Dragon Song Read Online Free PDF Page B

began to take out the food that they would prepare together for breakfast. This was another of their rituals for the weekend, party late into the night on Saturday and eat brunch together on Sunday. Sometimes they altered this routine by attending church, but that was when Jamie’s grandmother invited them to have Sunday dinner with her. The old woman would never hear of them not first attending First Baptist morning services before heading to her house.
    Tielle sighed. She was not the best cook in the world. In fact, she hated it that she could never pull off a decent recipe, but Jamie’s grandmother put her foot in everything she prepared. Tielle always overate when she went to Nana Wells’ place.
    For the next hour, Tielle sat in her tiny kitchen listening to Jamie recount every nasty detail of her sexual encounter with her lover. Tielle hooted over some of the crazy stuff they said to each other while in the throes of sex, and made mental notes of the more interesting moves. She’d thought she had done it all until Jamie came up with something new. The woman should write a book, Tielle kept telling her, but Jamie insisted her conquests were for her eyes and Tielle’s ears, if she behaved herself. Tielle always rolled her eyes and sucked her teeth over that statement.
    When her phone rang, she put up a finger because she didn’t want to miss a second of what Jamie was saying, and she answered the call. “Hello?”
    “Ms. Williams? Ms. Tielle Williams?” the person on the other end enquired.
    Tielle paused for a second and then remembered she had paid off all outstanding bills. No creditors should be calling her. “Yeah, you got her. Who is this?”
    “I’m—” The man stopped and coughed. That raised her suspicions—the hesitancy and the fact that the man spoke with the same lilt that Stone did—but she decided to hear him out. Maybe he had news of how Stone was doing. When his fake-sounding cough was done, the man continued. “I’m J-James Wallace, Stone Hughes’ secretary.”
    Tielle’s eyes widened. “For real? He has a secretary? How is he? Is he okay?”
    “Uh…uh…”
    Again her suspicions rose, but she waited for him to finish.
    “Uh, he’s all right. Had to take a rest after what he went through last night. Um, he thought maybe he told you the wrong date and time about when you two would meet again.” The sound of papers rustling reached her through the phone. “Now, when did he tell you he’d be by?”
    Tielle knew when a person was lying to her. Hell, she’d done enough lying in her time when she went through a faze of seeing just how much she could get away with on her series of foster parents. She’d perfected the lies and knew even better how to detect them—even over the phone.
    “Thursday,” she answered without hesitation. “Thursday night at nine. But we weren’t going to meet at my place. This time, we were going to meet at his.”
    The man’s voice lightened, like he was thrilled she’d shared all that she did with him. If the person on the phone was really Stone’s secretary, he would know she’d never met him before last night, that is if he handled Stone’s personal life.
    “Yes, yes,” the man chortled with glee that was a little on the sickening side. “The penthouse on Collins then. Okay, thank you. That confirms what I have. Good-bye.” He hung up without any more comment from Tielle, but right about then, she stood there in shock. Just how rich did Stone have to be to have a penthouse apartment? She knew
Collins Street
, and the apartments that had penthouses over there were through the roof in pricing. Stone had been slumming big time at the club where she found him. But then again, when a place became popular, money didn’t matter if the owners stayed down to earth.
    Tielle put her phone down and tapped her lip. Just what in the world was going on that first Stone was attacked, and now someone was pretending to be his secretary trying to find out