A Private Affair

by Donna Hill

  He smiled as he trotted lightly up the stairs. Mother downstairs, and my woman upstairs. Not half bad.

  The light by the bed was still on, and Nikita was propped up with pillows and all of her schoolbooks spread out around her.

  She was knocked out.

  Quinn collected her books and stacked them on the floor near the bed. Cradling her like a baby, he eased her under the down comforter and pulled it up to her chin.

  He took a quick shower, crawled in beside her and switched off the light. He put his arm across her waist and pillowed his head on those breasts that he loved.

  She moaned softly in her sleep.

  He snuggled closer. Damn, this felt good. His body began to uncoil. His thoughts smoothed out and began to recede to that hazy phase just before slipping off to dreamland.

  The sound of his name being called tugged him back like a fish on a hook.

  “Quinn.” Her voice sounded soft and fluffy, cushioning him back to sleep.

  “Quinn.”

  His eyes flew open. “What? Whatsthematter, baby?”

  She thought she’d had it planned, but the words just tumbled out, like an overstuffed closet whose door had been pulled open. “I want to publish some of your poetry.”

  “Say what?” He was definitely awake now. He sat up in the bed and turned on the three-stage light full blast. “You wanna run that by me again?”

  Nikita blinked at the look of fury that blazed in his dark eyes, the deep furrows that creased his brow and lowered the timbre in his voice to a growl.

  “I…found some of your writing…and it’s really good, Quinn. Really. I want to get some of it published in the magazine.” She held her breath.

  Quinn got up out of the bed, cut his eyes at her over his shoulder and walked out of the room.

  He tried to clear his head as he went down the stairs, but his thoughts wouldn’t stay focused.

  One, she’d gone through his things. Two, she’d read his work. He’d never let anyone besides his sister read his work. Why did she do that? How could she do that? What next?

  He flipped on the lights in the living room and went to the bar. He poured a glass of Jack Daniels, no ice, and tossed it down his throat.

  Publish his work! Yeah, right.

  “Quinn.”

  Nikita stood framed in the doorway, her oversize nightshirt—that did nothing to disguise her curves—hitting just above those beautiful knees. His eyes rolled down her legs for a minute, then back up, and rested on her heart-shaped face, the picture of innocence.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it.” She took a deep breath and walked into the room. She looked up at him, her chin jutting out. “But I’m glad I did. And I’d probably do it again. You may think it’s okay to have all the gifts you have and just keep them to yourself. I don’t think so.”

  “Lemme get this straight. Because you don’t think so, I shouldn’t. Is that the deal?”

  “All I want is the best for you, Quinn. That’s all. I want the world to open up to you, to let your talents, your dreams, take you places.”

  “What about what I want? Huh? Did it ever occur to you that maybe I wrote because I had to, Nikita…to keep from losin’ it…to keep from doin’ somethin’ to hurt somebody or myself? And that after all the words were done I was done with what was eatin’ me alive…at least for the moment? What makes you think I want to share the things that make me feel less than a man with anyone…including you?”

  He would have done less damage if he’d smacked her. He saw the sting of his words bounce her around harder than a prizefighter’s best shot.

  She pressed her lips together and breathed…slowly.

  “Fine.” Her voice barely crossed the short distance between them. “Did you show them to Maxine?” She turned and stormed up the stairs.

  Quinn paced. Relentlessly. Moving back and forth across the expanse of the gleaming, high-gloss floors, trying to find a way to break free of unseen bars.

  He was exposed. His insides turned out. The one person who could cast a critical eye, whose esteem he wanted to remain highest, had seen his every weakness, his every pain, his every dissolved dream.

  How could he face her and still be the man he wanted her to see, the one she had met and claimed to love? How? That was not the same man who poured himself onto those pages.

  “I want you to be whoever you want to be with me.” Her words echoed in his mind.

  Did she really mean that?

  Finally he sat down, heavy, on the couch, his thoughts outweighing his body.

  “It’s okay, Q,” Lacy whispered.

  His body shuddered as his hands came up and covered his face.

  For the first time since the night he’d seen Lacy’s lifeless body, he cried.

  Chapter 22

  Just Do It

  Everything ached, and the aches finally woke him up. His legs were stretched one way, his body turned another, and his neck was propped against the arm of the couch.

  Slowly he opened his eyes and blinked against the brilliant morning sunshine. He sat up, and a blanket slipped off his bare chest and dragged on the floor.

  He half smiled. Nikita must have tossed it over him during the night.

  Nikita!

  He sat straight up and heard his neck crack in protest. He’d slept on the couch and left Nikita upstairs all night…Why? His thoughts struggled for organization. Then it all came back to him in a wink. She’d read his work and wanted to publish it.

  He settled back for a minute, letting the events of the previous evening replay. He shouldn’t have left things the way he had, or spoken to her the way he did. There was no way for her to know how he felt. What was worse, he had her believing that Maxine had a spot with him that she didn’t.

  Slowly he stood and stretched. It wasn’t the first time she’d said something about him and Maxine. But it wasn’t like that. They were just friends. Period. Always had been. Nikita was just going to have to understand that.

