He stared straight ahead, his face oddly grim. “I’m not a good guy.”
“Why do you say you’re not a good guy?” she asked, mildly amused.
“Because I’m not.”
She didn’t know why he’d become so solemn or would make such a disparaging remark about himself. They’d had an interesting discussion on the drive to her apartment. He’d told her all about his home in Naples, his mother, and the close relationship with his grandfather.
In an effort to dispel the disturbing conversation, she stated the obvious. “It’s really raining hard. I’ll have to make a run for it.”
Instead of popping the lock as she expected, Jay surprised her by pulling away from the building.
“What are you doing?” Brenda demanded.
He glided into a parking space farther away from the front door. It was Saturday night and only a few cars were in the parking lot because many of the student residents were out partying one last time before they left for break.
Jay turned off the car and twisted in the seat to face her.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice quiet, her heart pumping a little faster.
“I think about you all the time.” He took her hand, and she let him. His was warm and comforting and made her skin tingle. “I don’t know what to do about the way I feel. It is like…like a torture I cannot be free from.”
His words shocked her. That he experienced even a modicum of the tumultuous sensations coursing through her every time she neared him, had never even occurred to her.
Her fingers curled against his palm. “Jenna’s my friend.” The statement was a reminder to herself and spoken aloud to set an obstruction between them. But it seemed he didn’t hear her words.
His hand tightened around her fisted fingers and he slowly pried them open, one by one and with very little resistance. He planted a kiss in the middle of her palm. She should have pulled away, but didn’t. Not even when his lips moved in gentle strokes to the inside of her wrist.
After that, everything happened so fast. He pulled her across his lap so that she straddled him on the seat. She’d never been in such close, intimate contact with Jay. Her pulse exploded with excitement.
He pressed his lips to her neck, and lithe fingers crept under her dress and between her legs. The warmth of his hand in her panties and the swipe of his thumb across her clit left her gasping and fueled a flood of sensations she’d never experienced before.
For a brief moment they paused and stared into each other’s eyes at the realization of what they were doing. But all thoughts of stopping evaporated as he eased long fingers into her wetness.
She gripped his shoulders and pressed her mouth to his. Their tongues and lips tangled as she rode his hand. The pounding rain sheltered their act from prying eyes and composed a natural soundtrack to their furtive movements. Frantic, frenzied sounds filled the car.
Desperate to touch and satisfy her curiosity, her fingers popped the buttons on his shirt and she pressed her lips against his warm flesh. Groaning, he ran trembling fingers through the soft strands of her hair as she licked his chest and his nipples hardened under the stroke of her tongue.
His hand at her back held her close, and his mouth on her collarbone sucked the sensitive flesh there. Meanwhile his adroit fingers stroked and fondled, teased and rubbed, until she came all over his hand from an orgasm so impactful she gasped and tossed her head back.
Before she could even recover, the button on his jeans snapped open and he pushed down his boxers in an inelegant wiggle, enough to expose himself—long, hard, tumescent. And she was wet, swollen, and aching. For him. To feel him deep inside of her. The temptation was great. She’d never known such temptation, but she pushed at him, forcing as much distance as she possibly could while remaining on his lap. The steering wheel dug into her lower back.
“No,” she whispered.
It didn’t seem fair that she’d gotten off and now refused him when he was so ready. He looked into her eyes and stopped immediately. The stormy grey of his pleaded with her.
“Brenda, tesoro mio. Per favore, ho bisogno di te. Please. I need you.” He cupped her face in his hands, but that single action was the biggest mistake he made.
She smelled the scent of her own musk on his fingers and pulled away. “I can’t. We can’t. No.” She shook her head vigorously.
She climbed off his lap and, in a rush to escape to the other side of the vehicle, bumped her knee on the emergency break.
“Brenda.” He reached for her and she knocked away his hand.
Scrambling for the door handle she stumbled out of the car, twisted her ankle, and fell onto one knee.
