“I know. And I’m so sorry for that.” Regret thinned Ahmed’s mouth. “But please give me a chance to make things right. Here.” He tucked a folded piece of paper into her hand. “If you can, come here tonight. I’ll explain everything.” Then his eyes flicked to look over her shoulder. Elle turned in time to see Shaye give him two thumbs up.
Oh, God…
Elle crumpled the paper in her fist without looking at it. At his flinching look, she only nodded sharply once. He gave her a slower version of that nod then turned and left. In the quiet he left behind, the sound of her own heartbeat was unnaturally loud in her ears.
“So, what are you going to do?” Shaye asked, face serious, even a little concerned.
Elle stared at her best friend in challenge. “Aren’t you going to tell me what I need to do?”
“Nope. This is your fight. Your win or your loss. I realize I’ve been butting in where it’s none of my business. I want you to be happy, but I don’t want you to think whatever happens from now on is my fault—good or bad. Make your own decision, sweetie, and I’ll be here for you whatever it is.”
Did an alien take over her best friend’s body? Elle stared at her, not knowing what to say.
“I know, I know. You’re getting whiplash, right?” Shaye stood up and made a show of brushing off her skirt. “I’m going to leave you alone to think.”
“But this is your office.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Shaye gave an impish grin. “Then I guess I’ll go treat myself to an early working lunch.” She grabbed her laptop, phone and massive designer handbag. “I’ll see you after lunch. Just call if you need me.” Then she was gone.
For a very long time, Elle stood in the middle of the office that did not belong to her. When she finally left, she still didn’t know what she was going to do.
*
Eight o’clock found her at home. The time Ahmed had written on the paper, 7:00 p.m., had come and gone. After work, she’d taken a shower then, after aggressively convincing herself she wasn’t going anywhere, put on her pajamas and parked herself in front of the darkened television.
Chances were for people who deserved them. Right?
Elle nibbled at her bottom lip and stared at the television, imagining Ahmed at the restaurant waiting for her while the chance she couldn’t give him slowly withered and died with each ticking second of the clock.
The restaurant he’d listed on that note was the one Shaye planned for their first date. La Bohème Sud. The most romantic French restaurant Elle had never been to for dinner, the perfect date she’d never had. She rolled her eyes at her pathetic thoughts.
Sitting there in the dark, she felt the walls of self-protection settle around her more firmly than ever. Yes, she’d told Ahmed she still believed in love despite the things that had happened in her life, but she was only human. At some point, she had to learn to flinch from the fire.
A rattling buzz from the coffee table brought her mind back to the present. Her cell phone vibrating again. Probably Shaye who, despite saying she wasn’t interfering anymore, texted every ten minutes to ask Elle when she was going to the restaurant, if she was there yet, what kind of crow would she stuff down Ahmed’s throat before accepting his apology and the happily-ever-after his eyes promised.
It hurt too much to look at the proof of her friend’s hopeless and unfounded optimism. Ahmed didn’t want a happily-ever-after with her. Sex, yes. Forgiveness, sure. But that was it.
A sharp rapping at her door made her jump. Elle glared at her phone then at the door as if her friend stood right in front of her. Tonight was one of those nights Shaye needed to—
But it wasn’t Shaye.
“Can I come in?”
It was an illusion. It had to be. But the more she blinked at the vision in her doorway, the more real it seemed. Ahmed stood there in a suit tailored to fit his broad shoulders and tall frame. The narrow slacks fit well over his muscled thighs and long legs. He looked ready for a business meeting or church.
Elle opened her mouth but only stuttered half words came out.
“I hope that’s a yes,” Ahmed said with a ghost of a smile even though worry held the corners of his eyes tight.
Suddenly, she was conscious of the relative mess of her living room. The shoes she’d kicked off and left at the side of the couch when she walked in. Shaye’s half-finished mug of tea from the evening before. She threw a quick glance behind her.
“Okay. Sure.”
Now it was his turn to look behind him. “I brought a few friends with me. I hope that’s okay.”
Friends?
After getting her quick but confused nod, he stepped back and a slender man walked in ahead of him.
“Good evening, mademoiselle.” The stranger greeted Elle with a smile and faintly accented English. “Forgive us the intrusion, but I hope you won’t mind if we come in and set up in your beautiful home.”
Set up what?
Elle startled when Ahmed’s warm fingers settled into the crease of her elbow and tugged her back against him. Although his suit was cool, his body burned hot through the luxe material. “Trust me tonight?” His voice rumbled low.
Like a fool, she nodded.
Moments later, in a blur of chairs and flapping cloth and a rattle of cutlery and low voices speaking in French, a small army invaded her home. Elle watched them march past first into her living room then out to the back patio. “What’s going on?”
“Unfortunately for me, you didn’t make it to dinner tonight, so I brought dinner to you,” Ahmed said. He was still standing at her back, his fingers making warm circles on the delicate skin of her inner elbow.
She refused to apologize for standing him up. He had disrupted her day at the office with what amounted to an order to come see him at a restaurant, not taking into account anything she had to do that day. Or her broken heart. Maybe he was used to women bouncing back from his emotional yo-yoing, but she wasn’t like that.
