Layla licked her lips as Carter’s smoldering stare made her womanhood quiver and her nipples tingle. Considering that she was feeling more than a little relaxed from the wine, she thought it best to bring the lunch to a close before she headed down the road of no return. Layla put her wine glass down on the table. “It’s almost one thirty. I should order some coffee and then get going.”
He leaned forward, not taking his eyes off her. “Would I be . . . out of line if I invited you up to my room for that . . . cup of coffee?” he asked in a husky tone.
Her body screamed for her to say yes. It took all her strength, but she had to resist him. “Considering the fact that I’m married,” she began in a whisper. “It would be out of line.”
“Only if you are happily married.” His eyes trailed down her neck. “Are you?”
“Yes,” she stuttered slightly above a whisper.
“You don’t sound sure,” he teased with a smirk.
“I . . . I am,” she answered again. But, deep down, she wanted it. Ached for what Carter Mitchell wanted to give her. She could see him hovering above her, shoving in at full force, and both of them loving every bit of it.
“All right, I’m not a beggar. I don’t have to be. I’ll order you that cup of coffee,” he conceded with style. Then he motioned for the waiter to come over. He ordered coffee for both of them. And, as if nothing improper was suggested several minutes ago, he started talking about his two other cousins in New York.
After fifteen minutes, he told the waiter to put the tab on his room bill. Then he turned back to her. “Is your head clear?”
“Yes,” she answered sheepishly.
“Hmm. That’s too bad,” he jested with a smirk.
She couldn’t help but smile. When was the last time someone flirted with her? “You’re incorrigible.”
Carter chuckled. “Well, would you at least let me walk you to your car?”
“Only if you can behave,” she teased.
He laughed. “I’ll give it my best shot, but I can’t make any promises.”
Layla shook her head as they rose from their chairs.
****
The FBI surveillance team could see everything that had gone on inside the country club restaurant from their white van in the parking lot. They had a team member inside the dining room who had a small camera in his lapel pin.
“Hey, they left the dining area,” the team member said to them from a speaker box they had set up.
“Where are they heading?” Allen asked. He hoped they weren’t heading to Mitchell’s room. He had promised his colleague, Alec Peterson, that if Carter Mitchell was sniffing around Lana Murphy, he would let him know. Allen was one of the agents who had been tailing Lana for almost a week. When the daily reports showed that she wasn’t in any immediate danger, Peterson’s superior had pulled them off her trail. Their main priority was watching Carter and Hugo. The FBI wanted to see if the Mitchell crime family was going to start making moves in Tampa since the Italian mob had blocked their expansion in New York.
“No. They’re heading outside. You should see them any minute now.”
“Okay, hang back. Just wait in the lobby for now. See if he comes back in.”
One of Allen’s team members went to the window that had a small camera with a scope set up.
“Do you see them, Mark?” Allen asked.
“Yeah, he’s walking her to her car, I believe,” Mark answered.
“Belief isn’t going to be good enough if she ends up missing again for another four years,” Allen said with annoyance.
“He’s walking her to a white, four door BMW, license plate, JKL-0008.”
“That’s better.” The sound of clicking whispered in the van as Mark took pictures.
“He’s giving her something, but I can’t make out what it is. It’s small.” Clicking came from the camera. “Eh,” he retorted in disgust as the clicking became faster.
“What?”
“That slime ball just kissed her hand. I know she has amnesia, but how can she not see he’s a sneaky scumbag? It’s written all over him.”
“Sometimes women are blinded by fancy suits, nice cars, and money,” Allen replied.
“She’s leaving. Looks like Carter is heading back inside.”
“Well, at least she didn’t sleep with him,” Allen commented. “Something tells me that Alec would hate to hear that.”
“He’s back inside,” the man on the inside said over the speaker.
“Okay, see where he leads. And be careful. Don’t get too close,” Allen said. He was surrounded by rookies on this one. His experienced men were on higher priority investigations.
Chapter 11
It was five o’clock that evening, and Carter was enjoying a glass of Hennessey on the rocks. Hugo had been gone since eleven thirty. Carter didn’t text him, though. He was a grown man and could go and stay where he pleased. Back in the old days, Carter would get worried when Hugo was gone too long because the rival gangs were relentless against the Mitchells. After the Mitchells had finally prevailed and took over the neighborhood fifteen years ago, Carter didn’t worry about anyone taking out his family members anymore.
The suite had a beautiful view. Too bad Lana didn’t come up to see it. She would have loved the white plush carpeting and the tasteful art on the wall. Carter sat down in an armchair. The pillows felt good on his back. He took another swig from his glass. Lana was more beautiful now than she was four years ago. But memory or no, she was trouble. He had to remember that.
The door opened. It was Hugo. “Hey,” he greeted and closed the door.
“Hey,” Carter said back. “Did you find any new business prospects?”
“Nothing substantial, but I think we can expand our operations here.”
Carter snorted. “Not likely. We’re being tailed.”
“What?”
“I wasn’t sure until this afternoon, but we are being tailed. I don’t know if it is the local cops or the FBI, but someone knows what we’re really about,” Carter said nonchalantly.