“Brenda, wait!” he called through the open door.
She pushed up from the ground almost as soon as she hit the rough pavement and ran as fast as she could toward the building. Rain battered her back, skin, and hair. Her knee stung where the skin had been scraped off in her fall, but she didn’t hesitate to keep moving.
He called her name from a distance, sounding far away, but not far enough. She kept running and slammed into the door. Huffing, heart racing, she swiped her key card, rushed into the building, and ran to the elevator.
Behind her, she heard Jay pounding and the door rattling from the force of his heavy-handed shaking. She dashed into the elevator and hit the button for her floor. That’s when she finally looked across the lobby at him.
He stood out there, his shirt still undone but pants zipped. A helpless, pleading expression filled those grey eyes. His hair was plastered to his scalp, and rain streamed down his face.
Her stomach clenched with guilt and regret. What they’d done was wrong. Sickened by her own behavior, Brenda averted her eyes.
Finally, thankfully, the elevator doors closed.
****
Brenda sipped the warm tea.
A week passed before she and Jay spoke privately about what had happened between them. They’d had a reasonable conversation where she told him they shouldn’t have kissed or touched each other in that way. They’d made a mistake, she explained. She wasn’t a boyfriend stealer and couldn’t do that to her friend.
Jay didn’t argue. He didn’t fight. In fact, he had been very understanding and agreed they’d crossed the line. He even apologized, and they agreed to act like it never happened.
Yet every now and again when they were all together, she’d catch his eyes on her, and she hoped no one else noticed. Those looks lessened over time and dried up completely when a few months later, Jenna became pregnant, and she and Jay announced their engagement.
Brenda’s feelings for him never completely died, however. After tonight, she could admit the truth. What she’d felt had merely been overlaid by life and circumstances. She’d learned to never get too close to him. To touch as rarely as possible. But those feelings remained.
And so for all these years, the rendezvous in the car had remained their little secret.
Chapter Nine
Brenda locked her car and walked to the six-story office building where she worked in Alpharetta. Wearing a blue, pinstriped pantsuit and kitten heels, she shifted the Gucci purse into the crook of her arm and opened the glass door. She’d purchased the leather handbag used on eBay in mint condition, a present to herself for landing the job of her dreams, but the purchase had set her back a couple thousand dollars.
For years Atlanta had been touted as the “Hollywood of the South.” Attractive tax incentives offered to movie-makers and production companies pulled the movers and shakers in the industry to the city. The Entertainment Report, or the ER as it was often called, set up a second office and recruited her from a smaller magazine in Chicago where she had been an associate editor covering lifestyle and entertainment.
More and more magazines were moving away from print. Many people read on their tablets and phones nowadays, so the ER was primarily digital, with only two special print editions every year.
“Who’s the latest celebrity that
you’ve met?” asked Dev, walking backward toward the door. A slender Indian man, he worked for an insurance company on the first floor. His clean-shaven face always wore a mischievous smile, a cross between a leer and boyish charm.
Brenda pressed the elevator button. “Yesterday I had lunch with Boris Kodjoe.”
“Ugh.” He placed a hand over his heart, feigning pain. “I don’t stand a chance, do I?”
He was a terrible flirt, and she never took him seriously. Smiling, she said, “Dev, you know good and well it’s me who doesn’t stand a chance. Your mother would have a fit if you brought me home.”
“I could make it work, Brenda. For you, I’d make it work.”
“Uh-huh.” She waved goodbye to him before entering the cabin.
On the way to her office, she stopped to chat with Nina, one of the interns. The young woman sat in the middle of the office at a table she shared with other interns.
“Miss Morrison, the concert was amazing,” Nina gushed, placing emphasis on her favorite word. Her brown eyes were wide and as glossy as her raven-colored hair. No matter how many times Brenda said to call her Brenda, the young woman always used her more formal name.
