Free Forever Love (Arabesque) by Celeste O. Norfleet Page B

asked, tearing his check off her pad.
    “No, I’m done,” Keith said. “Thanks, Gladys, and please thank Lois, as well.” He wiped his mouth needlessly, paid the check and then placed two one-hundred-dollar bills for Gladys’s and Lois’s tip on the table where the notes had been.
    He left the diner, driving in silence. For the first time in a long while he didn’t want to go back to the office. But he went anyway. He opened the door and headed to his desk. Kate had left two overnight express packages and a note from Megan. Neither needed his attention this evening. He sat, opened his laptop and pulled up the file he’d been working on. Two hours later he stopped. His mind was no longer in this. He saved his file, closed the laptop and got up to leave. As soon as he turned the office lights off, his phone rang.
    * * *
    Gia dragged her finger across the tiny inset pad, highlighting everything she’d just written. Seeing the massive section made her cringe. In the last hour and a half she had rewritten, edited and corrected this passage fifteen times. She shook her head, bit at her lower lip and then pressed the delete key. In the blink of an eye, everything vanished.
    She sighed heavily and shook her head again. She’d just wasted almost two hours writing what sounded more like country and western lyrics than a serious business proposal requesting financial and political support. She closed her laptop and then set it aside. It was useless. She wasn’t getting anything done this evening. She was too distracted.
    At first she told herself it was her grandmother’s health, but she knew her grandmother would be fine in time. Then she convinced herself that it was the OCC. But she knew that wasn’t true. She knew exactly what was distracting her, or rather who was distracting her—Keith Washington.
    As if to clear her thoughts, she stood up, walked to the window and looked out. Living on the top floor in a high-rise condominium right off Delaware Avenue on Penn’s Landing afforded her a spectacular view. To the left were the glittering shining lights of the Ben Franklin Bridge. She looked across the Delaware River to the sparkling lights of Camden, New Jersey. At night the dazzling landscape was breathtaking. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
    Right now this was what money afforded her—the lavishness of her home. She was born into the lifestyle, and that would never change. Her family’s wealth dated back five generations. It had started in the back of her great-great grandmother’s laundry. The simple card games grew into the hottest nightspot in the early 1920s. By the time prohibition became law, the Duncan family added loan-sharking and bootlegging. Just like many of the megawealthy families now, the Duncans’ history began steeped in the underbelly of crime, illegal speakeasies and back-alley liquor dens. They realized early that there was money to be made, and they made a lot of it.
    They took advantage of weaknesses. If customers couldn’t pay their debts, they signed over their homes. Soon the Duncans owned property all over the city. By the time the prohibition laws had been repealed, her family was mind-staggeringly rich.
    Today the Duncans were a respected family in the City of Brotherly Love. They were law-abiding, mostly, and had prominence and power as the city’s premier real estate developers. Her grandfather was a legend, and her father was living up to it by creating his own legacy. But that’s where it ended.
    When she turned her back on it all, they were shocked and blamed her nonconformist mother for corrupting her family responsibilities. Her father was furious. Her grandmother collapsed and her grandfather was enraged. He disowned her on the spot. But she refused to change her mind. She just hoped they would learn to accept her life as she wanted to live it.
    Gia closed the drapes and turned around, knowing it was never going to be that easy. She walked back to the desk and