“When did you first suspect—?”
“Two days ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me then?” Hugo asked as he sat down on the sofa across from Carter.
“Because I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want you operating on high alert for nothing. It wasn’t until I was having lunch with Lana downstairs when I knew for sure. There was a white dude dressed like a golfer in the dining area. He kept looking over at us. At first, I thought he was just some racist fruit cake. Then I noticed that he was kind of following us to the lobby. When I came back inside, he was sitting in the lobby. He glanced over at me. It was quick, but I noticed. I’ve been seeing that guy all over the place since the day after we arrived.”
“Wait. Back up. Did you say that you and Lana had lunch downstairs?”
“Yep. She was supposed to meet a friend of hers here for lunch, but it got canceled. So I treated her to lunch.”
Hugo cleared his throat. He was trying not to frown, and he was failing.
“You got a problem with that, cuz?”
“Don’t you think that might have been foolish?” Hugo asked bluntly. “Granted, she has no idea who she really is or who you really are, but by you spending time with her, you could trigger things that we don’t need her to remember.”
“It’s been four years, and all she has remembered was some pimply faced high school crush,” Carter explained. “No harm done, and if she hasn’t remembered in all this time, she never will.”
Hugo ran his hand over his afro.
Carter knew what that meant. Hugo was concerned, and that was his way of not coming out and saying so. “What now?”
“Look, Carter, I . . .um, wait. If we’re being watched, then they could have bugged this room.”
Carter rolled his eyes. “Do you think I’m a moron? As soon as I came back to the room, I used the listening device to see if there were any bugs. Clean as a baby’s bottom. Now, go ahead.”
“I know that you still care for Lana, but she’s still a threat to us . . . to everyone in our family. We should . . . take care of her before we leave. Just in case.”
“No,” Carter said quickly. Truth was, he didn’t want her dead the first time. He just wanted her found and returned to him. That’s it. Those idiots had gone too far. And Carter had made them pay for it. The idea of his woman being chased down like an animal still angered him to this day. “That loser husband of hers fed her some cock and bull story about being an orphan at six and being adopted. Then her adopted parents died when she was nineteen. She bought it hook, line, and sinker. Poor thing doesn’t know any better, though.”
“Damn.”
“As long as she believes what that nutso doctor told her, she won’t remember a thing. There’s no reason to . . . bother her anymore,” Carter mumbled. He could tell Hugo didn’t like the decision, but he was head of this thing, and what he said goes.
“I’m going to take a shower.” Hugo stood.
“We need to leave tomorrow afternoon. No reason to tweak the nose of whoever is watching us. We just gotta find another spot to expand. It’s a big country, though. I chartered a plane. It leaves at eleven tomorrow.”
“Good. Tampa is nice and all, but there’s something weird to me about a place that’s seventy degrees in November.”
****
It had been a slow day, nothing much going on. Bruce was having the same type of day because he had entered his office twenty minutes earlier asking what Alec was doing.
“The only thing about working for the bureau is that when you’re not in the field, you are being drowned in paperwork,” Bruce said.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Alec said as he sat behind his desk.
Allen Coachman, head of the surveillance team, walked in. “Hey, fellas,” he greeted as he closed the door behind him.
“Carter must be up to something. If it was the same ole, same ole, you would have sent me an email, not come down to my office,” Alec said.
“Yeah,” Allen said and approached the desk. “During this afternoon’s surveillance, Lana Murphy went to the country club.”
Alec sat up in his chair quickly. “What? Why?”
“She had lunch with Carter Mitchell.”
“What?” Bruce and Alec exclaimed.
“I knew it. As soon as Blanchette called us off–” Alec said angrily.
“I think it might have been a coincidence. We got a tap on his new cell phone. He didn’t call her, and she didn’t call him for a date. According to the guy we have on the inside, he said that it looked like Carter was surprised to see her there. They chatted for a minute with the maître d’, and then they got a table together.”
“How long were they together?” Alec asked.
“An hour and forty-five minutes.”
“Did she seem upset at all?” Alec asked as a lump formed in his throat.
“Well . . . I’ll let you be the judge of that,” Allen said and gave Alec the folder. “I brought these for your own records. Just in case Layla Mil— I mean, Lana Murphy’s memory comes back, you have these for your open case file on Mitchell when you worked in DC.”
“Thanks,” Alec said and opened the folder. It was full of eight-by-ten pictures of Carter and Lana from that afternoon. Alec flipped through the still pictures of them having lunch together. In one picture, they looked a little too cozy for Alec’s liking. He flipped to the next picture. They were walking out of the county club. Then he flipped to the next one. They were talking next to Lana’s car. Alec felt his lunch bubble in his stomach when he flipped to the picture of Carter kissing her hand. The last picture was of her driving off.
“Let me see, Alec,” Bruce said.
“Where is Mitchell now?” Alec asked as he handed Bruce the folder.
“At the country club. I don’t think we have to worry about them bumping into each other again. Carter called the airport after his lunch with Lana. He ordered a private plane to take him and Hugo back to New York tomorrow morning.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Bruce said as he flipped through the photographs.
