Czytaj książkę: «Bare Pleasures»

Chapter 1

Alexander Diallo was taking a break from casual hookups.

He sipped his champagne, his back to the wall of the gallery where his sister was currently having her first solo exhibition, trying not to think how this would impact his social life.

“Hey, Lex.” His brother Kingsley walked up with a champagne glass of his own, tapped Lex’s glass with it. “Did you congratulate Lola yet?”

“No, not yet. She’s a little busy.”

In the center of the room, their younger sister stood surrounded by nearly a dozen people. Willowy and petite with big anime eyes her siblings often teased her about, Lola, who was two years younger than Lex, looked years away from being twenty-six. She wore some sort of pale green, flowy dress that brushed the floor, a contrast to her dark and moody paintings on the gallery walls.

“Yeah.” Kingsley sipped his champagne and swept his eyes around the rest of the gallery. “A lot of people are here tonight.” He said it like he was surprised.

“Why not? She’s popular enough and not just on Facebook.” Lex tracked his eyes around the room, not so subtly checking out all the gorgeous women not related to him. This resolution wasn’t off to a great start.

“Lola is a pretty girl everyone loves to be around, but that doesn’t translate to getting people to show up to things that matter,” Kingsley said.

An excited squeal caught their attention. Lola had wandered away from her adoring crowd and now stood near one of her more expensive paintings with a longtime friend of the family. A check changed hands.

“Looks like she just sold something,” Lex said.

Kingsley nodded. “To one of Mama’s friends. Let’s hope she can keep selling this stuff once she wears out the family connections. Most of her art-school friends are as broke as she is.”

Lex made a deliberately noncommittal noise. His parents were rich. Not as rich as the Kennedys or even Oprah, but they did well enough as owners of a multibillion-dollar cosmetics corporation. Their money, though, was not their children’s money, even with the millions held in trust for each and made available after their thirtieth birthdays.

He hated the assumption that just because his parents had a lot of money, that he did too. Over the years, he’d done a lot to distance himself from that belief, from the Diallo Corporation and from money he never earned. Not all his siblings felt the same way; hell, maybe only a couple of them did. Kingsley, the oldest of the thirteen, was their mother’s right hand at the company while Wolfe, the second oldest, had built a business of his own from nothing. Or as close to nothing as a person can get after borrowing start-up money from their parents.

Lex didn’t want any of it. He fought his whole life not to be just another Diallo trust fund kid. He wasn’t naive enough to think he was ever truly financially on his own. But what he had, except for the money held in trust, he’d earned for himself.

“What are you doing after this?” Kingsley asked. His champagne glass was now empty and he looked around the gallery with easy hunger. Like Lex would’ve done a few months or even weeks before, he was on the hunt for feminine distraction. “We’re all heading to the bar after the gallery closes.”

“I’ll come with you,” Lex said.

“Good. Maybe you can find a hot girl at the bar to take that frown off your face.”

Lex brushed a hand over his face, hoping that gesture, like a mime’s trick, would wipe away the frown he hadn’t even been aware of. “I’m good,” he said. “I’m not having sex these days.” The confession rolled smoothly enough off his tongue. He’d practiced saying it out aloud.

Kingsley laughed though, a sharp crack that attracted more than a few amused stares. “You all right?”

“Yeah. I’m just not into expending that much energy right now.”

His brother looked him up and down, wearing a smile of disbelief. “Maybe expending some...energy is exactly what you need.”

“Don’t even start,” Lex muttered.

His last four relationships had quickly gone south because they got physical way too fast. And after the sex was done, he and the women realized they had nothing left between them. Just sweat and apathy. Those relationships left him feeling emotionally drained and unbalanced. Not that he was looking for meaningful ever-afters, but it all became too much.

“Sex is fun,” he said to Kingsley. “But that’s not the kind of fun I’m looking for right now.”

His brother nodded, looking thoughtful. “But you’re okay, right? Nothing wrong with your...?” He waved his hand south of Lex’s waist.

“No, man!”

“And it’s nothing from before?” Kingsley pressed. Sometimes he took his role as the oldest Diallo sibling a little too seriously.

Still, a mutual memory from ten years ago flared between them. Lex’s incessant rebellion had frustrated their parents enough to send him off to Jamaica right after high school. Back then, he’d been the knucklehead son doing the dumbest crap just because he could. Taking his father’s car for a joyride. Bringing women into the house to screw when nobody was home. Setting other people’s property on fire. Things that infuriated his father and finally made his mother say “enough” in a big way. She sent Lex away to Jamaica for college and to learn better manners. He spent two out of his four years on the island before coming back to America and finishing up at MIT with a degree in electrical engineering and computer science.

“No. Everything’s cool,” Lex told Kingsley. So far, none of his bad behavior had come back to haunt him.

He took another sip of his champagne and then froze when a flash of long legs caught his eye. Very slowly, so he wouldn’t chase away the gorgeous apparition, he lowered his glass to get a better look. High heels. Rounded calves with a hint of muscle. A familiar heat snaked low in his belly and pooled behind his zipper.

He wanted to see more. But when he moved his eyes up to look at the rest of the woman, she disappeared behind a broad back clothed in a pinstripe jacket. Kingsley started to say something the same moment the woman reappeared from behind the pinstripe. She was in profile this time, showing off for him a body like a Coke bottle, thick thighs flowing up into a wide and round ass he easily imagined overflowing his hands. Her waist was ridiculously small. And her breasts... He licked his lips and gave his imagination free rein.

