The Pleasure Of His Company

She did try to relax during the car ride through the bright and tourist-rich streets of Oranjestad, the car’s engine purring through roundabouts and past casinos that burped out victims of the previous night’s gambling excesses. Her mother sat across from her, looking content and refreshed, like she’d had the good night’s sleep Adah had been denied, her hair perfectly put together in a gray ponytail resting over her shoulder, an ocean-green dress complementing the slender lines of her body.

“You don’t really have to do any of this,” Adah said.

“I know, darling. But I want to do this for you. It’ll mellow you. Besides, after this, your father and I will feel better about not doing enough for your birthday.”

Her mother plucked a slice of pineapple from the silver dish sitting between them. Juice exploded from the fruit and dripped down the side of her mouth. On another person, it would have looked clumsy, but her mother’s delighted laughter and the delicate way she wiped the juice from her mouth with one of the cloth napkins made her seem charming and young. Not for the first time, Adah wished she had been the child her mother deserved, a truer reflection of her instead of this awkward and too-soft girl-woman who barely knew how to style herself.

Adah drank from a bottle of water, not wanting to chance any fruit on her dress. With her luck, one of the dark red strawberries would squirt out of her mouth and down her front, making it looked like she’d just suffered a massive nosebleed. Or a mugging.

In the spa, beautiful women in white whisked Adah and her mother away to a serene room that smelled even more like tranquility, this time with low, strings-heavy music and dim lighting. The women gave them fluffy white robes to change into and plied them with cucumber-infused water. An old Deep Forest album, humming with the sounds of chirping birds overlaid by timid violins, played in the background.

Once she was lying on a massage table, with her mother in an identical position a few feet away, Adah actually tried to relax. A silent masseuse began to work on her face, smoothing eucalyptus-scented circles over her forehead and cheeks, while her mother shared stories about what Adah had missed in Atlanta the single day she’d been gone.

“And Petra doesn’t seem like the type to fall for someone that shallow, or scary,” her mother said, continuing her portion of a conversation Adah was barely paying attention to.

She was talking about a bank manager friend of theirs who’d hooked up with the cold but slightly scandalous anchor of a national news network based in Atlanta. On the outside, Petra seemed boring, and everyone she knew was stuck wondering how she’d managed to snag a man like Gabriel Saint.

“Every woman has something about them that only appeals to a select few people,” Adah said. Petra kept things pretty low-key and had a wicked sense of humor she often kept hidden. “Petra is a badass,” Adah said. “She just doesn’t show that side of herself very often.”

“Well, one person must have seen it, and I mean Gabriel Saint, because everyone is mystified about them being together.”

“Including you?”

“Including me.”

Adah smiled as much as the hands moving on her face would allow. “You only see what you want to see.”

Her mother laughed, not admitting to the truth they both knew. And it was so comfortable talking with her about the old familiar things that Adah did actually relax.

But then her mother said, “Have you been giving much thought to the wedding, darling?”

Adah released a slow breath through her nose. “No, I haven’t.” The masseuse paused with her hands on the suddenly tense muscles of Adah’s thigh. After a quick glance at Adah’s face, she continued the massage.

“You know Errol and Stephanie are excited to officially welcome you into their family.” Errol and Stephanie Randal were onetime rivals and now potential in-laws of Adah’s, owners of Leilani’s Pearls, a successful bath-and-beauty business that was on the verge of the same kind of stagnation pulling down Palmer-Mitchell Naturals. Separately the two companies would flounder, but by joining together they stood a greater chance of succeeding in the increasingly competitive marketplace.

Just about every beauty company had some kind of natural-hair product line now, even companies who’d created their success from selling perms to black women. Despite being in business for over thirty years, Palmer-Mitchell Naturals was a relatively new company and not well-known enough to succeed on its own.

Palmer-Mitchell Naturals needed Leilani’s Pearls much more than the other way around. And the agreement to merge companies, and do it in a way that kept the businesses in the family, hinged on Adah’s agreement to marry the Randal’s son, Bennett. The idea for Adah to become the sacrificial wife had come from her mother during a time of romantic disappointment and on the anniversary of her sister’s death. Marinating in pain from all sides, Adah could think only that the less useful sister had survived.

“I know the Randals are anxious, Mother. I know you and Daddy are, too.” Her stomach clenched with unease, and she wished she could just say yes and agree to the date without putting her parents through all this worry. Any relaxation she’d gained from the massage had fled. Her muscles felt tight and unwieldy.

“I want you to be certain about your decision, Adah. When I first suggested this idea, you were a young woman in college, practically still a child. I know you’re a different person now.”

But the situation Palmer-Mitchell Naturals found itself in was the same. Adah pressed her lips together while the anxiety rolled through her, steady and unrelenting. The masseuse’s fingers dug harder into her back.

“But—” her mother’s tone changed “—think about how amazing this would be for you, too. You could have the financial freedom to realize your dreams. And have a handsome husband to call your own.”

