Because of You

When—no, if—he married and had a family, he would make certain to play an active role in the lives of his children. That was where Christiane differed from her peers; she hadn’t left child-rearing to nannies, housekeepers or au pairs. Her face was the first one Jordan had seen when he woke up and the last one before he’d closed his eyes at night. Even Edward had become a more involved parent. Jordan didn’t agree with everything his parents said or did, but there was never a question as to their unwavering support when it concerned their children.

The mood lightened considerably after several glasses of wine accompanied by asparagus soup, a radicchio, fennel and walnut salad, rib eye roast with a mustard and black peppercorn sauce, winter greens with pancetta and potatoes au gratin. Chanel and Paige asked to be excused before dessert was served. The chef had outdone himself when he’d prepared Apple Charlotte with whipped cream.

Jordan was amused when Rhett, who was not yet legal, refilled his wineglass. He knew his brother had begun drinking before he’d celebrated his twenty-first birthday, but usually not in front of their parents. He, on the other hand, had raided the liquor cabinet at fourteen and had drunk so much that he had been sick for more than a week. It was another ten years before he took another drink.

“Jordan, are you currently dating anyone?” Christiane asked, breaking into his thoughts.

Tracing the rim of the wineglass with a forefinger, he stared at the prisms of color on the glass reflected from the chandelier. “No, Mother.”

“Didn’t you tell me you were seeing a girl?” Edward said, accepting a cigar from the engraved silver case Wyatt had handed him. “Thanks, Dad.”

“I was,” Jordan said truthfully, “but it was nothing more than a summer fling.”

Christiane sat up straighter. “Who was she, darling? Do I know her family?”

A pregnant pause ensued before he said, “Her name is Natasha Parker, and I doubt whether you’d know her family.”

All traces of color disappeared from his mother’s face, leaving it frighteningly pale. “Not that girl who worked with Jean-Paul for a few days.” Her words were a breathless whisper.

“She’s a woman, not a girl, Mother.”

Wyatt did something he rarely did in the dining room. He lit his cigar, inhaled deeply and blew out a perfect smoke ring. A gray haze obscured the sneer around his mouth. “It didn’t take long, did it, Jordan? I had no idea you liked dark meat. But then I really shouldn’t be surprised, because what else is there in Harlem.”

Noah flashed a white-tooth smile. “Does she have a sister?”

“Don’t you mean a brother?” Wyatt drawled.

Touching the corners of his mouth with a damask napkin, Noah pushed back his chair and stood up. He pointed to his parents. “Now you see why I don’t bring a woman into this.” He shifted his angry gaze to Rhett. “Get your girlfriend out of here before she finds herself with a bull’s-eye on her back.”

The young woman whom Rhett had introduced as Amelia pressed a hand to her chest. “Please don’t mind me. I grew up with my folks going at each other like cats and dogs. After a while, I learned to tune them out.”

Jordan joined Noah when he, too, stood up. “Excuse me.”

Turning on his heels, he walked out of the dining room, his brother following in his footsteps. He knew if he’d stayed what would’ve ensued would have been an argument that would have been certain to pit him and Noah against their parents and grandfather. Edward was fifty-five, yet he still hadn’t been able to stand up to his tyrannical, controlling father. Wyatt had clawed his way out of poverty on New York City’s Lower East Side to create a real estate dynasty second only to Douglas Elliman in New York City, and now at seventy-eight, he was tough as steel and wasn’t above using his fists when necessary to prove a point.

“When are you going to learn not to entertain Grandfather’s taunting?” he asked Noah.

“I just can’t stand it when he comes off so condescending. And just because I won’t subject a woman to his holier-than-thou attitude he thinks I’m gay.”

“He is who he is,” Jordan said, taking the spiral staircase instead of the elevator to the second floor and their suites. “After I had that dust-up with him last year I made myself a promise never to let him see me that angry again.”

“How do you hold your temper?”

