Corporate Seduction (21 page)

“That’s not how it was,” he interrupted. Standing, he concentrated deeply to keep from going to her, from wrapping his arms around her. Couldn’t she see how much this was hurting him? Couldn’t she see what she’d done to him?

“Oh yes, it was. There’s no use denying it. I was a fool, too, because I thought…I believed you when you said you were different, that you could show me how a man loved his woman.” She lost the battle and one tear found its way down her cheek. She quickly wiped it away, then leaned over the desk to scoop the pictures up and put them back inside the envelope. Holding it out to him, she summoned her resolve and looked him straight in the eye. “You never trusted me. That’s why you questioned me about Donovan. And if you never trusted me, then how could you love me?”

Khalil had never felt so broken before. This last hour of his life had seemed like a hundred years of hard labor, of solitary confinement in which he was starved and beaten. No. Even that didn’t seem to explain what he was feeling. He snatched the pictures from her. “I didn’t cheat on you!” he yelled.

She shook her head. “No, you didn’t. Cheating would have been the easy way to hurt me. Gaining my trust then letting me down took a lot of work and effort on your part. For that I give you an A+.” He stared at her incredulously. He was expecting something else. A scene, a tantrum. That was more like the Reka he presumed she was.

With a chuckle she shook her head, finally giving in, a little. “And for those bullshit pictures you have, you and the pervert who took them can go to hell! Now get out of my office before I call security.” She did raise her voice then because the sight of him was literally breaking her heart. She felt the ripping, the searing pain of the separation and wanted to lash out at him. But he’d gotten all he was going to get from the ghetto receptionist turned college prepped paralegal. She wouldn’t give him another minute of pleasure.

To prove her point she lifted the receiver of the phone.

Khalil wasn’t afraid of security. He wasn’t afraid of anyone in the office hearing what was going on between them. He was so beyond that point. What he was afraid of was that he’d take her in his arms and tell her he forgave her, that they could work past this, that he still loved her. He didn’t want her to have that type of control over him; she didn’t deserve that type of loyalty and dedication, since she was incapable of giving the same in return.

“You disappoint me,” he said on his way to the door.

“No, Khalil.” Her breath was ragged now, the tears inevitably about to flow. “I didn’t make promises, you did. And you didn’t keep them. So you let me down.” The last was said quietly.

He didn’t turn to her again, didn’t look at her one last time, simply walked out, closing the door soundly behind him.

Reka sank back into her chair, dropping her head onto the desk, those pesky tears flowing fiercely.

Cienna was still in her meeting, and that was just fine with Khalil. Everything, including those damned emails, had taken a backseat in his life the moment he opened that envelope. He stopped by his office only long enough to shut down his computer and grab his suit jacket. Then he was on the elevator, headed out of the building.

He drove with no awareness of the other drivers on the road, and only by sheer luck did he make it to his destination without causing an accident. Switching the ignition off, he attempted to calm himself, resting his head on the steering wheel. Inside he was in turmoil, his emotions so confused, twisted and distorted that he could barely tell right from wrong. He needed to vent, to clear his head. Grabbing the envelope from the passenger seat, he stepped out of the car intent on doing just that.

He was inside the courthouse, was checked and checked again because he’d left his keys in his jacket pocket. Now he was on his way down the marble hall towards the judge’s chambers.

“Good afternoon,” Gayle said cheerfully from behind her desk.

“Hello,” Khalil offered with no hint of a smile. “I’m here to see Judge Page. You can tell him it’s Khalil Franklin.”

Keith was opening his door, on his way out to lunch, when he saw his friend standing at the desk. “Hey, man. You’re just in time. I was about to go out and grab a bite to eat. Join me.”

Khalil took Keith’s outstretched hand, shook it then shook his head. “Nah, we need to talk. Let’s go in your office.”

Khalil’s voice was grave, and Keith knew instinctively this was going to be bad. “After you,” he said extending his arm towards his office. “Gayle, I’m out to lunch. Don’t disturb me unless it’s my wife.”

Gayle nodded her understanding.

Khalil sat down in a high-backed leather chair after dropping the envelope on Keith’s desk. Keith watched as the man he’d known for years sat defeated, his shoulders slumped, his head down.

“What’s going on? Is it your parents?”

“No,” Khalil said quietly.

Keith had known that but asked anyway. The look Khalil had said one thing: woman problems. “Reka?”

Khalil inhaled deeply, sat back in the chair and looked at Keith. “Open the envelope.”

Keith did as he was told, but was in no way prepared for what he saw. “What the hell? Where did you get these?”

“They were sent to me at the office this morning.”

“Is this Tyrese?”

“Yes.” Gritting his teeth, he continued, “The man is Donovan Jackson, Reka’s ex. And the other woman is?”

Keith held up a hand. “Don’t.” This had to be the hardest thing for any man to swallow. Pictures of the woman you’re in love with in bed with another man…and a woman. He didn’t envy Khalil one bit. But he did sympathize.

