She dropped her briefcase on the couch and the mail on the coffee table and kicked off her shoes. In the kitchen, her eyes went to the newspaper she’d left on the counter. It was open to the photograph of Marcus and his father. A reminder.
She passed the paper and grabbed a pitcher of juice instead of the margarita she really wanted. Marcus. Even though she was determined to dismiss him from her mind, he crept into her consciousness again and again.
At work, as she sat at her desk going over the financial reports, the memory of his kiss had nearly overwhelmed her. His full mouth on hers. The hot crush of his body pressing her into the wall at Gillespie’s. During lunch, while she sprinkled the packet of dried cranberries and almonds over her salad, she remembered the sound of his voice in her ear. How he had said her name. And the night. The night before had been plagued by dreams of what might have been. Hotter kisses. The cool sheets at her back and his muscled body at her front as he made love to her.
Diana drew a quick breath. The universe was a cruel place, she thought. Why else would the only man she’d been interested in in months also be the same one whose father had driven hers to suicide? Her hand tightened around the glass as she thought of her father, a powerfully built but emotionally delicate man who had left his family more wrecked after his suicide than Quentin Stanfield had with his trickery and lies.
The sound of the doorbell jolted her from her thoughts. She put down her half-finished juice and went to see who it was.
“Damn, I’ve been out here forever!” Her brother stood on her front step, hands in his pockets, a crooked smile on his handsome face that looked so much like their father’s. “You have a man in there?”
In faded jeans and a T-shirt with a drawing of Darwin’s ape-to-man evolution as stick figures, Jason looked very much as she’d seen him a few hours before. Full of energy. In complete possession of their father’s wide-shouldered, copper-skinned masculine beauty. Unconquerable. Like he’d just woken up from spending the night with the gold-toothed girl he’d met in Coconut Grove.
Diana briefly wondered if she had been so optimistic about the world when she was in college. As quickly as the thought came, she dismissed it. In college, she had been worried about her family. About providing for them and making sure that her mother’s emotional health remained strong. About the regret she had for going to a Miami college instead of the university in Madrid.
Diana opened the door wider for her brother and invited him in. “What’s up, Jason?” She didn’t even bother to address his comment about her having a man in her house. He’d only rung the bell once.
“Can I borrow your car for a while?” He passed her at the door, dropping a kiss on her cheek before flopping down on her couch and throwing his feet up on her coffee table. Right on top of her mail.
She looked at him. After a brief staring contest, he took his feet from the coffee table and dropped them to the floor with a solid thump.
“So can you lend me the car?” He gave her his puppy-dog face. “You walk to work every day, and the grocery store is just down the street.”
Her house was on the very edge of a neighborhood that had been gentrified only a few years before. The explosion of high-rent condos, gourmet markets, eateries, dry cleaners and accompanying high taxes hadn’t completely pushed out the original residents. At least not yet.
“That’s not the point, Jason. What if I need to go to South Beach or something? It’s not like I only go to work and the grocery store. My life is a little bigger than that.” But not by much.
“I’m not saying you don’t have a life, Di. Stop being so defensive.” He looked around the living room and beyond to the kitchen, surveying Diana’s place with his subconscious but habitual look of masculine dominance.
Diana went back to the kitchen for her juice and drank it standing at the counter.
“Just lend me your car for a little while,” her brother said. “I might have my ride back by the end of the week.”
They both knew his asking was just a formality. Diana could never deny Jason, or any member of her family, anything. Whether it was money or her car or blood. As long as she had it to give, she would give.
“Okay,” she said. “But I need it back by Monday for work.”
He smirked. Triumph in his clear brown eyes. “No problem.”
“I hope not.”
“Thanks, sis!” Jason jumped up from the couch, came into the kitchen and gave her a quick hug. Then he went to her fridge and rummaged through her kitchen until he found a pack of M&M’s.
“You’re welcome,” she said as he reached on top of her fridge.
