Pleasure Under the Sun

Seven laughed. “It has ginger in it.”

“Damn. Ginger always makes me sneeze.” To prove it, she sneezed again.

He sipped from the same cup he’d asked her to taste. “That is adorable.”

His laughter mingled with the sound of her cell phone’s ring tone. Smiling, Bailey wiped her nose with a napkin and stood to grab her phone off the desk. Marcus’s image and name flashed on the phone’s display. For a moment, she debated not answering. The last thing she wanted to do was deal with Marcus and his foolishness, especially when she’d managed to all but forgive and forget that he was a friend to her good-looking and damn near irresistible office guest.

Bailey sighed and picked up the call. “Hi, Marcus.”

Seven looked up when she mentioned his friend’s name, a frown on his otherwise smooth forehead. Then he looked away, busying himself with taking something out of the picnic basket. Bailey sank down into her chair and turned her attention back to the phone call.

“You sound happy,” Marcus said.

“Don’t make it seem like such an unusual occurrence.”

“Isn’t it? You’re the only chick I’d ever tell she needs to get laid. Since Clive, you act like you’ve been saving the kitty for marriage.”

Bailey’s good mood abruptly evaporated. “What do you want, Marcus?”

He had the nerve to laugh in her ear. “I was calling to check on my boy, Seven. Did you take care of him?”

“We’re talking right now,” she said.

Marcus whistled. “Damn. It’s like that?” He laughed again, this time with a whole other meaning behind it.

“No. It’s not.” Bailey’s face flushed with heat, but she kept her voice hard.

“This is shocking the hell out of me. You don’t have time for any man that’s not—”

“Get to the point, please. I have things I need to get back to.”

“I bet you do.” He chuckled, a low and dirty sound. “Anyway, tell Seven that Nilda wants to buy one of his pieces. I’m with her right now. I tried to call his cell but he’s not picking up.”

Bailey knew Nilda. Another one of Marcus’s friends with more money than sense.

“Pieces?”

“Yeah. Your new boyfriend likes to hammer on things and sell them as art. Chicks can’t get enough of him or his stuff.”

“He’s a sculptor?”

Seven looked up at her tone of voice. Bailey turned away from him to stare, blinking, out the window. “You didn’t mention that before.”

“Does it matter? You want clients and he’s got money to help you get that corner office.” The sound of laughter and a popped bottle of champagne gurgled to Bailey through the phone. “Anyway, I gotta go. Pass my message on to the man, will you? He can call me if he wants to get together later.” Marcus hung up.

Slowly, Bailey did the same. An artist.

It made sense. All along, there had been something about Seven that reminded Bailey of her father—her dear broke and irresponsible father.

“You didn’t tell me you were an artist,” she said, voice brittle with the frost of her disappointment.

Frowning, Seven slowly got up from the floor and sat in the chair across from her desk, putting them at a relatively even height. “You look upset. Why does it matter?”

“It matters.” Bailey clenched her fist and realized she still held the cell phone in her hand. She put it on the desk and leaned back in her chair. The fact that he was Marcus’s friend, she could have possibly overlooked, but this... This slammed the door on every possibility between them.

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

Suddenly, Bailey felt tired. The stress of her day and the seesaw of emotions from Seven’s appearance hit her like a Mack truck.

“Actually, there’s no problem,” she said.

“If that isn’t giving me mixed messages, I don’t know what is.” Seven raised an eyebrow in her direction. “What is it? You don’t like artists. Did one break your heart or something?”

“I have a lot to do tonight. Can you just pack all this stuff up and go, please?” She slipped her stockinged feet into the four-inch black Manolo Blahnik pumps under her desk to regain some semblance of power in the conversation.

Seven leveled a steady gaze at her. “Okay,” he said.

Although his movements seemed slow and unhurried, he quickly gathered the remains of their impromptu picnic into the basket and tucked them away. Soon, he stood at the door, ready to leave.

“Thanks for stopping by,” Bailey said. Even with every disastrous thing she now knew about him, she still wanted to rush over to Seven and ask him to stay. Beg him to stay. “It’s unfortunate we won’t be working together, after all.” Slowly, she stood up to her full height and then some in the couture stilettos, giving him her coolest and most professional smile.

