Ahmed was built on a more modest but—he liked to think—no less impressive scale with his six and a half feet of lean but defined muscle, a strong jawline and cheekbones that had been accused a time or two of being “chiseled.” And those were just the nice things his sisters said about him.
Only the memory of the mellow breakfast he’d had with his family—his sisters, Aisha and Devyn, his mother and Sam—kept his annoyance at the heckler to a low-grade ripple. Besides, the hostility of strangers was nothing new to him, especially after twelve years playing professional basketball. He was now retired and having fun being a part-time radio show host. Even if he’d been silent about his politics, people would still find some way to throw insults his way. Plenty of his former teammates were prime examples of that. The people loved you when you were playing well, making them money, entertaining them. But once you fumbled, good luck.
“Damn, they’re rowdy out there today.” Sam settled the lines of his dark jacket more firmly on his shoulders with a shrug, the custom-made suit easily hiding his gun and somehow minimizing the size, but not the threat, of his big body. Ahmed didn’t know how he could wear it with the crazy-hot January weather currently punishing Atlanta. “What the hell did you do while I was asleep?” His deep voice rumbled in a way that let Ahmed know he was only half joking. Before going their separate ways—Sam to the military and Ahmed to basketball—Sam was forever pulling Ahmed out of the trouble his big mouth got him into. He’d learned to temper his snarkiness but once Sam got out of the army with an honorable discharge, Sam fell back into the role as bodyguard but in a more official capacity.
“You know it’s because of that tweet I sent last night,” Ahmed said.
“As if the city didn’t already know how you felt about it closing that downtown high school.” Sam took in the wide and sterile hallway and the half dozen or so people making their way through it with a skilled gaze, taking in details Ahmed took for granted.
“Just making sure they didn’t miss my opinion,” he said with a scornful twist of his lips.
Marcus Garvey High was a school Ahmed had poured a lot of money and time into to support its STEM program that worked to give city kids an equal chance at tech, engineering and science jobs once they graduated. Although Ahmed had been born into a middle-class family and hadn’t faced the challenges many of those kids at the high school did, he knew betting on an elusive sports career or going into the armed forces shouldn’t be the only options they saw in their future.
Ahmed was sick of urban kids’ education being a low priority. Something had to be done about securing their future. He may not be a politician or even a “real activist,” by some standards but he was doing what he could while he had the platform.
“Don’t forget we’re going to that town hall meeting on Monday morning,” Ahmed said.
“Good,” Sam said, nodding.
As they made their way toward the studio Ahmed would occupy for the next three hours, Sam walked just behind and to the right of Ahmed, keeping an eye out for whatever possible dangers lurked nearby. Not that Ahmed had stumbled into any hazards after being at the station for his new gig for nearly two months now. The weekly midmorning show was still enjoyable. It gave him a chance to interact with fans—and haters—in a personal way he’d never had the chance to try before. And it was something for him to do after retirement that didn’t involve groupies, the successful string of restaurant franchises he’d bought or the various “investment people” he’d had to hire once his money began multiplying even faster than he’d planned.
Sam stepped ahead to push open the door of the studio, and Ahmed moved to step through it when a flash of pink caught his eye, something unusual in his established Wednesday-morning routine. He stopped in his tracks and damn near caught his breath at the vision of femininity floating toward him from down the hallway.
High heels, a pink floral dress swirling around slender legs and hips, a narrow waist he could easily measure with both of his hands. The woman’s breasts were small, barely a handful, but like most Black men he socialized with, Ahmed had never been caught up in breast size. Big, small, barely there at all—it didn’t matter to him. The rear view was what made him decide whether or not a woman was worth a second look or even a second date.
The Pink Lady sauntered toward him, her hips swaying and high heels loudly kissing the tile floors, making his heart beat faster as she came close. She wore her hair straight and pinned up in some sort of topknot with curly wisps floating around her face.
“Don’t swallow your tongue.” Sam, still holding the door open, was making a visible effort not to roll his eyes.