The metal bread box squealed as he opened it. Jason grabbed an unopened packet of cookies from the box and tucked it under his arm. Then he turned, grabbed a cup from her cupboard and got some juice from her fridge.
As much as she wanted to chide him for his rudeness and all the things he did without thinking, Diana couldn’t. She helped raise him to be this way. He was the kindest boy in the world, but he took the love and everything else that she, her sister and their mother offered as givens, things that would never disappear.
“What’s up with this?” He drank thirstily from the glass of fruit juice.
She put her empty glass in the kitchen sink as he pointed an elbow at the folded newspaper. It was turned to the photo of her and Marcus Stanfield leaving the gala together.
“It’s a newspaper,” she said, grabbing it from under his nose and tossing it into the recycle bin.
But her brother had already seen it. “Is that the bastard Mom was talking about?”
Against her will, she remembered how chivalrous Marcus had been, how kind. She bit her lips closed, wanting to defend him. Instead, she jammed her hands in the pockets of her skirt, turned away from her brother and walked out of the kitchen. The last thing she wanted to do was talk to her brother about her love life. Or her wreckage of one.
“The girl I saw you with last night was pretty,” she said.
Jason had his mouth open, like he was going to say something else about Marcus, but he snapped it shut and paused. “I guess so, but she’s a little young for me.”
Diana smiled tightly, not knowing whether to be pleased or insulted that her brother’s foray into her personal life could be so easily derailed. “Young? She looked like she’s at least as old as you are, maybe even twenty-five.”
“Like I said, young.” Her brother shrugged. “I like—”
The sound of the doorbell cut off whatever else he was about to say. Diana went to look through the peephole. All she saw was the back of a man’s head, the wide stretch of shoulders under a tailored jacket. This man was too expensively dressed to be a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
She opened the door, and her jaw dropped in surprise.
“Good evening,” Marcus Stanfield said in that low and compelling voice of his.
“What are you doing here?” She’d gotten his calls on Sunday, dying a little inside as she sent each of them to voice mail.
“I came to see you.” He stated the obvious with a knee-weakening smile.
Diana drew a trembling breath. “I don’t think it’s—”
“Who’s at the door?” her brother’s voice boomed from behind her.
Marcus glanced briefly behind Diana, frowning. “Did I come at a bad time?”
She bit the inside of her cheek. “Yes. You did.”
Diana sensed Jason’s presence not far behind her, but she didn’t want him anywhere near Marcus.
“When would be a good time?” Marcus asked with his charming smile. “I can wait in the driveway or come back. Whichever you’d like.”
She swallowed and said words that almost choked her. “It’s never going to be a good time.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, and he tilted his head as if he thought he’d heard wrong. Diana drew back from the doorway.
“Last night was a mistake,” she said. “I shouldn’t have gone out with you.”
�
��Is it that bastard?” Her brother’s voice came closer.
Diana drew the door behind her, pressing her back against it and keeping her feet on the threshold. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to let things go so far last night.”
Marcus looked at her with an upraised eyebrow as unease twisted in her belly.
“What’s going on?” he asked at last.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Really?” A frown wrinkled his brow. “The other night you were into this as much as I was, but today you’re talking to me like I’m a stranger. What changed?”
“She doesn’t have to tell you a damn thing!”
Diana flinched as her brother’s words exploded from behind her. She almost stumbled back as he wrenched the door completely open.
“Your father killed our father, that’s what’s going on here!” Jason shouted from near her shoulder. “Get the hell away from my sister’s house before I call the cops!”
“Watch your mouth, boy.” Marcus’s mouth tightened as he stood near the doorway, his body tense and angry.
Jason grabbed Diana’s wrist and dragged her back into the house. Her stomach dropped at the confused look on Marcus’s face. Jason slammed the door.
“That guy has a big set of brass ones trying to talk to you!” Jason jerked back the blinds to peer outside. “He’s still there. He’s putting something in the mailbox.”
