Chapter 12
DEJA
As soon as Colin shut the door behind him, I turned on my heels and marched back into the house. My father was standing in the hallway just off the foyer with a calm, sort of satisfied expression on his face that made me want to grab him by the shoulders and shake.
“What was that all about?” I asked, crossing my arms to keep from acting on the impulse. “You cornered him.”
A slow, amused smile spread on his lips. “I did no such thing.”
“You demanded he go to your office and you interrogated him.” I stood my ground, looking up into his eyes before I gave my head a firm shake. “Khaled was excited about the potential this deal held.”
My brother was hovering at the entrance to the kitchen with Ashanti, but he immediately lifted his hands up and turned his palms out. “Leave me out of this. I’m innocent.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course, you are. You’re just the guy who got Colin into that office to begin with.”
“He’s a big boy, Deja,” Khaled said. “He can handle himself, and if he wants to work with us, he’s going to have to learn how to deal with Dad sooner or later anyway. Don’t stress about it.”
My dad sighed. “I was perfectly pleasant with him and he did just fine. It was a meeting, sweetheart, not an interrogation or a torture session. And Colin Thayer is no pushover. That meeting just showed me that.”
Dad pulled me into a hug. I was still irritated, but when his arms closed around me, some of the tension evaporated from my shoulders. Dad had always been this way, demanding, protective, stubborn, and yet somehow, still so affectionate with his family.
He kissed the top of my forehead. “Get some rest, sweetheart. Everything will be fine.”
Tipping my head up toward him, I narrowed my eyes. “What does that mean?”
“It means everything will be fine. I have it handled.”
One of my eyebrows arched. “What exactly are you handling?”
“Just the usual stuff,” he said calmly, providing the vaguest possible reassurance in the history of reassurance. “Just go to bed, honey. It’s been a long day.”
Behind him, Khaled appeared in the doorway once again, but with two cups of tea in his hands this time. Our dad nodded at him, then turned back to me, but I could see that his attention had already shifted. Physically, he might be in front of me, but mentally, he was already back at work.
“All will be well, Deja. Trust me.” He glanced at Ashanti too. “Sleep well, ladies.”
With that, both men disappeared down the hallway and shut themselves into the temporary office. When I turned toward Ashanti, she just gave me a shrug.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “I wasn’t in the room either. I have no idea what they said to him. Or what he said back.”
Something told me that she could find out, but my sister-in-law was already on her way upstairs, her own cup of tea steaming in her hands.
I stood in the foyer for another minute before I shook my head and finally made my way up to my guest room.
The fact that Colin and I had almost kissed was front and center in my mind again.
My father had been absolutely furious that he’d caught me, his fully grown daughter, about to kiss a fully grown man.
Our argument about it had felt ridiculous, but that was life with Basel Saad.
It was his way or the highway, and in this instance, his way seemed to be that even adults had no business getting close to each other unless they were already married.
I’d heard stories about him from when he’d been younger. Once upon a time, my father had been quite the charmer, a real ladies’ man if my aunts were to be believed. These days, however, he was as traditional as they came.
Although I didn’t remember him being quite so hotheaded about Khaled kissing Ashanti back when they’d been dating.
On the other hand, they had actually been dating.
Maybe Dad’s bigger problem was that he didn’t want me going around kissing just any man—especially one I wasn’t formally dating—but I didn’t do that, and even if I wanted to, it still wouldn’t have had anything to do with him.
After showering and changing into my pajamas, my mind drifted back to wondering about the strange sense of secrecy suddenly hanging over the house. My argument with Dad had only been about the almost kiss, but I doubted that was what’d kept Colin in that office with him for so long.
On the upside, Colin had lasted longer in there than any of the other boys I’d been interested in that had been summoned into Dad’s office. As I climbed into bed and flicked off the lamp on my nightstand, I felt an involuntary smile spread across my lips.
For the first time ever, a guy had emerged from Dad’s office after the talk and hadn’t practically run screaming from the house. In fact, he’d come out and immediately almost kissed me. Again. As if my father hadn’t terrified the pants off him after all.
That said a lot about the kind of man he was. And the size of his… backbone.
The thought sent a pleasant flutter through my stomach. I’d known there was more to Colin than met the eye and today had proven that in several different ways. For starters, he was really fun to be around when it was just the two of us. Really easy to talk to.
At the same time, he clearly had a spine made of steel and balls the size of planets. It was a titillating combination that he was hot, funny, smart, not too full of himself, and able to face off with a man like my father without flinching.
I rolled onto my side, then onto my back, then onto my other side, but sleep remained elusive. Outside my windows, the city lights twinkled in the distance, but in here, it was dark and quiet, with only my memories of the day to keep me company.
After a while, I heard a door close somewhere downstairs, followed by muffled voices, but it was only for a minute before silence fell again. Eventually, I drifted off to sleep, but the next morning, I woke up still smiling.
Usually, I was practical and sensible enough to know that one great day did not mean I’d accidentally stumbled across the love of my life, but unfortunately, practicality offered little defense against the memory of Colin smiling at me, patiently teaching me how to play golf, or the way he’d looked at me on the front porch.
