by Grayson Cole
No, Michael thought to himself as Lysette pulled off, she certainly isn’t cold.
Chapter 7
Lysette just couldn’t bring herself to go straight home. Granted, she wanted to know why her friend had left him at the galleries, but, more importantly, she needed to find a way to approach the things he had told her about Elphonse. For so long she had worried that El had been hiding some parts of his life, and she hadn’t once thought they were good parts. But Nya had unwavering faith in the man, as if she had not noticed the significant changes in him over the years.
She parked in the driveway and went up to the house. She knocked on the door off the kitchen.
Nya came to the door wiping her hands on a towel. “Hey, ’Sette. Come on in.”
“What are you cooking?” Lysette asked, sitting on a bar stool positioned next to the island.
“Brownies.”
“Brownies?”
“Don’t start,” Nya warned.
“Start what?”
“I wanted brownies.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“Shut up, Lysette. I don’t just bake brownies when I’m anxious.”
“No, you also do it when you’re feeling guilty.”
Nya rolled her eyes and tried her level best to ignore her best friend.
No dice.
“You also do it when you’re horny.”
“Oh, my God, Lysette. Shut up!”
“Which reminds me, you’ll never guess who I just talked to.”
“I’m sure I would, considering I sent you to pick him up,” Nya answered wearily.
“You’re no fun,” she said and pouted. “So, yes, I just spent some quality time with Michael Harrison.”
“And?” Nya said as she stirred brownie batter.
“And I want to know what happened. I want to know why you left the man hanging at the galleries.”
Nya turned away from her to slide the brownie pan into the oven. “You want a glass of wine?”
“Sure.”
Nya moved over to the wine rack, removed a bottle of red, and then poured a glass for each of them. After handing Lysette her glass, she took a sip of her own as she rubbed the back of her neck with her free hand.
“Lysette, I don’t know what got into me,” she blurted.
“Girl, tell me what happened!”
Nya plopped down onto a stool next to her, tucking her long legs back beneath her. “Lysette, it was awful. I can’t believe I did what I did.”
Lysette rocked forward in her seat. Nya was only hesitant when it came to talking about trouble with her family and talking about sex. “Okay, so tell me. What did you do?”
Nya took a fortifying sip. “So, we know I was attracted to Michael when I first saw him.”
“Who wouldn’t be?”
“Right. I mean, he has this fabulous smile.”
“You were looking at his smile?”
Nya made a sound like partial groan and partial giggle. “I don’t know, Lysette. We were in the garden and I just… I just lost my mind!”
“You are killing me, Nya. What the hell happened?”
“I kissed him. Or maybe he kissed me, but I kissed him back, and it just went on and on. Right there in the garden where anyone could have seen us. We just…”
Lysette could feel her eyes growing wider at every word.
A blush silenced Nya and she averted her eyes.
“You kissed him?”
Nya’s attention snapped back to her friend. “Look, I know that’s insane. I’ve been telling myself over and over again that I can’t get involved with him. I don’t have time for a relationship, especially since he’s the reason why I’m doing damage control right now, and especially not in the middle of this investigation and everything.”
“Ahem. Pardon the interruption, dear, but you never think you have time for a relationship.”
“Lysette, you know that if I let up at all at the office, my father will not waste time naming someone else to a position that is rightfully mine.”
“Nya, you don’t think you’re being a little over-dramatic?”
“I’m not. You know Daddy.”
“Yeah, I do. That’s not what I’m talking about. Your dad’s a lunatic and, yeah, you have to stay focused, but all you did was kiss a man. At your age, that’s definitely not enough to ruin your life.”
“God, you don’t understand.”
“For once, we agree. I don’t. I mean, you left him there.”
“I had to. After… after everything I just couldn’t face him.”
“Come on, you didn’t strip down and hump in the sand, did you?”
“No, no. But it was a little more than a simple kiss.” Nya winced but pushed forward. “We were all over each other. I mean kissing and groping like—”
“Like you couldn’t get enough of each other?”
“Y-yes. I mean, I’ve never let myself get that carried away before, and practically in public.”
“So it was good? You two had chemistry?”
“God, yes,” Nya moaned. “Anyway, I didn’t know what to do. I hardly know him, and what I do know of him is that he wrote an article based on the word of Marshall Ellis that paints us as monsters that could potentially let the real monsters go free. God, I should have known better. Then I ran away like some… some… virgin and made it even worse.”
“Yeah, now that is a little weird.”
“I know. I was just embarrassed by my reaction to him.”
“I say either you really, really like him, or it’s been too damn long.”
“I think I’ll go with the latter.”
“I think I’ll go with both.” The rich scent of chocolate filled the kitchen and Lysette took another sip of red wine. “Just admit it. You like him.”
“I think I’ve already admitted it. I liked him a little too much.”
“You know what I mean.”
Nya shrugged. “I admit it, then. I feel a crazy connection to him, crazy because I just met him.”
“Jamie and I got married three months after we met.”
“You guys are the exception.”
“Might be, but it still means that it’s possible. If things went down the way you said they did, I’m sure he feels that same connection.”
