by J. D. Mason
Robin started talking about the designer dress she’d had fitted for a fund-raiser that she and Jordan were scheduled to attend Saturday night in San Francisco, finally bringing him into the mix.
“I’m just worried that my knight in shining armor might stand me up,” she said, laughing as if she were joking. “He’s been impossible to get ahold of lately.”
Phyl did that seesaw kind of nod thing with her head. “Yeah. He’s been pretty busy lately,” she said indifferently.
Above all else, Jordan’s privacy was sacred. His business was his business and was to be shared with absolutely no one unless he gave explicit instructions to the contrary. He’d made her raise her right hand, put her left hand on the Bible, and swear on her mother’s grave to keep that oath. Then he’d pulled out a huge serrated bladed knife, sliced her hand across the palm until it gushed blood, did the same to his, and made her his blood brother. Not really, but he’d made it a point to be certain that she understood just how important it was for him to know that he could trust her. And he could.
“Usually, he tells me when he’s traveling,” Robin said, studying Phyl for some sign to confirm or deny her suggestion that he was on the road.
Phyl held her gaze. “You know how he can be.” She smiled. “Jordan gets so wrapped up in things that he gets tunnel vision.” She took a sip of her vodka tonic, a long, slow sip.
Robin was as steady as a rock. “I just worry because he seems to be a bit removed,” she continued. “Busy or not, he usually gets back to me pretty quickly when I call. I’ve left several messages, but…”
The truth was, even Phyl didn’t know what Jordan had been up to lately. She had no idea if he was traveling or not. His comings and goings were as much a mystery to her as they were to Robin. Periodically, he called her to “just check in,” but other than that, Jordan disappeared for days at a time and then would suddenly appear like a rabbit popping out of a magician’s hat with no indication whatsoever of what he’d been doing or where. Despite what Robin wanted to believe, Phyl worked for Jordan, he didn’t work for her.
“I have the same problem,” Phyl admitted. “He’s got a sixth sense about things, though, Robin. Jordan always shows up in the nick of time to save the day.” She raised her drink to her lips again. “Just like Batman.”
Robin’s blank stare gave a clear indication of the fact that either she had no idea who Batman was or she just didn’t care. That easygoing, friendly demeanor of hers gradually faded, and Robin’s steely gaze gradually put Phyl back in her place.
“I need confirmation from him that he’s still planning on taking this trip with me to San Francisco this weekend,” she said curtly.
Phyl had a feeling that she was going to be paying for her own drink.
“I’ll reach out to him,” she assured her.
“My feelings will be hurt if he’s more responsive to you than he’s been to me,” she said coolly.
Phyl let loose a nervous chuckle. “Well, you know? I’ll be sure that he knows how important this is.”
Of course he’d respond to Phyl. She held his life in her planner, mostly. At least that part of his life that he wanted her to keep track of. But she got it. Ms. Sinclair wanted the whole Jordan, lock, stock, and barrel. And Jordan was being, well, Jordan. He was doing his thing, whatever that was. He didn’t feel compelled to answer to Robin or anybody else because after all, he was a mogul. And moguls had minds of their own.
Robin’s glare made Phyl severely thirsty, and she tossed back what was left of her cocktail.
“Please let him know that I’d like to speak to him as soon as possible.”
“Oh, of course.”
Without uttering another word, Robin picked up that expensive clutch of hers, stood up, and left. As soon as she did, the server appeared out of nowhere and placed the bill down on the table. That bitch had left Phyl to pay for both drinks. She gave the server her card and immediately called Jordan. Yeah, she was definitely expensing this one.
“Hey, boss,” she said, leaving a message on his voice mail. “Now it’s my turn to check in. Wanted to let you know that Robin contacted me wanting confirmation from you that you’re still flying to San Francisco this weekend. She hasn’t heard from you, and, well, she’s concerned.”
More like pissed.
“She wants you to call her as soon as you can. Your tux was delivered yesterday, and the captain has the jet fueled up and ready to go, so, I guess I’ll just wait to hear back from you.”
She hung up and wondered where it was written in her job description that she would have to referee lovers’ spats. Knowing Jordan, it was probably in there somewhere.
* * *
It had been several days since the last time Robin had seen Jordan, and even then, he was short with her, almost dismissive. Every time she called his office, all his executive assistant, Jennifer, would say was that he was in meetings and asked if Robin wanted to leave a message. Yes, it was only days, but Robin couldn’t shake the feeling that he was slipping away from her, and that just would not do.
She was in love even if he wasn’t. Robin padded barefoot through her penthouse apartment and sat down on the sofa facing the expansive window overlooking the city. The wine was too warm, and she hadn’t eaten all evening. Once again, she’d left a message for him to call her, sounding overtly casual, like it was no big deal if he return her call. But it was a big deal.
“So much has happened in the last year of my life,” he’d told her over drinks the first time they went out, “I’m just focused on the business and seeing where else I can take it.”
Seeing Jordan Gatewood in pictures or from a distance paled in comparison to being up close and personal with him. But it wasn’t just about looks with him. It was an air, imposing and electrifying. He effortlessly commanded the attention of everyone when he walked into a room. It was about everything he represented, an extraordinary black man who’d beaten the hell out of the odds and earned the respect of an industry. He was a king, a god, striking and regal.
