Chapter 13 #2
“I may have to take you up on that,” he said. He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “But right now, I have a surprise for you.”
There was a quizzical lift to her brow.
“It’s time to stomp some grapes,” he said.
She gasped. “Are you kidding me?” She pointed toward the door their tour guide had just left through. “But she said regulations prevent the vineyard from using the method.”
Jamal shrugged. “I pulled a few strings.”
The look she graced him with was akin to a kid getting the toy she’d been hoping for on her birthday, and Jamal couldn’t help the way his chest puffed out a bit. He could get used to being the hero.
They were brought into a room filled with huge barrels lining the walls. On an elevated platform stood a wooden tub. Jamal followed Phylicia up the stairs, and after washing her feet with the supplies that were provided, helped her into the tub filled with freshly picked grapes.
“Oh my goodness,” she said. “This feels so weird.”
“Looks pretty sexy to me,” Jamal said, staring at the smooth thighs that peeked from under the dress she held in her hands.
“Aren’t you joining me?” she asked.
“Nah, I’d rather watch.”
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth as she gingerly took her first couple of steps. “This is so weird,” she said again. “But, um, kind of fun.”
Jamal looked on as her attack on the grapes became more aggressive.
The only other time he’d seen Phylicia this uninhibited was when she was painting, and never had he seen her so playful.
He loved the way it looked on her. She had so many burdens weighing her down—guilt over her father, worry about her mother’s health, stress from that jerk of an ex who’d left her in near financial ruin.
The chance to put a smile on her face was worth the extravagant price he’d paid for this little excursion.
“You don’t know what you’re missing.” She grinned.
“I’ll take your word for it,” Jamal returned as he studied the unbelievably sexy way the delicate muscles in her lean legs flexed with her movements. The hem of her dress brushed her thighs, driving him out of his mind.
After she’d stomped around for nearly twenty minutes, he was finally able to coax her out of the tub. They were shown to a washroom where Phylicia was able to clean her legs and feet. Even that was sexy.
His phone vibrated, and Jamal checked the screen. It was the event planner he’d hired, letting him know that everything was set for the other bit of extravagance he had planned.
“Are you ready?” he asked Phylicia.
“Are we going to another winery?”
“No, I think I’m going to go with this one as my Arizona supplier. When we get back to Louisiana, I’ll visit a few and get another local supplier. But we need to get on the road.” He gestured with his head.
“Where’re we going now?”
“I promised to show you my home state’s magnificent scenery, remember?” He captured her hand and placed a delicate kiss on the backs of her fingers. “We still have a lot to explore.”
Jamal purchased a couple of bottles of wine from the winery before heading for Route 179 to Cathedral Rock. A short time later, he pulled the rental car into the driveway of the Crescent Moon Ranch.
“Is that it?” Phylicia asked, pointing to the majestic red rock with its two peaks.
“Yep,” Jamal said as he grabbed a bottle of wine. “Let’s walk. There’s an even better view on the other side of the cabin. It’s the best place to watch the sunset.”
They rounded the corner, and Phylicia’s loud gasp echoed around them.
Dozens of lit candles surrounded a hand-stitched blanket with a traditional Native American design.
A picnic basket, filled with bread, fruit, and several artisan cheeses delivered from a dairy farm in Tempe, sat just to the right of it.
She whirled around, her eyes wide with surprise. “How did you do this?”
“I told you I would show you the best that Arizona had to offer. Sit.” He gestured to the blanket with his head.
After settling next to her on the colorful blanket, Jamal filled the two wine glasses Phylicia held, then opened his legs so she could scoot between them. He wrapped an arm around her middle and nestled his lips against her neck.
“Thank you for coming here with me,” he said. “You’ve made an unbearable trip better than I ever thought possible. Instead of being miserable, I’m actually enjoying myself.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. After a pregnant pause, she quietly asked, “Jamal, what was the argument with your dad about?”
He shook his head, rubbing his chin against her collarbone. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he murmured.
“No,” she said with enough force to make him rear back a bit.
She twisted around and faced him with a look that said she wasn’t backing down.
“You don’t get to shrug this question off anymore.
I came all this way to be here for you when you face your dad; the least you can do is tell me what caused the disagreement in the first place. What did he do that was so horrible?”
“It wasn’t just one thing,” he answered. He blew out a frustrated breath, casting his gaze on the red rock formation in the distance. “My father doesn’t respect me. He never has.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because he practically said it to my face.” Jamal drained the remainder of his wine and set the glass down, silently applauding himself for not grabbing the bottle and drinking straight from it. Talking about this would be so much easier after an entire bottle of wine. Or four.
“One morning, my dad came into my office and told me to pack up because I was moving to the twenty-eighth floor, into one of the executive suites. I told him I was fine with my windowless office on the sixth floor, with the rest of the architects at Johnson Construction. But he’d never intended for his only son to remain a lowly architect.
