Chapter Seven
One week later
~Foreign~
It was my current belief that this day had gone to hell before my alarm clock had gone off. Turning on my shower should’ve started with the usual ice-cold stream, no matter which faucet was running in the winter time. However, the lever that regulated the hot water was still supposed to produce it at some point, right? Well, it didn’t, the water pressure was down to a trickle.
Since I’d had a harder day than usual the day beforemostly mentally—followed by falling asleep at my dining room table in yesterday’s work clothes, I needed a bath. Therefore, someone needed to get their ass to my apartment and fix the problem. The wait was going to cost me time, which was money. Nothing scheduled today could or should be put off, like paying for school and going to work. If you knew my boss, being late came with verbal penalties that would singe your eardrums, but privacy was my obsession. Probably because you’re so good at invading others’.
And it was too easy to do, thus no way in hell I was leaving anyone alone in my space.
Hoping to get the cursing out from my boss over with, I called and let him know about the new developments, then stood around useless while the property’s only maintenance man tried to diagnose the plumbing issue himself. Praying that he’d be done in the next minute and the hot water tank was just being lazy, didn’t work. Minutes turned into two and a half hours. It took the gray-haired senior citizen, with his work pants grossly exhibiting the top of his rump, that long to decide to just cut a two by two hole in the wall behind my tub that hid the pipes, getting to the source of the problem.
We discovered a pipe had burst and the hot water was going into a half-frozen lake on the ground behind the wall. If that wasn’t bad enough, the hot water tank wasn’t being lazy. It wasn’t working at all. Finally, he called a plumber who braved stepping onto the ice to quickly fix the pipe, then replace the tank that had its own cubby hole in the itty-bitty laundry room at the far side of my kitchen. After I cleaned up the chunks of drywall getting more use out of the tub than me, the wait for the maintenance man to repair the wall in the bathroom began. After all that, a shower was still a nonfactor. Turned out wet putty and fresh paint couldn’t get even more wet before any of it dried.
By then, four hours had passed. Under the gun, settling for a bird bath at my bathroom sink was my only choice. Being quick about it made it possible to get to my first pitstop minutes before afternoon arrived. With check in hand for the classes already selected online, I tore into the college as if there was a sniper gunning down anyone that stood in his way. Despite the rush to get inside, I still had to stand at the end of a very long line at the registrar desk. I was thirty students away from the second, but not the last, momentous events that would occur for the day.
Being told my classes were already paid for got me an audience with a financial counselor. Someone had given me a grant that I hadn’t applied for nor had to pay back. It covered all my school fees and gave me a monthly stipend as long as I was enrolled at Arrow College. Should I transfer schools, the money would follow me. After saddling me with that tidbit of info, the grinning, wire-rimmed spectacle wearing counselor in pale skin, a dark bun on top of her head, and an ill-fitting pink skirt suit commenced to listing the reasons the school was one of the best in my field.
Respectfully steering her toward the origin of the money brought me one step closer to figuring out where it came from, Cliffstone Scholarships, and that was where the trail ended. She couldn’t give out the address or a single person’s name to go with the thousands of dollars contributed to my expenses from someone who obviously was generous but wanted to remain anonymous. Where I came from, people gloated about their donations.
I drove to work baffled. Nearly plowing into the back of another car but not because my mind wasn’t just on the road, my instincts were clamoring to return the money to wherever it came from. Screw owing anybody or a company that could demand repayment at any time. I already had Christian’s mandates coming out of the clear blue to deal with, him always at the back of my mind where I had grown used to him being right after I met the fucker.
Before him, I didn’t obsess over men consciously or unconsciously. Before he showed up here, I didn’t think I was obsessing over him. Yeah, well, I was having to rethink that. Worse, the college had accepted the money on my behalf, wasn’t giving it back to the donor no matter how much I demanded, and the counselor wouldn’t accept my paltry check for a few classes in the scholarship’s place.
“No point,” she said. “Your money would just be returned to you because your scholarship got here first, and it’s already been applied to your account.” No wonder she wasn’t giving it up, the school had already taken its cut.
