Carter’s phone vibrated when he turned it on. A single message from Kingsley had come in during the five-hour flight.
Got in touch with the firm you suggested. We got lucky they took our call outside office hours. Their chief strategist will be in my office when you get here.
His brother didn’t waste any time...
Other than that, only one new business emergency had come up. Plus, an update from Kingsley’s fiancée about the engagement party the whole family was expected to attend. He sent his assistant the details so she could keep him on track.
As soon as the aircraft door opened and he was free to go, Carter nodded to his neighbor and left with his single piece of carry-on luggage. The patience to wait for bags to arrive at the luggage carousal just wasn’t in him. Not to mention, he wasn’t often anywhere long enough to need more than a change of clothes, his laptop and cell phone.
He wound his way through the airport to the curbside. A scant three minutes later, a black town car pulled up and the driver slid down the passenger-side window.
“Mr. Diallo?”
He nodded and barely moved toward the car before the driver leaped out, a woman in a crisp dark uniform, and opened the door for him.
“Thank you,” he said, but she was already back in the driver’s seat and pulling away from the curb.
During the drive, he checked his messages again. His assistant, who was worth her weight in gold and rubies, scheduled the meeting with Kingsley in the early afternoon. This gave Carter enough time to head home, shower, change and take care of some urgent business for his own firm. The situation with Jaxon was urgent but no one was about to keel over.
While he took care of these basic things, the chauffeur waited.
They made good time to the office and Carter offered the woman a tip, which she respectfully refused before driving away from the thirty-story Miami high-rise that housed the Diallo Corporation and a few other interests the family owned.
When he walked into the building, it felt like home. More so than the three-thousand-square-foot house he’d recently bought on Hibiscus Island.
He’d been coming to the building since he was a kid, always eager to see what magical things the lab came up with or find out firsthand what kept his parents away from home so much. Now that he knew the ins and outs of the business that kept five of the thirteen Diallo siblings employed, he half wished he hadn’t been so eager to throw his childhood away just to satisfy his curiosity.
His parents had taken that curiosity for interest in running the family business, and once it had been established that he had no interest in arm wrestling the title and pain in the butt of being CEO away from Kingsley, they’d slotted him into the next best or possibly worst job. Company fixer aka CSO, chief security officer. A title he was convinced they’d made up.
It didn’t matter to them that he already had his own security firm, his own employees. They were Jamaican. For them, it was perfectly normal, even expected, to have more than one job.
The elevator doors chimed and slid open.
Carter took it to the top floor and walked into his brother’s office after knocking once and waiting a few seconds past the “Come in.” He’d accidentally barged into enough sex-at-the-office scenarios by various members of his family with their significant others to last him a lifetime.
“You work fast, Kingsley.” He closed the door behind him with a click.
God, he was tired. But sleep would have to wait.
“We don’t have time to waste.” Kingsley greeted Carter with a grin despite the seriousness of what they needed to discuss. After a few quick keystrokes, Kingsley stood up and hugged Carter, gave him the manly slap on the back.
“Trust me. I understand,” Carter said.
He was so focused on his brother that he didn’t notice the other figure in the large office until he caught movement from the corner of his eye.
Right. The head of the California-based PR firm. Damn, he must have been more tired than he thought.
Carter turned with his hand held out to shake. “Carter Diallo,” he said automatically, expecting a middle-aged white man. But he froze as a slender hand clasped his.
“We’ve already met,” the PR chief said in a particularly expressionless voice. The corners of a familiar pair of lips curved up in a humorless smile. “Jade Tremaine, in case you’ve forgotten.”
Carter Diallo was huge.
His shoulders easily filled the doorway of his brother’s office, and his presence was immense and intimidating. The impression of overwhelming strength was only made even more so by his expressionless face. He looked more like an enforcer than the CSO Jade knew he was. Thick muscles were apparent even under the sleek Tom Ford suit; his hair was perfectly and precisely cut—he was the very embodiment of class and power.
His face was still the same, though. At least his eyes were: that peculiar mix of hyperconfidence and authority that hadn’t seemed to match the slender boy Jade knew in college but now seemed perfect for the giant who just walked through Kingsley Diallo’s door.
No, this wasn’t the man she knew in college. His effect on her equilibrium was worse. She swallowed and barreled ahead on the course she’d chosen when she first found out they would be doing business together.
“Jade Tremaine, in case you’ve forgotten,” she said, carefully shielding her emotions from him.
His eyebrow, dark and perfectly sculpted, rose as he clasped her hand in a perfectly respectable handshake.
For such a muscled, hypermacho-looking man, he was incredibly well-groomed. His brows manicured, skin smooth and exfoliated. She couldn’t remember if that was all natural or if he took as much care with his looks as she did with hers.
Looking at him, her nerves jangled all over the place. Although she’d prepared herself for Carter Diallo, just seeing him in the flesh after ten years obliterated everything from her memory except the taste of his lips.
She’d seen Carter’s last name on everything, from the first email contact to the massive sign and logo on top of the building his family owned, even the transfer of her agency’s fee in their account. But somehow she’d thought—hoped!—it was all a coincidence.
Until Carter walked in the door, older and even more gorgeous than ever.
She hated herself for noticing.
Kingsley had a large glassed-in office. Anyone inside could see out but no one could see in. So she saw Carter coming in from the elevator, watched him exchange a few words with Kingsley’s assistant before striding with a confident, bow-legged stride toward the door. Though she’d been in the middle of a conversation with the older Diallo, Jade had turned away, flustered, to root around in her briefcase on some pretense or other. When Carter came in, he didn’t see her face right away. She made sure of it.
And now...
“Not at all,” he said in response to her ridiculous statement, and she immediately saw his brother take note, a shifting of the expression on his face.
But, ever the professional that Jade had known him to be in the few hours they’d known each other, Kingsley said nothing.
Carter unbuttoned his suit jacket and took a seat at the oval conference table at the far end of the spacious office like he was the one who’d called the meeting. In a way, he had, she supposed.
“Did Kingsley tell you what this is about?” He glanced briefly at his brother which was Kingsley’s cue to join him at the table, apparently.
Kingsley gestured toward a