Date Cute Marry Rich

by Alexis Nicole

  Dang! Couldn’t guys come up with anything more original?

  “So, do you come here often?” he asked, as if this were Club Starbucks.

  “Not if I can help it,” I said as the line inched up just a little and the stranger moved, too, right alongside me. Well, since he wasn’t going anywhere, I decided to get my little flirt on, too. So, I said, “What about you? Do you come here often?”

  He said, “I haven’t in the past, but if I would get the chance to see you every day, I’d be here from sunup to sundown.”

  Okay, someone needed to help this brother with his lines. Though I guessed when you looked like him, it didn’t matter what you were saying. Well, he kept on talking until I was the second person in line. That was when he reached into his jacket and pulled out a card. He leaned over onto the counter, jotted something on the back, and then handed the linen card to me.

  “On this card is every telephone number that I have—work, home, and my cell. I want you to use this,” he said, tucking the card into my palm. “I want you to use this soon and use this often.”

  I couldn’t help it now. I laughed. This brother had some lines!

  “Thank you,” was all I said.

  Then the barista said, “Can I help you?”

  But Trent just pointed to me before he spun around again—this time not hitting anyone—and rushed out the door. Without ordering a cup of coffee. After all of that.

  I shook my head and gave my order to the cashier. Standing to the side, waiting for my drink, I glanced at the business card. Just like he said, his name was Trent Hamilton. Real estate investor.

  I thought back to what he was saying on the phone. Maybe he’d been in the middle of a deal.

  Ah, fine and probably rich. Too bad, ’cause it didn’t matter to me. I already had my knight. Noah was all that I wanted or needed.

  I glanced toward the garbage pail, but I thought that would be rude—especially if someone saw Trent give me his card. So, I opened my purse and tucked Mr. Hamilton’s card inside one of the pockets.

  I’d get rid of it later.

  Chapter 13

  Devin

  B. Smith’s was the place to be. Especially tonight, because this was where my girls and I were going to hang out and catch up. Since getting together was my idea, I got to choose the place. And who didn’t love some real good down-home cooking especially in the heart of Harlem?

  I had a feeling this night was going to be full of surprises—especially when we got to the part about what I’d been doing in the past weeks. I couldn’t wait to tell my girls my news. But the first surprise came when I got to the restaurant and I was the first one there.

  What? Ms. Always On Time Chyanne wasn’t sitting here, waiting for me?

  But I let the hostess seat me, anyway. No need to wait—my crew would be right behind me. Even though Skye was always running late, I had a feeling she was going to be on time tonight. I knew she couldn’t wait to hear about Chyanne’s win; Skye was nosy like that. And I wasn’t really talking about my girl . . . not at all, because I was the same way, and nosy people knew nosy people.

  And, anyway, I was right, because I hadn’t even sat down when Skye rushed to the table.

  “Devin!”

  “Skye!” I cried right back at her.

  In the center of that high-class place, we acted a fool, hugging and kissing like one of us was coming home from war.

  Finally, she stepped back. “Boy, look at you!”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, spinning around so that she could get the full effect of one of those new unisex jackets that I’d gotten at Fashionista when I shopped there with Leigh. The sunrise orange color was perfect for my complexion, and I knew I was looking hot. “What do you think?”

  “As fine as wine,” Skye said to me.

  “And you don’t look too bad yourself,” I said, giving her a half compliment, knowing that I was the star of this fashion party. But, my girl did look good wearing one of her Skye originals.

  But the moment we sat down, Chyanne bounced over to our table, and we were back on our feet, doing that hug fest thing all over again. When we finally stepped back, I held Chyanne at arm’s length and announced, “Here is the lady of the hour!”

  The people at other tables looked at us; some glared at us. Not that we cared. We didn’t mind being young and dumb when it came to this sort of thing. We weren’t into that whole image thing yet . . . at least not when we were out just hanging.

