Seductive Memory

by Altonya Washington

  “More amazing than your party?”

  Emotion had her clearing her throat. “I’m hoping it’ll turn out to be.”

  “Can you spare me a few minutes before you leave?” he asked.

  “I can spare you more than that. It’s you I was coming to see.”

  Linus sobered then too. “I see.”

  “I don’t think you do, L. I’m not giving up. I know Miranda Bormann’s revelations threw us for a loop, but that’s finished now. I won’t give up on finding out what happened—all of what happened—that night to change you. To find out what put the sadness in your eyes and the anger in your heart.” She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them quick to reveal the defiance lurking.

  “I know you never want to share it and that’s just too damn bad. I don’t care if you hate my questions—I love you and I won’t lose you again. I can’t let you keep carrying the weight of the past on your own.”

  Linus seemed to absorb her words and then gave an obedient nod. “I get it, Paula. Um, do you think I could come in now?”

  Paula finally realized how biting the wind was as it seeped beneath the hem of her coat. It assaulted the thin legs of her pantsuit with icy daggers. Tugging the cuff of his jacket, she brought him in from the night.

  “This way.” She directed him along a back staircase. The second floor corridor was lit by the soft gold of electric candles.

  The first door they approached was partly opened. The unmistakable flicker of firelight danced against it. Linus smiled, pushing the door farther open as the delectable aroma of apples and spices filled his nostrils.

  “Already smells like Christmas in here,” he said.

  “I like to get a jump on the holidays.”

  “Speaking of being jumped, where’s your security? I expected them when I decided to take the back way in. What’s up? Do you leave them behind when you trade your penthouse for the quiet life?”

  “They’re around. Just not on heightened alert.”

  Linus’s chocolate browns narrowed. “Maybe they should be, with you sneaking out into the night by yourself.”

  “It was to see you.”

  “A worthy cause—don’t get me wrong—but safety first, P. I’m pretty sure you’ve got your share of enemies. This Bormann thing certainly helped you add to ’em.”

  Paula rolled her eyes. “Keeps the job exciting.”

  “And where do things stand with that? With the Bormanns?”

  “Better than I’d have guessed considering the initial evidence, but it turns out that Hayden Bormann wasn’t as careful as he claimed.”

  “He left a trail.” Linus watched Paula nod to confirm his guess.

  “His close-as-a-brother cousin is ready to turn on him in hopes of saving his own business,” she added. “Looks like the Bahamas project wasn’t their first job together.”

  Linus nodded over the developments. “Keep me posted, okay?”

  “I promise.”

  Silence settled into the cozy den. Muffled music, laughter and conversation gently radiated through the floor and added to the relaxing aura that seemed to permeate the space.

  Linus shrugged out of his jacket. “Have a seat, Paula,” he urged.

  Paula removed her coat and, seeing Linus’s reaction, waited. His dark gaze scanned the chic jumpsuit—a black number with silver piping.

  “That your, uh, usual hostess attire?” he asked.

  “When I entertain out here, which I rarely do.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Surprised by the surge of self-consciousness instilled by his words, Paula crossed her arms over her chest. The suit’s V-cut bodice gave an onlooker a modest, albeit enticing, view. Paula decided to walk the room, but Linus stopped the move. Pulling at her arms, he slid his own around her waist and tugged her near as his head dipped. He took her mouth with a strong thrust that she instantly reciprocated. Greedy to have him closer, her arms circled his neck, and she stood on the toes of her icepick pumps to more accurately align her body with his.

  Hungrily, Paula pushed her tongue against his, moaning feverishly when he broke the kiss. He devoured the supple honey-toned flesh of her neck, his tongue leaving a warm, wet trail to her clavicle. He took her off her feet in order to suckle the spot from a more satisfying angle.

