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“About time you got your lazy ass up,” he said.
A trio of young women stood behind him, staring over his shoulder at Seven’s bare chest and stomach. Seven was suddenly glad that he’d taken the time to cover himself, otherwise the girls would have gotten more than they’d bargained for. But, looking at the scantily dressed girls who watched him with a shark’s intensity, maybe they wouldn’t mind seeing him naked, after all.
“Damn,” one of the girls said under her breath.
Seven cleared his throat. “Morning. It’s a little early, isn’t it?”
“It’s never too early.” Marcus laughed as if he’d made some big joke.
Behind him, the girls tittered on cue.
“You remember the girls from last night, right?” Marcus gestured to the women around him by way of introduction. Kenya was the bleached-blonde with deep gold skin. Felice wore her hair in a short natural, a pretty complement to her deep chocolate complexion. And Masiel had a fountain of black hair spilling around her narrow, foxlike face. All three girls were fiercely made up, dressed as though they’d just come from the set of a rap video.
Confused, Seven looked at the foursome gathered on his borrowed doorstep and gave them a questioning look.
“I came to take you to that money guy I told you about,” Marcus said. “The girls and I are on the way to that side of town and thought you might want to tag along.”
Seven raised an eyebrow at “the girls,” who wore tight skirts and body-hugging blouses of the animal-print variety. They didn’t look ready to see anyone’s money guy. Unless he was a pimp.
Marcus read his look accurately enough. “They’re not seeing the banker, you are. Come on. Get dressed. Maybe after you’re done we can go grab the jet and go for a bite and a sail in Cape Cod.”
Seven hesitated. He was flattered by Marcus’s interest, but he had had enough of the man’s hearty company. Marcus was generous, but he seemed to expect to be entertained at all times. His investment in Seven made him think the artist was there for his entertainment. It was time to end this.
“I have to shower. I don’t like leaving the house dirty,” Seven said.
“We’ll wait.”
And they did. As he walked out of the room to go shower, Marcus and the three girls sauntered into the small living area. Marcus fell into a sprawl on the couch while his companions grabbed the video game controllers and knelt in front of the fifty-inch flat screen to start a game.
In the bedroom, Seven quickly discarded the sheet and grabbed some clothes from his suitcase, climbed into the travertine-tiled shower and turned the water on full blast. The hot water washed away the last of his tiredness, flooding over his head and face, dripping through his lashes, over his mouth and down the muscular planes of his chest, belly, the thick stalk of his sex and his corded thighs. He sighed into the water, the heaviness in his body falling away to leave him awake.
Energized, he quickly finished his shower and dressed in jeans, a plain white Armani T-shirt and a favorite pair of loafers. He walked into the living room, fastening the clasp on his watch.
There, the three girls played “Just Dance,” their breasts and hips shaking as Marcus looked on with laughter and appreciation.
“Ready,” Seven said.
“Yummy,” Masiel murmured, turning her attention from the video game. Bouncy black waves tumbled down her back as she twisted around to look at Seven.
“I liked him better without clothes,” Felice said. With her close-cropped hair and sensual mouth, she was pretty in a Meagan Good kind of way, although not as sexy.
“I’ll take you however I can get you.” Kenya gave up any pretense of paying attention to the game and strutted over to Seven, who stepped back before she could touch him.
He wasn’t into playing with another man’s toys. Marcus watched all the action with a faint smile but didn’t say a word.
Seven raised an eyebrow. “You ladies are making me blush.” Though clearly he was in no danger of doing that. He looked at Marcus. “Are we heading out or what?”
“Of course.” Marcus stood up with a set of keys in his hand. “Let’s go.”
In the detached garage that was as big as another house, he chose a black Mercedes C-Class sedan and ushered the girls into the backseat before getting behind the wheel. He looked at Seven briefly. “You want to drive?”
Seven got in the passenger seat. “Yeah, right. I’m just here to relax and go along for the ride. Drive on.”
Marcus chuckled.
They drove out of the garage, under the wide, slowly lifting door, into the bright spotlight of a Miami Monday afternoon. Diamond sunlight bounced off the reflective lenses of Seven’s sunglasses as they wove through the estate’s main drive, flanked by bright ginger plants, yellow hibiscus and a profusion of thick-stalked pink and red flamingo lilies, plants Seven was used to seeing in Jamaica. A neatly manicured dozen or so acres, the landscape was occasionally broken by a hatted gardener stooped over a bed of flowers or stretch of grass. The smell of fresh-cut grass drifted into the car despite the closed windows and arctic AC.
