Give Me Fever

by Niobia Bryant

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that this relationship is over, Kaeden. I want you to move your vehicle so that I can leave. I’m saying you should work on building your view of yourself up so that there is no room to tear your woman down.”

  Kaeden stepped back from her vehicle. “This is how you want it?”

  Jade shrugged even as her heart broke. “This is how it is,” she told him as she circled the front yard and drove between Kaeden’s rear bumper and the road.

  She stopped.

  He turned to watch her.

  “Why is it so hard for you to believe that you were enough man for me?” she called out to him before she accelerated down the road, wanting to be free of his presence before the tears fell.

  Chapter 21

  Kaeden’s feelings were taking him on an emotional roller coaster and he could definitely blame some of it on the alcohol. As soon as he left Jade’s cottage he headed back to his office and fell right into the bottle of cognac he kept in his mini-bar. “Shit,” he swore, realizing that Jade might be out of his life for good.

  That didn’t sit well with him, but neither did the idea of Jade lying to him. Not once had she answered how Darren knew about something so intimate as the flat mole on the inside of the lips of her femininity.

  Images of Darren and Jade, naked and thrusting, plagued him.

  Maybe their breakup was for the best.

  Sitting at his desk, he poured another drink and tossed it back, wincing as it burned a hot trail against the back of his throat before settling like liquid fire in his stomach.

  “Hi, Kaeden.”

  He looked up over the rim of his glass at Felecia standing in the doorway of his office. He held out his hand. “Give me my office keys, Felecia,” he said in a bored and tired voice before he tipped his head back to take another sip.

  Something dropped in his extended hand, but he frowned at the soft and silky texture. He knew it before he looked and he sighed heavily. Sure enough, Felecia stood before him naked as the day she was born with her dress draped over his hand.

  “Make love to me, Kaeden,” she said in a mock-sultry voice that came off like she had a horrible cold.

  Sitting his glass down on his desk, Kaeden rose and walked over to her, his eyes giving her a slow once over. “Not bad, by the way,” he began before he shook out her dress and wrapped it around her. “But you know this is not what you want to do.”

  “Yes, I do,” she told him emphatically as she flung the dress away and jumped up on him to wrap her arms and legs around him.

  Kaeden just stood there and wiped his mouth with his hand. When she moaned loudly and planted wet kisses on his neck, he grabbed her arms and pried her off his body. “Enough, Felecia,” he said roughly.

  She stumbled back from him and covered her face with her hands.

  Kaeden bent down, picked up her dress, and covered her nudity…again. “Sit down, Felecia,” he ordered her before he turned, grabbed another snifter, and poured her a drink.

  “I don’t drink,” she told him as she put the wrap dress back on correctly and tied it securely.

  “You don’t have sex either, but tonight you were in for a change…so drink up.” Kaeden dropped back down in his seat behind his desk. “Enough is enough, Felecia.”

  She smoothed her mussed hair as she took the seat and the offered drink. “What?”

  “I have a lot going on right now and not much time to spare,” Kaeden began. “There is more to you than being someone’s wife. You are a smart and attractive woman, but your demeanor comes off desperate and clingy at times, and I’m here to tell you that it scares men away.”

  Felecia crossed her legs and stiffened her back in a dignified manner—like she hadn’t just jumped butt naked onto him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do.” Kaeden eyed her as he placed his head in his hands atop the desk.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Yes, I am. And you’re desperate.”

  Felecia looked offended.

  “When you have no reason to be,” he added. “You were willing to throw away all of your convictions to sleep with me to try and get me to get back with you. And I could have hit it and still quit it, Felecia. You setting yourself up to be used. Think about what I just said.”

  Felecia shifted her eyes away from him and took a sip of the drink. She frowned and gagged comically at the taste.

  “Burn that wedding trunk thing you have. Sell that wedding dress and go focus on living life. I bet the man of your dreams—the one that’s meant for you—will come along, but you can’t just pick somebody and try to make them love you or want you or marry you.

  “Felecia, you and I will never get back together. I will never marry you. You are not the one for me and I am not the one for you. Don’t call me and I won’t call you. I promise.”

  She slammed the glass down on the desk and rose to her feet to walk out of the office. She returned moments later to drop his office keys onto his desk. “It’s your loss, Kaeden Strong,” she told him.

  Kaeden nodded as he leaned back in his chair and poured another drink. He thought about the drama swirling in his relationship with Jade and nodded solemnly. “You’re probably right.”

  Felecia gave him one last long look before she turned and walked out of his office—and Kaeden hoped out of his life for good.

  Jade was lucky she didn’t get a speeding ticket when she made her way back to Walterboro. She parked and stormed into the Wild-n-Out office. She slammed the door behind her and it quivered on its hinges.

  Darren walked out of his office and looked at her in surprise. “Something wrong, Jade?” he asked smugly.

  And she saw red.

  “You jealous hearted, evil, soulless, nutless, horny, lying son of a no good bitch,” she spat in her anger, her eyes blazing with the angry fire burning in her belly.

  And he laughed. He laughed in her face.

  “You think my life is a joke?” she asked him as she advanced on him.

