He didn’t know what he’d been thinking. Or maybe that was it. He hadn’t been thinking when he’d crawled out of bed and, after grabbing his clothes, out of the house. A walk through his neighborhood hadn’t answered any of his questions, so it wasn’t too long before he found himself on the comfortable stretch of beach where he and Gage occasionally swam, hosted parties, even slept on particularly debauched nights. And it hadn’t been a surprise to see his friend awake and wandering the beach, smoking his habitual clove cigarette, hands shoved into the pockets of his cutoff shorts, his unbuttoned shirt blowing in the breeze.
Kingsley had wordlessly joined him, and they walked together toward the very edge of the beach, where the water flirted with their toes.
“So what’s up with you and this chick, then? I thought you liked her.”
Although Gage didn’t hang around with Annika, Carlos and the rest, he knew just as much about what Kingsley got up to while on the island. They were good friends, not as tight as he was with his best friend, Victor, but nearly so.
“I do like her,” Kingsley said. “That’s the problem.”
“Oh come on, dude.” Gage blew out a stream of scented smoke. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those types who backs off as soon as the girl they’re chasing shows some reciprocal interest.”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
It was a question Kingsley didn’t want to answer. He liked Adah. He liked her to the point of distraction. She was beautiful, and sexy, and vulnerable even with her sharp edges. The problem was that after less than a week he liked her and enjoyed her company more than any other woman’s. He wanted more of her. More time. More sex. More of everything. He was nervous about the sharp urgency of it all. But he was also nervous about something else.
“She was supposed to get engaged.”
“I heard was in that sentence,” Gage said.
“Yeah. She broke it off.”
“Good. No problem. You can screw her guilt-free. I know you’re one of those moral guys, all twisted about stuff like that.”
Kingsley laughed. “Yeah. I typically think about right and wrong.”
Although it had been a close thing with her warm and tempting in the hammock the night before when he knew all about the potential fiancé and still put his hand in her pants.
“She dumped him, and now she’s probably looking to find a replacement. I’m not ready for that.”
Gage drew on his cigarette, and the tip glowed hot in the low morning light. He blew the smoke toward the sky. “Did you ask her that mess, or just assume?”
“What else am I supposed to assume? She’s at the age when most women get married. She just got rid of a fiancé out of necessity, and now she needs a replacement.”
“You’re assuming she’s looking at this, at marriage, like a business arrangement. She’s not the CEO of a billion-dollar business. From what you told me, she’s not much of a businesswoman.” He sucked on his cigarette again. “No shade, though.”
Kingsley leaned forward to balance his elbows on his knees. His back twinged and his thighs burned, reminding him sharply of the night before, as if he even needed a reminder. Down on the beach, a couple in matching shorts and tank tops jogged past. He wondered vaguely if Adah was into things like that. Couples jogging. Matching outfits.
“Her parents need an investor to save their company. I looked into their business. It needs the help.” Then he told his friend the whole story.
Gage narrowed his eyes, took his time sucking the last from the cigarette and ground down the butt into the white saucer between them.
“So, you’re saying to me that you just had sex with a woman you’ve been calling all kinds of saint and gorgeous and everything else the last couple of days.” Gage pinned him with a piercing stare. “You’re talking about how she may be the one you’ve been looking for, and now that you got her into bed, now that she tossed aside this guy she’s never even had sex with but promised herself to out of some crazy sense of family duty, now that she’s done all that, you’re saying she’s some sort of a corporate gold digger using her body to get you to do what...?”
When Gage put it that way... “I’m not sure,” Kingsley said. But his summary was accurate enough. He rubbed the back of his neck and cursed under his breath.
“You, my friend, are something else.” Gage picked up the ashtray and stood up, the wind blowing his long curls away from his face. “Stay as long as you want. I gotta get ready for work.” He walked away from Kingsley, taking the nearly hidden path toward his house far up on the beach.
With Gage gone, the sound of the wind seemed to pick up, rattling in Kingsley’s ears like an accusation, taking up the slack where his friend left off.
Was he really that kind of guy? Kingsley stared at the peaking sun with the denials rising up in his mind. Of course, that’s not what his actions meant. He wasn’t looking for an excuse not to be with Adah now that she was free and could be with him as little or as much as he wanted. And he didn’t want anything permanent. She was beautiful, and he was single. He just wanted some fun.
But maybe that was what she wanted, too? Gage’s words rang in his ears again.
Kingsley let the sun rise over him, heating his body and bringing the sweat to the surface of his skin, warming to the point where he could smell himself, and smell Adah, too. He drew in a deep breath and took in all of it. His feelings, the sun, the lingering traces of her that clung to him like perfume. He wanted to see her again. He wanted to touch her again. And as much as he was afraid of what she wanted, he was terrified of his own need that rose up in him every time he was around her.
Most nights, as he lay in bed and thought about her, it felt too intense to be real. A throbbing awareness that was more than sexual desire. More than simply enjoying the company of a beautiful woman. More intense than anything he’d ever experienced before.
With the sun free of the horizon and burning brightly in the sky like the realizations tumbling through his mind, he finally stood up and brushed off the bottom of his shorts. He drew a steadying breath and began to make his way home.