The chill of the car made Seven suddenly wish for a cup of a hot chocolate. Steaming from the stove, not a packet. Freshly shaved from a ball of cocoa, swirled with milk and a dash of nutmeg. Just like his father made for him whenever he was home in Jamaica. Yeah, that was what he wanted.
Seven emerged from his momentary fantasy of hot chocolate to the sound of the girls giggling in the backseat. Marcus navigated the car through the mansion’s wide double gates and out to the long bridge heading off Star Island and to the A1A for downtown.
“The firm is downtown,” he said to Seven. “I’m not sure if Bailey can do anything for you today, but I let her know you’ll be there soon.”
“Her?”
“Yeah. Bailey. She’s my money guy.”
Masiel tapped Marcus’s shoulder from the backseat. “Can we go shopping on Collins Avenue?”
Marcus glanced back at her in the rearview mirror. “What, you got Collins Avenue money, girl?”
A chorus of giggles sounded from behind Seven.
“Honey, we thought you’d treat us.” Felice pouted, cocking a thigh bared in her short skirt. “We’re always treating you,” she said.
Seven didn’t have to imagine what the girls were always treating Marcus to. In the rearview mirror, Masiel gave him a teasing, wet-lipped smile as she trailed a red fingernail along her low neckline. He wasn’t impressed.
“You can drop me off at your money guy’s office and take off,” Seven said. “I got this.”
“See, he got this,” blond-haired Kenya mocked as she offered her cleavage for Marcus’s consideration. “We have needs, Daddy.” Her declaration set off another peal of laughter from the other girls.
In his profession, the rich and bored often clung to artists as a way to relieve their boredom—a lot like Marcus was doing now. Seven had seen enough of this type of leeching to last a lifetime. These girls bartered their bodies and their time for jewels or money or trips outside their small towns, riding that tiger as long as their looks lasted while hoping for one of these men to sweep them off their feet and offer marriage. He glanced at the trio in the backseat. He didn’t see Marcus marrying any of them, but then again, he had underestimated women enough to know he could be wrong.
“Here it is.”
The car pulled up in front of a high-rise glittering with blue glass and steel. “You’re going to the top floor. Braithwaite and Fernandez Wealth Management. Ask for Bailey Hughes.”
Seven nodded his thanks, patted his back pocket to make sure he had his wallet and got out of the car. As he slammed the door shut, one of the girls clambered over the other two to claim a position in the front seat beside Marcus. The younger man saluted Seven with a tap of fingers against his brow and peeled off down the street.
Inside the building, the AC threatened to turn him into an icicle in his thin white shirt and jeans. He pressed the elevator for the twenty-second floor, and when the car arrived laden with a half dozen business types who gave him cool, dismissive gazes, he got on and rose in swift quiet toward the building’s summit.
* * *
The top floor was rarefied air indeed. Seven stepped off the elevator into the marble-paved lobby of Braithwaite and Fernandez Wealth Management and the cold smell of new money. A thick mahogany desk sat directly in front of the elevator. Behind the desk, a freckled redhead with wheat-colored skin watched as he walked through the steel doors of the elevator. The heels of his loafers rang out against the marble.
Seven shivered slightly in the chilled air, feeling goose bumps rise over his arms. The lobby was cold and massive. It stretched out in both directions with an impressive view of the Miami skyline to the left and an ocean of cream marble in a long corridor that branched off into several hidden hallways. Purple orchids stood in tall black planters at each corner of the large lobby, a complement to the long row of black leather armchairs lining the back wall on both sides of the elevator.
“Good afternoon,” the redhead greeted him with a surprising island accent. Bahamian, if he wasn’t mistaken.
“Good afternoon. I’m here to see Bailey Hughes. I was referred by Marcus Stanfield.”
“Of course. Have a seat.” She gestured to the thick armchairs as she lifted the phone to her ear. “Your walk-in is here,” she said into the receiver. After a moment, the woman nodded. “Of course,” she said then hung up the phone.
“Ms. Hughes will be with you in a moment. Would you like a beverage while you wait?”
