His phone vibrated, and Jamal checked the screen. It was the event planner he’d hired, letting him know that everything was set for the other bit of extravagance he had planned.
“Are you ready?” he asked Phylicia.
“Are we going to another winery?”
“No, I think I’m going to go with this one as my Arizona supplier. When we get back to Louisiana, I’ll visit a few and get another local supplier. But we need to get on the road.” He gestured with his head.
“Where’re we going now?”
“I promised to show you my home state’s magnificent scenery, remember?” He captured her hand and placed a delicate kiss on the backs of her fingers. “We still have a lot to explore.”
Jamal purchased a couple of bottles of wine from the winery before heading for Route 179 to Cathedral Rock. A short time later, he pulled the rental car into the driveway of the Crescent Moon Ranch.
“Is that it?” Phylicia asked, pointing to the majestic red rock with its two peaks.
“Yep,” Jamal said as he grabbed a bottle of wine. “Let’s walk. There’s an even better view on the other side of the cabin. It’s the best place to watch the sunset.”
They rounded the corner, and Phylicia’s loud gasp echoed around them. Dozens of lit candles surrounded a hand-stitched blanket with a traditional Native American design. A picnic basket, filled with bread, fruit, and several artisan cheeses delivered from a dairy farm in Tempe, sat just to the right of it.
She whirled around, her eyes wide with surprise. “How did you do this?”
“I told you I would show you the best that Arizona had to offer. Sit.” He gestured to the blanket with his head.
After settling next to her on the colorful blanket, Jamal filled the two wine glasses Phylicia held, then opened his legs so she could scoot between them. He wrapped an arm around her middle and nestled his lips against her neck.
“Thank you for coming here with me,” he said. “You’ve made an unbearable trip better than I ever thought possible. Instead of being miserable, I’m actually enjoying myself.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. After a pregnant pause, she quietly asked, “Jamal, what was the argument with your dad about?”
He shook his head, rubbing his chin against her collarbone. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he murmured.
“No,” she said with enough force to make him rear back a bit. She twisted around and faced him with a look that said she wasn’t backing down. “You don’t get to shrug this question off anymore. I came all this way to be here for you when you face your dad; the least you can do is tell me what caused the disagreement in the first place. What did he do that was so horrible?”
“It wasn’t just one thing,” he answered. He blew out a frustrated breath, casting his gaze on the red rock formation in the distance. “My father doesn’t respect me. He never has.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because he practically said it to my face.” Jamal drained the remainder of his wine and set the glass down, silently applauding himself for not grabbing the bottle and drinking straight from it. Talking about this would be so much easier after an entire bottle of wine. Or four.
“One morning, my dad came into my office and told me to pack up because I was moving to the twenty-eighth floor, into one of the executive suites. I told him I was fine with my windowless office on the sixth floor, with the rest of the architects at Johnson Construction. But he’d never intended for his only son to remain a lowly architect.
“’It’s time for you to step up to the plate and take a swing at being the boss,’” Jamal said, mimicking his father’s voice. “He’s the king of baseball analogies,” he added with a derisive snort.
“You must have known he had this in mind. How long had he been grooming you to move up into a leadership role at the company?”
“Since birth,” Jamal answered. “But I never wanted it. Never. It’s the creation process that I love. I love working with my hands, even when it’s only my hands touching the keyboard and computer mouse. I’ve never wanted to be anyone’s boss.”
“But you will be when you open your firm and hire people.”
“Yeah, but it won’t be the same,” he said. “For one thing, my firm will be a one-man show for at least the first year. I’ll expand in the future, but I don’t want it to grow into what Johnson Construction has become.” He shook his head. “I can remember a time when my dad knew the name of every person who worked for him. Now, there are twenty thousand employees. I’m going to make sure that my firm remains small, and more of a partnership than one man at the top dictating what others do. I’m going to be open-minded when it comes to new ideas. The complete opposite of my father.”
“Ah, let me guess,” Phil said. “He isn’t onboard with the eco-friendly stuff?”
“Somebody hand the lady a prize,” Jamal said, his mouth twisting with a cynical grin. “I’d been waiting for the perfect opportunity to share some of my ideas for incorporating green technology into Johnson Construction’s designs. But that morning was definitelynotthe time to do it. Things went downhill from there. I told him if he wasn’t ready to step into the twenty-first century, I would just open my own firm.”
Her eyes widened. “What did he say to that?”
“That I didn’t have what it took to make it on my own. That I’d come crawling back to Johnson Construction with my hands stretched out.”