“Yeah,” Alec agreed.
“Well, if you don’t need anything else, I’m going to my office. I need to make a report. I was with the guys today.”
“Okay, and thanks for doing me this solid,” Alec said.
“Not a problem. Hell, if it wasn’t for you, I would have died seven years ago in a ditch in Seattle.”
The corner of Alec’s mouth turned up. Seven years ago, Allen had been a field agent. They were about to do a bust, but the perpetrators figured out they were outside waiting for them. They started firing out of the windows of the house they were in. One bullet hit Allen’s stomach. Alec kept pressure on the wound during the fire fight until the paramedics arrived. He kept Allen from bleeding out. “I’m sure someone would have helped.”
“Maybe. A lot of bullets were coming our way. Everyone ducked for cover,” Allen said. “Later, guys.”
Bruce and Alec said goodbye to Allen.
As soon as Allen closed the door, Bruce said, “Maybe you should reconsider talking to her.”
“I can’t do that even if I wanted to. Dr. Calhoun took a look at her medical file from New York. He said if someone started spitting her memories at her like a leaky faucet, it could further traumatize her. Possibly make her mentally ill. I can’t risk it.”
Bruce nodded.
****
Her nipples were hard as raisins, and his length filled her. His brown skin was smooth and taut over his muscular chest. She moaned with delight as he was giving her the business. Then he abruptly pulled out of her and flipped her like a pancake on the crisp, blue, satin sheets. She got on her knees to give him access. Spreading one cheek, he entered her. The fit was tight, but she loved it because she could feel all of him; pleasuring her, possessing her, making her yell for more. She started to wiggle her hips, making her ass move him. “Ah, that’s it, baby. Show me what you got,” he heaved in a demanding tone. She moaned. Her body shook.
He was saying her name. “Layla.”
She opened her eyes. Damien stared at her as he sat on the edge of her side of the bed. His tie was off, and the first three buttons on his shirt were unbuttoned. The lamp was on. She was back in her bedroom. Her thighs moist, her nipples were harder than pebbles, and her womanhood was creaming.
“Hey,” Damien said softly. “You were moaning and mumbling in your sleep. I thought you were having a bad dream, so I woke you.”
She was glad he did, because she wanted satisfaction, and she was going to get it. Shooting up, she grabbed Damien’s cheeks and kissed him.
He grunted with surprise.
She continued to kiss him as her hand trailed down his chest to his crotch. Rubbing the area to get him prepped to give her what she wanted. Then she leaned forward, making him lay back on the bed. She immediately broke the kiss.
“What are you doing?” he asked breathlessly.
Layla started unbuckling his belt with quickness.
“Layla, I’ve been at the hospital since five.”
Ignoring him, she yanked his dress pants and briefs down his hips. Taking him in hand, she started stroking him – hard.
“Layla, I said I’m tired,” he said a little more sternly.
“All you gotta do is shut up and lie there,” she shot back at him.
“What did you say?” he asked in a high-pitched tone.
She took him in her mouth, sucking hard and fast. It was almost there.
“Layla, stop!” he shouted and grabbed her shoulders. He shoved her off him.
He forced her on her feet as he stood. “What the hell has gotten into you?” he asked with slight outrage as he gripped her upper arms.
“Me? A woman comes on to her husband, and I’m the one with the problem? What’s wrong with you?” she asked defensively.
“First of all, it’s two a.m. and I ha
d to do two emergency surgeries tonight. Second, you were being too rough. Third, this isn’t you. What in the world were you dreaming about?”
A real man. But she didn’t say it out loud. “God,” she snarled with disgust. “Offer yourself to a man, and all you get is twenty questions. Let go of me,” she demanded.
The sternness in her voice startled him. He let her go.
Layla walked to the chair at her vanity table and snatched up her robe. “I’m going in the guest room,” she sneered.
“What? You can’t be serious?”
“Like a heart attack,” she said and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.
She strode down the hall to the guest room and opened the door. It was a little warm in there because she had the vents closed. She didn’t open them unless they had an overnight guest. After opening the vents, she pulled the covers down on the full-sized bed and hopped in.
If all the other wives’ husbands are like mine in the neighborhood, no wonder they cheat on them. What a whiney bitch.
She closed her eyes and let her mind drift to Carter, allowing herself to fantasize about him again like she had all day.
The next morning, they ate breakfast in silence. Once they were done eating, Layla started clearing the dishes.
“Daddy,” Keisha said in a low tone.
“Yeah, pumpkin,” Damien answered.
“Are you coming home tonight?”
“I am. Why?”
“Good. I miss you when you’re not here at night,” Keisha said.
Damien stood and approached the highchair. “And I miss you all the time, pumpkin.” He kissed her on the cheek, making the little girl giggle with delight.
Layla couldn’t help but smile. Damien definitely had a way with Keisha. She walked into the kitchen and placed the dishes in the sink. She toyed with the idea of loading the things in the dishwasher instead of washing them by hand.
“Hey,” he said as he came up behind her.
She turned to face him.
“We shouldn’t go to bed mad at each other,” he stated.
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