by Donna Hill
He trotted up the steps, unlocked the apartment door and went inside.
Silence.
Then he remembered his promise to Nikita.
He checked his watch. Seven forty-five. He’d said he’d meet her at eight. He’d already blown that damned meeting and knew he’d have to hear her mouth, anyway. What the hell.
He went straight upstairs to the bedroom and to the phone on the nightstand. Sitting down on the bed, he pulled the piece of paper from his jeans pocket.
For several moments he just stared at the numbers.
Maybe he should just leave well enough alone. She’d moved on, as Val had said, whatever that meant.
But there was still that need, a deep and unyielding need to hear her voice, her laughter, to listen to her tell him, “You go ’head on with your bad self.” He smiled at the recollection.
She was the familiar. The roots.
He punched in the numbers and listened to the clicks while the fiber optics kicked into place. His heart pounded.
The phone began to ring. And the answering machine came on.
“Sherman Travel and Tour. No one is available to help you right now. Please leave your message after the beep.”
B-e-e-p.
He started to hang up. Just forget it. It obviously wasn’t meant to happen. At least not now. But hearing that familiar voice again…
“Hey, Max, this is Quinn. Just checkin’ on ya. See how ya don’ and all.” He paused. “I’ll try you again…another time.”
Maxine was just walking in the door and heard the tail end of the message, the familiar voice. She dashed across the room and snatched up the phone.
Quinn slowly lowered the receiver, feeling worse than before.
“Quinn!”
He jerked the phone back to his ear.
“Max?”
“Hey, Q.”
Her voice washed over him like a soothing balm. His muscles began to relax, and his heart slowed its pace.
“Hey, yourself. Tell me what’s good.” He leaned back against the pillows and put his sneakered feet right up on the bed. What the hell.
She laughed, that deep, rich chuckle that made him smile. “Some of everythin’,” she began, and eased right back into their old routine as if the last time they’d seen each other was yesterday.
He told her about the music contract and she squealed with delight and swore that she was gonna make all her clients buy the album.
They laughed and talked for more than an hour, making time and space slip away.
“So what ever happened with you and André?”
She sighed. “Wasn’t for me, ya know. Thought it was. But it just wasn’t happenin’.”
“Hmm. Know how that is.”
“What about Nikita?”
“She’s cool. Gettin’ ready to buy that magazine that she works for.”
“Get out. Ya’ll gonna be livin’ large.” She laughed.
“Ain’t nothin’ change but the day.”
“I hear ya. So when you gonna come out and see a sista?”
He laughed. “I’ma make it a point to do that. Got good hotels around there?”
“Forget hotels. You stay with me. I got plenty of space.”
“You got it like that, huh?”
“No doubt.”
They both laughed.
“So make plans to come out and let me know.”
“I’ll do that.”
She took a breath, not wanting to let him go, but knew that she had to. “Hey, listen, Q, I gotta run. So call me. Okay?”
His stomach did a slow dance. “No…doubt.”
“Good talkin’ to you, babe,” she whispered.
“You, too.”
She hung up before she could say something really stupid, then sat there and stared at the phone. She hadn’t asked him why he never said goodbye.
Quinn lay across the bed and stared up at the ceiling, running the conversation over and again in his head.
He threw his arm over his eyes and wondered what life was like in California.
Nikita took a bite of her cherry cheesecake. “He probably just got held up in the studio.”
“Hmm,” her mother mumbled.
Her father signaled for the check. “Tell him we asked about him.”
“I will.” She smiled, fuming inside.
They parted at the door, exchanging hugs and promises to call soon. Nikita got in her car and couldn’t get home fast enough.
He heard her the moment her key connected with the lock. He thought he was prepared for what he knew was coming. He wasn’t.
The shrill whistle of the teakettle pierced in unison with the diatribe that Nikita hurled in Quinn’s direction. Her petite body perched on shapely legs, paced with uneven footsteps across the hardwood floor, like a professor lecturing to an errant student.
She spun toward him. “Why do you do this, Quinn?” Her shoulder-length locks swung around her face, following his cat-like gait.
Apparently without a care, which only fueled her fire, Quinn took a short stroll to the far side of the living room and stretched out unceremoniously on the mud-cloth-draped black leather couch. Dark eyes cut at her from beneath his thick lashes. “Why we gotta go through this every time I don’t do what you want me to do, be where you want me to be?”
Her light brown eyes widened. She expelled a long, exasperated breath between her teeth. She was the one who stayed up nights wondering where he was, worrying what had happened to him, until exhaustion lured her to sleep.
“We are on the planning committee for one of the biggest publishing events in ages, and you didn’t even bother to show up. Not to mention that you never showed up for dinner. I was the one who had to pretend that your no-show was no big deal!”
Which had given her mother the perfect entrée to recite her laundry list of reasons why Quinn was wrong for her. Judging from this latest fiasco, maybe she was right. God, she didn’t want her mother to be right. Not this time. Not about Quinn.
She took a breath. “Does it ever occur to you that I may be worried? Does it ever occur to you to call?”
