Winner Takes All Read online

  Suddenly he asked bluntly, “Did we kiss last night?”

  “No. No, we didn’t,” she said on a breath. She turned away from him.

  “Did I try to kiss you?”

  Jean faced him again, keeping her expression flat. “Don’t you remember?”

  A very slow, decidedly wicked grin lifted a corner of his mouth. “Good response,” he drawled. He headed into the living room to finish dressing and gather his things. “I better get going. Don’t want to overstay my welcome. You might not ask me back.”

  The idea of asking was intriguing.

  “What are your plans for the day?” He collected his jacket and wallet as they prepared to leave her apartment together.

  “My cupboards are bare. I have to do some marketing. Run a few errands. Come back and do laundry…”

  “Bor-ing,” Patrick singsonged.

  “You probably have a housekeeper. I don’t.” She grinned with meaning.

  He nodded. “I concede.”

  Jean opened the front door. Patrick pushed it closed again.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, putting a hand on her waist. He gently pulled her forward. Jean didn’t resist, curious. “I don’t want to make the same mistake I did…we did…last night.”

  Patrick encircled Jean in a light embrace, sliding his hands around her back but not pulling her too close, their torsos barely touching. Then he kissed her, getting as close as was needed to seal the deal. The kiss was a warm and tender melding of their lips. Their tongues briefly, gently dueled. He took his time and Jean let him, loving the thoughtfulness of Patrick’s kiss as he explored.

  They slowly withdrew, regarding one another with the sweet caress of their gazes.

  “I hope it’s not going to be another fifteen, twenty years until the next time,” Patrick murmured.

  “I think something can be arranged.”

  “I’ll call you?”

  “Yes.”

  His hands grew restless on her waist, like he wanted to do more. Patrick looked earnestly into her eyes.

  “I’m really glad it was you yesterday.”

  Me too, Jean thought.

  Chapter 4

  Patrick laughed at the joke made by the man sitting next to him. But he was distracted.

  It was Monday evening, and he’d hoped to hear back from Jean by now and was concerned that she hadn’t returned any of his attempts to reach her since the weekend. Patrick wasn’t yet sure why it had become urgent. Maybe because the overnight at her place had been so comfortable, so easy, he wanted very much to keep the good vibes alive. What did it mean that there was radio silence? Had he been mistaken that there had been a new connection between him and Jean? It had been less than forty-eight hours since they’d been together. To Patrick it seemed longer.

  He forced his attention back to the group around him, seated in a corner of their usual noisy Midtown haunt, where they came together every couple of months to shoot the bull, rag on one another, eat wings and drink beer, and have a great guys’ night out. Everyone except Patrick and Brian would soon be headed for home by car or commuter train. They were former colleagues and homeboys from the days of being in the game when they all expected fame and glory. Most of the five men had not reached their goal of going pro, had not even come close. They were now living middle-class lives, with aging, soft bodies. Most had moved on to other careers, had wives and kids and suburban homes. But they’d all remained in touch for the sole purpose of remembering the good old days, and now congratulating Patrick, one of them who’d made it big in another way. He was grateful that no one harped on that, and treated him as they always had. Just one of the team.

  “I’m not sure I’d want that kind of win,” Brian said at one point, shaking his head as if he’d given the prospect a lot of thought.

  “Bullshit,” one of the men growled, and the others burst into knowing laughter.

  “Not kidding,” Brian said. “I know for a fact that our boy here has had some serious weirdness thrown at him. And it’s only been about a week since the announcement.”

  “Like what?”

  Brian looked at Patrick, who didn’t want to repeat some of the things that Brian was alluding to. He gave a dismissive wave of his hand, and Brian leaned forward to recount one of the more amusing and touching stories about a youngster who’d reached out to ask if Patrick would adopt him.

  Patrick pulled out his cell and checked for text messages, voicemail…anything that might have come through from Jean.

  “Mr. Bennett? Sorry to bother you. There’s someone at the front who wants to talk to you. I told her you were with a private party, but she was insistent.”

  Patrick stood up. “Who is it?”

  “Sorry, she didn’t give her name.”

  She.

  “She said you’d know.”

  Patrick turned to his friends. “Guys, excuse me for a moment. I’ll be right back.”

  There was no chance that Jean would know where he’d be today, and he was forced to abandon the thought. There were a few other possibilities, Patrick considered, but they were all professional contacts or acquaintances, and no need for all this mystery. When they reached the maître d’s desk, Patrick was pointed to a small area next to the entrance where people waited to be seated. There was a tall blond pacing tensely, stylishly dressed in tapered black slacks, a blouse that artfully exposed one shoulder, and open-toed, high-heel booties. Her expensively dyed hair was a calculated tangle of long, softly curled locks that fell around her shoulders, obscured her forehead and her eye, requiring her to either shake her hair aside or carelessly brush it away, the better to focus bright blue eyes on her audience. It always worked for getting attention, and it worked now.

  Patrick slowed his walk once he identified the unexpected visitor. He quickly glanced around to make sure they were alone. When he turned to her again, his gaze was steely. Hers was a combination of haughty bravado and rage.

