Sherelle Green - Enticing Winter

He glanced over at Winter, taking note that she still hadn’t looked him in the eye. He ran his hand over his forehead before placing his forearms on his thighs, trying to think of what to say. In all his thirty-three years, he’d never been at a loss for words around a woman. “I guess we need to set up a date to meet. What day works for you next week?”

She didn’t turn to look at him right away, but when she did, she looked as though she’d rather have been doing anything else than having this conversation.

“Look,” he said, clasping his hands together. “I don’t like this idea any more than you do. But I would love the exposure and I’m sure you would, too. And since Ajay’s my brother, I couldn’t say no even if I wanted to.”

“But that’s insane.”

“What is?”

“What’s insane is the fact that your brother or anyone else would think we could work well together. Over the past couple months, every time we talk, it turns into a debate or an argument. You and I don’t get along.” She waved her hand between the two of them.

“That’s because you disagree with everything I say.”

She gave him the side-eye. “Actually, you are the one who starts most of the arguments.”

“No, I don’t,” he said as he turned his chair more to face her. “Just last month at that fund-raising event that you and I both attended where we happened to be placed at the same table, I was talking to that high school principal about the benefit of a growing man having a good male role model to look up to.”

“And I didn’t disagree,” Winter interjected. “In fact, I agreed with you. I was just pointing out that the same goes for a woman having a good female role model. Sometimes I feel like women get left out of the equation. We need positive role models just like men.”

“But that wasn’t the conversation. That principal was talking about the program he’d created at his school for young men.”

“Exactly my point,” Winter said, turning her chair, as well. “Why start a program for the male students and not have one for the female students? Why segregate the programs at all?”

“I never said I disagreed with you either. I just pointed out the fact that that wasn’t the current topic of discussion.”

“Yeah, and you pointed it out in front of the eight other people at the table, who laughed and then disregarded my suggestion.”

He placed his hands on his chest. “So you’re mad that they thought I was funny?”

She lifted her eyebrows. “How in the world do you process information? It wasn’t because they thought you were funny. It was because they lost sight of my point.”

“Because they were only focused on laughing at me and talking about my viewpoint?”

“Once again, you somehow made this about you.” She sighed and closed her eyes, the sound distracting him from listening to whatever else was coming out of her mouth.

“Taheim, did you hear anything I just said?”

“Every word,” he said as his eyes dropped to her lips. She must have noticed the change in his mood, because her lips parted with awareness.

“So,” Ajay said, reentering the room and breaking the trance between him and Winter. “Did you guys settle when you’d have your first meeting?”

Winter stood and put back on her coat. “Your brother is the most difficult human being to ever walk the planet.”

Ajay laughed as he looked from Winter to Taheim. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Call me at Bare Sophistication when you’re ready to set up a meeting,” she said to Taheim as she left the office.

“She was in a hurry,” Ajay said as he sat back in his desk chair. “What did you say to her? Because clearly, it was the wrong thing to say.”

He glanced at the seat that Winter had just vacated. “When it comes to that woman, what don’t I say that’s wrong?”

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