Sultry Pleasure. Lindsay Evans

night. Marcus. Her brother’s interruption.

      She sighed, abruptly feeling her body’s exhaustion.

      Diana leaned heavily against the sink. Between her brother’s call for help, his rambling conversation afterward and her preoccupation with her date with Marcus, she should be dead to the waking world. But she was wide awake, eagerly anticipating Marcus’s call.

      Last night, in more ways than one, she had not been pleased. After driving through the congested streets of Coconut Grove, she found her brother with his foot propped against a fire hydrant, the blinkers of his rusty old Buick flashing, the hood up. But he was talking to a woman. Some pretty young thing in a short skirt and with a glint of gold in her mouth.

      Diana waited with Jason until the tow truck came, followed the truck to the mechanic’s, then drove her brother home to his little one-bedroom apartment in the middle of the Black Grove. And, of course, she hadn’t been able to simply drop him off. He wanted her to come in for a drink, to take a seat on his ratty sofa and talk about their mother, about life, even the field trip he and other budding marine biologists at the university had taken earlier that week. By the time Diana had staggered home, it was after five o’clock in the morning.

      Barely three hours later, she was, unfortunately, very awake. With her cell phone in hand—she could almost convince herself she wasn’t waiting for Marcus’s call—she walked through her small house, the tiles cool under her bare feet. In the kitchen, she put the ingredients for her morning smoothie in the blender.

      She was swallowing a second mouthful when the phone rang. A surge of anticipation darted through her as she grabbed the phone.

      But it wasn’t Marcus. It was her mother. Again.

      “Good morning, Mama.” She tried her best not to sound disappointed as she sagged against the counter.

      “Diana, what were you thinking?” Cheryl Hobbes-Freeman’s angry voice snapped at her through the phone.

      “What?”

      “I’m looking at you in the paper. How could you?”

      “How could I what?” She set her glass on the kitchen counter, confused. What was her mother talking about now? “Slow down and explain yourself, Mama. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

      Although she didn’t know what this latest problem was, Diana could easily picture her mother’s ruffled state. Hands wildly gesturing as she walked the circular path of her backyard garden. Surrounded by her tall hibiscus bushes and towering bright red ginger plants, her slender figure already dressed in a T-shirt and cropped pants despite the early hour. The only concession to the morning would be that her always neatly pressed silver hair was still wrapped in a silk scarf from the night before.

      “The newspaper!” her mother said shrilly, her voice rising through the phone. She lived all the way in Hialeah, but the way her tone cut, she might as well have been standing in Diana’s kitchen. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen it.”

      She heaved a sigh, even after all this time not fully able to deal with her mother’s dramatics. Jason got a B in Chemistry—complain to the principal! Her sister, Luna, was five minutes late from school—call the police! Diana looked around her brightly lit kitchen, the pristine cream countertops, the curtains open to let in the brilliant sunshine. She silently fought against the infection of her mother’s mania.

      “My paper just came, but I haven’t read it,” she said.

      “Get the paper,” her mother commanded. “Open it to the society page.”

      Society page? Her mother only bought the Sunday Herald for the mountains of coupons she could get her hands on. Remarried to a man who happily supported her, she didn’t need to clip coupons. But it gave her something to do with her days aside from gardening and talking on the phone to each of her three children at least once a week. Children she only saw every six months or so by mutual agreement.

      Diana opened the paper. As she turned to the page, her mother practically shouted into her ear.

      “Do you see it? Do you?”

      The paper had photos from the previous night’s party. The headline read Prism Luminaries Shine at Annual Miami Philanthropists’ Gala.

      The headline said just about the same thing every year. The photos and article about the gala took up all the first page of the society section. It had pictures of the women’s dresses, their jewelry, a rundown of who was who, which man was single and which couples looked radiant that night. Diana skimmed over the words to the photos. And froze.

      Someone had taken a photo of her and Marcus. To be fair, it wasn’t just of them, there were four other couples, too, because the paper seemed to be especially focused on speculating about the marriage situation of each pair pictured. The camera had caught her after the party, of course. She was in front of the hotel and in midstep, Marcus’s hand on the small of her back as he guided her into his gleaming silver car.

      It was a lucky shot. The photographer had caught her looking up at Marcus, a half smile on her lips while his face was seriousness itself, filled with a suave confidence that she’d fought against nearly the entire night. Nothing was scandalous about their pose, although it was obvious they were leaving the gala and heading somewhere together. Under their photo, a suggestive caption showed the newspaper had done its research: Miami billionaire playboy and business mogul Marcus Stanfield escorts Diana Hobbes, assistant executive director of local nonprofit Building Bridges, from the gala and off to a night on the town.

      Diana touched the grainy surface of the paper that memorialized what had happened between her and Marcus last night. She didn’t see what was wrong with the photograph. It wasn’t as if the papers had speculated that she and Marcus were dashing off from the party to have a wild night of sex.

      “Mother—” She made her voice placating.

      “You don’t know who he is, do you?”

      “He’s just Marcus, Mama. I met him last night.” Diana was getting irritated at her mother’s suggestion that she had done something wrong, that she should already know what that thing was and be groveling on her knees because of it.

      “Turn the page,” her mother snapped.

      On the next page, the reporters were done with the frivolous details of the Prism Gala and now talked about the powerful people there, their money and their business deals. There was another photo of Marcus, this time taken with another man. The two men had been caught side by side, in mid-conversation at what could have been a cocktail party. Marcus had a glass of dark liquor in his hand while the other man was caught in midgesture, his empty hands chopping the air. The other man was older, a couple of inches shorter than Marcus and wore power like his own skin. He was handsome but coldly so—his harder face was all too familiar to Diana. Her eyes dipped lower on the page to read the caption under the photograph: Power runs in the family. Multibillionaire businessman Quentin Stanfield and his son, Marcus.

      She sagged against the counter. Marcus was Quentin Stanfield’s son? Diana made a strangled noise. “But—but...”

      “But nothing!” her mother shouted. “That man who had his hands all over you last night is his son. That bastard who ruined your father and drove him to shove that gun in his mouth.”

      Diana shook her head in denial. No, he couldn’t be. Their night had been too perfect. He had been perfect.

      “You can’t see him again,” her mother said.

      Something caught in Diana’s throat. “No, I...I won’t.” She swallowed. “Listen, Mama. I have to go now. I have something I need to do.”

      Her mother’s tone instantly changed. “Are you all right?” She abruptly swung from manic to reasonable in a head-spinning moment, something else Diana had never gotten used to.

      “It’s not because of what I said, is it?” Her voice was muffled, as if she was pressing her mouth too close to