But when he got into the house, she wasn’t there. Not that he could blame her. With no lover and no note, he could hardly expect her to just sit around and wait for him. Standing in the doorway of the bedroom that still smelled like their sex, he wanted nothing more than to have her back there again. In his arms. In his bed.
He needed to speak with her. He needed to see her.
After a quick shower and a change into presentable clothes—he didn’t want to look like a complete bum if he ran into Adah’s mother again—he drove to Adah’s hotel. As he walked up to the front desk, he cursed under his breath, realizing he didn’t know her last name.
As he walked up to the desk, he realized the woman there was vaguely familiar. Maybe she knew him enough to give him the information he wanted without him downright begging for it. He put on his most charming smile.
“Good morning, miss.”
The woman looked up, smiling, from the stack of papers she’d been making notations on, a pen clasped between her fingers. Her smile disappeared when she saw Kingsley’s face.
“Good morning, sir. May I help you?”
This was not his lucky day. The woman who looked back at him with a near scowl on her pretty face was one of the women who’d offered him the foursome days before. He’d assumed they were all tourists, but this was one of the girls who hadn’t talked much. And even then, her Dutch accent had simply marked her as another visitor from the Netherlands enjoying the warmth of Aruba before going back to her European tundra. Faint malice stirred in her eyes.
Kingsley could see it was a lost cause, but he tried anyway. “I’d like to have one of your guests called, please.”
Her eyes glinted. He could tell she
wanted to say something about meeting him on the beach, maybe even about him leaving them high and dry at the hotel, but she pressed her lips together instead and shook her head. “Do you know this person’s name or room number?”
“Her name is Adah.” He looked her straight in the eyes. At least he knew her by more than just Doe Eyes now. Not that he’d get anywhere asking this particular woman for any information.
“And her last name?”
He clenched his teeth. “I don’t know it.” He might as well have just confessed to a one-night stand with a stranger. Someone he’d chosen over this woman and her two friends.
“Then I’m afraid I won’t be able to help you.” Her smile from earlier came back, pleased and sharp. “Sir.”
He purposely kept his hands loose on top of the counter while he mentally searched for any clues to Adah’s full name or how to get this woman to give up the room number, or at least call Adah and let her know he was down there waiting to see her. His eyes flicked up to the woman’s hair, and its fall down her back despite the island heat. Hair products. Her family’s business. An image of the jar his sister used on her hair nearly every day flashed in his mind.
“Mitchell,” he said. “Adah Mitchell.”
The smile fell away from the woman’s face. With obvious reluctance, she typed something into the computer. When she finished whatever search she made, her sharp smile was back.
“I’m afraid we don’t have an Adah Mitchell here,” she said.
“Are you sure?” He resisted the urge to grab the computer and yank it toward him so he could see for himself. “How about Adah Palmer?”
Just then another employee, this time a man, wearing a burgundy bow tie neatly tucked under the collar of his starched white shirt, appeared behind the desk.
“Excuse me, sir,” Kingsley said. “Can you verify something for me?”
“Of course, I’ll be more than happy to.” After a puzzled look at his coworker, he sat in front of another computer station and tapped the mouse. “What can I do for you?”
The woman looked ready to throw something at him, but Kingsley was unbothered. He asked the young man about Adah.
“We don’t have an Adah Mitchell or Palmer registered but we do have an Adah Palmer-Mitchell who checked out early this morning.”
“Checked out? This morning?” It was barely eight o’clock.
“Yes, sir. She is no longer a guest with us.”
Kingsley cursed under his breath. “All right. Thank you very much for your help.” He turned to the woman, who still watched him with poison in her eyes. “And you, too.”
He left the hotel and went back home, ignoring the alarm on his phone he’d set to remind him of his tournament later that morning. Online, he found out more about Adah Palmer-Mitchell than he’d known before. She lived in Atlanta and was the co-owner a fancy day care. Seeing photos of her on the computer only reinforced how far he was away from her, and what an idiot he’d been. Kingsley shut his laptop down and called his secretary.
Chapter 8
Kingsley glanced down at his phone when it vibrated for the third time in as many minutes.
Did you find the place OK?
Then:
Are you having trouble getting her? We put you on the list.
Then finally:
Let us know when you have her, OK?
He restrained himself from rolling his eyes, but just barely. His brother Wolfe had asked him to pick up his daughter from her Atlanta day care since he and his wife were stuck in a meeting that ran later than expected. It was only pure luck that Kingsley was even in town. Three weeks after leaving Aruba, he was still desperately searching for Adah. Every one of his online or phone leads had stopped at a dead end. Like she was being deliberately protected by someone or something. He stopped himself from outright hiring a private investigator. That would be creepy and strange. Instead, he’d taken a few days out of the office and flown to Atlanta himself, determined to find her the old-fashioned way.
So far he hadn’t had any luck. But he was at least able to spend a day or so with his brother and sister-in-law, who were working an unexpectedly long-term business project in Atlanta. They’d been in the city for months and had their young daughter, Yasmine, with them.
