Tempting The Billionaire

“Como estas?” she asked in rapid Spanish as she reached up to lightly tap the bottom of his chin with her fingertips.

“I’m fine,” he assured her.

She shrugged one shoulder and slightly turned her lips downward as she tilted her head to the side. Translation? She didn’t agree with him, but so be it.

The radio began to blare “Borracho de Amor” by Jose Manuel Calderon, and Chance was thankful. His mother gave a little yelp of pleasure and clapped rapidly at the sound of one of her favorite songs from the past before she grabbed the hand of her nephew Victor and began dancing the traditional bachata.

Chance took a seat at a wooden table and placed his beer on it as he watched his mother, alive and happy among her culture and her family. But as everyone focused on their dance, his attention was on the words of the song. As was common with traditional bachata music that was about heartache, pain and betrayal, it was a song of a man who turned to drinking after the heartache and pain caused by a woman’s scorn. It was said that the tortured emotions displayed in the song fueled bachata dancers to release those emotions through dance.

Chance knew about heartache all too well.

His gut tightened into a knot at the memory of his former fiancée, Helena Guzman, running off with her lover and leaving him at the altar. In the beautiful blond-haired Afro-Cuban attorney he’d thought he found the one woman to spend his life with. She’d even agreed to give up her career as a successful attorney to travel the world with him.

But he’d been wrong. And made a fool of.

His anger at her was just beginning to thaw. His mother referred to her only as “Ese Rubio Diablo.” The blond devil.

Cabrera had helped him to heal.

But now I’m headed home.

This celebration was his family’s farewell to both him and his mother.

The daughter of his best friend since their days at Dalton, Alek Ansah, and his wife, Alessandra, had been born and he’d been appointed her godfather. He’d yet to see her in person; photos and FaceTime had sufficed, but now it was time to press kisses to the cheek of his godchild and do his duty at her upcoming baptism.

In the morning they would board his private plane and fly back to the States. She would return to the house he purchased for her in New Jersey, and he would be back at his estate in a house he’d foolishly thought he would share with his wife and their family one day.

Chance looked over into the shadowed trunks of the trees that surrounded the property as his thoughts went back to the day he was supposed to wed the woman he loved...

“I’m sorry, Chance, but I can’t marry you,” Helena said, standing before him in her custom wedding dress and veil as they stood in the vestibule of the church.

For a moment, Chance just eyed her. His emotions raced one behind the other quickly, almost colliding, like dominoes set up to fall. Confusion. Fear. Pain.

“I am in love with someone else,” she said, her eyes filled with her regret.

Anger.

Visions of her loving and being loved by another man burned him to his core like a branding. The anger spread across his body slowly, seeming to infuse every bit of him as the truth of her betrayal set in.

“How could you do this, Helena?” he asked, turning from her with a slash of his hand through the air, before immediately turning back with his blazing fury.

And his hurt.

That infuriated him further.

“How long?” he asked, his voice stiff.

“Chance,” Helena said.

“Who is he?”

She held up her hands. “That is irrelevant,” she said. “It is over. It is what it is, Chance.”

“Who?” he asked again, unable to look at her.

“My ex, Jason.”

The heat of his anger was soon replaced with the chill of his heart symbolically turning to stone. He stepped back from her, his jaw tightly clenched. “To hell with you,” he said in a low and harsh whisper.

Long after she had gathered her voluminous skirt in her hands and rushed from the church to run down the stairs, straight into the waiting car of her lover, Chance had stood there in the open doorway of the church and fought to come to grips with the explosive end of their whirlwind courtship.

Chance shook his head a bit to clear it of the memory, hating that nearly eight months later it still stung. The betrayal. The hurt. The dishonor.

Damn.

“Baila conmigo,Chance.”

He turned his head to find Sofía, the best friend of Carlos’s wife, extending her hand to him as she danced in place. She was a brown-skinned beauty with bright eyes, a warm smile and a shapely frame that drew the eye of men with ease. They had enjoyed one passionate night together a few months ago after a night of dancing, but both agreed it could be no more than that, with his plans to return to the States. And his desire to not be in another relationship.

Accepting her offer, he rose to his feet and took her hand, pulling her body closer to his as they danced the bachata. “You remember what happened the last time we danced?” he teased her, looking down into her lively eyes.

Sofía gave him a sultry smile before spinning away and then back to him. “I can’t think of a better way to say goodbye,” she said.

Chance couldn’t agree more.

* * *

“Lord, help me get through this day.”

Ngozi Johns cast a quick pleading look up to the fall skies as she zipped up the lightly quilted crimson running jacket she wore with a black long-sleeved T-shirt, leggings and sneakers. The sun was just beginning to rise, and the early morning air was crisp. She inhaled it deeply as she stretched her limbs and bent her frame into a few squats before jogging down the double level of stairs of her parents’ five-bedroom, six-bathroom brick Colonial.

Her sneakered feet easily ate up the distance around the circular drive and down the long paved driveway to reach Azalea Street—like every street in the small but affluent town of Passion Grove, New Jersey, it was named after flowers.

Ngozi picked up the pace, barely noticing the estates she passed with the homes all set back from the street. Or the wrought iron lamppost on each corner breaking up the remaining darkness. Or the lone school in town, Passion Grove Middle School, on Rose Lane. Or the entire heart-shaped lake in the center of the town that residents lounged around in the summer and skated on in the winter.

She waved to local author Lance Millner, who was in the center of the body of water in his fishing boat, as he was every morning. The only time he was to be seen by his Passion Grove neighbors was during his time in the water, tossing his reel into the lake, or the rare occasions he visited the upscale grocery store on Main Street. In the distance, on the other side of the lake, was his large brick eight-bedroom home with curtains shielding the light from entering through any of the numerous windows. He lived alone and rarely had any guests. The man was as successful at being a recluse as he was at being a New York Times bestselling author.

He waved back.

It was a rushed move, hard and jerking, and looked more like he was swatting away a nagging fly than giving a greeting.

Ngozi smiled as she continued her run. With one movement that was as striking as flipping the middle finger, he confirmed his reputation as a lone wolf with no time to waste for anyone. When he did venture from his lakeside estate, his tall figure was always garbed in a field jacket and a boonie hat that shaded his face.

Passion Grove was the perfect place to come to enjoy high-scale living but avoid the bustle, noise and congestion of larger cities. Home to many wealthy young millennials, the town’s population was under two thousand, with fewer than three hundred homes, each on an average of five or more acres. Very unlike Harlem, New York. She had enjoyed living in the city, soaking in the vibrancy of its atmosphere and culture and the beauty of its brownstones and its brown-skinned people—until a year ago. A year to the date, in fact.

When everything changed.

“Damn,” she swore in a soft whisper as she shook her head, hoping to clear it.