“’It’s time for you to step up to the plate and take a swing at being the boss,’” Jamal said, mimicking his father’s voice. “He’s the king of baseball analogies,” he added with a derisive snort.
“You must have known he had this in mind. How long had he been grooming you to move up into a leadership role at the company?”
“Since birth,” Jamal answered. “But I never wanted it. Never. It’s the creation process that I love. I love working with my hands, even when it’s only my hands touching the keyboard and computer mouse. I’ve never wanted to be anyone’s boss.”
“But you will be when you open your firm and hire people.”
“Yeah, but it won’t be the same,” he said.
“For one thing, my firm will be a one-man show for at least the first year. I’ll expand in the future, but I don’t want it to grow into what Johnson Construction has become.
” He shook his head. “I can remember a time when my dad knew the name of every person who worked for him. Now, there are twenty thousand employees. I’m going to make sure that my firm remains small, and more of a partnership than one man at the top dictating what others do.
I’m going to be open-minded when it comes to new ideas. The complete opposite of my father.”
“Ah, let me guess,” Phil said. “He isn’t onboard with the eco-friendly stuff?”
“Somebody hand the lady a prize,” Jamal said, his mouth twisting with a cynical grin.
“I’d been waiting for the perfect opportunity to share some of my ideas for incorporating green technology into Johnson Construction’s designs.
But that morning was definitely not the time to do it.
Things went downhill from there. I told him if he wasn’t ready to step into the twenty-first century, I would just open my own firm. ”
Her eyes widened. “What did he say to that?”
“That I didn’t have what it took to make it on my own. That I’d come crawling back to Johnson Construction with my hands stretched out.”
“He did not!” Phylicia gasped, her vehemence on his behalf providing a small measure of comfort.
“It shouldn’t have hurt me as much as it did.
It wasn’t the first time he’d shot down my ideas.
I was used to it.” A familiar pang of disappointment tightened Jamal’s chest. “I’d spent my entire life trying to live up to his expectations, and…
I don’t know…I just… I was just over it.
At that point, I knew I’d never earn that man’s respect.
It was time for me to go. I was tired of having my life dictated by other people. ”
Phylicia caressed his cheek, a sympathetic frown marring her brow. “I’m sorry,” she said. She gazed up at him for several hauntingly quiet moments before she spoke again in a soft voice. “Jamal, don’t take this the wrong way, but why haven’t you opened your firm?”
Her question struck a chord of panic in his chest, but he shrugged it off. “I want to take my time and make sure I do it right.”
“But you’re not making any progress on it,” she said. “You’ve spent over a year working first on the Georgian, and now Belle Maison. You haven’t even decided on a location for your firm.”
“I’m not in any big rush.”
“Because there’s no reason for you to rush.
You have enough money to live on for the rest of your life.
You can put off opening this firm forever.
” She tilted her head to the side, those brown eyes boring into his.
“If this is something you truly want, why haven’t you made more of an effort to see it through? ”
Jamal tried to keep his expression light, but unease tightened his jaw. “What’s with the third degree?” he asked with an uncomfortable laugh.
“You’re afraid,” she said.
Her simple, softly spoken words hit a raw nerve.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about,” she said. “I know what it’s like to be afraid to fail. When that house-flipping venture went bad, I tried to put all of the blame on Kevin, but I was just as culpable. I wanted to prove to myself that I was right in wanting to expand my father’s business.”
“Our situations are completely different.”
“No, they’re not.” She placed her soft palm against his cheek, her eyes brimming with understanding.
“You have something to prove, just as I did. And just like me, you’re afraid that if you fail, you’ll prove your father right.
That’s why you took so long to remodel your house, and why you bought Belle Maison.
You’re finding projects to occupy your time so that you don’t have to go after your dream. ”
He huffed out a grunt. “I thought your degree was in finance, not psychology,” he said, reaching for the wine. He busied himself with refilling his glass so he wouldn’t have to face the truth that pummeled him with every word Phylicia uttered.
She took the bottle from his hands and set it next to them.
“It doesn’t take a psychology degree to see what’s going on here,” she said.
“Don’t let fear stop you. And don’t let revenge or some misguided desire to prove your dad wrong be your sole focus.
This is your dream. Do it for you. And Jamal?
” She captured his chin between her fingers and tilted his head up.
“You need to settle things with your dad. Don’t let it eat away at your family anymore. ”
“It’s not worth it. Trust me on this. Let me handle this in my own time.”
“But—”
Jamal leaned forward and captured her lips, halting further comment. He had not gone to all this trouble setting up this romantic night just to ruin it with talk of his father.
“Enough free advice for the night,” he whispered against her lips. “We’ve got other ways to occupy our time.”