“A date?” Nala choked on her laughter, shaking her head as if the idea of him leaving another woman to climb into Nichelle’s bed was awful but also awfully hilarious. “Are you serious?”
“That’s pretty much what I said when he walked in my door.”
“And you let him through your door...?”
She blushed again. But it was true. As if she could ever turn him away. “I did. But it was incredibly stupid. He can get sex from just about any woman on the planet. Why the hell did I allow him in my house last night?”
“Because you wanted to. It’s been a long time, Nicki.” Nala held up eight fingers, ticking them off one by one as she listed all the months since Nichelle had had a man in her bed.
“I wasn’t starved for it.”
“So you say, but if not, why jump on Wolfe?”
“Because...” But she didn’t have a reason beyond her desperate and sudden yearning for him.
Every woman wanted Wolfe. But what good did that do them? He loved women, but they tumbled so cheerfully and easily into his bed that he took them for granted. All of them. He easily moved on to the next one because there would always be a next.
And last night, she felt as if she’d been easy for him. The week in Marrakesh had teased them both with the possibility of how intimacy would be between them. In some ways, she could have even justified sleeping with him there. But here, in Miami, for Wolfe, making love with her had been convenient, a novelty that would wear off with the coming of the morning sun.
Nichelle cursed. “I feel like such an idiot.”
Nala waved a dismissive hand. “Stop beating yourself up. It was only sex. And sex that you both wanted. It wasn’t like you raped him or destroyed the whole world with the force of your orgasm.”
“Orgasms,” Nichelle corrected. She shoved her coffee cup against her mouth to stop herself from saying anything else. But that didn’t stop her thoughts from stuttering back to hours before, her body arched in the bed under the force of Wolfe’s merciless tongue and fingers, while she cried out for him to stop, but not stop, what he was doing.
Nala chortled. “And you have regrets about this one? Damn, you should have regretted that boring University of Miami professor with the tiny penis. Now that was a waste of your three minutes.”
Her comment teased a smile out of Nichelle. She agreed with Nala. The decision to let the professor go had been an easy one. Wolfe and his magical mouth and hands, not so much. But she had to let him go before he dropped her like he had so many of the others before her.
“I can’t let him hurt me, Nala. I just can’t.”
“Who’s to say that he will? You’re assuming an awful lot, friend.”
“I’m not assuming. I’m inferring based on the behavior I’ve observed over the years.” Nichelle toyed with the handle of her cup. “I can’t do this with him. It’s not going to end well, and I won’t allow him to treat me like the others who ended up falling for him.”
Nala plucked apart her almond croissant, finger-painted the nutty filling across the plate and licked her thumb. “I never realized before what a pessimist you are, Nichelle. You’re throwing away something sweet. But I’ll be here for you when you regret it and need a shoulder to cry on.”
“That won’t happen,” Nichelle said.
But even to her, the words sounded empty and false.
Chapter 11
Wolfe woke up alone in Nichelle’s bed.
He opened his eyes and blinked around the unfamiliar room. No, not unfamiliar. He’d seen this bedroom before, but had never been in the bed and certainly not naked. He sat up and called out Nichelle’s name.
But the house was quiet. He glanced by reflex to the bedside table, expecting...something. But there was no note, certainly no breakfast and no other sound in the house except the softly humming air conditioner. The bedroom door was closed. He’d never woken up alone in someone else’s bed before. He’d thought he and Nichelle would—
He scrubbed a hand over his face. He wasn’t sure what he thought.
Wolfe took a breath and jumped from the bed. He couldn’t stand being there anymore. He got dressed and left the house, locking the front door behind him. Sex with Nichelle was supposed to be about pleasure and enjoying the uncomplicated joy of their bodies. This part wasn’t fun, though—waking up alone under the weight of his crushed expectations and wondering why she’d left. This role reversal was a bitch.
