Samira yawned behind her hand as she reviewed a report on underperforming resorts owned by ADG across the world. Using her stylus, she made notes on the large tablet before removing her computer glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose as she stretched once more. She was exhausted. Late nights at work and early mornings with Lance before trekking back into the city were wearing her out.
She looked at her office, now decorated in sleek charcoal with bronze lighting fixtures and pops of fuchsia accents. Like the job, she had made the space her own. She swiveled in her chair and looked out the glass wall at the metropolis in the summertime. She was able to see her reflection in the glass wall, and the look on her face was pride. Three months ago, the board had approved her plan for the luxury boutique hotels, with the first rollout in Kauai, Hawaii. Today one of her management staff had flown to the main island, known as the Garden Isle, and finalized the purchase of the property she’d previously scouted the year before. The tentative grand opening was not for another two years, but Samira was excited nonetheless.
“Excuse me, Ms. Ansah,” her assistant said via the intercom.
Samira whirled in her chair. “Yes, Assi,” she said.
“You have a guest,” the woman supplied.
“It’s your mother, beloved,” LuLu added, her voice now filling the room.
Samira smiled. “Come on back, beloved,” she said, already rising from her seat.
LuLu soon entered, looking like an African queen in tailored gray pantsuit with a kente cloth head wrap in a rich maroon shade, which stood for Mother Earth. That was apropos, because LuLu Ansah was the consummate mother figure. Loving but firm when needed. Filled with wisdom and guidance. Respected and cherished. Truth and love personified. Since the death of her husband, she had truly become the backbone of the Ansah clan.
Samira’s eyes fell on the black leather picnic basket her mother carried. “Lunch?” she asked.
LuLu smiled as she came to a stop in the center of the spacious office and looked around with an approving nod. “Yes, of course. For all my children,” she said, her accent pronounced.
Samira’s stomach grumbled as she came around her bronze-trimmed L-shaped glass desk to give her mother a quick hug and kiss on her high cheekbone as she took the posh picnic basket from her. “What did you make?” she said, setting it on the round glass dinette set with a frosted bronze-trimmed base and charcoal parson chairs.
“Abenkwan and fufu,” LuLu said as she set her oxblood tote on the sofa and removed her fur to join it. Her mother lived in Manhattan but rarely ventured to the ADG offices. She’d made her seafood stew of tilapia, shrimp, crab meat, eggplants and okra cooked down in tomatoes and palm oil with lots of spices.
Samira stiffened before she moved to the adjoining bath in the corner of the office and washed her hands. She looked at her reflection in the round mirror over the pedestal sink. In her eyes, she could see her wariness.
This impromptu pop-up was about more than food.
Samira gave herself a look before turning and leaving the bathroom. Her mother had already removed the large plastic containers and dinnerware from the basket to set the table. “Your homemade ginger drink, too?” she asked, eyeing the glass bottle of the nonalcoholic drink made with ginger root, lime and peppercorn. Also her favorite.
Oh, this is serious.
She sat down at the table and crossed her legs as her mother served up the food. Fearing she would not enjoy the conversation, she refrained from rushing it so that she could at least get a good bite of fufu dragged in her stew first. She maintained her silence even after they had said grace over the food.
“How’s everything with Lance?” LuLu asked, casting her a brief side glance before she reached with her right hand to break off a piece of the round dough. She shaped it into a ball and pressed an indent in the middle with her thumb before using it to scoop up some of her stew in the bowl.
Déjà vu.
Lance. Same topic. Different day.
“A one-sided relationship is not a happy place, Samira,” LuLu said.
Samira chewed her food and wiped her fingertips on the linen napkin, but her mind was on Lance and the truth of her mother’s words. It had been just six months since they began their...
What?
Dalliance? Affair? Friendship? Relationship?
No such boundaries had been set. The only thing Samira knew for sure was she enjoyed his company, rejoiced in their sex and longed to know more about the secrets that kept him walled off from everyone—even her. At times, she felt like he was feeding a hunger in her with crumbs of his time and attention and not a full meal created by openness and devotion.
At her mother’s silence after that, Samira looked to her. The faraway stare in her eyes both surprised and confused her.
“Trust me on this,” LuLu added with a touch of sadness.
