Wolfe had to pull himself together before he was able to stand up from the conference table. He immediately went to find Nichelle. He rapped on her office door once before pushing it open.
“Hey.”
She sat at her desk, fingers poised on her computer keyboard.
“Hey.” She smiled back at him, but had that same distant look, her eyes a dark ocean he had no chance of sailing safely through. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“About Friday night...” Wolfe closed her office door behind him. He didn’t miss the slight tightening of her shoulders at his approach. He stopped, shoved his hands in his pockets and gave her the space she so obviously wanted.
“We’re okay,” she said, dismissive and calm. “You needed a little something, and I was there. No big deal.”
No big deal? The pleasure he’d shared with her far eclipsed any he’d had with any other woman. It had only been one night, but he wanted more. He wanted her.
Nichelle took a deep breath and put down her pen. She clasped her hands together on the desk. “This doesn’t need to go any further, Wolfe. Really.”
“And that’s all you want to say about this?” It can’t be. The thought pulsed in him, hard and painful. After the things they’d shared in Morocco and the way she responded with him in bed, this couldn’t be the end.
“Yes, it is.”
She tapped the keyboard, obviously ready to get back to work. Dismissing him. But a flicker of something unfamiliar in her eyes caught him. She was...afraid. Then the fear was gone, and it was just Nichelle staring at him with an upraised brow. Whatever she was feeling, she didn’t want him to see it. He had to respect that.
“Okay.” He nodded. “I have a lunch meeting in Fort Lauderdale. I’m heading that way now.”
“Sounds good. See you when you get back.” She turned back to her computer.
Wolfe’s lips tightened. But he let himself out and closed her door very deliberately behind him. This was going to be a long, damned day.
* * *
Nichelle kept her eyes on the computer for a full thirty seconds after Wolfe walked out of her office, only blinking, unseeing, at the screen. Regret, a spiked and hard thing, rolled through her chest. She clenched her teeth to prevent the words that would call Wolfe back to her. He’d looked so hurt. Maybe there was a way they could—
The telephone rang, derailing her train of thought. Was it Wolfe calling?
But it was her assistant’s voice that came over the line. “There’s an Isaac Franklin on the phone for you, Ms. Wright.”
What would he want to talk to her about? She pursed her lips, considering. “Put him through, please.”
“I know what you did to get the Quraishi account.” Isaac didn’t bother with any pleasantries.
Nichelle hissed an indrawn breath, then forced herself to stay calm. Isaac was a bully and not very smart. What he thought might be dirt on her and Wolfe might actually be nothing. “What do you mean? That I had the best proposal, better resources, and was more prepared to do my job than you?” She leaned back at her desk, consciously relaxing her body.
“The two of you were pretending to be married to impress Quraishi. You took advantage of his conservative stance to push your proposal through.”
“What he may or may not think about my personal life with Wolfe has no bearing on the job we’ll do for him as his business management consultants.” She gave him the party line, hoping he’d give up and get off her phone.
“If Quraishi knew you two played him, he would snatch that account from Kingston Consulting so damn fast you’d get whiplash.”
Nichelle tapped her fingers against the desk, already mentally doing damage control. “What’s the point of this call, Isaac? What do you want?”
“You know what I want.”
“To grow a few more inches?” She was deliberately nasty, adding a sneer in her voice. She wished he was standing in front of her so she could stare witheringly at his crotch for maximum effect.
“You’re going to tell Quraishi everything,” Isaac said. “Or you drop Diallo and come back to work for us. If you come back to Sterling, I won’t say a word to Quraishi.”
And by leaving Kingston, she was as good as telling Quraishi she’d lied anyway. What wife would abandon her husband and his business to work for a mediocre competitor? Not a very smart one. “Why the hell would I do any of that?”
“If you care anything for Diallo and his company, why wouldn’t you?” Then he hung up.
Nichelle glared at the silent telephone as anger knocked an erratic pulse in her throat, and she pressed her teeth viciously together. She wanted to find Isaac wherever he was in Miami and gut him like the useless bottom-feeder he was. She buzzed her assistant instead.
“Isaac Franklin doesn’t get through to me again.”
“Yes, ma’am. Understood.”
Nichelle disconnected the call, only to have her cell phone chime a second later. It was a text from Nala inviting her out to lunch. She texted back: I can’t. Something came up at work. Dinner tonight?
A minute later Nala wrote back: Fine. But you’re buying. Romeo’s Café.
A brief smile quirked Nichelle’s mouth. Her friend would pick one of the most expensive restaurants in Miami in retaliation for Nichelle not being available when she wanted. She texted: Fine. But you’re picking me up.
Nala: You’re on.
She put the phone down, already thinking again of Isaac and the threats he made. She had to find a way to fix this. No matter what was going on between her and Wolfe, she wouldn’t allow someone else to hurt him. But her usually quick mental reflexes couldn’t find a solution to the conundrum Isaac had left her with. She could only sit in the chair, frozen, remembering Wolfe’s face only minutes before when she’d basically told him to leave her alone. That had hurt his feelings, but Isaac Franklin had the power to cripple his business.
Nichelle’s hand clenched into a fist.
