Vulnerable

by Bonita Thompson

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  Dear Reader:

  Bonita Thompson treats readers with a journey of love and obsession in her second novel, Vulnerable.

  She spins the tale with an in-depth cast of characters who are entangled in a web of lust, deception and ultimately murder. The author delivers in poetic fashion and descriptive writing against the Seattle backdrop in the coffee capital where cafés and bookstores are a major setting. Rawn, a schoolteacher at an elite private school, teams up with a model, D’Becca, and once the sparks start to fly, there is no stopping the intense romance. Sicily, his friend and colleague, and Tamara, a stunning boutique owner and mistress to NBA star Henderson Payne, soon become entrapped in their world and relationships prove that anyone is capable of being vulnerable.

  This page-turner will keep one speculating on the next chain of events to unfold in the scenic Pacific Northwest. The pace is quick and readers will hang on to every word in this romantic suspense novel.

  If you haven’t read The New Middle, check out Bonita’s debut novel centered on those in the middle age spectrum who experience the ups and downs in the aging process.

  As always, thanks for supporting myself and the Strebor Books family. We strive to bring you the most cutting-edge, out-of-the-box material on the market. You can find me on Facebook @AuthorZane or you can email me at zane@eroticanoir.com.

  Blessings,

  Publisher

  Strebor Books

  www.simonandschuster.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The New Middle

  I love bookstores. So in a time when traditional bookstores have become progressively dinosaur, I am especially grateful to the independent bookstores in the U.S., Canada, and England for carrying The New Middle. Including the American Book Center (@wwwabcnl) the Hague, Netherlands, Shakespeare & Co. (@Shakespeare_Co), Paris, France, Chevalier Books (@ChevaliersBooks) Larchmont Village, Los Angeles, and Elliott Bay Book Company (@ElliottBayBooks) Capitol Hill, Seattle.

  A very, very special thank you to Skylight Books (@skylightbooks), Los Feliz, Los Angeles. The opportunity to launch The New Middle at their outrageously amazing bookstore was such an honor!

  It is a compliment when a book club chooses to read your book. Shout-outs to book clubs for supporting The New Middle.

  The year, 2015, was a madly, deeply, crazy year. My family and friends had my back when I faced every anticipated and every unimaginable obstacle. Much love and huge hugs!

  Vulnerable

  Vulnerable is a novel that has taken numerous forms. In reaching the version that Strebor accepted in 2013, several readers offered kind-hearted feedback to help me shape it to its natural fruition. I want to acknowledge their time and gifts: Karen Roth, Ahmad Wright (the screenplay version), Tanisha Jackson, and Omar Caleb. Their collective thoughts were the ultimate game-changer.

  PROLOGUE

  In a deep sleep Rawn kept hearing this faraway voice—It’s between you and me—and the tone was eerily familiar. His eyes popped open. The syncopation of his day hinged almost entirely on how much sleep he had. If he could manage a good night’s sleep, all the minutiae, which defined his day, would not be so exasperating. But like a sequence of mornings lately, he woke up having experienced another fatiguing night and he was bone-tired. Rawn adjusted his deep cognac-colored eyes to the essence of premature autumn sunlight. He wished like hell he could stay in bed and let the day that was about to unfold do whatever it was going to do without him contributing to the collective consciousness. Annoyed, he tossed the bedding to the empty side of the queen-sized mattress. Finally, he was getting used to sleeping alone.

  Absent-mindedly, he came to his feet. The room felt cool against his naked skin. Soft signs of early dawn trickled in from exposed roof windows which defined the neatly squared room. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he became conscious of the fact that he was not sweating, nor had he been disturbed by a dream he could never quite remember. Immediately this struck Rawn cold; he had come to depend on trying to make sense of his dreams. Still not fully awake, he strolled to the bathroom.