He held her gaze for a long moment before responding. “Yes, a shame.” Then he was gone.

Bailey’s smile withered away. After his faint footsteps had faded down the hallway, she stood in the middle of her office, with the after-fragrance of their picnic swirling around her, disappointment like ashes on her tongue.

* * *

She left the office shortly after Seven did, unable to concentrate on work. With him gone, the building seemed lonely in a way it hadn’t before. Lonely and cold. Bailey gathered her briefcase, turned off the lights in her office and got on the elevator, pressing the button for the parking garage.

The last time a man had intrigued her as much as Seven, she’d quickly opened herself to him, excited that, for the first time in her twenty-eight years, she felt something close to love, a feeling her sister always swam in like some rarified pool in an otherwise dry universe. Bailey had almost drowned. She hadn’t realized that Clive, a professor at the University of Miami, had been steadily sleeping his way through his graduate students. Even after he’d asked her to marry him.

Bailey’s heels clicked a sad tattoo against the cement floor of the garage. Although it was almost nine in the evening, hers wasn’t the only car in the well-lit parking structure. She pressed a key on the remote and it chirped once, unlocking the pale blue Volvo C70 with a quick flash of the headlights. She climbed in and turned on her stereo and the Alice Smith song that had been playing on her way to work blasted into the small confines of the car. The bluesy, big-throated song blew away her unproductive thoughts about her love life and anything else lurking in her subconscious.

With the top down, she drove to her beachside condo, enjoying the feel of the wind in her hair during the short drive. She knew the route well and had driven it most of the eight years she’d been working at Braithwaite and Fernandez. It hadn’t been her first job offer after graduating from the University of Miami with her degrees in finance and business administration, but it was the one that had the most potential for growth and allowed her to stay in Miami. Stability. She had it. And it was something she was grateful for.

In the condo, she put her keys on the silver-plated hook by the door, walking by moonlight into the living room to drop her briefcase on the couch, then detouring in the kitchen to grab a crystal tumbler from the cupboard. Ice cubes clinked against the glass as she held it under the fridge’s dispenser. At the sideboard in the sitting room, she poured Scotch into the tumbler. The liquor gurgled and splashed over the ice in the silence.

Seven Carmichael briefly floated through her thoughts as she took the first sip of the twelve-year-old single malt. He had been like the drink, a searing heat through her senses that put her on pause for a moment to pay close attention to the slow burn over her tongue, in her chest and her belly.

Bailey shook him from her head.

It had been a long day, but she was far from tired. Her work energized her. And though she would have liked to share the evening with someone—the silver rush of moonlight over her hardwoods, the coolness of the floor against her bare feet, her quiet walk back out of her condo and up the elevator to the rooftop pool—she also savored her privacy. Her things.

Her home was all paid for. So was her car. She owed no one. It was a great feeling. One she cherished even as she sat at the edge of the pool with moonlight and starlight winking overhead, her whiskey by her hand. Alone.

Chapter 3

“If I’d known you were going to make a play for her, I would have warned you.” Marcus braced his elbows against the bar, sipping from his Hennessy and Coke. “Unless you’re corporate, you’re wasting your time.”

“Why? Is she just about money?” Seven asked.

He hadn’t gotten that vibe from her at all, and she had seemed to warm to him over the course of the hour they’d spent together on her office floor. But that warmth had disappeared once Marcus opened his big mouth and told her what Seven did for a living.

Seven tilted the last of his beer to his lips and leaned back in the chair at the bar of Marcus’s favorite spot, Gillespie’s Jazz and Martini Bar. The sound of the piano wove through the lazy Monday night, while soft laughter, the clink of glasses, the flash of jewels imbued the air with a subdued urban magic.

“Nah,” Marcus said dismissively. “She doesn’t care about things like that. Her last man was a teacher, some professor over at UM. She just doesn’t do artists.”

Seven looked at him. “If you knew that, why did you tell her that?”

“Like I said, man. I didn’t know you were feeling her like that. Most guys, once they realize she’s such a hard-ass, they back off. She’s hot, but damn!” Marcus shook his head.

