Chapter 4
MAHOGANY
“Thank you,” I said to the waitress as she sat my strawberry mimosa in front of me.
Instead of immediately grabbing it and taking a sip from it, I let it sit.
He noticed. How nervous I was. Crescent.
I was at brunch with him. A business brunch.
And I was drinking. I never drank at business meetings.
I was always professional, poised, and modest when it came to ordering.
However, I was on a meeting with Crescent Carter—Armani fucking suit.
I was a nervous wreck. Earlier he called me nervous, and I said I was intimidated.
I was both. But because he was a smart-ass, he corrected me, saying that intimidation was the same as nervousness.
He was right. Still… I was both, regardless of what the definition of them were.
He was a lot.
Heavier today than he was before. Heavier but…
lighter too. His aura was drowning. Intoxicating.
Drawing. In-fucking-timidating. I could barely hold eye contact with him, and I hated every second of it.
I wasn’t me. I was someone else. That timid little girl who’d sat on that barstool five years ago.
I thought it would be easy for me to Mahogany with him, but it wasn’t.
I was shy. Me. Fucking shy. I hadn’t been shy since I was a child.
So, I needed a drink. And he noticed. He fucking noticed.
Ordered me a second one just a few sips away from finishing the first.
“I think you’re going to do just fine,” Crescent stated.
I told him he was intimidating. Well… kind of.
I told him the job was intimidating—not him.
I couldn’t tell him that. I didn’t lie though.
There were six projects in the contract with Skylight Industries and neither of them were small.
Crescent was jumpstarting a new hotel corporation called Celestial and Couture was on the design team for the first six.
I was working on one. He requested me personally for The House of Nova Ray, a children’s hotel.
Easy, right? It was before I learned who Nova Ray was.
His daughter. His deceased daughter. Died before she could see two.
My heart ached. Stomach churned. Nerves heightened.
This was a passion project for him. One coated in dedication and love.
I had to be careful. Very careful and when it came to design, I was almost never careful or that considerate to what the client wanted.
I knew what color schemes worked best. I knew what pieces fit where.
I understood more about the design aspect than them.
Otherwise, why would they have hired me?
But see… this was different.
His personal touches needed to be deeply considered. I couldn’t just… overthrow his obnoxious fixation with black despite it being too harsh for a children’s hotel. I had my work cut out for me, for sure.
“I love the faith you have in me,” I said with a light laugh, finally reaching for my drink. “That don’t add any pressure at all.” I joked.
I took a longer than normal sip from it.
His eyes were on me. Planted. Centered. Unwavering.
Not only had he been giving me direct eye contact the whole time, but he’d also been pretty fucking flirtatious.
So much so, that I kept asking myself if he knew me.
If he remembered me. If…he felt what I felt.
I almost convinced myself that he did. But I knew better.
Honestly it was good he didn’t remember me.
It was good he didn’t see my face. Otherwise, I would be dealing with another Judah situation.
Speaking of, I’d been to Pandora’s damn near every night since, in hopes of running into him there.
We needed to have a conversation. I didn’t think Judah would be a problem.
Not since I didn’t have to work with him directly.
But he knew my name. He knew me outside of Pandora’s now.
And although I didn’t think he was crazy enough to create problems, I didn’t trust it.
Not without a conversation about boundaries and respect.
It’d been about a week since everything and I’d gotten desperate and found him on Facebook.
I sent him a message last night and was still waiting on a reply.
“You got it, love,” he said, finally pulling the blueprints up.
I took a sip of my drink and leaned over closer to get a look at them.
He smelled delicious. Felt even better. God, what was my life?
Armani suit. In the flesh, after five years of radio silence.
After hoping to run into him again, he practically fell into my lap.
And in the worse way possible. Why couldn’t God make this easy for me?
Why couldn’t he have come back to Pandora’s after that first night?
I would have sucked his dick so got damn good.
While we stared down at the blueprints, I took it as an opportunity to take him in.
I watched him, instead of the screen, admiring how he talked about his plans for The House of Nova Ray.
