On-Air Passion Read online

  Elle blushed, thinking of how desperate she must seem to Shaye, then got over herself. They were more than just friends; they were sisters against the world. Nothing was too intimate, and nothing was off-limits for them. Even when she was mad at Shaye, she loved the damn woman. All the parts of her were open to Shaye—the desperate, the loyal, the petty, plus the good things, too. And she was slowly coming to realize that it wasn’t desperate to lust after a hot guy, even if he was anything but nice. If women only fell for nice guys, 90 percent of the male population would’ve wandered off to die in the desert by now.

  Elle shook her head. “You know that’s nothing. Ahmed is nice, but nothing’s happening between us.”

  “If that’s what you want to say right now, that’s fine. But I want you to know I would never go after him.”

  Elle bit her lip. “You know that’s not what I’m worried about.”

  “Yeah. I know I messed up. I know I’m being pushy about this radio spot. And I am sorry that things aren’t as smooth as they should be. As they could be. But I have a good feeling about this. I really do.”

  And just like that, Elle had to laugh. This was her best friend’s way of apologizing for getting her stuck in the most awkward situation ever. All was forgiven.

  She grabbed her now-empty margarita glass and stood up. “Do you want another one?”

  “Hell yeah!”

  Chapter 6

  Ahmed wasn’t nervous. Not at all.

  He stood in his kitchen, not remembering exactly why he was there. His house keys were in his hand, his wallet in his back pocket, the Jag gassed and ready to go. All he had to do was walk out the door. But for some reason, he was stuck in the kitchen trying to remember what it was that he’d forgotten. Butterflies fluttered in his stomach, but he was doing everything in his power to ignore them.

  “I’ve been calling you for nearly an hour now.” His sister Devyn burst through the side door, her phone held out in her hand in evidence of all the apparently unanswered calls. Her pretty face, a more delicate version of Ahmed’s, with a pointy chin and wide eyes, was scrunched up in annoyance. With her short natural hair, she looked a bit like a pissed-off pixie.

  “Are you sure you’ve been calling the right number?”

  Devyn tapped a button on her phone, and a humming buzz from his phone sounded from someplace nearby. It certainly wasn’t in his pocket.

  “Yep. I was calling the right brother.” She disconnected the call and picked up his phone from the middle of the kitchen island, where he must have left it when he was talking with Sam last. “The last five calls were from me,” she said drily. “Feel free to ignore them.”

  He apologized with a shrug—his version of an apology, at least—and tucked the phone into his pocket. “What’s up?”

  “Are you seriously going to play it that way?”

  “What are you talking about now?” Ahmed looked at his watch and briefly stroked its face with his thumb, a nervous gesture he was trying to train himself out of. He had about an hour and a half to get to Elle’s place.

  “Your date. The thing that everybody in Atlanta knows about except our mother. And she’s going to kill you, by the way.”

  Resigned to the conversation, Ahmed pulled the pitcher of iced tea from the fridge. He was early anyway. By over an hour. It would only take him about twenty minutes to get to Elle’s place in Kirkwood. When he brought it to the kitchen island, Devyn already had two glasses waiting.

  “Mom is going to be pissed that you’re fake dating when you could be seriously finding someone to spend your life with.”

  “Mom is the only one on the clock,” he said.

  And it was true. She’d found the love of her life and lost him at the young age of forty-three. She dated occasionally, but she was sure to tell any of the kids, whether or not they asked, that she was just having fun. There was no man in the world for her other than her dead and perfect husband, but there was plenty of play left in her, so she would enjoy the dating experience while it still gave her pleasure. Sometimes Ahmed wished his mother shared a little less with him and his sisters.

  She wanted all three of her kids to know what it felt like to have a forever love. Ever since Ahmed turned twenty-five, she’d been trying to get him to take dating seriously, find a woman he could relate to and love the way she had loved her husband.