Ahmed didn’t care. He was already losing himself in a daydream involving thick thighs and a plump backside made for spanking. He had no idea what his Pink Lady was packing in her trunk, but damn, he bet it was good. His fingers twitched with the phantom sensation of sinking into her sweet flesh.
Sam pretended to cough into his fist. “Okay, now you’re just being a creep.”
And he was right. Ahmed couldn’t stop himself from just...staring. He didn’t want to stop. Above her hips and waist and delicate-looking breasts, the woman’s face was pretty. Like a daisy in sunlight or a rainbow after a storm, she stunned him with her natural and easy radiance. The image came to him, effortlessly, of tumbling with her into his bed to the music of her laughter and the sweet clasp of her thighs while her thick hair fanned over his pillow.
Damn. She made him want to give up his rule about messing around at work.
But he wasn’t a kid anymore. He couldn’t afford to be that sloppy about who he took to his bed. Not again.
His—no—the Pink Lady was still walking toward Ahmed, but he forced himself to look away from her.
“Let’s get in there and do this.” He clapped his hands once, a loud gunshot of a noise to get his mind right.
“I’m not the one who needs the pep talk about sticking to business, cousin.” Despite his casual words, Sam did his usual thorough scan of the studio’s large outer office, only relaxing his stance once he was satisfied nothing lurked in the spacious room to harm Ahmed on his watch.
“Ahmed, my man!” The station’s general manager, Clive Ramirez, was a ball of energy. Probably from the four-plus espressos he usually had before lunch.
He stepped out from behind the receptionist’s desk, where he had been looking over the young woman’s shoulder at something on her computer. With a wide grin, he shook Ahmed’s hand. Firm and enthusiastic.
“What’s going on, Clive?”
“Life, just life.” Short yet muscular, with a belly just beginning to grow from middle age and lack of exercise, Clive Ramirez gave the impression of being a perennially happy man. He loved what he did for a living, fairly treated the people who worked for him, and loved drama like a teenage girl. But everyone had to have a hobby.
Clive followed Ahmed and Sam from the outer offices to the sound booth.
“Nothing wrong with that.” Ahmed took off his blazer and draped it over one of the six chairs in the room while Sam stood with his back against the wall, his legs spread, hands clasped easily in front of him as he kept an eye on the single door into the room and the glass partition separating the sound booth from the studio, where the sound engineer and his intern handled their responsibilities.
Over the airwaves, Ahmed could hear DJ Don Juan, who was in the sound booth across the hall, about to wrap up his morning show.
“What’s on tap for today?” Ahmed asked Clive. “Anything special or do I just do my thing?” His thing was usually to play music, rile up the listeners and entertain them with what his mother called his bee-sting humor. Ahmed would almost do this for free. He settled down into the ergonomic chair with a sigh of bone-deep pleasure then swiveled around to keep Clive in his sights.
The station’s GM sat in the chair on the opposite side of the oblong table and it
s six microphones set up in the center of the soundproof room. “More of the usual,” Clive said. “Except we have a Valentine’s Day promotion going on. A local woman is supposed to come on with you today to plug her business.” He passed Ahmed a sheet of paper. “It’s all here. Just introduce her and her business then offer the prize. If it goes well, people will be calling in to win, and she’ll get her money’s worth in new clients.”
“Cool, I can do that.” He quickly scanned the paper, noting the type of business, the name of the owner and what she offered. He smirked before he could get his face under control. “Selling romance, huh?”
“What? You got something against selling love? ’tis the season, my friend.”
Ahmed shrugged, not bothering to offer his opinion about romance or love in general. None of the so-called relationships he’d experienced had anything remotely like “love” attached to them. He didn’t want to seem like the Grinch or whatever the Valentine’s Day equivalent was.
“If you like it, I love it,” he said and caught the flicker of amusement on Sam’s otherwise stoic face.
Ahmed hid his hand behind his back and shot his cousin the bird. This time, Sam’s amusement came with a huff of quiet laughter.
