“Uncle King!” she gurgled softly and laughed, yanking at her playmate’s sweater to point at Kingsley. “Uncle,” she said again.
Adah stood up then, her eyes wide, a hand going to her waist. At first she stared at Kingsley like she didn’t recognize him. Then he remembered he was wearing a suit, a bespoke Tom Ford that was just one of many in his closet and part of his CEO uniform. It was a very different outfit from the one he’d worn the last time they’d seen each other. Granted, he’d been naked at the time.
Before he reached Yasmine, Adah rushed over to him, careful of the children scattered like so many flower petals around her feet. She gripped his arm, and he felt her touch through every layer of cloth, smelled the unforgettable sweetness of her.
“What are you doing here?”
Before Kingsley could answer, Adah was dragging him away from Yasmine and toward the door he’d stepped through with Mariah moments before. Mariah, though she frowned in confusion, immediately stepped out onto the yard to take up watch where Adah had been. Kingsley took a moment to admire how efficient the place was run before he allowed himself to be propelled through the door, down the hallway with a click of Adah’s heels and into an office.
“What are you doing here?” she asked again. “You can’t be here.”
Away from the children, her mask of control dropped away. She dropped his arm and stepped all the way across the room and behind her desk as soon as they were behind the closed door together.
About to explain about his niece and the reason he was at the day care, Kingsley frowned. “Why can’t I be here?”
“The children...” she stuttered. “This is my life. I left you behind in Aruba.” She stood up even straighter, her palms pressed against her belly while light from the wall of windows behind her haloed her rigid figure. “Just like you left me that morning.”
Kingsley locked his muscles to hold off the tremors, a reaction to her words, he could feel gathering. This wasn’t going to be an easy discussion. Not about him leaving her in bed that last morning, and definitely not about the reason he was in Atlanta searching for her. And though he’d put so much energy into finding her and trying to explain, now he was simply tongue-tied and didn’t know what to say to make her listen to him.
“I’m sorry.” That was a decent start.
But she didn’t seem impressed. “That’s what you came here for? That could have been an email. That could have been something you said to your priest and kept it moving.”
He winced. It wasn’t like he didn’t deserve her scorn, though. “I was an idiot,” he said. “I made some assumptions and acted on them without even talking with you.” He was too embarrassed to say what those assumptions were. But her face said he didn’t have to. His cowardly behavior that morning said plainly what he’d been afraid of.
“I wasn’t ready to be anyone’s fiancé.” He said the words out loud anyway, just to get his stupidity out there. “That’s what I thought that morning. That’s why I ran.”
Just like Kingsley thought, he wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t thought of herself. “And now you’re here, do you still think that?” Adah shifted, arms crossing over her chest, her feet planted wide.
Before he could answer, a knock sounded on the door. Adah looked toward it and raised her voice.
“Yes?”
“It’s getting late, Adah. Perhaps Mr. Diallo needs to make an appointment to speak with you at another time when it’s not so close to dismissal.” It was Mariah on the other side of the door, as levelheaded as Kingsley expected her to be, brief though their acquaintance had been.
“We’ll only be a few more moments, Mariah. I promise not to let him kidnap any of the children on his way out.”
The dead silence from the other side of the door gave Kingsley an idea just how funny Mariah thought that comment was.
“I only came to take one child with me,” he said raising his voice so the woman on the other side of the door could hear him. “I don’t want Mariah to gut me based on your bad jokes.”
“I’ll tell Yasmine you’ll be out here shortly,” Mariah called back to him the same moment Adah drew a sharp breath and slapped her palms down on the desk as if to brace herself against a blow. The fading sound of Mariah’s practical shoes against the floor dominated the brief silence.
“You have a child here?” Adah asked softly, her tone making it clear that she’d not only felt betrayed by him in Aruba, but expected the same treatment from him here, as well.
“My niece is here,” he rushed to explain. “Yasmine Diallo.”
“Oh.” Her face softened just the tiniest bit. The hydraulic chair behind the desk hissed softly as she sat down. “She’s beautiful.”
“Yes, she is. Beautiful babies do tend to run in our family.”
“Not to boast or anything?” Adah raised her brows in question and leaned back in the chair. She looked, suddenly, exhausted. Outside when he’d first seen her, she’d looked even better than the last time they were together. Now that they were away from the chaos of the children and the distractions of other people, he saw the signs of skillfully applied makeup, a slight puffiness around her eyes. She looked stressed.
“How is your mother?” he asked. “Did she let you out of the agreement without any trouble?”
“She did, actually.” A faint smile touched her face. “It was all so much easier than I thought. It hasn’t taken her long to come to terms with my decision. She’s almost happier now.”
“Good.”
Silence, broken only by the faint hum of the air conditioner, closed in on them. The wall of windows behind her looked out onto the backyard with the children, but the glass was visibly tinted, allowing light in, but not unwelcome eyes.
Kingsley felt awkward looming above Adah in her own office. He sat in the chair across from her desk and shifted to be as comfortable as he could in an uncomfortable situation. “Do you regret it?” he asked her.
