Heated burned inc, p.1
Heated (Burned Inc.), page 1
PRAISE FOR NAIMA SIMONE
“Passion, heat, and deep emotion—Naima Simone is a gem!”
—Maisey Yates, New York Times bestselling author
“Simone balances crackling, electric love scenes with exquisitely rendered characters.”
—Entertainment Weekly
OTHER TITLES BY NAIMA SIMONE
Secrets and Sins
Gabriel
Malachim
Raphael
Chayot
Guarding Her Body
Witness to Passion
Killer Curves
Bachelor Auction
Beauty and the Bachelor
The Millionaire Makeover
The Bachelor’s Promise
A Millionaire at Midnight
Lick
Only for a Night
Only for Your Touch
Only for You
WAGS
Scoring with the Wrong Twin
Scoring off the Field
Scoring the Player’s Baby
The Sweetest Taboo
Sin and Ink
Passion and Ink
Blackout Billionaires
The Billionaire’s Bargain
Black Tie Billionaire
Blame It on the Billionaire
Ruthless Pride
Trust Fund Fiancé
Billionaires of Boston
Vows in Name Only
Secrets of a One Night Stand
The Perfect Fake Date
The Black Sheep Bargain
Back in the Texan’s Bed
Broody Brit
Rose Bend
Slow Dance at Rose Bend
The Road to Rose Bend
A Kiss to Remember
Christmas in Rose Bend
The Love List
With Love from Rose Bend
Fairy Tales Unleashed
Bargain with the Beast
A Perfect Fit
Grading Curves
Sweet Surrender
Flirting with Sin
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2022 by Naima Bryant
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542038294
ISBN-10: 1542038294
Cover design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes
Cover image © Michelle Lancaster, @lanefotograf
To Gary. 143.
To Connie Marie Butts. I will miss you forever and will love you even longer.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE ZORA
CHAPTER TWO CYRUS
CHAPTER THREE ZORA
CHAPTER FOUR CYRUS
CHAPTER FIVE ZORA
CHAPTER SIX CYRUS
CHAPTER SEVEN CYRUS
CHAPTER EIGHT ZORA
CHAPTER NINE CYRUS
CHAPTER TEN ZORA
CHAPTER ELEVEN CYRUS
CHAPTER TWELVE ZORA
CHAPTER THIRTEEN CYRUS
CHAPTER FOURTEEN ZORA
CHAPTER FIFTEEN CYRUS
CHAPTER SIXTEEN ZORA
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ZORA
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CYRUS
CHAPTER NINETEEN ZORA
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
ZORA
“Well, aren’t you the brave soul today.”
I glance up from my study of the ad layout for my company’s latest planned social media blitz to look at my brother. As usual my older twin by two minutes is impeccably dressed in one of his gorgeous, immaculate three-piece suits. I don’t know. Tom Ford, maybe? Honestly? I can’t tell a Tom Ford from a Tim Gunn, but Leviticus—Levi, for short—Nelson makes it work.
Oooh. See what I did there?
“I’m brave every day. I work with family, don’t I?” I switch my attention back to my monitor.
Hmm. The colors are vivid and eye catching, but the image of the couple standing back to back, arms crossed, doesn’t exactly fit the brand and mission statement of our company.
Yes, Breaking Up, Reversing Nuptials & Evading Disasters—BURNED Inc., for short—is a full-service breakup company, but we’re all about aiding people in a hopefully peaceful, drama-free termination of their relationships. Whether it’s with a text or video. Or a quiet dinner. Or even a singing telegram—yes, a singing telegram. We’ve done it all. Don’t judge. At BURNED, we’re about what the client needs, and we want to prevent them ending up in a relationship that resembles the Battle of Antietam.
Look. I might not recognize a Tom Ford suit, but when you have a high school social studies teacher who’s obsessed with the Civil War for a mother, you tend to pick up a few facts. Such as the Anaconda Plan, Mary Lincoln was a swindler, the North got its ass kicked at Bull Run, and Abraham Lincoln was not a vampire hunter.
And when you have a Civil War–obsessed social studies teacher mother and a Bible-thumping sports-apparel-store-owner father who spent your entire child- and adulthood fighting over everything from the power bill to whether pork is really the other white meat, you and your siblings open up your own breakup-service company.
Some might say Levi, Miriam, and I have mommy and daddy issues. And there’s probably some truth to that. But if so, we’ve constructively addressed them by taking the war zone we grew up in and turning it into someone else’s Switzerland.
Much more lucrative than therapy.
“Brave or insane,” he mutters, sliding his hands into his pants pockets and exposing his pinstripe dark-blue vest and flat abs. I try not to glare at them. But seriously, we’re twins. Not even one small belly roll to even things up? So unfair. “Even after three years I’m still trying to figure that one out.”
“You’re still here.” I stop wishing a glazed-donut curse on him long enough to drag my attention back up to meet the long-lashed dark-brown eyes I greet every time I glance into the mirror. “Why? What’s this about?” I fall back in my chair and draw a figure eight in the air, encompassing his tall frame. “You never make casual visits.”