“He’s a man. He probably feels it every morning when he wakes up.”
Lysette giggled, and then cleared her throat. Nya was a little more relaxed, so maybe it was a good time to approach the other thing she wanted to talk about. “Hey, there is something important I want to talk to you about.”
Nya frowned and looked up at her. “What’s that?”
“You might be a little bashful after what happened between you, but I think you ought to talk to Michael about the Art Sentries Foundation, about the article.”
“I thought I’d already done that.”
“Did you ever ask him who his sources were?”
“He said he didn’t know who his sources were—go figure—except for Marshall.”
Lysette bit down on her lip and closed her eyes. “I’m pretty sure he has questions about at least one other one.”
Nya sat up straight. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” Lysette studied her friend closely. Nya was on alert. All semblance of the relaxed and vulnerable woman of moments before was gone. Maybe it wasn’t such a good time to tell her about El. “Well, I told him you were flying out tomorrow. He asked for your number here. I figured you would be okay with me giving it to him, if he had something to share.”
“Of course.”
“And of course that was before I knew you jumped his bones.”
“Not funny, Lysette.”
Lysette decided then not to go any further. She’d let Michael break the news, then offer support afterwards.
h
Nya was cutting brownies when her cell phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number and gave her best friend an arch look. The phone rang again and she picked it up.
“Hello,” Ny
a squeaked. She cleared her throat. “Hello?”
“Nya, it’s me, Michael. Are you busy?”
Man, he had a sexy phone voice. Already she started to feel that warm, languid, and tingly sensation in her belly. She recognized the arousal, but tried her best to tamp it down. “No, just in the kitchen with Lysette.”
“Do you need me to call you back?”
“No, really, it’s fine. Uhhh… ummm…” She didn’t quite know where to start.
Lysette took her hesitation as a clue to disappear into the den.
“Michael, I’m sorry about how I left today. I… uhh… wasn’t expecting what happened between us, and… and…”
“It’s okay,” he told her. “Not so great for my ego, but—”
“Oh, no! It’s not like that.”
“Thank the Lord.”
“It’s just…”
“I know,” he said in a deep, soothing voice. “I was a little taken off guard, too. You may find this hard to believe, but I don’t normally accost beautiful young women in public gardens.”
Nya smiled.
“How about we put that behind us for now? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about, about the Art Sentries Foundation situation.”
Nya nodded and stood straighter. “What is it?”
“Do you remember the guy that ran across us in the gardens today?”
“Who?” Nya asked, wondering why his voice sounded so urgent.
“The guy in the gardens, did you see him?”
“Yes, that was Elphonse Deklerk. He’s a vice president with us.”
“Yes!” Michael declared. “That’s him. Nya, I know he’s very close to your family, but there are some things that don’t sit well with me about him. I’ve thought about this all evening and I feel like I have to be honest with you, to be open. What I’m about to tell you goes against everything I believe in as a journalist, but you need to know.”
Nya felt her lips tighten. “What are you saying?”
“Deklerk is the man who told me to speak with Ellis about the scholarship fund. He told me that he couldn’t talk on the record for fear of his job. He sent me to Ellis.”
Nya considered the possibility of what she was hearing for less than a second. There was no way it could be true. “That’s not possible, Harrison. El was in on this at ground level with my father. He would have known better than to talk to a reporter.”
“But he did talk to me. I have no reason to lie to you.”
Nya put a hand over her eyes and paused to consider what he was saying. “If he did speak to you, led you to Marshall, then there had to have been a good reason. Maybe I’m wrong and he didn’t know—”
“Nya!” Michael interrupted. Frustration gave grit to his voice. “You’re the one who has continued to push the issue that the timing of the article could have damaged the investigation because it alerted the criminals that we were on their scent. You were asked to keep it quiet for that very reason, surely he knew that.”
She started to speak, but caught herself. Finally, she said, “I really don’t have the time to discuss it right now.”
Michael’s voice grew louder on the phone. “I just thought you’d want to know. You have no idea how dangerous this thing just got. If this friend of yours is involved with the man the Feds think is behind this, then—”
Nya’s throat was tight. “Rinaldo Mandolesi. Right?”
Michael’s silence on the other end gave her her answer.
“As far as we knew, that wasn’t common knowledge. So how did you know that?”
She heard him take a breath, preparing to say something. But nothing came out. Then, it seemed as if he elected to take the offensive.
“Despite what you think, I am good at my job, Nya. I am.”
“Not that good,” she snapped. “If you knew anything at all about Elphonse Deklerk then you would know the last person on God’s green earth he would help is Rinaldo Mandolesi.”
“But help him he did. His story, his lead to Ellis, the whole set-up jeopardized the investigation, slowed it down, maybe even dried it up because Mandolesi is classically skittish.”
“You don’t know El. He’s my family, maybe not by blood, but he’s my family.”
“Nya.”
“No, Michael. There’s nothing you can say to make me believe any different.”
“And here I thought I was doing you a favor.”
