AlTonya Washington - Seductive Memory

“Mmm-hmm, and what about Clarissa?” Linus asked Eli, who was on his way to the living room with three bottles of soda in tow.

Eli smiled at the mention of his girlfriend, Clarissa David. “She’s already feeling guilty for leaving Ray with so much of the workload—first the getaway to Cortina and then Mexico for Tig and Sophie’s wedding. She’s trying to get the woman to take some time for herself.” Eli referred to Rayelle Keats. In addition to being Clarissa’s best friend, Ray served as general manager for her late aunt’s franchise of gentleman’s clubs that were transitioning into dance studios.

“Trust us, it won’t be all work,” Tig said. “We’ll take Rook and Bark along. Since Rook’s new job keeps him up to his ears in snow for most of the year and if the weather guys get it right, we’ll be getting our fill of it in a few weeks, so I don’t think it’ll be hard to convince Barker. We could make it a guys’ getaway—hell, we’re entitled to those, same as the girls,” he added.

“Sure we are.” Linus gave a half shrug. “Thing is, guys’ getaways are a lot more fun when girls participate. No offence, but Rook and Bark aren’t exactly the playmates who’d put that fun in motion.”

“Yeah, well, it wouldn’t be much fun if everybody didn’t have a playmate,” Tig observed.

Linus grinned, the gesture sparking his faint dimple. “You know, I won’t have trouble finding one of those to bring along.”

“Mmm, but not the one you want.” Eli held his bottle poised for drinking while regarding his friend with quiet amusement. “Who is she?” he asked.

Linus’s grin remained, but the gesture appeared just a tad forced. “Do you really need me to talk about my list of conquests now?”

“No. Just the one who’s got you in this mood.”

The grin vanished. In its place was a series of muscle twitches along the jawline. Linus left his recliner and began to pace the living area.

“We don’t mean to pry, man.” Tig winced. “If you don’t want to talk—”

“It’s okay.” Linus shook his head. “I should’ve told you guys about her a long time ago.”

“Girl from your past?” Tig guessed.

“ Way past,” Linus confirmed.

“We know her?” Eli asked.

“Yeah.” Linus turned then, folding his arms over his chest while he leaned against a wall. “Paula Starker.”

Tig and Eli exchanged looks.

“Paula?” Tig blurted.

“ DA Paula Starker?” Eli emphasized.

Linus’s lazy grin returned. “Yes and yes.”

“Get the hell out of here!” Tig ordered, after silence had held the room in its grip for half a minute.

Eli roared with laughter. “Damn, man, if you didn’t want to talk about it, you could’ve said so!”

“It’s not a joke,” Linus insisted, though he fully understood his friends’ disbelief.

“She’s the DA.” Tig apparently felt the need to reiterate that fact.

Linus only smiled. “She wasn’t always.”

“How is this possible?” Eli wanted to know. “We’ve been friends since the crib.”

Linus laughed heartily then. “Does that mean we have to know everything about each other?”

Eli shrugged. “I’d say everything else pales in comparison once you know someone crapped their pants up through first grade.”

Laughter exploded between the old friends.

“Lies!” Linus roared. “That only happened when they served that green pudding for lunch.”

“I gotta agree with E, man.” Tig’s tone brought a touch of seriousness back to the conversation. “Soph and Paula are best friends. She’d have mentioned it.”

Linus grew more serious then too. “Guess she’s done as good a job keeping it from her friends as I have from mine.”

Eli leaned over to set his bottle on an end table. “What happened?” he asked.

“Lost my temper.” Linus knew it wouldn’t take much more than those words to give his friends a good idea of how things had derailed. Questions remained, however.

“Did you hit her?” The gold flecks in Tig’s dark eyes glinted with unspoken disapproval.

“No.” Self-disgust had sent the faint amber hue of Linus’s gaze diluting to its molten chocolate state. “But I didn’t much care where the furniture landed when I threw it. She wasn’t touched, but she could’ve been.” Linus reclaimed his seat on the recliner. “Touched or not, she got hurt just the same. I said things...called her names.”

“What names?”

“The bad kind.” Linus sent Eli a humorless smirk. “She’s got every right to hate me, and she’s made it clear that she does over the few times we’ve seen each other lately.”

“In Cortina?” Eli shifted a meaningful look at Tig while referring to the recent trip they had taken to Rook Lourdess’s home.

“Hmph, yeah.” Linus shook his head in spite of himself. “Then there was Mexico.”

Tig winced. “So I guess all the love and adoration that’s been goin’ around has been hell on you.”

“You’ve got no idea, T.” Linus managed a weary grin. “She should have been my wife by now. The night I lost it, I was gonna propose.”

“Jesus, Line...” A measure of Eli’s own temper surfaced then. “It was that serious and you never told us?”

“Nothin’ personal, E.” Linus shrugged weakly. “It was just so good for so long between us and I didn’t want to do anything to set them off.”

“Them?”

“My demons,” Linus said in reply to Tig’s query. “They’d been quiet for so long before that night. I thought maybe...maybe they were gone. That somehow I’d defeated them. It took that night to see there was no defeat, no triumph ’til I turned and faced them.”

“Looks like you have.” Tig spread his hands in an encompassing gesture. “We haven’t been witness to any furniture-throwing outbreaks lately.”

“Paula hasn’t been in my life lately, T. Sometimes I think all my so-called progress is a joke. It won’t be real until I turn and face her—apologize for what I did.”

“So what happened that night?” Eli queried, his expression a tad guarded. “To make you do what you did?”

“That’s not the point.” Linus’s features visibly sharpened as well. “The point is I did it and I need her to give me the chance to tell her how sorry I am.”

The looks exchanged between Eli and Tig were laced with uncertainty again.

“An apology for what you did might go over better if you tell her why you did it,” Tig noted.

Linus’s features remained set. “Why doesn’t matter.”

“It might to her,” Tig challenged.

Linus leaned forward then and held his head in his hands. Silently, he agreed.

* * *

“But that’s for later. First, I want to hear about this young man.”

Paula sent strongly worded mental orders to her brain to pick her jaw up off the ground. She watched Miranda Bormann with a mix of humor and disbelief.

“You can’t just lay something like this on me and expect us to go back to talking about my love life,” she said.

“Ah, so you are in love with him?”

“Professor B—”

“Humor an old woman, love.”

“Okay. Where is she?” Paula countered.

Miranda Bormann’s gaze sparkled slyly. “Nice try, but flattery won’t help. I want to know about your young man. Let’s start with when you met him.”

“Alright.” Paula anticipated the woman’s surprise at what she would say next. “A few weeks before I got my law degree.”

Miranda Bormann was indeed stunned. “You met him then, but I’ve never seen you with a diamond on a certain finger. What gives?”

“Remember that drama I spoke of? There was a ton of it.”

Bormann blinked. “Still?”