My brother, God love him, doesn’t . . . people. The story goes he came out my mom’s vajayjay giving the doctor his ass. And that attitude hasn’t changed at all in our thirty years.
I, on the other hand, emerged headfirst, following the birth rules, offering the doc and Mom no trouble. Again, setting the stage for our lifelong roles.
Levi glances over his shoulder, frowning at my closed office door. “I know, and believe me—I don’t want to be here. I have more important things waiting on my desk.” Ah. My brother, the charmer. How a real, breathing woman let this curmudgeon’s penis anywhere near her vagina will forever be a mystery to me. “But on my way to drop off an outgoing package to Deanna, I passed by Dani’s cubicle . . . and saw Miriam there.”
“Oh shit.”
A dark eyebrow climbs halfway up his forehead, and if Levi wasn’t the human equivalent of Star Trek’s Data, I’d say that one gesture contains a whole lot of smug “I told your ass so.” But that can’t be so because this is Levi, the emotional mushroom.
“Exactly. Especially since I overheard alarming phrases such as ‘Not dirty enough,’ ‘Start from scratch,’ and my personal favorite, ‘Money is no object.’”
For the love of . . .
He’s the chief financial officer of BURNED and a man who makes ol’ tightwad Scrooge look like Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, so those last four words probably have him breaking out in vicious hives beneath his three-thousand-dollar suit. But hell, I’m not even in need of a late-night visitation by three spirits in order to save my immortal soul like Levi—that situation’s not looking too good, by the way—and I’m cringing.
Our younger sister, Miriam, is—in a word—brilliant. And I’m not just casually throwing that word out there. It’s true. She graduated from high school at fifteen, entered college at sixteen, and graduated five years later with a BA in graphic design with a double minor in marketing and contemporary women’s rights and also a master’s in graphic illustration. So yes, brilliant. But what’s the saying? There’s a fine line between genius and madness? I’m not saying my sister’s crazy, but . . . let me put it this way. If the CIA raids our building and uncovers a secret laboratory in the basement where a mastermind has invented a chip for a global hive mind, well . . . I’m not going down for my sister. Natural curls like mine don’t fare well in prison.
“It’s your day to babysit her,” I accuse, stopping just short of jabbing a finger at him. I do narrow my eyes on him, and he’d better thank God, Allah, Buddha, and Zeus ’n’ ’em that I don’t have heat vision, or he would be an unrecognizable lump right now.
“No.” Levi raises an eyebrow. “It’s Tuesday. It’s your day.”
“Shit.” It is my day.
Again, no verbal “I told your ass so,” but the room rings with it like the Ebenezer First Baptist Church’s choir on Easter Sunday.
“Right now, Miriam’s with our marketing department, single- handedly dismembering our ad campaign so it looks less ‘How can we be of service to you at this vulnerable and difficult period in your life?’ and more ‘Reverse cowgirl is my favorite hashtag on Pornhub.’”
“One.” I pop up a finger. “Never in life say reverse cowgirl or Pornhub to me again. Two.” I add another finger. “Since Dani is the only marketing personnel we have, technically, I don’t think she can be considered a department. And three.” Yet another finger. “Why in the world didn’t you stop her right then? God knows what havoc she’s wreaked in the”—I turn over my wrist, glancing down at my watch—“ten minutes you’ve been in here lollygagging.”
His chin snaps back toward his neck. “Excuse you. I’ve never lollygagged a day in my life.” Wow. That’s what he took away from all three very valid points. “And like I said, it’s your day. So I came to you. Handle her.”
Another quirk of Levi’s. An almost obsessive dedication to schedules, and woe to anyone who dares to try and interfere with his.
God knows I love him. I mean, we shared a womb together for thirty-seven weeks. And despite his reserve that makes the guys on Mount Rushmore look like a group of zany court jesters, he’s . . . mine.
But damn, sometimes I just want to set that stick in his ass on fire with diesel fuel and a blowtorch.
“Okay, how about this?” I narrow my eyes on him. “Since I have a client that should be arriving in the next five minutes, and I don’t have time to wrestle Miriam to the ground, could you at least talk with Dani and remind her that any changes—marketing or financialwise—must be okayed by me first?”
Levi cocks his head, studying me, as if trying to figure out my angle. Suspicious, that one. Finally, he gives me a sharp nod.
“Yes, I can do that.”
“Thanks. ’Preciate it.” I swear I try and keep the sarcasm out of my voice. But hell, I’m only human. And it’s fifty-fifty whether he catches it anyway. “If you’ll—”
A knock reverberates on the door, and a moment later, Deanna Lynn, our office manager, opens it and slants her upper body inside.
“Hi, Levi.” She smiles at my brother, and I mentally shake my head at the slight gleam in her eyes as she scans his tall frame. Oh, woman. If lost cause had a face. “Hey, Zora,” she says, switching her attention to me. “Your eleven o’clock appointment just arrived.”
“Great. I’ll be right out to meet her. Thanks, Deanna.”
“No problem.”