  Ahmed didn’t have the heart to tell her he didn’t believe in that nonsense. What his parents had found together was an amazing thing. But not everyone was so lucky. Ahmed had found a bloodsucking leech by the name of Christine early on in his ballplaying career, and she had bled him dry of every positive emotion toward love and commitment just as she’d tried to bleed him out of nearly a million dollars. She hadn’t gotten the money out of him, but all his belief in love, if it had ever been in him, was gone.

  “Mom just wants to see you happy, big head.”

  He winced at his older sister’s annoying name for him, a name she still insisted on calling him even after he’d grown out of his childhood melon head. But it was her way of being close, so he let her have it.

  “I’m already happy, Devyn.” He poured the iced tea for both of them. “Didn’t you see me in Atlanta Magazine’s eligible-bachelor list? It says my life is perfect.”

  “Yeah,” she muttered, raising the glass of tea to her mouth. “Good thing I don’t believe everything I read. So what’s up with this so-called date of yours?”

  He leaned into the kitchen island, glad for the grounding coolness of the marble against his forearms. His skin felt overheated in places, cool in others. Was he coming down with something? Did he have to cancel this thing with Elle?

  “I thought you knew all about it.”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass. Like everybody else—”

  “Except our mother,” he interrupted.

  “Like everybody except Mama, I heard the show. Imagine my surprise when I tuned in for the Ahmed Clark hour—yeah, yeah, I know it’s actually three hours—only to hear you flirt school-yard style with a woman who seriously kicked your butt on the radio.”

  “She didn’t kick my butt.”

  “Yeah, she kinda did.” A new voice chimed in over his shoulder.

  Ahmed sighed. He moved his arm for his younger sister, who leaned against the breakfast bar with her own glass. She poured herself some iced tea and grinned at Ahmed, an image of bohemian contentment in her flowy dress with her hair in two even plaits tied with pieces of brown leather that dangled down each shoulder. “She totally owned you on air, big brother, and I laughed.” To prove it, Aisha laughed again.

  “I can’t believe Mama didn’t hear about this date,” Devyn stated.

  “Or that she wasn’t listening to the show. You know she’d obsessed with everything we do,” Aisha said and slapped the countertop with her hand.

  “Are we talking about the same Mama? I recall pretty clearly that she’s got her own life doing…whatever it is women her age do.”

  Devyn’s mouth twisted. “I see you’re not obsessed with what she’s doing.”

  “That’s not how it’s supposed to work. Mothers give everything to their kids,” Ahmed said.

  “All we have to do is pay it forward by having more kids and not dying before them,” Aisha interjected.

  “And this is my cue to get out of here,” Ahmed muttered. He tossed back the last swallow of iced tea in his glass and stood up.

  “It’s not like you to run from a challenge, big head,” Devyn teased.

  “Yeah, but nosy sisters are a whole other breed.” He patted himself down again to make sure he had his wallet and phone. The key to the Jag hung in the utility box in the garage. He’d grab it on his way to get the car.

  “Come on, Ahmed. This is just a warm-up for the butt kicking Elle Marshall is gonna give you if you don’t get it together.”

  “No one’s getting their butt kicked today.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Maybe a butt might get kissed…”

  “Ew…inappropr
iate!” Aisha pretended she was throwing up, complete with gagging noises.

  Devyn rolled her eyes. “You wish you’ll get that lucky today. From the way you treated her on the radio, you’re lucky she doesn’t roll you into traffic and spit on you as she drives away.”

  Jesus. “And now I really have to go,” Ahmed mumbled. “I thought family was supposed to be on my side.”

  “I’ll be on your side when you’re not treating some poor girl like trash just because she dares to like pink hearts.”

  “Good luck, big brother. You’re going to need it.” Aisha cackled.

  “I’d say I wish you two a good afternoon, but I’d be lying.” He put his glass into the sink and took off. “Don’t break anything while I’m gone.”

