Taste for Temptation (Kimani Hotties)

by Bourne, Phyllis

  “I’m talking about the fact that he doesn’t have a job.”

  “He left his job to pursue his dream.”

  “Does his dream bring in a paycheck?” her mother mimicked.

  “Not yet, but Adam’s very good at what he does and it’s just a matter of time.” And I believe in him, she silently added.

  “Humph,” her mother snorted derisively. “It’s just a matter of time before he starts asking you to loan him money. A car payment here. A rent payment there.” Jolene’s eyes narrowed. “If he hasn’t already.”

  “Of course not. Adam’s not like that and as we both know, I no longer have any money.”

  “You have a steady job.”

  Not for long, Brandi thought.

  “All I’m saying is after that debacle with Wesley, I’d hate for our family to be publicly humiliated again,” she said. “Especially now that your sister’s about to become the wife of an up-and-coming physician.”

  “I told you already, Mom, we’re friends.”

  “For your sake, I hope that’s true.”

  * * *

  Adam stared down at the cakes he’d made incorporating Brandi’s suggestions, one with lavender-infused balsamic and the other with a pinch of cayenne added to the ganache, but he didn’t really see them.

  The scene in the hallway replayed through his head with haunting familiarity. An adult child trying to appease an overbearing, disapproving parent.

  He remembered Brandi saying she and her mom weren’t close, and he hoped things turned out better for them than they had for him and his father.

  Not truly knowing his father on a personal level would always be one of his biggest regrets.

  Even as Adam eulogized him at the funeral, all he could speak on was David Ellison’s business acumen and tireless dedication to Ellison Industries. He hadn’t had a single personal anecdote to share with regard to the man lying dead in the flower-topped bronze box.

  There’d been none of the father-son baseball games or fishing trips other boys enjoyed with their fathers. It was one of the reasons he and Zeke had bonded so easily as kids. His friend’s father was of the same ilk.

  A knock on his front door pulled him from thoughts best left in the past. He flung it open expecting to see Brandi.

  “Jade,” he said.

  As always, his ex-fiancée had the salon-fresh look of a woman who spent a great deal of time and money on her appearance. She was dressed in her typical designer ensemble topped by a black suede coat and accessorized with needle-heeled boots and the latest two-thousand-dollar “it” bag.

  “Adam.” She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth. Her lips were flat and lifeless. They felt nothing like the sweet, pliant mouth he’d spent the night before kissing.

  The kiss, like her visit, had taken him by surprise, and it took him a moment to recover. He pulled her arms from around his neck and took a step backward.

  Unfortunately, he hadn’t disentangled himself quickly enough. Brandi’s door was open, and her mother was standing in the hallway glaring at him.

  His first inclination had been to catch Brandi’s mother before she went back inside Brandi’s condo to share with her daughter what she thought she’d seen. However, he could only put out one fire at a time, and if Jade was on his doorstep she believed they had some unfinished business.

  If that was the case, he wanted to find out what it was and finish it.

  “Can we talk?” Jade asked, oblivious to Jolene Collins slamming Brandi’s door so hard the entire hallway shook.

  Adam nodded and stepped aside. She walked past him in a cloud of floral perfume. The scent was pleasant enough, and he’d smelled it enough times, but for the first time his nose picked up a synthetic after-note.

  He knew it was unfair, but he couldn’t help comparing it to the orange-blossom-infused scent Brandi wore. Fresh and down-to-earth, just like the woman.

  Adam watched his ex take in the place he’d grown to think of as home. While he found it quiet and enjoyed the convenience of the walkable community’s nearby town center, it was a long way from the second-floor wing he used to occupy in the palatial Ellison mansion.

  “I haven’t had a lot of time to dedicate to interior design, so you have a choice of a seat here in the dining room or in the kitchen.”

  “Anywhere is fine.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  Jade tossed her bone-straight, precision-cut weave over her shoulder. “Water, please.”

  She walked with him to the kitchen where he handed her a bottle of water from the fridge. She was staring at the two chocolate cakes on the kitchen island.

  “So you actually made these?” she asked incredulously. “Yourself?”

  Adam nodded.

  “They’re magnificent,” she said. “I had no idea… When did you learn to do something like this?”

  “My grandfather taught me when I was a boy.”

  “I never knew.”

  “There are a lot of things we didn’t know about each other.” He sat down on one of the swivel stools facing the kitchen island. “You didn’t stick around long enough to find out.”

  He was surprised to see an uncharacteristic look of contrition pass over her flawless brown face. “I know, and I wish I’d handled things differently, but you blindsided me with all the sudden changes,” she said. “Also, there was Brooks Brand to consider.”

  “We broke up months ago, Jade. Why are you here?” he finally asked.

  Unbuttoning her coat, she put her purse on the island’s countertop and took the seat next to him.

  “These months without you have been harder than I expected,” she said. “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed us.”