As if all Adah had ever wanted from this thing was a man.

She twitched under a particularly firm press of the masseuse’s fingers. “I know I agreed to all this before, but I just need a little time right now.”

Her mother sighed. “I know, darling. I know.”

Then she noticeably withdrew into herself, leaving the room silent except for the sounds of the women’s hands on their skin, oil rubbing into flesh and quiet breathing. Embarrassment at airing their dirty laundry in such a relatively public place heated Adah’s face. Although it hadn’t been a full-fledged fight, she felt battered and in the wrong. Her mother had always come away from their arguments as the clear victor while Adah was left limping and bleeding in her separate corner. This time was no different. She sighed into the deafening silence.

Later, Adah tried to recapture some of the lighthearted conversation they’d been having before. But her heart wasn’t in it, and it was obvious. Soon enough, their spa day was finished. Adah’s body was limp from the massage, but her mind was wound too tightly to rest.

After the car dropped them off at the hotel, Adah and her mother picked up the keys to their new rooms and took the elevator up. The penthouse room was beautiful. But Adah gave it no more than a passing glance before she grabbed her jogging clothes and quickly changed.

“I’m going out,” she called out through the open door between their rooms, then left before her mother could reply.

Adah took the stairs. Her sneakered feet pounded on the elegant steps, taking her down five flights, away from her mother and the snaking guilt that wouldn’t let her say no outright to the gift of an upgrade. For so much of her twenty-six years, Adah felt she’d been stealing her life. A charmed existence taken away from her sister, who’d died before she’d even fully known what she had. Parents who loved her. Parents who could afford to send her to private school. Who had the strength and brilliance to start a small business that became a national company within Adah’s lifetime. Her parents wanted more. Adah wanted more. But she knew the things they wanted were no longer compatible with her own wants, if they ever were.

At the bottom floor, she panted rough and ragged, sweat covering her body, heat flowing through her like she wished some new strength would. She was tired of this weakness of hers in the face of her parents’ wishes. Marriage was a serious thing. If she couldn’t find a man of her own, she’d rather be alone than with someone she wasn’t in love with.

The messed-up thing was that she actually liked Bennett Randal. They’d known each other for years and were like brother and sister. But he wasn’t someone she wanted to marry. At first, she thought she would be able to do it, but the idea of being with him in that way had unsettled her more and more as the years passed. Bennett, she knew, didn’t have the qualms she did.

He expected the marriage to happen. While the details were being finalized, he was enjoying being a bachelor, gobbling up all the available sex he could, usually via the hottest reality stars in Atlanta and the world, before he was tied to Adah forever.

Forever.

Just the thought of it made her breath stutter. And it wasn’t just because she was running full speed out of the hotel and onto the beach. Her feet pushed into the soft sand, and she forced herself to take even breaths, trying to put as much distance from her troubles as possible while not getting one step ahead of them.

Adah squeezed her eyes tightly for a moment but kept pace along the beach, which was nearly empty; most of the beachgoers had gone inside for showers and dinner and sex. The moon was fat and gorgeous in the Aruban sky. A paradise. Or it would be if her mother and Adah’s own troubles hadn’t followed her here.

She ran on. Her breath huffing. The sound of her feet thumping against the sand and the waves rushing up toward her but never touching. A writhing shape in the water pulled her attention from her breath’s steady rhythm. The moon glided over whatever it was, showing hints of curves. A couple, she thought, making love in the water and under the stars. She changed her path and ran in an arc away from the water, giving whoever it was their privacy.

But as she moved away, the splashing grew more intense and moved closer to the beach; then a lone body climbed from the water. Adah’s footsteps slowed as details of the swimmer emerged under the moonlight. A masculine body firm with muscles apparent even in the dark, bare shoulders, torso and hips. She stared, her footsteps slowing. Was this man naked?

“Doe Eyes?”

She stumbled at the familiar voice and nickname, then without fully realizing it, began walking toward the water’s edge and the gorgeous creature emerging from the water, getting barer as the moonlight slid silver fingers over every hard inch of him.

“Ah,” Kingsley said, his breath coming quickly after his swim. “I figured I would see you again.”

Adah clenched her jaw to stop her tongue from hanging out of her mouth. Kingsley wasn’t naked, but he might as well have been. The moonlight outlined him from the top of his proud head to his feet striding out of the water and across the sand to meet her. Pale swim trunks clung to his hips, to the insistent shape between his legs, and the tops of his muscled thighs that were wide and hard enough to make the tips of her fingers ache to sink into them.

He just said something. It’s my turn to talk now. She swallowed again.

“I’m just going for a jog to escape my troubles,” Adah finally said with her wryest smile. She looked down the beach and saw the illuminated outline of her hotel much farther away than she’d realized.

Damn. How far had she come?