When she glanced over and found Samira’s steady gaze on her, she smiled and reached for her daughter’s hand. “Be clear on what you want, and if you’re not getting it, demand it,” she stressed. “I just want to make sure you have the tenacity and fight for yourself—your heart—that you have in business. You wanted this office and this position and you got it. Keep that same energy in life and in love, ma poupée de chocolat.”
Samira gave her a smile she hoped was reassuring as she raised her mother’s hand to her mouth to press a kiss to the back of it.
“Compromise is important in any relationship—be it a mother with a child or a spouse with a spouse,” LuLu said. “But I see you changing so much of who you are to be with him, and that worries me.”
She was right. Samira the social butterfly had vanished over the months. She couldn’t remember the last time she had lunch with friends or went dancing. She even chose to be with Lance over family, tucked away inside his seclusion from the world. Lost in him.
And I still do not know why.
She thought of his scar and the occasions he awakened from sleep startled and panicked. He would sit on the side of the bed and she would wrap her arms around him from behind and press kisses to his shoulder blades until the pounding of his heart eased under the hand she pressed to his chest. She would ease him through it, but he never revealed the cause. Never let her in.
LuLu smiled. “I know my children as well as I know myself,” she said. “I know you all better than I know myself. I want more for you. Be a little selfish. More than I have the courage to be.”
She extended her mother’s fingers inside her palm and looked down at her ring finger, smiling when she spotted the tiny mole by her cuticle. Her smile faded at the unshed tears glistening in her mother’s large eyes. “Maman, qu’est-ce qui ne va pas?” she asked, gripping her hand with her own.
LuLu blinked away the tears. “I’m okay. I just want you to have love, Samira. All the love the universe owes you, ma poupée de chocolat,” she whispered.
Samira nodded, stroking the back of her mother’s hand as she gazed out the window and released a heavy breath filled with thoughts she’d had way before her mother had given voice to them.
“Is this your owner’s suite?”
Samira and Lance lay on their sides in the middle of the bed with the sweat-soaked sheets barely covering their naked bodies as they spooned with their arms extended and their fingers entwined. Her question was unexpected.
Lance was pressing a kiss to her nape, but he stiffened at her question.
Since they began their relationship, they’d spent a good bit of it on his estate...in the same bedroom.
“No,” he admitted.
It was her turn to become rigid.
Lance closed his eyes. He wasn’t surprised when the warmth of her body moved away from him on the bed. He rolled over onto his back, folding his arms behind his head as he opened his eyes to watch her rise. The summer moon was bright and cast a glow over her brown body. Her curves were outlined like a silhouette. Her hair swayed gently against her lower back as she moved.
She was magnificent.
“Is this where you sleep when I’m not here?” Samira asked, turning to face him.
Lance reached out to touch the lamp and softly illuminate the room. “No,” he admitted, unable to lie to her.
Their eyes met and locked.
“Your life. Your secrets. Your past. Now your bedroom,” she said, giving him a soft, sad smile that matched her eyes. “What else are you keeping me out of?”
Pain radiated across his chest and clenched his gut. “Samira, there is a difference between secrecy and privacy. I have no secrets,” he assured her.
She looked pensive as she glanced away from him and then back again. “Then let’s go to bed in your room, Lance,” she said, walking about the sizable room to pick up her discarded clothing.
He shook his head and sat up in the middle of the bed. “No,” he said firmly.
She turned with her clothes gathered to her chest in her arms. “I’m here a lot. More than I’m home,” she said. “But it’s front or back door straight to your kitchen. Front or back door straight to your office. And of course—of course—front or back door straight to this room that I thought was your room, but it isn’t. You have me well trained, sir. Good job. Where’s my Scooby snack?”
Her chuckle was short and bitter.
“Samira, please don’t,” Lance stressed.
“Don’t what? Ask questions? Wonder? Feel foolish? Feel slighted or disrespected?” she asked. “Don’t what, Lance?”
He rose from the bed, snatching up the sheet to wrap around his waist.
Samira pointed toward his groin. “You’re keeping that from me now, too,” she snarked. “Oh no, of course not. Then we would have nothing. Right?”
“That’s not true and you know it,” Lance said, his voice hard.