But she was also impressed, despite how much she didn’t want to be. Not by the fact that he came and had all these people at his beck and call but because he’d come to her not knowing where the night would lead. Elle sighed, flicking a look down his body.
“Let me go change at least.”
The reality was she needed to take a breath. Ahmed in her house was too overwhelming. He took up so much space, his smell was all around her, filling her with memories of what they’d done together, reminding her powerfully of the things she’d felt for him, the desire still thrumming through her veins for him despite…everything.
She escaped to her bedroom. Once there, she stood in front of the mirror, a hand over her pounding heart, staring at her openmouthed reflection.
A long while later, she shook herself out of it enough to get dressed.
She decided on an off-the-shoulder blouse and a blue skirt, something of a more modern style than she usually wore. Another random suggestion of Shaye’s the last time they’d been out shopping together.
Be adventurous, her best friend was always telling her. Step out of your comfort zone.
After slipping into high heels, she went to find Ahmed. But the living room was empty. A lush trail of music, saxophone and the gentle stirrings of a keyboard led her out to the back patio.
There, she gasped.
Her backyard had been completely transformed. On the deck, a table for two covered with a lushly gold tablecloth and set with gleaming cutlery sat underneath gently swaying lanterns that looked like they’d been taken straight from one of the bridges in Paris.
A low platform had been set up in the middle of the yard, and a jazz trio was playing there. A short-haired woman made love to a saxophone while another woman, who looked enough like her for them to be twins, flew graceful hands across a keyboard and crooned a song in French into a microphone. A man stood playing a double bass and tapping his feet to the music. All three members of the trio wore tuxedos with red bow ties.
Ahmed had brought La Boh�
�me Sud to Elle’s backyard.
As Elle made her slow way into what had been her plain backyard, the scent of mouthwatering French food reached out to pull her even closer.
“Do you like it?”
Ahmed’s low voice came from behind her and aroused prickling goose bumps along her bare shoulders. After a brief touch to her elbow, he went to the table and pulled out one of the chairs for her.
Like it? She absolutely loved it, and she told him so.
Even if nothing else came of tonight, she’d never forget this moment. Elle didn’t know what to say. This was more incredible than she could have ever wished for, beyond what she thought anyone would ever do for her even with limitless funds at their disposal. From her memory of her visit to the vibrant French restaurant, Ahmed had duplicated the music there—hypnotic jazz—the richly colored table cloths and table settings, and the smell of the food, luxurious and creamy, that she’d gotten from the kitchen on her single visit to check it out as a potential place to partner with Romance Perfected.
Her trembling legs took her to the chair Ahmed held out for her, she sat down and looked over her shoulder at him while she scooted closer to the table. When he settled across from her, she noticed the small vase of flowers in the table’s center—red roses and white peonies—that sat low enough for them to see each other.
“Thank you for going along with his,” he said. “I know I haven’t made it easy.”
“I didn’t really have a choice, did I?”
He winced. “Am I being that guy again?”
“You mean overbearing? Yes, a little.” But she didn’t mind it. Not really.
He shifted across from her, his beautiful body just a little awkward. Just that small bit of imperfection made her think, for a moment, that things could be what she wanted between them. But no, she couldn’t afford to be a fool again.
“What do you want to eat?” Ahmed picked up a small menu from the edge of the table.
But she couldn’t do this. Not yet. As beautiful as it all was, the music and the delicious smells coming from her own kitchen, it was all a little too much. She bit her lip.
“Why are we here, Ahmed?”
He settled his arms at the edge of the table and watched her, sighing. “All right.” His hands stretched across the table and around the flowered centerpiece, his palms up and empty. “Will you forgive me, Elle?”
She looked down at his upraised palms that lay across from her, waiting to be filled. She let them rest there, curling her own fingers in her lap to stop herself from simply giving in and holding on.
“I’m ready to tell the whole world what I did wrong,” he continued. “By tweet, on the airwaves, in skywriting, if you need me to.”
“But what exactly am I supposed to be forgiving?”
“I knew you wouldn’t make this easy for me.” The corner of his mouth twitched, although Elle couldn’t tell if it was from of amusement or nervousness.
“If easy is what you want, then you came to the wrong woman.”
“There’s no other woman I want.” The sincerity in his eyes warmed her like the sun. “I’ve known this for a while now, but I let certain things from my past mess me up—that woman you saw at the party and all the bull she put me through. I knew better, but my fear got the best of me.”
Elle swallowed, remembering clearly the woman in red and her poisonous attitude, the way she’d tried to insinuate herself into Ahmed’s life that night. Her own jealousy aside, Elle understood all too well the power of the past and its potential to wreck the future. She’d fought a long battle with her own demons to be the person she was today. Far from perfect, but getting better.
“I know what I just said is pretty cliché, it’s nothing new. But, please, can you forgive me for what I did?” A sharp line settled between his brows, worry and pain.
She didn’t have to think long about it. “Yes. I can and I do.” How could she not? He’d come to her more than once now and with reasons she could understand.