Seven breathed in the memory of Bailey. Everything about her was hot. Her body. The way she had thawed for him like an ice sculpture under the rising sun. And her smile—absolutely incredible.

“Just give it up, man.” Marcus raised his drink to his lips. “You’re better off.”

Seven made a noncommittal sound. After what had happened in Bailey’s office, he’d been in a hurry to distance himself from Marcus, convinced that the other man was bad luck for his new life in America. He had left Braithwaite and Fernandez to view a condominium with vacancies. Luckily, they allowed him to move in immediately. When Marcus called to invite him to Gillespie’s, Seven had reluctantly accepted, plugging the address into the GPS and making his way to the club.

“You’re not going to give up, are you?” Marcus asked, his tone of voice saying that Seven should give up.

“Why should I?”

“I already gave you a good reason. Bailey is a genius with money, but she’s a bitch. Plain and simple.”

“Every strong woman isn’t a bitch, Marcus.”

“Spoken like a man who’s already whipped. And she didn’t even give you any.”

Seven gestured to the bartender for another beer. “Spoken like a man who’s never had a special woman in his life.”

“I’ve had plenty of special women.” Marcus laughed.

Seven nodded his thanks as the bartender slid him another bottle of Corona with lime.

“And speaking of which...” Marcus swiveled around in his chair as two women walked up to them, parting the crowd with their video-girl good looks. It was two of the girls from earlier that day. “Felice and Masiel are here for our pleasure,” he said, pulling Felice against him. The girl settled into his chest with a satisfied purr while her friend looked at Seven expectantly.

Seven squeezed the lime into his beer then slid the crinkled remnants of the citrus into the full bottle. “I don’t need any company tonight, thanks.” He sipped his beer, mouth puckering at the tartness of lime and beer.

Marcus stared at him in amazement. “You’re refusing this?” He gestured to Felice’s lush frame while she posed seductively, hand on hip, breasts thrust out.

“You’re hot like fire, baby,” Seven reassured the woman. “But I’m not in the mood.”

“Damn. You are whipped.” He started to sing Babyface’s “Whip Appeal” in a surprisingly good voice.

Seven laughed despite his irritation. “Forget you, man. I’m heading out. See you later.” He put the beer to his head, drinking as much as he could, then thudded the mostly full bottle against the bar with a sound of finality. He stood.

“You’re going to regret giving this up,” Marcus said. “But that’s cool. I’ll handle the girls for you.”

Masiel claimed the seat Seven had vacated, giving him her sexiest hurt look.

“Enjoy.” Seven tipped his imaginary hat at Marcus in a mocking salute, then turned and left the bar.

He didn’t have a particular destination in mind. His only goal was to get away from Marcus and his poison so he could have some time to himself. To think. To just be. But as Seven climbed into the rental Lexus and drove away from the bar, he suddenly realized that what he wanted more than anything was to go for a swim. Although he’d been in Miami for four long days, he had yet to get in the water. It had been months since he’d been in the water, not since his trip to Jamaica last winter to visit his parents.

Even then, he’d spent most of his time helping his parents around the house—fixing, climbing, painting, all good and honest work that left a pleasant ache in his body and sharpened his hunger for the good food his mother always had in the kitchen. A pang of homesickness took him, and Seven stepped harder on the gas, pushing the car up Collins Avenue toward his new condo. Once there, he quickly parked, went upstairs to change into his swim trunks and a white jogging suit, then walked the two blocks to the beach.

It was dark. The beach was deserted except for the occasional passerby. Waves tumbled up on the sand, pale waves painting the sand dark as they capered up on the beach before retreating back into the ocean. Seven kicked off his sandals and pulled off his jogging suit. The water called him.

Chapter 4

Bailey didn’t realize she’d brought her phone up to the roof with her until it rang. She put down her Scotch—her third glass in the past two hours—to answer it. “Good evening, Bette.”

Her sister chuckled into the phone. “Hello, sister dear. Did you finally leave the office?”

“Yes. Thank you very much.”

Bette made a shocked noise. “It’s not even midnight.”