Outright refusing, loudly, to attend classes on the scholarship didn’t help.
“You’ll still be registered in school, marked absent, and receive a bunch of zeroes for work not completed, Miss Torres.” Screw that too. Success not failure, remember?
So, I was stuck with being financially stable for a change. Didn’t mean I had to like it or wouldn’t be tracking down the foundation’s owner when the first opportunity arose, starting with questioning Nevaeh and Mahogany. They had also attended the college. Mahogany was still enrolled. Neither had heard of Cliffstone Scholarships, but they wished they had. That was reasonable for them who never had to depend solely on someone else’s money as adults. They both quickly informed me that they had wished they had someone else’s money too while in school but understood my side of things. I wanted to do things on my own because that can’t be taken away from me when I pissed someone off. Anything I did for myself didn’t come with conditions and strings that could be used to jerk me around. Been there. Done that too. Obviously, I still had the fucking T-shirt though.
My boss found the huge donation to my education just as strange, Cliffstone Scholarships just as new to him, so he gave me a longer break time to dig into the charity from his office. Scouring the internet only produced a single webpage topped by a scenic picture of cliffs for the charity. Beneath the cliffs was a mission statement, ways to donate online to the foundation, and the name of the first student to benefit. You can guess who that was. At least they didn’t have my picture up. Especially not of your thighs.
Nobody asked you.
The webpage didn’t have anything I needed to further my investigation, like a brick and mortar location or an IP address that led back to at least one piece of useful information on the founder. Instead, the IP address was stemming from several countries as if several computers used the same one. That wasn’t possible, each device had its own, or was supposed to, and things got worse. The foundation’s domain on the internet was newly opened in the scholarship’s name with the minimal amount of info; a one-eight-hundred number out of Utah no one answered and a fake physical address on a road that stretched through the middle of the same picturesque, government-owned cliffs on the website.
Hacking, googling, and earnest researching the company took me right back where I started, nowhere. Someone had covered their tracks well. I flopped back in my boss’ chair, disgusted with myself for being stumped at every turn, and thinking about changing my major to computer sciences. Obviously, I still had a lot to learn.
Tommy stepped through the opened door of the office in his chef’s coat and olive-green slacks. “Find anything?”
I shook my head. “Nope. I bypassed the firewall on the foundation’s website and email server, tracked the IP address, and still found nothing useful. Why all the damn secrecy?”
He jerked back as if I had stupidly swung at him. “I got another damn computer expert in here? Remind me not to leave you and Mahogany alone in my office together. One woman is bad enough with your snooping asses. Both of you together, there’s no telling what you’ll find out about me.” Someone else had secrets, huh?
Of course, he did. Who didn’t? I smirked at that.
He crossed his arms, resting one lean hip against the doorframe. “Look, Foreign,” he started. “Someone wanted you to have that money anonymously. Nothing you can do about it.”
“But why?” Why suddenly does someone want to gift me anything, then hide their hand if a gift was all it was? Strange how said gift didn’t show up until Christian did.
But he was blackmailing me for something, not to give me something.
Says who?
But that didn’t make sense.
Tommy’s chin jutted out, signaling his annoyance with the subject. “Because they wanted you to have it. Didn’t I just say that, along with there’s nothing you can do about it? As far as I know, it was right on damn time. Once people start getting loans, they never damn stop, and you should bring your late ass downstairs to work. Mahogany needs help waitressing. It’s slower than usual today, so I don’t need either of you in the kitchen, but we have a few guests that braved the freezing temperature to eat here like idiots. What am I talking about? I should be thanking God for idiots.”
Standing up, I shut down the internet, then followed him through the cream-painted long hallway to the stairwell that opened into the dining room. Half a year ago, there would’ve been a time when I’d have taken the opening to ogle his firm ass and concoct fantasies around it without him being the wiser just because I could. Tommy was almost the perfect example of what I liked in a man. He was slim but muscled. Yes lord, muscles. Also taller than me—who wasn’t—he had a sense of humor, was eleven years older, so he knew where he was going in life. Hopefully, in the bedroom too. More importantly, he hadn’t wanted to be tied down with a relationship. Well, not before Kat showed up.
