Tender to His Touch

by Adrianne Byrd

  Their eyes locked and Beverly’s body submitted to an overpowering magnetic pull.

  At the sight of Lucius’s head descending, the muscles in her belly quivered and her heart pounded so loud she feared the whole world could hear it. When their lips finally made contact, Beverly’s eyes fluttered close and once again, she was lost.

  However, this time was different. In her mind, not only could she hear music but there was this wonderful floating sensation that made her feel lush and giddy. She pressed closer, greedy for more.

  Lucius eagerly gave her what she wanted—what they both wanted. He had spent the evening wondering what she would taste like and he wasn’t disappointed. Her lips were amazingly soft and decadently sweet. A man, if he wasn’t too careful, could get caught up.

  Books by Adrianne Byrd

  Kimani Romance

  She’s My Baby

  When Valentines Collide

  To Love a Stranger

  Her Lover’s Legacy

  Sinful Chocolate

  *Tender to His Touch

  ADRIANNE BYRD

  is a national bestselling author who has always preferred to live within the realms of her imagination, where all the men are gorgeous and the women are worth whatever trouble they manage to get into. As an army brat, she traveled throughout Europe and learned to appreciate and value different cultures. Now, she calls Georgia home.

  Ms. Byrd has been featured in many national publications, including Today’s Black Woman, Upscale and Heart and Soul. She has also won local awards for screenwriting.

  In 2006 Adrianne Byrd forged into the world of Street Lit as De’nesha Diamond. In 2008 she jumped into the young-adult arena writing as A. J. Byrd, and in 2010 Adrianne will hit the women’s fiction scene as Layla Jordan. She plans to continue creating characters that make people smile, laugh and fall in love.

  TENDER TO HIS TOUCH

  ADRIANNE BYRD

  HOLLINGTON HOMECOMING

  Where old friends reunite…and new passions take flight

  This book is dedicated to: Sandra Kitt, Jacqueline Thomas and Pamela Yaye. It was a pleasure working with you talented ladies.

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome back to Hollington College! This is the final book in this sexy, emotional reunion series. Next up: Beverly Turner and Lucius Gray. As Hollington’s class of ’99 homecoming queen, Beverly seems to have lived a fairy tale existence. But once she married her college sweetheart, it all turned into a nightmare. Now ten years later, she’s looking for a new start and I believe I have just the man for her.

  You might want to curl up next to an industrial fan for this one, romantics. You’re in for one hot, spicy read as Lucius helps this beauty find her own groove. Maybe there are even a few clues we can all learn from this insatiable couple.

  Wishing you the best of love,

  Adrianne

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Beverly Clark’s eyes were wide open when her alarm clock blared at five-thirty. She flung out an arm and shut off its loud and annoying buzz. However, she didn’t climb out of bed. Instead she remained nestled in her white cotton sheets, staring up at her popcorn ceiling.

  She hated that damn ceiling.

  It reminded her of cottage cheese or, worse, something she used to study under a microscope in her old science lab class eons ago. One of these days she was going to take Spackle or a chisel to the damn thing and scrape that junk off. Beverly huffed, rolled over onto her side and stared at the clock. Its loud ticking sounded as if it had been hooked up to an amplifier. In no time her heart and the muscles along her temples thumped in precise harmony.

  Maybe she should just stay in bed today.

  Why not? What difference would it make? It wasn’t as if anybody cared—or that she had anything to do.

  The numbers on the clock blurred and in the next second warm tears slid from her eyes, rolled down her nose, then dripped quietly onto her pillowcase. She pulled in a deep breath, but her lungs felt as if they were trying to resist being revived. Her shoulders trembled and before long her entire body followed suit. It was five forty-five in the morning and she was crying.

  A whole fifteen minutes ahead of schedule.

  Reluctantly Beverly peeled the sheets back and pulled herself up. Those two simple acts nearly zapped all her energy. From across the room, she caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror and was repulsed by what she saw.

  “Oh, God.” She raised a hand to her sunken face while her fingers traced the deep lines below her bloodshot eyes. Her full lips looked bee-stung and cracked, and her hair…well, let’s just say that it would probably be easier to cut it than comb it. Her hands fell from her face and slapped against her lap. “Look at what’s become of me.”

  Being the daughter of two prominent doctors, Beverly had grown up in an affluent and privileged life. Friends and family had told her throughout the years that she’d been lucky to have inherited her mother’s honey-brown complexion and liquid-gold eyes. In her youth, the combination had made her popular with the opposite sex and garnered more than a few sniping remarks from girls who’d assumed she was stuck-up. Those opinions usually changed, though, once people got to know her.

  Beauty and charm helped land her the Miss Georgia Teen crown at sixteen and the Miss Georgia crown at eighteen. Plus she was also homecoming queen in both high school and in college. She was smart, too—at least she liked to think she was. She had managed to graduate in the top of her class and at one time had given serious thought to following her parents’ example and enrolling in medical school. But after an art teacher pointed out she had a natural flair for fashion, Beverly started spending hours upon hours daydreaming that one day her fashions would be worn on red carpets around the world.