Kingsley waved a hand in front of his eyes, nearly choking with laughter. “Good luck with that celibacy thing.”

Lex blinked and took another swallow of champagne to ease the dryness in his throat. “I’m celibate, not blind,” he said, still staring at the woman. Her face was pretty in an ordinary way, red lips turned down slightly at the corners, her hair thick and straightened to brush just beneath her collarbones.

“Yeah, well, looking is just the first step. Especially if you’re gawking at her like that.”

Lex wanted to do more than look. Before his (now ill-advised) vow of celibacy, he’d have walked up to the woman, given her his number and definitely gotten hers. Then they’d probably end up in his bed later that evening. He slid his empty glass on the tray of a passing waiter and deliberately turned away from the woman.

“Well, now I’m not even looking,” he said.

“Okay, Lex.” Kingsley just laughed at him. What else were big brothers for?

A sharp, brittle sound, cutlery tapping on glass, captured Lex’s attention. The gallery’s entire focus was moving, conversations halting and flowing into silence to pay attention to Lola, who stood in the center of the room with a champagne glass and a dinner knife in her hands. When the room was quiet enough for her to be heard, she stopped tapping on the glass.

“Thank you all for coming tonight,” Lola said. “You have no idea what it means to see you all here celebrating this huge moment with me.”

Lex moved closer so he could see her better. His little sister was growing up. Four years out of grad school with her MFA in studio art and a museum job lined up, she was doing very well. Lola had high hopes of making it as an artist but was being responsible and had a backup plan just in case those hopes proved challenging. She was definitely her mother’s child, practical while firmly holding on to her dreams. With people from every aspect of her life celebrating her triumph with her, she was glowing. Lex winked when he caught her eye. She giggled in the middle of her speech.

“I couldn’t have made it here without the love and support of my family!” Lola grinned and threw her arms wide, nearly splashing the person closest to her with champagne. “I love you all so much!” Her twin, Leo, pushed through the crowd to hug her, his height and wide shoulders just about hiding her from everyone. He kissed her noisily on the cheek, smiling, to the sound of loud whistles and applause.

Lex grinned, proud of how his family stood with and helped each other. All his brothers and sisters were there to celebrate with Lola. Yeah. She was lucky. They were all fortunate to have each other. An elbow bumped into his and he turned, expecting Kingsley, but it wasn’t his brother who he saw. His breath hitched.

No. It can’t be her.

The woman who’d caught his attention turned toward the back of the room, but from just the shape of her cheek and chin, the long and narrow lines of her body he knew who it was. Panic dropped, swift and nauseating, into his belly. He stared at the woman, noting the changes from the last time they’d been in the same room. Her face leaner, her clothes more sophisticated and expensive. When she didn’t turn back to face him, he began to breathe a little easier.

“You okay, Lex?” Kingsley was suddenly at his side and lightly squeezing his arm. “You look a little gray.”

Gray? He felt like all the blood in his body had dropped to his feet, leaving him cold and shaking.

“I’m good.” He threw what he hoped was a reassuring smile his brother’s way and then turned again to the front of the room, slowing down his breathing. Although he was positive the woman saw him, she never acknowledged him. Maybe she didn’t realize who he was. Ten years was a long time. He’d changed a lot since then. His face was thinner, his body less obviously muscular. He’d even grown a couple of inches since those days of being an eighteen-year-old asshole. He took another breath.

“Everything is fine,” he said, hoping to convince himself.

When Lola finished her sweet, if disjointed, speech, Lex pushed his way through the crowd to congratulate her. She squealed when she saw him, a tiny whirlwind, and latched her arms around his waist, laughing. Lola smelled like champagne and whipped cream from the bonbons she’d insisted on serving. “I’m so glad you made it! I thought you’d be working again.”

Lex had been stuck in front of his computers, either at the office or at home, for most of the past few weeks. The project—fine-tuning a program for national law enforcement to help track, capture and prosecute human traffickers—took up more of his time than he’d initially planned. It kept him from at least one family dinner—he wasn’t sure his mother would ever forgive him—and had him regularly estranged from his bed a few nights a week. It was still a work in progress, important work, but there was no way he’d miss Lola’s first solo show.

“I am working,” Lex said. “It’s all up here.” He tapped his forehead. “I’m great at multitasking.”

She clung to his arm, smiling wide to reveal her slightly crooked bottom teeth. “Hmm. That’s why you’re the smart brother.”

“Oh, you do love me.” He laughed. Three of their brothers were self-made millionaires and one was on the fast track to NASA. “Get back to your adoring public.” He playfully pinched her side and she fell into his chest with an attack of the giggles. “Kingsley and I are waiting to buy you a drink after this is over.” He could sense his brother just behind him.

“Okay. But don’t run off with some skank before then.” She wagged a finger at them both. “Where are these skanks she’s talking about?” Kingsley asked, his eyes crinkling with laughter. “It’d be nice to run into a couple right now. I’d even handle your share since you’re on lockdown.”

Lex made sure to jab a sharp elbow into his brother’s side as he passed him and headed to the other end of the gallery where their parents stood together.

“That was rude,” Kingsley said loud enough for half the gallery to hear.

Lex ignored him but was grateful for his brother’s foolishness and whatever else the two of them would get into before the night was through. He needed a distraction from the woman in the gallery, an unwelcome phantom from his past. He’d have to eventually deal with her and everything she represented. But right now was for celebrating. Right now was for family.