Groaning softly, I rolled over and buried my face in a pillow, trying to will myself into being less ridiculous, but it didn’t work, so instead, I just surrendered to the urge to start planning my next move instead.
While I was aware that made me more ridiculous rather than less, I still picked up my phone when I got back into the room after brushing my teeth, a little disappointed when I didn’t find a message from him waiting for me.
Thankfully, phones worked both ways, so I unlocked mine and opened my messaging app, scrolling to his name and staring at the blank text box for a second before I began to type. All I wanted to do was thank him for what had truly been an amazing day—and apologize for the way it’d ended.
Khaled had been right that Colin would have to learn how to handle my father if we were all going to work together, but that didn’t mean they should’ve ambushed him the way they had.
While I’d been shocked as anything when even my father had said Colin had held up well, I still felt a bit bad for how it’d all gone down.
A new text appeared before I could finish typing my own, my entire message vanishing beneath the notification.
As soon as I saw Colin’s name attached to the text, sparks shot through me, joy erupting someplace deep inside.
He’s not running. He’s really, truly not running.
Dad and Khaled didn’t scare him away after all.
Colin Thayer: Would you like to have dinner with me later this week?
I stared at the screen, a grin spreading across my face as I read it. After all the casual boyfriends I’d lost to those exact intimidation tactics, this certainly was a breath of fresh air. Imagine that, a man who knows how to stand up for himself.
After deleting the paragraph I’d so painstakingly composed explaining my father’s tendency to be overprotective, I nixed the idea of apologizing. Clearly, he didn’t need me to.
Me: I’d love to.
Colin: Perfect. I’ll make reservations.
Me: I can’t wait.
Colin: Looking forward to seeing you.
The admission caught me completely off-guard, but when I reread it, the words remained completely unchanged and I smiled so wide, my cheeks started hurting. God, it’s refreshing to find a man who doesn’t play games and doesn’t pretend about anything.
All too often, the guys I’d met had turned out to be such disappointments in this early stage of a relationship. Not that Colin and I were in one of those, but he was mature enough not to care about making me wait or leaving me to wonder if he even remembered I existed.
He wasn’t pretending to be too busy or too important to show that he actually wanted to spend more time with me. As far as I was concerned, this was a man. Those other idiots had all been boys. Emotionally, at least.
When it became apparent that our exchange was over now that the plans had been made, which was equally refreshing, I forced myself to put down my phone and headed downstairs. Almost as soon as I left my room though, I noticed that the house was unusually quiet.
At least by our standards—and especially when Khaled and my father were in residence.
There were no booming voices and no phones ringing off the hook. It was almost eerie, but I soon found out it was because they weren’t, in fact, in residence.
Gabrielle was alone in the kitchen, patiently waiting for a freshly baked loaf to finish in the oven. She lifted her gaze away from it to smile at me when I walked in. “Good morning, sweetheart.”
“Morning,” I said, looking around to confirm that we were, in fact, alone, but there really was no sign of anyone else. Not even a dirty tea cup or plate left behind from their early morning routines. “Where is everyone?”
“Your father and Khaled have left for a brunch meeting with the Westwoods, and Ashanti is upstairs. She should be ready any second now. I think the kids are finishing up breakfast in front of the television.”
Her nose wrinkled a little bit, but she donned an oven glove and pulled the bread out before she looked at me again. “I know it’s summer, but so much screen time isn’t good for them.”
“Like you didn’t let me watch cartoons while eating breakfast when I was growing up,” Ashanti said, breezing into the kitchen fully dressed and clearly ready to leave.
She rolled her eyes at her mother, but I saw the smile she was trying to hide.
“Your generation just likes to pretend you didn’t parent the exact same way we do.
I think it’s because you’re jealous you didn’t have all the same resources. ”
“Smart phones are not a resource,” Gabrielle argued lightly as she set the bread on a cooling rack. “They’re the devil. Your generation are just too addicted to your own to see it.”
Ashanti finally let the smile break free. “Says the woman who has more followers on TikTok than I do.”
Gabrielle smirked. “I only share all the funny videos and memes that get sent to me. If they can make me smile, they deserve to be out there, brightening up the day of anyone who needs something to smile about.”
Ashanti blinked a few times, but then shook her head and relented. “It’s hard to argue when you put it like that. Anyway.” She turned to face me, sliding Khaled’s black credit card out of her pocket and pinching it between two fingers. “Get dressed. We’re going shopping, courtesy of your brother.”
“Why?”
She gave me a weird look, like she was trying to come across as perfectly innocent, but that only made me more suspicious. “Why what?”
“Why is my brother sending us on a shopping spree? He complains when I ask him to buy me a cup of coffee. And now he wants us to go shopping on him? I smell a rat.”
Ashanti stared back at me for a long moment before she finally nodded, a tiny flicker of guilt passing behind her eyes. “We’ll talk at lunch. Just go get dressed, will you?”