* * *
Wolfe maneuvered his sleek burgundy Mercedes-Benz through downtown Fort Lauderdale while 2 Chainz growled from the car’s speakers. His meeting had gone well, another guaranteed win for Kingston Consulting, but dissatisfaction writhed under his skin. He couldn’t get Nichelle out of his mind. Not the way she dismissed him that morning, not the way she had felt moving beneath him as they’d made love only days before.
The music in the car faded to nothing when his phone started to ring. A photo of Nichelle appeared on the screen of his cell, a picture he’d taken of her at a family dinner. Velvet eyes smiling, her mouth bare of lipstick, a peacock-blue dress making her skin look like black gold. She was so breathtakingly beautiful.
A car horn honked sharply behind him, jerking his attention back to the road and the green light he was currently wasting. He set the car back in motion the same time the phone stopped ringing.
He lifted his thumb to hit the redial button when the phone rang again.
“Good, I’m glad you called back.”
“Are you sure you’re talking to the right person?”
The masculine voice at the other end of the line made him glance at the caller ID he’d ignored before. An unknown local number. But his brain caught up and he recognized the voice.
“Isaac Franklin.”
“Got it in one.”
“I didn’t know we were playing guessing games.”
Franklin laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I just talked to your wife.”
“I don’t have a wife,” Wolfe said before he could stop himself.
“That’s not what Quraishi thinks.”
Wolfe sucked in a silent breath. “What he may or may not think is none of your business. In case you already forgot, he’s not your client. He’s ours.”
“In case you forgot, you told him a lie to get the contract. He wouldn’t take very kindly to knowing that.”
“Get the hell off my line, Franklin.” He hung up.
Wolfe was getting off on the exit toward C
oral Gables, passing the airport with planes taking off low overhead, when his phone rang again, from another line he had forwarded to his cell. The phone number plainly said it was from California. It had to be Franklin again. Despite the unease in his gut, he answered the call.
“Whatever you have to say, make it quick,” he growled into the phone.
“You may not know Nichelle as well as you think, Diallo.” Franklin sounded smug. “I know what you two got up to in Morocco.” Had he watched them from the tent while they’d pressed together under the desert stars? No. Franklin wasn’t talking about that.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Franklin continued. “That heart-shaped mole on her hip is like a stamp of perfection. They don’t make them like that anymore.”
A cold shiver raked through Wolfe. He’d never seen the mole until the night he and Nichelle made love. It was an inky beauty mark near the seat of her sex that he’d licked and bit until she gasped his name, begged him to move his mouth lower. Bile rose in his throat at the thought of Franklin touching it.
“You’ve never been that lucky in your life,” Wolfe rumbled. He slammed on the brakes when he almost rear-ended the car in front of him.
“I have been that lucky,” Franklin said. “And could have been again if a man higher up on the food chain hadn’t come along for her to sink her claws into.”
Wolfe remembered their night together, her nails raking his shoulders and back, the sharp tips digging into his skin, bringing him unbearable pleasure mixed with pain. The images rampaging through his head struck him dumb, made him grip and release his hand around the steering wheel.
“You need to realize that she’s all for herself. She’s going to leave you and Kingston Consulting and take the Quraishi contract with her. Watch her carefully and see. I didn’t pay attention to my own advice, and she damn near crushed me.”
“She never slept with you,” Wolfe finally hissed.
“Is that what she told you?”
The indistinct sounds of conversation came through the phone, a jarring noise given the absolute quiet of moments before. Franklin was on the move.
“Good luck with that viper, Diallo. I’m just telling you the score before you become another one of her victims. It’s not a good look on any man.”
Wolfe hung up, clenching his jaw so hard it hurt. He looked around, saw that he had driven on autopilot back to the office and he sat in the parking lot, listening to the music that had pulsed back on once the call ended. Anger churned in his belly. He silenced the speakers.
Franklin was a liar. There was nothing he could tell Wolfe about Nichelle that he would believe. Certainly no ridiculous story about her stooping low enough to sleep with a colleague to advance her career. But the echoing silence in the car was haunting. A chill washed over him. He needed to talk with her. Now.
But when he got back into the building, Nichelle wasn’t there. Wolfe hesitated in the open door of her office, the specter of their Friday night encounter haunting him even more than what Franklin said. She’d left him alone in her bed, for God’s sake!
It looked as if she had packed up for the day, the computer shut down, her purse gone. He sat down behind her desk and leaned back in her chair, fitting his body to the same contours she did nearly every day.
Okay, this is getting creepy.
Wolfe started to get up when an envelope, propped on the footrest under the desk, drew his attention. He plucked it from its perch—and drew a surprised breath. The envelope was from Sterling Solutions and stamped “private.” There was nothing inside it. What the hell did this mean? He thought back to Franklin’s phone call.
“No.” No way.
He dropped the empty envelope on Nichelle’s desk as if it were on fire and turned, nearly stumbling on a floor lamp, to make his way to his own office. A reminder on his phone beeped.
Family dinner tonight.
He’d forgotten all about it, which was the purpose of reminders, he thought with a wry twist of his mouth. With effort, he pushed the Sterling envelope from his mind and called his mother as soon as he got back to his desk.