  He looked at his watch. Nine-thirty.

  Damn. She’d already left for work. He was sure of that. Must still be ticked, because she hadn’t said goodbye.

  Grabbing the blanket, he took it upstairs, folded it and put it in the hall closet. He went into his bedroom. It was empty. Just as he’d figured.

  A tingling sensation suddenly ran through him. He opened the connecting door, stepped into the bath and across to the extra bedroom. He flung open the closet and released a breath of relief.

  She hadn’t left him. But that flash, that millisecond when he thought she had, rocked his world.

  She knew she must look a fright. She hadn’t slept a good ten minutes after Quinn came home. There were shadows beneath her swollen red eyes, and her body felt as if she’d run the Boston Marathon without a warm-up.

  What was worse than all that was that her emotions were all tied up in a knot. It was all she could do to keep herself from totally falling apart.

  Parris was right. She should have just left it alone. But she’d thought she was helping. She couldn’t understand why he would be ashamed of who he was, of the deep feelings that he had about life.

  Methodically, she began opening the stack of mail from the weekend, wondering how she could turn around what she’d begun.

  “Mr. Martin?”

  André looked up from the four-year-old Sports Illustrated magazine that he’d been reading and put it back on the imitation wood table. He stood up, adjusting his bronze-and-black-striped tie, standing at least a head over the very bald man.

  “I’m Mr. Hargrove.” He stuck out his pudgy pink hand, which was enveloped by Dre’s. “Why don’t we step inside so we can talk?”

  An hour later Dre walked out of Mr. Hargrove’s office with his first assignment—to get video coverage of an allegedly injured truck driver who was believed to be scamming the insurance company. All Dre had to do was get footage of the driver doing any activity that could prove that his back “injury” was a fake.

>   The insurance company would pay him for up to five hours of surveillance per day for two weeks, with a bonus if and when he caught the culprit in the act.

  This was going to be a cinch.

  He whistled all the way back to his car with the name, address and photograph tucked in his pocket. He would start this afternoon, along with a guy who was going to show him the ropes. The quicker he wrapped it up and got his bonus, the quicker he could get a new case. The faster he got the hang of this surveillance thing the better. ’Cause he had a plan.

  Maxine looked up from her pile of applications for new accounts into Val’s smiling face.

  “How’s it going?”

  Maxine rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Too slow.” She smiled a tired smile. “Whatsup?”

  “Just passing through. Thought I’d stop and see if you wanted to go to lunch later.”

  “I’m just gonna go down to the lounge and catch a few winks. I’m beat, girl. This two-job thing ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “So business is starting to pick up, huh?”

  “Definitely. In the past week alone, I’ve processed two cruises and three trips to the Bahamas and arranged for the hotels, and booked another half-dozen flights around the country.”

  “Sounds like you’re going to need an assistant before long.”

  “I know. I’m just not too crazy about having somebody up in my house when I’m not home.”

  “I hear ya. But maybe you could find someone who’d be willing to work the same hours you do, and you take a break on those nights.”

  Her eyebrows raised as she tossed around the idea. “Hmm. Not bad. It just might work.” She looked up at Val and grinned. “So you are good for somethin’.”

  “Yeah. How ’bout that? At least every now and then. How’s Dre doing? Find a job yet?”

  “No, girl. That’s a whole ’nother story.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to catch me up when you have the time…and the energy.”

  “Are we still on for the gym tomorrow after work?”

  “Can’t miss my workout, since that’s the only workout I’ve been gettin’, if ya know what I mean.” Val gave Maxine “the look,” and they broke out laughing.

  “Girl, you need to stop.”

  “Stoppin’s not the problem. It’s getting something started. Hey, listen, I’ve got to run. Talk at you later.”

  “Have a good one,” Maxine called out.

  Maxine took a moment to refocus on her work, but her thoughts kept bouncing back to Dre. She was really beginning to worry. He seemed to get more depressed each day, with no real prospect of a job in sight. When she’d told him that she’d be willing to help in any way that she could, she’d meant it. Yeah, he’d tried to blow it off as if he had everything under control, but how long could his finances hold out without an income?

  She turned to her computer and pulled up the accounts file. Her heart started to race. She’d never done anything like this before, especially on the down low. Her eyes darted quickly around. She keyed in André’s name and pulled up his account. Within seconds she saw his remaining balance. $75.00.

  Damn. She exited from the file. How was he gonna make it?

  Her heart ached for him, and he was too proud to say anything to her. Well, that was coming to an end.

  Tonight.

  Nikita picked up the phone and dialed the house. Somehow she’d have to find a way to make it up to him. She didn’t want to lose him, couldn’t lose him. Not over this.

  The phone rang.

  And rang.

  The answering machine clicked on and Quinn’s smooth voice came on the line. She listened to his request to the caller—“Tell me what you want me to know”—and then she hung up.

  She needed to talk, to try to sort out her feelings, figure out what she was going to say to Quinn, to do about their relationship.

  She picked up the phone again, intending to call Parris, then quickly hung up. Although Parris would listen and empathize, she wasn’t up to hearing the censure in her voice, even though she would never actually say, “I told you so.”