  He always let the shower run until the room was so steamy he could barely see a foot in front of him. Rawn observed his tired face in the bathroom mirror. Not long ago a young woman he knew only by sight approached him at his table. He was sitting at a neighborhood bookstore-café, and she said something about liking his “new look,” followed by a wink. By chance was she referring to stubble that shadowed his cheeks and jawline? Rubbing his face with his hands, he wondered was she throwing off an innocent flirtation or was she in effect hitting on him. Rawn could not recall exactly when he last noticed that a woman was flirting. He himself stopped flirting some time ago.

  He was in and out of the shower in less than ten minutes. He was wrapping a towel around his lean waist when he heard the telephone ringing in the background, but he chose to ignore it. These days Rawn screened every single call; he made no exception. He was fed up with producers from popular television talk shows calling him every other day. Even though the preoccupation with him had tamed to a degree over the past several months, he chose to buy a cellular because, despite it being unlisted, his landline was now public knowledge. In less than thirty minutes he was dressed in a casual Perry Ellis suit that hung tastefully on his tall and lean physique. He stood at the front door, his worn-leather satchel slung across his chest. He bowed slightly as if he were saying a silent prayer. On his front porch he bent over and reached for The New York Times.

  Fifteen minutes later Rawn entered Café Neuf and it was typically crowded. The bakery-café was rich with the smell of strongly brewed coffee and scrumptious French baked pastry. He stood at the entrance and studied the room. Straightaway he caught the local dot-com millionaires, Rowena and Sean, at their regular table wearing their trademark all-black. The café became their temporary office while their rambling waterfront home was being renovated. Cellulars rang incessantly, and top-of-the-line laptops congested the birch and poplar wood table. Jean-Pierre, the owner of the well-liked Café Neuf, always accommodated his regulars and knew each one by name. Of course he was well-acquainted with Rawn because he was a frequent customer, not to mention he spoke French. Likewise, Jean-Pierre, like so many on Crescent Island, knew all the good, the bad, and the ugly details of Rawn’s once private life. For months he was relentless Crescent Island gossip. What had happened last year forever changed the young man who dropped by Café Neuf most mornings for an espresso and rich buttery croissant. Jean-Pierre had a soft spot for Rawn. He gestured for the young man.

  “Hey, good morning, Jean-Pierre,” he greeted the Frenchman.

  “I open terrace. Let you sit in back. It be not so stressful, peutêtre?” Jean-Pierre shrugged.

  Rawn looked over his shoulder at the animated room. “I can wait until a table’s free. It’s cool, Jean-Pierre.” He tried to pull off a nonchalant tone.

  In his thick French accent, Jean-Pierre said, “D’accord! Take the table when it come, oui-oui?”

  “Merci,” Rawn said. His intonation was virtually flawless.

  He stood by a couple waiting for a table. It was impossible to not take notice that they were in the middle of a rather intense conversation. Politely Rawn nodded to a young woman seated alone nearby, primarily because he felt her eyes trace his every move from the moment he entered Café Neuf. She slid a laptop inside a high-end brand-named backpack, and as she headed for the door, folded an issue of the
Weekly under her armpit. She offered Rawn a subtle nod when she passed. Rawn’s eyes traveled to her excellently shaped legs concealed by a pair of black opaque nylons.

  Taking a deep breath, he flipped the newspaper to below-the-fold. More and more, he lost interest in what he read about in the newspaper or heard on the news. What was happening out in the world had no direct influence on him personally, not right now. It was rather apparent there was a moral crisis in America. Still, Rawn could not seem to focus on teens with handguns, the political and intellectual climate, foreign crisis, the Middle East, the president and his conflicting approval ratings as a result of a scandal, and the soi-disant thriving economy. Although he was naturally curious and typically engaged, the way the new worldview was rapidly transforming humanity—eco-friendly, technology, globalization—did not pique his interest.

  When he turned to the sports page, Jean-Pierre approached him and said in a low voice, “A table, it come. Take it, rapidement, mon ami.”