She backs out of the office as I rise from my chair, closing out the files and programs I have open, and quickly pull up the intake form we have all new clients fill out before arranging a meeting with them. When someone requests any of our services—whether it’s a text or a dinner in a Michelin-starred restaurant—we require an initial appointment. Most of our customers are sincere in their intentions to end their relationships with zero mess or acrimony. But occasionally, we have those—well, let’s just call them what they are—assholes who either want to waste our time with ridiculous requests or the bitter ones who seek to humiliate and shame their soon-to-be exes. And that’s not what we’re here for. Hell, Levi, Miriam, and I lived that bullshit—still do when we can’t avoid going home for family dinners or holidays—and I’ll be damned if someone uses my company to intentionally inflict that kind of damage on someone else.
So yes, we require a meeting as a weeding-out process as well as to determine our clients’ needs.
Some people might find our company silly or even laughable, but we take what we do seriously. And laugh all they want; in the three years we’ve been in business, BURNED Inc. has enjoyed growth, and we’re firmly in the black. Not many new businesses can claim that. I’m damn proud.
“Okay, you return to your bridge or office or whatever. And don’t forget to speak with Dani.” I round my desk, striding past him toward my office door.
“I won’t. And don’t think I didn’t catch that reference to the troll under the bridge.” He snorts. “You’re attempting to insult me, but you’re not. Frankly, that troll got a bad rap. That was his damn bridge, and he had a right to eat anyone who tried to tread their happy asses all over his territory. It has stand-your-ground law all over it.”
Christ. Some of the shit that comes out of his mouth. Miriam came by her crazy honestly.
“Yeah, Leviticus, I don’t think that’s how that works. Not to mention Three Billy Goats Gruff didn’t take place in Colorado, much less the United States, so again. Not sure how that applies.”
And yes, I am arguing about a fairy tale with my brother as if it’s a legal case study.
After exiting before he can launch his comeback—because there’s always a comeback with Levi—I move down the corridor toward Deanna’s desk and the lobby. Mentally and physically, I shed the roles of sister and peacemaker and assume the mantle of president of a successful Black-owned business.
I’d like to claim that I’m that confident, self-assured, take-no-shit businesswoman twenty-four seven. But as my father would say, “The devil is a lie, and the truth ain’t in it.” Despite our differences in personalities, I love working with my family. But sometimes the pitfall is being dragged back to feeling like that twelve-year-old girl who would tremble and cradle her stomach against the ache that bloomed there at just the thought of contention or raised voices or arguments. And that twelve-year-old girl has self-esteem the size of a pea. Like the pea that delicate princess slept on. Small as hell.
“You’re a queen. And if you don’t feel it today, fake the hell out of it until you do.”
I smirk as I round the corner that leads into the lobby. If my mother ever retires from teaching, she might have a poetry gig waiting on her.
Shoving my parents and the circus of crazy that was my childhood to the back of my mind, I move forward to where a woman with a shining, thick sheet of long dark-brown hair sits on a tastefully upholstered couch. She flips through one of the magazines we leave fanned out on the cedar coffee table, and from the short distance that separates us, I note the flawless french manicure and flash of gems that circle her wrists and a couple of fingers.
Rich.
If the hair, nails, and jewelry didn’t tip me off, the red soles of her glossy pink patent leather pointy-toe pumps would’ve been a blinking neon-red sign. Louboutin. A classic So Kate with its almost five-inch stiletto heel. One hundred twenty millimeters, to be exact.
I know my shoes.
Remembering the name on the intake file, I curve my lips into my polite yet with-the-perfect-degree-of-warmth smile—and yes, I’ve practiced it in the mirror.
“Ms. Summers?” I say, pausing next to the end of the couch.
The woman turns her head toward me and stands. All that’s missing is the slow-motion panning and a backwash of golden light as she flips her light fall of hair over her shoulder. Because she is that beautiful. Only one other woman has made me question my devotion to dick. Now, Valerie Summers can be added to that short list right under Jennifer Lopez.
I’m not a small woman at five feet nine in my bare feet and six feet in my heels. Throw in my full D cups, round hips, and thick thighs, and I’m what a romantic soul would call Rubenesque. Some men—including exes—have called me fat ass or chubby. And they can go fuck themselves, thank you very much.
But my client, catwalk ready in her slim-fitting royal-blue pantsuit, towers over me by several inches. With her flawless features, at least size 4 figure, and excellent taste in shoes, no one would dare call her anything but perfect. If I hadn’t fought hard to be comfortable in my own space and body, I might be in the corner right under the black-and-white print of the Rossonian, sucking my thumb and rocking back and forth.
As it is, I might be holding in my stomach.
Judge not lest ye be judged, as my dad would say.
Smiling, I extend my hand toward her. “Welcome to BURNED Inc. I’m Zora Nelson, president.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Nelson.”
She accepts my hand, her palm cool, her grip brief before she loosens it and lowers her arm back to her side. Clasping her matching pink clutch to her waist, she scans the waiting area with an impeccably arched dark brow. Through her gaze, I take in the spacious lobby and the large smoked picture window that offers a view of busy Welton Street. Levi, Miriam, and I chose each piece of furniture and painting together, right down to the magazines and knickknacks that decorate the coffee and end tables.
