Ngozi’s eyes widened when they shared a passionate kiss that lasted just moments before LuLu broke it and wrenched out of his grasp.
Feeling small for peeking into other people’s lives, Ngozi whirled from the window.
Alessandra was breastfeeding Aliyah with a lightweight blanket over her shoulder and the baby to shield herself. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Ngozi said, respecting LuLu and Roje’s privacy even as her curiosity over the extent of their relationship shifted in overdrive.
As far as she knew, LuLu had never remarried or even dated after the death of her husband, but there was clearly something between her and the handsome middle-aged driver.
Ngozi flipped her phone over.
Ngozi: Welcome back. I can drive. Time?
Chance: 7? I can fix dinner.
Ngozi: Dinner at 7? Dessert by 8? ;-)
Chance: And breakfast in the a.m.?
Ngozi arched a brow at that.
Ngozi: See you at 7, Chance.
Chance: K.
She looked up when the door to the nursery opened and LuLu entered. Only hints of her bright red lipstick remained, with some a little smudged outside the natural lines of her lips. Ngozi bit back a smile. Passion had ruined many lipstick or lip gloss applications for her, as well.
Humph.
Throughout her marriage and for one year after the death of her husband, Ngozi had lived without the passion Chance evoked. And now, just two months into their dalliance, she hungered for him after just a week without it.
“Hello, ladies,” LuLu said, setting her tote bag on the floor before heading straight to Alessandra and Aliyah.
“She’s all full, LuLu. You can burp her,” Alessandra said, rising to hand the baby and a burping cloth over to her mother-in-law.
“How are we doing, ladies?” LuLu asked, lightly patting upward on Aliyah’s back as the baby struggled to hold her head up.
Feeling flirty, Ngozi texted Chance.
Ngozi: Panties or no?
Ding-ding.
Chance: Yes...if I can tear them off.
Hmm...
“We were just talking about finding love again after the death of a spouse,” Alessandra said, readjusting her maternity bra beneath the rose-gold silk shirt she wore with matching slacks.
Ngozi froze and eyed her client and friend.
Alessandra gave her a deadpan expression.
LuLu looked at Ngozi with a sad smile. “I lost my Kwame six years ago,” she began, shifting Aliyah to sit on her lap. “It felt like a piece of me died with him, so I understand how you feel.”
Ngozi looked away, unable to accept her sympathy when the truth was unknown to everyone but herself, shielded by her long-practiced ability to hide imperfections and present what was palatable to everyone else. Guilt twisted her stomach as if its grips were real.
“But our stories are different because I am limited by obligations...to children, to the dynasty he helped create, to a marriage of more than twenty years, to class, to my age,” she admitted.
Her sadness was clear, and it drew Ngozi’s eyes back to hers.
“You have a freedom I do not, Ngozi,” she said, raising the baby and pressing her cheek against hers. “Do not waste it.”
And right then, Ngozi knew that LuLu Ansah loved Roje and wanted nothing more than to be with him, but felt she could not.
Alessandra stooped down beside where LuLu softly sang a Ghanaian song to the baby and lightly touched her knee. “LuLu,” she said softly.
The older woman looked down at her.
“Your obligation as a grown woman who has successfully raised her children and mourned her husband is to yourself,” Alessandra said, her eyes filled with sincerity and conviction. “You deserve to be loved again, and I know there is a man out there who can and will love you just as much if not more, and nothing—not children, business, class or age—should keep that from you.”
LuLu’s eyes filled with a myriad of emotions, but above all she seemed curious as to just what Alessandra knew of her life.
Ngozi wondered the same.
Ding-ding.
Chance: I really missed you Go-Go.
Her pulse raced. Go-Go was short for Ngozi. She had no idea why he insisted on giving her a nickname. She’d never had one.
And secretly she liked it. It was something just for them.
Ngozi: I missed you 2.
Chance: Not fun.
Ngozi: Not expected.
Chance: Not a part of the plan.
Ngozi: No. Not at all.
She awaited another text from him. None came. She checked the time. Three more hours until she was with Chance again. It seemed like forever.
You have a freedom I do not, Ngozi. Do not waste it.
* * *
Dinner was forgotten.
Food would not sate their hunger for each other.
Chance feasted on her body like it was his own buffet, kissing her skin, licking and lightly biting her taut nipples, massaging the soft flesh of her buttocks as he lifted her hips high off the bed to bury his face first against her thighs and then her plump mound, before spreading her legs wide to expose the beautiful layers of her femininity. Slowly, with more restraint than he had ever shown in his life, he pleased her with his tongue as he enjoyed her unique scent. His moans were guttural as he sucked her fleshy bud between his lips gently, pulling it in and out of his mouth as if to revive her, but it was her shivers and her moans and the tight grips of her hands on his head and shoulders and the way she arched her hips upward, seeking more, that gave him renewed life.