“Should we call it destiny then?” Kingsley wiped the seawater from his face, dragging his hand from his chin down to his strong throat and chiseled chest. Even in the soft light and pervasive dark, Adah could see his grin.

“Let’s just call it a coincidence and leave it at that,” she said, crossing her arms over nipples that had gone embarrassingly tight.

Kingsley stepped even closer, and she resisted the urge to close the last few feet of space between them and see if his body was as hard or smooth as it looked.

She cleared her throat. “Aren’t you afraid they’ll cart you off for public indecency?”

He looked down at himself and shrugged. “They’d be false charges if they do,” he said, grinning. “Do you think I’m being indecent just by swimming at night? I have a suit on.”

“What you call a bathing suit some might call underwear.” And the fact that it was a pair of tight white trunks only highlighted what a dark bathing suit would hide. Not that he had anything to be ashamed about. Heat scalded her cheeks, and she yanked her gaze up from his crotch.

“I’m more covered than most people on the beach today,” Kingsley said.

He was right. On her walk, she’d seen dozens of European tourists spread across the beach, all body types and speaking so many languages that she’d lost track of how many she heard. But the one thing most had in common was that nearly all the men wore brief swim shorts that clung to their butts and crotches, being just as aggressively sexy as the women in their bikinis. Adah was all for equal opportunity swimwear and enjoyed her walks mostly because of the view. Not all the men were beautiful, but the ones who were gave her quite the eyeful.

She’d been impressed and amused until she saw the more modestly covered Kingsley on the kite and just about lost her mind. Not that she was doing that great of a job of managing herself now. And if his smug grin was anything to go by, he saw through her clearly enough.

Adah could only laugh at herself. “Anyway, it was great to see you, all of you.” She couldn’t resist. “But I’ve got to get going.”

“Nope.” Kingsley shook his head. “You can’t leave yet.”

“Excuse me?”

“I want to see you again, and I don’t want fate to determine the time and place.”

She should say no. Adah shook her head and pressed her lips together, just on the edge of the confession. “You know I can’t...” But she didn’t know how to finish that sentence.

“This is nothing more than an invitation to go snorkeling,” Kingsley said with a look that was far from innocent. “Aruba has some of the most beautiful waters in the Caribbean. You should experience it with locals who know what they’re doing.”

“And you’re one of these locals?”

“Not at all, but my friends are and they will be there. I’m only local to Miami.” He said his home city with an echo of pride in his voice.

Miami was so very far from Atlanta. Good. That meant nothing could come of this...whatever it was. No matter how much Adah’s eyes drifted low on his body and her heart sped up at the thought of him touching her. But it wasn’t all because he was the most perfect male specimen she’d ever seen. He was just so open with his desire for her, so deliriously transparent in a way she’d never experienced before that it was intoxicating. And she also felt like the very air around him smelled of freedom. Escape. A higher plane of living, where pleasure was easy and everything else was inconsequential.

“What exactly do you have in mind?” she asked.

His beautiful teeth flashed in the moonlight again, and her breathing sped up. This was beyond ridiculous.

“We have a snorkeling trip planned for tomorrow night.”

She gestured to the high moon and the inky evening around them. “Snorkeling at night? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?”

“Not at all. The sea looks completely different at night, just beautiful. You won’t regret it.”

Adah started to argue with herself about the safety of going off someplace with a man she didn’t know. But all her life she’d been safe.

“Okay.” She took a deep breath once she’d committed herself. “Where should I meet you?”

“Do you know where the lighthouse is?”

“Yes.” It rose high and majestic, a historic piece of island history where tourists gathered from morning until night to take pictures, gawk at the scenery and buy food and drinks from the vendors who set up shop at its base.

“Meet me there just before sunset,” Kingsley said.

She raised an eyebrow at him. The snorkeling trip now sounded suspiciously like a date. It lay at the back of her tongue to change her mind and tell him there was something else she’d committed to after all. But she bit back the almost-confession.

“Okay,” Adah said. “I’ll meet you there. Near sunset.”

“Perfect.”

Adah didn’t know about that. She was quite possibly doing the most imperfect thing for her situation right now. She didn’t need another man in the mix to cloud her already-murky judgment where the potential wedding was concerned. But as she turned away to jog back down the beach toward her hotel and her mother, her mind’s eye wouldn’t let go of the memory of Kingsley, rising from the water like some Adonis thirst trap, making her heart beat fast and her tongue feel heavy in her mouth, thick with the desire to taste the path where every drop of water had run.

Yeah. Her decision making was cloudy. Absolutely the cloudiest it had been in a long time. But that didn’t stop her from smiling the whole way back to the hotel.

Seconds after walking into her room, she heard a knock on the other side of the door joining her room to her mother’s, then a muffled voice. Instead of answering what was undoubtedly the question of where she’d just come from, she quickly fled to the bathroom, stripped and turned on the shower. Her mother’s questions would have to wait another day.