  Paula’s hands were busy at the dark wool jacket he wore over a gray shirt open at the collar and hanging outside his dark trousers. Linus rested his forehead against the crook of her neck and stole several seconds to settle his breathing. Then, before she knew it, he was putting Paula to her feet and retreating.

  “Baby, you need to listen to me now, okay?”

  Paula nodded, blinking obsessively as if to dash away the arousal that all but screamed inside her. “Right,” she said. “Sorry.”

  Linus replied with a crooked smile. “Nothing to apologize for, remember? None of this was about you. I can’t even blame my brother. Lantz...he wasn’t doing anything different from his usual—taking advantage of the situation. He thought getting together for drinks and reminiscing over our grandmother on her birthday would soften me up enough to share the wealth. I told myself not to go. The fact that he tracked me down there with you told me this was going to be a situation best avoided but...well... I hadn’t seen him in years and he, um, he’s my brother.”

  Linus lent Paula a tired smile then that quickly turned into a grimace. “’Course it was everything I expected—started off well, got ugly halfway through. When I said no to his needing $100K to back a deal he wanted into, he started going on about how he wanted what was his. Then he blamed our grandmother for keeping him down, for not letting him be who he was.”

  Linus grimaced. “When I stood up for her,” he continued, “and reminded him of all the money he’d already lost on his schemes and how she had just been trying to protect him, he said she had just been trying to control him—keep him under her thumb. He said she’d wanted him to behave the way she wanted. ‘Not me, Line, not me,’ that’s what he said. He left and I haven’t seen or heard from him since. When I got back to the room that night I—” He paused, pacing the room then like a caged tiger while he smoothed both hands over his head.

  “I kept thinking about what he said...about our grandmother wanting us to behave the way she dictated, and I realized he was right.”

  Paula went to him then. “Linus—”

  “Wait.” His voice held a pleading tone. “Wait and hear me, okay?”

  She hesitated, but eventually gave the nod he wanted.

  “I behaved, and I got what was mine. All the years Lantz rebelled, pouring hundreds of thousands down the drain, throwing the most horrific tantrums ’til she gave in and gave him the money. He’d steal it when she wouldn’t.”

  He grinned, shook his head. “We’d have the worst fights over the way he treated her—arguments really. But when I got to the point where I just flat out wanted to kick his ass, she held me back. She said Lantz was just finding his way—told me to be patient with him. She let his ways slide, asked me to go along with it and I did, even—even when I knew there was no changing him. Still I went along, stifled my anger and never let myself dwell on the fact that Lantz was free to let his ways run riot while I had to restrain mine until—”

  “You exploded.” Paula’s interruption was quiet.

  Linus came to take her hand then. Squeezing, he eased her back to sit on the loveseat.

  “I had tried to find you when I got back, before I...where were you?”

  “You had gotten me that time in the spa, remember? You’d told me unexpected business had come up and that was your way of apologizing.”

  “Right.” Linus smiled over the memory. “I bummed around the room for twenty minutes or so before I lost it. Funny thing is, what broke me wasn’t anger over Lantz—it was my gran. She took us in, put her life on hold to do it. Nobody
could’ve raised us better and I—I was angry at her.”

  He leaned over, hands going to his head again. “That I could really feel that way, it made me feel like I was no better than Lantz was, and I, um, there was nothing I could do but give in to it.”

  “But you were just a kid when all that happened.” Paula scooted close to squeeze his hand. “Dealing with it when you became a man was the only choice you had.”

  “Dealing with it has never made me feel like a man, but like a kid—a weak kid.” His voice was like stone. “Giving myself over to the rage, it felt so good, Paula. Like—like a weight was off.” He grunted an ill-humored laugh. “Didn’t take me long to see that it was killing me. I couldn’t have been with you while I was going through all that, Paula—you wouldn’t have understood it. Hell...I didn’t understand it. I finally mastered the rage, though...thought I was done with it too until I tried to talk to you about it. Hmph. Didn’t take me long to see what a grip it still had over me.”

