yet.”
She glared at him as if her little five-foot-six self could intimidate him. That lasted a whole five seconds before she changed her tune.
“I’m sorry.” She pulled a tissue out of her purse and dabbed at her invisible tears. “This breakup has been really hard on me. I thought we had something special, that we would one day get married.”
Nash relaxed his shoulders and sighed. She had to know her tears no longer affected him, but maybe if he tried a different approach she’d finally get the message.
“Listen, Eve, I didn’t mean to hurt you, but you knew going in that I wasn’t interested in anything serious. I was up-front with you from the beginning. I’m not looking to get married to you or anyone else.”
Thanks to his college sweetheart, Nash had promised himself years ago that he would never allow a woman full access to his heart again. He and Audrey had dated their first year at UCLA, and talked about getting married upon graduation. During their last year of college, Audrey dumped him for the school’s star quarterback, whose family came from old money. She told Nash she wanted to marry rich, instead of marrying someone who had the potential of being rich.
He would never forget how she took his love and his heart and stomped the hell out of them. The only thing good that came out of the experience was that it spurred him to work his butt off to become a successful multimillionaire.
“Nash, honey, I know you said you weren’t interested in marriage, but I thought...”
He placed his hand against Eve’s cheek, suddenly feeling sorry for her. She leaned into his touch, shutting her eyes and then reopening them as she met his gaze.
“I’m sorry, Eve. I hate things turned out the way they did, but I can’t do this anymore.” He dropped his arm and turned to walk back into the restaurant, but flinched when a camera flash blinded him.
“Mr. Dupree...Mr. Dupree...Mr. Playboy Dupree. Is this your latest victim who you’re kicking to the curb?”
Damn. Nash ducked his head, put his arm up to block any additional photos and hurried back into the restaurant. This was the second time in the past couple of weeks that he’d been bombarded by some paparazzo mentioning him being a playboy. Now that he thought about it, Eve had been there then, too.
* * *
Hours later, Nash sat in the office at Platinum Pieces–Midtown, his first Atlanta nightclub. To get his mind off women, he was catching up on paperwork. He sifted through documents and reviewed report after report from his business managers, hoping to make a dent in the pile.
“Okay, boss, all the patrons are out and everything is locked up,” the club’s manager said from the doorway. “We’re going to head out. You coming?”
Nash glanced at his watch, noting the late hour, and then glanced at the short stack of file folders on his desk. “Nah, I have about an hour of work left. You guys go ahead and I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”
His manager hesitated. Tall and burly, he looked more like a wrestler than a club manager. “I can stick around for another hour. Just holler when you’re ready to leave.”
Since one of the female servers had been mugged late one night when leaving the club, Nash had instituted a policy: no one, regardless of gender or age, left the building alone after closing time. While spending most of his days and evenings at the new location, he’d temporarily forgotten the rule. Nash wasn’t too concerned about his safety. The club, located in Midtown Atlanta, had good exterior lighting. Growing up in Compton, California, he had learned at an early age how to take care of himself, but he didn’t want to be the one to start breaking rules.
“Actually, give me fifteen minutes to wrap things up.”
Nash should have been done with his paperwork hours ago, but his mind kept drifting to Tania—and Iris. This couldn’t have been a worse time for Tania to get into trouble, not that there ever was a good time. Nash was swamped with getting the new club and restaurant open, and the last thing he needed was to be worrying about her at juvenile detention. And then there was her lawyer. Iris. Even her name was sexy. How was a man to concentrate when visions of her took up so much space in his mind?
Always a sucker for a beautiful woman, he couldn’t help but wonder about the alluring defense attorney. Meeting her earlier at her office and then seeing her again at the restaurant was like experiencing two different women. One minute he was dealing with a reserved attorney and the next, a voluptuous babe.
That’s how Nash envisioned the lovely Iris Sinclair—a stuffy professional by day, fighting for her young clients, and a sex goddess at night, taming her man with her lasso of truth before wearing his ass out. Oh, yeah. Nash grinned at the thought. He leaned back in his seat, swiveling his chair back and forth, enjoying the mental visual until his cell phone rang.
Unknown caller. He started to let the call go to voice mail, but thought better of it, in light of Tania’s being in detention.
“Hello.” He adjusted the single-lightbulb desk lamp away from his face.
“Hi, Nash.”
Nash dropped his shoulders and let his head fall back against the leather headrest of the office chair. Why me?
“Eve, why are you calling? Especially this time of night?” What was it going to take to get her to move on?
“I couldn’t sleep and knew you were probably up working. I was thinking that maybe you could stop by and put me to sleep like you used to.”
“Eve, the days of me stopping by your place, for any reason, are over. You have to figure out a way to move on. I have.”
“How can you say that, Nash? We dated for eight months and now you’re saying it meant nothing to you.”
“I’m not saying that at all. Eve, you knew going in that I didn’t want anything serious.” Nash felt like a broken record. They’d had the same conversation for the past few weeks and he didn’t know what else to say to make her understand.
“I know what you said, but we had something special. You can’t tell me that the sex wasn’t good.”
Nash would admit it had been good at first. She was an attractive, sexy woman who had a wild, adventurous side. It was everything else about her that he couldn’t deal with. Her jealousy and accusing him of seeing other women was a huge turn-off. Until she came along, he hadn’t dated exclusively since Audrey. Two months into dating her and he remembered why. She constantly complained about him not spending enough time with her and she showed up at his place of business demanding his attention. That was enough to drive a sane man crazy. The last straw had been when she talked about them getting married and alluded to sending Tania to a boarding school. Now that’s never going to happen.
“Eve, you and I are over. Besides, if I remember correctly, we only were dating for four months, and eighty percent of that time was me dealing with your childish behavior and your insecurities.”
“I can change,” she said, her high-pitched whine grating on his nerves.
Even if she could, he wasn’t interested. He wasn’t looking for anything serious with any woman, especially someone like Eve.
“You might be able to