  A knock on the office door pulled her away from her thoughts. She looked up at the wall clock. Eleven-thirty.

  Must be Federal Express.

  She went to the door and pulled it open.

  “Quinn.” Her heart beat in triple time, making her suddenly light-headed. He was coming to tell her to pack her things, that it wasn’t working, that she’d—

  “I…I’m sorry, baby.” He put his hands on her shoulders and looked down into her eyes that looked as if they needed sleep. His stomach tightened. “I was rough on you…I shouldn’ta been. Ya know.”

  She had just grown roots, because she couldn’t move from the spot in front of the door.

  “Quinn, I’m the one who should be apologizing. It was wrong of me to go through your things. It’s just that…I was feeling lonely…and—”

  “Forget it, Nik. You don’t have to explain.” He blew out a breath. “Can I come in outta the cold?”

  He smiled that baby-boy smile, his dimples twinkling, and her knees went weak.

  She took his hand from her shoulders and led him into the office.

  When he came in, he realized it was the first time he’d actually been right inside where she worked. They’d been together for months and he’d never seen the place, and up until recently she’d never known he wrote. Humph. Strange.

  He looked around.

  “This isn’t what I expected.”

  Nikita tried to tidy up her desk. She smiled. “What did you expect?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess somethin’ like what you see on the box. A bunch of desks, people runnin’ around, stuff everywhere. This is more like an apartment.”

  “It was, until it was converted. Lillian used to live here before she bought her house. She knocked out a few walls and had office furniture and computers put in. Come on, I’ll show you around.”

  She took him on a five-minute tour, pointing out the two bedrooms that had been turned into work and storage rooms, the dining room that was the copy room, the kitchen, bathroom—equipped with a shower—then back to the large living room that was the main office.

  “Not bad.” He looked at her with a newfound pride. “So you really run all of this by yourself, huh?”

  She grinned. “Most of the time. Lillian comes in less and less now that I’ve got the hang of everything. But I really could use some help. Between the mail, bills, reading manuscripts, writing copy and laying out the magazine, it’s a lot of work.”

  The phone rang.

  “Not to mention all the calls. Excuse me, just one minute.” She picked up the phone. “Today’s Woman.”

  Quinn wandered around, looking at the stacks of previous issues and what appeared to be the layout for the next one.

  Funny, he’d just sort of assumed he knew what she did every day. Taken it for granted. Sure, she rattled on about her day, but it had never really sunk in, until now. Nikita really did have it going on. She was doing something she was good at and handling it, and when she’d wanted to make him a part of it he’d blown up, because he was scared.

  He looked across at her as she took notes, checked something on her computer and answered the caller’s questions.

  She hung up and caught him staring at her. Her face got hot. “Sorry. It took longer than I thought.”

  He stuck his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. “So…ya know…you think my stuff is good?” He chewed on the inside of his bottom lip.

  “Quinn.” Her gaze moved over his face, seeing and sensing his doubts and insecurities, and she couldn’t understand them. “Your work is so wonderful, moving. It touches you. It’s the part of you that no one knows.” She stood up and crossed the room to stand in front of him. She looked up into his eyes, taking his hands in hers. “But I’m glad that I do, now.”

  “You are?”

  “Of course. Did you really think it would mak
e me feel different…love you any less?”

  “I don’t know, man. It’s like stuff punks do. None of my boys would be sittin’ ’round writing rhythms unless they were for some rap music. And stories, sh—forget it.”

  “Maybe it’s because they can’t, Quinn. But you can. Why hide that?”

  He let out a long breath. “So…What are you gonna do with them?”

  She heard the cautious note in his voice, but also the beginnings of hope.

  “You’ll probably flip your lid again.” She looked down at the floor, then up at him. “I showed them to Lillian and she’s willing to publish one if I get your written permission,” she said quickly.

  Did she just say her boss would publish them? His heart started beating faster. He swallowed. “She did?”

  “Yep! She loved what she read.”

  His dimples made a brief appearance. “Yeah?” He sort of shrugged as if it was no big deal, but his insides were going crazy.

  “Yeah.” She beamed.

  He thought about it. Thought about having his innermost thoughts on display. Thought about seeing his work actually published in a magazine. He thought about how his sister had always encouraged him, and how Maxine had said the only thing stopping him was him. And he thought about this itty-bitty woman standing in front of him who believed in him from the bottom of her heart. And he thought…What about me? What do I really want?

  “So tell me about this permission thing.” He sat down on the edge of the desk and pulled her onto his lap, nuzzling her neck while she spoke.

  Nikita’s spirits shot straight to heaven. She couldn’t wait to tell Parris how wrong she’d been about Quinn. And maybe this would shut her parents up, too, especially since she planned to bring Quinn home for Christmas. Everything was going to work out just fine.

  But how could she concentrate and figure out what was best with his hands roaming all over her body, his mouth finding exposed skin?

  She started to feel shaky again, just as she had that first night, and the night after that, and after that. It was always that blissfully helpless sensation that floated through her like gentle, lapping waves, building a steady rhythm, until her entire body pulsed and the sweet wetness between her legs felt like liquid fire.