  Rawn looked to the couple a few feet away. They were caught up in a heated exchange and couldn’t care less that a table had become available. Because seating was first come, first serve, customers generally dashed for a free table. The couple’s conversation began to get increasingly passionate and Rawn caught “You have colossal nerve!” and “Go to hell!” through clenched teeth. The woman gave the man a finger and stormed out of Café Neuf. Rawn thanked Jean-Pierre and walked to the empty table. When he sat at the table-for-two, he could see beyond the French doors that the once tender blue sky had turned heavy, low, and gray.

  “Ça va!” The familiar waitress greeted Rawn in good spirits. Her sultry mouth accentuated her strikingly attractive face.

  He thought she might have quit or he missed her whenever he came into Café Neuf, because Rawn had not seen the waitress in—certainly before everything went down last year.

  “Ça va!” he replied.

  “What would you like this morning?”

  Rawn was not up to meeting her warm, kind eyes; instead he looked beyond her slender shoulder, concentrating on copper-colored photographs of Paris arrondissements which classily lined the mauve-painted wall. “A café au lait and chocolate croissant.”

  “Would you prefer non-fat, low fat, soy…?”

  “Good old-fashioned milk,” he spoke in a tone verging on sarcastic.

  “Oh-kay! French or American roast?” She knew his preference. Yet she was making every effort to engage him; throwing some loving-kindness his way which did not accompany an ulterior motive.

  He dropped his eyes to the newspaper and said, “French.”

  “The bowl or a cup?” The waitress shrugged subtly, her mind playing with the idea that he was different now; aloof.

  “Bowl.” He purposely avoided eye contact. He stated, “C’est tout.” Rawn preferred that she not hover.

  With a tight smile, the waitress departed swiftly, and her very gentle scent—jasmine or lavender, Rawn did not really know—caressed the air. When he first laid eyes on her, he decided that a man had to ease into the waitress. She was unapproachable, and not because she was cold or standoffish. There was something about her. The standard line—whatever a man generally used to get the attention of a very attractive woman—would not work on this one. She was classy, and more importantly, comfortable in her skin. She was complicated—if not mysterious—because she was not average.

  Minutes later she carefully placed his French roast café au lait on the table, and Jean-Pierre’s to-die-for chocolate croissant. “Here you go,” she said. “Anything else?” She pressed her plump lips together as if doing so kept her thoughts buried deep inside her head.

  “I’m good.” Rawn sensed the waitress wanted to say something to him. He had learned the look, the demeanor. He assumed she was like most people who struggled to be appropriate. But what exactly was appropriate?

  When the waitress left his table, she was so poised, so graceful. She stopped at the table next to Rawn’s, and in a sincere voice inquired if the customers enjoyed their croque monsieur and whether they were ready for their check. Once, a little more than a year ago, Rawn ran into the waitress at PCC. Comfortably dressed in well-fitted jeans, her cropped lime-colored chenille sweater exposed a small butterfly tattoo slightly left of her navel. Before approaching her, Rawn observed the waitress leisurely walking through the aisles of the market. A subtle detail made her eye-catching; a je ne sais quoi-ness. When he finally managed enough nerve to approach her, they held a casual conversation for a while, talking and laughing so effortlessly in a way that happened when two people naturally clicked. No pretense, no façade, no status-dropping nonsense like where-did-you-go-to-school and what-do-you-do? When he inquired about her to Jean-Pierre, the Frenchman offered nothing more than the waitress lived in Seattle, and her name was Imani.

  Rawn was attracted to Imani the very first time he laid eyes on her. On at least one occasion he sensed the attraction was mutual, and then out of the blue, she disappeared. A good year had come and gone since he last saw Imani, and it only struck him that particular morning. He had been suspended between the present and what used to be.

