“Maybe we should take this into my office?” Jonas offered, and then turned to Michelle. “Hold my calls.”
Michelle’s lips puckered like she’d been sucking on a lemon. “You’re the boss.”
Ophelia wheeled the stroller around, took another deep breath and marched into Jonas’s office. With each step, the knots in her stomach tightened and her heart rate climbed to a dangerous level. Out of all the emotions swirling inside of her, so far she had managed to keep regret at a manageable distance.
However, if her husband ever found out that she was here...
Jonas closed the door behind them. “I have to say you’re certainly looking good. Marriage agrees with you.” His gaze swept down to the sleeping baby inside the stroller and a soft smile tugged his lips. “Or is it motherhood?” He glided past her and took his seat behind the desk. “Now what’s all this talk about me backing off?”
“Why did you buy Warner’s interest in Solomon’s company?”
“C’mon, Ophelia. You’ve always known that I’m a voracious businessman. I go where the opportunities and the money lead me. This time, it just so happened to lead me straight to T&B Entertainment.”
“A convenient coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Is there any other kind?”
Ophelia sucked in an impatient breath. “So we’re going to just play games and act like you don’t know what I’m talking about?”
Jonas sat back in his chair; his gaze roamed the length of her like a habit he couldn’t break-or didn’t want to break. “Letting you go was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do. I’ll admit that.” He braided his fingers. “I’m not accustomed to being embarrassed in front of six hundred friends and family.”
“So this is all about us?”
“All? No.” He smiled.
Ophelia stared, contemplating her next chess move. Logic wouldn’t appeal to a man motivated by emotion. “What happened between us wasn’t intentional. I did care for you. And-”
“Spare me.” Jonas stood and eyed her cagily as he moved around his desk and leaned against one corner. “We’ve already been over this ground. I’m such a good man and one day I’ll make some lucky woman a wonderful husband blah, blah, blah. I remember the speech.”
“Then what?” she snapped. “What do you really want from us?”
“I want...” He checked his anger and then smiled benignly. “I want just a little satisfaction. You and Solomon have been living happily-ever-after for the last eighteen months while my world has been turned upside down. I want you both to feel what I feel-just for a little while.” He snapped his fingers as if suddenly remembering something else. “And to make a little money in the process.”
“This is childish and I expected better from you.”
Jonas’s smile didn’t falter as he pushed away from the desk and approached her.
Ophelia stood her ground and lifted her head defiantly when he stopped within inches of her.
“A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” He leaned forward.
“I know that asshole is here!”
Jonas’s door flew open as Solomon breezed into the office and stopped short when his eyes landed on Jonas and Ophelia. “What the hell?”
Chapter 7
Out of all the duties that Michelle had to engage in over the years, one she hadn’t expected was to act as referee and break up a fight. No sooner had Solomon barreled his way past her did the man launch at her employer’s throat. Granted, Jonas had it coming since they’d walked in on him about to kiss his attacker’s wife.
In order: Jonas writhed on the floor, Solomon was scrawled on top of him with a fierce choke hold, Michelle hopped on Solomon’s back and hooked an arm around his neck in a less effective choke hold, Ophelia stood above everyone screaming for them to stop, while lastly, the baby woke and was wailing at the top of her lungs.
All in all, a circus no matter how you looked at it.
More voices thundered into the room, but no one paid them any attention. However, the next thing Michelle knew, she was plucked off Solomon’s back and set aside. Another pair of arms broke Solomon’s firm grip on Jonas’s neck.
“Has everyone gone crazy?” Quentin thundered, helping his brother up from the floor.
“Sol, man, what’s gotten into you?” Marcel asked, struggling to keep a hold on his best friend.
“I came up here and found these two...” His hard glare swung to Ophelia, but he never finished his sentence.
“It wasn’t what it looked like,” Ophelia defended, comforting the child.
“Really? Because it looked like he was about to kiss you!”
“Then it was what it looked like,” Jonas said with a mocking smile and an indifferent laugh.
“I wasn’t going to let you kiss me!”
“We’ll never know. Now will we?”
Solomon launched at him again, but Marcel tightened his grip and threw his whole body into keeping them apart. “Calm down, man. Calm down. We came here to make peace, remember?”
Finally Solomon stopped struggling and tossed his hands up in surrender. However, his accusing stare found Ophelia again. “And why did you come here? I remember specifically telling you not to.”
His wife’s chin came up in clear defiance, and though she held her tongue, her eyes flashed with the promise that their argument would continue at another time.
“Maybe you all should leave,” Q suggested. “Come back when everyone has cooled off.”
“I think that’s probably best,” Marcel readily agreed, his own anger stabbing both Solomon and Ophelia. “I’ll have Chelsea call and arrange a meeting.”
Minutes later, Marcel successfully ushered his friends out of the office and left the Hinton brothers and Michelle alone to stare at one another.
“Man, I can’t leave you alone for a moment,” Q burst with a hearty laugh.