“Favor?” Nya scoffed. “The only favor you can do for me is to keep silent about Mandolesi. Don’t dare print a word about him. He knows the foundation has been busted, but we’re fairly certain he doesn’t know we’re coming for him, that Marshall is going to be the only fall guy. Don’t ruin what’s left of the case. And you know what else? Leave El alone. I’ve known the man longer than I’ve known how to talk. If you want to stir up some dirt for your paper, Harrison, then I’m sorry, you’d better search in someone else’s backyard.”
“You know what? You can think what you like. With or without you, I’ll get to the bottom of this. Goodbye,” he said and hung up.
Nya had the urge to throw the phone, but instead set it down on the table and began to knead the muscles at the base of her neck.
“I think you should listen to what he’s saying,” Lysette ventured cautiously from the doorway.
“And I think not,” Nya answered. The subject was closed.
h
After Lysette left an hour later, taking half the pan of brownies with her, Nya curled up on the sofa in her den and tried to puzzle through everything that had happened. She skipped around in her thoughts, though, because every time she settled on her time with Michael in the garden, funny things started to happen to her body, despite her attempt to hold on to her anger about his accusations about El.
Harrison could have accused anyone else of being corrupt, but not Elphonse. Her mother and El’s had been best friends since before there was a Hatsheput Industries. Nya and El had been inseparable in the years before she moved to Birmingham.
She remembered following him up the jagged rocks that lined Hull’s bay and running through wild, overrun paths. She and Jenine had always followed him, trying to keep up and prove that they were just as fast as he was, just as strong. El never went far enough ahead to lose sight of them. He always made sure they were out of harm’s way.
The same could be said for when they were young adults, too. Even though El started to act out, to hang out with the wrong crowd, he remained true to and protective of her and her sister. True, at one point in time she just didn’t know what he was capable of. He seemed to be on the rise in the crime world, and Nya didn’t want to know what it took for him to get there. One terrible event had changed all that, changed El forever. He pulled back from the game, went back to school and came to work for her father.
But she had to acknowledge, he had never let go of all his contacts. Sometimes they went places together, and Nya found herself surprised that the suave, corporate El knew someone with an obviously dubious background. They weren’t as close as they had once been, and sometimes Nya thought him secretive. Was there something significant she didn’t know?
Suddenly she felt like such a fool. Michael Harrison apparently thought he could sucker her in with a single kiss, then tell her anything. True enough, a kiss like that was enough to make any woman forget her own name. And equally true, she still couldn’t get it out of her mind. Nya could, however, tamp down all of the desire it had awakened within her. She could reason through what he’d said and draw the conclusion that her friend was not a traitor and had not cooperated with the one man in the world he hated the most….
But something didn’t sit well with her.
El had been peculiar when he visited the other day. Something was going on with him. She felt it in her bones.
h
Late that night Nya sat holding her phone, her eyes burning with shame. The doubt had taken over, and she hated Michael for it.
She punched in El’s number. He answe
red right away. “Hey, El.”
“Hey, Nya.” There was a hesitation in his voice. It was as if he held his breath.
“Listen, I have to ask you about something, and I just want to get it over with, okay?”
“Fine.”
She started to ask, “Have you ever met Michael Harrison?” Instead, the words that left her lips were, “What are you doing up this time of night?”
“I just got in.”
“Got in where? Charlotte Amalie?”
“Yeah, flew in this evening.”
“Commercial?”
“Of course not. I don’t know why we have a jet if you and Nyron won’t use it.”
Nya shrugged, as if he could see her. “I didn’t know you were heading home before Daddy made it back to Birmingham.”
“Yeah, change of plans. I have a lot of things to do tomorrow. Some that can’t really wait.”
“What’s that, El?”
“It doesn’t matter, Nya.”
Oh, but it did. Why would El hop a plane home out of the blue? She knew for certain he had been in the gallery that day. She knew for certain he wasn’t supposed to leave for home until Sunday. What had changed that? If Michael Harrison’s story was to be believed, then it would follow that El was getting out of town before they ran into each other again. But that couldn’t be. Could it?
She needed to ask him, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it directly. Instead, she asked, “Tell me why you had to hop a plane so fast. What did you have to do tomorrow that couldn’t wait?”
“I’m meeting with Lola MacPherson, Danika Rolle, and Mary-Amelia Stewart. I wanted to see them all together, and Lola called to say they could get together tomorrow.”
For a second Nya didn’t know what he was talking about. When she made the connection, her heart constricted and she squeezed the phone until it hurt. It took her a moment to speak. “Why are you meeting with them? Did my father ask you to?”
“No,” El replied. “I’ve tried to help each of them out here and there since they lost their boys.”
Nya squeezed her eyes shut and tried to tamp down a wave of nausea. Here she was doubting her friend, believing that he might have lost his way, and yet what he had told her days ago rang true. He hadn’t lost his way, she had. Instead of making an apology and approaching the women who had lost their sons to the criminals operating the Art Sentries Foundation, she’d spent all her time trying to address their image through the Tribune. She had succeeded at that but failed at her most fundamentally human and decent responsibility. Tears started, and a knot formed in her throat.