* * *
The day after Nichelle left him in her bed, Wolfe was still feeling hollowed out by the aftermath of his night with her. But this time, he blamed himself. He had wanted her, and so he took, without regard for the potential consequences of his actions. The bittersweet memory of her, warm and clutching around him, haunted him from his sprawl on the back terrace of his Coconut Grove house. The rising sun threw its faint light across the backyard and through the rippling waters of the pool.
The night with her had exceeded every fantasy. She’d touched him and welcomed him into her body in ways that both shocked and pleased him. Her soft mouth and hands, the sweetness of her most intimate flesh pulling him toward bliss. And then to see even more of her cool facade melt away in the wake of their passion had been humbling. And sexy as hell.
Wolfe dropped his head back and hissed, hands tightening on his thighs, his body hard already from the memory of having her and wanting her again. His drunkenness had been no excuse. He didn’t want any excuses made for taking what he had desired for so long. But he knew things were different now. Every good thing between them had been destroyed.
His phone vibrated on the table in front of him, tapping a harsh rhythm against the glass top. He didn’t look at it. A few seconds later, it rang again. He turned it over just as a text from his mother came through.
I’m coming in. Get dressed if you’re indecent.
Wolfe looked down at himself. Bare chest, cotton pajama bottoms. Decent enough. When she let herself into the house barely two minutes later, he already had the kettle on and was reaching into his cupboard for her favorite tea, a Japanese concoction that cost a small fortune.
“Good morning, darling.” She brought the smell of pumpkin-spice coffee with her. When she saw him, she paused in the doorway. “You look like hell.”
“Is that why you came over here so early, to shower me with compliments?”
She sailed into the open-plan dining room and kitchen, looking much too lively for six o’clock in the morning, and carrying a large cup of coffee held out like a peace offering. Her yellow dress was a burst of sunshine in the dawn-shrouded room. She frowned and touched his cheek, fingers rasping through his overnight whiskers.
“You look like you’ve overindulged,” she said.
Still feeling raw and not exactly ready to be civil to another human, Wolfe carefully stepped away from her touch. “I don’t have a hangover.”
“I didn’t say anything about a hangover. You, my son, look like regret.”
She put the coffee on the bar and uncapped it to release the aromatic trail of steam. The smell of pumpkin spice became even stronger, perking up Wolfe’s taste buds. She must have stopped by one of the few places in all of Miami that served pumpkin-spice coffee, his secret pleasure, all year long. He reached for the cup.
“Sometimes you want something very badly,” his mother murmured, almost meditatively. “When you take it, it’s good. So good that you wonder why you’d never taken it before, and you want to keep having it. But you can’t. That’s the regret I see in you.”
Wolfe stopped at the bar with his hands braced on either side of the open coffee cup. He put them into fists and closed his eyes, sickened suddenly by the coffee smell.
“I’m not like you,” he said. But because his words sounded weak and unconvincing, he said them louder, slamming his fist against the granite counter. “I’m not like you!”
In the kitchen, the kettle screamed. They both ignored it.
His mother arranged herself on a bar stool, draping
the hem of her dress carefully over her legs. “What happened to you, darling?”
Was she even listening to him? “Shi—!”
“Do not curse in front of your mother, Wolfe Forsythe Diallo.” She didn’t even have to raise her voice.
He clamped his mouth shut but could not look at her. The tangled emotions, the frustration, bubbled in him like acid. The kettle’s hysterical scream wasn’t helping matters. In the kitchen, he snapped off the flame and moved the kettle to a cold burner. The sudden silence between them was even louder.
“When you left us sixteen years ago, I thought my life as I knew it was over.” Wolfe stepped back from the stove and into the dining area, hands on his hips so he wouldn’t be tempted to hit something again. “I thought that was the worst of it, you know. You leaving and taking every ounce of joy in our house with you.”