Jordan pushed open the door to his apartment that included an en suite bath, dressing room, living/dining room area and a utility kitchen. He probably would’ve lived in the mansion until he married if he hadn’t had such an angry confrontation with his grandfather. The apartment suite afforded him complete privacy, and a full-time household staff was on hand to provide him with whatever he needed regardless of the day or the hour. However, purchasing the maisonette less than a mile away gave him something he hadn’t been able to achieve living under the same roof as his family—independence. Noah preceded him, flopping down on a club chair with a matching footstool, while he draped his long frame over a sofa.

“Remember, Noah, I’ve got ten years and a lot more experience, and with that comes maturity. I learned more working as a litigator protecting the interest of well-heeled clients than I had in three years of law school. And now working in Harlem with clients whose needs are as great or even greater than those at Trilling, Carlyle and Browne has forced me to examine who I am and what I want for my future.”

“What do you want, Jordan?”

“I want the best for the clients of Chatham and Wainwright.”

Noah gave him a long, penetrating stare. Ten years his senior, Jordan was considered tall, dark and handsome. His black hair and olive coloring was a dramatic contrast in a family where everyone was blond. However, whenever he saw photographs of their grandfather in his youth, the resemblance between Wyatt and Jordan was uncanny. Wyatt Wainwright had been quite the rake with his raven hair and penetrating blue eyes.

“What about your personal life?” he questioned again.

“What about it, Noah?”

“Don’t you want to get married? Start a family?”

Jordan rested his head on folded arms as he lay across the sofa. “I suppose I do one of these days.”

“Why are you so ambivalent?”

“I’m not ambivalent. It’s just that I haven’t met the right woman.”

“You haven’t met the right woman and I have.”

Sitting up as if he were pulled by a taut wire, Jordan planted his feet on the carpet. “Who is she?”

“You’ll meet her if you come down to the Bahamas with me.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow night. I’m not coming back until January the third.”

Jordan shook his head. “I wish I could. I promised Brandt I would attend his New Year’s Eve party.” Their professional football player cousin hosted a New Year’s Eve bash at his penthouse every two years.

“Damn! I forgot about that,” Noah said under his breath. “Well, maybe you’ll meet her another time. Now, tell me about your summer liaison.”

Leaning back, Jordan stared at objects in the room that were as familiar as the back of his hand: the suede and leather seating grouping, the marble fireplace with the mantelpiece lined with family photographs, the floor-to-ceiling windows with glorious views of Central Park. As a child he’d spent countless hours sitting on the padded window seats watching the change of seasons.

The park had become his personal playground when he’d ice skated at Wollman Rink and walked the 86th Street transverse road to the West Side to visit the American Museum of National History several times a month.

It was at the Museum of the City of New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Natural History, where he’d lost himself in art and history, where he’d escaped the orderly life his mother had created to mold him into someone he hadn’t wanted to be. Christiane Wainwright had wanted him to attend the boarding school where countless Johnston men had received an exemplary education. But it was Jordan’s first memory of his father asserting his authority when he told his wife that he refused to warehouse his son in a drafty New England school where he would act and react like a robot instead of a six-year-old boy. He’d been quick to remind her that their son was a Wainwright, not a Johnston. His parents had finally reached a compromise, and he had been enrolled in a prestigious Upper East Side preparatory school, where all of the students arrived and were picked up in chauffeur-driven limousines.

Life as Jordan knew it changed the year he’d celebrated his tenth birthday. With Noah’s birth he was no longer an only child. Rhett was born less than two years later, and Chanel five years later. He was seventeen when his sister was born, and her birth was a mixture of delight and sadness for Jordan. The joy of having a baby sister had softened him. But because he’d left for college, then enrolled in law school he’d missed seeing her first steps, hearing her talk in sentences and other important milestones during the first seven years of her life.

“Jordan!”

He jumped as if coming out a trance. “What’s up?”

A frown marred Noah’s handsome features. “I asked you about Natasha Parker.”

Jordan closed his eyes. “There’s not much to tell. She needed money for tuition for her last year in culinary school, so I hired her to teach me to cook—”

“Did you learn how to cook?” Noah interrupted, smiling.

He nodded. “I can put together a nice breakfast and grill steaks and fish. We got close, real close, but we both knew it was going to end once she returned to school.”