Even if he had hinted at having a no-strings affair with me, it didn’t seem like a good idea to shit where I eat or work. There was no harm in looking at the menu though, and he had already been rendered no more than a friend who I stopped picturing without clothes on around the same time I divested Christian of his. Yes, I noticed the connection between the times I lumped Tommy in the forever friend zone and Christian entered my world. Don’t get your hopes up. Nothing was going to come of Christian and I. Sixty dates. That was it between us. If he let this month already halfway gone run out before getting the first date under his belt, then that was on him and would be good for me. If you think that, why wonder all the time when he’s going to call then?
Because I can, it was my mind… and I was busted.
So, I didn’t stop thoughts of a curiously-absent Christian from pushing forward in my downtime. So what? Anyone would find it odd that he had barreled into my life, waved around my scandalous love life on hard copy, then slipped away without a word for a week. So yeah, I often wondered why we weren’t dating after all the trouble he had gone through. Wondered often? More like every other minute.
Shush.
Downstairs, Tommy veered right, moving toward the door into the kitchen. I waved at Nevaeh behind the black, glossy bar as Mahogany swerved around it, then through the tables off to the side, halting beside one occupied by a lone woman. I found it odd that both women were beautiful in identical ways. The one sitting was a little older, and like twenty-three-year-old Mahogany, she was slender and a little world-weary if her black eyes rimmed in black eyeliner and silver eyeshadow were any indication to go by. Mahogany’s identical set of midnight orbs appeared weary because she was abandoned at a fire station in Spindle, right after she was born, then given to two pitiful excuses for foster parents, and her two-year-old daughter just went through a vicious bout with leukemia that they both nearly perished from. That leaves the older woman’s story untold… and why the hell did she look so much like my friend?
Mahogany’s coke-bottle hips shifted to one side as she whipped out a pad and pencil. A few long tendrils of hair had slipped from beneath her net to waft around her mocha-tinted skin. The woman, with her head slanted up, gave her order in a tone too low to hear.
I, an unashamed people-watcher, sidled up to the bar to stand in front of Nevaeh preparing a drink and motioning with my head towards Mahogany. “Do you know who that woman is, Nevaeh?”
She, with startling gray-eyes that stood out like bright beacons against her dark skin, towered at six feet and looked down at me. “Nope, but she looks a lot like Mahogany, doesn’t she?”
“You noticed that too, huh?” The second I responded, Mahogany whipped around on her heels and dashed away to the door I just exited beside the cashier stand across the dining room as if she had been threatened. Or seen a ghost.
Mahogany didn’t get shook that easily, and nobody threatened my damn friends. If she wanted, hoisting the damn woman out of here would be no problem. I had to ask her if that was what she wanted first, so I called out to her just before she disappeared into the stairwell leading to the second floor where Tommy’s office and another exit out of the building were. When she didn’t even look back, I followed her, pitching a glare over my shoulder at the customer before shoving open the door, finding Mahogany sitting at the bottom of the steps. Her eyes were so wide it was safe to assume they’d fall out of her head at any moment. Maybe in the beginning stages of a rapidly developing case of shock too while staring through me, or rather through my waist as I hovered.
“What did she say to you, Mahogany? Do I fuck her up now or later?”
“She said…” She paused to swallow deeply before making eye contact. “She said she’s my mother, Foreign.”
Oh. Shit. I wasn’t sure if Mahogany wanted to meet that particular person after all this time. She had never expressed interest in doing so before, more of the kind of person who played the hand she was dealt. Didn’t dwell on if she lost the hand or not, just waited patiently on better cards to come along. That is so not like you.
It really wasn’t—I’d demand better cards. Fight everything, remember?
Sitting down beside her forced her to scoot over to make room for both of us.
“Okay, so maybe mommy dearest has showed up not shockingly after you got engaged to a millionaire architect. Do you want me to put her out of here or what?”
That begged the question had the woman been keeping tabs on Mahogany all this time? If so, this woman was already at the top of my shit list; Mahogany’s life was hell before and after she got free of her foster parents. Yeah, there were worse parents than mine out there, and work wasn’t exactly the place we could talk about this at length, which was what she needed. I would do what I could to make her feel better for the time being.
