AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He took her hand into his own. “Cole Cress,” he said, easing out of their shake when her finger pressed against his inner wrist.
Before Jillian, he would have matched Lesedi’s vibe, offered her an early morning breakfast as the clock struck four in the morning, and then taken her to his bed to make sure she never regretted her boldness in approaching him.
He retrieved all of his tokens before turning to her. “And if you know I’ve been here that long, then so have you,” he said.
She tucked a metallic leather clutch under her arm. It matched the strapless minidress she wore. “My family is staying in Monte Carlo for the summer,” she said, her accent giving her voice a lilting quality.
“Nigerian?” he asked of her heritage.
“Very good,” she said with an incline of her head.
He watched her tuck her shoulder-length bob behind her ear and glance away. A flirty move that was subtle. He caught it. She was interested.
Am I?
He eyed her. But it was Jillian’s shapely frame in the dress that he saw.
That angered him.
To be intimate with this beautiful chocolate woman before him would be nothing more than using her to relieve his sexual frustration and make him forget a woman whose past betrayal stung like it happened yesterday.
Damn.
Lesedi looked up at him with a regretful smile. “Whoever she is, she is truly the lucky one,” she said.
“She doesn’t deserve it,” he mumbled, clenching his jaw.
Lesedi opened her clutch and removed a business card to extend to him between her index and middle finger. “Ifyou ever fix it or forget it...” she said before walking past him with one soft pat to his chest.
As he slid the card into the front pocket with his phone, he turned and watched her walk away before she disappeared into the crowd. Deciding his night of gambling, drinks and fine food was done, Cole left the elaborately decorated casino to take the stairs up to the hotel lobby. Here, too, the architecture spoke to its long history and grandeur.
Last month he had been at the family’s country estate in Paris when the house staff made his mother aware that he was staying there. Once her incessant calls bounced between his cell and the estate’s landline, Cole had caught the first flight to Monte Carlo. Within hours, he’d been safely tucked away in the city of glamour, enjoying the serene quiet of the days and the endless opportunities of an active nightlife.
As he caught the elevator to his suite, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He wasn’t surprised to see his mother’s number. Nicolette Cress was on a mission to bring the wandering son back into the fold. She was huge on the family remaining close.
Thus, the townhouse large enough...for them all.
Same as the business...for them all.
Nicolette was so intent on family unity that she’d mediated Gabriel’s part-time return to Cress, INC. as he’d put his primary focus on his restaurant and she’d capitulated on his relationship with Monica, the family’s former maid.
Where Phillip Senior was stern in his demand for family loyalty, Nicolette used a different approach—knowing how to sway all the men in her life to bend at her will.
The night he saw his mother move with such calculating coldness for his feelings at Jillian’s apartment, he had never returned to the Cress townhouse. He’d spent the night at a hotel in Midtown Manhattan and flown to Paris the next day. He kept in touch with his brothers to assure his mother that he was alive and well, but he had, thus far, avoided any direct communication with her and handled his business decisions via Zoom calls and emails.
No one knew that Jillian was at the root of his annoyance with his mother.
Cole entered his deluxe suite. With the linen curtains of the terrace door open, the moon cast the room’s modern décor with light. The shades of white, powder blue and taupe matched the view of the sea. It was calming by day or night.
He kicked off his handmade leather shoes, undid the top buttons of his shirt and unlatched the band of his Piaget watch as he crossed the marbled entryway to make his way down the hall to the bedroom. His yawn was hard to deny because of the late hour, but he walked up the space between the all-white, king-size bed and the sitting area’s suede chair to open the terrace door. The scent of the sea reached him. The sight of the moon’s rays glistening upon the waters calmed him as he took in the views of the city’s Belle Époque architecture among the surrounding green hills.
It was too magnificent to ignore.
And he could use the tranquility.
Thoughts of Jillian made him feel as if a storm was brewing inside him with no escape. He missed her. That truth caused him to clench his teeth and release a heavy breath filled with his frustration at her.
And himself.