“Where’s she in school?”

“Rhode Island.”

“Come on, Jordan. It’s not as if Rhode Island is halfway across the country. You could still see her.”

Jordan shook his head. “No, I can’t. She’s married. I didn’t know it at the time, but she and her husband were separated.”

“When did you find out?”

“He was involved in an accident, and that’s when she told me.”

“Were you in love with her?”

The sweep hand on the clock on the mantelpiece made a full revolution before Jordan spoke again. “No. If I was, I would’ve fought to keep her. What’s up with you asking if she had a sister?”

Noah closed his eyes for several seconds, long pale lashes brushing the top of his cheekbones. “I don’t have a particular type when it comes to women.”

Attractive lines fanned out around Jordan’s eyes when he smiled. “I take it you like a little diversity.”

“It’s more than a little, big brother.”

Jordan sat up, leaned over and bumped fists with his brother. He knew instinctually when Noah did decide to marry, the woman he would choose was certain to change the complexion of the family in more ways than one.

The brothers talked for hours about the women they’d dated and those they wished they hadn’t. It was close to ten when Noah retreated to his own apartment and Jordan went into the bathroom to shower before climbing into bed. He was asleep within minutes of his head touching the pillow. He’d promised his mother he would spend the week with her, but chided himself for giving into her plea that she didn’t see him enough. He loved Christiane, but could only take his grandfather in small doses. Hopefully the week would go quickly, and after the first of the year he wouldn’t be obligated to hang out with his family again until the Easter break.

Chapter 2

Aziza Fleming pulled the cashmere shawl tighter around her shoulders before settling back against the Town Car’s leather seat. It was New Year’s Eve and she was on her way to a party when she wanted nothing more than to be at home, in front of the television watching the ball drop, while toasting the new year with a glass of champagne.

Instead of stockings, a pair of designer stilettos, a dress that revealed more than it concealed, she would’ve preferred a pair of lounging pajamas and thick cotton socks. However, she’d caved when her brother threatened to come to Westchester and forcibly drag her out of the house to attend a party hosted by his pro ball teammate on New Year’s Eve at an Upper East Side penthouse.

Her brother Alexander Fleming claimed she worked too hard and was alone much too much. But what her football player brother failed to realize or understand was that she was content being alone. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t find a date—if she needed one. It was that she didn’t want to date anyone. She had a career she loved, owned a house in a community she liked and enjoyed decorating it, and most of all she’d learned to love herself.

At thirty-one she was five years older than Al, as most people called him, but he’d appointed himself her protector. Aziza constantly reminded him that she could take care of herself; however, as the only girl with two older brothers and one younger she had grown up very much the tomboy. She could fend for herself, whether it was with words or, on rare occasions, with fists. Her father had insisted she take martial arts training along with his rough-and-tumble sons.

She still fought, but now it was for her clients: women contemplating divorce, seeking custody of their children or pursuing delinquent child support or alimony payments. All of her clients were women, but there was one exception: Brandt Wainwright. The high-profile superstar NFL quarterback, who roomed with her brother whenever they played away games, had hired her to handle his legal affairs. If it had been anyone other than Brandt hosting the New Year’s Eve gathering, she would still be sitting in her family room staring at a wall-mounted flat-screen television—her Christmas present to herself—rather than in the back of a limo.

Aziza closed her eyes, sinking deeper into the supple leather seat. It was minutes after ten, and in less than two hours it would be a new year. She rarely made New Year’s resolutions, and this year was the same. The first and only time she had, it was to marry her high school sweetheart. The man she’d loved had turned into someone and something else within minutes of their exchanging vows.

Lamar Powers believed that wearing his ring and taking his name was a symbol of ownership. What he’d failed to realize was that growing up with three brothers, Aziza had been forced to assert herself. Unfortunately their fairy-tale romance had ended before it had a chance to begin. She’d tried to make a go of her marriage, but it ended after a year.