“Do I? How? Am I psychic?” Samira asked. “Or maybe when you screw me and plug your dick into my body I’m suddenly connected to your thoughts. Um, sorry, it doesn’t work that way.”
“You’re being crude.”
“And you’re rude. Sue me.”
They fell silent, turning away from each other. Only the sounds of their breaths filled the air.
“How did you get the scar?” she asked.
“I don’t like talking about it,” he admitted.
“Or the bad dreams? Your seclusion? Your darkness? None of it, right?”
“Right,” he agreed.
Samira nodded with her lips turned downward. “If you want me to stay here tonight, I will only do it in your room,” she said, looking away from him and down at the floor.
Lance eyed her.
She looked up, and whatever resistance she saw in him made her shake her head. She set her clothes on the edge of the bed and began getting dressed. “I, uh, have to go to Milan for business. I leave in the morning,” she said, avoiding looking at him.
He had to ball up his hands to keep from stopping her.
Tell her. Talk to her. Trust her.
But he couldn’t. The last thing he wanted from her was pity, and the last thing he wanted for himself was one more person privy to his pain and trying to convince him to move beyond it.
“I need a break anyway,” she said, stepping into her shoes. “I need to figure out if this ‘situationship’ is best for me.”
He hung his head, thinking perhaps a little time apart was what they needed. She walked to the door and opened it.
“When will you be back?” he asked, unable to help himself even as he felt relief.
“Back home? Soon,” she said, never turning around. “Back to you? I don’t know. Maybe never.”
He felt gut punched.
She left without another word.
Samira stepped out of her heels as soon as she entered ADG’s elegant two-story penthouse apartment in the heart of Milan, the financial capital of Italy. She poured herself a glass of Château d’Esclans Garrus rosé wine and carried it up the wrought iron stairs to the roof garden. At the doorway, she paused to take in the panoramic views of the historic Piazza del Duomo, the main square of the city. The sight of the gothic cathedral against the blue skies and white clouds was stunning, made even more so as the sun set and deepened the blues, painting the clouds with shades of orange, lavender and red that radiated against the 356-foot bronzed statue of the Virgin Mary atop the building.
She crossed the rooftop and took a seat on one of the patio lounges, happy that the leaf-covered walls on the sides offered privacy from neighboring buildings but the views of the city were unobscured. After a long day at the Milan ADG offices, and dreading another night missing Lance as she lay in bed, this time was important to her peace of mind.
It had been two weeks since she requested last-minute permission from Alek and Alessandra to work out of the Milan office. She’d pulled the family card and they’d obliged her, but her work ethic had not diminished. In fact, she worked harder, utilizing modern technology to properly manage her division and attend meetings. She knew it couldn’t last and she had to get back to New York, but for now, the distance between her and Lance was needed.
The man took her breath away.
And I needed to breathe.
Emotions rose and brought tears with them. She closed her eyes as they raced down her cheeks. Foolishly she had gotten too deep with Lance when he didn’t show the signs of getting as deep with her. She wasn’t upset about entry to his master bedroom. The bedroom was just a symptom of a bigger problem in their relationship. His loyalty and his heart rested with another woman.
And that hurt.
“A one-sided relationship is not a happy place, Samira.”
“No, it’s not,” she whispered, using the side of her hands to wipe her tears.
Still, she missed him. His rare smiles. His bashfulness about his scar. The deep timbre of his voice when he spoke her name. The time they spent in each other’s company just reading or relaxing, not speaking any words. The feel of his snores vibrating against her breasts as she held him from behind as they slept. The passion of his loving. The look on his face when she made him climax.
“Damn,” she swore in a whisper, feeling a tingle at the thought of that.
Her cell phone rang. She took another sip of her wine before sitting it on the table beside her lounge and picking up her phone. A FaceTime call. She made sure her face was tear-free and plastered a smile on before answering.
“Auntie Mira!” her niece, Aliyah, exclaimed as soon as her little face filled the screen.
“Hello, ma poupée de chocolat,” she said, using her mother’s pet name for her on her niece.
“Kwesi, say hi to Auntie,” Aliyah said, placing the phone in front of him.
He reached for it and patted the screen as he smiled and laughed.
“Hello, Chocky-Wocky!” she exclaimed as his nanny held him face forward in her arms.
