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Takiyah were as different as night and day. So why was he drawn to her? Then he thought of her son. There was trouble brewing there. He had a nose for it. Maybe he should follow the kid and see what he was up to, head off whatever Takiyah might not be able to handle even if she did claim she didn’t need anyone.
    When Duke realized he’d spent far too much time thinking of Takiyah, he dismissed her from his mind and went about a few errands. By five-thirty, he was ready to pick up Adele to see where the night would lead.

Chapter Five
    “ Y ou sit right there , Keen,” Takiyah commanded her son. “Don’t move. I’m going to get my people settled in with their orders, and then you and I are going to talk.”
    “Ma, I told you it’s nothing.”
    She glared and looked at his eye, swollen shut. “It is something when fools think they can pick on my baby and get away with it. And for you to think you can hide it from me, oh no, pal, we’re talking. Period. I’ll be right back.”
    “Ma,” he called after her, but she ignored him. Keen liked to keep everything bottled inside, and earlier he’d hidden out in his room claiming he wasn’t hungry. She wasn’t falling for it, and she’d barged in to find his eye swollen. The school was going to hear from her tomorrow. She would have gone down there today if Keen hadn’t tried to hide. First the alley incident and now this.
    For a moment, tears welled up, but she swallowed and blinked them away. She would handle it. Keen had said the fight had happened on school grounds. What she wanted to know was where the hell were the teachers? She would get names and phone numbers, and if the principal didn’t fix this the way she wanted, then… Well, she wasn’t sure what she could do yet, but she would find out.
    As she laid a white cloth over her arm, she thought about how she could pick Keen up after school. Her shift at the call center ran right into the end of the school day, but she would talk to her boss. If he wasn’t willing to let her leave early, then she would call Ed, her ex. That was the last thing she wanted to do, but she didn’t have much of a choice.
    Takiyah headed into the kitchen for an order and ran into a conversation between Shada, who had come in with her baby for the workers to see, and Talicia, who Takiyah believed was the wife of one of the brothers. She didn’t really follow the Marquettes like the Kardashians as some people did.
    “What I do has nothing whatsoever to do with you,” Talicia snapped.
    “I beg to differ.” Shada handed her baby over to another woman in the Marquette family. “When it comes to Stefan, it does. You are not risking his life for your selfish dreams. We tried to accept you but—”
    “Accept me?” Talicia looked Shada up and down. “I don’t give a damn what you accept or don’t accept. We went shopping the other day because Stefan asked me to. The way you and your husband try to rule the whole family isn’t going to wash with me. What I do is between me and mine.”
    “Ladies, please don’t fight,” the other woman said, rocking the baby gently. “You’re going to scare the baby.”
    Nobody listened to her. Takiyah glanced around the kitchen. Every member of the staff had stopped what they were doing to watch the blowout. Shada moved up close to Talicia and pointed in her face. “What you think you have going with Stefan won’t last. I guarantee it if you keep acting like this.”
    Talicia’s eyes narrowed, and her jaw worked. Takiyah had the feeling she held her temper in check. Any second she was going to let go and clock Shada. How a woman as tiny as she was could stand up the heavyset Shada, she didn’t know. Takiyah was jealous because the pounds crept onto her hips and thighs when she wasn’t paying attention. Right now, her weight wasn’t what she worried about. The two women having a slugfest in the restaurant was.
    “I’m giving you one warning, Shada,” Talicia said. “After that,