At First Kiss Read online

  She turned around and gave the offending hand a hard glare. He still wouldn’t let go. He stepped closer until there was no semblance of personal space whatsoever.

  She inhaled.

  Mmm. Drakkar Noir. Nice.

  “What’s your problem, Jasmine? Why won’t you just—” He cut himself off, and before she knew it his lips were on hers and he had engulfed her mouth, mind and all of her senses in his all-consuming grasp.

  His arms locked behind her and he held her so still and so close that the only thing she could move was her mouth. And apparently her mouth wanted to move. Her tongue snaked its way into his mouth and swirled around like it had found a new playground or something.

  Her heart felt like it was going to beat its way out of her chest and her toes tingled. What the hell kind of kiss made your toes tingle? she wondered, as she pressed closer to him, enjoying the warmth of his body heat.

  We are on fire.

  She sucked his tongue into her mouth and decided to forget about her out-of-control heartbeat. He tasted too damn good.

  Fire and Desire like Rick James and Teena Marie. I’m talking square biz. I’m talking lo—

  She pulled her tongue, her body and her mind back at the same time and she used the hands that were trailing his massive and muscular chest to push him away. The disconnection between them was so gut-wrenching and so swift she almost fell.

  It’s you! You? Oh. Hell. No. Not today. Not ever!

  Panting and trying to keep her heart rate from spiraling out of control, she glared at him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand with as much disgust as someone who had literally been kissed senseless could muster. “Don’t ever do that again! I do not like you. And you need to just stay away from me.” She straightened her shoulders and half walked, half ran away.

  Troy Singleton had taken her through a range of emotions in the space of a few hours. More emotions than any guy had ever taken her through before, and that placed him in a category all by his lonesome…

  And that was just where he needed to stay, all by himself and the hell away from her. She couldn’t afford to let him get too close, ever. He could never catch her slipping or she would fall…fast.

  Troy stood in the middle of the hallway and watched as Jasmine did her breakneck dash to get away from him. The expression that a feather could knock him down came to mind. Even though he could hear a small whisper in the far nether regions of his mind whispering, it’s her, her, he didn’t want to go after her, that was for damn sure. In fact, as soon as his knees were no longer weak and his toes uncurled and stopped tingling, he was probably going to run in the opposite direction and get the hell out of that restaurant.

  If he was going to live up to his boast that he would remain a bachelor until he died and then they’d have to pry his player card out of his cold, dead hands, he needed to get as far away from Jasmine Stewart as possible.

  He could never allow himself to get too close to her.

  Ever.

  He just reminded himself how mean and evil and crazy she was. That would work, and his player status would be safe…

  Chapter 2

  “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players…”

  —Shakespeare

  Ten years later

  “Wha de France yuh telling muh? Yuh mus be mad, nuh?” Stunned and increasingly livid didn’t even begin to cover the feeling of dread creeping through Jazz’s body. She knew she was just on the edge of losing it completely because her Bajan was coming out. Even though she had been on her mother’s island home of Barbados for a couple of days now, it wasn’t just being around her Barbadian kin that had made her code switch and flip on her dialect. It was the stress of losing the one person she loved more than anything in the world that had her about to snap on the puny lawyer.

  The past few days had been one shock after another, starting with her mother’s death.

  Jazz hadn’t even known that the cancer had come back. She’d been traveling a lot for work, a lot of traveling for a local television personality, anyway. And travel to and from Boston in the winter meant a lot of time spent in various airports because of delayed and canceled flights.

  Airport chairs didn’t invite longtime sitting, let alone comfortable sleeping. Add to that losing the only person who had faithfully had your back and a lawyer spouting nonsense about terms of inheritance in the will tied to outrageous sums of money and marriage of all things, and it was easy to see why Jazz’s patience had finally run its course.

  The stiff but kind of cute young lawyer seemed to sense that Jazz was on the brink of some kind of breaking point, because he moved back in his seat a little.

  “Your mother has left you $500,000 with the condition that you marry in at least six months and remain married for at least two years.” He nervously fidgeted with his gray tie, which perfectly matched his gray suit and did nothing to compensate for the blandness of his starched white shirt. “If you fail to do so, the money will go to your father, Clifton Williamson.”

  Jazz never knew her mother even had a will, let alone $500,000 to leave her. And all her life Carlyne Stewart had told her daughter never to trust no-good sorry men and to make sure she could take care of herself and never have to depend on a man.

  Yet her mother had actually made it a condition of her inheritance that Jazz had to marry someone? It made no sense. None of it made sense.

  Just like it didn’t make sense that she was going to have to bury her mother in a couple of days. That nonsensical element was the real tipping point threatening Jazz’s sanity.

  Her mother was gone.

  Why should anything else make sense in the world when Mom’s gone?

  Jazz inhaled and exhaled. She braced her back against the wooden chair for some kind of support. She closed her eyes and held them closed as she mentally counted to twenty.