“Regret what?”
“Any of it.”
Adah sighed again and dipped her head to stare thoughtfully at the neatly arranged surface of her desk while Kingsley watched her every move. His belly clenched tight, he prepared himself for her to say she regretted meeting him and hated the night they spent together.
She lifted her head and met his gaze. “No. I don’t.”
If Kingsley had any doubts he was doing the right thing by chasing Adah to the other side of her world, they all vanished with that one look. He’d pursued her, seduced her from her promises to another man, then run off like a coward and a fool once she ended up in his bed. Still, she didn’t hate him.
Here, in her everyday life, she was as lovely as she’d been under the Aruban moonlight. Seductively sweet with her plush mouth and angular cheeks. Compelling from him the desire to make her smile, make her respond to him, make her stay. This wasn’t just about vacation sex. On the island, it had actually scared him how much he felt for her. He wasn’t scared anymore.
“Will you have dinner with me tonight?”
The mask of indifference fell back over her face, and she stiffened. “Why?”
“Because I’ve missed you.” It felt freeing to say the words.
“How can you miss someone you never had?” she asked.
“I never had you, but I shared your company, and I thought we enjoyed each other.”
She shook her head, the mask slipping when she bit the corner of her mouth.
Something terrible suddenly occurred to him, and he sat up in the chair. “Are you seeing someone?”
“No!” She looked like he’d just accused her of murder. “You came into this place by complete happenstance. You didn’t know I work here. I just... I don’t want you to ask me out because you think it’s what I want. I’m not going to force you to pretend you want to still fool a
round with me just because the world is a small place.” Adah drew a breath, looking everywhere but at Kingsley’s face. “We slept together, and it’s really no big deal.”
“It is a big deal to me,” he said, very carefully weighing his next words. “Sure, I stumbled into you here by pure dumb luck, but I’ve been searching all over the place. Online, off-line, everything. I searched so much that it felt like you were trying to hide from me.”
“I...” Her eyes flickered wide in surprise as she seemed to take in what he just said. “I’m not into the social media thing and the business is listed as an LLC.”
“That explains it. I guess I’ll have to get to know you properly the old-fashioned way.”
“The ‘old-fashioned way’?” she asked softly. “That’s a little too late for us—don’t you think?”
The memory of their night together flared abruptly to life in Kingsley and he had to clench every muscle in his body before his reaction became too obvious. He cleared his throat.
“Nothing is too late for us,” he said. “Have dinner with me and we can start over, do things the right way.” He paused, wanting desperately for her to say yes. But he didn’t want to look too eager either. “So...is that a yes?”
She breathed a gentle laugh. “Okay.”
“Tonight?”
Adah laughed again. “Tonight.”
“Seven o’clock?”
“Let’s do eight instead,” she said. “I have a few things to take care of first.”
She gave him her home address, and he tried to play it cool as he typed it into his phone. But he was pretty sure she saw his hands trembling. After he’d gathered Yasmine in the car seat and taken her to Wolfe and Nichelle’s rented condo, amused and fed her until they showed up nearly two hours later, he realized he didn’t want to wait until dinnertime to see Adah again. It was at least another two hours away. He’d searched for her for nearly three weeks. Another two hours was too long for him to wait.
So as soon as Wolfe and Nichelle were settled in with their daughter, he left and went back to the day care. When he got there, only two cars waited in the parking lot. He pressed the buzzer on the porch’s intercom system and waited. And waited. He was about to turn away and head back to his car when the intercom crackled to life. Her voice sounded through the electronic box and he smiled in relief.
“You know we’re closed.” But there was warmth in her words.
“Yes, but I figured you’d make an exception for me.”
“You’re very cocky,” she said as the door released with a soft electronic chime.
“You would know,” he said the last under his breath, and he slipped through the door, making sure it closed and locked firmly behind him.
Without bothering to ask where she was, he followed his memory to her office where he found her seated behind her desk and watching the door expectantly.
“I wasn’t going to cancel on you tonight,” she said.
“I know.” He closed her door and leaned back against it, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t want to wait,” he said.
Adah looked at her watch. “Dinner is less than two hours from now. Are you that impatient?” But there was a flare of something in her eyes, something that matched the answering fire low in his belly.
“Yes, I am.” He finally gave up his nonchalant pose by the door and crossed to her desk while she watched him with a fraction of the hunger he felt building inside him.
“I really did look for you everywhere,” he said. “I bribed people to tell me where you lived. I think I even called in a favor from an old girlfriend who works at the DMV. Nobody would tell me anything about you.”
He leaned on her desk, his palms flat on its surface in a mirror of the pose she had taken when facing him earlier that day. The desk felt cool under his hands, his own body well on its way toward overheating.
“Whatever you want to know, all you have to do is ask me.” She leaned back in her chair and smiled serenely up at him.
“Will you marry me?” The words tumbled up out of his hot throat.