As a perk of the job, she often received invitations or tickets to events. For events like a concert, such as the one Nina attended, she awarded those to interns who did a write-up with the help of one of the editors.
“So you enjoyed yourself?” Brenda asked, flipping through the mail.
“Yes. When we went backstage, it was incredible. They were so friendly and nice. It was amazing.”
Brenda smiled. It was easy to become star struck in the entertainment business. Unfortunately, some interns thought the job was all glamour, but not Nina. She worked hard and did the grunt jobs nobody else wanted. That’s why she was one of the few Brenda always thought of when passes became available.
“Glad to hear you had a good time.” She tucked the correspondence she wanted under her arm. “Did you already send the writing clips?”
“Yes, ma’am. Already forwarded them to you.”
Freelance workers who wanted to work for the ER sent writing samples by email with links to their articles online. Nina checked the designated email account and compiled the links into one email, which she forwarded to Brenda once a week.
Brenda greeted other members of the staff on the way back to her office, a glass room on three sides, but with a window and exposed brick on the fourth. Red and purple verbena in pots on the window ledge soaked up the sunshine and looked out onto a busy roadway. Their citrus scent welcomed her when she entered.
She set her purse on the polished wooden desk as Nina appeared in the doorway of her office.
“Have you ever listened to their music?” Nina asked, still talking about the concert.
Brenda sat down and crossed her legs. “No, but I understand it’s very gritty.”
“It is, but they speak for those who have no voice, you know what I mean?”
The awe in her voice reminded Brenda of herself at that age—nineteen or twenty—before she understood celebrities were normal people, and before she knew she could have a job where she rubbed elbows with them on a regular basis. Stars who didn’t get caught up in their own hype or press were often embarrassed by the adulation heaped on them.
“Yes, I know what you mean,” she said. Unfortunately, she couldn’t chat. “I have a meeting at ten. Would you order snacks from the cafe and make sure coffee and tea are set up in the conference room?”
“Yes. Sure will.”
“Thanks.”
Brenda scanned her itinerary for the day. Before the meeting she had time to check emails, many of which were junk, but she had to sort through them just the same. This afternoon’s schedule was packed with more meetings and she had to review proofs of Ryan Seacrest’s home and select which to use for the next installment of the segment on celebrity design tips. She was sending out replies to emails when the phone rang.
“Brenda Morrison,” she said, mildly distracted by the words on the computer screen.
“Hi Bren.”
Her ears perked up. Her mother, Samantha, only used the nickname when she wanted something. Samantha almost always wanted something.
“What’s going on, Sam?” Years ago her mother had insisted Brenda and her sister call her by her first name. She’d had Brenda when she was young and thought it made her a cool, hip mother. She was always concerned about being cool and hip.
“Nothing. I just called to say hi.”
“You never call to say hi.”
“Well, I am this time.”
“Tell me what’s going on. You know I’m at work.”
A heavy sigh came through the line, which meant Samantha had something potentially earth-shattering to tell her. “I’m getting married.”
“What?”
“Calm down,” Samantha said.
Brenda pulled in three deep breaths and rested her forehead against her fist. “Please tell me you’re joking.” What she really wanted to ask was, who in their right mind would marry an aging wannabe actress who regularly wore clothing inappropriate for her age? “Wait a minute, don’t tell me it’s…him?”
Samantha confirmed her fears. “Yes, it’s him, and his name is Basil. Be happy for me, please. He’s really a wonderful man.”
Brenda lifted her head from her fist and twisted toward the window. She didn’t want the employees to read her facial expressions through the glass walls. “You’ve only known him three months,” she whispered fiercely. She hated sounding like a disapproving mother, but such was the nature of their relationship. Brenda was always the one to say that’s not appropriate, you can’t do that, or have you no shame?
