Welcome Back, My Love: Strong Family, #8

By Niobia Bryant

Continuing with her much-loved Strong Family series, bestselling author Niobia Bryant delivers a tale of romance that proves love conquers all...

MEENA ALI'S extended family—The Strongs—are filled with couples who are in love, but she can't seem to move past the break-up of her parents that was caused by an affair. Passion? She enjoys it. Love? She's tried her best to avoid it…until she meets ARMSTRONG MANN. This charmer with a big smile, and even bigger arms with which to hold her, is simply hard to resist. Still, she is hesitant to commit leading to their break-up. When her "Mann-Mann" is in a car accident out of town and comes home with amnesia—not remembering her or the love they shared—she is forced to realize losing him was a mistake. He has with him a sexy nurse in tow who claims to have nothing but his best interest at heart as he struggles to remember his life. Wanting the nurse gone and the affection Armstrong once had for her returned, Meena digs in for the good fight to ensure she is able to rekindle their flame and welcome back the man she loves into her life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Infinite Ink Presents...
• Release date: Jun 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386752417

Niobia Bryant

Niobia Bryant is the award-winning and national bestselling author of more than fifty works of romance and commercial mainstream fiction. Twice she has won the RT Reviewer’s Choice Best Book Award for African American/Multicultural Romance. Her books have appeared in Ebony, Essence, The New York Post, The Star-Ledger, The Dallas Morning News and many other national publications. 

Book preview

DEDICATION

Much love and gratitude for those who read my books.

PROLOGUE

June 2016

He really left me.

Meena Ali’s heart pounded as she looked down at the empty drawers of the dresser. The spare house key she held almost fell out of her grasp as she stumbled backward. At the feel of the edge of the bed hitting the back of her legs, she allowed her body to drop down upon it. Legs spread wide. Hands at her side with the palms up. Mouth ajar. Panting. Eyes wide. Dazed.

He’s gone.

For countless moments Meena sat there staring at the wall before her eyes shifted, landing on reminders that he was truly gone. The empty drawers of his dresser. The lack of dirty clothes on the seat of the recliner.  His bed still made, not slept in. His bottles of cologne and deodorant gone. The picture of him as a young boy with his mother missing from his nightstand.

Meena’s heart rate accelerated and the muscles of her stomach clenched as her breathing became shallow and quick. She tilted her head back, raising her hand to softly stroke the soft skin of her throat. It was then she noticed that it was shaking. She clenched the hand into a tight fist and squeezed her eyes shut. Shit, she swore in a whisper.

Pain clutched at her heart before radiating across her chest. It made her breathless and she gasped as a tear fell and raced down her cheek. She bit her trembling bottom lip with her teeth. Her shoulders slumped. She felt weak.

You never miss your water ‘til your well runs dry.

She opened her eyes and they landed on her reflection in the mirror over his dresser. How many times her had her step-grandmother, Nana Lisha Strong, offered up that advice to nearly everyone in their large family at one time or another? So, this is what she meant by that.

Meena jumped up to her feet and raced from the bedroom.  As she crossed the small living room of the single-wide mobile home, she frantically dug into her crossbody bag to grab her keys. Her tears blurred her vision and she stumbled over something. Her small cry was more from her anguish than tumbling forward to the floor. Quickly she scrambled to her feet and rushed to the front door, grabbing and turning the knob to yank it open wide.

The night summer air surrounded her. She paused in the doorway. The heat warmed her tears.

Meena closed the door and rushed down the wooden steps to her parked red Volvo. As she reversed out of the dirt packed yard she alternated her hands between steering the wheel and wiping away her tears.

‘Is this really the end?’ she wondered, her face pensive as she drove the short distance in Holtsville, South Carolina from the mobile home park to the home of her twin sister, Neema, and her brother-in-law, Dane Jackson.

She felt as if she were in a daze. More than once she sat at a stop sign, lost in her thoughts, jarred by a startling blare of a horn from the driver behind her. Sometimes she freed her cheeks of tears and accelerated forward. Other times she sat there with her forehead resting lightly on the steering wheel, not caring if the vehicle behind her went around or waited.

Soon Meena pulled into the yard of the modest home shaded by a large maple tree. After she parked in between Dane’s Harley Davidson motorcycle and her sister’s matching Volvo in white, Meena sat there staring at the front door. The windows flanking it were dark. They’re asleep.

She lightly bit her bottom lip, feeling hesitant about disturbing them. With a deep breath, she pushed her reluctance aside. The man she loved for the last three years of her life had moved on from her. Nothing but the feel of her sister’s arms would get her through this first night.

Nodding to build reassurance, Meena licked her lips again as she opened the door and made her way up the flower-lined path and stairs to the front door. She raised her fist.

Sadness and disbelief flooded her again. She lightly rested her knuckle against the door and released a heavy breath that cooled her moist mouth. Oh, God, help me, she begged in a soft voice, closing her eyes as she opened her hand and pressed her palm against the gleaming wood for a moment before closing it back into a fist. Please.