  Adam took a good look at the woman he’d come close to marrying. Kyle and his Uncle Jonathan were right. Jade was indeed very attractive in an airbrushed-magazine-cover-girl kind of way.

  “In retrospect, I know I should have been more patient,” she continued. “You’d suffered a tremendous loss. I should have been more understanding.”

  His initial anger at her turning her back on him along with everyone else had faded. Time had given him perspective, and he now knew she had done the right thing.

  Adam shrugged. “You were right to break it off.”

  She reached out and covered his hand with hers. “Then why do I regret it so much?”

  He gently removed her hand, sending the silent signal that it was over. “I’ll always care about you, Jade.”

  “I care for you, too, very much. It wasn’t just business for me, I really do love you.”

  Unmoved by her admission, Adam shook his head. “You love what we represented. You loved being half of a power couple.”

  “Of course I did. So did you,” she said.

  “I’m no longer willing to let business dictate my personal life, and you shouldn’t, either. Don’t sell yourself short, Jade. You’re more important than Brooks Brand.”

  Jade rose from her chair and slung her purse over her shoulder. “If that’s what you believe, then you’re naive,” she said. “Together we would have been worth billions.”

  “It’s not going to happen for us. You should move on.”

  “I already have,” she said, but she didn’t sound happy about it.

  “Then why come here?”

  “I wanted to see if there was any way to salvage my old life, the one with you, before I officially moved on with my new one.”

  “Good luck with your new life, Jade.” He stood, leaned over and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I wish you all the best.”

  * * *

  Brandi watched the scowl on her mother’s face deepen as she crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot. The staccato beat of her shoe echoed o
n the living room’s hardwood floors.

  “I know what I saw,” Jolene Collins said. “They were kissing, Brandi. Kissing! Why do you think I came right back in here to tell you?”

  Brandi sat on her sofa wrapped in her robe. She’d shed her workout clothes and was about to jump in the shower when her mother had come charging back into the condo.

  “Mom, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation,” Brandi said aloud, silently hoping like hell it was true.

  Her mother, however, wouldn’t be mollified. “I’ve seen this man exactly twice. The first time you’re plastered all over him, and less than a half hour later, he’s in a lip-lock with another woman.”

  It was all Brandi could do not to cover her ears and scream at her mother to shut up. She didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want to consider that the man, who’d only last night made her feel like the most beautiful and cherished woman in the world, was at this very moment with someone else.

  “The woman was breathtaking. She looked like a model or actress,” Jolene said.

  Brandi pulled the belt of her robe tighter as if the action would deflect the sting of her mother’s words. But like a boxer looking for a win, her mother picked up on her vulnerability and landed a knockout blow.

  “I told you he looked like a man who could have any woman he wanted. Didn’t I warn you he was out of your league?” Her mother ranted as she paced the floor.

  Brandi tried to swallow the lump of hurt and anger rising in her throat as she’d done so many times before. Only this time, it wouldn’t go down.

  “How could you, Mom?” Brandi’s voice trembled with unspoken pain.

  “Me? What are you talking about?” Her mother huffed. “It’s your friend from next door you should be questioning, not me.”

  “No, Mom.” Brandi shook her head slowly. “Even if everything you say is true, Adam couldn’t possibly hurt me as much as you have over the years.”

  Her mother stopped midpace. “I’ve done no such thing.”

  “Just stop it, Mom.” Brandi held up a silencing hand. “All you’ve done since Dad died is pick me apart with your constant criticism.”

  Brandi felt years of tension ebb away as she finally let go of the words she’d been holding back so long. “Nothing I do seems to please you, and I’ll tell you, Mom, I’m sick and damned tired of trying.”

  “Brandi Collins. How dare you curse me!”

  “No, how dare you, Mom. How dare you nitpick me about my weight. How dare you insult me at every turn. And how dare you try to make me feel like nothing I ever do is good enough.”

  “What you call nitpicking is what I consider helping,” her mother shot back. “You’d be so much prettier if you dropped those extra pounds.”

  “Oh, my God, there you go again.”

  “What? Are you so thin-skinned, you can’t handle a bit of constructive criticism?”

  “It’s not constructive. It’s mean and it’s hurtful, and I don’t know how much more of it I can take.”

  Her mother fisted her hands on her hips, and her face turned three shades of red before settling on an angriest.

  “Don’t you try making me out to be the bad guy here,” she said through gritted teeth. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a parent having high expectations for her children. It’s not wrong for me to want my girls to look and be their very best. I’m not mean because I pushed you and your sister to get your college degrees in solid professions and want you to marry men of the same professional caliber.”

  Brandi felt like she was beating her head against a brick wall. What had happened to turn the sweet, nurturing mother of her childhood into this hard, unrelenting woman?

  “You shoved me into a career I never wanted.”

  “I did what was best for you—my job as a parent,” Jolene said. “I wanted you and Erin to do better than me and your father. To have better. To be better.”