“When were these taken?” Was Keith’s first question.

Khalil shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“It could have been before you two got together.”

Khalil hadn’t thought of that, but agreed. “It could have been. Does that make it all right?”

Still holding the pictures, Keith looked at his friend. “Are you judging her based on these pictures?” Khalil was silent. “Or had you judged her before?”

Khalil stood, throwing his hands up in the air. “I don’t know.” He walked towards the window, then turned back to Keith. “What kind of woman does something like this?”

Keith rocked back in his chair after setting the pictures on the desk. His fingers steepled beneath his chin, he studied the man he called a friend. Khalil was a good guy, but he’d been raised with blinders on. He was from an affluent family, who lived, breathed and existed a certain way. They believed in black and white; there was no room for gray. And Reka was definitely gray. “What you should be asking yourself is, what type of woman is Reka? That’s all that matters here.”

Dragging his hands down his face, Khalil felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. He was so conflicted. There was a part of him, a strong part, that told him from the moment he saw those pictures up until now, that Reka couldn’t do this. Not before she met him, and certainly not after. But he was faced with irrefutable proof, or so the logical side of him believed. “She didn’t deny it,” he said quietly.

“She shouldn’t have had to.”

He shook his head. “I loved her.”

Keith raised a brow. “And you don’t anymore? Can you honestly say that once you looked at these pictures everything you felt for her disappeared?”

Khalil didn’t even attempt to kid himself. “No. I guess that’s what makes this so bad.”

“I could go into how you should trust her, how I told you not to hurt her, how I explained to you that she was different from the women you were used to, but that would be futile and might turn into a pretty ugly scene in my place of business.” Keith stood, walked over to his friend. “So I’m going to be the judge here.”

Khalil looked at him peculiarly.

Keith cracked a smile. “Humor me,” he said, clapping Khalil on the back.

Khalil nodded, not sure where Keith was going with this but desperate for anything that would shed some light on this situation.

“What I look for first is a motive. Who would want to see you and Reka apart? Because there’s no doubt in my mind that’s the purpose of these pictures being sent to you. And if you weren’t drowning in your own emotions right now you’d see it, too. But since you are, I’m going to help you out.”

“Man, I don’t feel like doing this right now.” Khalil’s fists clenched at his sides as one of the pictures popped into his mind.

“Ever heard the saying, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’?” Keith asked simply.

Khalil paused, closed his eyes, then re-opened them, his thoughts shifting from Reka to Sonya. “She couldn’t. How would she have even known?” Then he remembered her phone call the day after Thanksgiving. He remembered her mentioning Donovan Jackson.

“Second, ask yourself who had the most to gain by your breakup. Now I recall hearing about Donovan and Reka’s relationship. He seemed all right on the surface, but he loved money and would do just about anything for it. He sold drugs, stole cars. Anything he could do for money, he did it. That’s the reason Reka ended it with him. That and the fact that he was pimping women out, then making them sleep with him when they didn’t get all his money.” Keith shrugged. “Think about it. Put one and one together.”

“But in this instance one and one don’t go together. How in the hell would Sonya know a guy like Donovan?” He didn’t have the answer to that but he knew that she did, she’d told him as much.

“Don’t put Sonya on a pedestal, man. She’s still a woman, the woman you refused to marry. Imagine how embarrassed she was when you broke things off with her and then took another woman to your mother’s house on Thanksgiving. And she still wants you. You even said yourself that she was willing to settle for a loveless marriage for the sake of money and prestige.”

“All this is well and good, but pictures don’t lie.”

“Khalil.” Keith was becoming more and more frustrated by the minute. “You know, for a computer geek you sure are stupid when it comes to matters of the heart.”

Khalil shot him a heated glare.

“You’re into private investigating. Look at these pictures again and tell me they couldn’t have been tampered with.” Moving to his desk Keith picked up the pictures, then thrust them into Khalil’s hands. “Now at first glance you would think it was Reka. But give it a closer look. I mean, I haven’t seen her naked so I can’t be one hundred percent positive, but there is a strong possibility that this could have been airbrushed. Reka can’t stand Tyrese, so there’s no way in hell she’d be licking on her or being licked by her, for that matter.”

Khalil had no choice but to take the photos even though he was beginning to think that coming to Keith was a bad idea. His friend wasn’t exactly soothing his broken ego. He looked down at the photos.

This was the shot of her riding Donovan. The hair was the same, the skin tone was the same. His eyes traveled down further and stopped. Reka had two dimples at the base of her back. The picture didn’t show any, but then the lighting wasn’t all that great.

He flipped through the pictures, looking for one that would show her face. He would know if it were her face. She was lying down, her legs spread wide, with Donovan between them and Tyrese playing with her breasts, breasts that looked a lot smaller than he recalled. Her eyes were closed in this shot but her lips were puckered as if she were moaning. Then his heart stopped. He lifted the picture closer to his face, studying it earnestly. Where was the beauty mark?

