brown curls radiant in the fluorescent light. “Thanks for the ride,” he said as he let them in the penthouse.
    “Oh you’ll be thanking me all right,” she chuckled, nodding toward his cordless phone. “Don’t be forgetting about that pizza, now.”
    He pulled out his smart phone and, leaning back against his granite kitchen counter as she opened the wine, tapped his screen several times before smirking. “Done and done,” he said.
    “Aren’t you Mr. Techno?” she asked, impressed. “I can recall a time I had to help a certain jock with his phone calculator, and now you’re ordering pizza in three clicks or less.”
    He found two wine glasses and held them out as she poured. “A lot’s changed since we met, Merl.”
    She nodded, finding it hard to dispute him. “Yes, yes it has Joe.”
    They leaned across the counter from each other, sipping their wine, and for some reason Marlene thought it sounded like they were talking about two different things. His eyes looked contemplative in the dim kitchen light, as if he was searching for something.
    The condo was warm despite the late January chill, Joe looking handsome in his soft, woolen pullover and faded blue jeans. She’d always adored his jock looks, in a way she might never admit to her friends in the English department, but now they looked more settled, more grown in, his youthful cockiness mellowed into a soft, glowing confidence that was like a magnet.
    Sipping her wine helped to ease the sexual tension she was feeling, but not the fire in Joe’s eyes. “What’s up with you tonight?” she asked.
    He shrugged. “Not quite sure,” he said. “Just wondering why we don’t do this more often.”
    “I told you I’ve been busy,” she explained. “Exams and your ex-wife and syllabuses to write and…”
    He held his hands up, defensively. “I just meant… do this , what’s happening now.”
    “What is happening now?”
    “ This , Merl. You… me… the wine.”
    “How much did you say