  When she opened them, the lawyer was still there. The will was still on the table. Her mother was still gone. And the possibility that her deadbeat—never paid one dime of child support that she knew of—father, whom she wouldn’t even be able to pick out of a police lineup, would be getting a whole lot of her mother’s money was taunting her brain and giving her an acute migraine.

  No way would Clifton Williamson see one thin dime of her mother’s hard-earned money.

  No way would she get married in six months, either.

  She glared at the lawyer again.

  The lawyer moved even further back. “As I said, you have six months in which to get married. You’re mother’s will is very specific about what she wants for you. And she left you this letter to read at your leisure. She said it would explain her reasons for wanting this for you.”

  Reasons? Reasons? She didn’t need to read the letter to get her mother’s reasons. It was obvious that her mother had lost her mind in her last days. Why else would the woman who’d told her on a daily basis that she needed to be able to take care of herself and do for herself because men aren’t worth a damn now be demanding that she get married?

  Insanity was the only reasonable answer.

  She reached over to take the letter off the desk and the lawyer moved back. If she weren’t so irritated it would have been funny. She was tempted to really lose it and throw a serious fit that would give him a real excuse to take all the precautions he was taking. But she didn’t have it in her.

  She had funeral arrangements to finalize, and her mourning wouldn’t let her expend any more energy on the scared little lawyer. The only other thing she could think about was how she would make sure Clifton Williamson never spent one dime of her mother’s money and how she was apparently going to have to find a husband in six months…

  The island breeze and the sound of Lalah Hathaway’s beautiful voice riffing and scatting like Ella Fitzgerald reincarnated made Troy feel like his impromptu trip to the Barbados Jazz festival was more than worth the wrath he was going to incu
r from his father/boss when he got back to Detroit. Besides the great footage the two-man camera crew was getting for his top-rated show, Detroit Live, he was also proving a point to his meddlesome father.

  And the women…oh, the women.

  Barbados in January—with its white-sand beaches, azure-blue waters, lush green foliage and breathtaking tropical flowers—all the beautiful women—both the local fare and the many who traveled from other countries to enjoy the festival—had made his trip all the more worthwhile. The bevy of beauties, the music and the atmosphere made him feel like he was in player’s paradise.

  “So are you really going to keep in contact with me when we get back home? Detroit is a long way from New Jersey. You’re probably just on the prowl for an island fling like my girlfriends said.” A high-pitched, nasal voice piped into his chill space sounding like a deep and ugly scratch on a vintage album.

  Troy pulled his attention away from Lalah’s melodious voice and the fine women all around him to focus on the petite cutie sitting next to him. He’d met her the night before when they were listening to Roy Ayers perform. She had been with a group of other women and stood out as the hottest one in that bunch.

  But she was starting to become just a tad too clingy for Troy’s tastes. And he didn’t have the energy to expend making her feel secure when he’d just met her. Plus there were so many women in attendance, women more adept at the game and who knew how players play.

  “Sure… We can definitely connect when we get back to the States. I travel a lot getting footage for the job. Anything that has something to do with the entertainment industry is of interest to my viewers. So, I’ll definitely look you up if I’m near…” Troy struggled to remember both her name and where she was from. He hoped that his pauses hadn’t clued her in.

  He gave her a smile, one of his most suave displays, and added a slight wink.

  She pouted, and he had to admit the little lip poking out looked sexy. He remembered what it had felt like to kiss her last night when he’d walked her back to the hotel room she shared with her girlfriends. It might not be too much energy to put in a little effort now that he remembered she was a pretty good kisser. She might have been clingy, but she was also a sexy little thing. It might be worth his while to play a little longer and see if she did other things as well as she kissed.

  “Candace from New Jersey,” she deadpanned as she glared at him. “My girls were so-oo right about you. You can’t even remember my name after you kissed and groped me for hours last night. And I’m standing right next to you! You certainly won’t be able to remember me when you get back to Detroit. You’re just a player looking for some island fun!”

  Troy expelled an irritated breath. She was not worth all this drama when there were so many women around. “Listen…”

  “Candace!” she snapped.

  Candace, that’s it!

  Why couldn’t he remember her name? Probably because he was bad with names anyway and made it his business to use endearments whenever possible like “baby,” “sweetheart” or “darling.” That way he never slipped and called someone the wrong name and he didn’t have to bother trying to remember them.

  “Listen, Candace, I seem to remember you kissing and groping me just as much, if not more, than I did you. And I didn’t hear any complaints last night.” He gave her another smile, because honestly he was a lover not a fighter and all her drama was starting to become a real drain.

  When she continued to give him the evil death stare, he shrugged.

  It was time to cut his losses.

  “You know what, why don’t we just go our separate ways. I’ve got to connect with my crew anyway to shoot some footage of some other island hot spots for the show. And clearly you and I have very different agendas for how we want to proceed with things. So, it was nice meeting you…”

  Damn, I just said her name…

  “Candace!” she yelled in that horrible high-pitched voice of hers, and all the heads around them turned. She rolled her eyes, let out a huff of breath and stormed off, leaving him to face the irritated people sitting around them who had been trying to enjoy Lalah Hathaway.