After a few minutes, Diana heard the sound of a car engine. Her fists slowly unclenched at her sides as she listened to Marcus drive away. Her brother rushed out to the mailbox and came back with an envelope in his hand.
“You should just throw whatever piece of crap this is into the garbage.” He held the plain white envelope in both hands, about to tear it in two.
Diana grabbed it from him and shoved her spare set of car keys into his hand. Suddenly, all she wanted was for her brother to leave.
“Here are the keys, Jason,” she told him. “Please don’t crash my car.”
He looked at her closely, noticing her distress for the first time. “Do you want to talk about this?”
“Not with you, no.”
As soon as she ushered her brother out of her house, she opened the envelope Marcus had left. Inside were two tickets to the Alvin Ailey troupe’s performance in Miami later that week.
She gripped the tickets in her hand, staring out the kitchen window with regret and anger creating a toxic cocktail in her stomach. How dare he approach her knowing what his father had done to hers? How dare he come back to her expecting her to be okay with it?
But remembering his face in the doorway as Jason had railed at him, she realized that he may not have known, for him she might have been just another woman he could talk into his bed. She smoothed the tickets out on the kitchen counter.
How had he known that she loved Alvin Ailey? She had been planning on inviting Trish and buying the tickets for them both but had to cancel those plans when she’d lent her sister money for school. Diana sighed as she thought about her family and her best friend. She picked up her cell phone and dialed.
“Hey, girl.” Trish greeted her with laughter in her voice. “It’s funny—I was just about to call you.”
“Great minds think alike.” She left the kitchen to sink into the couch her brother had recently vacated. “What were you going to call me about?”
Diana heard the shuffling of papers, then Trish’s syrupy southern drawl. “I’m finishing up my budget for the month and realize I have an extra few hundred. I want to give it to Building Bridges.”
Diana smiled at the idea of having extra money lying around at the end of a month. Her siblings, or even her mother, would snatch that money up before she had the time to even realize it. Sometimes she thought they knew more about her budget than she did.
“That’s great, Trish. You know we’re happy for anything at all.”
“And I know you all could use it. I don’t need the money, so why not send it around?”
Trish had had a sugar daddy who’d bought her a gorgeous rooftop condo on Miami Beach—cash—before he’d died. Somehow, he’d even hidden the maintenance fees of the condo in the monies paid out from his trust every month. All Trish had to do was live in the condo and be happy, which she managed to do just fine.
“Thank you for the donation,” Diana said. “You know I appreciate it.”
More papers rustled, then quieted. “What’s wrong?” Trish asked.
“What makes you think something is wrong?”
“Oh, please. I’ve known you longer than you’ve known yourself. What’s gotten your little panties in a twist?”
A reluctant smile came to Diana’s face. “Nothing, really. Everything is fine.”
“Oh, really? That’s a big, fat lie if I ever heard one.” She heard the sound of papers through the phone again, then keys jingling. “Keep lying to yourself, honey. But I’ll be at your place in a few minutes.”
Before Diana could say anything else, her friend hung up the phone. Less than ten minutes later, a car honked in her driveway. She rushed to the window and peered through the blinds. Trish’s white BMW convertible sat in the drive, top down. “Come on, girl!” Trish called out as she waved at Diana. “I don’t have all day!”
Diana laughed, both surprised and pleased. Trish must have blazed through all the lights to get there so fast. She grabbed her purse and left the house. Trish already had the passenger door open for her and her favorite neo-soul station playing on the car’s satellite radio. Diana sank into the plush leather seat and leaned across the car to give her friend a hug and a quick kiss.
Trish looked gorgeous as usual in white skinny jeans and a gray blouse that dipped low in front, showing off her abundant cleavage. She had replaced the thick, waist-length weave from the weekend with a pixie cut.
“You didn’t have to do this,” Diana said.