Mahogany swiped a hand down her face, still drilling holes in the door with her eyes. “No reason to put her out. She just asked if we could get together to talk soon, so she could explain why she gave me up. I told her I couldn’t do that right now.” Then Mahogany bolted like there were hellhounds on her heels.
“If you don’t want to talk to her period, that’s enough reason for me to throw her out on her ass right now. Tommy would fire me for it for like a day, then call me, telling me to get my ass to work because if he had to show up here, so did I.” That was fact, happened a few months after I was hired and waited on a particularly nasty piece of work that was under the influence and couldn’t keep his hand off my butt.
I took his fork loaded with spaghetti off of his plate, jabbing him in the arm with it. When my boss figured out why his customer was shrieking like a banshee, he gave my walking papers right then, but the guy didn’t touch anyone when he came here anymore. Luckily, he didn’t sue me, but I would’ve hit him with a sexual harassment lawsuit. There were plenty of witnesses to back me who was sure the guy could look and tell I needed the money.
My phone chose to pulsate in the side pocket of my slacks. If someone was calling me, it was important. Idle chats to pass the time on the phone, I did not do often. Face to face, in striking range, was more of my speed. I extracted the phone with Christian’s name and number glowing on the screen. Oh, my damn. My nerves splintered. It was time to pay for my sins. When I should be experiencing pure dread about our first date, my anticipation overshadowed it, had heightened with each day over the last week until I thought my nose would bleed.
A hundred times during the last seven days, I picked up the phone to call him, to ask ‘What are you waiting on? Let’s get this over with already’, then chickened out. Each of those times were accompanied by flashbacks of the mind-blowing pleasure he gave, could give again, and the mess I was in because of it. Then, I remembered to be leery around him. That should’ve came naturally. Eventually, I put my guards up where they should’ve been in the first place, put the phone back down, then went and found something much safer to do than call him.
But it was too little, too late for me and my damn guards. Christian had breached my defenses, whipped up a ton of emotions inside me, and murdered my survival instinct without even being present. Basically, my mind had been in the gutter all week, the same one I couldn’t climb out of in California around him. I was in trouble. If only I didn’t already know that he had no boundaries when it came to satisfying me.
And recording you, but you still gotta answer his call.
Because of the mess I was in. Right.
“Let me answer this, Mahogany,” I requested while swiping the accept icon.
Don’t piss him off.
Be quiet.
Having a second set of thoughts that knew it all and gave orders was the damn pits. “Hello.”
“Hi, Foreign.” Warmth emitted from the low bass in his voice, scuttled down my spine, wrapped around the base of it like a blanket, and set loose a riot of butterflies in my stomach.
I should not be glad to hear his voice, but I was.
Now, speak.
“I, um, I’m at work, and a friend is in a crisis, so tell me what I can do for you real quick.” Why did I tell him all that?
“Everything okay? Anything you need?” His concern took me aback, like nobody had really been worried about me before.
Well, actually, they hadn’t. Until now, I didn’t care, so why does it feel nice that someone does care? Not someone… Christian, who’s on the phone by the way. Start talking.
While thinking about him, I had forgotten about him who didn’t know he had mastered being two places at one time; in my ear and head. This was not good.
“Ah, I don’t need anything, Christian, but everything’s not okay. My girl needs me, so speak now or forever hold your peace… until the next time you call.”
“Right. Tonight, I’ll pick you up at seven. We’ll eat at the resort I’m checked in to.”
The first of many dates was happening, finally, in only a couple of hours after I got off, and I should be relieved to be starting what I was ready to be done with; being blackmailed. Instead, I was breathless, a little in shock for the strangest of reasons; I was looking forward to my first date ever that had been decided against my will, but I wasn’t panicking. That’s because you’ve been looking forward to the date with him all week.
Shut… never mind.
“Okay, give me the address, and I’ll drive to you.” In my ride, I could go and come as I please.