His body in tune with hers, he knew when her release was near and did not relent, wanting to taste her nectar, feel her vibrations and hear her wild cries. With no compassion for wrecked senses, as she was still shivering and crying out, he entered her with one hard thrust that united them, and he did not one stroke until his own body quivered and then stiffened as he joined her in that sweet chasm, crying out like a wounded beast as he clutched her body. He bit down on the pillow beside her head to muffle his high-pitched cries as he forced himself to continue each deep thrust even though he felt near the edge of madness.
Long afterward they lay there, bodies soaked in sweat, pulses racing, hearts pounding and breaths harshly filling the air as they waited for that kinetic energy they’d created to dissipate and free them.
Snores—evidence of their exhaustion—soon filled the air.
* * *
Chance awakened the moment he felt the weight of her body shift the bed. She was already reaching for her clothing. “No, Ngozi,” he said, his voice deep and thick with sleep.
She paused in pulling on her lingerie to look back at him over her shoulder. “Huh?” she asked, as she clasped her bra from behind.
“Stay the night,” he said, sitting up in bed and reaching over to turn on the bedside lamp.
She shook her head, causing her now-unkempt hair to sway back and forth. “No,” she said.
The silence in the room became stilted.
“We haven’t shared a night together since Italy,” he began, finally broaching the subject he’d wanted to for weeks. “You run home to your parents like a little girl with a curfew.”
Her brows dipped as she eyed him over the wrap dress she held in her hands. “What...what—what is this?” she asked, motioning her hand from him to her several times. “When did the rules change, because no one told me.”
Chance eyed her, knowing she was right.
“I’m not a little girl with a curfew. I am a grown woman with respect for my parents’ home,” she said.
“Then maybe it’s time for a grown woman to have her own home,” he said, bending his knees beneath the sheets and setting his arms on top of them.
“Says the grown man who spends hi
s days frolicking,” Ngozi said, her tone hard as she jerked on her dress.
Chance stiffened at the judgment. “Frolicking?” he asked, kicking his legs free of the sheets before he climbed from the bed to stand before her.
“Yes, Mr. Italy today and Cabrera tomorrow and...and...and skiing and sailing...and not doing a damn thing else but working on your body and deepening your tan,” she said, motioning with her hand toward his sculpted physique.
“Because my work doesn’t look like what you think it should, then I’m just a loaf?” Chance asked. “Because I work smarter and not harder, then I ain’t shit because I increased my wealth by a million dollars just yesterday. Did you?”
“No. Nope. I did not, Mr. Billionaire, but I spent my holidays working to get the bail reduced on a hundred different pro bono clients of nickel-and-dime crimes so they could spend that time with their families, and for those whom I failed, I paid their bail out of my own pocket,” she said, her voice impassioned as she looked up at him. “So, you tell me, Mr. Million-Dollars-in-a-Day, what the hell are you doing with your wealth—and your time and your brilliance—besides creating more opportunities to play and have fun?”
“You have no idea what I do because we don’t share every aspect of our lives with each other,” he spouted, feeling insulted and belittled.
Ngozi raked the tangles from her hair. “Right.”
“And when your life is exhausted and time flies because you are so busy working your nine-to-five—excuse me, your six-to-eight—that you haven’t lived, then what?” he asked. “You spend the last years of your life with damn regrets. Well, no thank you. I will live and let live.”
“You know what, you don’t have to justify your life of leisure to me. Just don’t judge me for how I choose to color within the lines,” she said, dropping down on the edge of the bed to pull on her heels.
Chance turned from her. “All we do is either fuck or fight,” he said, wiping his hand over his mouth.
“Then maybe this has run its course,” she said.
He looked at her over his broad shoulder. Their eyes locked. “Maybe it has,” he agreed.
Ngozi finished gathering her things. “Goodbye, Chance,” she said softly, moving to the door.
He followed behind her, saying nothing but feeling so many things. At the front door, he reached out past her to open it for her, even though the chill of December sent goose bumps racing over his nude form. He stood there looking down at her. “It was fun,” he began.
“Until it wasn’t,” she finished.
He bent his head to press a kiss to her forehead and her cheek. “Goodbye, Go-Go,” he whispered near her ear.
And with that, she left his home without looking back.
He stood there until she was safely in her car and had driven away from him.
* * *
“Five...four...three...two...one! Happy New Year!”
Ngozi took a sip of her champagne from the second floor of her parents’ home as all of the partygoers began to either kiss their mate or join in singing “Auld Lang Syne.” The charity dinner/silent auction was an annual event for her parents, and Ngozi had attended for many years with Dennis by her side. Now she turned away from the festivities and the emotions it evoked, making her way to her bedroom suite and gratefully closing the door.
She crossed the sitting room to her bedroom, setting the flute on the eight-drawer dresser. The maid staff had already cleaned her room and turned down the bed. She could barely make out the sounds of the party down below as she stepped out of her heels and unzipped the black sequin dress she wore to let it drop to the floor around her feet.
After washing the makeup from her face and wrapping her head with a silk scarf, she sat on the edge of the bed. Soon the quiet was disturbing. Her thoughts were varied. She shifted between grieving the loss of Dennis and feeling guilt over missing Chance.
