But then that felt unnatural. Un-him.
He flexed his shoulders.
Samira wrapped her arm around his and squeezed his bicep with her hand. “Lance, let me introduce you to the gang,” she said, pulling him about the room before each person. “My mother, LuLu. My brothers, Alek and Naim, and their wives, Alessandra and Marisa, respectively. And this is my brother from another mother, Chance Castillo, and his wife, Ngozi.”
Lance air-kissed the cheeks of the women and firmly shook the hands of the men, who then promptly guided him away from Samira and their wives to gather around him by the bar.
“Preferred drink?” Alek asked.
“Beer, actually,” he said.
Alek motioned for the server.
“You have to try Ghana beer,” Naim said, seeming warmer and more open than his older brother. “I wish I’d known beer’s your preference. I would have brought you some.”
“Samira keeps some here for me and brought me some for my house when she—”
The rest of Lance’s words faded as three sets of eyes suddenly gazed at him with frowns before they shared a look.
“Chinese wall, man,” Chance said. “Some things just shouldn’t be shared.”
“Agreed.” Lance accepted the opened bottle of beer and glass from the tray the server held.
“Let’s talk books or some shit, man,” Alek said before taking a swig of his drink.
Chance and Naim laughed. It broke the tension.
“Go easy,” Samira called over to them in warning.
Lance gave her a reassuring smile as if to say, “All is well.”
She gave him a big, broad and beautiful smile, and his gut clenched, but he wondered what Pandora’s box he had opened by agreeing to the dinner party. How many more times would he have to step out of his comfort zone and attend social gatherings with her? Things were going well enough, but what if they were just too different to make it work without someone making a great sacrifice?
What if they just weren’t right for each other?
Ding-ding-ding.
“I just wanted to thank you all for being here, especially since we’re all leaving in the morning for our annual Christmas in the Swiss Alps,” Samira said. “Tonight is very important to me, and I appreciate you all making time for Lance and me. Cheers to the holidays, family and new friends.”
“Cheers,” everyone said, raising their glasses in a toast before taking a drink.
“And dinner is ready,” Samira added, waving Lance over to her.
He joined her as she slipped her arm around his and they led her family toward her dining room.
“I know we agreed six weeks was a little soon to do family trips, but I am going to miss you, Mr. Millner,” Samira said to him, for his ears only.
“Same here, beautiful,” he assured her.
He paused at the entrance.
The room was a winter showplace, complete with a lit fireplace that was adorned with an elaborate garland and tiny Christmas trees on the mantel. The smell of fresh pine was heavy in the air. There were trees of varying sizes in every corner. The table was adorned with ornately wrapped presents as centerpieces.
It all saddened him.
“Daddy! Daddy! Wake up. It’s Christmas!”
Lance cleared his throat at the recollection, feeling that all-too-familiar wave of pain, grief and regret. He shifted his shoulders in the jacket of his custom tuxedo. There was still so much to overcome. So much he didn’t share.
“You okay?” Samira asked, nudging him forward.
“Don’t you love Christmas, Daddy?”
He used to. Not anymore.
Lance moved to hold the chair at the head of the table by which Samira stood. Never had he wanted so much to be back on his estate away from anyone. “Yes,” he lied, ready for the night to end before it even truly began.
Chapter 7
Five months later
Samira yawned behind her hand as she reviewed a report on underperforming resorts owned by ADG across the world. Using her stylus, she made notes on the large tablet before removing her computer glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose as she stretched once more. She was exhausted. Late nights at work and early mornings with Lance before trekking back into the city were wearing her out.
She looked at her office, now decorated in sleek charcoal with bronze lighting fixtures and pops of fuchsia accents. Like the job, she had made the space her own. She swiveled in her chair and looked out the glass wall at the metropolis in the summertime. She was able to see her reflection in the glass wall, and the look on her face was pride. Three months ago, the board had approved her plan for the luxury boutique hotels, with the first rollout in Kauai, Hawaii. Today one of her management staff had flown to the main island, known as the Garden Isle, and finalized the purchase of the property she’d previously scouted the year before. The tentative grand opening was not for another two years, but Samira was excited nonetheless.
“Excuse me, Ms. Ansah,” her assistant said via the intercom.
Samira whirled in her chair. “Yes, Assi,” she said.
“You have a guest,” the woman supplied.
“It’s your mother, beloved,” LuLu added, her voice now filling the room.
Samira smiled. “Come on back, beloved,” she said, already rising from her seat.
LuLu soon entered, looking like an African queen in tailored gray pantsuit with a kente cloth head wrap in a rich maroon shade, which stood for Mother Earth. That was apropos, because LuLu Ansah was the consummate mother figure. Loving but firm when needed. Filled with wisdom and guidance. Respected and cherished. Truth and love personified. Since the death of her husband, she had truly become the backbone of the Ansah clan.
Samira’s eyes fell on the black leather picnic basket her mother carried. “Lunch?” she asked.
LuLu smiled as she came to a stop in the center of the spacious office and looked around with an approving nod. “Yes, of course. For all my children,” she said, her accent pronounced.
