Chapter One
Present Day in Arrow, Colorado
~Foreign~
The people creating noise in the busy dining room behind me drew my attention as I tucked menus on the top shelf of the podium. It was where I worked as hostess at Tommy’s Cuisine. Nevaeh Lomax was celebrating graduating from Arrow College as a mixologist with a bachelor’s degree in business. I should be beside her, reveling in the occasion.
She had come a long way from being stalked and found guilty of arson after framing her abusive ex, Jason, for the crime. He was released a month into his incarceration, and he still refused to back off. In a last-ditch effort, she dropkicked his ass out of a second story window, leaving him completely paralyzed and residing in an assistant-living home for the rest of his life. I was proud to call her best friend, another woman who knew how to take care of herself.
Orion Townsend, whose building it was she torched to entrap Jason in a prison sentence, leaned over to kiss her temple. I smiled, more than happy for them, a couple which had been through hell itself and came out on the other side not untouched but stronger for their struggles together.
Yeah, I was a teensy bit envious too… when I cared to examine my feelings—I hated feeling anything.
Nevaeh had it all, deserved the glamorous life awaiting her and the gorgeous man who loved her flaws, as much as he did her strengths. They made her, well, her, and the same love he exuded also wafted from our mutual friends and her grandmother seated nearby.
Even if Nevaeh didn’t have a bright future in easy-grabbing distance, she would be taken care of whether or not she continued to run the bar at Tommy’s Cuisine as its manager, putting her degrees to work so she could rightfully demand more money. Speaking of money…that was the reason why I stood at the hostess’ podium and not with everyone else as they toasted to Nevaeh’s success.
On scheduled days, I worked as Tommy’s sous-chef. If I wanted what Nevaeh had, success-wise only, I had to stand right where the hell I was. I needed to be willing to help the customers with the needs, when they walked through the double doors, just waiting to be seated. This was all to earn the overtime that would pay for my next semester of culinary school, once I combined it with my meager savings that ran out every time a new semester started. We all didn’t have millionaires as backup, and that was just fine by me. Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. Burned that bitch almost three years ago.
Tucking the menus away, I straightened up, noticing a stretched Hummer stopping at the end of the canopied walkway on the other side of the glass entrance I loitered at. An extremely tall man exited the vehicle, his head adorned in a black fedora. His upper body was as wide as the car door once he shut it. I liked big men. Something about little me taking their asses down did it for me. This one reminded me of someone I shouldn’t, no, wouldn’t be thinking about right now.
Through the opening of his leather trench coat, the top of a black suit and white collar with a streak of black that disappeared into his jacket, peered out while he stood beside the car. Too far away for me to tell who he was with the top part of his face veiled by the rim of his hat, hands buried in his coat’s pockets. His head swiveled from side to side slowly, like he was checking out the venue’s exterior. He could have easily done that as he rode up. What is he thinking about? I wondered. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t be let down by the establishment’s décor inside or out, nor the food. Tommy’s was a classy joint that catered to everyone’s appetite for a fair price.
Dropping an elbow on the top of the podium, chin in my palm, I waited patiently for him to reach the entry point of the on the bottom. He was in no hurry as he walked gracefully down the walkway like he was born with a predator’s stealth and grace despite his size, moving like he had all the time in the world. So did I, who got paid by the hour. The slower the customers were to reach me, the longer my boss needed me to man the doors as hostess for today.
Appreciating man-meat as much as the next twenty-eight-year-old heterosexual woman, I indulged in ogling his physique because hell, let’s face it, I had nothing better to do. Even from several yards away, his charisma outran him, penetrated the thick glass of the doors, and drifted around me. Drawing me in. Suddenly, I wasn’t being just nosy anymore as my attraction grew to the way he carried himself, but I had seen swagger before. Wasn’t impressed by it, not much anyway.
His self-confidence was evident just from the way he strode towards me. Holding himself straight as an arrow reminded me of someone I couldn’t forget, even though I tried. Christian Bradley, who I met under the wrong circumstances: at my childhood home after my father’s funeral six months ago. My mother introducing me to the man who could have easily been the stuff that dreams were made of created the ‘wrong circumstances’; he couldn’t be trustworthy if he dealt with her in any way. That didn’t seem to matter to my hormones at the time, nor now, as I shivered just recalling meeting him. Stupid hormones.
Even months later, sleeping butterflies woke up in my stomach whenever I thought about him. I freely admit only in my mind that I’d have given him the first chance to be my first boyfriend if I hadn’t already been disillusioned about men a long time ago because of my parents, Ma-ling Torres-Daniels and Terrence Daniels.
Because my mother was Filipino royalty with ancient views, the snobs that nearly wetted themselves after meeting a real live princess referred to us as the Torres’ until it stuck. My father, a big, burly, dark-skinned, African-American didn’t give a shit whose last name they called us by. He had his own riches that could support a kingdom, knew who took whose last name on paper, who gave my mother orgasms and children, and who provided for them all. So as far as he was concerned, he was her equal. Equal or not, there was a vicious cycle in my family, and my first encounter with Christian perpetuated it, killing any chances for him and me to be anything but what we were; ships passing in the night.