“Like hell I didn’t. You sound like someone stole your pet parakeet and wrung its neck for soup.” She put the car in gear. “Just sit back and relax. Try not to think too hard about what’s bothering you.”
With the top down and Anthony Hamilton crooning in her ears, Diana sat back in the leather seat and relaxed, as instructed. She simply watched the scenery of her neighborhood pass by—the couples walking their dogs, hipsters ducking into the corner coffee shop for an after-work latte, a lone woman reading something on her iPad as she waited for the bus.
*
The car rushed through her little neighborhood, south on Biscayne toward downtown and I-195 to Trish’s posh condo. She sat in silence, her mind shying away from the reason she was in Trish’s car. The convertible parked and Trish got out. When she joined her friend, Trish tucked her arm around Diana’s waist. “A friend of mine sent me this decadent case of whiskey ice cream we definitely need to try.”
They zipped up to the thirtieth floor and into Trish’s penthouse.
“Don’t say a word.” Trish closed the door behind them. “Go in there and put on one of your bathing suits that’s already in the dresser. I’ll get the ice cream. Meet me on the balcony.”
Trish was the only one who ordered Diana around. With everyone else, she was the caretaker, the mother hen, always making sure things went smoothly. But with her friend, she could just relax and be.
She changed into a bathing suit, then padded back out to the living room on bare feet and opened the sliding door leading out to the balcony and an incredible view of the beach.
At nearly 6:30, the summer sky above was still a brilliant blue. Bright and crisp, without a single cloud in sight. Sunlight made the decadent space even more beautiful, sparkling on the chrome-edged railing, covering Miami Beach in light. Trish was already out there, her gorgeous body on display in a white bikini with heart-shaped cut-outs at the hips. The swimsuit was strictly ornamental. Diana doubted she ever went swimming in the thing.
Trish had situated two beach chairs side by side. On a table between the chairs sat an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne, two glasses
, and a thick towel draped over a pint of ice cream. Trish smiled as Diana approached, her eyes moving over Diana’s simple, forest-green bikini. It was a suit Diana only wore at Trish’s place. She would never reveal this much of her body at the beach or even at a public pool. If she ever visited such places.
“Sit,” Trish commanded.
Diana sat down beside her friend, enjoying the simple pleasure of the sun on her skin, her friend by her side, the blue sky overhead. They sat quietly for long moments, enjoying the silence. They sat for so long that Diana thought Trish had forgotten the reason for her being there. Then her friend sat up and portioned out the ice cream, watching Diana as she scooped the golden dessert into two glasses.
“So,” her friend finally said as she gave Diana one of the glasses. “Tell Auntie Trish what’s gotten you all upset.”
Diana found herself stiffening, or at least trying to. But the sun had done its work. Trish’s uncomplicated company had soothed her. She swirled the spoon around in her ice cream, brought it to her lips. It was smooth and cool with only a distant alcoholic bite, definitely not enough to get her drunk. Delicious. Diana reached for another spoonful.
“Does it have to do with that hot piece of business you went home with on Saturday night?” Trish lay back in her chair and spooned ice cream into her mouth.
Diana stared at her. “I didn’t go home with him!”
“But I bet you wanted to.” She grinned wickedly and licked her spoon. “Did you give it up in the backseat of his car? Does he have a big d—?”
“We didn’t do anything!” Diana interrupted, her face flushing hot.
“Because of you, I’m assuming.” Trish’s wide grin showed off the gap between her teeth she’d been talking about getting fixed for years. “That man looked ready to drag you off to bed the moment he laid eyes on you.”
“That’s not true!”
“You may not want it to be true, but I know men. And that man wanted you bad.”
Diana felt heat move through her face again. Trish’s teasing words burst the dam on the feelings she was keeping at bay. Her lower lip trembled. The spoon clanged against the edge of the glass as she dropped it into the ice cream.
Sultry Pleasure Page 5