Samira’s stomach grumbled as she came around her bronze-trimmed L-shaped glass desk to give her mother a quick hug and kiss on her high cheekbone as she took the posh picnic basket from her. “What did you make?” she said, setting it on the round glass dinette set with a frosted bronze-trimmed base and charcoal parson chairs.
“Abenkwan and fufu,” LuLu said as she set her oxblood tote on the sofa and removed her fur to join it. Her mother lived in Manhattan but rarely ventured to the ADG offices. She’d made her seafood stew of tilapia, shrimp, crab meat, eggplants and okra cooked down in tomatoes and palm oil with lots of spices.
Samira stiffened before she moved to the adjoining bath in the corner of the office and washed her hands. She looked at her reflection in the round mirror over the pedestal sink. In her eyes, she could see her wariness.
This impromptu pop-up was about more than food.
Samira gave herself a look before turning and leaving the bathroom. Her mother had already removed the large plastic containers and dinnerware from the basket to set the table. “Your homemade ginger drink, too?” she asked, eyeing the glass bottle of the nonalcoholic drink made with ginger root, lime and peppercorn. Also her favorite.
Oh, this is serious.
She sat down at the table and crossed her legs as her mother served up the food. Fearing she would not enjoy the conversation, she refrained from rushing it so that she could at least get a good bite of fufu dragged in her stew first. She maintained her silence even after they had said grace over the food.
“How’s everything with Lance?” LuLu asked, casting her a brief side glance before she reached with her right hand to break off a piece of the round dough. She shaped it into a ball and pressed an indent in the middle with her thumb before using it to scoop up some of her stew in the bowl.
Déjà vu
.
Lance. Same topic. Different day.
“A one-sided relationship is not a happy place, Samira,” LuLu said.
Samira chewed her food and wiped her fingertips on the linen napkin, but her mind was on Lance and the truth of her mother’s words. It had been just six months since they began their...
What?
Dalliance? Affair? Friendship? Relationship?
No such boundaries had been set. The only thing Samira knew for sure was she enjoyed his company, rejoiced in their sex and longed to know more about the secrets that kept him walled off from everyone—even her. At times, she felt like he was feeding a hunger in her with crumbs of his time and attention and not a full meal created by openness and devotion.
At her mother’s silence after that, Samira looked to her. The faraway stare in her eyes both surprised and confused her.
“Trust me on this,” LuLu added with a touch of sadness.
When she glanced over and found Samira’s steady gaze on her, she smiled and reached for her daughter’s hand. “Be clear on what you want, and if you’re not getting it, demand it,” she stressed. “I just want to make sure you have the tenacity and fight for yourself—your heart—that you have in business. You wanted this office and this position and you got it. Keep that same energy in life and in love, ma poupée de chocolat.”
Samira gave her a smile she hoped was reassuring as she raised her mother’s hand to her mouth to press a kiss to the back of it.
“Compromise is important in any relationship—be it a mother with a child or a spouse with a spouse,” LuLu said. “But I see you changing so much of who you are to be with him, and that worries me.”
She was right. Samira the social butterfly had vanished over the months. She couldn’t remember the last time she had lunch with friends or went dancing. She even chose to be with Lance over family, tucked away inside his seclusion from the world. Lost in him.
And I still do not know why.
She thought of his scar and the occasions he awakened from sleep startled and panicked. He would sit on the side of the bed and she would wrap her arms around him from behind and press kisses to his shoulder blades until the pounding of his heart eased under the hand she pressed to his chest. She would ease him through it, but he never revealed the cause. Never let her in.
LuLu smiled. “I know my children as well as I know myself,” she said. “I know you all better than I know myself. I want more for you. Be a little selfish. More than I have the courage to be.”
She extended her mother’s fingers inside her palm and looked down at her ring finger, smiling when she spotted the tiny mole by her cuticle. Her smile faded at the unshed tears glistening in her mother’s large eyes. “Maman, qu’est-ce qui ne va pas?” she asked, gripping her hand with her own.
LuLu blinked away the tears. “I’m okay. I just want you to have love, Samira. All the love the universe owes you, ma poupée de chocolat,” she whispered.
Samira nodded, stroking the back of her mother’s hand as she gazed out the window and released a heavy breath filled with thoughts she’d had way before her mother had given voice to them.
* * *
“Is this your owner’s suite?”
Samira and Lance lay on their sides in the middle of the bed with the sweat-soaked sheets barely covering their naked bodies as they spooned with their arms extended and their fingers entwined. Her question was unexpected.
Lance was pressing a kiss to her nape, but he stiffened at her question.
Since they began their relationship, they’d spent a good bit of it on his estate...in the same bedroom.
“No,” he admitted.
It was her turn to become rigid.
Lance closed his eyes. He wasn’t surprised when the warmth of her body moved away from him on the bed. He rolled over onto his back, folding his arms behind his head as he opened his eyes to watch her rise. The summer moon was bright and cast a glow over her brown body. Her curves were outlined like a silhouette. Her hair swayed gently against her lower back as she moved.
She was magnificent.
“Is this where you sleep when I’m not here?” Samira asked, turning to face him.