“Dinner is still on for tonight?”
“Of course. When do I cancel something this important at the last minute?” The answer was never. She treasured the family dinners perhaps more than anyone, proof and celebration that she still had a family despite everything that had happened years before. “Bring a bottle or two of your favorite red wine. Your father asked for steak tonight, but our last party sucked up the last of our good wine.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’re such a good son.” She laughed. “See you tonight.”
Hours later, freshly showered and shaved, he rang his parents’ doorbell. Nala opened the door. He automatically looked behind her, searching for Nichelle.
“Why are you ringing your own doorbell?”
“Mama will be the first to tell you that this doorbell is definitely not mine.” He greeted her with a brief kiss to the cheek, then walked past her with a carton of wine under his arm. The bottles clinked in the box as he put them down to give her a proper hug. “Besides, the times I walked in on something I didn’t want to see as a kid made the practice of ringing a doorbell and knocking once or twice the rule rather than the exception.”
Jealousy flashed briefly across Nala’s face. Even before her parents died and left her alone, they’d never been as close or as passionate as his own. He squeezed her waist in sympathy.
“You on your own tonight?”
“Nope.” Nala gave him a knowing look, the jealousy gone from her face as if it had never been. “Nicki is upstairs. Chatting with your father, I think.”
She’s here. Okay. He took a deep breath. “Cool.”
The house was already lively with conversation and music, Toots and the Maytals playing from the stereo, two sets of twins smack talking over a game of spades in the sitting room. Sounds of a playful disagreement drifted down at him from upstairs.
He found his mother in the kitchen, laughing with his sister Alice and maneuvering a large casserole dish, steaming with the scents of broccoli and cheese, to the large center island.
“Wolfe.” She shucked off the potholders to hug him and kiss his cheek. The mingled scents of cooking food—steak, garlic sautéed vegetables, rosemary potatoes—made his mouth water.
“Hey, Mama.” He gave her a long and tight hug, then pulled back to smile into her eyes. “Where’s Daddy?”
“In the den. Jaxon is trying to convince him to buy some new gadget or other.”
“So he can inherit it after Daddy gets frustrated with trying to learn the new tech?”
“Exactly.”
Wolfe laughed. “Some things never change.”
He greeted everyone else he found lingering in the kitchen, before wandering off to find his father. In the den, his father sat at his desk, the computer on, and Jaxon, half of the youngest set of three twins, perched on the edge talking about terabytes and hardware upgrades.
Wolfe stopped when he noticed Nichelle on the other side of the desk, her arms loosely crossed over her stomach while she nodded in response to something his older brother, Kingsley, was saying. She was wearing a houndstooth check dress tonight, the black-and-white fabric hugging her body from collar to knees. Wolfe’s gaze drifted to her hands, over her bare wedding ring finger where he’d grown used to seeing that flare of yellow fire.
Nichelle glanced at him then, a flash of her long-lashed gaze lingering on him before turning back to his brother. He shook off his stupor and went over to his father, squeezed his shoulder. “Daddy.”
“My boy!”
His father shoved away from the desk, and from Jaxon’s look of annoyance at being interrupted, to embrace Wolfe in a giant, breath-stealing hug.
Maybe I need to visit home more often, Wolfe thought. “Is this one trying to get you to spend more money on crap that’s going to be obsolete in six months?”
His father chuckled, a deep rumble in h
is wide chest. “Something like that.”
“Keep your opinions to yourself, Wolfe,” Jaxon said. “You don’t know a damn thing about tech.” His brother, a nineteen-year-old who knew everything, was only half teasing.
“I know enough to realize when spending money is a waste.”
“Aren’t you a millionaire or something? Why are you here counting somebody else’s pennies? Look out for your own business.” He jerked his chin toward Nichelle, who laughed while Kingsley stepped closer to touch her shoulder much too intimately.
Wolfe told his brother what he could do with his opinion.
“You first.” Jaxon grinned.
“None of that talk around here, boys. If your mother caught you, she’d give me hell for it.” His father sat again at the desk and waved toward his youngest son. “If you think this thing isn’t a waste, show us what you’re about.”
Jaxon grinned at the challenge and hunkered even closer to the large computer screen, gripping the mouse. “Okay, take a look at this...”
Wolfe stopped paying attention to his brother. Instead, he listened to the conversation Nichelle was having with Kingsley, a conversation that seemed intimate despite the very public atmosphere of the den.
Nichelle’s voice was low and interested as she talked with his brother. Kingsley said something to her about the new account with Quraishi Industries, about her possibly moving on to another firm. She shrugged, but didn’t say anything about staying.
“Business is always changing,” she said. “For better or worse. The people you align with today might be your enemy tomorrow or vice versa.”
“That’s true,” he said. “But what about doing something more for yourself? Building your own firm, branching out and taking the initiative, grabbing another challenging project?”
“Why? Are you trying to make me an offer I can’t refuse?”
Kingsley laughed, the dimples flashing in his cheeks. “I don’t think I have that much money at my disposal. At least not yet. But I’m really envious of what my brother did with your help. I don’t think he could have come this far without you.”
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