Knock-knock-knock-knock.

Meena turned and pressed her back against the door. I never thought he would really leave.

She winced.

Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock.

She tilted her head up to look up at the moon’s light breaking through the leaves and branches of the towering maple tree. With a hint of a smile, she remembered one night when they made love on the bed of his truck and how she saw the stars in his eyes as she rode him.

I love you so much, he whispered up to her that night.

Rough cries of passion came from inside the house. Meena frowned and arched a shaped brow as she pushed off the door to leave. She paused and shook her head before turning back to rap her knuckles against the door again.

Knock-knock.

Neema? Dane? I know y’all home. Open up, she said, her voice loud.

Her body went still as she listened closely. Was that a laugh? Come on, y’all. Pull it out and wipe it off, Meena drawled.

Knock-knock.

Coming, Neema and Dane yelled out to her in unison.

Moments later the windows were filled with light. Relief flooded her. She was anxious to fill her sister in, her hear advice and receive a twin hug.

Neema would understand.

Neema would not let her go through this night alone.

Neema would make it all better.

But it’s not just Neema anymore. It’s Neema and Dane. Am I wrong to expect the same kind of closeness with her?

Meena remembered last Christmas when her twin was in the throes of her breakup with her then-fiancé and made it clear that Meena’s boyfriend Armstrong Mann was intruding on their twin time. Very clearly, she recalled the memory of her standing on the porch as she watched Neema leave the home they shared. Even though she knew her sister had felt like an outsider in her own home, Meena had let her go.

I chose him, she mouthed.

What if Neema does the same? How can I blame her?

Hey, Twin, what’s the...

Their identical eyes locked for a second before Meena was pulled into her sister’s arms.

What happened? Neema asked.

At that moment her sister’s compassion broke the dam in her. Her tears welled up and returned full force. Mann went ghost on me, she cried against her sister’s shoulder.

There it is. I said it out loud. I can’t take it back. Can’t hide it. My man left me. Won’t call me. Won’t answer me. It’s over.

Her sister hugged her closer.

Meena released a wail. Her body went slack.

I gave him three years and he can’t give me the time of damn day?

Meena felt her body lifted up by Dane.

Three. Years. The fuck?

The softness of the sofa welcomed her body. Soon her head was on her sister’s lap. Her twin’s soothing noises and smoothing of Meena’s hair was of little comfort, but she didn’t bother to stop her. Her thoughts were elsewhere.

How did we get here?

CHAPTER ONE

Three years earlier

Summer 2013

Is it bad that I never made love...

Dressed in nothing but a snug fitting tee that framed her plump breasts and low-cut bikinis, Meena Ali twerked her plush bottom as she sung the chorus to Wale’s Bad. She smiled at her reflection in the full-length mirror sitting in the corner of her bedroom.

She paused and cocked her head to the side as she twisted this way and that, studying her figure. Not bad, she said.

How can one twin be vainer than the other when they’re identical?

Meena looked over her shoulder at her twin, Neema, leaning in the doorway of her bedroom. Save from their clothing they were mirror images. Long and thick jet-black hair, cinnamon brown skin, slender faces with pouty lips, and slanted eyes. Self-love is very necessary, Twin, she advised her as she turned from the mirror and walked over to her bed to scoop up her distressed jeans to pull on. Meena was of the mindset that a woman without self-esteem could—and would—fall for the manipulations of a man. "See, a man will tell whatever to whomever to get what he wants whenever."

Here we go, Neema drawled, turning so that her back was pressed to the door frame as she crossed her arms over her chest.

Meena cut her eyes over at her sister as she paused in buttoning her jeans. You better listen to this knowledge instead of trying to hush me, she said, her dark brown eyes serious. If women stopped looking to men for validation they wouldn’t give them the power in the relationship. If you know you’re beautiful, a man telling you that won’t make you stuck on stupid. His compliment will be a light dessert—

And not the main meal, Neema finished with an overly dramatic eye roll.

Nice but not necessary, Meena continued, before reaching up to pull her hair into a loose top knop that she secured with bobby pins. I’m not even tryin’ to let a man destroy me because he decides I’m not what he wants anymore.

Neema sighed.

Meena eyed her as she stepped up into her pair of midnight blue wedge sandals.

When you gone forgive Daddy? Neema asked, stepping fully into the room to kneel and buckle the straps of the sandals around her sister’s ankles.

Meena frowned. She looked over at her reflection again. They resembled their mother—a woman who looked more their age than nearly in her fifties—but there was no denying that Ned Ali was their father. Their foreheads, soft hair texture, and smiles were given to them by him. And his giving nature to his twin daughters had been ongoing, even down to the matching convertible Volvo c70s he purchased them as college graduation gifts.

For the material things,