I sighed loudly and shook my head. “If only he didn’t run with Ma-ling’s crew or was willing to barter with her for me.” But he did, and he was.
Why else would he hang with them?
My parents didn’t invite anyone into their home that they didn’t think was good enough to marry. Although, I had never seen Christian in their home, at least not before I left it, he fit their qualifications for marriage to a tee… and I only knew that because he told me them himself. Oh well, he still fraternized with the Torres and their cronies. Little better than snobbish gangsters if you asked me, only they horded power and favors collected around conference and dining room tables.
It was saddening to find out that a man such as Christian, self-made, striking in appearance, successful, well-mannered, well-endowed and knew how to use what his daddy gave him, was no different than anyone else that my parents tried to foist me off on. If I hadn’t outright refused to marry anyone I hadn’t chosen for myself, I’d probably already be a wife, mother of at least one middle-schooler, and an alcoholic. Something would have to get me through the days of being attached to a man I didn’t love.
. He couldn’t possess any of them if he, with all his good looks and money, needed to bargain for a wife. If he was desperate, there had to be no hope for the rest of us in the world. People who had a lot less than him were finding love without some form of assistance in every country and on every planet. The proof was behind me in Nevaeh, a beautiful, silver-eyed, and broke ex-college student cuddling against her guy who was just as sinfully-good looking and rich as Christian. Therefore, he had no excuse to imbibe in the ancient practice of arranged marriages.
I sure as hell wasn’t doing it for anybody, even if it took my mother twelve years to find a man I might have dated with her encouragement, but never at her command. It was straight freaky to like Christian at first sight. By the time I knew of his existence, I didn’t like any man enough to attach myself to him, even those confident like the gentleman making his way toward me. He was definitely financially stable if he had a chauffeur. That suit was not off a department store’s rack, so he was probably just as conceited and stuck-up as most wealthy people tended to be. Christian wasn’t conceited however, which was mostly due to the fact that he wasn’t born with a silver spoon up his… ahem, in his mouth.
Mine tilted up in the corners every time reminiscences crossed my mind of me teaching him a valuable lesson for thinking he’d received me from Ma-ling like I was a wrapped gift on Christmas Day. He was the only man I thought worthy of being schooled about treating women like lumps of flesh to be molded in a Stepford wife’s image, the only man in my parents’ circle that may have been worthy enough of love and having a family one day. And my God, what a lesson it was.
My womanhood heated up and throbbed just from recalling how I took him to task for humoring Ma-ling’s archaic way of thinking while running my tongue along his tattoo sleeve. Bold, black lines slashed across his flesh, curving and dipping into sharp points over his right shoulder, down to his right forearm. It was no hardship to remember how his long, thick shaft dragged through my body, assaulting every erogenous zone I had, all of them at one time no less.
My body was his for the taking for one very long night that should’ve ended for me at a few hours. The extra time only added depth to my main reason for being there; nothing hurt more than to be given a prize only to have it snatched away. The longer it was in your possession, the more it hurt you to lose. The prize, as in me, ditched Christian then the whole state of California the morning after. If gaining then losing a whole living, breathing person didn’t teach him to appreciate women a little more and realize we had just as many rights as a man had, nothing would.
As the guy outside got closer, blond hair cropped above his ears glimpsed from beneath the sides of his hat. Damn, Christian had blond hair too. The nearer the stranger came, the more charisma and sex appeal billowed off him like smoke, choking me in a good way, just as Christian’s magnetism had done. Good thing I had ‘catch and release’ or rather ‘be caught then jump ship’ down to a fine art, or I’d still be in that man’s bed. Permanent freaking houseguest.
The trench coat wafted out behind the approaching customer as the icy December breeze played with his coat’s tails. When he covered half the distance between us, I bent down to retrieve a menu, knew the exact moment he pulled the door open. The same breeze frolicking with his clothes left a trail of goosebumps up my bare arms on its way past to give the same chilly greeting to the patrons at the two long tables pushed close together for Nevaeh’s party.
.
“Welcome to…” I started, then damn near swallowed my tongue; stupefying amazement and a microscopic amount of dread had shut down my vocal cords and lungs simultaneously as recognition set in.
A blast from my parents’ past—anyone they associated with wasn’t even a blip on my radar—had entered my space. My city. My workplace, with a one-sided smile belonging to none other than Christian. I felt violated, wanted to take off running for the nearest exit. There was no reason for him to be here… unless Ma-ling found out about our night together somehow and sent him, hoping we’d rekindle what he and I never had: a real connection. Or she wanted to initiate one, another reason to abscond like a criminal, but my fight-or-flight response was broken. It was stuck solely on fight.
Fight for everything, like how to live. Where. With whom. And for my status as single. I fought especially hard to stay out of relationships. The idea of it completely turned me off after battling with my relatives for years to live my life as I saw fit. That was also how I got cast out of my childhood home, my family, and life in Los Angeles as I knew it three years ago: a lavish existence fraught with domineering parents that were trying to marry me off to the highest bidder every chance they got.
Hell would have frozen over first before I became one of their business deals. I sure as hell wasn’t going to be one now, which is more than likely the motive for Christian being in Colorado instead of California. But I don’t like to assume.