Page 84 of Tempt Me

I glanced at Jamila. How did she feel being left out of this bromance? From the way she stared down at her menu, not great.

“Mila, I”—Cooper cleared his throat again—“I was going to take you out, too, but since you’re here, would you also stand up for me?”

She grinned at him, all traces of her earlier stoniness gone. “Of course. Y’all are still planning it on the island in the fall?”

“Oh my god, it’s going to be gorgeous,” Ben said. “There’ll be a chuppah on the beach, and Cooper found us a rabbi on the island. And then dinner and dancing in the restaurant. We’ve got the whole resort to ourselves.”

“I don’t remember agreeing to dancing,” Cooper grumbled.

While they argued about whether or not Cooper would be required to dance in public, I stole a glance at Jamila. She watched them argue, a bemused look on her face.

“Hey.” I touched her thigh under the table, and she startled. “Are you okay?”

“Of course,” she muttered. “I’m just surprised, is all. It’s been a weird morning.”

We hadn’t expected to meet her besties. But I didn’t love that she’d called the morning weird. Earlier, she’d called me her girl. She’d taken me out to breakfast. But now she felt far away, and despite the contact of our knees under the table, she’d erected a wall between us.

By the time the waiter came to take our order, I’d lost my appetite.

But Jamila hadn’t. She flashed her biggest grin at the waiter, whose cleft chin reminded me of Hayden Christensen fromStar Wars.It would’ve been a lot for anyone, but the full force of Jamila’s flirting—because that’s exactly what it looked like—was too much for him. He blushed, dropped his pencil, and skipped over me entirely when he took our order. Ben had to grab the waiter’s sleeve to pull him back to hear my clipped request for a short blueberry stack.

As the others talked and sipped their coffee, I felt trapped in an invisible cage like a mime down on the Embarcadero. Jamila drove the conversation toward business. She asked Alicia about her company and her plans to hire another consultant to cover her maternity leave. She talked stock prices with Jackson and Cooper. Jamila even asked Ben about his work for a local foundation and whether he thought charitable giving would increase as the country emerged from the recession.

She said not one word to me.

But I laughed at her jokes. I picked at my pancakes, and I hid all the hurt behind a vacant smile. I knew my role. My family taught me well.

Jamila was here with her peers, her friends. I was the dorky little sister, too uninteresting to invite to the conversation. As long as I remained silent, they wouldn’t notice I was there and send me off to play with my dolls.

Maybe that’s what Jamila meant when she called me her girl. I was a plaything, something she’d pick up when she thought about it, then toss aside when she was no longer in the mood.

I’d been a fool to think we could be more.

While they lingered over coffee, I ordered a rideshare. This close to the city, it didn’t take long.

As it arrived, I stood. “Thanks for breakfast.” I didn’t say it to anyone in particular, sure one of the billionaires would pick up the tab. “I’m heading home.”

“What?” Jamila finally met my gaze, and I knew she saw my pain when her eyes crinkled at the corners. “You’re leaving?”

“Yeah. I’ll see you at work on Tuesday.”

She scraped back her chair. Glancing around the table at her friends, she said, “I’ll be right back.”

Jamila followed me outside to where a sickly green Toyota Prius idled. She grabbed my arm. “What are you doing? I’ll drive you back to my place. Or yours if that’s what you want. I thought we were spending the weekend together.”

I shielded my eyes against the sun behind her. “I thought so too. I guess I was wrong.”Wrong about how you feel about me,I didn’t add.

“I don’t understand. We were having fun.”

“You said you’d tell Jackson about us.”

“You expect me to tell him in front of my mentee, my best friend, and his fiancé that I’m fucking his little sister? How the hell do you think that’d go?”

“I don’t know since you didn’t even try!” I cursed the waver in my voice.

“Look, I can’t. Not right now. I need his support and Cooper’s. I need my family. Once this media mess dies down and we launch the new app—”

“Then you’ll have another excuse.” I took a deep breath. “I need a minute to think. Okay?”

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