Jonas rubbed at his neck, a red welt visible against his light complexion, and his busted lip bleeding again. “If you’d waited another minute, you’d be joking with a corpse right about now.”
“That’s usually the penalty for kissing a man’s wife,” Michelle chirped, and turned toward the door. “I’m taking the afternoon off. I need to rest my nerves.”
Jonas knew better than to argue. “See you tomorrow?”
“We’ll see.”
Quentin did a lousy job muffling his amusement. “I take it your new partners aren’t happy with your new business venture?”
“You can say that.” Jonas returned Q’s cocky smile. “Pity. I was hoping that we could all be fast friends.”
Q turned toward one of the empty chairs and eased into it. “So you’re kissing married women now?” His eyes twinkled as he laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of you, bro.”
“You have no idea how much that disturbs me.” Still rubbing his neck, Jonas returned to his desk and reviewed what had just happened. He hadn’t intended to kiss Ophelia. It was just that the urge came out of nowhere.
What did it mean?
Was he still not over her?
He shook his head. Maybe it was curiosity instead of attraction. When she stood before him, his body hadn’t reacted the same way as it did when Toni was in his office.
With Toni, he hadn’t so much as touch the woman and he’d been aroused to the point he wanted to knock everything off his desk and wrap those gorgeous legs of hers around his waist. Suddenly the room’s temperature skyrocketed during his fantasy.
“Well?” Q prompted.
Jonas blinked out of his reverie. “Well, what?”
“Well, was it worth it?” Q laughed.
It was and it wasn’t. It had been eighteen months and he could finally say that he was no longer in love with Ophelia. “Yes,” he said, nodding.
Quentin’s smile spread wider. “You old dog. I knew you had it in you.”
Jonas just laughed. “Where’s Sterling? I thought we all were going out to lunch?”
<
br /> “He should have already been here. He left before I did.” Q glanced at his watch. “We don’t have to wait for him, do we? I’m starving.”
“No. We can just call him on his cell phone on the way to the restaurant. He can just meet us over there.” Jonas stood. “It’s not like Sterling to be late. A woman must have caught his eye.”
“Please.” Q laughed. “Sterling is so straight-laced he wouldn’t know what to do with a beautiful woman if one leaped into his arms.”
Jonas did his best to clean up before he and Q headed out to lunch, but there was only so much one could do with a busted lip, a swollen neck and rumbled suit.
Quentin found the whole thing funny and emphasized how much he wished he could have been a fly on the wall.
“C’mon, man. It isn’t like I’ve seen anyone kick your ass before,” he goaded as they walked through the doors of Houston’s. “Sterling came close that one time, remember? It was right after you stole his girlfriend and took her to the prom.”
Affronted, Jonas’s chest puffed out. “For the last time, I didn’t steal Tracy Mathis from him. He never even told the girl he liked her. She was free game.”
“Uh-huh. You’d ever think that Solomon stealing your girl from right under your nose was the universe’s way of giving back what you put out?”
“Since when did you start believing in karma?”
Q shrugged. “This one chick I was seeing back in um...April...or was it February? Anyway, she was real cool. Really into this spiritual stuff.”
Jonas sighed. “What was her name?”
His baby brother’s face drew a blank, just as he knew it would. “If this karma stuff is true then I don’t want to be anywhere around you when you start getting your comeuppance.”
“What? I spread love and happiness to beautiful lonely women. By my estimates I should be the next Powerball lottery winner.”
Jonas opened his mouth for a rebuttal, but then thought better of it.
The hostess finally arrived at her podium. “How many are in your party?”
“Three. We’re expecting one more,” Jonas told her.
She nodded and reached for menus and silverware. “Follow me.”
The brothers fell in line behind her and navigated through a maze of tables. Suddenly Q’s hand clamped onto Jonas’s shoulder. “Oh, there’s Sterling.”
Jonas stopped and followed Q’s gaze.
“Looks like you were right. He did find a woman. A damn fine one at that.”
Jonas had stopped breathing at the sight of Sterling and Toni hunched, laughing and ogling like a pair of lovebirds.
“Would you like to join them over there?” the hostess asked when she realized that they had stopped following her.
“No,” Q said. “I think we should leave them alone. I haven’t seen Sterling glow like that since Tracy Mathis.” He started to walk away.
However, Jonas marched toward the couple.
“I stand corrected,” Q said. “It looks like we will be joining them.”
Damn right we are.
Enraptured by Toni’s L.A. stories, Sterling didn’t see or hear his brothers’ approached; but when Jonas cleared his throat, he jumped as though he’d been caught with his hands in the cookie jar.
“Jonas. Quentin. What are two doing here?” He frowned and did a double take on his older brother. “What happened to your face?”
“He got his ass kicked for kissing another man’s wife.” Q laughed.
Toni’s brow shot up at the information.
“We were also all supposed to meet for lunch to celebrates Jonas’s new business venture, remember?” Q asked.
While Quentin and Sterling chatted, Jonas’s gaze zeroed in on Toni.
