gave her an understanding smile before turning his chair to face the bar’s liquor-covered shelves. He was sympathetic but not interested. Not tonight anyway. It had now been twenty minutes since Marissa had promised to meet him in fifteen. Leaning back in the comfy bar chair, he took another slow, deliberate sip of wine. His mother had taught him that anything worth having was worth waiting for. Donovan Drake was nothing if not a patient man.
* * *
Marissa pulled into the parking lot, her heart thumping with excitement. It seemed forever ago that she’d even consider giving a man her phone number, let alone meeting one for a drink. Her employer, Jackson, and anyone else who knew her would consider the night’s actions quite unlike her. But there was something about Donovan Drake that seemed different from the average man, something that made her feel safe and protected. He exuded a type of authority that you could only be born with, yet had a way of making you feel comfortable in his presence. Oh, and there was that minor detail about him being very good-looking. Not in a pretty-boy way like Trey Songz or Boris Kodjoe, or even in a Dayum! sort of fashion like his tall, hunky brother, Dexter. No, Donovan’s good looks were as much from what was within as the package without.
This is why she’d ignored the fact that at the moment, she wasn’t supposed to be interested in the opposite sex, that after the betrayal she’d endured from a so-called friend, work and continuing her education were the only two things that were supposed to have her attention. But the smile currently on her face had nothing to do with executive assistant work or landing a graduate degree in business administration, and everything to do with a tall, strapping male, one she’d thought of intermittently since being introduced to him months before. Then, as now, there had been nothing about the six-foot-tall, broad-shouldered sculpture of brown sugar that she hadn’t liked. Not his smoldering cocoa eyes, his juicy lips, his wide, thick eyebrows or that hint of a cleft that kissed the middle of a strong jawline. Nothing. This was probably why her heart raced as though she was on a first date. She felt she could fall in like with Donovan Drake very easily. She’d already fallen in lust.
“Let’s go, Marissa,” she encouraged herself. “It’s only a drink.” With one last look in the mirror and a quick sprucing up of her curly, shoulder-length tresses, Marissa got out of the car, got halfway between the parking lot and the tasting room door…and froze.
“Well, well, well.”
Thump, thump. Thump, thump. Her heartbeat was so loud it almost drowned out the voice she’d hoped to never hear again. At least not for a few lifetimes. Unfortunately this pitter-patter had nothing to do with the man for whom she lusted and everything to do with one she despised.
“Hello, Marissa.”
Figuring the faster she’d speak, the faster he’d leave, her lips parted. “Hello, Steven.”
“You’re looking good.”
Any comment she would have offered, if it existed, would have had a hard time squeezing past the tightness in her throat. The greeting had been hard enough.
Steven eyed her a moment longer before turning to look through the window at the wall-length bar just beyond them. Marissa immediately saw Donovan talking to the bartender. On one side of him was a tanned man with dark hair and a mustache; a blonde woman sat on his other side. A couple walked up and took two seats on the short side of the L-shaped counter. “Which one of them are you here to meet?”
Marissa swallowed her discomfort, squared her shoulders and tried to not show how totally uncomfortable she was seeing her former best friend again.
“I’ve purposely stayed away from Long Beach and certain areas of San Diego so that I don’t have to see you. And now, I find you conveniently in between the two at the exact same time as I am. Are you stalking me?”
Steven laughed, the sound sinister and hollow. When he replied, his eyes were cold. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Then how did you find me, Steven?”
“I wasn’t looking for you. Antonio’s band has a gig out this way. Not that it’s any of your business.” They continued eyeing each other a moment. “I see you still believe that bull those strangers told you.”
“That’s right. I still believe it. And I still meant what I said when it happened. If I have another confrontation with you, if you harass me in any way, I will get a restraining order.”
Steven shrugged. “You do whatever you feel you need to do. Handle your business, because I’m definitely going to handle mine.”
Marissa took a deep breath and tried another approach. “You know what, Steven? Somewhere inside you is a nice person. I knew him once. In fact, we used to be friends.”
“That good man is still right here,” Steven said with that boyish smile Marissa remembered. “In fact, that good man still wants to take our relationship to the next level. I’ve already seen you,” he said cockily, with a long, lascivious visual sweep of her body. “Might as well let me tap that—”
“That’s enough,” Marissa hissed between gritted teeth. She found the nerve of this former best friend infuriating. She wanted to lash out, curse him out. Remembering the darker moments of their shared history, she chose to stay calm and keep her wits about her.
And just in time, as it turned out.
“Which one of those jerks are you screwing?” Steven demanded, his brow creased in anger as he pointed toward the glass. “Which one did you offer on a silver platter what I couldn’t beg you out of? I told you I’d deal with whoever came between us.”
That’s right. He had told her, that last night they were together, the night that changed everything. It was why she hadn’t gone on a date in a very long time. It wasn’t worth putting a potential new friend at risk. The Steven McCain she’d known since college had been smart, funny and trustworthy. Or so she’d thought. Until that fateful night he’d tried to take their friendship to another level. By any means necessary. That’s when she’d begun to believe he might not be as nice as he’d seemed. Or as sane.
She looked from him to the window, saw Donovan glance at his watch. Dang it, I don’t even have Donovan’s cell phone number. But she had common sense, and she knew that to go in now, to get anywhere near Donovan, would not only result in an altercation, but would tell the lunatic standing in front of her more than he needed to know. Reluctantly, she turned back to her car. “Stay away from me, Steven,” she threw over her shoulder.
“My phone number is the same, Marissa, and you need to use it. Let’s get together, just to talk, I promise.” She kept on walking. “Remember I can blow the cover on that goody-two-shoes image you’re boasting.”
Marissa ignored him, got into her car, started the engine and sped away.
* * *
Donovan was getting just a bit antsy. Not at the fact that he might have been stood up, no, he’d seen the look of interest in Marissa’s eyes. And more than that, for some reason he felt she was a woman of her word. He definitely knew what the other type of woman looked like, the one who would say one thing and do another, the one who wouldn’t know the meaning of such words as honor, truth or integrity unless looked up in a dictionary. It had been a half hour since they’d parted. Should he entertain the remote possibility that she’d gotten into an accident? It seemed unlikely considering the short distance she would have traveled. Or could it be something much more likely, such as her having been sidetracked by someone at the party,
