Heart's Secret

“Should’ve known.” Dale’s smirk stretched into a callous grin. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you and Carlton are two peas in a pod.”

“Don’t even joke about something like that.”

“The truth is an inconvenient thing, my brotha. Inconvenient indeed.”

“Hello, gentlemen,” Richard said after finally making his way over to the table. “Mind if I grab a seat?”

“Knock yourself out,” Jaxon said, determined to be unfazed by the intrusion.

But Richard had a sixth sense when he was gettin’ under Jaxon’s skin and he reveled in it as he took his seat.

As if to spare them from having any further conversation, the club’s music changed and the main attraction got underway. Jaxon gladly turned his attention toward the stage. Kitty stretched out a long, curvy leg from behind a red curtain. Every man in the joint hooted and whistled their approval only for Kitty to pull the leg back as if she was suddenly too shy. The next time there was a little more leg, plus the curve of her hip. A very nice hip at that.

“The girl is a pro,” Dale praised. “I’m getting so hard, I just might have to go home and screw my wife.”

Jaxon laughed. “God forbid.”

“All right, so he’s good-looking,” Zora said, handing back the Forbes magazine, and then surrendering herself to the wonderful massage Alejandro was performing on her back and shoulders. This was day two of Melanie’s relentless campaign.

“Don’t forget rich,” Melanie reminded her as she too let her eyes drift while a hunky masseur worked knots out of places she had long forgotten existed.

“C’mon, Mel. You oughta know by now that I’m not impressed by a man’s bank account. The brotha I want in my life has to have a good heart and won’t feel threatened by a strong woman with her own bling. I’m so over men who try to make me feel bad for being independent.”

Melanie laughed. “Oh, I musta hit the sistagirl nerve. I feel ya.”

Zora chuckled. “Nah, girl. I’m just keepin’ it real. I get more grief from men about the money I’m pullin’ down than a little bit. The few relationships I have been in all start the same. ‘Baby, you know I looove you,’” she imitated with fake, deep baritone. “‘I don’t care about you making that long money. Just long as you’re bringing all that sweet lovin’ to me.’”

Melanie cracked up.

“Don’t act like I’m the only one. You’re not exactly broke, either.”

One side of Melanie’s lips quirked up. “I realize as successful women, we have a unique set of hurdles to deal with. But we can get over them.”

Zora peeled open one eye to stare at the friend lying on the massage table next to her. In the brief silence that followed, she thought how hypocritical Melanie was.

“I’m telling you, Zora. You and Jaxon Landon will hit it off,” Melanie insisted, hammering the wild idea that Zora was the perfect woman to really reel in Jaxon Landon. Of course she was going on nothing more than a hunch, but her hunches had a 95 percent batting average. There was also a lot of luck riding on this, too. Zora was perhaps one of the few women in elite New York circles who hadn’t gotten wind of Jaxon’s reputation.

And what a reputation it was.

The women who had been with Jaxon had described him as a certified sex freak and bragged that he had a libido to put the Energizer bunny to shame. He wasn’t opposed to doing it anytime and anyplace. Normally, Melanie wouldn’t take on a client with such a voracious sexual appetite. They were usually too hard, if not impossible, to tame.

But to Zora, there was just something about Melanie’s instincts that told her she was on the right track. The two women had met back in Melanie’s brief stint modeling. She had liked Zora instantly. She wasn’t like the other girls in the house where they lived with other models. She had a real brain in her head and it didn’t surprise her in the least at just how fast the world and the fashion industry fell in love with her. It also didn’t surprise her that Zora turned the platform into an enormous business opportunity.

“Just meet him,” Melanie said, sounding sooo close to begging. “What harm is there in just meeting the man?”

Zora released a long sigh. Her resistance was starting to wear down.

“It can be at a party. You come separately and leave separately. We can make it as casual as you want.”

Another sigh.

“Trust me.” Melanie made one last desperate plea. “You’ll thank me for it at your wedding.”

Zora laughed at the unlikely notion.

“There’s just one thing.”

“Aha! I knew there was a catch. What is it? He has a tribe of children by half a dozen women?”

“It’s nothing like that.” Melanie frowned and then pulled herself up into a sitting position while clutching her towel.

Zora picked up her friend’s hesitation and felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “All right. Then what?”

