one,” he said, then walked through the door.
“Man, I’m a Donovan,” Sean said, following his brother out to the elevators. “I don’t need luck.”
Chapter 2
Dear Jenny,
I’m confused. I am a 32-year-old woman with two sons living with my 35-year-old boyfriend, who has three children from a previous relationship that also live with us. I work a full-time job and take care of the house and the children. My boyfriend is an entrepreneur—trying to open his own barber shop. We’ve been together for ten years.
I want to get married. He doesn’t understand why what we have is not enough. I want commitment and love and stability for our family. Especially since I don’t mind taking care of his kids as well as the ones we share together. I’m not even complaining about having to pay the bulk of our household bills myself. I am a Christian and have been taking all our kids to church for years, but my boyfriend never comes with us.
There is this life I want with a family and a household built on Christian love and respect. Then there’s this feeling that I’m still shacking up, and as my girlfriends keep reminding me, “settling” for less because he obviously does not want to commit to me.
Last Valentine’s Day my boyfriend proposed. I was so excited. I couldn’t wait to show everyone the diamond ring he gave me. I immediately went out and bought wedding books and started writing down my plans for the wedding. But when I asked him about setting a date he said he wanted to wait. It’s been more than a year, and we’re still waiting. Problem is, I don’t know what we’re waiting for.
Can you help?
In love and confused.
Tate Dennison read the letter for the second time. That was her process—Nelia, the editorial assistant on this floor, received the mail and routed each piece to whichever staff writer they went to. The second floor of the Excalibur Building was dedicated to the writing staff of Infinity magazine. Once Nelia had gone through the mail, she brought Tate her stack. Tate then separated the letters into two piles—male and female questions—because she needed a different type of focus when answering each letter.
Was this the way she thought she’d be using the journalism degree she’d received from Morgan State University in Maryland? Of course not, but it paid the bills.
It was nearing five-thirty in the afternoon and already she’d answered four letters, attended a staff writers’ meeting and let the graphics director talk her ear off for about an hour. The one thing she hadn’t done was answer her cell phone again. It had started ringing around noon and continued every half hour. The first couple of times she’d answered the unknown number, but then she grew tired of the hang-ups and turned the ringer to vibrate. Still, she’d kept an eye on the ringing each time, just to be sure it wasn’t the day care calling about her daughter.
To say she was tired would have been an understatement. But she was here trying to get more work done. Recently, the magazine had begun printing ten responses in her column per month. But Tate liked to be ahead of the game. She’d learned there was no other way to be.
Because she’d been sitting so long, her feet had started to go numb, so Tate walked to the end of her small office. It probably used to be a closet, she thought, as she skirted around the desk that took up the bulk of her space. Immediately she was face-to-face with the bookshelf that served as an organizer and held all her mail, past columns, along with copies of the letters she’d responded to and pictures of her inspiration squeezed in for good measure.
Her daughter, Briana Suray Dennison, stared back at her with plump cheeks and a tiny toothed grin. She was Tate’s star and moon, the reason she’d taken this job and lived in Miami. Briana was basically Tate’s reason for living at all. Three months ago, she’d turned two, and her baby chatter was becoming real words like mama and no. Tate rubbed a finger over the picture, touching the chubby cheeks she loved to kiss and nuzzle. She loved her daughter’s smile and the simply joyous look she always had in her eyes. It never failed to make Tate’s heart ache.
They were supposed to be a family living happily ever after. And here she was in another state, thousands of miles away from the only family she had left in Maryland. All because of him. No, she corrected herself, moving here and starting over had been her decision. Leaving their family high and dry had been Patrick’s. She wouldn’t take the blame for what wasn’t her fault.
She’d loved him enough to alienate herself from her relatives because they didn’t care for him. Had loved him enough to marry him and have his baby. And he’d used her enough to take their savings and all the furniture in their house. Now, nine months after his betrayal, she knew Patrick had never loved her. Their three-year marriage had been a complete lie. And that was fine. She’d resigned herself to that fact, even if Briana’s smile reminded her of it every day.
Another reminder of the mess her marriage had turned out to be was writing this damned column. Each morning she came in to another stack of mail, another stack of someone else’s relationship problems. And she was the one charged with helping them, when she hadn’t been bright enough to see the signs of her own union falling apart. If that wasn’t ironic, she didn’t know what was.
“Okay, get it together, Dennison,” she berated herself. Taking a deep breath, she thought about the letter she’d just read for the second time, about the circumstances and the issues she needed to address.
There were a few. For instance, why was “In love and confused” the only one with gainful employment in this household? What she needed to do was make this boyfriend of hers get a job. “A real job at that,” she said aloud and then chuckled and moved on to the next issue.
“Excuse me?”
The deep male voice startled her, and Tate jumped, backed up and slammed her leg into the side of her desk.
“Damn it!” she swore, leaning over to rub her leg and looking up just as the owner of the voice had moved in to catch her.
“Are you all right?” he asked, touching a hand lightly to her shoulder and leaning over slightly to look at the leg she was rubbing.
The full skirt she had on today was a thin paisley material, and it fell between her legs as she rubbed. She realized with a start how much of her thigh she was actually showing and hurriedly pulled it down.
“I’m fine,” she said, clearing her throat. “Just fine. Thanks.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he said. Then he took a step back, stood straight, his eyes trained directly on her.
Tate prayed a big gaping hole would open in the middle of this tiny office floor and swallow her up. Embarrassment spread across her cheeks and down her neck in a heated rush. “How can I help you, Mr. Donovan?”
Yes, she told herself in a stern voice, this was Sean Donovan, the boss, or at least one of the bosses. Tate knew that the Donovans owned Infinity and several other media ventures in the Miami area. She’d done her research when she’d applied for the position. He was the younger of the two brothers, the more serious and intense one. Dion was the tall and dangerously handsome one.
For a minute or two—she couldn’t really count right now, but she knew that it seemed like a really long time—he stared at her without speaking.
“Sir?” she prompted, her palms starting