Robin knew from the moment he’d asked her out that she wanted him, but she was intelligent enough to read between the lines of their conversation that night.
“I get it.” She smiled. “Believe me. Considering everything that you’ve gone through, Jordan, no one can blame you for wanting to focus on other things besides personal relationships. You need to heal and sort things out. When you’re ready for anything more serious, it’ll come.”
“In the meantime,” he’d said, gazing into her eyes with those dark, penetrating orbs of his, “thank you for agreeing to spend some of your evening with me, and welcome to Gatewood Industries.”
Of course she made love to him that night. She made love to him like her life depended on it, because it did. Robin had been desperately hanging on to him, to their relationship, these last six months, waiting for it to turn a corner and become something more than just casual dating. He teased her with himself, dangling all that he was in front of her, just out of reach, but keeping close enough to make her want him even more.
Robin needed to stop pretending with Jordan. Even if it meant pushing him away, it was tearing her up inside, keeping her true feelings hidden. She’d been so close on several occasions to telling him that she loved him, only to second-guess herself and swallow those words like bitter bile, holding them in just a while longer until the next time, she told herself. Well, next time was here.
The Feeling That I Feel
JORDAN HAD HER COCOONED against his chest with those big arms of his wrapped around her and one heavy leg on top of hers so that if she moved, he’d know it and wake up. Abby was starting to get really close to having to pee. She didn’t want him to wake, though. Not yet. Not until she had fully processed what he’d done to her last night. It was savage, frightening, and most incredible. She must’ve had at least three orgasms, and Abby was a one-orgasm-per-sex-act girl on her best day. He’d had her dizzy in ecstasy, her head reeling, eyes rolling back in h
er head, grabbing at sheets and pillows and him like a crazed animal. She’d never experienced anything like it, and she hoped that she’d never have to endure that again, because it was absolutely too much, more than her little mind and body could handle. At one point, she may have even cried.
He moved and moaned. She held her breath. Abby was not prepared to face him right now. It was too soon. If she could figure out a way to get out of his grasp without waking him, she’d sneak into some clothes, pee, tiptoe down the hall to the living room, get her keys, and leave. And she’d stay gone for a couple of hours, until she could be sure that he had left.
“Morning.”
She pressed her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut. That heavy and deep morning voice resonated to the depths of her soul. Please, God. Let him think she’s still asleep.
“You ignoring me on purpose?”
She couldn’t help it. Abby nodded.
He laughed, held her tight, and rolled her over on top of him. Abby pressed her face into his chest, refusing to look at him.
“Aw, baby,” he chuckled. That voice that rivaled Barry White’s. “Last night was lovely, Abby.” Jordan put his hand under her chin and raised her face, forcing her to look into his. “You are lovely,” he said, smiling.
Abby dared to open her eyes and stared back helplessly at him. “Why are you torturing me so?”
She was weak for this man, absolutely pitiful, and it was downright embarrassing. He seemed to know it and revel in it. Jordan stared so deep into her eyes that it felt like he could see every single secret, fear, hope, and dream. She felt so helpless.
“I think it’s the other way around, sugah,” he said, soulful. “I think I’m the one being tortured.”
“Now you’re teasing me.”
His expression turned serious, and he pulled her up until her mouth touched his. “Never,” he said, his lips grazing hers before sweeping his tongue against hers. All of a sudden, Abby started to get warm all over, and Jordan’s sizable appendage started to harden again, and it became immediately clear to her that they were about to pick up where they had left off the night before.
“Condom,” Abby said, abruptly and reluctantly breaking away from that kiss.
Even his morning breath was perfect.
He reached over to the nightstand, opened the drawer, and pulled out something that wasn’t a condom and that he wasn’t supposed to see.
“What’s this?” he asked, holding her vibrator in that big old hand of his.
Abby was mortified. “Put that back!” she demanded, attempting to snatch it out of his hand.
Jordan held it out of her reach. “What is it?”
“None of your business, Jordan. Put it back!” Abby was beyond humiliated, attempting to crawl across him to try to get to his outstretched arm, but he had a tight hold of her around her waist, and she felt and probably looked like a fish flapping around on dry land.
“What’s it do?” he asked, fumbling with it.
“Will you give me that?” she shot back angrily. How come she had the feeling that he knew exactly what it was and what it did? “C’mon, Jordan. Just give it to me,” she demanded.
Jordan found the on switch and pressed it.
Abby grimaced and buried her face in defeat against his chest. “This is so humiliating,” she muttered mortified.
“Whoa!” he said, feigning surprise.
“I’m starting not to like you so much,” she declared in dramatic fashion.
Somehow she found the courage to raise her eyes to his to let him see just how badly he was embarrassing her.
Jordan turned it off and placed it back inside the drawer. “I sincerely hope that’s not true,” he said, warmly brushing her hair back away from her face and kissing her forehead.
And just like that, she wasn’t mad at him anymore.