I ogled over the way his full succulent lips moved.
Admired his glistening beard. Wished it glistened with me, instead of the shea butter I smelled on him.
But then something caught my eye. Something I didn’t notice before.
A tattoo. A dainty one that sat on the side of his face, near his ear. A crescent moon.
“You got a new tattoo?” I blurted out.
What the fuck was wrong with me. Too many mimosas because what the fuck did, I mean ‘you got a new tattoo’?
“Huh?” He questioned, turning my way with furrowed brows.
“I said,” I paused and nodded toward him. “That’s a nice… a nice tattoo.”
He brushed his hand over it, and I noticed another one.
Nova, in cursive, in the small space that separated the thumb from the index finger.
Suddenly, I wanted to study him. Wanted to strip him of every piece of clothing to count his tattoos.
I wondered if he had more. Wondered if he was covered in them.
Taking my eyes away from his hand, I eyed his neck, trying to get a look below his collar bone.
Playing peekaboo was a bit of ink I couldn’t make out.
I wanted to know what it was. Wanted to see all of him.
Not just what rested below his waistline, between his legs.
“Oh, shit… thank you.”
I needed to put another designer on his case.
I had to. I could barely focus on work. It was hard…
separating the version of myself that wanted him from the version that was solely in business with him.
I’d never had this problem before. Never had to deal with a split at the workplace.
Handled it like a pro in my personal life.
But in business? In business it was a completely different thing.
And well…I hated it. Hated drinking on the job.
Hated lusting on the job. Hated working with him.
Life was a fucking joke.
God. He was a joke too. I didn’t find this funny. To dangle this man in my face, knowing I couldn’t touch him? Not only because this was business but also because of Duke.
We were trying. I guess, if you could say that.
He was trying; I was existing. Just going with the flow of life.
Birthday 2.0 ended with me cursing him out and sending him to the man-cave.
It’d been about a week since he’d been down there, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss him in bed with me.
Did that make me pathetic? Maybe. After sleeping with someone damn near every day for years, you miss their body next to yours.
However, despite how much I missed him in it, I refused to ask him to come to bed.
He asked if I wanted a divorce. Do you think I answered him?
Nope, I couldn’t because despite thinking what I thought, I didn’t have solid proof and well.
. that fear lingered. The minute the word divorce left his lips, my entire body heated up and I went mute.
I did want a divorce. I didn’t want a divorce.
What I wanted was for my thoughts to stop running wild.
I wanted the past not to exist. But it did and well, the past…
it seemed to be haunting me. Whatever the case, I was just existing and waiting.
Waiting for God to do what God always did. Reveal.
“You’re welcome,” I said clearing my throat, snapping back to reality. “Where were we?”
He licked his lips with a smile. “We can resume tomorrow morning, if you’d like.”
I squeezed my thighs together at the feel of that familiar pulsating.
My pussy spoke whenever he was around. My pussy…
she wanted to lead. Wanted me to risk it all because hello…
she’d wanted him for years. We’d wanted him for years.
So not only was I in a fight for my marriage, I was in a fight with morals too.
Which would win?
In which war would I lose?
And… if I lost in either… would it actually be a loss?
I waved him off. “Are you insinuating that I can’t handle a couple of mimosas, Mr. Carter?”
“That’s exactly what I’m insinuating,” he said with a laugh before holding his hands up. “No judgment here, baby. I’m talking about floorplans, you talking about tattoos. Seem like Mahogany the interior designing mogul is a little off her game.”
I took a deep breath and brushed my hand down the back of my head. “Just a little. Who serves alcohol at eleven in the morning?”
“Who drinks at a business meeting?” he asked with a smirk.
Squinting, I said, “Oop! You just said you weren’t judging. And don’t act like you didn’t order the second one like I asked for it.”
He leaned back against his chair and crossed his arms over his broad chest. For a second or so, he studied me. Eyed me up and down with this smirk on his face. “You needed it. This is the most relaxed you’ve been since we met, Ms. Mills.”