  “Linus.” Paula took both his hands then, squeezing them hard inside hers. “Struggling to shake this doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human.” She squeezed his hands harder still.

  “Not wanting to be with me while you’re going through this,” she added with a regretful shake of her head, “well, that just makes you stupid.”

  Linus grinned, though a sober element lingered in his eyes. “Whether it makes me weak, human or stupid, I never want you to see me like that again. It’s clear that I can’t promise you those memories don’t still carry weight with me.”

  “That’s not a promise you should make anyway, and the fact that you can’t make it isn’t good enough reason for us to be apart,” Paula decided and scooted even closer.

  Linus’s smile was proof of his approval. “I agree, Madam DA,” he said, putting her on his lap to satisfy his need to have her closer still. He cupped her chin. “I love you.”

  “I love you.” She gave his words back to him and set her forehead against his.

  “I guess the only way to keep those memories weighted down is to put new ones on top of them,” he said.

  “Better ones,” Paula countered.

  “Ones we’ll never want to forget. I’ll spend every day making good on that, Paula.”

  “Every day,” she emphasized.

  “Every day you’ll have me.”

  “There was a time I thought I’d have you every day for the rest of my life.” Paula blinked against the sudden pressure of tears—but they were happy ones.

  “There was a time I thought that too. I still do. Will you have me, Paula?”

  Instead of a verbal reply, Paula kissed him. Linus’s response embodied and signified the love, desire and promise they at last felt free to explore.

  “Every day, Paula?” Linus insisted on his answer.

  She cupped his face and squeezed. “Every day, Linus. Every day.”

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from A Los Angeles Passion by Sherelle Green.

  A Los Angeles Passion

  by Sherelle Green

  Chapter 1

  Trey Moore could barely conceal his anticipation as he ran his long fingers over the smooth, creamy piece of his latest obsession.

  “That’s it,” he whispered, pinching at a couple of curled edges that were beautifully laid out on the table before him. “Come to me, baby.”

  For months, he’d been preparing for this very moment. Trey reached for his scotch on the rocks before sitting on the high chair of his dining room table. He took a measured sip of the cool liquid and observed the printed cream-colored pages of his screenplay, which was currently divided into scenes.

  Trey had been cooped up in his Brentwood, LA, estate for nearly seventy-two complete hours, and he was no closer to being finished with his latest screenplay than he was before he’d taken his hiatus.

  For Trey, there was nothing more frustrating than having writer’s block when his agent and producers were on his back for the next Hollywood hit. He’d known, the minute he’d accepted this job, that he’d run into a few issues toward the end. He prided himself on only agreeing to write screenplays for stories that he truly believed were special in their own way. However, even he’d admit that, initially, he hadn’t seen the producer’s vision behind this particular project. As time grew and he let the story line foster in his head a bit, he’d begun to change his mind.

  Every time Trey wrote a screenplay, he invariably got that feeling in the pit of his stomach that he’d figure out how to tie up every loose end in the story finally. Call it writer’s intuition or good old-fashioned luck, he always knew instinctively that he’d be able to finish things satisfactorily, and just an hour ago, he’d gotten that hunch again.

  The feeling had come a little later than he’d liked, but luckily, he still had a couple of weeks to pull perfection from the last few scenes he’d written down in an effort to appease his agent and producers. It was mid-September and he hadn’t promised them anything final until mid-October.

  Taking another sip of his scotch, he picked up one of the action scenes and read his handwritten sticky notes plastered across the paper. “Come on, Trey,” he said, closing his eyes. “What’s missing here?”

  He kept his eyes closed as he imagined the scene playing out in his mind as it would in the movie. He was only partially into his vision when he heard keys jingling in his front door. Trey opened his eyes and glanced down at his rose gold watch.

  “Carmen,” he said aloud as he shook his head and headed toward his front door. There was only one person who could be coming into his home at eleven o’clock at night.

