So this was the boss’s wife. Damn, Nikita Harrell traveled in high circles. He’d seen Parris’s videos and her face more times than he could count. He stood. “Nice to meet you. I was talkin’ with your husband earlier. He said he’d introduce us, but Nikita here saved him the trouble.”
“Oh, you’re that Quinn! Nick hasn’t stopped talking about you. When do you start?”
Nikita frowned. What in the world were they talking about?
Quinn shrugged. “Probably next week.”
“Great. I’m dying to hear you play. Girl, you didn’t tell me you knew such a fabulous piano player.”
“Had I only known.”
Parris squinted as if she couldn’t see her. “Anyway, I have to run. My first set starts in an hour. Come to the office afterward, Niki. We can talk then.” She stuck out her hand to Quinn, which he took. “Pleasure to meet you. Welcome aboard.”
“Same here. Thanks.”
Parris waved, then hurried across the floor and into the back room.
Nikita set her gaze on Quinn’s don’t-have-a-care-in-the-world face. “You play piano—here at the club?”
He chuckled. “I ain’t even gotta look up the word disbelief. It’s all over your face. What’s so hard to believe?” His smile was gone. “Hard to believe a guy like me could do anything besides—what—find a short way into your pants? Everything ain’t always how it seems on the outside. Take you, for instance.” He leaned back. “Under the icy, uptown, Ms. Clean exterior, I know there’s a hot-blooded, double or nothin’, wanna-take-a-chance-with-you-Quinn woman dyin’ to get out. All she needs is somebody to unlock the garage door.”
She pressed her lips together to keep from smiling. “Oh, really?”
“Oh, yeah,” he crooned and took her hand, pulling her to her feet and in line with his body, forcing her to look up at him. “I’m gonna show you, right now.”
He led her out onto the dance floor and they flowed as one perfect unit to the moods of Whitney’s “I Believe in You and Me.” One song segued into the next, as they glided together across the smooth hardwood floor.
Although short women never held much appeal for him, this one was different, he thought. She felt perfect. She fit. Like some missing piece—of what he wasn’t sure. Nikita Harrell was no Sylvie, that was for damned sure, or anyone else like her. She was more like those women on the cover of Essence and Black Elegance. You could see ’em, but not touch ’em. Getting with a woman like Nikita Harrell was that elusive dream. Would she be his dream come true?
Nikita closed her eyes. Allowed her senses to soar. She felt him everywhere, warm, hard, large and strong. Strangely enough she felt secure, as if this man could easily keep the bogeyman away. Keep her safe—from herself. He wasn’t threatened by the foreign world she only imagined being a part of, because he lived it. Still, she felt that there was more to him than the hard, thug-like, don’t-give-a-damn, too cool aura that he gave off like an expensive cologne. Against every bit of good judgment that had ever been ground into her, she wanted to find out what was beneath the surface.
“What do you do when you ain’t hangin’ in nightclubs and pickin’ up strange men?” he said deeply into her ear.
A flood of heat roared through her body, jerking her away from her daydreaming. She arched her neck back to be able to look up at him. His eyes were crinkling at the corners. She swallowed. “I work for Today’s Woman magazine. It’s pretty local at the moment. But we’re growing.”
“Cool. What do you work at?”
She smiled. “I do everything—read manuscripts, answer phones, lick stamps. But I’ve finally gotten my big break. The publisher, Ms. Ingram, liked my idea for an entertainment section, and she’s letting me write my first article. It’s going to be an interview with Parris.”
“You got my attention. Tell me more.” He wanted to tell her about his own writings and his sister’s dreams for him. He didn’t.
The music moved from body-locking to hand-clapping, so Quinn guided Nikita back to their table.
“I’m listenin’.” He held her chair while she sat down.
Niki looked up at him for a moment, the small, uncalculated gesture reaching her. So she talked. And he did listen. In small doses, she explained about her abrupt exodus from Cornell and the tension-filled four months at home.
“So, you gotta save enough loot to get your own crib?”
“Loot?”
He grinned. “You know, Dinero, cash, money—loot.”
“Oh.” She smiled in embarrassment. “Yes, I do. And soon.”
Quinn nodded. “How long you been takin’ classes at NYU?”
“I just started this semester.”
He lounged back in his seat, splay-legged. “So now what—you’re gonna be a writer—what happens to all your doctorin’ skills?”
Nikita’s soft brown eyes slowly traversed the room as though searching for the answer, or for the words that would bring her emotions to the forefront. She looked for understanding. “It just wasn’t me,” she finally said. “I tried to make it work—”
“Because your people wanted you to,” he said, finishing her thought, “so you hung in there until you couldn’t hang no more.”
She nodded.
“Sometimes you just gotta do your own thing, ya know? Everybody ain’t gonna always understand or accept that. But you just gotta keep it real and go for yours.”
Nikita looked at him. Even through the crudeness of his words she knew he understood. When had any man she’d ever been with ever grasped what she thought and felt, or even cared enough to voice an opinion that reached beneath the surface? Her male associates had always been too concerned with their own success to show any interest in her needs or feelings. Quinn was in total contrast to what she’d imagined he would be. With a little polish he could really shine.
“What about you? What makes it real for you?”
“Maybe I’ll rap with you about it sometime.” He stood. “But I gotta be pushin’ on.”
Nikita hid her disappointment behind the glass she lifted to her lips.
His eyes crinkled as he touched her cheek with the tip of his finger. “Take it easy, Nikita Harrell.”
“You, too.”
He turned, smooth as a velvet-toned Nat King Cole album spinning on a crystal turntable platter, and, like vaporous wisps of cigarette smoke, was gone.
She didn’t know whether to be angry or insulted. He hadn’t asked to see her again, or asked for her phone number. Even though he wasn’t her type, anyway, he could have at least asked for her number, whether he called or not. Wasn’t she interesting enough? Pretty enough? What kind of woman attracted a man like Quinn—Quinn? She didn’t even know his last name.
“So, Miss Thing, what in the world was going on with you and Mr. Dark and Lethal?” Parris asked, breaking into Nikita’s meandering thoughts. She took a seat.
“Nothing.” She shrugged her right shoulder and frowned. “We were just talking. That’s all.”
“Really? Then what’s with the look?”
“What look?”
“Like you just got your little ego stepped on.”
“Not hardly.”
Parris put on her best lecturing-her-girlfriend