his body closed itself off to her. “Taste testers have never been my preference.”
Mella bit her lip and called herself all types of fool. She knew he wasn’t a casual man. All she had to do was look into the swirling brown depths of his eyes to know that he was a man to drown in, not wade into and step back when the waves got too close. She sat up straight on the stool. “Of course, Victor.” She picked up her glass and swallowed a sweet, burning bite of the drink. “I think it’s time for me to get back to my friends.”
His expression didn’t change. “Thank you for spending a bit of your time with me,” he said.
“A pleasure.” Then she made her escape.
Mella didn’t know how long she had stayed out the night before with her friends, but it had been much too late for someone who had to be at work by 5:00 a.m. Sitting on the patio of the North Beach flagship location of Café Michaela the next morning, she clutched a giant cup of black coffee while going over the previous week’s sales and current stock to decide what needed to be reordered.
It was still early, barely 5:30, and she was the only one in the café. Her first employee would arrive within half an hour to begin dealing with the morning rush, but for now, it was just her and the rising sun that seeped into her skin through the thin tank top and shorts she wore.
Mella sat on the patio with her laptop open, the sound of waves quietly whispering nearby. Her shop was on prime real estate. She’d been lucky to get it for a reasonable price a few years before. She never stopped being thankful for all her blessings, despite the other things in her life that hadn’t quite gone her way.
She was sending off an order to her supplier in Ethiopia when her cell phone rang. “Hey.” Mella kept her voice low to baby the last remnants of her hangover. She ruffled a hand over her thick hair and stretched out her legs in the sun.
“Good morning, Michaela.” Nala Singh laughed at her through the phone. “Either you’re trying not to disturb the other early birds, or a killer hangover is about to crack you wide-open.” Mella had to smile. Only Nala could make her laugh at herself in this condition.
Since they’d met, the billionaire orphan and jet-setting photographer refused to call Mella by the shortened version of her name, instead insisting, since their names sounded too alike, that she would call Mella by the name her parents gave her.
“What are you doing up so early?” Mella asked.
“I haven’t been to sleep yet. But I figured you’d be up doing something very responsible.”
“Good guess.” Coffee in hand, Mella stepped away from the table and walked to the railing, looking across the paved street to the glimpse of ocean through the bushes. The early-morning sun burned the sky with its incendiary reds and golds, spreading all that lush color through the clouds and over the virgin day. “What did I do to deserve a call so close to your bedtime?”
“Your email, of course. I just read it.”
Mella hid her surprise. She’d only sent the email a few hours before while she’d been at Fever. Before the drinks had started to dull her senses. “Good. I think we lucked out with the Raphael Design Group.” She ignored the way her stomach fluttered when Nala said the name of Victor’s firm. “They have a great reputation, and the projects they’ve done in Miami and across the States are phenomenal. They’re the perfect fit for your Sanctuary project.”
“It looks like it. Thanks for sending the links to their website and the Herald articles about their work.”
“I like to be thorough.”
Nala had inherited a mansion from her long-dead parents. It was a place she didn’t want to live in and had left to basically rot for years. But then she had the idea to turn it into a nonprofit space for homeless kids, kids who were kicked out of their homes for one reason or another and wanted to stay in school or get jobs but weren’t quite able to do it on their own. A sort of semipermanent home for formerly homeless kids. Nala wanted to complete the renovations to the mansion, have a party to celebrate her best friend’s marriage and new baby, then turn it over to the kids who wanted to move in.
When Nala told her the idea the night they’d met at a party on Star Island, it instantly captivated Mella. Helping kids who had been abandoned by their parents, people who were supposed to love them no matter what, had resonated with her immediately. She offered to help with the logistics of the mansion’s renovations, even finding a firm to deal with the applications to live in the home. The project and what it would eventually do for an underserved part of the city’s population made Mella feel she was doing something worthwhile with her life. She was thankful to Nala for giving her that chance.
“I’m hoping the firm would get some good publicity out of this, at the very least,” Mella continued. “Victor Raphael has been a good sport about this whole thing, especially since it wasn’t even him that put his services up for auction.” She explained Kingsley’s prank.
Nala snorted. “That sounds like something Kingsley would do. For someone who runs a Fortune 500 company, he has a lot of damn time on his hands.”
“You know him?” Mella took another sip of her coffee, then balanced the cup on the railing.
“He’s my best-friend-in-law’s brother.”
Mella laughed, almost choking on her coffee. “What?”
Chuckling, Nala explained their connection, that Kingsley was the older brother to her best friend’s husband. “Not complicated at all,” she said.
“Of course not.”
Mella laughed again and shook her head. It was a small world. “Anyway, Victor’s going through with the project, although obviously he doesn’t have to.” She remembered Victor’s melodic and downright sexy voice explaining what his friend had done. “But I sent him an email about Sanctuary this morning. He agreed to meet me at the site later on this week to take a look at what needs to be done.”
“Have fun. I know Corinne thinks he’s smokin’ hot.”
Corinne talked to Nala?
“I’m not sure if you can take Corinne’s word on something like that. She thinks any man with a pulse is a viable choice.”
Laughter snorted at her from the other end of the phone. “Are you saying Victor’s not sexy?”
“I’m definitely not saying that...” Mella bit her lip as she remembered Victor sitting at Fever, his furred forearms resting on the bar, the smell of faintly spicy cologne, and beneath that the more natural scent of a man. “He’s definitely sexy. But he’s too serious. You know I like my men with a sense of humor.”
“According to Nichelle, all men have a sense of humor—you just have to tickle them the right way.”
“I’m not ready to work that hard,” Mella said with a dismissive wave of her hand, although obviously, Nala couldn’t see it. But even as she said the words, she wasn’t sure she actually believed them. They had been true before she met Victor. She generally liked her men fun and uncomplicated. That way, the affair was light, just like she preferred it. And when it came time for it to end, nobody would cry any disappointed