There had been many nights when Bette had called her as late as two in the morning to find Bailey still at the office, laboring over some account or other. Worthless things, her sister said, despite the fact that her clients were worth billions and she handled millions of dollars of their money.

“What happened to drag you out of your den?”

“Who says something happened?” But something in her tone must have warned Bette.

“Ooh,” her sister gasped, drawing out the exhalation like caramel. “Do tell!”

Bailey picked up her Scotch and brought it to her lips. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Shut up with your lies, girl!”

Bailey was helpless to the slight smile that quirked her lips. An image of Seven came to her, his hand raised to lift the plastic cup of sparkling white grape juice to her mouth. His own mouth smiling.

“It’s nobody.”

“Well, if he made you leave the office at a reasonable hour, I want to meet this nobody.”

“He’s...” She felt the disappointment again. “He’s like our parents.”

“What...dead?”

Bailey hissed. Sometimes she wondered what was wrong with her sister. “No. He’s some sort of artsy type. He sculpts or something.”

“Not this again.” She could practically see her sister plop down on the nearest available surface, flip her long dreads over her shoulder with irritation and scowl into space. “The life we had with Mama and Daddy wasn’t so bad.”

“What are you talking about? There were months when we were damn near homeless.”

“But didn’t we have so much fun?” Bette stretched out the last word as if it was the most important part of their lives. Damn the unpaid bills and insecurity about the roof over their heads, or where their next meal was coming from, or the constant moving from place to place following one art residency or another. There were nights when Bailey had cried over the desperation of it. She hated that life. The thought of going back to something like it terrified her.

Bailey sighed and took a sip of her Scotch. It seared across her tongue in a wave of beautiful heat, flowed down her throat like liquid silk. She stood at the edge of the cordoned-off rooftop to look down on the trickle of evening traffic, the winking lights from the occasional passing car. Bette was talking, but she tuned her sister out. They could never agree on their life before Miami. It was as if they had lived different versions of the same story. For Bette, it had been a dream. For Bailey, it had brought nothing but nightmares.

A movement on the beach caught her attention. For a moment, she didn’t know what it was, but the shape coalesced into a masculine silhouette walking out from the water. A dark, muscled figure with long, lean legs and slim hips covered in tight white swim trunks.

“What?” Bette’s voice cracked at her through the phone.

“Huh?”

“Did you say something?” her sister asked.

Bailey cleared her throat. “No, I didn’t say a thing.”

“You weren’t listening to me, either, were you?”

She leaned over the balcony, trying to see the man more clearly. “Not really.”

“Typical.” Her sister made a noise of frustration. “I don’t even know—”

“There’s a really hot guy on the beach.”

“Really?” Bette asked, her irritation apparently forgotten. “What does he look like?”

The waves whispered like a siren in the quiet evening. On the sand, the man stood with his hands on his hips, staring into the dark water. There was something vaguely familiar about him, about the masculine perfection of his body close enough for her to see his sculpted back with its deeper shadows of muscle.

“I can’t really tell, but his body is ridiculous,” Bailey murmured as she leaned over the concrete barrier. It pressed into her ribs through her blouse.

She’d seen enough body-conscious gay men walking on the beach that she wasn’t easily impressed. This specimen below her was something else. A brief thought of the man who’d brought dinner to her office intruded. But she shoved it away. It was easier to be frivolous and giggly with her sister, someone who wouldn’t take her appreciation of a stranger’s body for anything other than what it was.

“Does he look like Tyrese?” Bette asked with a laugh. “Damn, maybe it is Tyrese.”

“No. This man looks much better.” Oh, my God, so much better. “I wish I had my binoculars.”

“Now you’re just being creepy.”

“No. Just appreciative.”

“And drunk, too, I expect.” Bette laughed, a low and happy sound that made Bailey smile. “I wish I could come over there and have some of what you’re sipping on. And check out that hottie for myself.”

“No one told you to move all the way to Fort Lauderdale. There’s nothing up there but old queens.”

“And me.”

Bailey made a rude noise. “How could I forget?” She leaned her hip against the stone railing, paying proper attention to her sister while keeping her eyes on the man on the beach.