  “Don’t bring Daddy into this. All he ever wanted was for us to be happy,” Brandi said.

  “Happiness doesn’t put food on the table.”

  “What are you talking about? We never went hungry.”

  “Thanks to me,” her mother snapped.

  “Oh, come on. Daddy was an excellent provider, who left you well taken care of when he died.”

  “All he left me was bills and you girls,” Jolene muttered.

  “What did you say?”

  Her mother put her hand over her mouth. “Nothing,” she said. “Look, I only came back to warn you about that guy next door. Not to open this can of worms.”

  Brandi watched her mother turn to go, but walked past her and blocked the door. “No, Mom. I want to know what you were talking about,” she said.

  “It was a long time ago, and there’s no sense in dredging it up now.”

  “When Dad died I remember you telling me we’d be okay because he had investments and life insurance.”

  Her mother diverted her eyes. “Yes, that’s what I told you.”

  “Was it the truth?”

  Brandi watched Jolene’s lips firm into a stubborn line.

  “You might as well tell me, because you’re not leaving until you do,” she said, still blocking the door.

  Their standoff lasted a few minutes before her mother relented and took a seat on the couch.

  “Now tell me,” Brandi said. “What really happened after Daddy died?”

  Brandi didn’t want to put herself or her mother through the pain of those dark days, but somehow she knew the reasons for her mother’s change were tied to them.

  Sitting on the sofa with her hands clasped in her lap, the domineering Collins matriarch suddenly looked smaller, older and very fragile.

  “There were no investments or insurance,” she finally whispered. “Just bills.”

  “But you said…”

  Her mother shrugged her small shoulders. “Your father worked construction. It was good money, but the work was seasonal. My little secretarial paycheck had to tide us over for the rest of the year,” she said. “There wasn’t money for investments. He was a young man. We didn’t think about life insurance.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Brandi asked.

  “You adored your father. He was your larger-than-life hero. Memories of him were all you had left, and I didn’t want anything to tarnish them.”

  “So you let me believe he’d taken care of us.”

  Jolene nodded. “I know you, Brandi. If you’d known you would have skipped college and went to work to help out.”

  “Of course I would have.”

  “I didn’t want you to end up working a grunt job like me and your father. I wanted you to have your education.”

  Stunned, Brandi plopped down on the sofa next to her mother. “But food, clothing, not to mention keeping up the mortgage, paying for my college, opening your business. How did you do all of that?”

  “By working day and night until I was ready to drop, then working some more.”

  Brandi reached across the sofa and took her mother’s hand. Suddenly, she felt small and petty for the resentment she’d felt toward her over reimbursing her for the wedding. She’d owed her that much and more.

  “Mom,” she began.

  “I know what you want from me, Brandi, but I’m not that person anymore. Struggle changes people,” she said. “I am who I am.”

  No matter how hard she wished for her mother to be the way she used to be, it would probably never happen, Brandi realized sadly.

  Somehow she’d have to find a common ground to build a relationship with the woman her mother was now.

  Chapter 13

  After Jade’s exit, Adam went directly to Brandi’s. She was due at his place to sample the cakes, but after what her mom had witnessed, and
undoubtedly told her, he wasn’t sure she’d show.

  Brandi opened the door wrapped in the purple flannel robe she’d worn the night they’d met. He took one look at her red-rimmed eyes and knew her mother had given her a skewed version of events.

  He walked through the door and followed her through to her living room, where she sat down in the armchair. A crumpled tissue was on the end table next to it.

  “Is it true?” she asked, without preamble.

  “Yes. It’s true my ex-fiancée came to visit, and yes, she did kiss me. However…” He paused and held up his hands, wanting to make sure she heard the entire story. “I had no idea she was coming over. Until today, I haven’t seen or heard from Jade in months.”

  Seeing Brandi upset summoned his protective instincts and made him annoyed her mother had stirred up a mess over what was essentially nothing. However, if he were completely honest with himself he couldn’t fault the woman for looking out for her daughter.

  “Look, I’ve just had an emotional scene with my mother, and I’m not in the mood for any more drama today,” she said. “Besides, you’re a free agent. One night in bed doesn’t give me the right to question you.”

  Adam dropped his chin to his chest. How did they get from those giddy moments in the corridor earlier to here? he asked himself. One thing he knew for sure was he didn’t want to leave things like this. He’d worked too hard to get close to her to let doubts come between them.

  “I’m sorry about whatever went on with your mother. Do you want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, I need to talk. You don’t have to say anything, but please hear me out.”

  He felt a wave of relief at the brief incline of her head.

  “For one thing, I don’t think of last night as simply a night in bed. I consider it the beginning of something very special, and exclusive.”

  Adam gave her a moment to absorb his words. He needed her to believe she was the only woman he wanted.

  “Jade kissed me at the exact same moment your mother walked into the corridor,” he continued. “What your mother didn’t see was me peeling Jade off me. Nor did she notice I wasn’t returning the kiss.”