Jezebel by Koko Brown Page A

Celeste kept moving around. “You’ve got
someone who loves you and has your back despite what you may think.”
    Her words must have hit a
chord because Celeste stopped wiggling and her expression turned
somber. “Do you think I’ll find someone who’ll put
up with me, understand and love me like you do?”
    “ Maybe you’ve
already found him. Sugar Shane couldn’t keep his eyes off you
the other night.”
    Celeste
closed her eyes and then opened them again, as if fighting sleep,
“ Sugar’s
sweet, so is he ,”
she whispered, barely containing a yawn. “I’m going to
turn over a new leaf.”
    “ Sure
you are, sugar,” Trudy entertained. She’d heard this
speech before.
    Yawning,
Celeste curled her arms around the bed pillow and her eyelids slipped
to half-mast. “I’m on the level, Tru. First thing in the
morning, I’m paying a visit to my old manager Freddy. Then,
I’m going to see about moving back into the brownstone on
Willoughby. Finally, I’m going to tuck my tail tween’ my
legs and apologize to Shane.”
    Flabbergasted by the news,
Trudy’s mouth fell open. “You’re pulling my leg!”
    “ Nope,” Celeste
half yawned, “I was wrong for hanging him out to dry.”
    If she didn’t love her
cousin, Trudy would’ve strangled her. “I’m not
talking about him, clown! I’m talking about your moving back
into the brownstone.”
    A dreamy smile lit Celeste’s
face. “The Reverend willed it to me, along with the store and a
walkup.”
    “ The whole kit and
caboodle, well I’ll be damned.”
    Celeste finally gave up the
fight and closed her eyes. “Knocked me for a loop too,”
she rasped sleepily, “but its home, I’m home…”
    Trudy made sure her cousin
was out for the count before she reached over and switched off the
table lamp. “Good night, black bird.”

CHAPTER Ten

    By midweek, Celeste squared
things with her old manager Freddy Colon. She even started the
transition back home by rehiring her father’s housekeeper and
ordering all new furniture for her old bedroom. Since she’d
left home at the age of fifteen, her old twin bed, writing desk and
armoire had been acceptable for an adolescent, but not a grown woman
expecting to entertain company.
    Now the only thing she had
left to do was apologize to Shane.
    Like so many times in the
past, Celeste would’ve scrapped the unsavory business on her
‘live and learn’ pile and simply walked away.
    But in this situation, she
was finding it hard putting the prize fighter behind her. Ever since
meeting him, she couldn’t stop thinking about him. And that
flummoxed her, considering she generally went through men like
seamless stockings.
    Of course, she could’ve
followed proper etiquette and forwarded a written apology. But a
delivered message seemed too cold and insincere. And in all honesty,
Celeste simply wanted to see him again.
    She needed verification if
her attraction still had merit. If her desire for Shane was still as
embarrassingly wanton in the bright of day, while clean and sober as
it had been while she was ripe on gin and in a dimly lit funeral home
or smoky nightclub. Lord knows, while in the throes of a sauce binge
she’d found herself infatuated with practically anything with
two legs.
    But now as she stood eyeing
the Navy Yards Boxing Club, Celeste wished she’d ignored her
unreliable libido. Every time she made up her mind to cross the busy
intersection, she suddenly came down with a case of cold feet.
    Confidence waning, Celeste
made an about face to check her appearance in a store front window.
She didn’t see anything wrong with her reflection, and yet she
was beginning to second guess her outfit.
    Smart, but understated, her
outfit didn’t come off as if she’d spent all morning
agonizing over it, which she did. Still, it was quite modern even
for New York City. Seeing a magazine layout of starlit Katherine
Hepburn, she’d run out and bought a pair of navy wide-leg
trousers. She wore them now with a