Seven looked around the reception area at the miles of marble, at the original Rothko on the cream walls. A place of obvious wealth and influence. They’d have what he wanted. “A cup of hot chocolate if you have it,” he said.
“Of course,” the young woman said. She moved from behind her desk with a click of her impressively high heels against the marble and disappeared down the hallway.
Seven shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled to the wide windows. Miami lay spread out before him, bright and glittering with its ribbons of roads, high-rise buildings and the gilded waters of Biscayne Bay. It was no Jamaica, but he looked forward to making a home here.
The sound of shoes on the marble drew his attention from the view. Two men, both middle-aged, with gray hair at their temples, one Latin and the other white, emerged from a long hallway, talking quietly. They looked up at him as they passed, nodding in quiet acknowledgment, although the white one, taller and in a more expensive suit, gave a narrow-eyed glance at Seven’s jeans and T-shirt. Seven, used to the contempt of corporate types, at least until they realized how much money he made, let the man’s cool-eyed stare roll off his back like bathwater.
He returned his attention to the view outside the window.
“Here you are.” The pale islander returned, holding a steaming mug in both hands. She smiled, then gestured toward the long hallway the men had come from. Seven gazed longingly at the cup in her hands. “Ms. Hughes will see you now. Follow me.”
She went ahead of him, long legs beautiful and eye-catching under the black skirt. At the third frosted-glass door, she stopped and knocked briefly.
“Come.” A voice came faintly from behind the slightly open door.
The young woman opened the door for him and waved him inside, simultaneously handing him the hot cocoa and gesturing toward one of the leather seats in front of the desk. Her duty fulfilled, she left.
Only a brief view of the office registered: ceiling-high windows, a wide glass desk, a figure rising from behind the desk with a hand outstretched. The woman behind the desk wore gray slacks and a white blouse with a heavy white bow at her throat. Her hair, straightened and parted down the middle, was tucked behind her ears. The usual banker type. Boring and barely attractive. But something about her pricked Seven’s memory.
“I’m Bailey Hughes. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” the woman said.
Seven’s hand rose automatically to meet hers even as his mind registered the familiar lines of her face, her sharp blade of a body, which had drawn his attention before.
“Have we met?” he asked, shaking her hand.
Her mouthed twisted briefly in a smile. “No, we haven’t. At least not formally.” She drew her hand back. “And I still don’t know your name.” She looked up at him, challenge in the arch of her eyebrow.
He grinned. “Seven Carmichael.”
“As I said before, a pleasure.”
“Likewise,” Seven said.
He watched her carefully, the gazellelike grace of her body, the challenging toss of her head, the long neck. Suddenly, he remembered the sound of laughter around her, the splash of bodies hitting the water. Marcus’s party. Last night. The woman who had taunted him from the back lawn.
“Damn. It’s you.”
She laughed softly, dismissively, and drew back even more to stalk away from him—secretive smile, long legs, a fake banker’s demeanor—to sit once more on the other side of her desk. In that moment, he saw that it was a mask she wore, something she pulled down to hide the vicious beauty he’d seen last night. And he was intrigued.
“Marcus told me you need help with asset management,” she said with a cool smile. “What is it that I can do for you, Mr. Carmichael?”
He sat in the leather armchair across from her desk, with the warmth of the hot chocolate sinking into his palms, the drink nearly forgotten as he focused on something he wanted more. Seven grinned.
Chapter 2
Standing in her office was the most beautiful man Bailey had ever seen. Brown skin. A sinner’s mouth. A muscled body under a loose white T-shirt and designer jeans. From the top of his sharply barbered head to the tips of the square-toed leather shoes peeking out from under his jeans, he was absolutely perfect.
Bailey gripped his hand firmly and bit her cheek at the tingle that ran through her arm, the jolt of attraction.
“Have we met?” he asked. His voice was deep, rough, with a hint of an accent. He smiled then and his teeth were like a bright light against his deep golden skin.
Bailey said something in reply but she didn’t know what. This man was magnetic. She stepped away from him and put the shield of her desk between them, sinking into her chair with relief. What was wrong with her? She’d seen other attractive men before.
He arranged his lean length in the chair directly across from her and sipped the hot chocolate the receptionist, Celeste, had given him before she left. He stretched out his long legs before him, his gaze attentive, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. Damn, he was fine!