Lance reached out to touch the lamp and softly illuminate the room. “No,” he admitted, unable to lie to her.
Their eyes met and locked.
“Your life. Your secrets. Your past. Now your bedroom,” she said, giving him a soft, sad smile that matched her eyes. “What else are you keeping me out of?”
Pain radiated across his chest and clenched his gut. “Samira, there is a difference between secrecy and privacy. I have no secrets,” he assured her.
She looked pensive as she glanced away from him and then back again. “Then let’s go to bed in your room, Lance,” she said, walking about the sizable room to pick up her discarded clothing.
He shook his head and sat up in the middle of the bed. “No,” he said firmly.
She turned with her clothes gathered to her chest in her arms. “I’m here a lot. More than I’m home,” she said. “But it’s front or back door straight to your kitchen. Front or back door straight to your office. And of course—of course—front or back door straight to this room that I thought was your room, but it isn’t. You have me well trained, sir. Good job. Where’s my Scooby snack?”
Her chuckle was short and bitter.
“Samira, please don’t,” Lance stressed.
“Don’t what? Ask questions? Wonder? Feel foolish? Feel slighted or disrespected?” she asked. “Don’t what, Lance?”
He rose from the bed, snatching up the sheet to wrap around his waist.
Samira pointed toward his groin. “You’re keeping that from me now, too,” she snarked. “Oh no, of course not. Then we would have nothing. Right?”
“That’s not true and you know it,” Lance said, his voice hard.
“Do I? How? Am I psychic?” Samira asked. “Or maybe when you screw me and plug your dick into my body I’m suddenly connected to your thoughts. Um, sorry, it doesn’t work that way.”
“You’re being crude.”
“And you’re rude. Sue me.”
They fell silent, turning away from each other. Only the sounds of their breaths filled the air.
“How did you get the scar?” she asked.
“I don’t like talking about it,” he admitted.
“Or the bad dreams? Your seclusion? Your darkness? None of it, right?”
“Right,” he agreed.
Samira nodded with her lips turned downward. “If you want me to stay here tonight, I will only do it in your room,” she said, looking away from him and down at the floor.
Lance eyed her.
She looked up, and whatever resistance she saw in him made her shake her head. She set her clothes on the edge of the bed and began getting dressed. “I, uh, have to go to Milan for business. I leave in the morning,” she said, avoiding looking at him.
He had to ball up his hands to keep from stopping her.
Tell her. Talk to her. Trust her.
But he couldn’t. The last thing he wanted from her was pity, and the last thing he wanted for himself was one more person privy to his pain and trying to convince him to move beyond it.
“I need a break anyway,” she said, stepping into her shoes. “I need to figure out if this ‘situationship’ is best for me.”
He hung his head, thinking perhaps a little time apart was what they needed. She walked to the door and opened it.
“When will you be back?” he asked, unable to help himself even as he felt relief.
“Back home? Soon,” she said, never turning around. “Back to you? I don’t know. Maybe never.”
He felt gut punched.
She left without another word.
Two weeks later
Samira stepped out of he
r heels as soon as she entered ADG’s elegant two-story penthouse apartment in the heart of Milan, the financial capital of Italy. She poured herself a glass of Château d’Esclans Garrus rosé wine and carried it up the wrought iron stairs to the roof garden. At the doorway, she paused to take in the panoramic views of the historic Piazza del Duomo, the main square of the city. The sight of the gothic cathedral against the blue skies and white clouds was stunning, made even more so as the sun set and deepened the blues, painting the clouds with shades of orange, lavender and red that radiated against the 356-foot bronzed statue of the Virgin Mary atop the building.
She crossed the rooftop and took a seat on one of the patio lounges, happy that the leaf-covered walls on the sides offered privacy from neighboring buildings but the views of the city were unobscured. After a long day at the Milan ADG offices, and dreading another night missing Lance as she lay in bed, this time was important to her peace of mind.
It had been two weeks since she requested last-minute permission from Alek and Alessandra to work out of the Milan office. She’d pulled the family card and they’d obliged her, but her work ethic had not diminished. In fact, she worked harder, utilizing modern technology to properly manage her division and attend meetings. She knew it couldn’t last and she had to get back to New York, but for now, the distance between her and Lance was needed.
The man took her breath away.
And I needed to breathe.
Emotions rose and brought tears with them. She closed her eyes as they raced down her cheeks. Foolishly she had gotten too deep with Lance when he didn’t show the signs of getting as deep with her. She wasn’t upset about entry to his master bedroom. The bedroom was just a symptom of a bigger problem in their relationship. His loyalty and his heart rested with another woman.
And that hurt.
“A one-sided relationship is not a happy place, Samira.”
“No, it’s not,” she whispered, using the side of her hands to wipe her tears.
Still, she missed him. His rare smiles. His bashfulness about his scar. The deep timbre of his voice when he spoke her name. The time they spent in each other’s company just reading or relaxing, not speaking any words. The feel of his snores vibrating against her breasts as she held him from behind as they slept. The passion of his loving. The look on his face when she made him climax.
Christmas with the Billionaire ; A Tiara for Christmas Page 10