Aliyah joined him on the screen. “We miss you,” she said, her Afro puff covering part of his face.
Kwesi squealed and reached for it with both chubby hands.
“Arrête!” Aliyah snapped for him to stop in French.
The phone dropped as the nanny worked to free Kwesi’s grip on Aliyah’s hair. It was total mayhem and Samira knew she was homesick because even the chaos was familiar and she missed them still. Her heart swelled for the little chocolate cherubs she loved as if they were her own.
“Kwesi!” she said sharply into the phone, knowing he could hear her even if their phone was pointed to the ceiling as it lay on the carpeted floor.
Moments later Aliyah picked up the phone and her face reappeared on the screen with her one of her puffs a little deflated and her brows furrowed in annoyance. “Kwesi is bad!” she proclaimed, obviously perturbed.
Samira bit back a smile as she rose from her seat and moved to lean against the railing. People milled about the plaza, competing with the pigeons for space. The wind whipped her hair across her face. She tucked the strands behind her ears, and her line of vision fell on a bright blue taxi turning the corner and pulling to a stop a little way down from her apartment building.
“When are you coming home, Auntie?” Aliyah asked.
“Soon,” she said, about to turn from the railing.
She paused when the door to the taxi opened and a tall, broad-shouldered figure exited the rear of the vehicle. She smiled a bit thinking he reminded her of Lance.
Especially with that hat on...
Samira did a double take. Her heart pounded wildly. She leaned a little more over the railing as she looked down at the man accepting the suitcase his driver pulled from the trunk. Suddenly he looked up. She gasped and accidentally released her phone as she looked down into the face of the person who’d been her distraction for the last six months of her life. “Lance,” she whispered, her surprise making her light-headed.
“Bye-Bye, Auntie!”
Samira looked down in horror as her iPhone free-fell and her niece’s face on the screen was too far away to see her any longer.
“Shit!” she swore, thankful the street was empty as it crashed to the ground and shattered.
Samira turned and crossed the roof to reenter the penthouse. Her feet lightly slapped against the stairs as she came down them and moved across the stylish foyer to the front door. She refused to let the many questions she had about Lance’s sudden arrival in Milan overtake her. She didn’t want to make presumptions. He would have to fill in the details of who, what, when, where, why and how.
As her personal elevator connected to the penthouse opened, she looked across the ornate lobby and through the glass revolving doors just as Lance entered the building. She was a collection of raw nerve endings as she watched him striding toward her. He looked handsome in his linen shorts and matching V-neck tee with a cotton bucket hat. Her eyes missed nothing. Not one detail. It all was so familiar. And missed.
He came to stop before her and handed her the phone.
She reached for it. “Thank you,” she said.
He caught her hand in his.
She shivered from his touch as she looked up to him, imploring him for the answers to all her questions.
“You are everything I didn’t know I needed until you were gone,” he said, his thumb lightly stroking her pulse and probably feeling it race.
“Lance,” she whispered, shaking her head as if to deny him when all she wanted was to leap into his arms and kiss the night away.
“Samira.”
She looked up at him, and the warmth in his eyes was there, weakening her knees and her resolve before he even said the words. She gulped in air as the all-too-familiar breathlessness returned.
“I love you,” he said, his voice deep and seeming to vibrate with the emotion.
“I just want you to have love, Samira. All the love the universe owes you.”
She tilted her head to the side and reached up with her free hand to stroke his cheek. “You are everything I didn’t know I needed until I left,” she whispered up to him, stroking his bottom lip with her thumb. “But—”
He shook his head as he turned it to press a warm kiss to her palm.
“Do you love me?” Lance asked, his vulnerability exposed and raw.
She nodded and smiled up at him. “With every bit of my heart,” she admitted with no shame.
Her soul glowed at the relief filling his eyes, and she knew that his admission of love had been a huge breakthrough for him.
“Then it’s time,” he said.
“Time? For what?” she asked.
“To tell you everything.”
Her eyes widened.
Finally.
“Okay,” she said softly.
Lance smiled as he looked down at her feet. “You’re barefoot,” he said.
She looked down at them as well, feeling happy and nervous in his presence, as she wiggled her crimson-painted toes atop the handmade Italian porcelain tile floor. She squealed as he slipped one arm around her waist and picked her body up against him until her feet floated above the floor. She wrapped her arms around his neck, enjoying the scent of his cologne and the feel of his hard body pressing against hers. Their faces were aligned and they inhaled each other’s breaths as they stared at one another.
