“You know we come any time you call, Marcus,” Letisha McBride, a pretty woman in a white dress, said. She was pouty and gorgeous in a way that was forgettable in Miami.
A few titters sounded through the crowd. They knew enough about Letty and Marcus’s past that they were amused she still came around and considered him one of her acquaintances.
He smiled graciously in her direction. “Thanks, Letty.”
He couldn’t help but glance toward Diana. She was looking at Letty with a narrowed gaze.
“I won’t stand up here and bore you any longer,” he said. “Enjoy yourself tonight. My staff will offer you everything you need to have a good time. Just make sure you give generously before you go.” He pointed to the silver box in the center of the large room. “Thank you all again for coming.”
He left the platform to their applause, then nodded at the band to continue. They immediately launched into “The Lady is a Tramp,” which drew even more laughter.
Letty McBride found Marcus immediately. She squeezed his shoulders through the jacket, her gaze measuring and admiring. “Thanks again for the invite, handsome. It was a nice surprise. You, having a fund-raiser? Will wonders never cease?” Her brown eyes danced in her narrow, vulpine face. “Next you’ll be adopting some of these kids yourself.”
She definitely didn’t know him as well as she thought. Marcus pulled away from Letty as soon as he could without seeming rude. She was a woman he had once dated briefly, years ago. But even though her family had a significant amount of money and influence in Miami, their coffers were running dry thanks to her father’s bad management of the family funds. Since his investments had begun doing well, Letty had tried to come back into his life, making it obvious she wants to lure him to the altar.
But Marcus wasn’t interested in a convenient marriage. He wasn’t interested in marriage at all.
“You never know, Letty,” he said in reply to her comment about him adopting kids. “People change and develop new interests.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Diana walking toward the crystal donation box with the unknown woman from her office, a short redhead in a green dress. The large box was more than three-quarters full and getting fuller by the hour. After a brief squeeze of Letty’s hand, he excused himself to go to Diana. He grabbed two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter on the way.
“I can’t believe this party,” the woman with Diana said. “Isn’t it great? This will probably be our best fund-raiser for the year.”
Diana eyed the crystal box filled with folded checks and cash as if it were a coffin. “Even if the box doesn’t get any fuller than this, Nora will be very happy.” She shifted from one hip to the other, her bottom rolling seductively under the yellow silk. Marcus swallowed.
“Ladies.” He approached the women with a smile, offering each a glass of champagne.
“Thank you.” The woman at Diana’s side eyed the golden liquid but did not take the glass. “But I don’t drink champagne. You should share it with Diana.” Her smile was positively wicked. “Enjoy. I’m going to see what else is around here to eat.” She sauntered off, waving at them over her shoulder.
Diana absently took the champagne even as she gave the woman a narrow-eyed, suspicious gaze. “What is going on with everyone in my office tonight?”
“Maybe she was just hungry?” He shrugged.
Diana’s eyes met his. Then she took a sip of the champagne. “Thank you.”
“It’s my pleasure.” He held his glass in his hand without sipping from it, drinking up the sight of her instead, the upswept hair and the delicate tendrils at her temples, the luscious deep burgundy shade of her lips.
They stared at each other in silence while the music played, the hip-shaking jazz and lights from the chandelier lending a particularly sharp and luminous air to the evening—and to Diana. She was easily the most captivating woman he’d ever met.
She cleared her throat, making him suddenly aware of just how hungrily he had been staring at her. “Your house…it looks wonderful.”
“Thank you.” He watched as she licked her lips, her pink tongue against her plump red mouth. Marcus took a conscious step back from the temptation of her. “Would you like a tour?”
She looked surprised. “Sure. That would be nice.”
He took her elbow and guided her through the crowded ballroom, past people who looked at them with more than idle curiosity. Marcus nodded to them all, pausing to greet or introduce Diana to some as they made their way through the crowd and to the stairs.
“You know a lot of people” she said.
He smiled. “It’s part of my job.”
Their footsteps sounded against the polished wood of the curving stairs as he walked behind her. Her hair smelled like flowers, the scent of it trailing in her wake as she moved ahead of him, graceful and delicate with her hand on the banister. They climbed higher, leaving the sound of conversations behind. Everything became an aural blur. Only the music floated above it all, trumpeting and cheerful with the singer’s voice rising above the instruments.
As they arrived on the landing, she drew a soft breath of appreciation. Marcus stopped behind her, admiring the line of her back and the curve of her hips while she looked down at the ballroom with the lights, the band, the wide windows with a view of the tropical garden and manicured grounds.
“Such a gorgeous place,” she said.
“Thank you. I pay the very best to make sure it stays that way.”
She turned to look at him over her shoulder. “You’re definitely getting your money’s worth,” she said. “Show me the rest.”
With that look, he knew that Diana wanted him. But he knew that a woman like her needed more than the pounding of the blood and the burst of desire between two people to invest herself, to trust. And he wanted her trust, even as he knew that once he told her he was about to buy Baltree Heights from under her, she would be furious.
