“Oh, you haven’t met Manny yet? He’s the building super. And if you want something done right, you don’t call him.”
“Then how do you know he was right about the wall?”
Mimi shrugged. “I guess if you don’t get electrocuted we’ll know.”
“That’s cold,” he said. “You lured me up here to risk my life so that you can play Xbox.”
“PlayStation,” she corrected. “And if I remember correctly, you came willingly.”
Brent walked over to the wall and drummed on it. “Doesn’t seem as if there’s anything back here that will kill me. Mimi, where are your tools?”
“Under the bed,” she said, then dropped to her knees.
* * *
Brent couldn’t take his eyes off Mimi’s shapely behind as she crawled underneath her bed. She moved with the grace of a panther and when she stretched forward, he got hard. His body reacted in a way that he hadn’t expected. When was the last time that a woman gave him this feeling? Not since he was a teenager. As a grown man, he was supposed to be able to control his emotions and body, not act like a youngster looking at his first copy of Playboy. But damn! As she inched deeper underneath the bed and wiggled her ass, it took every ounce of self-control in him to stop from mounting Mimi from behind.
“All right,” she said as she slammed the tools on the edge of the bed. “Here’s my toolbox.”
Mimi was a goddess, Brent decided as he drank in the image of her tousled hair and full lips. When she flicked her tongue across her bottom lip, he nearly lost it.
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked.
“Sounds good,” he said, then unbuttoned his shirt.
“Cranberry juice works for you?” she asked as she turned away from his shirtless frame.
“Yes.”
She released a sigh as she took a quick look at him and then headed out the door.
Mimi gulped down a cold cup of cranberry juice. She thought about adding vodka to the cup, but figured it was a bad idea. Her body was on fire and she had a notion to run up to her bedroom and wrap herself around Brent.
Another sip of juice. She’d have to get naked first. Mimi looked down at her dress and gasped. Did she really crawl under the bed in this? Was her bra really exposed?
Final sip. She knew she needed to be sober. Mimi adjusted her dress and poured two glasses of juice and turned toward the stairs. She took two steps and stopped. What if she made a fool of herself and acted on her carnal thoughts? You’re better than this. Brent is installing a TV. He already told you he wants a family-minded woman to fall for and you’re more than a booty call. That would be a great blog post. Oh my goodness, I’m losing my mind here.
Mimi slowly walked upstairs and reminded herself to keep her hands off Brent. When she saw him with his hands raised above his head, she almost dropped the juice.
“I thought you’d forgotten about me up here slaving for your right to play games.” Brent shook his head and laughed.
“How could I forget that you’re in my bedroom?” she asked as she extended a glass of cranberry juice. Half naked and looking like you should be in my bed?
“Thank you.”
She smiled. “No problem.”
“Ooh, that was good.” Brent said, then handed the empty glass to Mimi. “Let me plug this in and make sure I did it right.” He bent over and Mimi downed her cold juice to quell the fire burning inside her belly as she had a flash of Brent taking his pants off and crawling into bed with her.
“Mimi,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“What? Yeah.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
She hadn’t even realized that he’d turned to face her. “No, I didn’t.”
“Where’s your remote and that PlayStation you can’t wait to play?”
She fanned her hand at him. She wanted to play a different kind of game and that couldn’t happen. “I’ll hook that up tomorrow. You did all the heavy lifting. I’m good now.”
“All right, then I’m going to head home,” he said as he picked his shirt up from the floor. “Mimi, it’s been a pleasure.”
She blushed as he headed out of her bedroom. Too bad he was one of those men who wanted serious. She didn’t do serious. Not anymore. Once bitten, twice shy, she thought as she followed him downstairs.
* * *
Alone in his home, Brent couldn’t sleep. Mimi filled his mind. Her hips. Her lips. That come-hither look in her eyes when she looked at him. Jamal would’ve woken up with Mimi—or at least tried. But Brent knew a woman like Mimi could be nothing but trouble. Fun, but trouble.
Sitting up in his king-size bed, Brent squeezed the bridge of his nose. He’d spent his adult life avoiding trouble and crafting an image that could handle all of the scrutiny being Brent Daniels Jr. caused.
When he’d been in law school, his father—also a lawyer—made the Daniels name infamous when he represented a Mafia hit man in a high-profile murder case. To get his client a favorable sentence, Brent Daniels Sr. attempted to blackmail the judge. When that didn’t work, the judge’s family had been threatened.
The judge had reported the blackmail attempt and the death threats to the FBI, and Brent Sr. had been arrested, tried and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. The media had held on to the story about the disgraced attorney like a dog with a meaty ham bone. The details of the story played on the evening news and ran across the front page of local and regional newspapers. Brent left Georgia to finish law school at Tulane in New Orleans. When he’d graduated at the top of his class, his father’s sins came back to haunt him, follow him and make getting a job in Louisiana impossible. So he’d spent the first five years of his career in New York. He’d made such a name for himself that when he decided to move back to Atlanta and open his firm, people knew there was a stark difference between Sr. and Jr.
In the five years that he’d been in business in Atlanta, Brent had put nineteen young men through Morehouse with his Martha Joyce Daniels scholarship. He named it after his late grandmother after his mother, Yancy Williams, told him she wanted nothing to do with publicity since she’d gone back to using her maiden name.
Brent wanted to restore some sort of pride to his family name and make sure no one ever confused him and his father. These days, questions about his father only came up around the anniversary of his conviction. Since he’d been sentenced to federal prison, he would never be paroled.
Brent hadn’t seen his father since he’d been a teenager, and their last meeting ended with Brent Sr. telling him that he’d never amount to anything because his mother made him soft.
That accusation made Brent work harder than ever. And his success was the greatest way to try to erase the stain on his family name. That’s why he made sure every move he made wasn’t a media moment. Mimi was obviously a media firestorm. Hell, she’d spent the day all over the news.
He needed to stay away from her, but knowing that she was just across the hall, that was going to be harder than his erection.
Brent was in trouble, but he wasn’t upset about it.
* * *
Mimi jolted awake in her bed, half expecting to see Brent there. When she felt the pillow, she was a bit disappointed. She’d spent the night dreaming of his arms wrapped around her as he thrust in and out of her wetness. Looking down at her thighs, she was