  “You didn’t take my feeling serious, so why should I give a damn about yours?” he told her coldly, his face suddenly etched in stone.

  Jade poked her finger into his chest. “You know damn well I never slept with you.”

  Darren said nothing and continued to look at her with a smugness that made her want to grab his head and then knee his groin so hard that she made his privates into a vagina.

  “You’re pathetic,” she said, pushing past him to walk into her office, grab a box, and chuck her laptop and personal items into it.

  Darren just stood there watching her like he was enjoying the show.

  Jade had enough. Darren with his revenge and Kaeden with his jealousy could both to hell. It took two trips to load her things, and each time she had to brush past Darren standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, watching her as if she was going to steal something. Well, she had a detailed inventory list complete with serial numbers if he tried it with her.

  Standing at the door, Jade turned and gave Darren a withering look, pointedly stopping at his crotch. “All of this because I wouldn’t give you any? A business and friendship ruined because you wanting to get five little inches wet. Sad. So sad.”

  “To hell with you,” he screamed.

  It was Jade’s turn to have the last laugh as she walked out on Darren and their business.

  Kaeden winced as the telephone on his desk rang loudly. Groaning from the awful hangover he was trying to live through, he reached for the phone. “Strong Accountings,” he said, in as clear a voice as he could muster.

  “Kaeden, it’s me…it’s Jade.”

  He sat up straighter in the chair, and that caused the pounding in his head to intensify.

  Last night had felt so awkward without speaking to or seeing Jade. Spending the night in a drunken stupor upstairs in a sheetless bed hadn’t helped either.

  “Just listen,” she ordered softly. “Darren knows about my mole b
ecause I told him and a few other people about it during a stupid game of Truth or Dare.”

  Kaeden removed his glasses as his eyes squinted in thought.

  “I was dating Darren when you and I slept together. We were not in a relationship and I had every right as a grown woman to date and to sleep with whomever I want.”

  “Jade—”

  “No, let me finish.”

  Kaeden leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes as he gripped the phone tightly while he pressed it to his face.

  “I’m telling you this because I don’t want this to end with you thinking that I did you wrong—because I didn’t. We had this amazing thing. This connection. It was special, Kaeden, and I hope it wasn’t one of a kind because I want to feel that way again with someone who loves and appreciates me. I want you to know that you messed up a good thing, Kaeden Strong, over not just a lie by a man filled with revenge but because of your own issues.”

  He heard the tears in her voice and his heart literally ached.

  “I want it clear that we are through because I refuse to be with a man that doesn’t trust me. I refuse to be in a relationship clouded with doubt and filled with foolishness. I am way too together for that. So this is good-bye, Kaeden.”

  Long after Jade hung up the phone, Kaeden sat there with the phone still pressed to his face. His mind was filled with a million different things.

  “I’m not trying to let you play me out, Jade.”

  “We had this amazing thing. This connection. It was special, Kaeden…”

  He leaned forward to hang up the receiver and replaced his glasses before he turned in his chair to look out at the traffic whizzing past.

  “You think I’m some insecure, insipid, foolish little girl who finds her self-esteem between a man’s thighs? Huh? Kaeden. That’s what you think of me.”

  He frowned.

  “I think you forgot you were right there with me enjoying that night in the woods, Kaeden. So what assumptions should I make about you?”

  His frown deepened.

  “Go get comfy with your accusations and your insecurities—”

  “Why is it so hard for you to believe that you were enough man for me?”

  Kaeden shook his head in disbelief at that one.

  “I’m saying that this relationship is over, Kaeden.”

  And that one? Well it seemed like it echoed inside his head and his heart for infinity.

  Felecia sat in the middle of her bed with her legs crossed looking at the wedding gown she would wear one day. She was meant to be a bride—a wife. She was meant to have the happily ever after. And she would have it.

  Since it wouldn’t be Kaeden, she was more than capable of setting her sights on someone else…and she had someone in mind.

  Felecia picked up her cordless phone and dialed the cell phone number he gave her. She smiled when she thought of the handsome fair-skinned man who made her pulse race every time she laid eyes on him.

  “Hello.”

  Felecia smiled. “Just checking up on you.”

  “I’m fine. They’re broken up just the way I wanted. How ’bout you?”

  She shrugged. “Darren, I just decided not to go through with it,” she lied.

  No need for him or anyone else to know Kaeden turned down her goodies served up to him on a platter.

  “To hell with that clown, anyway,” Darren told her.

  “To hell with that Jezebel, right?”

  “Right.”

  Felecia climbed down off her bed and lifted her wedding dress from the door hanger. “Actually, I was thinking that maybe you and I could grab a bite to eat…and console each other for being done wrong by our lousy exes,” she told him as she held the dress up to her body and twisted and turned to study her reflection.

  “That sounds like a good idea.”

  “And, Darren, what was your last name again?” she asked as she held the dress to her body with her forearm and twirled around the room.

  “Jon. Why?”

  Mrs. Felecia Jon, she thought with satisfaction. “Um, no reason,” she said.