“Speaking of queens, I’m coming down to Miami to do work for a Colette fashion show this week.” Bette made a flippant sound as if her being the makeup artist of choice for one of the biggest fashion names in the industry was nothing. “You should take me to dinner and invite me to spend the rest of the week with you.”

Bailey smiled. “Sure. Mi condo es su condo.” She purposely didn’t say anything about taking her sister to dinner.

Bette noticed, of course, and muttered something about Bailey being a cheapskate, although they both knew that the dinner would happen—probably multiple times in the week—and that Bailey would pay.

Her sister was quiet for a moment, and Bailey heard only her low breathing, the rustle of some sort of plant, as though she was outside in the backyard of her rented Wilton Manors house.

“You know you have to get over this thing about men like Daddy,” Bette said.

“What about you and your thing about women like Mama?”

“I’m not even going to justify that with an answer.” For once, her sister sounded incredibly grown-up, coolly attempting to put Bailey in her place. “I’m not shutting a whole population of people out of my dating pool just because they don’t have the kind of job you find ideal.”

“I’m not going to compromise myself—”

“It’s not compromise when you’re making yourself miserable going after guys like Clive, who aren’t worth anything. I’m sure the guy you were lusting after is great if you’ll just give him a chance.”

“I don’t think so,” Bailey muttered.

On the beach, the man turned away from the water and began to pull on his clothes. He shoved his feet in sandals and threw something—probably a shirt—over his shoulder. A sixth sense must have warned him about her watching, because he looked up. And Bailey lost her breath. She was dimly aware of him raising a hand in acknowledgment. Then, instead of waiting on a response from her, the man walked up the sand away from the water, and away from her. Bailey blinked as she watched the dark figure disappear down a narrow side street.

It was Seven Carmichael.

Chapter 5

Bailey couldn’t stop thinking about him. At work the next day, he lingered in her mind like the sound of the sea, haunting and unforgettable. Long after his figure had disappeared from below her at the beach, Bailey had allowed her thoughts, loosened by the Scotch, to dwell on the most beautiful man she had seen. Bette had tried to talk her into seeing him again, but Bailey refused to listen to her. Just because he had a hot body—a damn near perfect body, in fact—didn’t mean she should just throw her principles out of the window.

“That’s exactly what that means,” Bette had said with a happy lilt to her voice.

Wasn’t Bailey the one who had been drinking?

“Aren’t you supposed to be gay or something?”

“Bisexual,” Bette had corrected. “I can’t wait to see this guy. It’s too bad we’re not identical twins. I could get his cookies and he’d never know the difference.”

“I think you’ve been sleeping with women too long. Guys don’t have ‘cookies,’ Bette.”

“Oh, yes, they do, sister dear.”

Bailey had almost hung up the phone on her. After their call, she’d felt regretfully sober. She’d left the comfort of her balcony for a long shower, where her thoughts had lingered over the picture Seven made on the beach—muscled back, tight body, lean grace in every movement.

“I don’t want him!” Bailey had said to her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she combed out her wet hair. No one in the room had believed her.

The next morning, she tried to focus despite an unexpected hangover. A virgin Bloody Mary and too many cups of coffee later, she still didn’t feel 100 percent. In her office, she was sluggish, forcing her mind from thoughts of her comfortable bed to the task at hand.

Her client Raymond Gooden sat in her office, carefully glancing over the papers she had just presented for him to sign. Bailey took a deep breath of relief. The headache was finally going away, and at least he didn’t seem to notice her sluggishness. She’d managed to present nothing but a competent, businesslike front to her client as they’d discussed plans for investing the latest three-million-dollar payoff from his European film investments.

Wearing a red tie, body-conscious suit and trendy haircut, he seemed to be taking advantage of all the perks of his money, but contrary to appearances, Mr. Gooden was very cheap. If he ever asked Bailey out, he’d probably expect her to pay.

She flicked her gaze across her desk at the fiftysomething-year-old man. Why was she thinking about this man asking her out? Just because Seven Carmichael... Bailey clamped down on her thoughts and forced herself back to the matter at hand.

“What do you think, Raymond? Are these figures to your liking?”

“These numbers are fine with me,” Mr. Gooden said, offering a slight smile.