The smooth motion of the wheels suddenly stopped, and she opened her eyes. The drive from Bronxville to Manhattan had ended much more quickly than she’d anticipated. The driver had pulled up in front of a towering high-rise in the fifties between First and Second avenues. The glowing numbers on the vehicle’s dashboard showed the time. It was 11:16 p.m.

The rear door opened and she placed her hand on the driver’s outstretched palm, as he gently pulled her to her feet. Aziza flashed a warm smile. “Thank you.”

The driver’s dark eyes lingered briefly on the long shapely legs in sheer black hose and the stilettos that made her legs look even longer than they were under the fitted black wool gabardine dress with a generous front slit. “Just call me when you’re ready to leave.”

Aziza smiled. “I will.”

Alexander had arranged for the driver to pick her up and take her back home once she was ready. She’d told him that she hadn’t wanted to come into Manhattan, yet her protests had fallen on deaf ears. Once her brother set his mind to something, it would take a minor miracle for him to change it. Rather than engage in a verbal exchange with Alexander, she’d given in. Besides, what did she have to lose by leaving the house for a couple of hours? Partying with jocks wasn’t something she liked or looked forward to, yet she’d always enjoyed Brandt Wainwright’s company.

The elevator doors opened and Aziza walked into the penthouse with its panoramic views of the East River and bridges linking the island of Manhattan with the other boroughs. A slight smile parted her lips. Everyone was wearing the ubiquitous black. Dimmed recessed lights and dozens of candles provided a sensual backdrop to music coming from concealed speakers. She guessed there had to be at least sixty people milling around the expansive entryway and great room, but then a roar of laughter went up from another area beyond where she stood. Although Brandt had invited her to his home in the past, she’d always declined, deciding it was better not to mix business with pleasure. She walked into the space that took up two top floors of the opulent high-rise.

Removing her shawl, she folded it and draped the cashmere wrap over her left arm. She spied Alexander as he leaned down to hear what an attractive woman with a profusion of braided hair brushing her bare shoulders was saying to him. Whatever it was must have been funny, because he threw back his head and laughed loudly. Aziza smiled, although she couldn’t overhear what they were saying. Her brother, who was chocolate eye candy, and could lay claim to above-average intelligence and a quick wit, never failed to attract the opposite sex.

“How long have you been here?”

Turning, she glanced over her shoulder and smiled up at Brandt Wainwright. The quarterback had become the NFL’s latest heartthrob, appearing on the covers of most men’s and sports magazines. Nicknamed the “Viking,” because of his long ash-blond hair and piercing sky-blue eyes, Brandt garnered attention from legions of women wherever he went. He loved women and they loved him back. Dressed in street clothes, he appeared taller and larger than he did in uniform. Standing six-five and weighing in at two hundred fifty-five pounds, Brandt Wainwright was an imposing figure of rock-hard muscle. Even the black pullover and slacks failed to mask the power in his athletic physique.

“I just walked in.”

Brandt angled his head and kissed her cheek. “That’s good, because I threatened to fire anyone on staff if I didn’t see every guest with a glass or a plate of food.” Raising his hand, he beckoned a young woman balancing a tray with glasses filled with colorful concoctions. Taking a glass, he handed it to Aziza. “I know you like amaretto sours.”

She shifted the tiny silk evening purse to her left hand, their fingers brushing when she accepted the glass. “Thank you.” Aziza took a sip of the cocktail, smiling at her host over the rim of the glass. “It’s perfect.”

Reaching out, Brandt took her upper arm and steered her out of the living room and down a wide hallway to another wing of the penthouse. “Come with me. I want to introduce you to my cousin. I told him about you and your sexual harassment case.”

Aziza stopped. “How did you know about that?” Only Alexander knew about her plan to sue a former employer for sexual harassment.

“Al told me when I asked why you didn’t work for some firm in the city. But, don’t worry about my cousin. He’s one of the best litigators in the city,” he explained quickly. “And, there is no doubt he will be able to help you win your suit.”

“My case aside, if your cousin is an attorney, why did you ask me to represent you?” she asked.

She practically had to shout to be heard over the sound of voices raised in laughter when they entered a room that was as large as some multiplex movie theater. Reclining black leather chairs were lined up theater-style in front of a high-definition wall-mounted screen that was as least seventy inches. A powerful sound system blared music from one of the channels with images of partygoers gyrating to a popular dance tune filling the screen.