Melanie shrugged as if to suggest that it really wasn’t such a big deal. “I just need for you not to tell him…you know.”

Zora signaled for Alejandro to stop rubbing her shoulders. “No. I don’t know. Why don’t you just spit it out?”

“Let’s just say that Jaxon doesn’t know that I’m setting this…meeting up.”

Zora closed her eyes to prevent herself from rolling them out the back of her head. “A blind date? You’re trying to set up a blind date?”

Melanie’s smile returned and grew even wider. “Remember. You’ll thank me on your wedding day.”

Zora’s eyes rolled again. “Something tells me that I highly doubt that.”

Chapter 3

Jaxon was not looking forward to his grandparents’ sixtieth wedding anniversary.

It didn’t help that he’d almost forgotten about it. It was his crack secretary, Janine, who had cleared his schedule, bought a gift and reminded him that he would probably need to rehire his fake fiancée for a repeat performance or come up with a plausible lie to why Kitty was a no-show.

It was an irritating inconvenience, but one that he would grin and bear for at least a couple of hours.

When he placed a call backstage to the Velvet Rope, Kitty reacted to his invitation like she had just won the lottery. In a way maybe she did. He’d promised her a cool $5K for the night. No, he didn’t need to pay for a date, but knowing Kitty’s financial situation with her grandma made him feel like he wasn’t such a hard-ass like many believed. Plus, he would get another kick out of seeing Carlton sputter and stew in his own indignation.

It would probably be the highlight of his night.

He left his Manhattan high-rise a little past six o’clock, already anxious for the night to speed by. In his apartment lobby, Alfred tipped his hat and wished him a good evening. Jaxon highly doubted that was even possible.

Kwan, his new twenty-one-year-old driver, greeted him at the curb with his Maybach 62. He wore a penguin suit that looked as though it was three sizes too big and a hat that looked even bigger than that. Each time Jaxon saw the kid, he questioned his decision to hire him, but there was just something about the young man’s exuberance for the job that won him over.

Of course, the brother also tried his patience with his incredible knack for getting lost in a city he claimed to have lived in his entire life. That took a certain talent. And Jaxon could just forget about Kwan reading or understanding the GPS system in the car. Words like south, east, west or north were all met with the same blank stare. And if Jaxon combined them, southeast, northwest, Kwan looked ready to cry. So it was just best to keep it simple with oldies but goodies like make a left or a right that garnered the best results.

An hour later they made it to Brooklyn with only two wrong turns to which Jaxon had to listen to a ten-minute nonstop apology. Kitty must’ve been waiting by the door, because the bell hadn’t stopped jingling when she jerked it open and greeted him with a Texas-size smile.

The only thing that Jaxon wished that Janine had reminded him to do was tell Kitty to dress conservatively. As it was, she wore a cream-colored sequined dress that fortunately or unfortunately turned transparent when the light hit it. Since he was sure that his grandparents still had the habit of paying their electric bill, there just might be a problem with Kitty’s attire.

Then again…didn’t he hire the curvaceous stripper to be provocative?

“You don’t like my dress?” Kitty guessed after a full minute of him dragging his roaming eyes over her body. She prepared for his usual sly criticism only to be blown away by his devastating smile.

“On the contrary. I think you look ravishing.” He offered her his arm, and then seemingly produced a single red rose out of thin air. “Shall we go?”

It was on the tip of Kitty’s mouth to say that she would follow Jaxon anywhere, but she reined in her childlike fantasy and just accepted his proffered arm with a practiced innocent smile. “After you.”

In the car, Jaxon gave Kwan his grandparents’ address only to be met with a wide-eyed blank stare.

Jaxon huffed out a weary breath. “Take a right at the corner.”

“Right, boss.” Kwan started to pull away from the curb only to be blasted by the horn of a passing Bentley.

“We would like to get there in one piece, if you don’t mind,” Jaxon added.

“Right, boss. I’m on it, boss.”

Kwan tried it again.

Another horn blared, but Kwan forced his way into the lane and then flashed his thanks by giving them all a two-finger salute.

Jaxon covered his brow with his hand and tried to massage away the tension headache before it started. During the hour-plus drive out to the Hamptons, Kitty and Jaxon shared stiff smiles over a few glasses of champagne. But for the most part Jaxon allowed his mind to wander back in time. Back to when he was nothing more than a skinny thirteen-year-old kid being forced to live with grandparents he hardly knew.