“What?” Her serenity disappeared. She shoved back from the desk with the explosion of sound, looking at him like he was crazy. Maybe he was crazy.
Kingsley swallowed convulsively, shocked at himself. He wasn’t an impulsive man. Not by any means, but this... He opened his mouth to take the words back but immediately realized he didn’t want to.
It wasn’t his fear of Adah asking too much that had made him run; it was because he wanted her so immediately and completely in his life that it frightened him. His own desires, raw and unfamiliar, for one woman and one woman alone had made him question everything. From fear of the unrelenting firing squad of those questions, he’d simply pulled on his running shoes and fled like his very life depended on it.
He didn’t need to run anymore.
“Will you marry me, Adah Palmer-Mitchell? I want you in my life. I want to snorkel with you and make love with you all night, then breakfast in the morning. I want to share everything with you. Will you have me?”
“I...I don’t know. This is a little soon, isn’t it?” She stared at him, her eyelashes fluttering in agitation.
Was it too soon to know whether or not you wanted to spend the rest of your life with someone who made your pulse race, your heart soar and your moods light? Kingsley knew at some point, it could be too late, and he didn’t want that.
He knew he was acting impulsively, but he also knew he was doing the right thing. With her wide eyes firmly on him, Adah stood up from behind the desk, a slow rising to her feet that revealed to him again the sweetly slender form, her hips clad in the gray skirt still somehow managing to be alluring despite its conservative shade. She watched him as if she expected him to flinch back and run like a startled animal.
“Ask me again.” She rounded the desk, her footsteps soundless on the thin carpet.
He asked without hesitation.
“Okay.” She reached his side of the desk, her scent of ginger and sugar undoing him breath by breath. “If you’re still in Atlanta in the morning, I’ll give you a proper answer.”
Kingsley moved even closer to her, breathing her in after an absence that had nearly torn him apart. Her answer wasn’t exactly the one he wanted, but he could work with it. For now, her breath and her presence were enough.
“Can I still see you tonight?” he asked, every breath he took spiced by her sweet scent.
Adah pressed her lips together, her eyes darting down his body, then away. She sighed, the look on her face one he recognized as the one she wore when she was accusing herself of doing or saying something stupid.
“I... Yes.” With a delicate twist of her body that brought Kingsley’s eyes skimming her waist and hips, she turned away to grab a notepad from her desk and scribble something on it. “This is my phone number. Call if you’re going to be late.”
He took the note like it was a lifeline. “I won’t be late.”
“Good. See you then.”
Chapter 9
At 6:53 p.m., Adah clutched her cell phone and told her mother that no, she didn’t need to come over. But Thandie Palmer-Mitchell could ignore her child like a pro, and within thirty minutes, she appeared at Adah’s front door with a bottle of red wine and a bowl of sliced fruit.
“I have some deconstructed sangria.” She held up the bottle and fruit as she walked past Adah and into the apartment. “You can tell me what’s wrong while we put this thing together.” She dropped her purse and scarf on the couch, then looked searchingly at Adah. “I heard something strange in your voice earlier so don’t waste your breath telling me nothing is wrong.”
Ever since Aruba and the broken pre-engagement, her mother had been even more attentive than usual. Adah was consumed with panic and fear about disappointing her paren
ts, and was sure her mother sensed those emotions.
“Mother... Mama, everything is fine. I just had a little surprise today—that’s all. Nothing to worry about,” Adah said.
But Kingsley showing up at her workplace in his designer suit had been more than a little surprise. He looked like a completely different person away from the sea and the tropical sun, his unforgettable body clothed in a tailored suit. But the look in his eyes had been the same. Alternate hunger and amusement. Like he wanted to both devour her and laugh with her. Maybe both at the same time.
Adah shivered at the thought, then glanced at her watch. How long did her mother plan on being here?
After the first and last time her mother and Kingsley met, Adah wasn’t eager for the two of them to see each other again. At least not until she was certain where she and Kingsley stood. He said he was done running. But lip service was something Adah was very familiar with. After all, she’d been giving her mother plenty of it over the years when it came to her proposed marriage with Bennett. Adah sighed and reluctantly followed her mother into the kitchen.
“Mama, I promise you I’m okay.” She stopped herself from looking at her watch, knowing damn well she only had about twenty minutes until Kingsley showed up. If he was the punctual type.
“I don’t believe you, darling.” Her mother was pouring the wine over the fruit in a punch bowl. “I don’t want you to feel alone in whatever you’re going through. I made you a promise, and I intend to keep it.”
Adah smiled, warmed by her mother’s words. It meant everything that they’d come out on the other end of the marriage disaster with their relationship stronger than before. But she also didn’t want it all to implode when Kingsley showed up at her doorstep.
Her mother had taken the broken potential engagement better than Adah thought she would. It also helped that less than a week later, a billion-dollar beauty corporation even Adah had heard of made her parents an offer of partnership with Palmer-Mitchell Naturals that had the family celebrating for days.
The Pleasure of His Company Page 15
