Miss Lola.

Chapter 11.

"I'm gonna need for you to mind your own business, oh daughter of mine." I was smirking a little as I selected underthings and jewelry.

"So, you're not going to tell me?" Rhonda asked.

"And that would be a no."

"You're impossible, mother." Rhonda rolled her eyes, grabbed her purse off the dresser and stalked out.

Chuckling to myself, I finished getting dressed and said goodbye to my family in the driveway.

Mama has always said that you can judge the character of a man by how clean his house is and how he treated his mother and since I haven't met Hollis's mama yet, I only had his house as an example.

He'd told me that he lived in the Lakeside area which is a very la- di -da neighborhood which had become fully segregated in the 1970's and there were so many trees and big, grassy parks until I felt like an elf as I drove through looking for Hollis's house.

It was pretty scenery though, peaceful and quiet and a lot of older couples dressed in pastel colors were out walking their dogs along the lakeshore and I passed quite a few kids who were zipping up and down the street on those dangerous looking motorized scooters and not one of them was wearing a helmet.

Crazy little suckers are just an accident waiting to happen and I never could understand why some parents insisted on making their kids wear seatbelts inside of a car but these same parents didn't think it important for them to wear a helmet when they rode their bicycles, scooters and skateboards.

I'd always made sure my kids had worn their helmets, knee pads and everything else before they even thought about taking their bikes outside for a ride.

So, anyway I slowed when I found number 501 Lakeside, and frankly I'm impressed with Hollis' residence which is a smaller Tudor style home with ivy climbing up the walls and a big flower garden off to the side.

The midsized lawn is neatly bordered in clipped yew hedges and his freshly washed car is parked on the circular, crushed gravel drive instead of inside of the two car garage.

Hmm..very nice. Obviously Hollis takes pride in both his home and himself.

I liked that in a man.

My cellphone started playing Whitney again and I snatched it up, grinning when I saw that it was Hollis.

"Hello there, Mr. Williams."

"I see you've made it and on time too. I'm impressed."

"You can see me!" almost in a panic, I craned my neck trying to find him. Was
he hiding behind those bushes? Of course not because that would be crazy.

Hollis laughed but I didn't see anything remotely funny.

"I'm watching you through the front window." He said. "Listen, would you mind coming inside? I'm right in the middle of closing out a deal on the other line."

"Sure."

I was eager to see what the inside of his house looked like and find out if it matched the exterior.

Hollis met me at his front door wearing a pale blue dress shirt which was opened at the throat and gray suit pants. He seemed relaxed and in a good mood.

"Come on in." He said, cradling his mobile between cheek and shoulder as he politely held the security door opened for me to enter his home.

The front room was just off a short foyer which was floored in white and brown checkered tile and it was furnished with a hunter green leather sectional sofa and heavy, dark brown tables with clawed feet.

Sheer white draperies hung at the tall windows and a cut, crystal vase filled with fresh flowers was sitting on the mahogany side table.

Hmmm...very nice, Mr. Williams. I thought.

"I'll have Steve give you a call tomorrow to set up an appointment. Great doing business with you Mr. Andrews."

He finished his call and then opened his arms to me.

"Come on over here and give me some love, girl."

Hollis wrapped his rock hard arms around my body so tightly, as if he never wanted to let me go and I gasped with pleasure when he unexpectedly rocked me off my feet before gently sitting me back down again and it felt so good inside of his arms and like I'd finally come home.

Hollis slightly shifted his body away from mine, lowered his head and smiled into my eyes and I'm sure that I had an identical goofy grin on my own face too.

"You're a sight for sore eyes, and you smell good too."

"Thank you, Hollis. Umm..this is an extraordinary house."

"Why, thank you Miss Simmons. It's been in my family since they started allowing minorities to move into this neighborhood."

The way his eyelids lowered and the intensity of his stare made me blush.

"Umm..shouldn't we be heading to the restaurant?" I gently reminded him.

His gaze had gone out of focus as he stared at my lips as if hypnotized.

"Hollis?"

He blinked, moved away from me and glanced at his Rolex.

"Okay,  give me a minute to check something in my office. Feel free to look around." Hollis said flashing me a knowing smirk before going upstairs.

And that's exactly what I did, looked around at all of his little knick knacks, focusing the most attention on the sterling silver picture frames which contained several generations of his distinguished looking family and there was even one of Hollis shaking hands with the mayor of our fair town.

I was holding a recent picture of a handsome, light skinned young man when Hollis returned.

"That's Jeffrey, my son." He said, pride ringing in his voice. "Are you ready to go, or do you need more time to snoop around my house?"

"Well, I wasn't snooping. You invited me to look around. Did you decorate?"

"No, the only things I bought are the sofas and a few of the rugs. Everything else originally came with the house and my parents decided to keep it that way."

He'd changed into a white, Polo shirt and black jeans for our date which let me know that we were going somewhere casual.

"What did your parents do for a living?"

He looked at me oddly, "They were in the funeral home business. My great- grandfather started it but I'm not cut out for that and so I decided to sale cars instead."

Edited 12/1/21.
Edited 8/16/23.