Jaxon’s father, Carlton Jr., had himself rebelled against his father’s stern, iron hand to forge his own path in the world. His dropping out of Harvard caused a rift between father and son that lasted until the day Jaxon’s parents were killed in a tragic home invasion. It was just lucky that Jaxon had been spending the night at a friend’s house the evening of his parents’ murder. Otherwise, he would have been home in his own bed, just like his parents had been when two felons broke in the back door and took the most important people in Jaxon’s young life.

They say that time heals all wounds—but that was a lie. He missed his parents more today than ever. And the eight years he spent living with his grandparents was like a slow death unto itself. Well, he would be stretching the truth if he included his grandmother. He loved his grandmother. And one of the things he loved most about her was that she knew how and when to stay out of his business.

As far as he was concerned, his grandmother was a class act. He put her beauty and grace high on a pedestal. She was a great confidante, cheerleader and referee between him and Carlton. She never once pressured him into doing anything or becoming anything. Sure, she could get carried away from time to time, feeling faint, needing smelling salts and swearing that her heart could go at any minute. But it was all done with such theatrics that no one really took such declarations seriously.

But Carlton had the ability to get under Jaxon’s skin and ride his last nerve effortlessly. Thinking back on it, they had been butting heads from the start, almost as if Jaxon was born to pick up just where his father had left off.

Jaxon was convinced that when Carlton looked at him, he only saw his mother’s black skin. Carlton’s disapproval of Jaxon’s parents’ marriage was evident and documented when he didn’t bother to attend their wedding in Johannesburg. Carlton was also missing in pictures when Jaxon was born in Los Angeles—or any other special occasion in Jaxon’s adolescent years.

Sylvia was there. Always pleading for her son to forgive his father, but never receiving it. Both Carltons were stubborn as mules. It was an unfortunate gene that Jaxon now picked up.

“Are we almost there?” Kitty asked, shifting in her seat. “I have to go to the little girl’s room.” She set her empty flute down in a holder and then reached for her clutch to retouch her lipstick.

Jaxon performed a cursory glance outside the car window. “We should be there in a few minutes.” To be honest, he was a little relieved himself. He never cared for long car rides. They always made him feel as if he was wasting time. Not that he needed to dedicate every minute of the day to making big investment moves, but he needed to be doing some thing. Hell, he wouldn’t even mind rustling around in the backseat with Kitty for a few minutes if he could’ve been sure that Kwan would keep his eyes on the road and not run them into a ditch or up a tree.

Plus, sex always had a way of taking the edge off whenever he was feeling tense or anxious. He cut a look over at Kitty and knew that she would be down for whatever he was in the mood for, but just then Kwan turned onto Jaxon’s grandparents’ long, sprawling estate. It was time to suck it up, paste on a smile and ram horns with his grandfather.

There was a short wait, while cars and limos deposited the guests on, of all things, a blue carpet in front of the estate. At first glance, it appeared his grandparents had invited the whole state of New York to what the invitations described as a small get-together. Of course, the Landons never did anything small.

Kwan rolled the car to a stop and the valet quickly snatched open the door and offered a hand to assist Kitty. A person would have to have been deaf not to hear the collective shocked gasps when the outdoor lighting hit Kitty’s knockout number.

Jaxon stepped out of the car behind Kitty and made a dramatic show of possessively wrapping an arm around the exotic dancer’s slim waist. Both he and Kitty thrust up their chins while their eyes and attitude practically dared anyone to say anything about their odd pairing.

“Are you ready for this?” Jaxon queried under his breath.

Kitty leaned closer. “I am if you are.”

“Then let’s knock them dead.” Jaxon slid his free hand into his pants pocket and escorted Kitty up the royal blue carpet.

“Oops.” Kitty sprang out of his grip and stepped back.

Jaxon glanced in time to see a silver tube of lipstick roll down the carpet.

“I forgot to close my clutch.”

“I’ll get it.” Jaxon sprang into action though he felt a little foolish for having to give chase to a tube of lipstick.

Another car pulled up to the curb. The valet immediately opened the door.

Jaxon had stooped to retrieve the shiny lipstick tube when a woman’s gorgeous foot encased in a pair of silver stilettos was planted in front of him. Two things seemed to happen. Time stood still and Jaxon had unexpectedly fallen in love…with a foot.