Marcus cleared his throat. He took her through the rest of the twenty-two-room mansion, finally ending up in one of his favorite places in the house, a glassed-in room with a view of Biscayne Bay and the city of Miami. It was where he practiced his tai chi each morning, an exercise that centered his mind in the midst of the controlled chaos his life sometimes became.
“Where is this?” Diana turned to face the stained glass windows taking up a third of the east-facing wall, a large, three-paneled rendering of Marrakesh, a panorama of the city spread out under a wide, amber sky, featuring the turrets of the Koutoubia Mosque.
It was an awe-inspiring piece, each portion of glass perfectly capturing any light at any time of the day. Now, night lights on the floor illuminated the triptych from below, making the ancient city glow in shades of amber, carnelian and gold. He’d bought it on one of his trips to Morocco, paying to ship the large sections of glass from the other side of the world and installed by the artist in his home. It had been worth every penny.
“It’s one of my favorite cities,” he told Diana as she put the glass of champagne to her lips. “It’s the first place my father took me to that really impressed me. At the time, I had no idea how to articulate what I found so fascinating, but now as an adult, I can say that I love the sense of history of the city, the beauty and the deep spirituality you sense in every corner.”
He put his glass of champagne on the floor and came to stand behind her, inhaling the scent of her hair and feeling the rightness of her being in his home with him.
“It’s lovely.” She leaned back, resting against him, her hair brushing his cheek. “I’ve never really been anywhere.”
He watched their faint reflection in the glass, her delicate loveliness and the way she seemed to fit so perfectly against him.
“When I was a little girl,” Diana said, “I always wanted to travel. I watched all the documentaries on PBS and dreamed of the amazing places I would visit. I planned for a life of traveling. I wanted it so much.” She bit her lip and looked away to the wall of the plane
, then back to the glass of champagne in front of her. “But my father died, and everything changed.”
The silence sat between them for a moment. Marcus thought of several things to say, but they all seemed inadequate. Instead, he touched her arms, keeping her in an open embrace.
“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked.
She stared at him in the glass. “You mean you don’t know?”
“Why should I?”
Her body stiffened against him. “Does your father cheat and ruin so many men every year that they’re all a blur?” The words dripped from her lips, poisonous. Pained.
Marcus flinched from her hurt. “My father is his own man. He doesn’t share many of his business decisions with me.” He lightly squeezed her arms. “Tell me what happened. Please.”
She trembled against him. “I know what happened to my father wasn’t your fault. It’s just that my entire family suffered so much afterward. Daddy was dead, and Mama couldn’t get his pension. It was hard keeping perspective knowing Quentin Stanfield was off enjoying his rich life when we could barely put food on the table, and I had to give up going to school in Spain just so my family wouldn’t starve.”
Diana blew out a harsh breath. “Sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Marcus said.
He couldn’t imagine what she must have been through. Losing a parent. Watching all her dreams dry up in front of her face just because of one man.
“Daddy…Daddy had always been a delicate man.” She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Not the look of him but his constitution, you could call it. Science would probably say that he suffered from depression most of his life and didn’t get treated for it in time.” She toyed with the champagne flute in her hand but did not drink from it.
“He didn’t have many friends, and his family was everything to him. He preferred his life to be simple. He was happy to work at the same plant for nearly twenty years. The paycheck was steady, the insurance was decent, and the factory was only a few miles from home.”
Diana’s voice sagged as she talked about a life that could have easily been Marcus’s. In another reality, if things had turned out even a little differently. Three children, an adoring wife and a rented three-bedroom house that was comfortable for all of them.
Then, her father started forgetting things he had easily remembered before. He began to weaken. After several visits to the doctor, they decided that he should retire. Drawing his pension wouldn’t require his wife to make any significant changes to their lives. The money would be less than his current salary, but it would be enough to carry them through. Diana would have to pay for college herself, something she had expected to do anyway.
But when Washington Hobbes approached his boss about retiring, the man was hesitant at first, then said he would talk to his own boss about the options. They agreed he would retire, and they agreed on the amount of his pension. Then one day he came home and said he had been fired for job performance just a few weeks before his pension eligibility date. The whole family was stunned. Her father was devastated.
No one knew where he got a gun. One night he went down to the river where he often took his children fishing. There, he shot himself in the head, his body pitching face-first into the water, where Diana’s mother later found him.
“Mom told us how he looked floating there in the water, his body bloated and gray, almost unrecognizable with the back of his head completely gone.” Diana trembled again. “I couldn’t stand being in water after that.”
Marcus winced, easily imagining the putrefying corpse and the filthy water around it. A young girl with a vivid imagination and a mother who didn’t know any better to spare her children the details of her husband’s gruesome suicide.
“I was so mad at him.” Diana looked up at Marcus, a flash of that long-gone anger in her brown eyes. “How could he have been so selfish knowing that we needed him?” She bit her lip. “My mother had to get another job. I had to start working to help out. My childhood ended.”