  But love intervened and she ended up marrying her old high-school sweetheart, David Clark, right after college despite the protests of her parents. It didn’t matter at the time. Surely her parents could grow to love her husband.

  David had been a year older and, once upon a time, more mature. They had been so careful planning out their lives. He’d continued his schooling and become a dentist. It turned out to be a great decision. His career had afforded them a great life in the suburbs, but three years ago it all came crashing to an end.

  More tears leaked from Beverly’s eyes.

  From a distance, a car turned into the driveway. She turned her head toward the open window and listened to the smooth rumble of a Mercedes engine as it coasted toward the house. Beverly wiped her face and reached for her satin robe draped over the foot of her bed.

  Beneath the window, the engine shut off, the car door opened and then slammed shut. The familiar footfalls of expensive Ferragamo loafers slapped against the pavement and then up the front porch. Beverly stood when she heard keys rattle in the front-door lock.

  Inside the house, the heavy footsteps continued through the foyer and then up the staircase. Beverly tried to mentally prepare herself for her daily battle, but on this day she found that she simply couldn’t. She just didn’t have anything left.

  The knob turned and the bedroom door crept open. David poked his head inside, his atten
tion on the empty bed.

  “Glad to see that you found your way home,” Beverly said, her wintry voice chilling the room. “And here I thought buying that GPS unit was a complete waste of money.”

  Unable to hide his disappointment, David released a long, frustrated sigh. “I thought you’d still be asleep.”

  “I haven’t slept in years.”

  He rolled his eyes and pulled his wrinkled tie from around his neck. “Maybe that’s your problem.” David headed toward the adjoining bathroom.

  “My problem?” she said, her eyes narrowing on his retreating back. Beverly followed. “Maybe my problem is that my husband is out screwing his office manager at all hours of the night while I’m stuck in this suburban prison cooking dinners for one.”

  “There you go again. No one’s screwing around,” he said. “And I’m not stopping you from getting out of the house. That’s your choice. In fact, I wish you would get out. Maybe the neighbors would stop looking at me as if I’ve chained you up in the basement or something.” He turned on the shower.

  “No one’s screwing around,” she thundered incredulously.

  “Do I look stupid to you?” she hissed. “It is six o’clock in the morning. Nearly twelve hours since the office closed yesterday. Are you going to tell me that you had some dental emergency that kept you at the office and strategically away from a phone all this time?”

  His eyes rolled again as he unbuttoned and then slid out of his pants. “I went out for a few drinks with the guys. I crashed over at Curtis’s place.”

  David finally stopped and looked at her. Guilt was etched in every inch of his handsome face. The same face that she’d once vowed to love for the rest of her life. She now longed to rake her nails down its gorgeous perfection. Why did it seem as if the nightmare of the last three years had not scared him the way it had her? Why was it so easy for him to just move on? If they were truly soul mates why weren’t they living in the same hell?

  “What?” David asked defensively.

  “If you’re going to be a playa, then learn to get your lies straight.”

  “I told you—”

  “Curtis called here last night looking for you. He wanted to know whether you two were still going fishing today.”

  Thick clouds of steam billowed from the shower, then swirled around the fractured husband and wife. The battle of their heated gazes raged on for a few heartbreaking seconds and then finally, resignation flickered across David’s face. He’d been busted and his brain failed to come up with a plausible lie.

  “Just admit it,” she urged in a thin whisper. She half convinced herself that she would feel better if he’d just confess that he’d been having an affair. Confess that the perfume clinging to his clothes right now wasn’t just her imagination.

  “Beverly—”

  “Say it,” she choked out.

  “Bev—”

  “Goddamn it, say it!” She snatched a curling iron from the vanity counter and hurled it at him. The bastard ducked and the curling iron slammed against the glass shower stall. It hit a weak spot and the whole thing shattered as if she had unloaded an AK-47 at it.

  David leaped away from the shower as shards of glass launched toward him. “All right! All right! I’m having an affair. Are you happy now?” he roared.

  Beverly sucked in a breath and stepped back as if he’d punched her. Her mind reeled. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to hit him, scratch him or kick him in the balls.

  As he realized what he had said, regret blanketed David’s face. He reached for her. “Beverly, I—”

  “Don’t touch me.” She pulled away. “I want you out. Out of this house and out of my life!”

  “Look, Beverly. I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s over.” She took another huge step back, shaking her head. “I want a divorce,” she said evenly.

  He wouldn’t give up. “We’ve been through a lot,” he reminded her. “We can get through this.”

  “No, we can’t,” she contradicted. “We can’t…because I don’t love you anymore.”

  Chapter 1

  Two years later

  A jacketless and tieless Lucius Gray was nearing his tenth hour poring over documents and case files. He kept telling himself that he’d quit for the day—or rather, night—every ten minutes, but his determination to know this wrongful death case backward and forward prevented him from leaving. He wanted all his ducks in a row so he could squeeze Dr. E. J. Stewart and his insurance company into settling the case for a mid-eight-figure settlement.