  Jade used a tablespoon to dig out a big scoop of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Macadamia ice cream. The entire pint was ninety grams of fat and she knew it meant plenty of extra miles on the treadmill, but so be it. She needed it.

  Just as she was settling in with the idea that she could love Kaeden—really love him—now they were over.

  Jade eased another creamy spoonful into her mouth. She was resolved to the fact that her first instincts about Kaeden Strong had been right. They were too different to work, and incredible sex or not, she wished she hadn’t even brought Kaeden into her life. Because now that he was out of her life, she knew it was going to take some time to get over him.

  Lots of time.

  Chapter 22

  Three weeks later

  “Okay, baby girl, enough is enough. It is time for an intervention.”

  Jade looked up as Deena picked up the remote and turned the television off with a click. “You make me sound a crackhead,” Jade drawled before she dug her tablespoon into the pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Macadamia ice cream.

  “At least a crackhead doesn’t put on ten pounds in two weeks,” Deena said.

  Jade looked comically offended.

  Deena strolled over on her gold heels and snatched the pint of ice cream away.

  Jade jumped to her feet in her plaid-footed pajamas. “I have no job, no business, and no man,” she said emphatically before she stuck out her hand. “Now give me the ice cream.”

  Deena felt like she was squaring off in a ring. She quickly kicked off her stilettos as she kept her eyes locked on her daughter and her hand locked around the carton. “Why are you sitting around here doing this to yourself when you broke it off with him?”

  “Mama, please give me my ice cream?” Jade asked calmly as she took a step toward her.

  Deena took two steps back. “A moment on the lips and a lifetime on the hips.”

  Jade released a heavy breath. “It’s just ice cream.”

  “So why are you acting like it’s crack?”

  Jade threw her hands up in the air. “What’s with you and the crack fixation today?”

  Deena eyed Jade before she took off across the room and slammed the ice cream in the trash just as Jade took off behind her.

  “Wow, old lady, you’re faster than you look,” Jade drawled.

  Deena laughed. “Sex is like exercise, and trust me, your mama stays in shape.”

  Jade pretended to gag herself as she made her way back to her couch. “Oh good God, Mama, please!”

  Deena walked over to the sofa, sitting down and settling her daughter’s covered feet in her lap. “Hey, your granddaddy called me and he’s worried you’re all cooped in this house and moping around behind Kaeden.”

  Jade shifted her eyes to her mama. “I miss him,” she admitted.

  Deena patted Jade’s leg. “Do you want him back?”

  Jade shook her head. Then she nodded. Then she shrugged.

  “But you miss him?” Deena asked.

  Jade nodded. “But I don’t miss the jealousy thing. It’s a big issue for me and you know it. I’ve been there and I’ve done that. He would really have to prove to me that he’s dealt with his issues and he can trust me.”

  “So in the meanwhile, you’re going to sit around here and live in a funk.” Deena sniffed the air and held her nose. “Smelling like funk.”

  “I don’t stink. I wash.”

  “Good. Just checking.” Deena looked relieved.

  Jade dug down deeper on the couch. “I’m fine. I promise.”

  “Well, I need you to get up and find a cute outfit to put on,” Deena said, rising to her feet. “We’re going out.”

  Jade snuggled down even deeper on the couch. “I’ll pass.”

  Deena waved her hand dismissively. “Whenever I’m in town you and I hang out. There’s nothing that changed because Mr. Lover Lover has been put on pause.
Up and at ’em.”

  Jade eyed her mother and she knew it was give in quick or be harassed until she gave in. Without another word, Jade rolled off the couch and made her way to her bedroom thinking of what to wear. Who knew what her mother had planned.

  She tied her hair with a silk scarf before she turned on the shower spray and waited to climb in once the steam swirled up to the ceiling. She sighed in pleasure at the feel of the water pulsating against her skin.

  As she closed her eyes and leaned forward enough to wet her face and not her hair, Jade thought the sound of the water hitting the wall and the tub and the shower curtain sounded just like a waterfall.

  She shivered at the memory of the first night she’d shared herself with Kaeden. The sound of the waterfall in the distance had been the serenade to their passion. Passion like she had never known and often wondered if she would ever feel again.

  Swarmed by sudden emotions and afraid that her face would be wet from more than just the water spray, Jade rushed through the rest of the shower. She rubbed her body down with baby oil before she patted herself dry with a soft towel.

  Maybe a night out was just what she needed.

  After pulling on a thong and lacy bra, Jade reached for a pair of her favorite jeans. She frowned when she couldn’t pull them any higher than her thighs. She had put on weight! “Oh, hell to the no…”

  Jade valiantly tried to pull up and then zip the jeans. She lay down and pulled. She stood up and jumped. She sucked in and tried to zip.

  “Still want the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream?” Deena drawled.

  Jade turned to find her tall and shapely mother leaning in the doorway of her bedroom. “Oh, hush.”

  Jade flew backward onto the bed and kicked her feet high up in the air as she peeled the now-offending jeans off. As she ignored her mother’s smug and pretty face, Jade promised herself a couple of things. One: She was going to have a good time tonight. Two: It was good-bye to Ben & Jerry and hello to the gym.