  “What do you want?” he said, crossing his arms over his chest the moment the door peeked open.

  “Dang, big bro. Is that any way to greet your favorite sister?”

  “You’re my only sister.”

  “Precisely the reason you should be more grateful to see me.”

  “You’re right,” he said with a laugh as he reached for the car seat that held his nephew, Matthew. “Hey, M-dog,” he said as he picked up the six-month-old. “How’s my boy doing?”

  “Ugh.” Carmen frowned. “Why do you insist on calling him M-dog?”

  “Because it’s way better than you and Mom insisting on calling him Matty. There’s nothing manly about the nickname Matty. Are you trying to raise your son to permanently be in the friends zone with every girl he meets?”

  “Shut up,” Carmen said, lightly slapping Trey’s shoulder. “M-dog isn’t a good nickname, either. You’re lucky I love you because had anyone else called him that, I would have nipped it in the bud right away.”

  Trey smiled, knowing she meant it. Although Trey and Carmen didn’t have the same father, they were extremely close. Trey’s stepdad—who was also Carmen’s father—had been around for most of his life, and since Trey’s relationship with his own father was strained, he appreciated his stepfather.

  Through his biological dad, Reginald Moore, Trey also had two half brothers, Derek and Max. Since they all had different mothers, they hadn’t been too close growing up. Like him, Derek also had an uneasy relationship with their father. Actually, Derek’s relationship with Reginald was much worse than Trey’s. Max was the only son who was close to Reginald, because he’d had the benefit of growing up with Reginald in his life and always had him around.

  “Have any scotch?” Carmen stepped away from the foyer and walked into the kitchen area that was connected to the dining room and living room.

  “You already know I do.” Trey handed baby Matthew back to his sister as he pulled out a glass to pour scotch. “I thought you weren’t drinking any liquor, though? When did that change?”

  “Oh, it didn’t,” Carmen said with a sneaky smile. “The scotch is for you.”

  Trey stopped midpour. “For me? I already have a glass I was sipping on b
efore you arrived.”

  “Great. Then maybe you should get that glass.”

  Trey leaned against the counter. “Enough stalling, Carmen. I’m happy to see you and my nephew, but why are you here?”

  Carmen nuzzled her nose with Matthew’s tiny button before speaking. “Well, as you know, Max has been trying to get me a few gigs, but even with his connections as my talent agent, I haven’t gotten a lot of bites.”

  Trey nodded, well aware of Carmen’s frustration with her acting career. His sister was talented, and seeing that their mom was a famous actress in her day, Hollywood expected that at least one of her children would follow her path. Surprisingly, Trey had found his niche in LA as a prominent screenplay writer. However, Carmen was still trying to emulate their mother. Trey knew that all she needed was a big break to showcase her talent, and he was hoping that Max, his half brother and Carmen’s agent, could help her in any way possible.

  “So, it looks like my hard work is finally paying off. I landed a minor role on a weekly television series.”

  “That’s great, sis.” Trey gave her a quick hug, careful not to crush Matthew. “I knew you’d get a break soon enough.”

  “I’m really excited,” Carmen said, beaming from ear to ear. “I couldn’t wait to tell you. I even wanted to tell Scott and gloat a little, but I don’t want to jinx anything.”

  Scott was Carmen’s ex and Matthew’s father. Trey had always gotten along well with Scott, but Scott didn’t support Carmen’s dream of becoming a full-time actress, so the two had split right before Carmen found out she was pregnant. Trey was proud of his sister for not letting her dream of spending the rest of her life with Scott and raising a family together deter her from following her other goal of becoming an actress.

  “I understand that.” Trey playfully nudged her on the head like he’d done since she was little. “When do you start filming?”

  “Funny you should ask.” Carmen perked up. “I’ve been informed that it will take two weeks to film the pilot episode and I’m needed on set starting tomorrow. Which brings me to the reason I’m here.”