TWO MONTHS LATER
We arrived in Turks and Caicos via Jabari’s private jet and took a private twin-engine aircraft to Ambergris Cay.
I glanced over at Jabari as he handled a business call.
My heart squeezed in my chest at the beautiful sight beneath us.
The turquoise waters were beautiful and teemed with aquatic life.
I glanced at Jabari again, this time with a brilliant smile, and he smiled back at me and gave a wink that sent tingles between my thighs.
He decided that we both needed to take a break from business and regular life to spend some quality time strengthening our bond.
It hadn’t been easy getting back to where we were before he learned of my betrayal, but we had slowly worked our way back into a flow.
Jabari had not only given me space for my business again, but he had purchased a little building that my father once owned and transferred ownership into my name.
I was still downtown and close enough to his location, but I was free to run my operations as I saw fit without depending on him or anyone else.
He had purchased all new equipment for our magazine printing.
For every person he had previously advised should place me on a “red list,” he told them to remove me immediately.
The professional relationships I had, had been restored and new ones were in the making. He had even gone as far as to give each of my staff a $10,000 bonus for the difficulties they had endured because of his and my relationship.
We had both hurt one another severely, me purely out of selfish interests, and him out of being hurt by my betrayal. We had worked hard to forgive one another and give each other a fresh start.
We touched down on the private runway, and a butler waited to greet us.
He handed us lavender-scented, chilled towels to instantly cool and calm our hot skin underneath the tropical sun after our travel.
“Hello, I am Iael, your personal butler for your stay on the island. Here is a little something to cool you off,” he stated, handing us each a glass of Krug Clos d'Ambonnay.
I savored the nutty and citrusy flavor of the champagne as I took in the beautiful surroundings.
“Is this how you always travel?” I asked Jabari.
Although we had done a lot of exciting date night adventures, we had never left the country before.
He took my hand in his and kissed it. Those beautiful brown eyes stared into mine, and he answered, “Always.”
After the butler unpacked our luggage, we were taken to our beachfront pool bungalow in an electric cart. The bungalow provided stunning views of the Atlantic Ocean, a beautiful outdoor wrap-around veranda to enjoy the ocean breeze, and a fresh-water plunge pool to cool down on a hot, sunny day.
We stepped inside to marble floors, high vaulted ceilings, and an open concept layout that allowed for entertaining in the main living area of the house, no matter whether you were in the kitchen, living room, or dining room.
Large ceiling fans whirred lazily overhead, and the house smelled like mint and lavender.
After we checked out the amenities, we beelined to the spa-like bathroom and jumped in the shower to cleanse ourselves of the dirt from traveling.
When we finished, the butler had returned and set up the deck with a seafood lunch of citrus-marinated, grilled lobster tail, conch salad, lobster mac and cheese, and cheddar biscuits.
I feasted until I couldn’t eat anymore. “Now that I’m fat and full, can I take a nap?”
He chuckled. “Not quite. I thought we could get a little activity in by paddle boarding, then return for a deep-tissue massage, and then you can get your nap in, beautiful.”
“Ohhh. I’m so sleepy, Jabari,” I whined.
“Come on. It’ll be fun. You can sleep your time away when we return home.”
I allowed Jabari to take my hand and pull me from my chair. What I wasn’t prepared for was for him to lift me into his arms and carry me off the deck and down to the pier where the paddleboard was tied.
Jabari looked good in the tan shorts that hung low around his waist and gave me a peek at the silken hairs rising just above the waistband.
He wore flip-flops on his feet with no shirt.
His tatted, chocolate skin bulged with muscles and glistened underneath the sun.
I wanted to lick away every water drop that dotted his skin and ride him until the sun set.
“Damn, you would have to go ruin the view,” I teased when he secured his life jacket over his body.
“What’re you talking about, woman?” he asked as he knelt to attach the leash to my ankle so that I would be secured to the board.
“It’s a shame that you’re covering all that sexiness with that life jacket.”
“I was kind of thinking the same about you, but I still get a good view,” he teased, moving to his board.
“How’s that?”
“I’ll just ride behind you and keep my eyes on your ass.”
I smacked the water with the paddle, causing it to splash up on him. “You’d better keep your eyes up before you lose your balance,” I teased, laughing as he wiped the water from his face and beard.
“Yeah, all right.” He winked at me, and my mind went wild with all the things I wanted to do later. Everything about the man was just sexy.
We enjoyed ourselves in the sun and the water for a couple of hours before we headed back to the bungalow to enjoy our hour and a half deep-tissue massages on the beach. I fell asleep during the massage, and Jabari carried me to the bed and held me while I rested.
***
“Were you and your brother ever close?” I asked, venturing into something I had wondered about since learning what happened to their family.
He sighed and pulled his fingers through his beard.
We had just finished our dinner of Caribbean-Mediterranean fusion food in the garden of the private estate we were on. The estate sommelier selected rare vintage wines for us to enjoy with our meals, and we were finishing off the last of the wine we had been given.
“We were at one point. By the time we were teenagers, that all changed. He was three years older than me, and he fell in with the wrong crowd early on. He gave my parents hell for years. His best friend was shot and killed by the cops when they were seventeen, and nothing was ever the same for Malik after that. He’d been there and seen the entire event.