Brandt’s expression changed, becoming impassive. “I try not to involve family in my personal business. The attorney I had on retainer before I hired you, who happens to be a very distant cousin, had a habit of talking to the press. I had to remind him that he was my lawyer, not my publicist. But I suppose his obsession for fifteen minutes of fame cost him a client and my friendship. Even though I can’t change the fact that we’re related, I do have the option of not having to deal with him.” He rested a hand on the back of a man in a black mohair jacket, interrupting the conversation between his cousin and one of his teammates. “Excuse me, Donnie, but I need to talk to Jordan for a few minutes.”

It wasn’t until the tall, slender man with short-cropped black hair turned around that Aziza was able to connect the name Wainwright with the man who’d become something of a local celebrity around Harlem.

Smiling, she said, “I never thought I would have the pleasure of meeting the ‘Sheriff of Harlem.’”

A rush of color darkened Jordan Wainwright’s face. He didn’t think he would ever get used to the sobriquet after he’d won a landlord-tenant case that had garnered national attention.

Jordan hesitated for several seconds as the beautiful woman standing less than a foot away shifted her cocktail to her left hand before he extended his. She was so breathtakingly beautiful that he’d found himself at a loss for words. Recovering quickly, a smile parted his lips.

“Jordan Wainwright.”

Aziza grasped the long slender hand that tightened slightly around her fingers before Jordan eased the slight pressure. Her gaze was drawn to his firm mouth when he smiled. His teeth were white and perfectly aligned. She knew people who paid orthodontists thousands of dollars to have teeth like his.

His face was as perfect as his teeth. A lean jaw, strong chin, high cheekbones, sweeping, arching eyebrows and large jewel-like hazel eyes that seemingly didn’t look at her, but through her. She was mesmerized.

“Aziza Fleming.”

His eyebrows lifted slightly. “So, you’re Al Fleming’s sister.”

She nodded. “That I am.”

Brandt slapped Jordan’s back again. “I’ll leave you two to talk. Jordan, if Aziza needs anything, please make certain she gets it.”

Jordan nodded as he tucked the slender hand into the bend of his elbow. Not only did Aziza Fleming look good, but she also smelled delicious. If he were given three guesses as to what she did for a living, he would’ve struck out. He never would’ve thought she was an attorney.

She was tall, even without the stilettos. He was six-two in bare feet and Jordan estimated Aziza had to be at least five-eight or nine without the sexy heels. Her hair was dark, thick and brushed off her face and secured into a loose ponytail behind her left ear. He moved closer and went completely still. The asymmetrical neckline of her dress hadn’t prepared him for the wide bands crisscrossing her back to reveal an expanse of flawless brown skin from nape to waist. Aziza Fleming’s round, doll-like face with a hint of a dimpled chin, large round eyes that tilted at the corners and a full, lush mouth had him completely enthralled.

“I see that you have a drink, but have you eaten?” he asked her.

Aziza knew not to drink anything alcoholic without eating, or she would find herself slightly tipsy. “No, I haven’t. And I make it a habit never to drink on an empty stomach.”

“Well, if that’s the case, then I’ll make certain you get something to eat before we talk.”

She walked alongside Jordan as they made their way down another wide hallway. “What did Brandt tell you about me?”

“All he said was that you handled his legal affairs, but it was Al who mentioned that you had a pending lawsuit against a former employer for sexual harassment.”

Aziza groaned inwardly. “I wish he hadn’t said anything.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

Jordan released her hand, placing his at the small of her back. She stiffened against his splayed fingers for several seconds before relaxing. “Why didn’t you want him to say anything? Whatever you tell me will be confidential.”

Aziza gave Jordan a sidelong glance, silently admiring his patrician features. It had been a long time, much too long, since she’d found herself attracted to a man. There was something about his striking looks that radiated sensuality, recklessness and danger. He had proven that when he’d stood in front of television cameras to enumerate the building violations in his family-owned properties.