  *

  He pulled up to Elle’s apartment in the taupe-colored Jag to the sight of reporters swarming around like moths latched on to a light. The small building with its modest walls and driveway looked as if it was being treated like the scene of a crime instead of a celebrity puff piece. Ahmed sent a text to let her know he was there then he slowly pulled all the way into the driveway, careful not to run over any of the reporters who stepped ever closer to the tinted windows of the car to get the perfect shot. Why, when he was about to get out of the car anyway?

  He shifted the car into Park and turned it off. After taking a deep breath, he got out and headed to her front door. Just as he lifted his hand to ring the bell, the door opened and Elle stepped out. He swallowed in surprised pleasure, taking in the sleek lines of her, not in another princess dress but in princess pants, looking like Dorothy Dandridge from one of the movies his mother loved so much. Delicate high heels on her feet, cream-colored cropped pants that hugged her lean body and flattered her behind, a bright yellow blouse that tied at the waist and bared a couple of inches of flat belly. Her straight hair looked pinned and pressed, controlled and superbly feminine at the same time.

  Her front door closed behind her and at the slightly panicked look on her face once she saw all the reporters up close, he automatically went to her side, tucked her under his arm.

  “What happened to Clive’s reporter,” he asked, scanning the dozen plus reporters for one who looked like they actually had permission to be there.

  Obviously shaken, Elle tucked her face into Ahmed’s chest. “He’s out there somewhere. Let’s just go.”

  He guided her quickly to the car.

  “Oh, my God! Why are there so many of them? Is this how the rest of the date is going to go?”

  He hoped not. “It shouldn’t. Must be a slow news day. They’ll get bored in a minute.”

  But they didn’t get bored. He pulled out of Elle’s neighborhood with a tail of nearly half a dozen cars, two of them with reporters hanging out the windows. What the hell? Ahmed hadn’t been tailed by this many paps since he’d announced his retirement from basketball.

  “I think Clive sold us out.” He clenched his teeth.

  “Yeah,” Elle muttered, staring at the cars in the side window. “Just a little.”

  One of the cars whipped out from behind them, going at least twenty miles above the speed limit, passed the Jag and took off toward Midtown, where most of the date Shaye had arranged was supposed to happen. He frowned. Did that mean the reporters knew where they were going?

  Ahmed pressed the button on the steering wheel for the phone and told it to dial his assistant, Michelle. He put the call on his over-the-ear Bluetooth headset instead of the car’s speakers.

  “Hey,” he said when she answered. “A couple of the reporters look like they’re heading in our direction, but they’re in front of us. What’s going on?”

  “I think Clive leaked the location of your date.” The sound of nails clicking against a keyboard came through the phone. “Yep. There’s some online paparazzi chatter about that French restaurant on the north side. The source is pretty obvious.”

  Ahmed cursed as Michelle confirmed his suspicions. He knew the publicity game very well and trusted Clive to know it even better. The man was shrewd as hell and hadn’t made it to the top of the radio business in Atlanta and most of the southeast by flinching away from cold, hard financial facts. Ahmed’s eyes flicked to Elle.

  In the passenger seat beside him, she held herself stiffly, staring every now and then at the cars following them, her fingers picking at the leather of her little yellow purse.

  She must have a closet full of those things, Ahmed thought.

  There was something vulnerable and soft about her then, something he hadn’t seen before. Even though he’d called her a princess and cursed the lies she told in the name of perpetuating something that didn’t exist, she’d never looked in need of rescuing before. Certainly not from Clive’s scheme and certainly not from Ahmed. And he had to admit he had acted a damn fool with her since they’d met.

  Maybe it was time he stopped acting like a villain and behaved like a prince for her instead. Just this once. Since she seemed to believe in that sort of thing.

  “Okay, thanks, Michelle. I’ll handle it.”

  “I never doubted you for a second, Ahmed.” Her tone was at its driest. He hung up on her.

  Then he took care of it.

  After another quick look at the direction the rogue reporters had disappeared to, Ahmed made a split-second decision. He kept his car slow, going just the speed limit as he cruised along Ponce de Leon Avenue until he saw a yellow light. Then he sped up, blasting through the yellow light and turning a sharp corner, wondering briefly if he should back up his plan with a change of car. His phone rang.

