Harlequin Dare May 2021 Box Set

by Jackie Ashenden

  “Yeah, it was pretty warm out yesterday. I’d been hoping to get a chance to go for a swim, but I fell down so many rabbit holes while doing my research.” She was taking another bite of her doughnut, licking the cream from her finger.

  The second he caught himself groaning he stuffed the last bite of his doughnut into his mouth. “You still enjoy swimming,” he said when he was finished chewing. It was a statement, not a question, because when they were dating, Grace had used the pool in his apartment building more than he had.

  “You know it.” She reached for a napkin after finishing her doughnut. “And whenever I get around to buying a house, that’s going to be a prerequisite.”

  A pool and at least four bathrooms because she didn’t want to have to share a bathroom with guests or anyone else. There’d been a few discussions about what type of home they might like to have together. Those conversations about their future had seemed so natural after the first year of their relationship, leading him to believe that they’d been on the same page about their trajectory.

  “Your parents have a pool at their house. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind you moving back just to use it on a daily basis.” He liked Grace’s parents, Milton and Videtta. They were both professors of Black studies at a local college and he’d had the pleasure of meeting them multiple times during the year and a half he’d dated their daughter. He’d even called Milton and asked for his blessing before proposing to Grace.

  “Yeah, they do, and so do Charity and her family of five, who’re still in Westchester with my parents. They have a house on an acre of land with a massive pool that I’m in each summer when I go home for vacation.” She grinned like an excited child just talking about swimming. It was her favorite hobby.

  “That’s right, Charity and Bret, that’s his name, right? They’d just gotten engaged when—” He couldn’t finish that sentence. “You said she has a family of five, so she’s got three kids now?”

  “That’s right.” Her hand was already in the bag for another doughnut—powdered and cream-filled again. He knew exactly what she liked. “Two girls and a boy. Trinity and her husband, Randall, don’t have any kids yet, to my mother’s dismay. But they’ve got a huge aquarium full of brilliantly colored fish.”

  He nodded and smiled. Major just had a custom aquarium built in the basement of the house he and Nina purchased a few months ago. RJ thought it was a clever addition to the space but he wasn’t a pet person, at least not after the idea of having a dog with Grace had fizzled.

  “And how’s Hope?” The oldest Hopkins sister had a chilly personality.

  Grace’s raised brow and half smile hinted that she knew exactly what he was thinking about her sister. “Just got engaged three weeks ago,” she said with a smirk that surprised him almost as much her announcement.

  “Really?”

  So Grace was the last single sister. Did that bother her? During the time they were together she’d shared with him the pressure she’d always felt to be just as good as her parents and sisters were in their careers. The weight of that task had sparked her competitive and tenacious nature. He’d been able to relate as the oldest Gold sibling—it was expected that he’d one day helm the company and he’d strived to prove he was up to the task. As he was also the last single sibling in his family, it occurred to him that while successful in business, he and Grace had fallen short in the area of love.

  “Yeah, somebody finally cracked that stiff exterior of hers.” She laughed. “And my mom’s ecstatic that the majority of her daughters are about to be married. ’Cause you know, the more who’re married, the greater the possibility of that houseful of grandchildren she wants.”

  There was a hint of something in her tone, irritation, sarcasm. The relationship among the Hopkins women had been a close-knit but still strained one, if he recalled correctly. From the sound of Grace’s voice and the look on her face, it still was. What if problems with her family dynamic had influenced her decision to not accept his proposal? Frustration threatened to push to the surface. If anyone knew about juggling different personalities and expectations within a family, it was RJ, and Grace knew that.

  “Well, I guess you can’t blame her. My mom hasn’t said anything yet but I know she’s waiting very impatiently for her first grandchild.” RJ obviously wouldn’t be giving her any since that was another idea that had drifted away when Grace left. He hadn’t imagined how much that realization bothered him until this very moment.

  Grace wiped her hands against each other, sending remnants of powdered sugar floating in the air. As if she hadn’t thought that would happen, she reached for a napkin.

  “At least your mom isn’t sending text messages to you, the only unattached child, saying things like ‘the clock’s ticking.’ I got one just a couple days ago saying ‘maybe you’ll meet a hot guy on the beach. You don’t need a marriage certificate to have a baby.’ Can you believe that? Now she’s even telling me to get pregnant before I get married. What parent does that?”

  Obviously, Videtta Hopkins did. And apparently, Grace didn’t like it. RJ didn’t like how this conversation was going. The tendrils of resentment mixed with unsettling desire created an enormous weight in his chest. He took a gulp of his significantly cooled-down coffee and prayed it would relieve some of the pressure. It had been an awfully long time since he’d thought about children, or rather the ones he wouldn’t have because he’d decided not to ever let another woman into his heart again. And unlike Grace’s mother’s stance on reproducing, if the woman wasn’t in his heart, she certainly wasn’t having his baby.

  “How’d you respond to her?” Again, this wasn’t the question RJ really wanted to ask.