“And there’s something else,” Ahmed said.
Elle swallowed past the thick anticipation and nervousness in her throat. “Tell me.”
“I want to try it with you, seriously try. I know I have trust issues, but I also have an Elle issue.” His faded smile appeared again. “I want you in my life, I need you in my life. Please say you’ll try to make this work with me.”
The tight press of her fingernails into her palms made Elle realize just how tightly she had been clenching her fists in her lap. She wanted to release and lean into what he was offering. But did she even know what he had waiting for her in those open hands of his? She flickered a gaze down to his empty palms then back up to his face.
“Ahmed, I…” But she didn’t know how to continue or what else to say. She wanted this thing with him. She could admit that now. But other than another evening in his bed, what did this mean for him?
When she said nothing else, Ahmed closed his hands and slowly drew them back and off the table.
Immediately, Elle wanted to reach out and grab them. Her stomach twisted around itself in anxiety and nameless want.
“I don’t know what you want,” she finally said when she could talk again.
Her fingers wound together in her lap, but she refused to look down and cower like a simpering idiot. She looked at a point over Ahmed’s shoulder toward the edge of the yard where one of the fence posts needed replacing. Cloth shifted and she felt rather than saw Ahmed move his hands back to the table.
“I want you,” he said.
Instead of empty hands this time, a black velvet box lay in the center of one palm. Elle almost jumped out of her seat.
“What…what is that?”
“Exactly what you think it is,” he said with the beginnings of the now familiar teasing light in his eyes. “I want you. Will you have me, too?”
Elle’s heart began thundering in her chest as she stared down at the box. Ahmed slowly opened it, and she gasped at what lay inside, her hands flying to cover her lips. “You’re nothing like my past,” Ahmed said, his voice soft and threaded with emotion. “I know that now. That past is over, now I want you as part of my future.”
A pink diamond ring gleamed from the center of the velvet box.
Questions tumbled into Elle’s mind, one after the other, doubts leaping on top of doubts, but with the opening of the box and, it seemed, of his heart, all those doubts disappeared. There was only one thing for her to say.
“Yes.” “Yes?”
“Yes,” Elle said again, and she couldn’t stop smiling. Only when she felt his trembling hand around hers did she realize she’d put her hand in his. Their smiles were a matching set.
Ahmed sagged with relief across from her. “Thank God. I thought you’d make me crawl across broken glass to get at that heart of yours.”
“You already had it,” she said as her smile grew wider. “You’ve had it since that afternoon in the barn.”
He grinned. “Better late than never. I won’t bother telling you the day mine fell out of my chest and landed at your feet. Let’s just say it was a long time before Valerian.”
“I can be a little slow sometimes,” she said.
“Never.” He stood up and pulled her to her feet while the music rolled and swayed around them. “You’re just my speed.” Then he dipped his head low to claim her lips with his own.
*
Keep reading for an excerpt from A TASTE OF DESIRE by Chloe Blake.
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A Taste of Desire
by Chloe Blake
Chapter 1
Nicole Parks burst from the bathroom of her hotel suite and rummaged through her suitcase. Bras, panties, a flat iron and a jam-packed makeup bag landed on the king-size bed. She sat up and aggressively squirted Visine into her eyes then
gulped the fresh coffee she’d made from the in-room coffeemaker. Then she dove for her other suitcase.
Her fifteen-hour flight to the Rio Grande do Sul region of Brazil had come with a pounding post-flight headache. The blazing hot thirty-minute car ride to Porto Alegre, the capital, hadn’t helped. She’d virtually passed out after checking into her hotel that afternoon, but now that nap, although refreshing, was screwing with her inner clock. Good thing her client chose the restaurant in her hotel for their business dinner. She had twenty minutes to be downstairs.
Ten minutes went by, and Nicole turned to check her appearance in the floor-length mirror: black, sleeveless, form-fitting dress, mascara and nude lipstick in place, sleek black shoulder-length hair—frizzing slightly, but so far, so good—and mahogany arms and legs shimmering with lotion.
She flipped her hair over her shoulder, gesturing to her reflection. I have a head for business and a bod for sin. Anything wrong with that? It was her favorite quote from the movie Working Girl. And she definitely was a working girl, since she was the only female international real estate broker and attorney at the New York City branch of Kingsley’s.
You got this. Smooth sailing. She whispered positive mantras to herself. She loved this business: selling gorgeous properties, seeing the world, making the money. Not too shabby for a little girl from Brooklyn. Closing a deal fed her soul. It was better than sex, not that she was having any.
Dressed to impress, she reached for her phone and sighed. After locating the passcode on the corner desk, she connected to the Wi-Fi and was instantly bombarded with texts, emails and voice mail messages. She itched to go through them, noting several from her boss, but they had to wait.
Clutch and phone in hand, she rushed toward the elevator in her six-inch heels. Just as she jammed the button, a call came through. Her best friend Liz’s name popped up and Nicole bit her lip, knowing she shouldn’t answer.
“Liz, I can’t talk right now. I’m meeting a client.” Nicole punched the elevator button again.
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