He took a harsh breath, and the feelings from that long ago cool Miami afternoon rushed back to punch him in the chest. “But I was wrong about that day. The worst of it was when I realized I was like you.” He gritted his teeth to stop the shout of anger and disappointment rising up in his throat. “Like you, I crushed one of the best things I’d ever had just because I couldn’t keep it in my pants.” He finally turned to face his mother. “I slept with Nichelle.”
Her reaction wasn’t quite what he’d thought it would be. “It’s about damn time,” she said.
“No, I don’t think you heard me. I just ruined one of the best relationships I’ve ever had. She told me to back off, but I just wouldn’t leave well enough alone.”
“You’ve been dancing around each other for years now.” His mother rapped her fingers against the bar’s granite surface for emphasis. “Everyone can see you’re perfect for each other. Even Kingsley, your own brother, has been baiting you so you’d step in and challenge him for her.”
As if that would even be a challenge. Wolfe ignored the thought. “No. It’s not like that.” He ground his teeth together, frustrated again by his inability to think clearly where Nichelle was concerned. “She is everything to me.”
The words surprised him. He gasped softly as the truth of them tumbled over him. “But I’d rather have her as a business partner, the way things were, than how they are now. I honestly think that she hates me. She left me alone in her bed, for Christ’s sake.”
“Listen.” She held up a hand to stall him. “Before you slept with her, did you tell her how you feel?”
He grunted, a dismissive sound. “That would have had her running for the hills for sure.” Wolfe didn’t want their relationship to linger on in its platonic limbo, but he didn’t want to lose her, either.
“You don’t know that she would run,” his mother said.
He turned his back to her, head dropping low, footsteps taking him toward the open doors of the terrace. “Mother...”
“Wolfe. I didn’t raise a coward. I didn’t raise a carbon copy of myself, either. Because you were so busy avoiding being me, you’ve always taken the path to easy happiness. But without risks, my darling boy, there can be no blissful forever.”
His mother pressed her lips together, hopped from the bar stool and paced to the kitchen to make her tea. She created a slow ceremony of scooping the right amount of tea leaves into the round infuser and pouring the hot water and agave into the clear teacup, then a slice of ginger. She was stalling. Which seemed so absolutely wrong because his mother never paused, never stalled. Instead she always rushed headlong into whatever decision she made, damn the consequences.
Finally, after the tea was made to her satisfaction, or she had delayed as much as she could get away with, she met his gaze.
“The weeks up until I left your father, I was in the middle of the worst postpartum depression I’d ever been through.”
He flinched in surprise. Depression? The strongest woman he’d ever known?
“I was crying all the time,” his mother continued. “Home began to feel like a prison. All those needy children plus the newborn twins made me want to do something drastic, something...awful.”
Wolfe’s stomach tightened. He swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. He’d read some terrible things about women dealing with postpartum depression, how they’d killed themselves or their children. Sometimes both.
His mother lifted the tea to her mouth, held the steaming cup under her nose. She stood in his kitchen, surrounded by stainless steel, a softness that he’d never seen from her before emerging as if by painful alchemy. It was an unfamiliar tableau.
“Royce, the man I left my family for, appeared at a time when I needed the distraction. I never loved him, but he saved me from myself. Sometimes I like to think he saved my family, too.” She paused and sipped the hot tea, flinching from where it must have burned her lips, but she took another sip. “With him in Vanuatu, I let everything go. That distance gave me the clarity and strength I needed. When your father came to get me, it was because I called him. I was ready to come home and be with my children and husband again. I don’t call myself a saint. I enjoyed Royce’s body...” Wolfe flinched again. He wasn’t ready to hear any of that about his mother. “And I enjoyed the sunshine and sea water on my skin. But that was the reason I left. To wash away the scum of depression that had formed over my life. I had three sets of twins, teenagers, newborns. Even with your father being there and being wonderful, it was still too much.”
“I don’t know why you two had so many damn kids in the first place.” Wolfe tried to make light of it, although his hands were cold from the shock of her confession.
