Playing Hard To Get Read Online Free Page A

She hadn’t yet decided if she wanted children but loved the weight and heat she felt when carrying Tasha’s girls in her arms. The feeling of being needed in such an innocent way by another living thing was comforting in a way that beat a full day of massages at any parlor in the city. Tasha’s early emergency kept the 3Ts together until sunrise, and now they were sitting on a bench beside the sandbox at the private playground in Tasha’s neighborhood. While it was March and cold northern temperatures still dominated the forecast, the high sun and crisp air made for an unusually warm day at the park. Nanny-driven Mercedes-Benz station wagons and Bentley coupes with drivers who looked like Barbie dolls whizzed by. These were common sightings in Alpine, the most expensive neighborhood in the entire country, which had in its zip code Mary J. Blige, P. Diddy, and Stevie Wonder.
    “Life is happening to you, Tasha,” Troy said, getting up from the bench and sitting in the sandbox beside Toni.
    “Nuh-uh, speak for yourself,” Tasha said. “This is some life, but not mine. Not the one I ordered. I mean, I was supposed to be…” Tasha stopped. In her mind’s eye, and with the brazen, savvy, and edgy reputation for busting balls she’d garnered, she was expected to be the “take no prisoners” go-getter of the group. The renegade. The game-changer. Now all she was doing was changing diapers and driving to the mall to buy another outfit to stuff into the girls’ closet.
    “Life isn’t about where you thought you’d be,” Troy announced prophetically. “It’s about where you are. If you’d asked me a few years ago where I’d be, I’d say I was going to be Mrs. Julian James. A doctor’s wife, who had her own law firm. I would be vacationing in the Hamptons with him and my two children—”
    “Little Rudy and Theo,” Tamia said, laughing at Troy’s unconcealed dream of the perfect Cosby life she would have shared with the man who broke her heart.
    If Tasha was the ballsy 3T, Troy was the ball-less one. She was the spacey dreamer whose silliness was easily marked by the mass of natural curls that shook every time she laughed. While she’d discovered the falsehoods in much of the shady, superior social practices her grandmother had taught her, Troy still tended to measure people and situations based on a black-and-white ruler of class and order. Thus, when she met and fell in love with her father’s business partner and became a preacher’s wife, her role went from being a future Clare Huxtable to a present-day church lady—hat and gloves included.
    “Speaking of Rudy and Theo, when are you and Kyle going to start having children? Shouldn’t you be pregnant already?” Tasha asked. “Y’all have been married for two years. You can’t be using protection. Christians can’t do that.”
    “That’s just the Catholics,” Tamia explained. “And it’s not really practiced anymore.”
    “We’re waiting,” Troy managed nervously, imagining Kyle’s loose head rolling from her lap and into the sand.
    “Waiting for what?” Tamia asked.
    “Just time and things.” Troy exhaled and tried to ignore Kyle’s praying head.
    “Well, take all the time you want,” Tasha said, “because this is not a party. Mommy hasn’t been laid in two weeks.” She looked from Toni to Tiara and smiled patronizingly to hide any trace of meaning from the girls. Only Toni pushed her shovel into the sand and flicked a scoop at her mother’s feet.
    “Toni, no!” Tasha ordered the toddler. “Don’t you throw sand at Mommy. No!”
    Troy laughed and took the shovel from Toni, who was smiling.
    “Lord, I swear that girl is too smart for her own good,” Tasha said. “The terrible twos!”
    “Something tells me she’s going to have more than terrible twos,” Tamia added.
    “Don’t be mean to my little Toni.” Troy defended the little girl, kissing her on the cheek. “She’s a blessing and an angel. All of God’s