* * *
Before Garrison came, she had been having a decent week. Never one to wallow in anything, especially not her feelings, she dove into re-establishing her West Coast business connections and plunged into the cool water of the Pacific to wear herself out to the point of exhaustion when that work didn’t distract her enough.
But with Wolfe’s best friend came doubts about the choices she’d made. Three days after Garrison left, she still couldn’t stop thinking about his visit. She reached out to her business contacts, working toward making her relocation to California a permanent thing. But after the phone calls and emails were done, her mind raced back to Garrison and the conversation they’d had.
Wolfe was miserable. He loved her. But not enough to make the journey to California himself. He’d told Garrison everything. But he didn’t trust Nichelle. She prowled the condo, only a breath away from tears.
Just stop thinking about him!
Close to sunset, she pulled the front door shut behind her with keys, cash and phone in her jeans pocket. She couldn’t stay in the condo any longer. After wandering the neighborhood for nearly an hour, she ended up at the little corner store near the head shop on Mission Boulevard.
The bell over the door jangled as she walked in.
“Ms. Wright.” The man behind the counter, more of a boy really, greeted her with his eager smile.
“Hey, Raj.”
She already visited the little store too often. Since leaving Miami, she’d developed an aversion to grocery stores, especially the big, bright ones. They left her feeling exposed and alone, waiting for something that would never come. But Raj’s corner store with its constant supply of overpriced condiments and pasta and coffee was perfect.
“Things going all right today?” She chatted with him as usual since he seemed always happy to see her, a boy with a crush, which was sweet and helped scrape some of her ego off the ground.
“Yes, ma’am.” His face was handsome and eager behind the glass partition. When she looked away in her search for her favorite Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, she sensed his eyes on her. She found the Chunky Monkey and took it up to the window to pay.
“Another one, huh?”
She nodded, refusing to get embarrassed about her sadness addiction. Five pints in three weeks. It was a good thing she got up to swim every morning; otherwise she wouldn’t be able to fit into her suits by the time she found a new job.
“Just a little something to tide me over until dinner,” she said, not sure she was entirely joking.
“It’s a delicious flavor,” the boy said. “You have good taste.” He dipped his head, subtle color touching his cheeks.
“Thank you, Raj.” She gave him a smile of her own, then collected her change. “See you next time.”
“See you!”
Nichelle swung the plastic bag with the ice cream at her side as she left the corner store and its ringing bell behind. She stepped out in the sunlight and bumped into the person standing near the doorway.
“Excuse me,” she said.
“No need to be excused,” came a familiar voice. “It was my fault.”
She jumped away from the steadying hands, her heart pounding frantically in her chest. Wolfe frowned down at her from his looming height. At least she thought it was Wolfe. This version of him was fully bearded with a thick fuzz of hair on his head and new lines around his mouth. Instead of a suit, he wore black Converse, faded jeans and a plain black T-shirt. Sunglasses shaded his eyes.
She gasped softly at the change in him, because yes, it was him. With that single touch on her arms, the scent of him, the brief crush of his broad chest against her, she knew immediately who it was.
She looked around the street, expecting to see Garrison meandering someplace nearby. Despite the runaway pace of her heartbeat, she pulled herself together and took another step back.
“Was Garrison supposed to soften me up for the kill?” She gripped the plastic bag with the ice cream against her belly, grateful for the cold, grounding pressure of it on her skin.
“What?” Frown lines etched into Wolfe’s brow.
“Don’t play stupid with me. I told Garrison I didn’t want to see you. You can take your bad feelings and shove them up your—”
“Garrison was here?”
“You didn’t send him?”
His frown deepened. “Why would I?”
Truthfully, sending an emissary didn’t seem like Wolfe’s style. If he wanted to deal with a problem, he usually confronted it head on, despite any possible consequences.
“It doesn’t matter anyway.” She gave him a dismissive glance. “You wasted your time coming out here.”