A slow smile lifted the corners of his rich mouth. He eased his six-foot-plus frame to a sitting position. His shoulder-length locks swept the sides of his face, shadowing his dark, chiseled features in an erotic silhouette of light and shadow.
He was feeling too good after talking to Max. He didn’t want to lose that sensation by fighting with Nik about something that was over and done with.
“Aw, come on, baby. I’m here now.”
His dark eyes sparkled with that old, barely contained passion. He held his hand out to her in an offer of peace and she felt her anger begin to melt like skillet-heated butter.
His touch always aroused a level of sexuality that left her weak. The acceptance of that reality put her in a state of vulnerability, easily susceptible to Quinn’s unorthodox lifestyle, which continually wreaked havoc with their lives. The only thing that had changed about Quinn in their two years together was his age.
She refused the olive branch he offered. “I…can’t keep living like this, Quinn. I want more than you’re willing to give this relationship. I want a man I can count on. Someone who is going to be there for me. Someone who is willing to share his goals and dreams with mine, and together make them come true.”
“So this is all about you.” His dark eyes narrowed. His voice grew dangerously low. “You sayin’ that I don’t have goals, that I ain’t about nothing? What about what I want? What I need? Huh? Maybe I didn’t wanna sit up in your people’s faces all night and listen to the bull. Have them treat me like I was somethin’ on the bottom of their designer shoes. Ever think of that?”
Nikita flinched. But she realized at that moment that if she backed down again, if she allowed his powers of persuasion to overrule what she truly felt, things would never change.
“What is it that you want, Quinn—to hang in the street till the sun comes up, to make a quick buck doing God kno
ws what?” Her nostrils flared as she sucked in air. “Those seem to be your goals in life, you and that crowd you associate with.” She shook her head. Her tone softened. “You have so much potential, so much to offer, and you waste yourself and your talents. You’re a gifted musician and a brilliant writer, if you’d just stick with it.”
Quinn pushed himself up from his seat and stood towering above her. His voice projected an eerie calm. “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I ain’t like you, Niki. I never lived in white America. I didn’t get to go to private school, or to the continent,” he singsonged, “when I was seventeen. I was strugglin’ for my life! I didn’t have a mother or a father who gave a sh—what I did with my life. This is me. All there is. You supposed to love me? Then love me for who I am—not who you figure I oughta be ’cause Moms and Pops say so.”
She felt as if she’d been slapped, and a sudden sensation of doom spread through her. “I do love you.” She stepped to him. “I do care what happens to you.” Her heart beat faster when he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “You’ve got to know that. If I didn’t, do you think it would matter to me what you did, or with whom?” Her eyes frantically scanned the planes of his face.
She so wanted him to just tell her what was in his heart. What he really thought and felt, what dark corner it was that he always turned into and shut her out of. If he would only let his guard down just this once, and let her in.
He smiled a bittersweet smile, caressing her face with his large hand. He gently brushed her trembling lips with the pad of his thumb.
His darkly haunting eyes, eyes that had seen too much, trailed up and down her face, seeing himself through hers. It was then that he realized with vivid clarity that they would always be in two different worlds. How could he ever hope to cross the bridge that separated them? Yet he needed her. His unspoken love for her helped him to face each day, and the decisions that lay ahead of him.
Slowly he lowered his head until his mouth was inches away from hers.
Niki trembled.
When his warm mouth touched hers and his tongue parted her lips, she knew that all she ever wanted was to be with this man—to have him within her—always. She loved him with a desperate yearning that frightened her. She knew he was right about her parents. He was everything she’d been taught to stay away from, a parent’s worst nightmare for their daughter. He was their eleven o’clock news.
But she couldn’t stay away. Somehow they’d find their way. They’d find a middle ground.
She clung tighter to him.
Without words, Quinn led her upstairs to their bedroom, slowly undressing her along the way. With a patience that belied his need, he took his time, finding a slow, soothing rhythm that stoked the embers of her fire, only to be quenched by his eruption of release.
Quinn gave himself to her, body and soul, as he’d always done before.
She never did see the silent tears that slid down his chiseled cheeks.
This union was different.
So very different.
When Nikita awoke the following morning, her heart and mind were filled with a sense of peace. Something wonderful had transpired between her and Quinn the night before. Their souls had somehow touched, and she wanted to finally understand the shadows that haunted him.
She was mildly surprised to find that he wasn’t sound asleep next to her. Rising early was not his strong point. She smiled. He was probably downstairs. Maybe working on a new piece.
She was eager to talk to him, tell him that she was really willing to work out their relationship—together, not just on her terms.
Quickly she got out of bed and hurried into the adjoining bathroom for a short shower. She was sure she’d find Quinn in the living room sipping his morning glass of grapefruit juice, his feet propped up on the coffee table, waiting for her to tell him to take them down.
What she found instead was an envelope stuffed with money for the next six months’ rent, and a note that changed her life and shredded her heart.
