A Tropical Rendezvous: A BWWM Interracial Bad Boy Billionaire Multicultural Romance (African American Romance) (48 page)

Chapter One

Janessa parked her car in the carport before she leaned her head on the steering wheel. She’d been at work for sixteen hours. Her feet hurt, her back ached, and her head was throbbing.

She’d known before she started that nursing wouldn’t be easy, but she never imagined it would be so hard. Just today she’d taken care of two screamers, a nudist and an old guy that kept trying to feel her up every time she took his vitals.

She slipped out of the car and hoisted her purse onto her shoulder. The bathtub was calling to her. She could already imagine sinking beneath the water and sipping a glass of wine.

Janessa rode the elevator up and examined her scrubs. They were horrendous. She couldn’t wait to peel them off and do some laundry. Tomorrow would be another busy day, but she needed the money. After all, she was the only one working at the moment.

She fished out her keys at the door and stepped into the apartment. Janessa froze. There were clothes strewn all over the living room, dishes piled in the kitchen sink, the bathroom was covered in hair. Janessa groaned in disgust.

Of course she couldn’t just have a relaxing night.  On the balcony, Antonio was with his friends smoking cigars and playing poker. She supposed she should be grateful that he was at least smoking outside.

“Hey, baby!” He called when he spotted her. “How was work?”

“Fine,” she said from between clenched teeth. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

A resounding “oooh,” left his friends mouths. Antonio looked at his cards a moment longer. She knew he was just doing it to defy her, he couldn’t afford to look weak in front of this particular crowd.

“Give me a minute.”

“Antonio, please. I’m exhausted, and my feet hurt.”

“I’m coming,” he said finally putting his cards down. “I think game time’s over.” When the guys groaned, he held up his hands. “My woman’s tired, what do you want me to do?”

“She shouldn’t even be working,” Marco said with a raised eyebrow.

“Are you saying I don’t take care of my girl?”

“Marco, Tony, stop it,” Janessa said firmly. “I
want
to work. And I’ll keep working. Why don’t you all go home?”

They said their goodnights as they walked out of the door. Janessa sighed. She’d had her brown curls pinned into a tight bun, but now she let them loose. Tight curls bounced and brushed her shoulders faintly.

Janessa had grown to love the way she looked as she got older. Her dark brown skin, wide hips, and big smile were a reflection that she’d grown proud of. The only thing she wished was that she still had time to go to the spa. Once upon a time, she’d been there at least once a week, but now she didn’t have the time.

Once everyone was gone, she perched her hands on her hips. Tony took his time coming in. She knew he was trying his best to delay the inevitable.

“What’s up babe?”

“Don’t ‘what’s up babe’ me! How is this place so destroyed? I spent all night busting my ass to make sure you had a clean place to live in.”

“I know, I know,” Tony said. “It wasn’t my fault. You know those guys, they’re animals.”

Janessa rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Can you at least help me clean up?”

“Isn’t that a woman’s job?”

Janessa narrowed her eyes dangerously until he laughed. “I’m joking! Calm down. Come give me a kiss.”

Tony kissed her, his tongue sneaking into her mouth. She shoved him away when he started pawing at her.

“Knock it off! I’m exhausted.”

“Jesus, we don’t even have sex anymore.” He mumbled as he started picking up his clothes.

“Maybe we’d have sex if you actually helped out around here.”

“I try to help out,” he protested. “I make more than enough money for you to quit that stupid job of yours and stay home. It’s not like I haven’t already asked you to marry me.”

Janessa scoffed. “Yeah, that was so romantic the way you proposed when you thought I was knocked up. Tony, you know I don’t want to get married until you quit your,” she thought about how to word it. “Your ‘job’.”

Tony shrugged. “I was born into the organization, and I’ll die in it too. You can’t change that.”

She glared. “If that’s the way you feel, maybe I should just leave then.”

Tony grabbed her arm before she could go. “Come on. You know I don’t know when to shut up. My mouth runs and runs. Come on, baby.”

He kissed her cheek, her neck, her collar bones. Janessa sighed. Antonio could be an asshole, but she’d been with him for three years now, she was used to his particular brand of BS. As he held her, she cooled down.

“Whatever.”

“I love you,” he said with a smile.

“I love you too.”

Janessa turned back to the task at hand, taming the mess in the house. She picked up an armful of clothes and carried them to the laundry room. The washer was empty so she tossed them inside then stopped.

A pair of dark red panties lay on top of the clothes. Janessa reached forward slowly. She picked them up by the hem and held them up. They weren’t hers. They were obviously from a petite woman.

“Antonio!”

“Yeah?”

“Can you come here?”

“Hold on a second, I’m trying to get the rest of these dishes into the sink.”

