Clarence kept eyeing his friend warily, constantly warning her not to be her own worst enemy. Still there were parts of her that were panicking. She doubted her ability to be able to travel this road to its natural conclusion. And there was no doubt what that conclusion was. Every night, Lucius whispered words of love and now those same words were seeping into their daily phone conversations. The situation both thrilled and terrified her.
What was so wonderful about Lucius was that he seemed to sense her inability to say the words back, even though she went out of her way to make sure that she showed him how she felt every time they fell into each other’s arms. But she couldn’t get herself to say the words. Saying them would change everything.
She just wasn’t ready for that.
At precisely five o’clock, Maggie looked up from her desk to see Lucius calling it a night. “I don’t know what’s come over you these past couple of months, but I have to admit, I like it.”
“Because when I work forty hours that means you do, too?” he asked.
“There is that,” she admitted. “Plus, it gives me a complete thrill to know that I was right. A woman is responsible for all of this.”
“Only if by woman you mean a certain eight-year-old,” Lucius countered, grinning.
“Nuh-uh.” Maggie waved a long manicured nail at him. “My husband and I went to the movies yesterday and you’ll never guess who we saw sitting just a couple of rows in front of us.”
Lucius coughed and pretended to clear his throat.
“Ringing any bells?” she taunted.
“You shouldn’t be spying on your boss,” he warned playfully and then headed to the elevator bay.
“For what it’s worth,” she called after him, “I think she’s beautiful.”
It was a superficial comment, but it still caused Lucius’s chest to expand with pride. “Yeah,” he acknowledged, “she is.”
Lucius picked up his chattering daughter at precisely 5:30 p.m. from a private day care center. While buckled in the backseat, Ruby decided it was her duty to reeducate her father on his multiplication time tables by using her huge flash cards. When they were getting ready to pass by the Shane Diamond Company, Lucius’s foot eased up off of the accelerator. “Baby, do you mind if we take a little detour?”
“Okay,” she said absently as she continued to flip through her cards.
After parking and walking hand in hand with his daughter into the large building, Lucius’s heart began to flutter.
“Can I help you, sir?” an attractive saleswoman inquired.
Lucius drew in a deep breath. “I’m looking for the perfect engagement ring.”
Ruby’s head jerked up at her father. “Daddy, are we going to propose to Beverly?”
A large smiled spread across Lucius’s face. “Yes, we are, baby. Yes, we are.”
Beverly was torn.
She’d told herself that she was going to spend some quiet time alone at home. Give her the chance to step back and clear her mind. But after she’d closed the shop, she started wondering what Ruby and Lucius would be doing that night. So when Lucius called to see if she’d like to join them for dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steak House for dinner, she accepted the invitation without missing a beat.
After hanging up, Beverly chastised herself for caving so easily. She wanted her space but she couldn’t stay away. What sense did that make?
“That’s what love does to you,” Clarence said when she explained the situation to him. “Have you thinking you’re coming when you’re going. You should know this. You’ve been here before.”
That was the wrong thing to say because she had been here before—though it was a little different, she reasoned. David Clark was never as caring and giving as Lucius. Everything was about supporting him and encouraging him with his schooling and then career. And when…
“You’re doing it again,” Clarence warned.
She looked up. “What?”
“You’re thinking about things…people you couldn’t change.”
She shrugged and started to deny it, but what was the use? Clarence knew her better than anyone. He could smell B.S. a mile away.
“Why can’t you just admit that you love him?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?” he inquired.
“Exactly.”
Clarence rolled his eyes and chuckled. “Face it, girl. You can’t run from love the rest of your life. The past is the past and it’s time for you to bury it and move on.”
Beverly heard what he was saying and she waited for his message to sink in, but the bottom line still remained: she was scared.
“How’s my tie?” Lucius asked his daughter after nervously tying and retying the damn thing about a thousand times.
“Here, let me help.” Ruby hopped up onto the edge of his bed and told him to kneel down so she could wiggle his tie around. “There,” she announced. “That’s better.”
Lucius turned toward the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door and was stunned that indeed his tie was now ramrod-straight. “Weeelll, thanks, sweetheart.” He delivered a quick peck against her cheek. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck, Daddy!”
He walked downstairs and thanked Maggie for agreeing to babysit Ruby on such short notice.
“Not a problem. It gives my husband ample opportunity to try to find a good place to stash my Christmas gift.” She shrugged. “It won’t do him any good. I’m a hound dog when it comes to sniffing out gifts.”
“Now why don’t I have any trouble believing that?”
They laughed and before Lucius walked out of the door, he gave Ruby explicit directions to be a good girl and to mind Maggie while he was gone. After another kiss goodnight, he was out the door, the weight of the ring heavy in his pocket and on his mind.
Beverly was glad that she’d insisted on meeting Lucius at the restaurant instead of having him pick her up. At least she would have one last out. Of course if Lucius started playing footsies or looked at her a certain way, she could still end up at his place scratching up his back and climbing the walls. When it came to Lucius she was a sex addict.
