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He sounded like the annoying minor character in a fantasy romance novel.
“Raina, I’m only here to show you what you missed out on.”
That was even worse.
He left his car in its garage slot and took the elevator to Delilah’s floor—Delilah Daniels, a medical student who lived in a building that housed seven-figure units.
What he knew of their family came from brief internet searches, Delilah’s rambling, and watching professional sports with colleagues.
Raina and Delilah’s brother, O.B., was a football player and guaranteed future Hall-of-Famer. Their father, Orylin Sr., was an engineer whose firm had evolved into a billion-dollar defense, security, and advanced technology corporation. Their mother was a former Senegalese model, and Raina started modeling at age eighteen at their mother’s insistence. Then, in the last twelve years, Raina had opened fitness centers, started a research nonprofit, and completed a Master’s in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.
It was an impressive family, so it was probably for the best that she wasn’t interested in him. Regardless of his professional bio, he was still the man who’d risked a family member’s life to keep his status as a medical paragon.
The elevator doors opened, and he stepped out, his heart racing like a Ferrari; it didn’t seem to grasp that today was about purging, not proposing.
He knocked on Delilah’s door and rolled up his sleeves, hands unsteady. Delilah opened the door, a smile on her face.
“You’re giving me full-on David Gandy vibes right now,” she said. “Where are you coming from, the theater?”
“One, I don’t live far enough away from you. Two, I was on a date.” It was a term he used loosely, but it did emphasize his desire to show up tonight. “Three, I don’t know who David Gandy is, but I assume he’s handsome, tall, and rich.”
“You left a date? To come here?”
“Desperate times,” he continued to fiddle with his sleeves, “call for desperate measures.”
“But what if I was lying?”
“Then I’d get you kicked out of med school.”
She snickered.
He rolled his eyes.
Despite coming from the most affluent family in her cohort, Delilah was humble, friendly, and extremely likable. It was a joy to teach her and watch her medical knowledge grow and develop. To retain his ornery persona, he treated her like his number one pest, but Delilah had quickly gone from mentee to a younger sister figure.
She opened the door wider and waved him inside, and he went from adjusting his sleeves to repeatedly squeezing his hands into fists. Raina, seated on the living room sofa, turned around.
Their eyes met.
And he silently choked on his entire speech.
“Who’s your friend, Lilah?” she asked.
“Instructor, actually,” Delilah said.
Raina left the sofa and walked over. “Well, thank you for giving my sister these opportunities. They mean a lot to her, and you’re giving her access to an invaluable network that’ll be pivotal in her future career.”
He didn’t respond.
There was no way she didn’t recognize him.
“Actually, Raina, you’ve met before,” Delilah added. “At a conference in Greece. Maybe if I poured a cup of water over his head?”
The garden gnome-sized beautiful conniver knew precisely who he was, and she was mistaken if she thought he’d let her erase him from her memories before he purged her from his.
“Dr. Lucas Suh-something?” she asked. “Yeah, I remember. Awfully quiet for a man who had a lot to say in Greece.”
Finally, he found his voice. “I already apologized for that. I…didn’t see your point at the time.”