And today, Wolfe had volunteered Kingsley to pick Yasmine up from day care.
Kingsley stuck his phone in the inside pocket of his blazer and climbed out of his rental SUV, opening the back door to check for the fifth or sixth time the stability of the car seat. He’d thought about using the day care’s parking lot, but since he had to make a couple of phone calls before he got out, he didn’t want to seem like a creep lurking in a place with children, especially a place where they didn’t know him from Adam.
Kingsley shut and locked the car door with a chirp of the remote, then crossed the quiet street littered with pink summer blossoms from the trees swaying overhead. The music of children’s voices rang up and down the tree-lined block.
The building in front of him was an attractive, two-story brick Georgian straight out of a fairy tale with kudzu clambering up its walls, and a small attic room framed in white perched on top of the roof. A low iron fence separated the wide front yard from the street, and a brick walkway led from the gate up to the short flight of steps and the wide porch.
He pressed the buzzer to the building, making sure to look straight into the camera he immediately noticed above the door.
“Good afternoon, sir.” A warm voice greeted him after an electronic pulse. “How can I help you?”
“Good afternoon. I’m here to pick up Yasmine Diallo. I’m her uncle, Kingsley Diallo. Her parents should have my information on the appropriate list.”
“One moment, sir.”
The voice disappeared, then after about half a minute came back, welcoming him into the building.
The inside of Rosebud Academy was just as impressive as the outside, both professional and warm, with the person belonging to the voice on the other side of the intercom just a few feet from the door. A slim young man sat behind the desk, a laptop open in front of him that clearly showed a picture of Kingsley and a scanned copy of documents Kingsley couldn’t make out from where he stood.
“Welcome to Rosebud Academy, sir.”
“Thanks.” He felt like he was about to pick up a stash of gold bricks. “What do I need to do now?”
“Yasmine is in her play session. It’s almost over, so you can go there and pick her up.” He gestured to a woman nearby Kingsley hadn’t noticed before. “Mariah will escort you there.”
In her low heels, black slacks and military-looking blouse, Mariah seemed official, welcoming and perfectly capable of kicking his ass if he so much as looked sideways at one of the kids. If he ever thought about enrolling any of his currently nonexistent kids into a day care of any kind, this was the type of place he’d want. He felt eyes on him at every step of the way, the setup of the school making it clear the welfare and safety of the children were top priorities.
Mariah walked beside Kingsley and made pleasant if forgettable conversation, guiding him down a brightly lit hallway with framed art on the walls. The air smelled faintly of lemons.
“Here we are.” She stopped at a door leading outside, scanned a card attached to a lanyard around her neck and opened the door.
The backyard was another fairy tale. A high brick fence was decorated with colorful, wooden butterflies, snails and other creatures in large enough sizes for the kids to appreciate. The grass was lush and freshly cut, while swing sets and jungle gyms in miniature sat on one side of the large backyard next to a clearly marked area for hopscotch and jacks. Ten children who looked no older than three sat, ran and played on the spotless Astroturf in the center of the otherwise grassy yard. Everything was in perfect geometric order but still managed to co
nvey a sense of warmth that the children seemed happy enough in.
Mariah pointed to Yasmine, but he’d already seen her. Tiny and coily-haired, she sat opposite another girl on the Astroturf, rolling an ambulance toward the girl’s fire truck. They sat together, smiling and chatting in whatever common language they’d found while three women carefully watched the children, walking between them, sometimes stopping to ask questions or even playing with them.
A pair of legs stepped between Kingsley and his view of Yasmine and he tilted his head to glance around them and catch his niece’s eye. But then something made him look up, heart suddenly beating triple time as he traced those bare feminine legs up to a close-fitting gray skirt and a pink blouse comfortable enough to wear in the summer heat, its collar loose around a slender throat. Adah’s throat.
Unlike the version of her in Aruba, who had her hair in a ponytail or in thick waves down to her shoulders, this Adah wore her hair twisted to the crown of her head in a wispy bun with delicate tendrils floating around her face. She looked both professional and breathtakingly gorgeous.
Kingsley stared. The woman was in profile to him but it was unmistakably her. Smiling down at a boy who moments before had seemed on the verge of throwing a tantrum because neither of the girls nearby wanted to play with him. Kneeling down so she was at eye level, Adah soothed the boy with a touch and soon he was smiling back at her and showing her the toy train he’d discovered nearby.
Even though he’d been searching for Adah for nearly three weeks, all Kingsley could do was stare at her. It was like all his prayers had been answered in one heady rush. Kneeling only a few feet from Kingsley, she nodded and looked interested in everything the boy had to say, obviously encouraging him to show her how the toy train worked and distracting him from the tantrum he’d been working up to. Her face was gentle and smiling. She looked better than fine, even better than the last time Kingsley had seen her. In his bed.
The memory of her sleeping in his sheets shook him from his paralysis. He strode toward her, but his niece chose that moment to look up and, despite the fact that the woman he’d chased almost two thousand miles was kneeling temptingly close, he changed direction and headed toward Yasmine instead.
The Pleasure of His Company Page 14