It should be there, just below her bottom lip on the left side. But it wasn’t.

Lowering the picture, he sighed. “I messed up, didn’t I?”

Keith grimaced. “Big time.”

* * *

It was almost time to go home and Tacoma hadn’t heard a peep from Reka all afternoon. That was unusual, since they normally talked a billion times during the day. He knocked on her door, then opened it without waiting for an answer. “Hey, where’ve you been hiding all afternoon?” He talked as he entered, then stopped abruptly when he saw her sitting in her chair, swinging it from side to side. Her face was somber, her eyes a little swollen from what he could see. The situation, he surmised, was bad. “What happened to you?”

She’d been closed in this office for the last four hours. First, immediately after Khalil had gone, she’d cried and then cried some more. It was well after lunch by the time she’d used up all her Kleenex and felt a burning in her nostrils from blowing too much. Then she’d found her resolve and thought about the situation seriously. Tacoma had come in at just the right time. “Close the door,” she said solemnly.

He did so quickly, then moved around the desk, taking her hand. “Tell me what happened, sweetie. You look absolutely beaten and downtrodden.”

His words interrupted her thoughts and she looked up at him strangely. “What the hell is downtrodden?”

Tacoma continued to rub her hand with his. “Oh, did I say that? I’ve been reading those historical romances again. You know, the ones that Terry absolutely hates.” He smiled.

Reka tried to reciprocate but couldn’t hold the grin. “You’re crazy.”

“And you’re upset. What happened?”

Reka took a deep breath, then went into the whole sordid spin her life had taken this morning. For a moment Tacoma was absolutely quiet, which in itself was a miracle. That confirmed that this was not a good thing.

“So what are you going to do?” he asked finally.

“I can’t change his mind. Whatever he thinks about me he’s going to think regardless of what I do or don’t do. I was honest with him, so I’ve done enough in that regard. The rest is up to him.”

“Yeah, but seeing those pictures had to be hard for him.” Tacoma surprised himself with that statement.

“He should have known it wasn’t me,” she retorted. “He should have known I couldn’t do something like that.”

“Calm down, chicky.” Tacoma continued to stroke her hand because she was getting riled up, and when Reka got riled up the next step was usually her swinging on you. “I’m not saying he’s right for being mad and confronting you. All I’m saying is that you need to put yourself in his shoes for a minute. Imagine if you’d opened up a package of pictures of him and that uppity woman you met. You would have been ready to rip him a new…”

“Tacoma! I get the picture,” she interrupted. Taking another deep breath—all this therapeutic breathing she was doing made her feel as if she were about to give birth—and closed her eyes. “I guess I would have been upset initially. But I really believed he wouldn’t hurt me. He made me believe that.”

“Sweetie, he can’t make you do anything. Don’t forget I know you, if nobody else does. You believed he wouldn’t hurt you because you loved him. You wanted to believe in him and the relationship you had. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Sometimes a person’s first reaction is more emotional than rational.”

“He never even asked me if it were true,” she said in a small voice. “He just believed it. Just like that. I think that’s what hurt the most.”

Leaning over, Tacoma wrapped her in his arms. “I know, sweetie. But everything’s going to work out. You just wait and see.”

“I don’t think so, Tacoma,” she said as he released her.

Tacoma waved a hand. “Sure it is. Because we’re going to work it out.”

“Oh, goodness, slow down, Rambo.”

Tacoma was moving about the office now. “Uh-uh, there’s no slow down now. Not this time. We’re going down that hall and we’re going to snatch that little hussy right out of her chair and beat her little ass!”

Reka was already shaking her head. “We can’t do that.”

“What do you mean, we can’t? Are you crazy? Has falling in love permanently distorted your mind? The Reka I know would be about handling her business.”

She stood. “I am going to handle my business, just not in the office.” She picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Sit down,” she instructed him. “Watch and learn. This is how a real woman works.”

Tacoma frowned, plopped his bony body into a chair and crossed his legs. He was ready to go, ready to snatch Tyrese bald, but he’d wait for now. Reka was his partner in crime, his road dog, his very best friend in the world. He’d do anything to keep her happy, and right now that included beating down a woman.

“Donovan, this is Reka. Give me a call as soon as you get this message.” She hung up, then sat back in her chair. “Somebody paid him. I know they did. Donovan loves money, and if the price was right he’d do just about anything.” She was tapping her finger against her chin. “What I can’t figure out is who would pay him to do this. And why would he do it with Tyrese?”

“That’s simple. The Fifth Avenue Ho,” Tacoma said matter of factly.

A knock sounded on the door and Cienna walked in. “Hi, I was looking for Khalil. I got his messages and just managed to get a moment to see him. Do you guys know where he is?”

Tacoma looked at Reka, who tried her best not to cry all over again. Cienna looked at the two of them and knew something was going on. “What’s happened?” She was in the office with the door closed behind her in no time.