  What he wanted to know was so simple—why the hell had she walked away from him and the love he thought they’d shared? But really, what did it matter now? He knew that some people needed closure for things like this, but not him. Nothing she said was going to change the fact that his heart had been broken and he could never trust giving it to anyone, especially Grace, again. Nobody knew how much strength it had taken for him to move past her leaving before; if it happened again, he wasn’t certain he’d survive.

  She shrugged. “I ignored the text. Which I know really pisses her off and maybe borders on disrespect or some other parental rule, but I just can’t think about any of that right now. I’ve got other stuff on my mind.” She put her hands on her keyboard then and tapped a few keys. “Speaking of which, I know you really came here to talk about my meeting with Veronica, so let’s get to it.”

  He sat there for a few moments while he presumed she pulled up her notes up. The war going on within him—one side warning he keep a safe distance, the other edging him toward her like a magnet, drawing them together in spite of everything that made sense—continued until he finally sighed wearily. Then he stood and walked over to her. She jumped when he touched a finger to the corner of her lip.

  “You missed a spot,” he said softly, and wiped the powdered sugar away.

  * * *

  Well, damn. Moments after that very intimate touch, Grace’s voice was surprisingly steady as she briefed him on her notes. She silently commended herself for not leaping across the table to straddle him. She’d wanted to. Oh man, had she wanted to.

  She’d spent the twenty minutes after he’d sent her that text in the bathroom, brushing her teeth and running her fingers through her hair. She’d slept in a tank top and panties and hadn’t yet decided what her outfit for the day was going to be. The shorts and T-shirt were on the top of the pile in the drawer so they were it. And he still hadn’t mentioned yesterday’s kiss.

  Neither had she, for that matter. The memory was startlingly clear in her mind and the desire between them was very much still a real thing. Case in point, the way her pussy had throbbed the second his finger touched her lip and the subsequent dampness of her panties thereafter. It was insane, yet undeniable—she still
wanted RJ.

  At least, she wanted to have sex with him. Anything beyond that was out of the question. That ship had long since sailed and there was no going back. Not that she wanted to anyway. This current situation reminded her that walking away from RJ had been the right decision. The Gold and King families had rented an entire resort for a wedding. Reporters and fashion bloggers all over the world were clamoring for any clue about this very event because they desperately wanted to be the ones reporting on what promised to be a glamourous spectacle. Not because they wanted to see Riley and Chaz commit to their love and each other. No, that was buried beneath the prestige of being in this family, the same way she knew she would’ve been.

  “So Veronica wants you to write her book?” RJ’s brow wrinkled, his eyes narrowed.

  “Is that all you got from my notes?”

  He angled his head and frowned. “It was the biggest bullet point, yeah. Are you kidding me?”

  Now the cursing came.

  “What’s she thinking?”

  “If you ask me, she’s thinking that it’s just a matter of time before she becomes the ex-Mrs. Tobias King number eight and she’s trying to get her ducks in a row.”

  In addition to the feud with Ron, Tobias was known for his many marriages. And Veronica, who’d been married twice before herself, was known for burying her husbands and keeping control of their estate. So Grace figured the two were in a standoff of sorts and in the meantime having “hot monkey sex,” as Veronica had described it.

  “It’s unacceptable, and she definitely left that little detail out of the conversation I had with her last night after dinner,” RJ said.

  This piqued Grace’s interest because she hadn’t really thought RJ was going to discuss the article with Veronica. She probably should’ve, though. RJ wasn’t known to mince words with anyone, for any reason. And as ticked off as he’d been about this story combined with Veronica’s open invitation to Grace, it made sense that he’d want a confrontation with the woman.

  “What’d she say to you?” Grace opened a new document and kept her fingers poised over the keys, ready to take notes.

  RJ’s brief hesitation and the leery look on his face she spied when she lifted her gaze from the screen said he noticed her actions and wasn’t sure about proceeding.

  “Look, last night I had a thought.” She cleared her throat and sat up straighter. “What if I tell the story of Ron and Tobias, pioneers and visionaries reshaping the fashion industry. I start from the beginning—the best friends throughout grade school and college, the grooming of two dynamic leaders at the hand of Ronald Gold Sr. There’s a stumble in their path that ultimately spurs them on to the top of their industry. What were the steps they took to get there?” She’d started toying with the idea after she’d thought about what happened between her and RJ in the cabana for the billionth time yesterday.

  He rubbed a finger over his chin, the hair of his goatee causing a rasping sound. “Focus more on everything they did to get where they are instead of the cause of the feud.”

  Well, put that way it sounded like she’d gloss right over the feud, which wasn’t totally her goal. “The feud wouldn’t be the focus of the story. Your father and Tobias would be. The families they both built and oftentimes put before their fashion houses. The secret to their success. How these two, who were once best friends, became enemies and competitors, the best of the best, and now are becoming family once again.”

  That sounded really good. She hurried to type it before she forgot the exact wording.

  “Veronica said she didn’t see a problem inviting you here because the media would write what they wanted about us otherwise. This way, we had a semblance of control over the dialogue.” He made a sound that had her looking up at him. “I guess what she said makes sense.”