Diana shook herself. “I didn’t want to talk about this. It’s old but still raw.”
“Something like that will never stop hurting,” Marcus said. “Your entire life changed.”
“Yes, it did.”
What she did not say, but that he could see plainly on her face, was that she’d changed, too. He saw hints of the girl who used to laugh. The child who did not have a mountain of responsibility dropped onto her narrow shoulders. A young woman who had smiled with her whole face and body instead of the reserved tilt of lips she gave now.
Marcus wanted to rescue that smiling girl from the cupboard where she had been shut. He wanted to see her and Diana become one.
“Your father would be proud of the woman you’ve become,” he said, “in spite of all you’ve been through.”
In the glass, he saw her trembling smile, how she briefly closed her eyes before turning away from the image of Marrakesh to walk around the rest of the large room, examining the three low couches in rich shades of burnt orange that rested in front of each wall, the brass wall sconces adding a gentle illumination to the room, the hand-painted Moorish tiles beneath their feet.
He watched her for a moment, unable to get the details of her story out of his head. Her father. His father. The cruelty of what Quentin Stanfield had done. The wrong way out that Washington Hobbes had taken. And now, years later, the repercussions of those actions reverberating between him and Diana, with the potential to shake apart their burgeoning relationship.
Marcus had always known his father had a ruthless streak, but he’d never thought he was capable of something like this. Calculated maneuvers in the boardroom were one thing, but cutting off a working man at the knees was something else altogether. All his life Marcus had worked three times as hard as his peers just to get his father’s respect and to be considered even half the man he was. But if this was the man Quentin Stanfield was, what did that make of Marcus’s ambitions?
Diana cleared her throat. “Thank you for showing me your home. It’s large but comfortable. Trish told me you collect art. I’d imagined this massive house with a million servants and lots of museum pieces that felt very cold and boring.”
“Like me?”
She looked up at him, her gaze considering, even teasing. “No. Not like you, but…” Her voice trailed off.
“Like my father, then?”
She made a face. “Yes, like your father. Even though I obviously don’t know him.”
“Would you like to?”
The question jumped from his lips, surprising them both. He waited for her answer.
“I… Why?”
That was a good question. Why did it matter that she got to know Quentin Stanfield? It wouldn’t change what already happened between her father and his. It might even make Diana more reluctant to become involved with him.
“Never mind.” He made a dismissive noise. “I should probably keep the two of you as far apart as possible.”
“I think that’s best. A man who can do the things he did…” She shook her head, shuddering. Diana hugged her arms and walked even farther away from him. She left her champagne glass on the floor beside his.
This wasn’t exactly the mood he’d wanted to cultivate. “Come,” he said. “I think we’ve seen everything here. Besides, there’s another part of the house I want to show you.”
She shot him a cool look from beneath her lashes, then took the arm he offered. They left the room, his mind touching again on his father and the things he’d done. No wonder she’d hated Marcus when she found out who his father was.
He lightly traced the bones of Diana’s hand as they walked down the lushly carpeted hallway toward their next destination. He felt a faint shudder move through her, and he pulled her closer. An instinct, strong and fierce, rose suddenly in him—the instinct to cherish her and protect her. Even if it was from himself.
Chapter 17
Despite the warmth of the house, Diana
felt a lingering shiver when Marcus suggested that she meet his father. Nothing on earth would convince her to meet with that man. Marcus, she knew, had nothing to do with her father’s death. And her feelings for him were complicated at best. But her feelings for his father were simple. It was another matter entirely to look into the face of the man whose actions had pushed her father over the edge.
She shivered again, and Marcus gathered her against his side, warming her with the heat of his body.
“Do you want to continue with the tour?” he asked.
“Is there much more to it?”
He looked down at her from his graceful height, his gaze clearing as if he’d been thinking wholly unpleasant thoughts. “Only one more thing,” he said. “But I wonder if I should hold off on that.”
“Well,” she said, shrugging, “we’ve already come this far.”
A smile touched his lips as he watched her. “True.”
Then he took his phone from his pocket and sent a quick text before leading her on to their next stop. As they made their way through a wide hallway, faint strains of music reached Diana. They neared a door, and Marcus stepped slightly ahead of her to open it. Johnny Hartman’s rich and melodic voice floated out to greet them. She looked up at him, feeling suddenly lighter at the familiar music.
“I love Johnny Hartman,” she said.
“I know.” He guided her into the room with a hand at the small of her back. “I remember seeing some of his CDs in your office the night of the storm.” Candlelight flickered as they walked in. “Here we are.”
Diana drew a surprised breath. The room was gorgeous with its heavy, wooden furniture, high ceilings and deep burgundy walls. But what made her catch her breath was the table for two with taper candles that looked freshly lit. The table was set for a meal. Cutlery, napkins, wineglasses. All the while, Johnny Hartman sang about falling in love too easily.
“What’s this?” she asked.
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