“It’s not wasted since I got to see you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Enough with the bull.”
“This is no bull, Nichelle.” He crossed his arms over his chest, both a protective and vulnerable gesture. “I needed to see you.”
“And what, it took you three weeks to get your courage up?”
He looked away, eyes skittering over the storefronts nearby, the awning of the corner store, the pretty girl who walked past in her bikini and UGG boots. His forehead wrinkled in confusion when he looked again at the girl, and Nichelle almost smiled.
“It’s a California thing,” she said. She stepped past him to wait for the light to cross the busy street. He kept up with her. “Why are you following me?”
“I want to talk with you.”
“We already said enough the last time we saw each other.”
“No, we didn’t. I—”
Nichelle stepped out into the street before the light changed. She couldn’t listen to another word. She didn’t want to hear his excuses for ripping her heart out of her chest and stomping it to pieces under his designer Italian shoes.
A car horn honked. Tires screamed.
Wolfe yanked her out of the street moments before a car plowed through the intersection. His arms lashed tight over her belly, painful and protective. She cried out, frightened, and dropped the ice cream. It rolled into the street. Another car sped through the green light and crushed the carton. Nichelle stared in horror at the pulverized carton still mostly encased in white plastic, banana ice cream and walnuts exploding from the bag and already melting on the street.
“Dammit, I didn’t come here for you to kill yourself!”
Wolfe didn’t let go. His heart thudded hard against her shoulder blade. But her heartbeat wasn’t any calmer. When the crosswalk light changed, Wolfe tugged her across the street toward the narrow path heading down to the beach. Nichelle pressed a hand to her chest, willing herself to calm down. She wiped a hand through the cold sweat on her forehead.
“I’m sorry,” she said after her heart stopped racing. “That was stupid of me.”
“It was stupid.” Wolfe tucked her under his arm and fumbled a kiss to her jaw. “But I’ve done my share of stupid, too.”
She bit her lip and relaxed into his embrace, into the sweat-flavored solidity of him. The day was bright with sun, heat pulsing around them, the afternoon wavering like a mirage. Nichelle briefly closed her eyes. Was all of this some crazy dream? Would she wake up in her condo, crying out in grief and loss like she had so many times before?
A pack of giggling girls walking toward them nudged each other, staring at Wolfe, then at her. Their envious looks made her feel self-conscious. She pulled away from Wolfe, although immediately she wanted to curl into him again.
He quietly released her. They walked through the clutter of bikini-and shorts-clad teenagers. It was a Sunday. No school and a packed Mission Beach. Instead of leading her toward her condo, Wolfe steered her with a gentle nudge of his shoulder away from the path toward her place and down to the water.
He paused to toe off his shoes and carry them while she trudged along at his side in the sand. The beach was crowded, mostly surfers and sunbathers, some families with their laughing children, ridiculously beautiful people playing beach volleyball nearby in li
ttle more than their underwear.
Nichelle found a quiet spot on the hot sand and sat down. Wolfe settled next to her. She took off her shoes, crossed her arms and balanced her chin on her bent knees, staring out into the water.
“You should go,” she said.
“I can’t.” There was nothing melodramatic in his words, simply a statement of fact. “My mother will kill me if I come back to Miami without you.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage to recover.”
He shifted at her side, his linked arms curved around his bent knees. He stared out at the water, sunlight glinting off his shades. “Nichelle. I was an idiot.”
“You’ve always been an idiot.”
A huff of sound, amusement and exasperation, left his mouth. Nichelle bit her lip again. Something about the relaxed ease of him on the sand beside her, the firm warmth of his arm against hers, the pounding of the surf, reminded her how much she’d thought of them like this, lying on the beach in Miami. Just the two of them without any worries. None of his women. No work. Just them and the sun and the weight of their feelings between them. The memory weakened her.
She sighed and dropped down into the sand, lying on her back. He lay with her, tucking his arms behind his head. His big body heaved with a sigh of its own.
“I love you.”