“Marcus told me you need help with asset management.” Bailey leaned forward on her desk, hands clasped. “What is it that I can do for you, Mr. Carmichael?”
Despite his attentive gaze, Seven Carmichael looked as if he wanted to talk about anything but the reason he was in her office. He took a leisurely sip from his mug, still watching her. Bailey remembered him, too. How could she forget?
Last night at Marcus’s party, she had been bored out of her mind, regretting her hasty decision to leave home for the questionable pleasures of whatever Marcus had to offer. But at home, she had felt pent up, confined by her relentless pursuit for partnership at the firm. Despite it being a weekend, she’d worked twelve hours that day alone. After only an hour at the party, she’d walked out to the dock of the mansion to get a glimpse of the bay and calm her mind before heading back to the soothing solitude of her Miami Beach condo.
The man on the deck of Marcus’s pretentious little boat had appeared overhead like a dream to the soundtrack of Janelle Monáe’s “Tightrope.” She’d never been one for wild behavior, but frustration at having to present herself as perfectly square partnership material and as a relentless worker bee had caused another side of her emerge in that moment. So Bailey had called out to him, flirted with him in a way that she wouldn’t normally have, especially if she’d known she was going to see him again.
“I want to reallocate some funds and set up local accounts,” Seven said. “But that’s not very important now.” He chuckled, white teeth flashing against his toffee skin. “It’s a small world, isn’t it?”
“Yes, very. Especially when you run in Marcus’s circles,” she said.
Her friendship with Marcus was good for business but hell on her personal life. He’d referred enough big-money clients her way that she’d be a fool to alienate him. At the same time, all the men she’d met through him, at least the ones she’d found attractive, turned out to be assholes, criminals or both. She clenched her teeth to keep the smile on her face.
“I just met him a couple of weeks ago.” Seven sat back in the chair and sipped from the black mug with the firm’s monogram on it, his amused and interested gaze devouring her from the small distance. “But I didn’t come here to talk about him.”
On the boat he had seemed distant, not just physically but emotionally, an unattainable dream safe to flirt with. But up close here in her office, he was all personal contact and heat. A danger. Especially since he was one of Marcus’s friends. Those guys, if they had money, were usually arrogant pigs who assumed their money could get them everything and everyone they wanted. If they were broke, they were parasitic hangers-on trying to jump from one well-fed fish to another. Her sister always said that was most men in Miami. Only Clive had been the exception. He had fit all her criteria but turned out to have fidelity issues.
“So what did you come in here to talk about, Mr. Carmichael?”
Seven chuckled again, another stomach-warming sound that made her want to sink deeper into her chair and hear it some more. “Call me Seven, please.” That smile of his played havoc with her senses. “I came in here to talk about my money, but suddenly that idea doesn’t sound as appealing, or urgent, as it did before.” He glanced around her office. “Are you free for dinner tonight? I’d love to take you out and get to know you in a more intimate setting.”
Yes. She wanted to say yes. But the reasons not to have dinner with him crowded in on her, forced other words past her lips.
“I’ve already eaten and I’ll be here all evening,” she said.
“I see.” His lips curved in a slow, sexy smile. He sipped again from the mug of hot chocolate, licking his mouth.
“So, for the reason you’re here....” Bailey prodded.
He nodded, gave another of his secret smiles and got down to business. As he spoke, Bailey sighed quietly with relief and took up her pen and pad to take notes. Seven finished his hot chocolate as they talked about his money, what he wanted to do with it, the possibility of him relocating to Miami and taking advantage of all the amenities Florida had to offer.
They didn’t talk again about anything personal, certainly not about how she’d like to see him again if only he wasn’t one of Marcus’s friends. At the end of their hour-long conversation, he signed the papers to make their financial relationship official, shaking her hand as he stood up to leave. She took his empty mug from him and gave him a cool nod.
“Have a good evening, Mr. Carmichael.”
“My name is Seven.” His hand was warm around hers, firm and solid, as Bailey briefly allowed herself to imagine his body would be. Thoughts were harmless. It was no big deal to picture this beautiful man without his shirt, imagining she would get the chance to prove she could handle him as she’d boasted the previous night while the wind and his presence blew her boredom away.