  We must’ve stood there hugging and laughing for fifteen minutes before we sat down. I snapped my fingers, and the waiter came over to take our orders of fried chicken, fried catfish, and pork chops with a bunch of sides . . . though, he didn’t move fast enough for me. I couldn’t wait for us to get our talk on.

  “Okay,” I said, taking charge once the waiter went away. “So, Chyanne, you go first, because this is really your party.”

  Skye and I leaned forward on the table, and Chyanne told us everything that she’d been going through over the past few weeks. From how she had worked the case to how she had won the case. It all sounded pretty exciting to me, and as I sat there, I realized that Chyanne was going to be an important lawyer, probably a real New York City mover and shaker, in a couple of years. And it was a good thing that I had her number sitting right up in my iPhone.

  “So, did you celebrate with Malcolm last night?” Skye asked right after the waiter sat all of that food down on the table.

  We were all smiles, ready to get our grub on, but for some reason, all the excitement that had been in Chyanne’s eyes faded when Skye asked that question.

  Chyanne picked up her fork and shrugged a little. “We didn’t have a chance to go out last night.”

  “He didn’t take you out to celebrate?” I asked. What was that about?

  “Well . . . he wanted to but, you know, I wanted to celebrate with my team. And afterward, it was too late for us to get together to do anything.”

  “Oh,” Skye said as she broke off a piece of catfish. “That makes sense.”

  I’m glad it made sense to her, because it didn’t make a bit of sense to me. If that was her man and if they were so close, why wasn’t he number one? Why did her team come first?

  Chyanne said, “But he was real excited and we’re going to celebrate tomorrow.” Then she took a sip of her water, as if that was a good enough reason for her to stop talking about her guy.

  Hmm. Umm. Something was going on with our girl, and now I was even more curious about this Mr. Malcolm. Skye and I had yet to meet him, even though he and Chyanne had been hot and heavy for close to a year. I was going to have to fix that. We needed to check out this Mr. Malcolm to make sure that he was treating our girl right.

  But, I wasn’t going to bring that up right now. I didn’t want anything to spoil the festivities.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, getting all excited again. “Now, you go, Ms. Skye.” I wanted my news to be the finale! “I remember that tall glass of water you were drooling over at the art show. As a matter of fact, don’t you owe me something?”

  “For what?”

  I pointed my fork at her. “For introducing you to your new boo.”

  “You didn’t introduce me. You weren’t anywhere around when I met him.”

  I waved my hand in the air. “I cannot stand people who are unappreciative.” Then I turned to Chyanne, as if Skye wasn’t even at the table. “She is so wrong. If I hadn’t bugged Leigh for the tickets, then bugged her to go with me, Skye would have never met that man.”

  “Okay.” Skye laughed. “You’re right. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be . . . on the verge of in love!”

  “The verge of in love?” Chyanne and I squealed together.

  Chyanne said, “Dang! I didn’t know it was that serious. That was fast!”

  Skye nodded. “Yeah, fast, but right, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know,” Chyanne said.

  “I really like Noah.” Skye spoke with a sincerity in her voice that I�
��d never heard from her before.

  I looked at Skye and then at Chyanne. Oh, my! My girls were doing it—in the boardroom and the bedroom! They were taking New York City by storm.

  And, I was about to join them in this mix!

  I waited for the waiter to clear the table before I sat back in my chair and said, “So, is anyone going to ask me if I have any news?”

  Chyanne and Skye looked at me as if I had the most boring life.

  “What? You got something to tell us about the shop?” Skye asked.

  Now see? If she wasn’t my girl, I would’ve smacked her, minimizing my life like that. Though how could I really be mad? I’d told my girls, I’d told everyone that coming to New York was going to be all about work for me. I was using my twenties to build my career. After I got settled and had stacked up some serious paper, then I could go out and have fun.

  But fate had changed all that.

  Now Mr. Dark and Lovely was all up in my life.

