by Francis Ray
She stilled.
“I’ll make this quick since we don’t have much time.” He picked up first one wrist then the other. “He’s out of your life?”
“Yes.”
He stared into her eyes. “Was there another reason you came here today besides for my children?”
“Maybe,” she said, her heart thudding.
He pulled her closer to him. “I hope so, because I don’t think I can go on if you aren’t in my life. I’m not letting you move until you agree to marry me.”
“W–what?” Her legs almost went out from under her.
“I loved Linda and she’ll always have a part of my heart, but you are my heart. I love you, Brooke. I can’t give you the things you want—”
“Shut up,” she ordered, then threw herself into his arms. “I love you. I’m holding all I want. Mark and Amy are special gifts and I love them, too. Just try and stop me from marrying you.”
John threw his head back and laughed. “I might have known you wouldn’t accept the proposal in a traditional way.”
“Disappointed?” she asked, grinning up at him.
“Never. I’ve got a feeling there are going to be a lot of firsts in our lives just like the first time we met and I can’t wait to experience them,” he said, then lowered his head to kiss her waiting lips.
A short distance away, Mark and Amy and their grandparents turned away from watching the kiss and started for the parking lot. All of them were smiling.
* * *
“Mrs. Livingston, I love Gray and I need your help to make him realize he loves me, too,” Claire said Sunday afternoon as she sat across from Gray’s grandmother in her opulent living room. They’d finished dinner and were having tea.
Corrine Livingston had always liked people who came to the point. She also liked that she had been right about Claire. She had spunk and the good sense not to let Gray get away. She picked up her cup and sipped. “What did you have in mind?”
Since Mrs. Livingston hadn’t so much as batted an eyelash when Claire told her she loved Gray, she saw no need to tread lightly. “Seduction.”
Brown eyes twinkled. She set down the cup and patted the seat beside her on the Chippendale sofa. “Come and tell me how I can help.”
Claire explained her plan and was thankful that Gray’s grandmother listened attentively and agreed to help. Thirty minutes later Claire was in her car and on the way to Columbia.
* * *
Gray didn’t want to go to his apartment, but he had no other place to go that wouldn’t remind him of Claire. Every day there was something that reminded him of her. A breeze. A flower. The moonlight. He thought he’d be free in Columbia since they’d never been there together, but he carried her in his heart and that was much more difficult to rid himself of.
Opening the door, he continued to the bedroom. He’d change and go for a run. Perhaps the jarring pace on concrete would get clear his mind. Eighteen holes of golf certainly hadn’t helped. He’d shot a 67. He’d never played that badly. The guys at the club kept asking if he was all right.
How could he be when part of him was missing? Opening his bedroom door he froze, blinked, then blinked again. The image remained.
“Hello, Gray.”
Not only was she still there, with a black sheet draped seductively between her thighs and just skimming her beautiful breasts, she was talking to him. His unruly body hardened in an instant.
“I’ve come to make you a business proposition and we’re not leaving this room until you say yes.”
Since Gray had been able to do little else but think about her, he gripped the handle of the golf bag to keep from going to her. He had to put her needs first. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Where else should I be than with the man I love?”
The clubs plopped to the floor. Gray grabbed the straight-back chair near the door and dropped heavily into the padded seat.
Claire breathed a little easier. “Here’s the proposition. We can either live together or get married, but I’m not letting you go. In the past I’ve allowed too many things to come before what I really wanted.”
“What you really wanted,” Gray repeated.
“You. I’ve wanted you since I was eleven. I don’t intend to give you up now.” Claire held out her hand.
Gray didn’t move. He simply stared at her. Her hand trembled, then firmed. She refused to break eye contact.
He realized she was risking everything for him. She had more courage than he did. She really loved him. For the first time a woman loved him for himself. And what a woman. Claire was like no other woman and to think otherwise was sheer stupidity. He might be a bit slow to realize how fortunate he was, but he’d like to think he wasn’t stupid.
Standing, he pulled his Polo shirt over his head and reached for his belt buckle. By the time he got to her, he was as naked as she was beneath the sheet. “Lady, you got yourself a lifetime deal.”
His arms greedily pulled her to him and they tumbled to the bed. Just like the first time.
EPILOGUE
Bliss, a year later their lives were still filled with it.
Bliss’s appearance in the Christmas issue of Livingston Catalogue might have given Claire, Brooke, and Lorraine a wider audience, but it was the fabulous products and savvy marketing of the three owners that kept their profits rising. But who could argue with the walking advertisement of the three happily married owners. That two of them had found their husbands as a direct result of Bliss had other women anxious to find their own man and do their own test marketing.
The three pictures on Bliss’s Web site certainly attested that the owners’ husbands enjoyed being guinea pigs. Gray and Claire, who was six months pregnant and ecstatically happy and healthy, were captured strolling on the beach in back of their home on Sullivan Island. John, Brooke, and their two children, Amy and Mark, posed for their shot after Mark’s team won the Y’s district softball championship. Hamilton and Lorraine’s picture was taken in their garden with her holding a rose he had just given her.
Just like the first time, like every time love found a way.
Reading Group Guide
1. Initially, Claire thought her parents had been wrong in teaching her that a college education would ensure success, but she eventually saw that her education helped her unexpected business venture. What other things did they teach her that helped her just as much or more? Do you think some lessons your parents taught you are outdated?
2. Have you ever been faced with a life-changing “leap of faith” the way Claire, Brooke, and Lorraine were? If so, did you go for it? Which of the three women had the most to lose? To gain?
3. Claire was the “good daughter,” but Derek was definitely a selfish user. When you love someone, it is very difficult to determine when you cross the line from loving and supporting to enabling. What signs should Claire have seen and heeded? Would you have acted any differently in her circumstances?
4. Brooke’s philosophy early in the book was that you could just as easily fall in love with a rich man as a poor man. Did thinking that make her a bad person? Do you agree with her?
5. Lorraine was the perfect executive wife and mother who finally decided she wanted to have a life for herself. Was there anything she could have done to help Hamilton accept her decision? When is it all right to give in to your husband on some issues and when is it not? Give examples.
6. Three women had a profound effect on the men in the story that in turn influenced their relationships with Claire, Brooke, and Lorraine. Gray by Jana’s betrayal, John by his wife’s death, and Hamilton by his amoral mother. Emotional baggage has sabotaged many relationships. Why do you think Gray and Claire, John and Brooke, and Hamilton and Lorraine survived?
7. Brooke and John thought they were in lust, not love. How can you tell the difference?
8. Should women use withholding sex as a way of teaching their husbands a lesson as Lorraine did? If problems can’t be resolved before going to b
ed should the discord stop at the bedroom door?
For more reading group suggestions visit
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St. Martin’s Griffin
ALSO BY FRANCIS RAY
Trouble Don’t Last Always
I Know Who Hold Tomorrow
Somebody’s Knockin’ at My Door
Someone to Love Me
Rockin’ Around That Christmas Tree
ANTHOLOGIES
Rosie’s Curl and Weave
Della’s House of Style
Welcome to Leo’s
Going to the Chapel
Gettin’ Merry
LIKE THE FIRST TIME. Copyright © 2004 by Francis Ray. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ray, Francis.
Like the first time / Francis Ray.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-32429-4
EAN 978-0312-32429-2
1. African American women—Fiction. 2. African American businesspeople—Fiction. 3. African American business enterprises—Fiction. 4. Downsizing of organizations—Fiction. 5. Gift basket industry—Fiction. 6. Female friendship—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3568.A9214L55 2004
813'.54—dc22
2003070879
First Edition: May 2004
eISBN 9781466833500
First eBook edition: October 2012