  Without thinking, he reached for the small silver spoon and scooped up a sand-colored, miniature rock-shaped sugar cube in the porcelain container on the table. He dropped it into the bowl of steamy warm milk and black, strong coffee Jean-Pierre had imported from France and brewed in a French press. It was a bold aroma. Rawn sipped his café au lait mindlessly, slowly, and occasionally picked at his croissant. He studied Imani working the vibrant room with natural ease, and handled the demands of the dot-com entrepreneurs, Rowena and Sean, with such ingrained finesse. It was her spirit that resided over the room, and Imani brought class to the place. By no means was Café Neuf a hole in the wall. The bakery-café had a unique ambience: thick planked dark wooded tables, and Patrick Bruel music that did not interfere with the energetic conversations that most often took place at the intimately situated tables. Part of its charm was that Jean-Pierre, and any help that worked for him, greeted and took orders for customers in French. While Rawn observed Imani closely, it became apparent to him that there was very little about her he did not find engaging. Standing, and taking one last sip of his café au lait, he considered, for one split-second, what his fate might have been had he been courageous enough to ask her out at least once. He was hoping to slip out of Café Neuf unseen.

  It started to rain when he crawled into his Jeep Wrangler, tossing the Times and his satchel to the passenger’s seat. Turning over the engine, it occurred to Rawn that he forgot to grab his umbrella before leaving the apartment. A year ago he walked to work, and it was something he only recognized recently—not so long ago he cherished the beauty of the day as it took shape: the rhythm of business owners washing down sidewalks and opening up; runners putting in their time before the demands of life took over; city centre residents walking their dogs; and morning dew on the grass. It was the first touch of a new day; still innocent, still filled with expectation. Eventually he decided to drive to work because when he took the ferry people stared; rarely was he fully present and aware of how the day evolved. Instead he spent more time mentally negotiating between this and that.

  Over the past month he developed a routine: Rawn composed himself and went through the mental exercise to deal with the students he taught in South Seattle that persuaded him on day-one that they were absolutely indifferent to learning. He turned up Dante Godreau playing on his CD player. It took several rings before he recognized that his cellular demanded his attention. Rawn was still not used to having a cellular. “Hello?” Grinning, he said, “Khalil! Hey, man. Yeah, I’m about to cross the floating bridge.” Rawn listened thoughtfully to his best friend while concentrating on the traffic leading into the overcast, silver-colored city. “Hell yeah, it’s raining,” he joked. “My flight leaves at ten. Well, check your e-mail, bro. I sent my itinerary to you last night. Cool.” Unexpectedly, he began to feel a burst of excitement about heading t
o L.A. for the weekend. “See you then. Definitely. Later, man.”

  Rawn had not quite come to terms with teaching in the hood. Be that as it may, when the opportunity was presented to him, he had not received offers which corresponded favorably with his qualifications; thus could not bring himself to turn down the one teaching position offered to him. Nothing from his teaching past prepared him for hallways flooded with boisterous, loud, and ill-mannered students. His perception of urban youth was swiftly revised. Hearing “nigga” casually fall off the tongues of not only black but Asian and Latino students troubled Rawn deeply. He was accustomed to being around born-and-bred-for-success kids.

  The first day he taught at his new school, he asked his bored and tattooed eighth-graders if anyone wished to open the discussion of “separate but equal.” Each student looked pokerfaced, bored. Girls admired their nails polished with dramatic colors like fuchsia and citron green, while the boys talked to each other or perused Vibe and Spin, fantasizing about their own images gracing the publications someday. Lamentably, becoming a hip-hop artist was the only dream they trusted. Rawn’s pressing goal was to get each student to recognize their potential. As an educator he wanted every student who entered his classroom to realize their individuality, and the potential they had to influence history based solely on their unique participation. There was a point when Rawn learned that his responsibility was to take raw talent and give it energy, spirit, life. Every student whom he taught should have entered the classroom already aware she or he was a rising star no matter their background. Without that principle he feared he would fail his students, because he had yet to acquire the skills to pilot a young person who lacked at least a scintilla of hope. A dim spark was sufficient to work with; still, Rawn needed the student to have a little faith in the process.