  “Well . . . I do have some news,” I said. I took my time filling them in on Mr. An-to-n-i-o! By the time I finished, I had them sweating, too!

  “Get out of here!” Chyanne said. “So, you really like . . . like this guy?”

  “Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Oh, yes!”

  Skye and Chyanne cracked up, but I didn’t know why. I was telling the truth.

  “Would you look at the three of us?” Skye said. She reached her hands forward, grabbing my hand on her left and Chyanne’s on her right. “The three of us are living in New York. We’re living our dreams—of careers and love. This is amazing.”

  “Yeah, amazing,” Chyanne agreed.

  All I could do was nod my head, ’cause truly I wanted to cry. This was the life. And I had a feeling that everything was just going to get better and better for all of us from this point on.

  Chapter 14

  Chyanne

  I stared at the stack of papers on my desk, and I knew for sure that my world was out of whack. It felt as if the planet had tilted and there were seven full moons all out at once.

  I’d felt this way for the past two weeks, since I’d won the Ferguson case. I don’t know why, but I’d thought that after that big win, my life would be easy, all wonderful. But it was far from that.

  It had started right here at work. The congratulations were still coming, but I’d been given another case right away. I wasn’t complaining—I certainly wanted to show the partners that my winning had not been a fluke. I just didn’t expect to get another heavy case so soon.

  This time my team included six other attorneys—without Nicole—and I wasn’t up against an individual. I was defending our client, Mastex, from trademark infringement against Master Pro, a much larger corporation. Just thinking about what I was facing had my stomach doing hourly somersaults.

  And this time Malcolm wasn’t here to help me. Not that I expected him to hold my hand on every case. But I did expect him to be there for me personally, and since I’d won the Ferguson case, it didn’t seem like Malcolm was here at all, even though it hadn’t started out that way.

  The night after I’d had dinner with Skye and Devin, Malcolm had shown up at my apartment and told me to grab my purse.

  “Where are we going?” I’d asked him.

  “On an adventure.”

  Before we even stepped outside of my building, I saw the sleek limousine parked in front. Malcolm helped me inside, and once the driver took off, I asked my man once again where we were going.

  “It’s a surprise,” he said as he took my hand. “A celebration.”

  I couldn’t imagine which restaurant he was taking me to, and once the car crossed over the Triborough Bridge, I was wondering even more. But my heart started bumping hard against my chest when the car edged into LaGuardia Airport.

  “You have to tell me now,” I squealed.

  Malcolm played like he didn’t hear me before he whisked me into the terminal. It wasn’t until we were at the counter that I found out we were going to Florida.

  “Miami?” I said, shocked. “For dinner?”

  He shook his head. “South Beach. For the weekend.”

  “But . . . but . . . but . . . I don’t have any clothes.”

  He grinned. “Exactly. And you won’t need any.”

  OMG! This was why I loved this man.

  The whirlwind continued—from our first-class seats to the W Hotel with our penthouse view of the Atlantic Ocean. The hotel was both beautiful and trendy, and after checking in way after midnight, I still had more than enough energy to make love all night long to the man who owned my heart.

  The next morning we had breakfast in bed, then just relaxed on the most luxurious Egyptian cotton sheets I’d ever felt against my skin. I never wanted to get up—especially since I didn’t have any clothes. But at noon a woman arrived with a trunk load of outfits.

  “Choose anything, everything you want,” Malcolm told me.

  It was Christmas in June for this Southern belle.

  The weekend was the most fabulous two days of my life. It was the first time ever that I’d got to spend not only an entire night, but two nights, with the man I loved.

  And the wonder continued until Monday morning, when we got up to catch our early flight back to New York.

  We were in the shower when Malcolm said, “About the firm’s gala. I don’t think you should go.”

  I stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around myself. “Why? You really don’t think we can handle this?”

  He climbed out of the shower right behind me. “No.”