  “What are you doing here, Natalie?”

  “It’s that whole Mohammed-comes-to-the-mountain thing. Obviously you have no intention of calling me, so I tracked you down.”

  “I think that’s called stalking.”

  His response infuriated her, and she glared, her mouth pinching for restraint. “How dare you suggest that!”

  Patrick took a step closer so they wouldn’t start to shout at each other. His teeth were clenched. “I dare because you don’t seem to get it. We’re done, Natalie. What is there about ‘We need to move on and go our separate ways’ that you don’t understand? I didn’t want to hurt you when we broke up. I simply wanted out. And it’s not like you were lacking for suitors. The way I see it, you worked pretty damn hard to try to make me jealous.”

  “I didn’t! It’s not my fault that men—”

  Patrick cut her off. “Right. I don’t call your flirting an attempt to push back and get even. But that’s okay. I’ll take the fall for ending the relationship. I realized we weren’t a good match. We didn’t want the same thing. Frankly, I was surprised when you still left voice messages and showed up at events I was attending.”

  “I thought we were great together, Patrick. Everyone said so. Being together was great for my business, and it certainly didn’t hurt you.”

  He groaned softly and briefly closed his eyes. “This is about the card and the ticket, isn’t it?”

  “You didn’t even tell me you’d won. It wouldn’t have happened, Patrick, if I hadn’t sent you the lottery ticket!”

  Natalie’s voice had raised several decibels as she let her anger gain control. Guests entering or leaving the restaurant hesitated to eavesdrop on the exchange. The maître d’ discreetly ignored them, distracting customers with a cheerful greeting.

  “I called you more than a year ago and told you it wasn’t a good idea to keep calling me and sending me cute greeting cards.
What do I have to do to make you stop? I don’t want to embarrass you. I just want you to stop.”

  Now Natalie took a step closer. She blinked at him, making him look into her eyes, her face. She didn’t have a soft, comfortable beauty. Natalie was bold, strong, and used to getting her way. The fact that Patrick had been the one to walk away had been an infuriating affront.

  “You want me to stop bothering you? Fine. I can make that happen. I sent you the lottery ticket. You won. The way I see it, you owe me. You would not be seventy-five million dollars to the good if it wasn’t for me!”

  “I didn’t want you to send me a card, or a lottery ticket, or anything. I don’t owe you anything. But here’s the deal. I turned your card and a copy of the ticket over to my attorney. He warned me I might hear from you.”

  “Good.”

  “You’ll hear from him, and he’ll deal with this. I’m really disappointed that it all now comes down to money. Are we finished?” Patrick asked, controlling his anger.

  Her smile was both coquettish and menacing. “We’ll see.”

  * * *

  Jean was headed out of her office, carrying a tablet, her smartphone, and the cell issued by the department when her desk phone rang. She turned back to stare at the instrument, puzzled. Very few of her contacts ever called the landline, and even fewer were given the number. But it was maintained because so many of the city’s constituents still were not tech savvy or had access to digital devices when they needed help from the city. She returned to her desk, briefly noticing the time on the wall clock as she answered the call.

  “Jean Travis,” she said.

  “Hi. Can you talk?”

  “Not really, Mom. I have a meeting and—”

  “Okay, I’ll be quick. I wanted to thank you for sending me that picture.”

  Jean slid into her desk chair. “What picture?”

  “It’s from your office, Jean. The one of the lottery winners, about a week or so ago.”

  “Lottery… Oh. Did I send that to you?”

  “Well, not you personally, but it’s from your office. I’m on your public PR email list.”

  “Okay…”

  “The one with you and that boy. When you were in high school.”

  “Patrick Bennett?” Jean murmured. “You remember him?”

  “I don’t think you called him Patrick at the time. He had some weird teenage name…”

  “Yeah. Trick.”

  “He was the one you tutored, right? Grown man now. Did he really win thirty-five million dollars?”

  Jean shifted in her seat, began to stand again and gather her things. “Seventy-five million dollars. Mom, I really have to go. I have a meeting…”

  “Okay, okay. I wanted to make sure I had it right. Seeing you two together in that image… Well, it’s interesting how you both turned out. Now he’s a millionaire!” She chuckled. “If I had any idea when he asked me if he could take you to his prom how he was going to turn out…”

  “His prom? Patrick? Patrick asked you if he…”

  “Could take you to the prom, yes. I told him no, I couldn’t agree to that. You were barely sixteen.”

  Her mother went on, but Jean had zoned out, trying to process news that she was hearing for the very first time. Patrick had actually asked her mother if he could take her to his senior prom?

  And she’d said no?

  “Jean, did you hear what I said?”

  “I… No…no,” she muttered, lost in a memory time warp.

  Behind Jean, someone hissed for her attention. She glanced over her shoulder and found a colleague pointing to a page with Agenda printed across the top. For a meeting. She was late. She stood up.

  “I have to go. Call me tonight…”

  Jean hung up on the one person in life she could do that to and not be disowned. She hurried after her coworker to the meeting called by Brad.