  “What’s up, Sam?”

  “The reporters are still following you.”

  “I know.” Despite having had the discussion about the date being escort-free, his cousin had insisted on following them. Though Ahmed didn’t see what good it did for Sam to follow in a separate car if someone was determined to end him.

  A beat of silence. “Pull up at the Trader Joe’s on Monroe. I’ll be there in less than three minutes, and we can switch cars.”

  Ahmed nodded, although his cousin obviously couldn’t see him. “Perfect. See you in two.”

  Elle tilted her head at him, eyes wide with questions. “You don’t have to go through all this trouble of avoiding the reporters. It’s fine.”

  “It’s more fun this way,” he said, flashing her a grin. “Make them work for it.”

  “There’s no need for you to test them.”

  “You haven’t seen me testing them yet,” he murmured.

  At Trader Joe’s, he easily spotted his cousin’s wide-shouldered frame and the dark gray Honda he drove.

  “You ready for a minor adventure?” he said, already getting out of the car to help Elle with her door.

  She shrugged, looking intrigued. The transfer went smoothly enough. Sam left the key in the car and the engine running while Ahmed did the same, and then they were on the road again, the Honda that Sam took care of himself whisking them quickly through Midtown.

  “Where to now?” she asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  She watched the scenery as they drove, eyes dipping every so often to Ahmed in a way he felt like a faint brush of heat against his skin. Damn. He really needed to get laid if he was reacting to her this way. He shifted gears and sped up.

  “This doesn’t look familiar,” she said when they drew closer to their destination. “Shaye must be trying something new without letting me know. We don’t have dates planned out this way.”

  “Maybe she wants to surprise you.”

  Elle snorted. “I don’t know if I’m in the mood for any more of her surprises. The last one was more than enough.”

  Since Ahmed had no idea what she was talking about, he only shrugged and kept driving. The Honda slid sleekly through the streets of Midtown Atlanta, heading to a place he wasn’t quite sure was the best date idea for a woman like this, but he also knew wasn’t the worst. The way she held herself in his car, delicate and vulnerable, made him want to sh
are something precious with her. Something good.

  “We’re almost there,” he said.

  It wasn’t a decision he’d consciously made, bringing her to this place. Peaceful. Not meant for the type of publicity Clive had in mind. But after the talk of relationships and dates and making his mother happy, Ahmed realized this was perfect. And part of him hoped Elle would enjoy it.

  He downshifted and slowed the car on the long paved road leading into the small town that had been settled by one of the first Black people to own property in that part of Georgia. Others had followed, and they had refused to be chased out by the KKK when they had begun their massive terrorization of Black people. The settlers had stayed, their courage backed by the number of their guns and the sheer stubbornness of these pioneer men and women.

  He tapped a button, and the liquid pulse of The Weeknd’s latest single drifted into the car. When he said nothing else, Elle slowly relaxed, her spine curving to meet the leather of the passenger seat, the grip on her purse loosening until she was leaning back against the headrest. She kept her gaze outside the window and watched the urban landscape of Atlanta proper fall behind them, tall buildings giving way to the smaller constructions, billboards and trees.

  The silence between them felt peaceful.

  A long while later, Elle hummed with pleasure. “This is pretty.”

  The tone of her voice clearly said she was surprised he even knew a place like this existed.

  “Maybe I’ll just leave you here so you’ll blend in.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a threat or a compliment.”

  Ahmed shrugged. He didn’t know either. An unsteadiness reminiscent of his teenage years gripped him, pushing him to get a response whether negative or positive. He tipped his gaze to her again and pulled the car into a parking spot surrounded by a tall ring of blossoming trees. The winter flowers were practically unheard of in most other places in Georgia, but not here. He imagined the purple blooms crushed under the car tires were bursting a sweet smell into the air. He turned off the car, and before he could get to Elle’s door and escort her out of the low-slung Honda, she gracefully climbed out. An impressive feat in the bright yellow high heels.