BOOK TWO
Chapter 29
Startin’ Over and Over
Nikita sighed and turned away from the puffs of cottony clouds that floated around the speeding Boeing 747. Three years. Three long years. A time that was behind her, and best forgotten.
She leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes, letting the motion of the slipstream currents lull her into a light, dreamless sleep. She didn’t want to think about Quinn anymore, and, oddly, she hadn’t for quite some time. The trip to Nigeria from which she was returning—the one that she and Quinn should have taken together—coupled with faxes and letters of correspondence from her executive editor, Monica Frazier, had caused the old wounds to seep open.
When she’d received the fax from Monica about a fabulous new book by a Q. J. Parker that her entire staff was abuzz about, it had thrown her completely off balance.
But, of course, the notion that Quinn had actually written a book was ludicrous. Once she’d been able to dispel the notion that it could be Quinn, she, too, got caught up in the possibility of a bestseller. She was eager to get back in the driver’s seat and see what all the excitement was about. Yet, as much as she’d tried, nagging memories of Quinn pricked the back of her mind.
To this day, three years after his unannounced departure from her life, Nikita still did not understand why he’d left her. She could forgive him anything—but not that. All that she had left of their two-year tumultuous affair was one of his favorite T-shirts and the hastily scrawled note saying that he was sorry. Sorry.
Fuck you, Quinn!
It had taken months for the shock to wear off. Day by day she’d discarded whatever clothes he hadn’t taken. And then she’d slipped into a state of numbness. Maybe it was a good thing, she reflected, allowing the memories to settle over her once again.
Quinn’s betrayal of her love had unwittingly been the catalyst that had propelled her to where she was today—owner and publisher of a growing black book-publishing company. She’d taken the money from her parents and what he’d given her and bought out Ms. Ingram’s magazine, expanding it.
Now, her company, Harrell Publishing, had been responsible for launching the successful careers of several black authors that other companies had refused to touch.
She knew in her bones that Harrell Publishing was on the brink of national attention. What would put them solidly in the company of Dutton, Penguin and the like was a major blockbuster novel. And from the sound of Monica’s fax, the new manuscript they had in their possession could be the one.
Nikita sighed. At thirty, she was in an enviable position. She had her own business, a solid circle of friends, and one of the few small female-owned black presses that were making inroads into mainstream America. And she had Grant, she added almost as an afterthought. Yes, she had it all, along with an unyielding sorrow that followed her like a shadow.
The voice of the captain filtered through her brooding thoughts.
“This is your captain speaking. Please observe the fasten-your-seat-belt sign. We are making our approach to Kennedy Airport. We anticipate touchdown in approximately twelve minutes. 2:00 a.m. eastern standard time. The temperature is sixty degrees. Thank you for flying with Delta.”
Slowly, Nikita opened her eyes and looked around, shaking off the remnants of the intrusive memories. Within moments she would be back in New York, soon back to work and back to Grant.
Grant. Her glossy lips flickered with a smile. They’d finally started seeing each other again. Had been a couple for the past three months. He was the first man she’d been with since Quinn. Somewhere in her mind, going back was easier than going forward, starting again.
Grant Coleman was everything Quinten Parker was not. Grant, she knew, would be waiting for her at the airport, even at the ungodly hour of 2:00 a.m.
She frowned, knowing that if it were Quinn, he would be explaining how he’d overslept, or was hanging out with his boys and missed her flight. They’d have their y
elling match, or at least she’d be yelling, and he’d soothe. Then they’d be in each other’s arms, making love.
A shudder skipped through her. Or was it just the plane landing with a subtle thud?
Nikita unfastened her seat belt and stretched her legs before standing. No one paid any attention to those seat belt signs once the plane finished its taxi, anyway.
As she threaded her way through the web of straggling travelers, she spotted Grant’s tall, lean form standing out amidst the throng. He was attractive—there was no question about that—in a quiet sort of way. She was happy that she’d decided to get back together with Grant. He almost filled all of the emptiness. And her parents adored him.
Her smile bloomed as she drew near.
Grant was what she needed in her life.
She stepped into his solid embrace.
Secure, dependable Grant. Her rock.
Quinn, her grains of sand.
“Six weeks seemed like forever. It’s good to have you back again, sweetheart,” Grant breathed into her hair, holding her close.
Nikita stepped back and smiled up at him. “It feels good to be back.” She kissed him softly on the lips, vanquishing the remains of Quinn.
“You look good enough to eat.” He slid his arm around her waist, ushering her toward the exit.
“The motherland was good to me,” she said, doubling her step to keep up with his.
“Not as good as I’m going to be to you.”
“Hmm.” Nikita smiled and snuggled closer, hoping to achieve the intimacy she craved, and failed. “There’s so much I have to tell you.”
“I bet you do. And I want to hear every detail. Later. We have the rest of the weekend to talk.”
They stepped outside to where the chauffeur was waiting and took her bags.
“I didn’t plan anything special. I thought you’d wind up with a whopping case of jet lag,” he said, helping her into the backseat, then positioning himself next to her. “So I thought we’d just relax at my place. So I can take care of you.”