Janessa gritted her teeth. She stalked into the living room, the panties stashed behind her back. As she looked at him, she wondered what she’d ever seen in him. Sure, he was tall, sexy and spontaneous. He had dark brown hair and these baby blue eyes that made women swoon. He seemed perfect, but he wasn’t.

This wasn’t the first time they’d had this kind of conversation. In the three years that they’d been together, Janessa was pretty sure he’d cheated on her at least once every four to six months.

“Tony,” she said quietly.

He came around the corner, towel in hand. “Yeah?”

“Who’s are these?”

“Oh, shit.”

“Oh shit is right.”

They spent the entire night arguing. Tony didn’t want her to leave, but he also refused to sleep on the couch. At the end of all the yelling and screaming, she packed her bags and left.

She was staying in a rundown hotel not far from work. Still, she got so little sleep it didn’t seem to matter. Digging into her bags, she pulled out a pair of peach scrubs and pulled them on.

Tony could go to hell for all she cared. He hadn’t even tried to explain it away this time as he had so many times before. Instead, he chalked it up to Janessa being too busy for sex and him having needs.

“Bullshit!” She cried as she threw her shoe across the room.

Quickly, she retrieved it and put it on before she left for work. She was already late, but the urge to care was gone. Instead, she stopped for coffee on the way to the hospital.

“How’s it looking?” She asked Yolanda, the head nurse on her floor.

“Crazy day. So far three gunshot wounds, a stabbing and the guy in room six has an injured elbow.”

Janessa lifted a brow. “That’s not that extraordinary.”

“There’s nothing wrong with his elbow. He just wants pain medicine.”

Janessa shook her head. “That kind of day, huh?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Janessa liked Yolanda. She had salt and pepper hair, a big smile and didn’t take crap off of anyone. Janessa hoped that when she reached her age, she was just as kickass as the woman she ate lunch with most days.

“Oh, honey I have a new patient that just checked into twenty-six. Do you think you could take it for me?” She asked as she peered over the top of her glasses “I just sat down, and my legs are killing me.”

“Sure thing.”

“Thank you, darling.”

Janessa was happy to jump right into work. She needed to take her mind off of last night and the big mess that she’d discovered. Refusing to think about it, she pushed the memories away as she walked down the hall to twenty-six.

“Good morning, I’m your nurse-.”

She forgot her train of thought. That never happened. She tried to stammer out a name as she looked at the guy in front of her.

Never in her life had she seen someone so sexy. Short blond hair, gunmetal gray eyes, and a crooked smile gazed back at her. Even with him sitting down, she imagined him to be at least 6’7, that was taller than Tony even was.

It wasn’t just his height, though. He was topless from the waist down with a pretty impressive wound on his side. Still, he didn’t seem to be in pain. Instead, he smiled at her, held out a hand and gave it a firm shake.

“Clyde Baker.”

“Janessa,” she said shaking his hand. She shook her head. “Let’s take a look at that thing,” she said nodding towards his wound. “What happened there?”

“Oh, this? Losing side of a knife. It just barely caught me, but it hurts like crazy,” he said with a chuckle.

“Let me take your vitals. The doctor will be in shortly to tell me-.”

“I’m Doctor Cane, actually.”

Janessa rolled her eyes. She hated the woman. Vanessa Cane was tall, thin and rich; the trifecta of bitch behavior. She looked Clyde up and down as she shook his hand. Looking closely at his wound, she nodded.

“It’s not terribly deep, but you should get stitches just in case. Why don’t I patch you up?”

Janessa fumed. She’d once again been completely tossed aside by the woman as if she wasn’t even there. She was about to turn on her heels to leave when the PA system above paged her for an emergency on the other side of the hospital.

She grinned. “I’m sure I can handle stitches. Why don’t you go ahead?”

Vanessa glared at her before she apologized to Clyde and headed out. Janessa knew she would be seething later, but it was worth it. She turned to the man.

“I’ll be right back. Let me grab a few things I’ll need.”

Janessa returned and laid out her supplies. “Can I get you anything for pain?”

The man shook his head. “I don’t like them. They make my head feel foggy. I already popped two Ibuprofen before I came in any way.”

She laughed. “Brave man.”

“I try,” he said with a smile. As she started to work on him, he dropped his voice. “What’s going on with your and the doctor?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Yeah, that glare was pretty obvious.”

Janessa shook her head. “Hospitals are a lot like high school. You’ve got the cool kids; those are the doctors. The nerds, the lab techs. The cleaners are the loners. And nurses, well we’re the mean ones,” she said with a laugh. “It’s not easy being nearly invisible. No one wants you, they want the doctor.” She shrugged. “That’s life I suppose.”

“Well,” Clyde said with a grimace, “for what it’s worth, I’m glad the nurse is working on me.”

She laughed. “Are you flirting?”

“Am I that bad at it?”

“A little bit,” she said with a grin.