She tensed at the unexpected declaration. “You don’t accuse someone you love of betraying you. Especially when you know it’s not true.”
“I did know you would never do that to me. Can’t I use my rampant jealousy as an excuse?” She heard the faint humor in his voice, the attempt at teasing.
“As if I could ever sleep with Isaac Franklin. He’s weak.” And he’s not you.
Wolfe choked on a laughing breath, then stilled. “He talked about your mole. The one here.” He touched her through the jeans. “I just saw red. But instead of taking it out on him, I let my paranoia do the damage.” He cursed softly. “I’m sorry. I knew better and I’m sorry.”
“You know that anyone who’s seen me in a bikini has seen that mole, right?”
“Hell! I know...” His voice faded away. “Once I pulled my head out of my ass, I realized that. Sorry doesn’t begin to cover what I feel.”
“And you think that should change things back to how they were between us?”
“No, I don’t.” He rolled to face her in the sand.
Bright sunlight reflected off the gold in his sunglasses. She squinted against the glare. After a brief pause, he took off the glasses. And she saw what he’d been trying to hide, the heavy sorrow in his eyes. “I don’t want things to go back to how they were,” he said. “I want them to be better.” He took another breath. “I want...”
For the first time in her adult life, Nichelle saw Wolfe hesitate. He licked his lips, and her eyes grew wider. He was nervous. His hand moved between their bodies, brushing her hip, then her belly. Then his hand emerged with a familiar scarlet box. “I want you to wear this again, but for real this time.”
A breath stuttered from her. “What is that?” But her body already knew what it was. She grew warm, happiness heating her from the inside out. Wolfe opened the box, and the canary diamonds winked at her in the sunlight.
“This is an inadequate symbol of my love and trust,” he said. “I love you. I trust you, and I can’t allow myself to forget that again. This is my promise to you that I won’t.”
She swallowed. “You don’t need to marry me just to keep me in Miami, Wolfe.”
“Does that mean you’ll come back to me? I want to marry you to keep you in my bed and in my life. I want to make official what everyone’s been saying about us for years. And I want to prove to you that I’m worthy of the trust and love you give me every day.”
She bit her lip to stifle a smile. “I never said I love you.”
His mouth tilted. “You don’t have to say it.” He took the engagement ring out of the box. “So, will you?”
Yes. Yes! “I’ll think about it,” she said. “I’m surprised you haven’t assumed my answer since you apparently know me so well.”
“I have. But I’m giving you the courtesy of allowing you to say it out loud.”
She took the ring from him and slid it into her pocket. “Ask me again when we’re back home.”
A shudder ran through his body, a hiss of relief. He wasn’t as confident as he claimed. “God, yes.”
She smiled at the vulnerability in his face, the easing of the tightness around his eyes, the way his beautiful mouth softened. His tongue brushed over his full lower lip.
“Nichelle.” There was a pleading in his voice.
“Wolfe.” And because she knew the man she would soon marry, knew what he needed, she whispered the three words in his ear.
“Then kiss me,” he said.
And she did. The press of their mouths together was a sweet welcome that soon became a heated slide of tongue and lips, hands pushing under T-shirts to find warm skin. An embarrassing sound leaked from her mouth, need and relief. Wolfe’s fingers curved around her ribs, a thumb stroking the underside of her breast.
Something smacked into Nichelle’s leg. She gasped, jerking back.
“Sorry! Sorry!” A slim girl in a bikini grabbed a volleyball near Nichelle’s feet, then ran off across the sand.
Wolfe laughed and stood up, the corners of his eyes crinkling with happiness. “We should continue this conversation someplace private, don’t you think?” He reached down to help her to her feet.
Nichelle put a hand in his, and he tugged her up into his arms. “Yes,” she murmured, a smile as wide as the whole ocean spreading across her face. “We should.”
She pressed close to Wolfe and buried her face in his chest, drawing in a deep breath of him that was like home. A place she’d been all along.
