was sitting at an outdoor café with a woman young enough to be one of his daughters. Nichelle had driven past the café, barely believing her eyes. But from that brief glimpse, he’d seemed happy.
“I thought you’d be too busy at the office to come out this evening,” he said to Nichelle, then kissed Madalie’s forehead.
“Woman cannot live by massive paychecks alone,” Nichelle said with a teasing smile.
He chuckled and sat next to her in the sand. “My baby is growing up.”
Willa, the image of their long-dead mother with her stripper’s body and angel face, smirked at Nichelle. “Yeah, I thought you’d be too tied up in the office with Wolfe to come out and play with us mere mortals.”
Madalie snickered. “I wish it was bondage with that hot man instead of work that kept her in the office all day and night. It would at least be more interesting.”
“And way more fun.” Willa hiccupped with laughter.
“Screw you.” Nichelle flipped off both her sisters. She was so tired of them harping on the imagined relationship between her and Wolfe. When it came from anyone else, she didn’t care. But there was something about the way her sisters teased that always rubbed her raw.
Their father made a token sound of peacekeeping. “Girls...”
“Okay, Daddy.” The three chorused voices set off a round of laughter on the beach.
Fire crackled and sparked in the circle of stones, its light appearing brighter as the sun dimmed and dusk’s softening colors spread across the horizon and over the ocean.
Nichelle leaned into her father’s shoulder to watch the fire. This, she thought with a sigh, feels perfect. After a long day of conferences, meetings and negotiations, it felt good to simply be. No stress or expectations.
On the other side of their father, Madalie was asking Willa where she got her shorts. Nichelle hugged her knees to her chest and tilted her head up to the stars.
“Pass me the rice and peas, Cheryl.” Glendon Diallo reached out to his daughter for the white serving platter piled high with the fragrant dish.
The entire Diallo family, along with Nichelle and the rest of the Wrights, sat at the large oval table in the Diallos’ dining room. Nineteen people, voices all raised in conversation and laughter. Hyacinth Diallo insisted on having a family gathering every four months that all the Diallos, no matter where they were in the world, had to attend. As next door neighbors and friends for nearly the entire twenty-four years they had shared the same Key Biscayne neighborhood, the Diallos had regularly invited the Wrights to participate in many of their gatherings, subconsciously melding the families over the years.
That melding had become even more deliberate after Nichelle’s mother died. At the time, Nichelle had thought Cin Diallo just felt sorry for them, but now, with the wisdom of adulthood, she realized that was what friends did for each other. Although she helped raise her two sisters after her mother had been killed in a car accident, because of the Diallos, she’d never been alone.
“I hear you and Wolfe are going off to Paris next week,” Alice Diallo, one of the youngest at just a few weeks past her twentieth birthday, said with a sigh. “That’s going to be so romantic.” She drew out the last word with a sly smile.
“We’re going there for work,” Wolfe reminded her as he reached for a platter of ripe plantains. He forked some onto his plate and tilted his head to listen to what his father, seated to his immediate right, was saying.
“But Paris is Paris,” Alice said. “When I went there after high school, I totally fell in love with the city and with this gorgeous boy I met there.”
“You’re always falling in love, Alice. I bet you don’t even remember that boy’s name.”
“Names aren’t important,” Alice said dismissively. “It’s about the feeling.”
Good-natured laughter bubbled around the table. She was only twenty but had been in love more times than anyone else at the table. At least according to her. Every man she dated was susceptible to her declarations of love. Once, she’d even fallen in love with a woman. The family refused to talk about it, even though she kept bringing it up and wanting the family to recognize that she was now “queer.” Just like all the others, that love affair had blown over after a few weeks.
“It’s the city of romance.” Alice pointed her fork at Nichelle. “You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”
Nichelle shook her head. “I’ve been to Paris before, remember? I spent a few days there while I was backpacking through Europe. It’s a pretty city, but I didn’t see any romance in it, just a lot of people using any excuse to make out in public.”
“You’re so cynical!” Alice made a dramatic motion with her fork, sending a piece of asparagus flying.
“Hey! Stop wasting food,” Willa called out from the other end of the table where the flying vegetable landed.
“I’m practical,” Nichelle said to Alice. “There’s a difference. When I fell in love, it wasn’t in Paris, but I think those feelings are just as legitimate, right?” she teased the young girl.
Wolfe caught her with a stare worthy of his namesake. “You’ve been in love?”
Nichelle winced, wanting to kick herself for saying anything about that failed affair. “Yes. Remember the Harvard professor I dated a few years ago?”
“That bourgie douche-bag?”
“Elia!”
Nearly the entire table exploded to scold the fifteen-year-old and youngest Diallo child.
“Don’t act.” She stared them all down. “You know none of you liked him. Especially not you, Wolfe.”
Wolfe bit into a plantain, and Nichelle noticed that the fruit left a sheen of oil on his lower lip. He licked at it, but the glimmer remained, making his mouth look plump and bitable.
“He wasn’t very interesting,” Wolfe said in his driest tone.
“See?” Elia laughed. “And Wolfe usually likes everybody.”
“You don’t have to say everything you think, darling,” her mother gently scolded.
Elia pouted and stabbed her fork into a piece of curry chicken on her plate. But she looked up at her big brother and grinned. Wolfe winked back at her, then smiled innocently at Nichelle when she took note of their exchange.
Mid-meal, the doorbell rang. Since they had dismissed the staff for the day, Glendon Diallo, Wolfe’s father, got up to answer the door. He returned a few minutes later with Nala, Nichelle’s best friend.
She grinned and hefted a bottle of wine above her head as if she’d just captured it in the wild. “Greetings, family!”
Nala looked as if she’d just stepped