Samantha had once been arrested for indecent exposure at the Caribbean Carnival in New York. Every year she flew to Florida for spring break even though she hadn’t been on a college campus since she visited Georgia Tech during senior year in high school to ‘see what the nerds were up to.’ On a regular basis, random men in bars did Jell-O shots off her stomach, and she proudly proclaimed herself the reigning queen of the wet T-shirt contest, due to all the prize money and trophies she’d collected from sea to shining sea.
Perhaps even worse and much to Brenda’s embarrassment, her mother had been the neighborhood MILF, rumored to have slept with several of the neighbors’ husbands, and regularly flirted with the teenaged boys who practically lived in their house. No surprise, all the boys with raging hormones wanted to hang at the home where the mom flitted around in daisy dukes and fuck-me pumps.
“I’ve known him long enough,” Samantha said.
“He’s not even your type. He’s over seventy years old.”
“One day you’ll be over seventy years old,” her mother shot back.
“Yes, but I won’t be engaged to a forty-nine-year-old!” Breathe. Calm down. If she didn’t, her mother would clam up and disappear for a while.
“Forty-year-old,” Samantha corrected.
“Whatever.” Brenda rolled her eyes at the ridiculous idea that her mother was forty, which would mean she had Brenda at eight.
“Are you done? I called because I wanted to share my news, but you’re being judgmental.”
Brenda took a deep breath. “I’m worried about you. You’re moving so fast, and this man—how do I know he’s not going to take advantage of you?”
Too often her mother let hormones dictate her actions and was no stranger to men with slick conversations and bad intentions. The slickest of them all was Tracey’s, Brenda’s sister, father. Tracey was the product of an extramarital affair Samantha had with a movie producer who’d promised her diamonds and didn’t even deliver a lump of coal.
“You’re worried about him taking advantage of me, and his kids are worried that I’m taking advantage of him.”
“You’re not taking advantage of him.” The very idea was ridiculous. Her mother’s tasteless behavior demonstrated a glaring lack of maturity. She was naïve and didn’t have a cal
culating bone in her body. “How dare they?”
“They’d probably say the same thing if they heard you,” Samantha pointed out.
The somber tone of her voice gave Brenda pause. Had her mother only called to share her news, or did she also need a morale boost? If Basil’s family questioned their relationship, she might be stressed and need support.
“I’m worried about you. But—I can’t tell you what to do. Well, I can tell you, but that doesn’t mean you’ll listen.” Samantha giggled and Brenda smiled at the sound. “Have you picked a date yet?”
“Not yet, but it’ll probably be early next year.”
At least they weren’t rushing the wedding. Her shoulders sagged in relief. “I want to meet him. Promise me you won’t get married until I meet him.”
“I promise.” Brenda heard the smile in her voice. “And I do want you to meet him, Bren. I didn’t expect to fall in love, but he’s everything I’ve been looking for. He makes me feel all warm and gooey inside, like chocolate chip cookies that just came out of the oven.”
She’d inherited her love of sweets from her mother. It was one of only a few things they had in common, because over the years she’d worked hard to be as unlike her mother as possible. As a young woman, she’d suffered from snide remarks that perhaps the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, that maybe she had the same loose morals her mother did. She’d made an extra effort to stand out and apart from that type of behavior.
“I’ll come to New York as soon as I can, even if it’s only for the weekend.”
“Take your time. Maybe I’ll come see you, instead. Around the holidays, maybe? I’m not going to run off and get married without you. It wouldn’t be the same if you weren’t there, Bren.”
Her throat constricted and her eyes became misty. Samantha sure knew how to get to her. “Damn straight.”
“Do you think your sister would come to the wedding?” Samantha asked tentatively.
The relationship between her mother and sister had always been strained. Her sister didn’t speak much to their mother. Like Brenda, she was often embarrassed by Samantha’s behavior, but unlike Brenda, she didn’t keep in touch. She’d gone to school all the way out in California and had as little to do with Samantha as possible.
An Unexpected Attraction (Love Unexpected Book 3) Page 8