* * *
Abby was the keeper of the biggest secret in Blink and maybe even all of Texas history. She had a tycoon in her house, a larger-than-life head of a major corporation, worth boo-coo millions of dollars, a major celebrity whose picture had been in Forbes, Time, Money, and who knows what other magazines, sitting in her breakfast nook, eating bacon with her.
Of course, Jordan had to ask about the belly dancing. She blushed a little when he asked her how she’d come to be interested in it.
“Well, I was in grad school,” she began with an exaggerated sigh. “Geeky girl, surrounded by a ton of geeky boys, and none of us knew how to talk to the opposite sex unless the topic of conversation was about calculus or metal alloys.” She rolled her eyes. “Know what I mean? So, one day, I was passing by the bulletin board outside the lab and saw an ad from this Turkish girl who was teaching belly dancing classes to earn extra money. I figured, why not?” She shrugged. “I mean, what better way to fuel-inject my estrogen than learning to do one of the most feminine dances in the world? Right? Most of my life, it had been all clogged up.”
“Your estrogen,” he confirmed.
“Yes. Which is understandable when you consider all the circumstances. I mean, there was a pattern.” Abby raised one finger. “Only girl raised in a houseful of men. That was the first problem. Two,” she said, holding up the next finger, “one of only two females in my whole graduating classes majoring in structural engineering.” She held up a third finger. “And three, summers and school breaks spent working construction, for crying out loud.” Abby grimaced. “Belly dancing reminded me that I had been born and still was, despite circumstances to the contrary, a woman,” she finished with a smile.
Finally, he laughed. “You most certainly are,” he said, pulling her to him and kissing her.
He sure liked kissing her. She liked kissing him, too.
“I tell Skye everything,” she said to him.
He was patient and listened to her ramble on without interrupting. It was nice.
“But I still haven’t told her about you, that I know you.”
Right now he looked just a regular person, sitting there with his shirt off, his jeans slung low on his hips, leaning on the table, sipping on a cup of coffee. If she didn’t know who he was, he’d be a guy. An average, everyday, severely handsome, overtly sexy guy.
“That’s good,” he said.
“Oh, it is. I trust her implicitly, but I don’t think she’s strong enough to keep you a secret. And then the next thing you know, everybody in town would be bugging me about you. I wouldn’t even be surprised if news reporters showed up at my door.”
“We wouldn’t want that.”
“How do you get used to something like that?” she asked, studying him. “How do you ever get used to people probing into your private life, wanting to know every single thing about you, and publishing it whether you want them to or not?”
He thought about it before finally responding. “That’s how it’s been my whole life, Abby,” he said introspectively. “Julian Gatewood was a man before his time. He was a big deal, and it was impossible to ignore him.”
“So, even when you were a kid, the media followed you around?”
He sighed. “Him more than us. And my mother, because she was his wife and because she was beautiful. My sister and I watched it, and to us, it was normal. It didn’t really affect me directly until he died and I was made CEO.”
“You were so young,” she said sympathetically. “Too young.”
“I was the man of the house,” he clarified. “It was my job to pick up where he left off. So, I did.”
“Do you have any privacy?”
He looked at her and smiled. “You’re private.”
“And I’d like to keep it that way,” she said emphatically. “I’ve never been one for the limelight. I’m small-town,” she said proudly, “through and through. And there’s something to be said for that.”
“I agree.”
“I wonder if they had this conversation,” she said, suddenly thinking of Ida and Julian. “I wonder if Ida was more comfortable living her small-town life here in
Blink than being closer to Julian?”
Jordan seemed to think about it. “This place is a haven, Abby. This town is nowhere. Maybe it was his way of escaping his world. I’m starting to wonder if he didn’t prefer it here as much as she did.”
“Is it a haven for you?”
He surprised her and nodded. “It is.” Jordan took hold of her hand, raised it to his lips, and kissed it.
It was hard not to consider the similarities, the parallels between her and Jordan and Ida and Julian. Of course, Abby was not going to be anybody’s side chick, and after today, she and Jordan might not ever see each other again. They had no reason to, really. He had his big life in Dallas, and she had her manageable life here in Blink. They were literally two different worlds.
Besides, she’d seen those pictures of him on the Internet with all those women that looked like Victoria’s Secret models. He had his pick, and for now, he’d picked Abby. And she’d picked him. That was about it. No expectations. She’d had the night of her life, though. After five years of unintentional celibacy, she deserved him—it.
“You want some more coffee?” she asked, starting to get up.
“Please,” he said politely.
Burned by the Fire
THE EVENT WAS HELD AT the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco, and Jordan and Robin had flown in on his private jet. Tonight was a fund-raiser for someone’s foundation to support some cause that Jordan couldn’t recall. He’d gotten the invitation months ago and had actually forgotten about this thing until his assistant, Phyl, had reminded him of it a few days ago.
People gave their customary greetings and nods. Jordan returned them in kind. He knew most of these people. Jordan had attended many of those types of events with these same people but would not count any of them as his friends. He was the dark horse. The stepnephew that none of them would purposefully choose to associate with. They tolerated him because of who he was. The name Gatewood drew more cringes than praise. But his money was green, he had lots of it, and green money at fund-raisers for causes he couldn’t remember always secured him a spot on the invite list.