“Okay?” He was stunned now, evidently expecting a struggle on my behalf. “And no, I’ll pick you up, so you can’t run off when the mood hits you.”
He knew me well enough to get around any tricks I’d certainly pull. That damn sure wasn’t good. A girl liked to have at least a little mystery about her. Plus, after all the routine I’d endured in my parents’ world, I liked flying by the seat of my pants sometimes.
“You’ve got me right where you want me, don’t you?” It was a little exciting being wanted enough to be blackmailed for my time—I wouldn’t admit that out loud for all the gold in the world.
Mahogany was no longer looking bug-eyed at the door but at me in the same fashion. I suspected I was a little bug-eyed myself. The phone was close enough for her to hear his side of the call. She knew I didn’t date and why, and now, I’d have to endure her questions. That put a damper on things because she could never know everything. Too bad. Unloading on her would’ve helped with unburdening my chest; secrets usually lay like bricks in it.
“Do I have you where I want you, Foreign?” he asked quietly, worriedly, drawing even more of my awareness to his soft but deep tenor that hid so much from me.
I wanted to know everything it concealed, but learning things about people brought you closer to them, and I was too chicken to get in that deep. “I asked first.”
“And you will get your answer tonight, so… see you then, sweetheart.”
“Bye.”
Slowly, I lowered the phone then killed the call because he sure as hell hadn’t hung up. Mahogany cocked her head, then mimicked my farewell to Christian. I glared at her. No way in hell I sounded as winded and husky as she did, like I was thrilled to hear his voice. Okay, I probably did sound like that. Didn’t mean I had to be honest about it.
“Who was that, Foreign?” And the twenty questions began.
I pinned the door in my crosshairs, couldn’t look at her while I answered, “Christian.”
She gasped. “Your one-night stand from California?”
“Yep.”
“He’s here?”
“Yep.”
She pointed at me, her finger an inch from my nose. “And you, the biggest commitment-phobe I know who refuses to be seen outside your four walls with a dude, are going on a date with him?” If I wasn’t seen with anybody, I couldn’t be tied to them.
“Yep.” I exhaled, unsure how much I could cop to before she got suspicious and asked all the wrong questions… or the right ones.
She was aware of how fast I’d run to avoid dating, and smart enough to start thinking that something wasn’t right with me. Maybe you should stop talking now.
Tommy picked that moment to yell through the door, “If you two don’t get in here and work, you’ll have even more time to date in the damn unemployment line.”
I flew to my feet, never been so glad to be cussed out or interrupted in my life.
Mahogany was a little slower to move. “The last place you want to find a date is in the unemployment line, boss. You both already know the other is broke and neither of you can fake it. And you are not off the hook, Foreign,” she advised just as I tore out the door, nearly colliding with my boss who sidestepped and mean-mugged me rushing by.
I diverted toward the cashier stand where I put a lot of concentration into grabbing waitressing supplies from beneath the counter.
Mahogany followed me. “We’ll finish this tomorrow on our day off, at your apartment. We both know Majestic would take over the conversation at my house.”
Two-year old, intelligent Majestic was just as gorgeous as Mahogany and their new, one-level ranch that Chance Middleton bought then remodeled behind her back. All so that he could give it to her as one of two gifts at a surprise engagement party. The other gift was none other than a ring with a whole lot of diamonds. Those gifts were why it wasn’t so hard for me to conclude that Mahogany’s mother found out her daughter was engaged to a millionaire from Utah, then decided to pop up for the first time in twenty-three years. Or it was one scary ass coincidence. They happened… but rarely. Whether Mahogany just met her first ever relative by design, or it merely coincided with her engagement, would worry me until I found out which was the case.
Mahogany was a sweetheart and didn’t deserve to be used by that… woman who looked too much like her to not at least be a relative who better watch her damn step around my friend. I wasn’t the only one who could hack into databases. Mahogany had better skills as a computer programmer still working on her degree, but I’d call out the new relative and swing on her faster. I was short with a shorter fuse, and I was always underestimated because of my size.
I had other shit to do, so I acted a fool quickly, then went about my business. That was exactly what I did for the rest of the day, until five, all while I was walking on air. No, that wasn’t normal.