  Troy threw up his hands in apology. Even though he hadn’t been the one to cause a scene, he shouldn’t have gotten involved with the clingy woman in the first place. If he had been at the top of his game he would have pegged her for the drama-queen type as soon as he’d met her.

  He could have chalked it up to his father’s threats to disinherit him if he didn’t settle down, leave the show and come into the boardroom. But a small voice in the back of his head had doubts.

  Maybe I really am getting too old for this shit after all…

  The walking dead.

  That’s what Jazz felt like as she walked to her airport gate dragging her carry-on bag behind her. The past few days on the beautiful island of her birth had gone by in a blur. From burying her mother, to connecting with family she hadn’t seen in years, to processing the dreadful news she had gotten from her mother’s lawyer, Jazz hadn’t seen a good night’s rest in at least a week.

  The only thing she wanted to do was get back to Boston, sleep in her own bed and mourn her mother in peace. Unfortunately, when she got back to Boston, she would have to finish getting things squared away for her move and her new job in Detroit.

  She was finally on her way to the big time—cohosting her own show and not just doing entertainment and girl-about-town slots on someone else’s show—and her mother wasn’t going to be there to enjoy it with her.

  “Jasmine, is that you?”

  That voice…

  Good grief, not now!

  Why did she have to run into the self-proclaimed playa of the decade in the middle of the Grantley Adams International Airport when she was looking and feeling like crap? And what the hell was Mr. Lover Lover doing in Barbados in the middle of January, anyway?

  Troy Singleton, the jet-setting playboy, probably didn’t even need a reason to be on a tropical island in the middle of the winter. He was probably just taking a spur-of-the-moment trip.

  And why was he still calling her Jasmine when everyone called her Jazz? The only person that got away with calling her by her full name was her mother.

  I can’t stand Troy Singleton!

  He walked over to her and she gave him a quick once-over. He would be looking all good when she looked like a hot mess. The man was tall, built like a power forward basketball player and the color of rich, deep caramel. He was, in a word or two, hella fine. “It is you.” He quickly embraced her and she gave him the half-pat-butt-poked-out-and-away church hug.

  They both let go just as quickly as they could. They couldn’t get away from each other soon enough.

  She had no idea what his deal was, but she knew her own reason for the quick hug all too well. Un til she’d met Troy, she had never met a man she wouldn’t let wine and dine her. She couldn’t afford to let Troy Singleton buy her a hot dog on the street, let alone anything else at all.

  She lived by the motto “Men are like buses. Miss one? Next fifteen minutes another one will be passing by.” She was a serial dater and proud of it. They would never catch her slipping, and her player card was certified platinum.

  “You look like death warmed over, Jasmine. What the hell happened to you?” He looked her up and down with a twisted-up expression on his face.

  She glared at him and ran her hand across her head. The cute twist out she’d had when she first arrived in Barbados was long gone, and her bright auburn natural hair was now pulled into a rather funky ponytail.

  And it was too darn hot for makeup, even if she had dark circles the size of tea bags under her eyes.

  While her sweatsuit might not have been Juicy Couture and was instead Hanes mix and match, it was comfortable for the long plane ride.

  And who the hell was Troy Singleton to be telling her what she looked like, anyway?

  She narrowed her very tired eyes. “Well, hello to you too, Stud.”

  He fr
owned at her little nickname for him.

  If he refused to call her Jazz like the rest of the known and free world then she made it her business to call him anything but his name. Her favorite was variations of Stud, from Studly to Studster to Studalicious and then some.

  He sighed, and she could tell the exact moment when he chose to ignore her.

  “Were you at the Jazz Festival? It was amazing, wasn’t it? Are you covering it for those little spots you do in Boston? Oh, wait, Alicia said you’re moving to Detroit soon. Are you going to be working for my competition?” She smirked. If you only knew, Studdy Boy…

  “I didn’t even realize the Jazz Festival was going on, I was too busy. My mom passed away and she wanted to be buried here, at home in Barbados. So I had to do that—”

  He hugged her and it startled her so she stopped speaking.

  “I’m so sorry to hear about your mom, Jasmine. Alicia didn’t tell me that you were here burying your mother. I would have come to the funeral to pay my respects. I was here all week shooting footage for Detroit Live.”

  She cleared her throat and tried to pull away, but he held her close. “Alicia didn’t know that my mom passed away. I didn’t want to upset her. She’s in the last stages of pregnancy with my godchild, after all.”

  “Our godchild,” he corrected. “And she is going to be so mad at you! Alicia’s going to be heated! You know she has to know everything. That’s why she eavesdrops all the damn time. And when she finds out that your mom passed away and you didn’t tell her…” He shook with mock fear.

  “It’s not like she could do anything. She can’t fly this late in the pregnancy, and it would have only upset her and given her something else to worry about. I figured I’d tell her when I move there in a couple of weeks.” She pulled away from him.

  “You know that won’t be enough to appease Alicia. She could have sent Darren, her mother, her father, my sister and Kendrick, heck, she could have even sent me to be here with you and give you moral support.”