Rivals in Paradise. Gwyneth Bolton
the promotion, she’d called her two best friends and her sister to cancel their impromptu celebration. She’d felt like curling up on the sofa with some Chunky Monkey ice cream, her favorite torn sweatpants and FAMU T-shirt, a blanket and her boyfriend, feeling sorry for herself.
Is that really too much to ask for? Seriously?
Instead, she came home to her boyfriend in her bed with another woman.
Isaac reached out and touched her shoulder, trying to pull her closer to him.
“Uh-uh. No. Don’t you ever touch me again! And I want you out of my condo. Give me your key and get the hell out. Take anything of yours here because you will never be coming back!” She turned and walked out of the master bedroom.
She couldn’t stay in the condo tonight. Finding him in her bed with another woman had left her feeling almost violated. He had tarnished the sacred space of her home. She had to get out of there. At least for a little while….
He followed her with his pants half-zipped. Ironic.
“Baby, please don’t do this. Please don’t go. Where are you going? Are you going to your sister’s place?”
“It’s none of your business where I’m going. And why are you still here? Give me my keys and get the hell out.” She hissed out her words with all the venom she felt for him.
“I don’t want to go. I don’t want our relationship to end. Can’t you give me another chance? Can’t we work this out?” He gave her a pleading look and a nervous grin. “I made a mistake. But if you love me, we can get past this.”
If she loved him…
She cared about him deeply. She had committed herself to building a life with him because he was supposed to be a safe bet. But she didn’t love him in that way that always landed women in trouble unless they existed in some make-believe romance novel or chick flick where everything always turned out perfectly and everyone always lived happily ever after.
That’s why she had thought she would be safe. She knew enough not to believe that fairy tales existed in the real world. That’s why she’d picked Isaac. He wasn’t the fairy-tale type, far from it. But he was her shot at a nice, staid, secure and somewhat happily-ever-after life.
Was this her fault for settling into a relationship she thought was safe?
She shook her head.
No.
This wasn’t her fault.
It was his sorry, no-good, trifling fault. She went to her closet and started packing a bag. She was normally a nonviolent, peaceful person. But she had to get out of there before she caught a case.
Isaac reached out and touched her shoulder. She turned and glared at him, giving her eyes just enough squint to show that she meant business.
“If you want to keep that hand, I suggest you keep it off of me. And get out!” Speaking through clenched teeth, she counted to ten in her head.
Woosah…Woosah…
He pulled his arm back quickly and she continued packing in silence.
She had no idea where she was going to go. She just knew she had to get the hell out of there. She thought about going to her sister, Latonya’s, house. But then she’d have to put up with her older sister feeling like she had to fix things for her baby sister. And her brother-in-law, Carlton, would probably make it his business to put Isaac in his place.
And if she went to Gran’s house, her grandmother would probably put a hurting on Isaac worse than anything Carlton or Latonya could ever do. Even in her eighties, Gran wasn’t anyone to mess with and she didn’t tolerate people messing over her girls.
No, it was best that she go to a hotel for the night. Yes, a luxury hotel with lots of amenities and a top-of-the-line snack bar to raid would be the perfect place for her to lick her wounds. She would pamper herself for the night, or maybe even the weekend, and come back as good as new to her now-defiled condo. She would be ready to face it then. Maybe buy some new sheets and a new duvet on the way home from the hotel.
I can do it, she told herself.
She pulled up the handle on her small rolling suitcase, cut a sneer at the now sniveling idiot sitting on her bed and walked over to him with her hand out.
“Key, please.”
He reached in his pants pocket and took her key off his key ring.
“Finish getting dressed and get to stepping.”
She watched as he slowly finished dressing, then walked him to the door, barely resisting the urge to kick him in his backside as he exited her condo.
She waited for him to be good and gone before she exited, too. She didn’t know where she was going, but she knew she was getting the hell out of there.
Chase “The Wolf” Yearwood took a sip of his drink after toasting to the good old days and brand-new beginnings with his college buddy, Leonard Stone. Chase’s taking the job as the head of the corporate development division at Mainstay Media where Leonard was the head of the finance department was the reason for their little happy-hour celebration.
At thirty-three years old, Chase had made more than a name for himself in the business world. Chase had made his former employer lots of money by relying on his keen kill-or-be-killed instincts. His instincts helped him in his personal life as well, especially in his relationships with the opposite sex. His law-of-the-jungle approach to dealing with the selfish, money-grabbing women he had become used to reinforced his nickname of “The Wolf,” in both the bedroom and the boardroom.
But in the boardroom, his former superiors had started to second-guess him and question his actions in unproductive ways. Chase refused to be stifled. So, he landed a sweet new position based on a tip from his old college buddy, Leonard Stone. He planned to start the new job just as soon as he took a trip to Dahinda, the island he’d been born on and the place he still called home.
His narrow focus on work and only work had caused him to miss the chance to be at his grandmother’s bedside when she’d passed away. He felt more than a little guilty about missing her passing and missing the chance to tell her how much she had meant to him. He planned to use the trip home to reevaluate his priorities and reconnect with what was important. He wouldn’t let work keep him away from the rest of his relatives, especially his mother, Margie.
The job at Mainstay was slightly different from Chase’s former job. He would still be in charge of mergers and acquisitions. However, the “corporate raider” aspect of his former job would be missing. He would be more hands-on in development instead of swooping in and gobbling up struggling companies so that they could be taken apart and sold off piece by piece. He would be building things now.
“You’re going to love it at Mainstay, Yearwood!” Leonard slapped him on the back and let out a chuckle.
Leonard hadn’t changed all that much in the years since college. He was tall and still somewhat lanky. He had what some would call a swimmer’s build. His formerly thick, wavy hair was now making a slow creep away from his forehead, but he hadn’t gone the shave-it-all-off route that most men went when faced with balding. He had a weird comb-it-all-to-the-front thing going on that really did nothing to hide the fact that he was going bald. His hazel eyes were still astute and focused and didn’t give anything away about the man behind them.
“And I’m going to love the fact that everyone knows I was instrumental in bringing you to Mainstay. It gave me major points with the boss, and as long as you do your thing the way you’ve done it in your previous job, I’m sure we’ll both be moving on up to the vice president slots soon.”
Chase squinted a little. He wasn’t sure how he felt about Leonard lumping their possible future promotions together like that. He had always been a man who went by his own merit, played by his own rules and made his own way. When he’d pledged Omega as an undergraduate, he’d earned the line name “The Lone Wolf” because