Before we knew it, he was on drugs. He said it was the only way he could cope with the pain of what happened.
My parents tried everything to get him off it, but he didn’t want any help.
“He stole from them, lied to them, jumped on my dad a couple of times, and tried that shit with my mom. That’s when I got involved, and he accused me of turning on him.
After that, we weren’t ever close again.
I tried, but he always found ways to push me away.
My dad used to tell me that I was my brother’s keeper, so I tried to keep him close.
Tried to be there for him when he didn’t want me to. ”
“And the last act was his final act of pushing you away, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you, Jabari.”
“I’ve had to live with the regrets of my decision ever since.
I watched my mother die of a broken heart, and my dad try to drown his sorrows in the bottom of a bottle.
One day, I’d had enough. I’d had enough of the hood life, enough of selling dope, enough of hurting people, and I decided I wanted something different. ”
“How so?”
“I had always been good at stacking my money. After I killed those boys, some people wanted answers. Their people were trying to start a street war, and I knew we didn’t need that.
So, I met up with the lieutenant for my area and gave him a rundown on what went down.
He respected what I’d done, but he said it wouldn’t be so easy to walk away from that, but he had a plan.
He was in the midst of dealing with some issues with his parents. His dad was the kingpin who I sold for.
“There were few people my lieutenant trusted, but he’d known me long enough to know that I was loyal if nothing else.
He’d come across information that his dad was planning to leave his mom, and that his dad had another family out there.
His dad had a legitimate company, too, but he was greedy, so he continued to run things in the street.
When I say this man was a major boss in the A, he was major.
“I agreed to help the lieutenant set his dad up. It was the only way that he could protect his mama and ensure she kept what was rightfully hers. That woman had sacrificed everything to help that man get to where he was, including her own family. She had no one but him, and he thought he was about to walk away with a younger woman he’d been messing with.
She had three kids; only one of them was his.
“All I had to do was drop off a package at a particular location.
In the end, I walked away with a cool couple of million.
I bought a couple of properties near the hospital that used to be Georgia Medical that were about to be taken by the bank and turned them into sober living homes that I could rent out by the room.
The people I took them off were losing them because of drug addictions anyway.
I purchased two more properties that were in foreclosure near the hospital, and I turned those into travel nursing and corporate housing so that travel nurses and medical professionals could use them while in town.
“My final investment was with the lieutenant that I mentioned before. He and I invested with two other guys; one of them was a trust fund baby, and we bought an old apartment complex that addicts had taken over. The owner wanted out of the deal, so he was desperate to unload it, and we got a sweet deal on it. We hired some guys, including my dad, to do a complete makeover on it. When my dad is sober, he’s a beast at what he does.
That gave him some focus time to keep his mind off losing my brother.
We turned it from rundown apartments into upscale condos. ”
“Bell Falls?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s where your dad lives.”
“Exactly. I wanted to offer him a percentage of ownership, but his drinking prevented that. Instead, I used what would be his ownership to pay his bills and make sure he has everything he needs, even if something happened to me.”
“Even now?”
“Even now.”
“Why does he have to work then?”
“A man needs something to do, Camilla, otherwise he’ll go insane or become depressed. I love my dad, no matter how much he hates me. He was set for a comfortable life, but his world continued to crash around him.”
“How?”
“No sooner than they finished the project, my mom died.”
“I’m sorry, Jabari,” I replied softly.
He was quiet for a while before he spoke up again.
“The next three years, I was on a grind. I hustled and stacked. I stacked money from the streets and money from the investment properties. I lived off two hundred a week and nothing more. I didn’t buy myself any new clothes, drove an old run-down hooptie, and cut my own hair.
“At the end of the three years, I walked away from everything related to Jamal Bell and became Jabari Blackwood. I was ready to buy my first commercial property, a 6,000 square-foot retail strip over on Fulton Industrial.”
I thought about that for a minute and a smile came over my face. I chuckled. “You’re the owner of Wood Venture Plaza?”
“Yes.”
That plaza had a coffee shop, a vape shop, a cell phone repair shop, threading and waxing salon, insurance office, and a bakery and ice cream shop.
“You’ve done very well for yourself, sir.”
“Thank you.”
I stood and walked to the edge of the garden. Jabari met me and linked our fingers together.
“You ready to return to the bungalow?”
“Yes.”
We walked in silence as I inhaled the aromatic herbs and fragrant orchids that dotted the land. A cool, crisp breeze tinged with ocean water misted our faces.
“Jabari, I absolutely love it here! I might not ever return home,” I teased.
He dropped a kiss on my forehead. “I could make that fantasy a reality, if you want me to.”
I smiled up at him. “Do you even know what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying exactly what I mean. We have both done things that neither of us are proud of, but I know that you’re it for me, Camilla.”
He stopped walking, gripped the back of my neck, and brushed his lips against mine.
“I don’t even deserve you, but I’m glad that you gave me another chance.”
“I did that for one reason, and one reason alone.”
“What was that?” I asked with my lips still pressed against his.
“To see you on your knees, begging to taste me, and hearing you call me Mr. Blackwood.”
The corner of my lip tilted up, and I smiled back at him. “I think I can make that happen, sir.”