Excerpt of Dangerous Pleasures by

Chapter One

Mayson turned away from the view of the San Diego hills, shaking long, wavy hair out of her eyes. She leaned back against the terrace wall and squinted at her best friend sitting at the nearby table.

In the sharp sunlight, she could tell that Renee hadn’t slept well the night before. Faint shadows lurked under her eyes and the corners of her narrow mouth were tight with tension. But a restless evening couldn’t erase her effortless beauty. The short, natural hair. Twin dimples in her cheeks. The slender body in its usual weekend sundress that left her shoulders bare.

Renee paused with the glass of grapefruit juice near her mouth and looked at Mayson, a reluctant smile on her lips. “Just like that, huh?”

A light breeze stirred up, fluttering the hair around Mayson’s face. Ink-black strands against her oak-brown skin. Renee thought briefly about going inside for her camera to capture the contrasts of her friend. Beautiful/strong. Jamaican/Chinese. A centered hurricane.

“Of course,” Mayson said. “Linc didn’t deserve you. I told you that the first day you brought that needy fucker home.” She bent down, her body supple and graceful from over ten years of practicing and teaching yoga, and grabbed another strawberry out of the almost empty bowl. “Usually divorce is a sad thing but you just dropped a big piece of shit off your shoe when you unloaded that moron.”

“I loved him, though,” Renee said, defensive.

She swallowed more of the tart juice, lowering her lashes against the sunlight blanketing the rooftop terrace. Her hand fumbled on the table for her sunglasses.

“You wish you loved him.” Mayson sank her teeth into the deep-red strawberry, sighing in brief pleasure at the sweetness that exploded in her mouth. “One day you’ll realize that it’s okay not to love everyone who loves you.”

The two women faced each other on the rooftop terrace of Renee’s seventh-floor condo. Below them lay the city of San Diego, tumbling hills dotted with other houses, other condos, other rooftops, the green interruption of trees, the gaze rolling down the hill until it fell into the sharp blue water of the Pacific.

Remnants of their Saturday brunch—a joint effort prepared in the kitchen nearly two hours before—lay scattered on the table. A bowl that was once full of fat red strawberries now contained only their lonely stems. Two empty plates with golden crumbs from the long-gone waffles, flecks of powdered sugar, and haphazard stripes of maple syrup. A small saucer still held half a sausage patty. It sat far away from Mayson, who, though not a nazi sort of vegetarian, didn’t want the meat anywhere near her. She was never in the mood to smell pork.

“It’s a good thing I already love you or I’d be following your advice already.” Renee gave Mayson a sour look.

Her best friend grinned. “Don’t shoot the messenger, honey.” Her rough-soft Jamaican accent curled lovingly around the words.

“You are being such an A-hole.”

“Ooh,” Mayson teased, grinning. “Are you actually cursing at me?”

“Shut up.”

Mayson stuck out her tongue at Renee and grinned.

Her friend never cursed. Never. The summer they turned eleven, the two of them had gone off to camp together. One of the counselors at Camp Minnehawk had had the filthiest mouth Mayson had heard before or since. She’d stood in awe of the girl’s inventiveness with the English, and some of the Spanish, language.

Renee’s reaction to the girl had been just the opposite. If she’d even been thinking of uttering a curse word before hearing Contessa Stephens swear like a drunken sailor on the last day of leave, that summer had effectively cured her of every single impulse.

The warm stone of the terrace pressed against Mayson through her thin T-shirt and jeans as she leaned into it, still smiling. “What’s up with Linc, anyway? I thought he was dating somebody else?”

“He is.” Renee paused. “I just woke up thinking about him this morning.” And those thoughts had led her to call him. Bad idea. On the phone, he’d acted as if she was the one who had asked for the divorce.

“I’ll forgive your subconscious for that lapse in judgment,” Mayson said.

“I can’t just forget him like that. He was a big part of my life for four years. We shared a life and a mortgage.”

“The house was in his name, Renee. You didn’t share anything more than the burden of that pseudo-marriage.”

“I’m just not there yet, Mayson. I can’t see it as a complete mistake. Even after everything that happened.” Her glass clinked against an empty plate as she put it back on the table. Linc was the future she had chosen for herself. At the time, her choice had felt like the right one. She looked at Mayson, then away.

“Fine. I’ll let you keep your illusions. But we both know you’re better off now. I’d rather you be vaguely uneasy without him than miserable with him. You may have short-term memory loss about how things were between the two of you, but I don’t.”

Renee winced. “Leave it alone, Mayson.”

The soft voice resonated faintly with pain. And that more than the words themselves stopped Mayson. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt Renee.

“Fine. Sorry. I got carried away, as usual.”

She dropped into the chair across from the bowed head, an apology on her face. “You want to go to the movies later? Djimon Hounsou is in a movie that just came out.”

Renee’s eyes met hers, the pain clearing from the sunlit brown. “Okay. But you’re buying the tickets and the popcorn.”

The pressure lifted from Mayson’s chest. She sighed through her smile. “No problem. That shouldn’t break the bank.”