  It was just as well that she had little to no need to participate since the subject of the meeting had nothing to do with Jean or her sector of the department. Which was also just as well, as she barely listened to what was being said, trying to wrap her head around what her mother had, probably innocently, revealed. She couldn’t believe it.

  It was way too late to be angry that her mother had flat-out said no to Patrick’s invitation without telling her about it. But why hadn’t he asked her? Would she have accepted?

  Jean was, to put it mildly, distracted for the rest of the afternoon. There was local press to coordinate with on the best way to publicize a community protest about the possible closing of a branch post office. There was the high school sophomore who was being recognized for placing first among the top five in the regional science fair. There were a half-dozen organizations that were requesting that the mayor provide and sign proclamations declaring…whatever.

  Through all of the professional and work chatter, Jean continued trying to parse information from her history with Patrick. The very last time they’d seen each other while in school was when he’d waited before classes one morning to let her know he’d passed the state exams. And to thank her. He was pleased, of course. She’d felt oddly empty. No more Tuesday and Thursday clandestine after-school meetings between the two of them as she coached Patrick through the high points of a semester’s worth of schoolwork. She’d figured out early on that he very likely would have passed the tests without her help, but she never let on. Jean liked that she might have been responsible for his successful senior year and graduating. They had been connected in a way that other students in their school had not been. It made her feel special.

  She got through work, managing to assign her mother’s revelation to a corner of her brain labeled Review, and made her way uptown to a reception. Early evening get-togethers were the mainstay of New Yorkers connected through work or personal interests. Tonight it was a music thing in Harlem, a gathering at a branch library. It was in recognition of a major archive donation from the estate of an artist who’d lived under the radar of fame and fortune, but whose work was now being lauded. The event was already filled with guests and loud conversation when she arrived. There were many small clusters of people chatting over wine, all well known to each other, and many to her.

  Jean accepted a glass of wine from a waiter standing near the entrance. She tried not to let her eyes roam the crowded room, an obvious sign that there might be someone present she was hoping to avoid. It was a very diverse gathering. In navigating her way through, Jean exchanged brief words with everyone she knew. Still, her goal was to make a slow circuit of the room until she reached the entrance again and could quietly leave.

  She heard a female voice call her name and tap her shoulder.

  “Jean! I didn’t know you were going to be here. How’ve you been? How come you don’t call me?”

  Jean turned to the woman, shorter than her…and wider. A pair of oversize, black-framed glasses drew attention to an attractive, slightly above middle-aged Black woman. She was adorned in an original, one-of-a-kind, kimono-style silk cover, over a black draped-neck top of polka dots and black harem pants. It was an outfit calculated so that the wearer was sure to stand out and be noticed. Jean gave and received an affectionate air kiss as their cheeks touched, and stood back to admire her former mentor’s attire.

  “Belle, you look fabulous. I love those pants.”

  “Thanks, sweetie. Off the rack in a Middle Eastern shop on Atlantic Avenue.”

  Annabelle Hampton had been a manager at the Department of Cultural Affairs for the city and was now the interim acting director, hoping for permanency. When Jean had first met Belle, she was known as the unofficial den mother for many young African American women just out of college trying to build careers. She’d been particularly kind to Jean when she ran into roadblocks in the Black cultural heartbeat of the city. Jean had not grown up in an all-Black community or gone to a Black c
ollege. Her biracial background was still an oddity at that time, and her authenticity as a Black person had been suspect growing up and into young adulthood. It had taken time to demonstrate that she wasn’t playing at being Black. Her mother had warned her. It had taken Belle Hampton and being out in the world and away from home to help Jean recognize that being who she was was enough, no other justification necessary.

  “It’s good to see you. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it tonight,” Jean said, keeping her focus on the woman for whom she’d once interned as an undergraduate. “I’ve been crazed, as usual.”

  Belle chortled. “Oh, please. Like, who isn’t? That’s what happens when you put yourself in the fast lane to becoming a Mistress of the Universe.”

  “Not interested in the title.”

  “Maybe, but people know who you are. You get things done, and that matters. And you’ve been smart about not making enemies. Huge props for that. Not easy when you’re backing up the mayor.”

  Jean grinned. “No enemies that I know of.” She glanced around, still trying not to focus on any one person. “Nice turnout.”

  “It’s the usual. Everyone’s here to say they were here. Suzanne is around; you know her. And I know I saw Mel and Bunny…” Belle leaned in closer to her. “And you-know-who is here. Alone.”

  Jean was proud of the fact that neither her stomach nor throat tightened with the sudden impact of that announcement. But in that moment, she knew that her response to Belle’s alluding to someone from the past did not compare to the newer, pleasurable reactions she’d experienced surrounding Patrick Bennett’s reappearance. She exhaled slowly in relief, her expression passive as Belle searched her features for reaction.

  “I’m not surprised. Ross knows everyone. He’s smart, charming, knows how to work a room.”

  “A damned fool,” Belle said with a smile that suggested a touch of empathy.