When she entered the glass doors of Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Lucius was already there standing near the hostess stand. When he turned and flashed his beautiful smile at her, her knees weakened and her heart fluttered. I’m fighting a losing battle with this man.
He walked over to her and she slid easily into his arms. “Hey, baby. You look beautiful.”
“Thank you.” She glanced around. “Where’s Ruby?”
“Home with a babysitter. It’s just you and me tonight. I hope you don’t mind.”
Beverly smiled. “I guess I’ll just have to suffer through.”
“Mr. Gray, your table is waiting,” the hostess informed him.
Lucius turned while still holding Beverly on his arm. “Shall we?”
“We shall.” She allowed him to escort her to their waiting table, smiled when he held out her chair and blushed when he kissed her cheek before walking to his own chair. It was then that she noticed there was something different about his demeanor, something about the way he smiled at her.
Suddenly it felt like a vat of butterflies had broken from their cocoons and started fluttering like mad in the pit of her stomach. Without explanation her palms started to itch and she could hardly sit still in her seat.
Lucius either ignored or didn’t notice her fidgeting, but he smiled at their waiter when he appeared with the menus and ran through the night’s special.
Beverly hardly heard a word that was said; she just wanted a glass of wine to try to settle her nerves.
“Are you all right?” Lucius asked.
She glanced up and noticed that he and the waiter were staring at her expectantly. “Oh, yes. I was just thinking about all those choices,” she lied. Glancing down at the menu, she just randomly picked an entrée number and then smiled tightly wh
en she handed the menu back over to his waiting hand.
Lucius cocked a brow at her. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Fine,” she squeaked and then coughed to clear the growing lump from her throat. Thank God their bottle of wine arrived. She watched almost impatiently as the waiter showed the label to both her and Lucius before uncorking and pouring the damn thing. At the first taste of the heady liquid, she sighed and nearly melted with relief.
Lucius smiled, obviously thinking whatever was troubling her was now over with. “Better?”
“Much.” She took another long gulp and drained the rest of her glass.
“You must have been thirsty,” he joked.
“Something like that.” Beverly averted her eyes. She still had the sneaking suspicion that Lucius was up to something tonight—and she feared that she knew what it was. Please, God, let me be wrong.
Lucius didn’t know what to make of Beverly’s behavior. It was actually setting him on edge, causing him to reevaluate what he wanted to do tonight. First, she had insisted on driving herself to the restaurant and now she seemed to be going out of her way not to meet his gaze. It all made for an uncomfortable start to what he wanted to be a romantic evening.
By the time their meals were delivered to the table, they had already suffered through strained bouts of silence, stiff smiles and sporadic, awkward and choppy conversations.
“Hmmm. This is good,” Beverly said.
“Yeah. This place serves the best steaks in town,” he offered and then they fell silent again.
It wasn’t until Beverly started in on her third glass of wine that she truly began to loosen up and started relating a few funny incidents that had happened in her shop that day. Lucius listened intently, finding her work fascinating, mainly because it was so different from his own profession. He even challenged her by asking whether she’d ever thought about stepping outside of the box and starting her own label.
Beverly loved the fact that Lucius was so interested in her work. It was just another example, in a long list of examples, of how different he was from her ex-husband. Why can’t you stop fighting this? she asked herself while battling an unexplainable rush of tears. As much as she had shared with him in such a short amount of time, there was still a lot she hadn’t—especially the part that haunted her soul.
“Let’s make a toast,” Lucius said, suddenly lifting his wineglass.
Beverly forced on a smile and followed suit.
“To the past two months. May they only be the beginning to something wonderful.”
Was tonight their two-month anniversary? Beverly’s hand started to tremble, but she clinked her glass to his in solidarity and added, “Hear, hear.”
The rest of their dinner passed by in a blur. Lucius never quite felt the right moment had approached for him to whip out the diamond ring in his pocket. Another idea popped into his mind—something that would perhaps help to relax Beverly. “You know what’s just a couple of blocks from here?”
Beverly’s gaze shifted up to his in curiosity.
“The downtown Hilton,” he supplied. “The place where we met just two months ago tonight.” He leaned forward and carefully placed his elbows on the white linen tablecloth. “What do you say that we revisit where the magic started?”
A sparkle finally glittered in Beverly’s eyes. The idea definitely had appeal.
“Remember how big and soft their beds were?”
Beverly’s brows hiked as she gently bit her lower lip.
He smiled, his voice dropping even lower. “Remember how I had you bend over and grab your ankles?”
She nodded, squirmed in her chair.
“Maybe this time I’ll tie you up,” he suggested slyly.
From the corner of Beverly’s eyes, she saw their server across the way. She literally jumped up from her seat and yelled, “Check, please.”
As luck would have it, Lucius and Beverly were able to check into the same room number at the Hilton in downtown Atlanta. And as before, they stumbled into the room pulling and tugging at each other’s clothes as if the fate of the world depended on them merging as fast as possible. Yet, the moment Lucius entered her, it seemed as if everything in the universe instantly went into slow motion. It wasn’t about who could outfreak the other by bending and twisting in new and innovative ways, but about making love and touching each other’s souls.