She returned his stare with a benign smile. “So we meet again.”
Sterling and Q stopped talking.
A constant but pleasurable occurrence,” Jonas replied in his velvet baritone.
“You two know each other?” Sterling asked; his gaze ping-ponged between the two.
Toni curled toward Sterling, her smiled turned syrupy. “We’ve met.”
Suspicion crept into Sterling’s handsome features.
“And the plot thickens,” Quentin joked.
“Will you be joining this party?” the confused hostess asked.
“No/Yes,” Sterling and Jonas said in unison.
Q tried to suppress a grin while Toni’s smile slid as wide as Texas.
The hostess remained standing with the menus suspended halfway toward the table.
Jonas pulled out a chair and sat down, all the while avoiding making eye contact with Sterling. “So how do you two know each other,” he asked. “I’d think that would be something that you would have mentioned.”
Quentin hurried to take a seat so he could watch the drama unfold.
“We, uh, just met,” Sterling grudgingly admitted and then turned to Toni. “But, um, you didn’t tell me you knew Jonas, either.”
Toni shrugged their light interrogation off. “You didn’t ask and I don’t see why it’s relevant. We have a business relationship. That’s all.”
Sterling visibly relaxed while Jonas clenched his jaw in irritation at the truth.
“Oh.” Sterling perked. “For a minute there...”
“What?” Jonas challenged, finally finding his brother’s gaze. “You thought it was something personal? Would you’ve backed off if there was?”
Caught off guard, Sterling searched his brother’s face to judge whether he was being serious.
“There’s no need to ask hypothetical questions.” Toni said, rescuing Sterling. “The point is: there isn’t anything between us.” Her hand slid across the table and all three men’s gazes tracked it until it covered Sterling’s. “As far as Sterling and I, I’m open to the possibilities.”
Sterling straightened in his chair as he sandwiched Toni’s hand. “That makes two of us.”
Jonas’s gut clenched. Over my dead body.
Chapter 8
At the end of the day, Toni returned home exhausted and excited at the same time. One thing for sure, it was going to be a lot harder starting her own business than she initially thought. By harder, she meant more expensive. Licenses, office space, furniture and employees were draining her bank account so fast it made her head spin. Which was why when Nora Gibson walked through her office doors last week, she nearly wept with joy.
When she left home this morning, she never dreamed she would flirt with Jonas and then wrap his younger brother around her finger. Though it was a boost to her ego, there was no doubt she was in a tricky situation.
“It really is a small world,” Toni told Maria over the phone after relating her day.
“That or it could be fate,” Maria suggested.
“Fate?” Toni laughed. “Only hopeless romantics believe in such things. “I, on the other hand believe in luck and opportunity. And I’m going to take this opportunity to get to know Sterling Hinton better.”
“I can already tell you he’s not the one for you,” Maria said nonchalantly. “Pulling out your chair, ordering for you and showering you with compliments? He’s too much of a Boy Scout.”
“Does that mean I’ll get a merits badge if I get him in the sack?”
“Hardly,” Maria laughed. “It means you’ll find him dull. Give you a brooding bad boy, however, and your panties practically melt off your body. You’re weird like that. But if you want to send this Jonas Hinton out to California, then I’ll gladly show papí a thing or two.”
“It’s bad form to beg for people’s leftovers,” Toni joked, but reflected over Maria’s words. The problem with having lifelong friends is they had the tendency to know you better than you know yourself. What Maria had so eloquently pointed out was one hundred percent true. Nothing turned Toni on more than a bad boy.
A challenge.
Looking back on that day in the airport, it had been Jonas’s sullen and brooding mood that had caught her eye. Even today, though
he struggled with restraint, Toni was certain there was a bad boy dying to get out.
The question was how to help him do that.
“Are you there—or did you just call me to hold the phone?” Maria said, annoyed.
Toni blinked and retreated from her wandering thoughts. “Yeah, I’m still here. I have a lot on my mind.”
“Uh-huh. I was telling you I was thinking about getting my implants removed.”
Toni rolled her eyes. “Didn’t you just increase their size last year?”
“Yeah, but I’m starting to have some pain and swelling-not to mention half the time my back feels like it’s going to snap in half.”
Toni suppressed the urge to say “I told you so” and instead said, “You should definitely get it checked out. Are you just thinking about going down a size or...?”
“I’m going to get rid of them all together. See how I like being au naturel for a little while.”
“Good for you,” Toni praised, but in Maria’s next breath, she was talking about the latest and great liposuction technique available, and Toni’s mind wandered again. She continued to lend Maria half an ear while she ran the bathwater and removed her makeup.
When the call ended, Toni soaked in a tub with lavender-scented bubbles while her mind replayed the scene in Jonas’s office. However, her imagination altered things a bit and Jonas, instead of suppressing his attraction, had knocked everything from his desk, ripped off her clothes and screwed her brain out.
Feel The Fire (Unforgettable Series) Page 5