Epilogue
“Is she pregnant?”
Wolfe, who’d been buttoning his shirt while his mother’s voice blared from the speaker of his cell, grabbed the phone off the bed. He took it off speaker. “What?!”
His mother laughed at his outrage. “Did you knock Nichelle up before the wedding? Is that why you had a quick ceremony on our back lawn less than a week after bringing her back from California?”
Although his mother couldn’t see, Wolfe shook his head. He darted a glance toward the closed bathroom door of their hotel and stepped away. He didn’t want Nichelle to hear the crazy things his mother was saying. The music of Paris, church bells and faint conversation from a café nearby hummed at him through the open window.
He and Nichelle had arrived in France three hours before, jet-lagged from the journey. But instead of falling into the bed to sleep, they had fallen on each other, passionate and eager to make love for the first time as man and wife.
Nichelle, with laughter in her voice, had asked him several times on the long flight why he’d booked the tickets for immediately after the wedding, knowing they had a nine-hour flight ahead of them and no chance for a true wedding night. But he hadn’t been thinking about that when he made the arrangements. He just wanted to finally start the life with her he’d imagined for so long.
So, no. Nichelle wasn’t pregnant. But it wasn’t for lack of trying.
“Mama, the rush was all mine. But it has nothing to do with a surprise baby.”
“If you say so.” The sound of a door slamming came to him through the phone. “Get on with your honeymooning then. Thanks for letting us know you arrived safely, although I’m sure you got in long before now.”
His neck heated again, but he refused to rise to the bait. “You’re welcome.”
“I’ll tell your father to stop planning for his first grandchild. Too bad, he was getting excited. And I was, too, to tell the truth.”
“Mama, I’ll talk with you later.”
“Yes, my son. Enjoy Paris and your new wife.”
He disconnected the call and rubbed the back of his neck. Nichelle carrying his child. The thought warmed him, made him eager to take her to bed aga
in and make it a reality.
“Did I hear something about me being knocked up?”
His wife emerged from the bathroom, flawless in a royal blue dress and black high heels, mouth red with lipstick. She smelled of the shower and a light citrus perfume, and had changed from the leggings and sweater she’d worn on the plane, or rather the leggings and shirt he’d torn off her as soon as the hotel room door shut. Nichelle was his wife. The canary diamond rings once again on her finger proved it. The quick ceremony in his parents’ backyard cemented it. And now they were in Paris on their honeymoon, in the place where it all started.
“Yes.” Wolfe drew her into his arms. “She thinks I shamefully knocked you up, and that’s the reason I ran off to France with you so quickly. My brothers have a bet going, apparently. I told her whoever started that bet had already lost.”
The corner of Nichelle’s red mouth tilted up in an odd smile. She slid her arms around his neck, sweet breath and sweeter body stirring him all over again. “Well, maybe not.”
Wolfe froze, the shock of her declaration tightening his spine. “Do you mean to say...?” He couldn’t go on. He stood still in the perfumed sanctuary of her arms, his body torn in two directions as she bit his earlobe and slid her palms over his chest through the half-buttoned shirt.
“No need to tell them now, though,” she murmured.
“When—when did this happen?”
“The night before I left for California, I’m guessing.” She licked his ear, and he felt the smiling curve of her mouth against his throat. He pulled carefully away to stare down at his wife, soon to be the mother of his child. “Should we even be...?” Making love? The shock of her revelation apparently rendered him incapable of finishing a sentence.
Nichelle crossed her arms. “If I thought you’d treat me like spun glass, I wouldn’t have told you until we got home.” She pursed her lips. “I’m not delicate, Wolfe, just pregnant. And only a little pregnant at that.” Then she smiled, dropping her gaze.
Wolfe’s heart tripped in his chest at the utter vulnerability on her face. Jesus. “Nichelle...” He dropped to his knees and pressed his ear to her flat stomach. “I love you more and more every day.”
Affair of Pleasure Page 17