Needing an escape from her own thoughts and emotions, Ngozi turned off the lights and snuggled beneath the covers. Her line of vision fell on her iPhone sitting on her bedside table. She snaked her arm from under the thick coverlet to tilt it up. No missed calls or texts.
She rubbed the screen with her thumb, fighting a small inner battle over whether to reach out to Chance or not.
The latter won.
There was no happily-ever-after for her and Chance, so why be with someone you were so very different from? It would be fine if their different outlooks on life didn’t cause conflict, but Chance wanted to fly out of the country on a whim and would expect her to be able to do the same. And when he drove them somewhere, his lack of respect for the speed limit was another point of contention. Ngozi Johns the attorney most certainly was not a rule breaker testing the boundaries and risking wasting money on speeding tickets.
Their moments together were either filled with passion or skirmishes.
It was tiring.
She returned the phone to its place and released a heavy sigh as she closed her eyes and hoped that her dreams were a distraction from Chance and not filled with memories of him as they had been over the last week since their divide.
* * *
“Five...four...three...two...one! Happy New Year!”
Chance pressed a kiss to the mouth of a woman he’d met just that night at the multilevel Drai’s Nightclub on the Las Vegas Strip. He couldn’t remember her name, and her mouth tasted of cigarettes and liquor that had soured on her tongue. Serves me right.
He turned from her just as the fireworks shot off from Caesar’s Palace across the street began to echo around them as they lit up the sky. When he felt her tugging at his arm, he gently disengaged her, closed out his tab with the bottle service girl and made his way out of his own section, leaving her and her friends to have at the abundance of liquor he’d already ordered.
Bzzzzzz.
He paused on the dance floor of the club as his cell phone vibrated against his chest from the inner pocket of his custom black-on-black tuxedo.
Ngozi?
Chance looked down at the screen. “Mama,” he mouthed, accepting his disappointment as he answered her call and made his way to the elevator.
“Feliz Año Nuevo, hijo!” Esmerelda exclaimed.
He smiled. “Happy New Year to you, too,” he replied, pressing a finger in his ear to help hear beyond the music and noise of the club and the commotion coming through from his mother’s boisterous background. She had remained behind in Cabrera after the Christmas holidays.
Chance looked down at his polished shoes. He’d planned to do so as well, but he’d traveled back to the States because he longed for Ngozi. And then we fought.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said, ending the phone call.
He stood there with the colorful strobe lights playing against his face and the bass of the music seeming to reverberate inside his chest, looked around at the gyrating bodies crowding the space and accepted that it would take more than that to make him forget Ngozi.
* * *
Two weeks had passed since Ngozi last spoke to Chance. Fourteen days. Three hundred and thirty-six hours. Twenty thousand one hundred and sixty minutes.
She shook her head and rolled her eyes at her desk in her office as she looked out at the snow falling down on the city.
She’d been so steadfast in her avoidance of the dynamic Dominican that she’d avoided Alessandra and Alek’s estate. She was determined to get Chance Castillo out of her system.
And she was failing at it miserably.
* * *
Chance increased the speed and incline on one of the three treadmills in his state-of-the-art exercise room. He picked up the pace as he looked out of the glass wall at the snow steadily piling high on the ground and weighing down the branches of the trees in his spacious backyard. He’d spent the last two weeks cooped up in the house, alternating between exercising and working
on his app.
Nothing worked to keep Ngozi out of his thoughts.
Or memories of her out of his bed.
With a grunt and mind filled with determination, he picked up the pace, almost at a full sprint now.
It did absolutely nothing toward his outrunning his desires to have Ngozi Johns back in his life.
* * *
“Ngozi.”
“Chance.”
They shared a brief look before moving away from each other after exchanging stilted pleasantries at a charity art exhibit. She hadn’t expected him to be there, and from the look on his face when he first spotted her, he had been just as surprised by her appearance. Her heart felt like it was trying to push its way out of her chest.
Wow. He looks sooo good.
Ngozi gripped the stem of the glass of white wine she sipped, fighting the nervous anxiety she felt. She barely focused on the exhibit as she moved about the gallery. Her eyes kept seeking Chance out. And several times, she’d found his gaze on her already.
That thrilled her beyond measure.
Why are we mad at each other again?
That familiar hum of energy and awareness she felt in his presence was still there. Across the room. Across the divide. When their eyes met, it seemed no one else was in the modern gallery.
Not a soul.
She released a breath into her glass as she trailed her fingertips across her collarbone and turned from the sight of him. She soon glanced back. He was gone. She took a few steps in each direction as she searched for him.
What if?
What if they never argued?
What if they were not so intrinsically different?
Then what?
Sex, sex and more sex. And fun.
She couldn’t deny that Chance had brought plenty of joy into her life. With him, she had laughed more and done a lot more things.
Her clit throbbed like it agreed with her naughty thoughts.
Humph.
Ngozi shook her head. “Where did he go?” she mouthed to herself.
She could clearly envision herself walking up to him and requesting that he take her home. And then staying there with him for days on end, whether making love or watching those 1990s action movies they both enjoyed or jogging together or cooking together. Anything. Everything. With him.
Tempting the Billionaire Page 9