  It wasn’t one of his biggest litigation cases, but this particular case hit him hard. The similarities between Mr. Keith Johnson’s death and Lucius’s father’s were just too striking. Dr. Stewart, a cardiologist, kept finding nothing wrong with Mr. Johnson a year after he had a stint implanted and recommended he see an oncologist for his illness. Of course the oncologist found nothing wrong with him and kept referring him back to his cardiologist. All the while, Mr. Johnson’s condition grew worse and worse. When he finally passed away, the autopsy showed that he had a lot of blockages in his arteries and his poor heart just gave out. There were so many of them that it was just unexplainable how Dr. Stewart had missed the obvious.

  What did it say about the state of the health-care system when doctors were just too busy to do their jobs?

  The phone chirped.

  Lucius glanced up, annoyed to have had his concentration broken. He punched the speakerphone button. “Yeah?”

  “Mr. Gray, I have your wife on line one.”

  He frowned. “You mean my ex-wife, don’t you, Maggie?”

  “I’m just repeating what she said.”

  Lucius drew a deep breath and pitched back into his chair. Until that moment, he hadn’t noticed how hungry he was or how tight his neck muscles had become.

  “Mr. Gray?”

  “Put her through,” he said and expelled a tired breath. In the next second the phone rang and he picked up. “What can I do for you, Erica?”

  “You haven’t been able to do anything for me in a looooonnng time,” she answered in her usual sarcastic tone.

  He rolled his eyes. “I really don’t have time to fight with you right now. So—”

  “I know. I know,” Erica huffed. “You’re working on a really important case. The story of our marriage.”

  “So you kept reminding me through the divorce.” Lucius’s office door crept open and he looked up in time to see Maggie poke her head inside. He didn’t miss the tired lines beneath her eyes or how her morning curls had wilted on her head. “Erica, hold on for a moment.” He hit the phone’s mute button without waiting for his ex-wife’s permission.

  “I’m getting ready to head out,” Maggie said. “Is there anything else you need?”

  Lucius glanced at his watch. It was well past seven o’clock. “No. I’m good. Have a good night. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Maggie nodded and then disappeared back behind the door.

  Lucius drew a deep breath and hit the mute button again. “I’m back.”

  “I can’t bring Ruby this weekend. It’ll have to be next weekend.”

  Lucius’s grip tightened on the phone. In the five years since his divorce, he and Erica kept playing the same game with their now eight-year-old daughter—the emotional blackmail game. And now that Erica had a new man, Andrew, in her life, she seemed steadfastly determined to have this jerk take Lucius’s place. “You said that last weekend, Erica.”

  “It was true last weekend, too,” Erica snorted. “And don’t act like you’re so disappointed.”

  “I made plans,” he said, though it wasn’t exactly true. He’d planned to wing it. Maybe take Ruby to Chuck E. Cheese or a movie or something.

  “Please.” He could practically see Erica rolling her eyes. “Buying her a bunch of junk food and dragging her to your office isn’t exactly a trip to Disney World.”

  Great. She played a guilt card. “It was just that one time.”

/>   “Uh-huh,” she said dubiously. “Like I said, I can’t bring her this weekend. Andrew wants to take Ruby up to Boston.”

  “Boston?” Lucius barked, irritated. “What the hell is in Boston?”

  “Andrew is from Boston…and we’re going up to meet his family.”

  Silence.

  “Lucius?”

  “So…what? This relationship is getting serious?” He was surprised by his annoyance.

  “Maybe,” she hedged, her tone finally softening.

  Lucius closed his eyes and then rubbed the tension from his forehead. It wasn’t that he still harbored romantic feelings toward his ex-wife. It was more that the threat of him being replaced in Ruby’s life with another man was becoming a reality at a pace that made him more than uncomfortable. “C’mon, Erica. How long have you known this guy? Two months—three?”

  “A year,” she corrected him.

  Had a year passed that quickly?

  “Of course, if you ever pulled your head out from your…work, you’d see that life was passing you by.”

  Lucius heaved another frustrated sigh. “Can we not fight tonight? I have a headache.”

  “Fine.”

  The line fell silent, but the tension remained. Finally he said, “I don’t know if I like this.”

  Erica chuckled. “Don’t tell me that I’ve finally done something to catch your attention.”

  “Is that what this is all about—getting my attention?”

  Her laugh deepened. “Please. I’ve stopped trying to do that a long time ago. You made it perfectly clear that your work is all that matters to you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It feels true.” Another awkward silence drifted over the line. “I’ll bring Ruby next weekend,” she said and then disconnected the line.

  Lucius held the phone until the automated voice came on and instructed him on how to make a call. “That went well,” he mumbled under his breath. He settled back in his chair, replaying the call in his head and wishing he had handled the situation better. But what had been obvious for many years now was, point-blank, he and Erica just rubbed each other the wrong way.