With no words spoken—or needed—Samira pressed a hand to his cheek as she leaned in to taste his mouth. Slowly. She savored him with grunts of pleasure as he kissed her in return with a hunger that made her heated.
“Voi due siete bellissimi insieme!”
Samira smiled against his lips before she looked over at the suit-clad middle-aged concierge looking over at them with warm eyes from his desk across the lobby. “Grazie, Agostino,” she thanked him.
“What did he say?” Lance asked, pressing kisses to her jaw.
“He said we are beautiful together,” she translated.
He looked to Agostino as well. “Grazie,” he repeated.
“You ready?” she asked when his eyes rested on her again.
“Are you?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” she stressed. “I want to know and to love all of you, Lance.”
He nodded and looked beyond her toward the elevators. “Six?” he asked.
“One for every floor, but the last one on the right is for the penthouse so it’s all mine.”
“Of course,” he said with a chuckle.
She snuggled her face against his neck and enjoyed his smell—his closeness—as he carried her with one arm and used his free hand to pull his suitcase behind him. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she whispered near his ear when they stepped onto the lift.
“I should have been here sooner. I missed you, and this is a conversation long overdue,” he admitted.
“I’m anxious to hear whatever you have to share with me.”
“I hope you still feel that way after we talk.”
She raised up to look at him. “I hope so, too,” she said, unable to be anything but honest with him.
“I’m not a serial killer,” Lance drawled.
Samira arched a brow. “My instincts would have told me to stay clear of the angry man by the lake who was stacking dead bodies in his basement,” she drawled. “My gut never lies.”
The elevator doors opened. He stepped off and crossed over to the wide double doors of the apartment.
“And your gut hasn’t told you anything about me that you felt I wasn’t telling you?” he asked.
“Definitely,” Samira said, tapping his shoulders for him to release her.
He set her down on her feet. “Like?” he asked.
“Most times I felt you were grieving a loved one and thought you were cheating on them,” she said matter-of-factly, grabbing his hand and turning to lead him over to the living room.
She frowned a bit when he didn’t budge from his spot by the front door.
“I do.”
Samira turned back to him, gripping his hand tighter when she saw the grief in his eyes. “Lance,” she whispered, stepping close to him to stroke his face with her free hand.
He closed his eyes and leaned his face against her touch.
“Oh, Lance,” she sighed. “That was so cruel of me. I’m sorry it came out so flip. I’m so sorry,” she whispered up to him, with waves of hurt and self-reprimand flooding her.
He reached for her and pulled her body against his as he lightly settled his chin atop her head. “Belle was my childhood love,” he began, his hand on the small of her back. “We were friends who fell in love. We married after my first book was published, and we were happy.”
Married?
She refrained from the many questions that flooded her at the news of his marriage. Her instincts that she trusted so very much told her to let him speak. Let his words flow freely. The truth would be revealed in due time.
She closed her eyes against his chest, feeling the rigidness of his stance and wanting to lead him to the sofa but knowing the way they stood shielded the emotions he may reveal on his face from her. She accepted that, understanding the ways of a man.
“When we had our daughter, our Emma Belle, she was the highlight of our lives.”
Daughter? Was?
Samira cringed, feeling dread fill her from her toes to the top of her head. She bit her lip to keep from asking any questions, wanting his story to flow from him freely without interruption. She did caress the back of his hand with her palm.
“Three years ago, we were all in the car coming from dinner,” he said, his hold around her body tightening a bit as if bracing them both for the rest. “Our car was hit by a drunk driver.”
The torture in his voice sent a ray of true pain across her chest.
“I was the only survivor, Samira,” he said, the words broken by his emotion. “I lost my family, and I felt like I didn’t deserve to live.”
She freed his hand to wrap both arms around his chest and held him tightly as his body shook with his pain and his grief. She understood so much, and although she was happy he’d finally shared this huge piece of his life with her, she had regrets for making him relive the pain of it all. The same way the scar was a constant reminder of the tragedy for him.
There was so much to process, but at that moment her only desire was to hold him and try to love on him through his grief.