King's Passion. Adrianne Byrd

will be with you in a second.”

      Q blinked and then snatched his shades off again.

      The receptionist frowned. “Are you all right?”

      You mean other than my seeing things? “Yes. I’m fine. Thanks.” He quickly turned toward the waiting area and commanded himself to pull it together. He sat down and slipped his sunglasses in the inside breast pocket of his coat jacket. A second later an office door to his right opened.

      A tall, older dark-skinned brother in an Armani suit crossed the threshold while still shaking hands with an attractive, red-bone sister who was needlessly hiding her curves in a black, shapeless skirt-suit.

      “Thank you, doctor,” Mr. Armani said, cheesing at her as he released her hand.

      “I’ll see you next week,” Dr. Turner replied, smiling before turning her soft brown eyes toward Quentin.

      “Mr. Hinton?”

      “Yes.” He stood up, feeling his nerves twist.

      “Hello. I’m Dr. Julianne Turner. Won’t you come in and have a seat?”

      Q forced a smile and strolled into the office. He hesitated for a second before he took his seat in the chair in the psychiatrist’s office. He shifted a bit, trying to make himself comfortable, but that wasn’t possible on the first visit.

      “You look uneasy,” the doctor said, removing her golden pen from her breast-pocket.

      “Nah. Nah,” Quentin said, shifting some more. “I’m good.”

      “Uh-huh.” Dr. Turner clicked the back of the pen and started writing.

      Q frowned. What the hell had he done to warrant her writing something down already? He leaned forward to read her handwriting on the yellow tablet, but before he could make out the words, the doctor looked up with a knowing smile.

      “So what brings you here today…do you mind if I call you Quentin?” she asked.

      “No. Please do.” This should’ve been the one question that Quentin was prepared for. But instead his brain zoned out, leaving him staring at the doctor as if he was waiting for an answer.

      “Please don’t tell her that you think you’re still in love with me,” Alyssa said from across the room. She was wearing those wonderful tight blue jeans and the white top that she’d worn the day they had gone horseback riding together and the first time he’d kissed her under an oak tree.

      “Mr. Hinton?” Dr. Turner interrupted.

      He paused for a couple more seconds and then said, “Love.”

      Dr. Turner’s brows arched upward at the answer.

      Across the room, Alyssa groaned.

      “Are you in love, Quentin?”

      Q’s head turned toward Alyssa, but she was gone. “I thought I was.”

      “But you’re not sure?”

      Silence.

      “Quentin?” she pressed.

      He faced her again. “Let’s just say that I don’t understand love. How it magically appears, puts you in a spell and then poof! After that, you question whether it was ever there at all.” Sensing that he wasn’t making any sense, Q cleared his throat. “Maybe I should lie down.”

      “If you like,” Dr. Turner said as she scribbled away on her notepad.

      Q assumed the position on the doctor’s leather chaise and leaned back on the arm. “You know, my brothers have been telling me for years that I needed to see a shrink.”

      “Are you here at their urging?”

      “No.”

      “So you wanted to come?”

      Pause. “More like I needed to come.”

      Scribbling. “And why is that?”

      Quentin lowered his gaze from the ceiling to stare at the floor-to-ceiling glass window to see an image of Alyssa in her white wedding gown, checking out her reflection. “I’m afraid that I missed my one chance.”

      “At love?” Dr. Turner asked.

      Alyssa spun around and shook her head at Quentin. “You don’t love me.”

      “Quentin?”

      “Yes,” he said simply. “The woman I thought was for me married my brother two years ago. I went to the wedding, stood in line with the other groomsmen and watched Sterling marry the woman of my dreams—then I left and haven’t seen them since.”

      “So you’re estranged from your brother?”

      “With Sterling—yes.” Q shrugged. “I still talk to my other brother Jonas from time to time. But it’s not the same. He’s happily married with children and…everything has changed. Everyone has changed. Everyone is falling in love,” Q chuckled. “Who knows, maybe something is wrong with me.”

      “You don’t really believe that, do you?” she asked.

      Alyssa shook her head at him.

      “I don’t know what I believe. Once I lost Alyssa, I swore off love and renewed my vow to be a bachelor for life. And why not? There are more than enough women out there who’d love the pleasure of my company. You know what I mean?” He turned his head and caught a glimpse of the doctor’s long legs. Nice.

      Dr. Turner cleared her throat.

      “Sorry.” Quentin smiled and turned back around.

      Alyssa rolled her eyes.

      “Anyway,” Q said, “like I was saying, bachelorhood is for me. So I figured that birds of feather flock together, right?”

      Scribbling. “You tell me.”

      This is like talking to myself.

      “It beats talking to a woman that’s not really here,” Alyssa said, twirling around in her dress.

      Quentin rolled his eyes but had to concede her point. “Well, I considered my business partners and cousins Xavier, Jeremy and Eamon a part of my flock. Well, maybe not Eamon so much—but definitely Xavier and Jeremy. They all loved women as much as I did. None of them wanted to settle down with just one, which actually made them the perfect partners in The Dollhouse.”

      “What’s The Dollhouse?”

      “Only the hottest gentlemen’s clubs in the country, of course I’m a little biased.” A smile eased across Quentin’s face as his chest expanded with pride. “We’re in Atlanta, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. But the big moneymaker is our side business called Bachelor Adventures—where we host the wildest bachelor parties ever. The women have their day, the men have their night. You know what I mean?”

      Scribbling. “So you and your cousins provide a service for men to enjoy their last night of bachelorhood?”

      “That was the plan.”

      “Until?”

      Q drew a deep breath. “Until love showed up. What else? Then they started to fall one by one. Take Eamon for example…”

The Reluctant King

      Chapter 1

      “Welcome to The Dollhouse, Las Vegas,” Eamon King shouted above the crowd, raising his glass to toast the raucous bachelor party as fifty or so guys entered the V.I.P. section of his exclusive Vegas nightclub. Most of them whooped and hollered, and fist-pumped over the loud, pulsing music—a clear sign that they were married men who’d planned to go buck wild on this rare night away from their wives. A few of their eyes were already bulging at the sexy-looking women who worked at The Dollhouse.

      “Now, which one of you is Marcus Henderson?” Eamon