  Grace agreed. “I mean, you’re sitting here right now sharing your conversation with her and I’m sharing my ideas for the story with you.”

  “That doesn’t mean I have control over what you write.”

  “Why would I go through all this if I planned to lie to you?”

  She could see the moment his mind took that question in a completely different direction. The slow lifting of his brow said he probably believed she’d lied to him before about loving him when she had no intention of marrying him. That had always been her fear, that he’d believe everything they had together was a lie just because she refused his proposal.

  “This is about business for me,” she hurriedly said. “It’s about me getting to the next step in my career. I’m going to write the very best story I can, revealing things about the families that no other journalist has revealed before while remaining in the parameters I’ve set. That’s all that matters to me.”

  Not the past or the feeling that there was something totally new buzzing between them now.

  “Yeah,” he said with a nod. “I know that’s all that matters to you. And all that matters to me is that my family doesn’t get hurt in the process of you tending to your goals. So we’ll keep checking in while you’re here.”

  “Great!” She wasn’t able to hide her excitement at the agreement they’d come to.

  “But first, answer this question for me,” he said.

  “Sure, what is it?” She typed a note of his agreement but looked up when he hadn’t spoken for a few seconds.

  “What’s the plan for dealing with this other thing between us?”

  The way his gaze had grown darker, causing her heart to immediately thump wildly, told her the other thing was that scorching hot kiss from yesterday.

  “It’s in the past,” she said quickly. Too quickly.

  The blank expression he now wore didn’t tell her if he was okay with that or not, but she wasn’t going to elaborate on her answer. She couldn’t.

  Not only had she and RJ moved on with their lives; there was still another bit of contention she’d just broached in their conversation about her family. While Grace was achieving her goal of being just as successful in her career as her sisters were in theirs, being a wife and mother was still a bit daunting, and her mother’s persistence wasn’t helping. Videtta and Charity had made having a career and a family seem so easy. Trinity didn’t have kids yet but she was married, and Hope never failed at anything. Grace knew the minute they both had children, the bar of Hopkins perfection would be even higher and even more unobtainable for her.

  Sitting here like this with him—as if nothing had happened between them ten years ago or even twenty-four hours ago—was one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do. It ranked right up there with the day she’d walked out of his life, because this morning she’d had to reconcile with herself that she still had feelings for RJ Gold. Really significant feelings that she feared could easily carry her down a path she couldn’t afford to venture on again.

  She had no idea why she’d shared the content of her mother’s text messages with him, or any of the specifics about her sisters and their families. Well, he’d actually asked her about the latter, but still, she needed to keep this as cordial and emotion-free as possible.

  “We’re having dinner at the Sienne Club tonight. You should come. It’ll give you a chance to see the family again.” He was already standing before he finished.

  She cleared her throat and stood as well, rubbing her now slightly shaking hands down the front of her clothes. “You want me to come to dinner with you and your family?”

  If she sounded shocked and confused it was because she was. RJ wasn’t down for this story, and while she’d been ready to interview as many people in the family as she could, sitting at a table and having dinner with them was a totally different ball game. She knew this because she recalled the Gold family dinners and how close their family was. That was the part she wasn’t ready for.

  He shrugged. “You’re the one hell-bent on doing this. The least you can do is sit down and have
a meal with the people you plan to write about.”

  His words made her seem ungrateful or rude, neither of which she wanted to be considered. “Sure. I can come to dinner,” she said as she followed him to the door.

  He opened it and stepped into the hallway.

  “Thanks for the doughnuts and coffee.”

  “No problem. You needed breakfast and I needed to catch up with you. So, as we agreed, we’ll meet daily after your interviews for an update on what you’ve been told and what you’re writing. We’re here for another twelve days, so you have that time to wrap this up because I don’t want any of my family disturbed on the day of Riley’s wedding.”

  “I’d never do that,” she replied, getting a little annoyed that he felt it necessary to remind her not to be a jerk.

  “Good to know. I’ll see you tonight.” He walked away before she could say anything else.

  That was fine; she didn’t have anything else to say to him. After closing and locking the door, Grace moved back to the table. She sat in the chair again and stared at the coffee cup for what felt like an eternity. When her phone chimed with a text she checked it and read yet another message from her mother, this one giving her the link to an IVF clinic. She groaned and rolled her eyes.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “GRACE IS BACK.” RJ said the words quickly, knowing that whoever heard him would immediately command the rest of them already seated at the table to ditch their current conversation and turn all their attention to him.

  Everyone at the table went silent in less than three seconds. That worked better than he’d planned.

  “Excuse me?” Riley asked, resting her elbows on the table across from him.

  “Grace as in Grace Hopkins?” was his mother’s follow-up question. She was seated at the end of the table with his father at the head beside her.

  Major was apparently up next. “Can you clarify ‘back’? Is she back from a trip? Back in your life?” He moved his hands to indicate he could go on but would rather RJ just tell them more.