At home, I bathed, and emptied out my closet to find something decent to wear, all in the name of making a dude think I had gone out of my way to be cute for him. I was that girl now, and being her wouldn’t have been so bad if the chick could make up her mind about what to wear. I didn’t have these problems before Christian.
Standing in the doorway of the tiny closet in my underwear, I shook my head, grabbed for the only thing still on a hanger, a fitted, gray sweater dress that covered me from neck to ankle, then paired it with matching gray stiletto knee boots. Since the snow and ice was gone with the blizzard, slipping in my heels and breaking something shouldn’t happen. With no time left to do anything special with the waviness in my hair formed from the top knot worn all day, parted on the side and curtaining my shoulders was the chosen hairdo. A little lip gloss, mascara, and a pair of hoop earrings later, I was ready to go two minutes early. Not enough time to clean up my bedroom.
“Might as well watch a little TV then.”
The faded red, ribbed couch wasn’t the finest of furniture, came with the apartment, but it was clean and worked just fine for snuggling my bottom into while surfing through the basic cable channels I had. The second I dropped onto the seat, a knock at my door had me jumping to my feet like a jack-in-the-box. I was freaking nervous. One more damn emotion that Christian had instigated.
“It’s just dinner, Foreign. Get it over with, then come back and do something to improve your life.” When the pep talk ended, I put on my coat, snagged my purse then strolled to the door, asking, “Who is it?”
“It’s Christian, sweetheart.” Even muffled by two inches of wood, his voice generated nerves in my gut.
Opening the door to him inspired two explosions in my chest; the powerful urge to kick both of his shins for acting so much like my folks convoyed with the bigger, more intense compulsion to take his beautiful ass down Foreign-style; lips first, followed by stripping him and taking him inside me. Get out the door first, Foreign. You can do everything else later.
Oh no, I won’t… not doing that last part anyway. Keep lying to yourself if you want to.
Shut… screw it, I had even bigger problems than a back-talking inner voice and unwanted feelings. His natural woodsy scent under a thin layer of sandalwood cologne was slapping my wits away, knocking them to the four corners of the room. That was exactly how this thing with him and me started; my good senses being abused until they no longer functioned. Had to find a way to control his effect on me, or there would probably be another sextape drifting around.
The best I could come up with was holding my breath, denying any more of his scent into my being. My eyes did their own thing, walking up the front of his high-neck, unbuttoned duster waving out behind his bow-legs, giving him action-hero appeal. That was if heroes came in navy-blue suits, matching velvet loafers, a deep red dress shirt and matching tie, and resembled blond-haired angels.
Jesus, he was gorgeous. Too damn gorgeous. Enough to make my womanhood weep, and it was. The sudden wetness between my legs made me uncomfortable, the affect he was having on me unwelcomed. I needed immunity from this man. He took what he wanted and coveted things he couldn’t have, but he was so damn hard to ignore.
He was also my blackmailer.
And then he smiled and prompted my heart to beat faster in my chest, like this was the first time a man was in its presence and it loved what it saw. It didn’t help that my heart and I both knew his grin was all for me. Things were going sideways out the gate because I, who learned to stop wanting things I couldn’t have at six-years-old, craved another dimpled smile from him bad enough to do anything to get it. Anything, but make another sextape or do anything illegal.
Shit was getting complicated, just because I was looking at his cupid-bow mouth, so I looked up.
His green eyes were blazing like sparkling diamonds. “You look beautiful, as always.”
If I was beautiful, what did that make him? Stunning? Yep.
I quirked an eyebrow. “Always? You’ve only seen me three times.”
He tilted his chin up, looking down his nose at me. “Tell that to my mind that’s always filled with you who looked beautiful all three times and the millions of times I’ve envisioned you in my head. Just take the compliment, Foreign. It’s not a crime to give or receive one.” True, but his mind was always filled with me?
It had to be if he sought you out to blackmail broke and no longer high-class ass you. Something must be wrong with him.
Something must be wrong with him indeed. What in the hell did he see in me?
That, I wanted to know badly.