Minutes later, Ahmed eased into the seat, once DJ Don Juan wrapped up his program. He slipped on the headphones and into his on-air persona.
“Hey, Atlanta! It’s Ahmed Clark on the air and in your ear for the next—” he looked at his watch, a gift from his father “—two hours and fifty-eight minutes. If you want to talk, call me. If you want to listen, open your ears real wide.” And he was off. Grin in place, anticipation for the next few hours bubbling under his skin.
Yeah, he could definitely do this for free.
He fell into the magic of being on air, exchanging laughter and information with his listeners until he got the signal from the sound engineer’s intern outside the glass. She flashed him five fingers. Almost time for Gabrielle Marshall to get on the microphone to hawk her goods. He gave Kiara the thumbs-up sign and started to wind down his heated discussion with a listener about citizen responsibility in the digital age. When the woman kept insisting regular people didn’t need to share everything they recorded on their cell phones, especially when it came to footage that would inflame the public, Ahmed cut her off with Rihanna’s “Desperado.”
When Kiara gave him the thirty-second warning, he was ready. The door to the sound booth opened. And it turned out he wasn’t prepared.
The Pink Lady from the hallway swept in on a cloud of crisp perfume, like she brought the spirit of autumn in with her, and Ahmed couldn’t help but inhale a deep breath of it. The pen he’d been making a note with dropped from his numb fingers and rolled across the notebook, across the desk and then to the floor. He heard Sam snickering. A signal for him to get it together. For real.
But damn, she had dimples. They bracketed her quick smile, and she sank gracefully into the chair across from him to easily fit the headphones over her high swirl of neatly pinned hair. Three diamond studs in varying sizes winked from the lobe of one ear.
“Hi, I’m Gabrielle Marshall,” she said. “Most people call me Elle.”
Her voice was pure sex. And damn if she wasn’t even sweeter looking up close. The smiling lips with just a hint of color. Big Bambi eyes and thick hair he could easily sink his hands into. He forced himself to pay attention to the now instead of the hypothetical future where he had her in his bed. He held out his hand for her to shake.
“Ahmed.”
She smiled wider, a curve of glistening and lusciously full lips that made him glad he was sitting down. After releasing her soft hand, he reached under the desk to subtly adjust himself.
Although Sam didn’t make another sound, Ahmed could feel his amusement from all the way across the room.
Ahmed cleared his throat and glanced at the timer. “I’ll introduce you after this song. You already know what to do, right?”
Why did that sound dirty?
The Pink Lady—Elle—nodded and settled her little purse on the desk. Her lips curved again. The pulse of heat in Ahmed’s slacks made him wince. A woman’s smile. Really? That was what was getting him hard these days? He must really need to get laid. He could easily picture her being the next woman sprawled, wet and panting, in his bed.
“Here we go,” he croaked.
The song ended and just about saved Ahmed’s life. Or maybe just his pride.
He switched on his mic. “All right, Atlanta. Somebody around here told me Valentine’s Day is coming up. It was a woman, so it must be true.” Across from him, Elle gave him a faint smile. “For you fellas out there who don’t know what to do for your ladies, we have some suggestions for you. I could tell you all about it, but I have somebody here who can do a much better job.” He tilted his head at Elle and lifted an eyebrow. Ready? She nodded. “So instead of killing cupid before he has a chance to show up, here’s Elle from Romance Perfected to tell you what you can do for your sweetheart on the day she’s expecting more than the usual.”
Across from him, Elle adjusted the headphones and leaned close to the mic. She licked her lips, her eyes looking with suspicion at the microphone, like she thought it was going to take a bite out of her. Then she drew in a silent breath, her features going blank for a moment. She looked nervous.
Ahmed felt an unexpected surge of protectiveness. “Tell the listeners what you have for them, Elle.”
