AlTonya Washington - Provocative Territory

Clarissa sat perched on the very edge of an armchair cushion. She resembled a frightened animal ready to take to flight. She was clenching her hands so tightly that they had an ashen appearance. Frustrated by the sight of them, Clarissa hid her almond-brown face in her palms and shuddered.

Soft rubs to her shoulders caused her to jerk upright a few moments later. Clarissa tried and failed to produce a smile for her aunt’s oldest friend and business manager, Waymon Cole. Desperately, she reached up to tug on Waymon’s hand until he was seated on the arm of her chair.

Clarissa rested her head on the man’s thigh as she cried.

“It’ll be all right, sugar.” Waymon’s calm, easy tone was almost as assuring as the manner in which he stroked the wavy, dark hair that tapered at Clarissa’s nape into the chic boyish cut that she sported.

In spite of Waymon’s words, Clarissa cried harder into his pant leg.

“I just—just talk—talked to he-her.” Overwrought, Clarissa barely hiccupped the words. “I came out—out here to see her and—and to talk. I—Terry made a stop. I—I asked him to stop and...” The sobs grew heavier as she bawled. “If I hadn’t told him to—to stop, I could, I would have been here before...”

“Shh...stop this now.” Waymon brought the firmness back into his voice. “You stop that, you hear? It’s no time to sit around blaming yourself.” Waymon bent to kiss the top of Clarissa’s head. “Jaz wouldn’t want that and you know it. Especially not now when you’re about to have so much on your plate.”

“I don’t even—even know what she wanted.” Still in the throes of remorse, Clarissa’s words sounded somewhat garbled. “She didn’t have time to—tell it—tell me anything—I didn’t know. I don’t know what to do, Way. She didn’t have time...”

“Clarissa? Stop. You know that’s not true. One thing everybody knew about Jaz was that she never skimped on the chance to tell folks what she expected of them.”

Clarissa shook her head against Waymon’s thigh before looking up. “I don’t mean that.” She blinked tears from her red eyes. “She wanted me out here...had something she needed to talk about.”

“Something about the club?” Waymon’s long attractive face appeared haggard from all the crying he’d done that afternoon.

Clarissa rubbed the back of her hand across her nose. “I don’t know, she wouldn’t talk about it on the phone. She just said to get out here ASAP.” Clarissa buried her face in her hands and shuddered again.

Waymon was back to massaging Clarissa’s neck when Jazmina’s doctor walked into the den.

“Dr. Raines.” Clarissa was on her feet the moment she saw the man.

Steve Raines had been Jazmina Beaumont’s physician for years. Speculation ran high that the two had enjoyed more than a doctor-patient relationship. Of course, neither party had ever owned up to the rumor but, when such talk centered around the likes of Jazmina Beaumont, chances were highly in favor of its accuracy.

“How long was she sick?”

“Clarissa.” Steve Raines sighed but he had no intentions of providing a sugarcoated response. Jazmina’s niece was far more perceptive than Jaz had ever truly realized. “You’ve always been a smart one,” he said.

Clarissa unfortunately was in no mood to be complimented. “How long was she sick?” she repeated, her dusky gaze was like stone and fixed on the handsome fifty-something Jamaican.

“May I at least ask you to sit down?” Steve waved a hand toward a sofa that matched the armchair Clarissa had just vacated. He nodded when she obliged.

“Jaz never wanted you to worry,” Steve began once he was patting Clarissa’s hands where she held them clasped on her knees. “She didn’t want you feeling that you had to be here full time. She’s been having heart problems for years and we—” he pressed his lips together proving how difficult the moment was for him, as well “—we diagnosed her with heart disease. She had a triple bypass three years ago.”

Horrified, Clarissa covered her mouth with both hands. Her speechlessness didn’t last for long.

“You should have told me!” she lashed out, her eyes shifting in fury between the two men.

Steve was shaking his head. “I couldn’t, love. She absolutely forbid it.”

Clarissa turned her accusing glare toward Waymon.

“It’s true, sugar,” he confirmed with the same slow, sad shake of his head. “You know better than we do how protective she was over you.”

Clarissa let her head fall as though she had no strength to keep it up. She couldn’t refute the truth in Waymon’s words. How often had she listened to her aunt advise her, over the last five years especially, to not let the business become her life or even her passion. Remaining true to form, Clarissa had allowed business to become precisely that.

Feeling defeated, Clarissa left the sofa and went to overlook the rose garden Jaz had cherished. Behind her, she could hear Waymon speaking with Steve about the funeral preparations. She turned to rejoin them.

“No. You don’t need to sit in for this, baby,” Waymon said.

“It’s okay, I’m fine.” Clarissa’s sigh proved otherwise but she maintained. “I need something to stay occupied.”

“Occupied?” Waymon mixed laughter with the word. “I promise you’ll have more than enough of that. But this is something you should let others handle for you.”

“I need to stay busy, Waymon.”

“Not now you don’t.”

She knew the man well enough to know that was the end of it. Deep down—though she’d be hard-pressed to know exactly where—Clarissa knew he was right. Stifling her arguments, she returned to look unseeingly past the bay window.

* * *

Elias had been unnervingly silent since Linus dropped the Jazzy B’s folder on his desk.

“We’ve already taken the early meetings,” Tigo explained, averting his dark eyes to pull on his shirt cuffs. “We’ve pretty much done all that we can without your approval.”

Eli applied a quick tug to his earlobe and then brushed his fingers along the edge of the legal-sized manila folder. When he’d brought his best friends into his father’s business, it was with the understanding that they’d have an equal say in the operations. Unanimous approval was needed before any project was green-lighted.

“The prelim work shows that the project is sound,” Linus chimed in. “The pertinent departments have reviewed the various aspects of the deal and everyone’s in agreement.”

“We can set up new meetings with everyone involved if you’d rather hear it from them,” Tigo offered.

“You don’t need to do that.” Eli’s voice was quiet.

“We know, given the history, that you might be hesitant here, man,” Linus chimed in again as he expected the worst with good reasons. “If you could just try blocking all that out. Think about the money on the table with another nationwide project in hand....”

Eli looked up from the desk. A smirk triggered the dimples slightly shaded by the goatee he wore. “You’ve sold me.”

Tigo and Linus expelled twin sighs of relief.

“What’s the catch?” Linus was first to recover from the easy feelings floating around the room.

“I’ll sign on two conditions.” Elias reared back again in the desk chair.

Tigo dismissed some of his easy feelings then, as well. “Conditions.”

“You two continue to work with Jazmina Beaumont and her people—” he shrugged “—I don’t want to find myself spending time with her while this thing’s in progress.”

Linus and Tigo tried to mimic their partner’s shrug. Blatant uncertainty slowed their movements even though working with Jaz and her people was pretty much the manner in which things were going anyway.