Page 2 of Six More Minutes
“You can feel me however you want, Myles.” She meant those words even if she had no idea how long this bliss would last, not after she said what she’d come here to say.
Two
This woman looked toogood wearing no clothes. Hell, she was fine as fuck when she was fully dressed. No wonder he couldn’t stop thinking about her in between their little meet ups. Shaking his head, Myles opened one of the cabinets and pulled out two glasses.
“What are you over there shaking your head about?”
Even her voice enchanted him and if his sisters ever heard him say that he’d never hear the end of it. There was just something about her slightly husky tone that he enjoyed hearing, which is probably why he played her phone messages more than once when there was absolutely no other reason to do so.
“Just thinking about how we met here in Temptation a year ago and now we’re back here again.”
“Yeah, it has been a year. If I hadn’t been called over to Holidays Inn to help Cordy we would’ve never met.”
“And we’d never have snuck out for that late night walk.”
That walk had started it all. For as much as Myles had been traveling all his life, he always had problems sleeping in strange beds through the night. As homey as the Holidays Inn and the people who worked there had felt to him upon arriving, his non-sleeping streak had continued.
Gemma was putting a cast iron skillet on top of the six-burner stove as she looked over her shoulder. “When you came into that kitchen, interrupting my midnight snack raid and asked if I wanted to join you for a walk out in the cold, I thought you had lost your mind.”
Her hair was a wild mass off curls hanging down her back. She’d put on one of those sexy as hell nightshirts she liked to wear. At a glance it seemed like just an ordinary T-shirt, but the thin material made it see-through in some spots and the tattered V-neck collar made it impossible to ignore all that natural cleavage she had going on. It came to her upper thigh, tucking under her perfectly rounded ass and just hiding the glorious spot between her legs that he couldn’t wait to get back inside of.
“Is that really what you thought? Because you didn’t seem to hesitate at the offer.” She hadn’t. Instead, she’d smiled at him, her cinnamon-brown eyes lighting up at his words making him feel like it had been fate that landed him at that bed and breakfast at that precise moment in time.
Not that Myles believed in fate. That was something his mother and his youngest sister, Cee-Cee talked about all the damn time. How things were pre-ordained, destiny fulfilled and all that crap. Myles was a realist and so was his middle sister, Kendra. They took the world and everything in it for what it was at face value. His father, on the other hand, believed in his music and had been stuck in that world all of Myles’ life.
“That’s because I thought you were cute,” she said.
“Oh really?” He put plates and napkins on the six-foot long oak table across from the island in the center of the kitchen and then moved closer to where she stood. “You never told me that before.”
She lay strips of bacon in the skillet causing a crackling sound to echo throughout the large space. “I don’t have to tell you what you already know. Besides, I’m sure plenty of women have told you how good you look before.”
He extended his arm and pushed a wavy strand of hair away from her face. “It hits different coming from you.”
The surprised look she gave him also hit him differently and he dropped his hand quickly. For a few prolonged moments they just stared at each other. Him trying to figure out why he’d decided to come to Temptation at the last minute under the pretense of handling business his construction manager could’ve easily taken care of after the new year. And her, probably wondering what the hell was going on with him.
“So, when is the resort opening?” She turned her attention back to the bacon, flipping it over before moving to the part of the counter where the waffle iron was warming. “Remember I told you about my sister-in-law Morgan and her sister Wendy? Well, they were talking about the town looking forward to the opening celebration. My brother Gray was more concerned about the media coming into town even though the exposure would definitely be good for Temptation’s economy.”
Deciding it probably wasn’t a good idea to get caught up in watching her move throughout this space as comfortably as if she lived there, Myles headed over to the coffee machine to see if he could fix them both a cup without causing too much of a mess.
“First week of April,” he told her and found the power button to the machine. They had one like this in his office back in Chesapeake, so he was relieved to see familiar control buttons. Fred Randall, the real estate agent who’d assisted him in finding the perfect location for the resort as well as this amazing cabin, had also hired someone to come in and make sure the place was fully stacked with food for his stay here this week. The guy was knowledgeable and dependable, even if his wife Millie was Temptation’s biggest and nosiest busybody. “I don’t know any details about the celebration, my sister and business partner, Kendra handles all of our PR and marketing.”
“That’s right, you’re partners with one sister and your other sister, Cecile, right? She’s a botanist. I remember because she and my sister Gen are Black girls in STEM and I love it!”
Myles dropped the first miniature coffee cup into the dispenser and closed it before placing a mug under the nozzle. Almost forgetting to add the water, he grabbed the container off the side of the machine and headed to the sink.
“Yeah, but she prefers to be called Cee-Cee. My mom’s really proud of her too. I mean, she’s proud of all of her children but she says she knew Kendra and I would own a business of some sort because we were so bossy as children.”
“So was I,” Gemma said. “I was my mother’s best helper and with sextuplets she needed all the help she could get.”
That’s right, sometimes Myles forgot that Gemma was one of six siblings born and dubbed the first set of African American sextuplets in the town of Temptation. Her family was just as notable as his.
“I was my parents’ biggest headache,” he said and then turned off the water with a sigh.
“Why? Because you were the only son oftheMyles Denton, lead singer of the Sweet Tones in the sixties and seventies and then chart-topping solo artist from the eighties and nineties. I couldn’t believe it when you told me that’s who your father was. I mean you introduced yourself as Myles Donovan when we first met and of course I’d heard of Parker and Savian Donovan via the television station they owned.”
Gemma had mentioned that to him earlier this year when she decided not to participate in the reality TV show his cousins were producing along with Ava Cannon who was now married to Gemma’s brother Gage. He recalled wondering if that made him and Gemma some type of distant relative and if so, they’d already slept together so that was bound to be a tricky situation. Luckily, he’d decided the distance was too great for there to be anything weird about him and Gemma sleeping together. At least as far as some of their family members knowing and being married to each other. On the other hand, these weekend trysts they’d kept going in the past year weren’t exactly what some would call a normal dating routine.
But he and Gemma weren’t dating. Myles didn’t do the “official dating” type connections. In fact, he preferred this on again, off again arrangement much better and was both amazed and pleased that Gemma seemed to be fine with it too.