  Inside the bedroom, as we dressed, I kept silent. But once we were in the cab, heading to the airport, I broached the subject again.

  “Malcolm, I know the risk of our relationship, but I know how to behave. I know how to handle this. I’ve done a great job in the office. No one has any clue.”

  “But this is different. We’ll be together for several hours in front of some pretty sharp people who are paid a lot of money to be perceptive.” He took my hand and kissed my fingers. “And you and I have this chemistry,” he added, as if those words would make what he was saying sound better. “We have a chemistry that people are going to see. We just can’t help it. I just don’t think you should go.”

  “But that invitation is my reward for what I did on the Ferguson case.”

  “Exactly! The reward is the invitation—not actually attending the gala.”

  When the cab rolled to a stop in front of the airline terminal, Malcolm added, “Look, you just don’t need to go. Period.” He said it as if it was a demand. As if the subject was closed.

  And that was the end of the most perfect weekend of my life.

  I was so upset by it all that the moment we landed and Malcolm put me in a cab to go back to my place to get ready for work, I called Skye.

  “This better be good,” Skye had said. I could tell that she was still asleep. She never got up before eight.

  “Hey, it’s me,” I said, and then, without another pause, I told her about my whole weekend.

  “Girl, get out,” she said. “The W? In South Beach? When am I going to meet this man and shake his hand?” Skye laughed.

  “But wait,” I said, not feeling anywhere as good as she did. “There’s more.” I told her about the invitation to the gala and how Malcolm didn’t want me to go now. “He is so sure that one of the other partners is going to figure out that he’s sleeping with one of his junior associates and—”

  “Hold up! Hold up! Hold up!”

  I frowned, wondering what had Skye all wound up. And then my eyes got big. Oh, no! I was so caught up that I’d told Skye what I had never revealed to her or Devin—that Malcolm was my boss.

  “He’s one of the partners? Where you work? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Yeah,” I said, dragging the word out because I needed some time to figure out what I was going to say now. But what was the point? The secret was out, and I needed my girl to help me figure this whole gala thing out.

>   “So, that’s why he doesn’t want you to go? Because he’s one of the partners?”

  “Yeah. Because he’s one of the partners and no one knows about us. No one can know about us, and he thinks if people see us there together, they’ll figure it out.” I sighed. “And, it’s not like I want either of us to lose our job.”

  “Well, if he’s one of the partners, that’s not going to happen. Neither one of you is going to lose your job. And you can trust and believe, this is not the first time two people in the firm have hooked up. No!”

  The way she said that, I could almost see Skye shaking her head.

  She said, “You should go.”

  “You think so?”

  “Definitely. The gala will be a great time and place for you to prove to Malcolm that you can handle it. That you can handle any situation. And once he sees that, Chy, it will bring the two of you closer together.”

  It was the part about Malcolm and me getting closer that had my attention. That was what I wanted. And what Skye said made a lot of sense.

  I’d been thinking about Skye’s words for the past two weeks. And there’d been so many times when I’d wanted to talk to Malcolm about it . . . just one more time. But he’d been so unavailable. I knew, of course, he was working on one of the biggest cases of his life, but even at night he didn’t answer his phone. And he didn’t call me.

  I saw him a few times in the hall, but there was never a moment to sneak a kiss or even a hug. Something was wrong and I had to do something about it.

  The ringing phone startled me out of my thoughts.

  “Hey, girl,” Skye said once I answered. “Have you gotten your gown for the gala yet?”

  Even though she couldn’t see me, I shook my head. “No. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Malcolm again.”

  “Don’t talk to him. Surprise him.”

  “I don’t know.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that. I mean, I wasn’t into playing any games.

  Skye said, “Look, just bringing it up again will only stress both of you out. Malcolm has to see that not only can you handle this, but that you’re serious about your relationship.” When I didn’t say anything, Skye sighed. “It’s not like you’re crashing a party or something. You were invited. And what will the other partners say if you don’t go?”