She flicked a grateful gaze at him before taking another breath. “Good morning, everyone. I’m Elle from Romance Perfected. Your local, full-service romance concierge. I’m here to offer you a Valentine’s package of our services—a fully catered day or evening of romance for you and your date.” Nervousness ticked at the corners of her smile, but the warmth in her voice carried through to the mic.
And damn, what a voice it was.
It made Ahmed want to move closer, slide across the table separating them and put her in his lap for safekeeping. He imagined horny guys all over Atlanta wondering what honey-drenched sweetness was pouring down on them through the airwaves. He dragged himself back to the moment to pay attention to what Elle was saying. Concentration, or lack of it, had never been his problem before, no matter how beautiful the woman. Irritation at himself made his tongue sharp.
“You say ‘full-service.’” Ahmed made sure the quotes were understood in the tone of his voice. “What are you providing here? Is your dream man or woman included for the night?”
A tiny frown wrinkled Elle’s brow. “We don’t run an escort service, Mr. Clark.” Ah, the kitten has claws. “What Romance Perfected provides is a romantic experience tailored to the couple or the person being wooed. We arrange for the flowers, transportation and even the attire for the couple, if necessary. For the date itself, we prepare the perfect location, whether it’s a luxury spa, five-star restaurant or rooftop garden.”
It actually sounded like dates Ahmed’s assistants had arranged for him back when he was playing ball and too lazy to put too much thought into what he wanted to do with the women he took out between games. But Ms. Elle didn’t need to know that.
Ahmed leaned toward the mic. “So basically, you create illusions that push poor bastards into believing something like love exists.” Now, why the hell did he say that? He opened his mouth to apologize, but she didn’t give him the chance.
The confusion cleared from Elle’s face, and her eyes snapped with cool fire. “And you hide behind this microphone to talk trash about people and things you don’t know anything about. Love is as real as life gets, and romance is necessary.” Elle gripped her purse. “For people like you, I’m sure love doesn’t exist. If it did come your way, you’d destroy it just out of spite. Or just cold cynicism.”
“The world is cold and cynical, Elle.” He leaned hard on her soft name. “Haven’t you heard that the bad guys are killing decent folks every day in th
e streets? Or what people in the world are doing in the name of religion or whatever the excuse of the hour is? You’re the one not paying attention to the reality of this world. You can sell love all you want, but the rest of us aren’t buying.”
Beyond the glass of the sound booth, a flash of movement dragged Ahmed’s eyes from Elle. Clive stood behind his assistant frantically dragging his hand across his throat, making the universal gesture for “shut the hell up now.” But off the court, Ahmed had never been any good at following directions.
“You should see this woman, y’all,” he said into the mic. “She’s in the studio looking like some sort of fairy-tale princess in her pink dress with a bunch of flowers on it.” He dragged his eyes over her, giving in to the urge to tease her even more, although he’d give away his closet full of classic Jordans to see—and touch—under that seductive dress. Ahmed continued, riled up by the fire in her dark crystal eyes that flamed higher with each word he spoke. “Her shoes are so tall they look dangerous to walk in, and even her name sounds like something unreal and out of a storybook. Elle.”
He rolled her name over his tongue, and it felt almost obscene. He hoped the listeners didn’t hear it the way he did. Not delicate at all, but rather the low groan of sound he’d love to make while pushing into her soft and welcoming body. Ahmed’s stomach muscles clenched with arousal. What the hell was he doing?
Elle wasn’t impressed by his words either. Anger glowed in her brown eyes, and the dress shifted over her narrow shoulders and pretty breasts when she straightened in her chair. Ahmed could see the rapid pulse beat in her throat, the quickening breath that made her chest rapidly rise and fall. She looked anything but kittenish now.
“Romance and the celebration of love are an escape from the narrow and dangerous worldview of people like you, Mr. Clark. At Romance Perfected, we’re not fooling anyone—we’re assuring people of a beautiful experience despite the ugliness the world keeps throwing at us. That doesn’t mean I live in a fairy tale, Mr. Clark. It means I’m human, and I have hope. Can you say the same?”
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