“That’s what we both wanted and agreed to. Honestly, your father and I didn’t know what we were setting ourselves up for.” A twisted version of a smile tugged at her mouth. She was slowly becoming herself again.
“So what you’re saying to me, then, is that I’ve been wrong about what happened for all these years?”
“You were a child, Wolfe. I didn’t expect you to understand adult things.” Her mouth tilted up. “Nor did I owe you any explanations. My husband understood.”
“But... I spent so many years hating you.”
“And yourself, too, apparently.”
Heat flooded the back of Wolfe’s neck. He scratched at his nape, unable to meet her gaze. “I don’t hate myself.”
“But you’re not giving yourself what you need, either.” His mother gave him a pitying look. “Making love to Nichelle was not an act of selfishness. From now on, what you do will determine the ultimate meaning of Friday night. Don’t treat her like she’s nothing. Let her know that what you experienced together can be worth more than the deal you two just closed on. Emotionally, that is.”
Wolfe shook his head. “How do you know that?”
“Because I know my son.” She passed him on the way out to the terrace. “Now grab your coffee and come sit out here with me. Let’s not waste this beautiful sunrise.”
Because he was a good son, he did what she told him, the words of their conversation ringing in his ears. Slowly, he relaxed, his tight shoulders loosening, the pressure in his chest nearly gone. Wolfe sat across the table from her and put his bare feet up next to hers in the same empty chair. He lifted his cup.
“Thanks for bringing the coffee.”
She smiled around the lip of the teacup, her eyes warm and golden brown in the thickening light. “Anytime.”
* * *
Monday morning, Wolfe walked into the office just after eight o’clock, eager to talk with Nichelle. He rounded a corner in time to see her back disappearing down the hallway. He buttoned his suit jacket, took a breath and walked quickly after her.
“Good morning, Nichelle.”
She stopped. Her gaze dropped to his tie, the green silk paisley she’d bought him years ago for their first business trip together, and she smiled, a barely there tug at the corners of her mouth. Although she stood just a few feet from him, she felt as distant as the moon.
“Hi.” Nichelle reached out to touch the tie, then caught herself, droppin
g her hand back to her side. She cleared her throat. “I was expecting you earlier. The strategy meeting is just about to start.”
Wolfe glanced at his watch, annoyed that he wouldn’t get to talk with her. “Who the hell scheduled a meeting so damn early in the morning?”
“You did,” she said serenely. “I’ve got to grab some papers from my office. Meet you in the conference room.”
Then she was walking away again. Back straight under a pale yellow blouse tucked into a black skirt. Her shoes were also yellow today. Their red soles flashed at him with each step, signaling both danger and desire. He wanted to follow but knew it was a bad idea.
How often had women come up to him after a memorable night asking why he’d left or hadn’t called for a second date? The flipped script was grating on his nerves and his pride, only made worse by the fact that it was Nichelle doing it. But if she knew that the night had been about more than satisfying a temporary itch, would she turn to him in welcome? Or would she walk away even faster? Maybe his mother had raised a coward.
Damn.
Wolfe looked at his watch again. He didn’t have time to moon over Nichelle like some punany-struck teenager. There were notes he had to look over for the forgotten meeting. He strode quickly toward his office.
Despite the disaster of his forgetfulness, the strategy meeting went off without a hitch. The room of Kingston executives even came up with workable solutions to the potential problems Nichelle saw on the horizon.
He left the meeting split in two. His mind was on the strategies he needed to begin implementing on his end. Everything else was fiercely focused on Nichelle and the way the yellow blouse looked over her summer-ripe skin. How, during the meeting, she had stroked a pen against her lips in thought, tapping the shiny black pen against the plump red of her mouth in a steady rhythm that echoed in his groin. He could swear his flesh was still imprinted with the shape of her kisses, lust bites on his throat and chest, her teeth marks on his belly.
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