Lucius’s long and deep strokes had tears surfacing and leaking from Beverly’s eyes as if she had truly reached the heavens. What is he doing to me? Beverly gasped when Lucius’s hips dipped and rotated in a hypnotic groove.
“I want to make love like this with you forever,” he whispered against her ear. “I want to feel you every morning and taste you just like this every night.” Lucius’s lips brushed against her shoulders. “Wouldn’t you like that?”
Beverly sighed and moaned.
“Hmmm?” His kisses moved to her sensitive neck. “Don’t you know how much I’ve fallen for you, baby? You know how much I love holding you like this. Look at you. You like how I make you feel, don’t you?”
“Aaaah,” Beverly moaned.
Lucius’s strokes slowed even further, causing her to claw impatiently at his back. “You don’t love me, Beverly? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“N—no.”
As a reward, his hips returned to their previous rhythm. “Do you love me?”
She bit her lips, trying to prevent the truth from spilling.
“I want to hear you say it,” he urged. “I know you do. I can feel it.” He captured her lips in a long, deep kiss, determined to coax her confession out of her. When he finally came up for air, he asked, “Do you feel it, Beverly?”
A familiar tremble started in her thighs and moved up to the tip of her clit and lower belly. Her breathing became choppy, her defenses lowered.
Lucius dipped his head low, licked at her breasts. “Feel that, Beverly?”
“Y—yes.”
His toes tingled. “Damn, I love you, woman.” He pulled her legs up and hung them over his shoulders so he could get as deep as he possibly could.
As bliss unfolded from every pore of Beverly’s body, she chanted Lucius’s name and finally told him what he’d been longing to hear. “I love you, baby.”
In what was becoming a habit, after Beverly’s third orgasm, she curled up to Lucius and fell asleep. Unfazed, Lucius just smiled and pressed a kiss against her forehead and then gently climbed out of bed and tiptoed to his jacket, which was lying with the rest his clothes on the floor.
When he crept back to the bed, he held in his hand the diamond ring he’d hoped to have given her during dinner. He carefully climbed back into bed, opened the jeweler’s burgundy velvet box and plucked out the two-carat, princess-cut diamond ring and prayed like he’d never prayed before that he’d guessed the right size. Quietly, he reached for her right hand, lifted it and slid the platinum band up her ring finger.
Perfect.
Lucius kissed her temple again and curled up against her. He couldn’t wait until she woke up and saw the diamond twinkling on her finger. With one more kiss to the back of her head, he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
When he woke up, the bed was empty, but the engagement ring sat gleaming on the pillow next to him. Stunned and heartbroken, he reached for it and belatedly noticed a folded note. Lucius opened it and read the one word scrawled across it. Sorry.
Chapter 19
“You did what?” Clarence asked, cupping his ear toward her. “I know I didn’t hear you right.”
Beverly huffed and rolled her eyes. “I knew that I shouldn’t have told you.” She stood from her desk and marched out of her office, but she knew good and damn well that it was going to take more than that to get her best friend off her back once she fed him a juicy story.
“Hold up, Bev. Why did you break up with Lucius? You’re crazy about the guy.”
At the front cash register, Leslie tried to pretend that she wa
sn’t listening to her boss’s private conversation.
“C’mon, Clarence. You know why. I promised myself years ago that I didn’t want to marry again. And what happened to his promise about a no-strings-attached relationship?” Beverly tossed her hands up in the air. “There are so many strings I feel like I’m choking.”
“You don’t think that you’re exaggerating a bit?”
“No.” She wiped at a tear before anyone could see it fall. “And mighty funny Lucius suddenly wants to get married just weeks after he becomes a full-time single father.”
“What are you saying?”
Beverly shrugged and said words she didn’t believe. “I’m just wondering whether he’s really looking for a wife or a new mother for his eight-year-old daughter.”
Clarence shoved a hand against his hip. “I ought to wash your mouth out with soap for that.”
“What?” she asked defensively. “It’s a legitimate question.”
“It would be if I didn’t see how that man had to practically beg you to go out with him before his ex-wife abandoned her daughter with him. You had that boy whipped from day one and you know it. All this other stuff you’re saying is extraneous B.S. and you know it.” He turned abruptly toward Leslie. “Ain’t I right, girl?”
“Well, if you ask me—”
“I’m not asking you,” Beverly snapped. “Get back to work.”
Clarence jumped to Leslie’s defense. “Hey, don’t take out all your frustrations on Leslie. You’re wrong and you know you’re wrong.”
“Fine. Maybe I’m just scared then,” she said, laying it all out on the line. “What’s wrong with that? This whole thing is going at warp speed. A shoe has to drop sooner or later.”
“So why not throw your shoe in first?”
“Stop pretending that you don’t know what I’m talking about. I can’t be a wife again. I can’t be that precious little girl’s…mother.” She choked over that last word. “I just can’t.”
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