A Dare Between Enemies

Chapter 2

Naomi rubbed at her eyes and tightened the robe around her waist the next morning as she headed for her kitchen. Unsurprisingly, she found her mother up and dressed, slaving away at the stove whipping up a batch of pancakes. Her mother glanced at her as Naomi fixed herself a cup of coffee which was already piping hot in her gourmet coffee maker.

"Honey, you look awful," Naveena commented as she raised her eyes from the bowl she was whisking eggs in.

"Jeez, Mom. And good morning to you, too," Naomi mumbled in reply as she took a seat at her granite breakfast bar and sipped her favorite hazelnut coffee. She knew how horrible she looked and she could only blame her disheveled appearance on the lack of sleep she got last night.

She had gotten home before midnight and went to bed eager for sleep to drown out her thoughts but everytime she closed her eyes, all she saw Darryl in his suit-wearing, lip-licking glory. And when her imagination started to drift and she would see that tonuge of his branding every inch of her body tortuously, her eyes would snap open to dispel the image. As if that wasn't bad enough, when sleep finally did come she dreamed of Dare mourning for a father he never knew, which only woke her up several times during the night in tears. She wished she had the option of sleeping in and staying buried under her comfy sheets, but she had a business to run and a son, whom she loved, to support.

"Was that the phone I heard ringing?" Naomi asked as she grabbed her iPad and checked her emails for work. "Was it Dad?"

"No. I called your dad earlier," she replied as she poured the egg mix onto a hot skillet. "It was Miles. He was on his way to the hospital and he wanted to apologize to you for his behavior last night."

The aloofness in her mother's voice hadn't fooled Naomi for a second. It had become a sixth sense to her when her mother was fishing for information and she knew better than to take the bait. Instead, she continued to sip her coffee and browse through her emails.

"Oh, come on, honey," Naveena pleaded after a long minute. "You hadn't said one word about last night--"

"That's because I'm barely awake."

"--and now Miles is calling to apologize for something he did last night--that you're obviously still riled up over. What's going on? Does it have to do with Darryl?"

With a sigh Naomi set down her coffee and pulled her gaze away from the tablet to look at her mother. All her resolve broke as she took in her mother's worried expression. Ever since she and Darryl had split up and she discovered that she was pregnant with his child, her mother seemed to worry more and more about her daughter's mental health. She had told her many times over the years that it wasn't good to keep her emotions bottled up and it was best to let them out, but Naomi had rather let those wounds remain sealed. She had nearly opened them last night when she lashed out at Darryl, and if it weren't for Miles interrupting, there was no telling what trouble she could have gotten herself into.

"Naomi?"

Taking a deep breath, Naomi decided that taking some weight off her mother's shoulders wouldn't kill her. Besides, if the roles were reversed and she knew something wasn't right with Dare, she would stop at nothing to know what it was.

"Well, you already know that Darryl was there last night," Naomi started, "At first I thought it would be fine as long as we remained in our own corners, but I guess I should have known better."

"You mean that you two talked?" Naveena asked incredulously as she dished the remaining flapjacks and added them to the tall stack that was mounted on a plate by the stove before shoveling the eggs in a separate serving platter.

"If yelling at the top of our lungs at each other and glaring at one another trying to decide how to kill the other with our bare hands constitutes as talking, then we did plenty of that," Naomi scoffed, taking another healthy gulp of her coffee as she remembered the scathing look he had in his eyes that had matched her own.