Leftovers With Benefits: An Interracial Contemporary Romance

by C. L. Donley

  “I’ve received their blessings once before,” she’d said, “and I wasn’t impressed.”

  Still, she couldn’t rid herself of the nagging desire to let Kevin be her husband.

  His words about her new last name burned and burned in her soul. “You wouldn’t even have to change your tattoo,” he’d said.

  He was offering her a drama-free transition. Like your whole house burning down and getting a new one. It was the exact thing to say to her.

  When he heartily agreed to the stealthy union, it solidified her decision. They got married, came home and stared at each other for a long time in bed, smiling and laughing, as if they could visibly watch their married state wash over them.

  “Did we make a mistake?” she’d asked. He’d simply shook his head.

  Their marriage license came in the mail and they opened a bottle of wine. That was almost two years ago.

  “I heard Lindsey got remarried,” Kevin offered. It was old news, but he struggled to think of a polite exchange.

  “She did! Some restaurateur investor guy our dad introduced her to. She’s doing very well! In Vegas, of all places. Honestly who would want to live there?”

  Kevin felt like the required pleasantries had reached their limit. He certainly had.

  “Well, it was um… interesting… seeing you here, Henley.”

  “You too. Give Kenya our best!”

  “…yyeah,” Kevin replied as Henley calmly walked away down the condiments aisle.

  * * *

  Kenya Hayes rested a hand over her belly as she stood outside in her black Chuck Taylors, her cut off jean shorts and tank top, her hair in a low ponytail. She cocked her head to the side and studied her handiwork. She backed up further and further down the walk until she was almost at the edge of the driveway.

  “Looks good!” Alan, one of her jogging neighbors commented. She gave him a thumbs up as he passed.

  “I love it!” gushed Carol, who lived three houses down and across the street. Her neighbors were so damn nice.

  Kenya had painted the front door of her white colonial house with the black shutters a pale yellow.

  It was one of only a few house projects she’d done so far. The major one was to have the interior of the house repainted, from several different shades of pale blue to a light warm grey throughout. She also had all the original trim painted white, which she hated and had to have stripped and sanded. She put a clear stain over the now light wood and it was perfect.

  Now she was on to the door. Her initial instinct was to paint it red. Then it went to a more modern yellow-orange. A last minute gut instinct made her opt for the pale yellow. And it turned out to be a pretty damn good choice. The second coat would take awhile to dry.

  She cleaned up her paint brushes and plastic tarp and set them out on the back porch. An hour or so later, she heard Kevin coming home.

  Right on time. She smiled. Not that she ever had to worry about Kevin not calling her to tell her where he was, but if she did, she could practically set her watch to the precise time it took him to get home from work, to the grocery store and back.

  He entered the kitchen setting the grocery bags on the island bar top.

  “First of all, that smells amazing and you look adorable.”

  “What’d you think of the door?”

  “It’s yellow.”

  “I know. Do you like it?”

  “I do. Guess who I saw at the grocery store?”

  “Where’s the wine?”

  “…I didn’t get it.”

  “Baaabe…“she whined.

  “I got non-alcoholic margarita mix, some club soda, some ginger ale. Look, I know it’s probably fine, and I know you’re a very knowledgeable, very astute, very professional and capable nurse.”

  She folded her arms as he spoke.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Who is sexy and beautiful and… tall. And patient and understanding of her worry wart husband.”

  She stifled a grin with all her might.

  “Just… can we not do the wine? For me? Please?”

  Kenya sighed and let her folded arms go limp, dramatically.

  “I’m dying,” she faux cried.

  “As soon as the baby’s born, I will buy you one of those hats with a wine bottle holder on each side, that has two straws that go directly into your mouth, I promise,” he said. She giggled.

  “You better damn do it.”

  “I will.”

  “Who was at the grocery store?”

  “Oh, yeah. Lindsey’s foul demon of a sister.”

  “Oh no,” Kenya groaned, having been filled in on that head case in the last three years. “Did you hide?”

  “I couldn’t, she saw me first.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “I’m so glad you asked.”

  Kenya gave him a furrowed brow and a slight head turn of skepticism.

  “She’s all like, ‘Kevin Hayes!’ and I said, ‘Henley Graves’ and she says, ‘actually, it’s Henley Hamilton now.’”

  Kenya’s face went through a series of expressions, chiefly one of shock and disbelief. Her eyebrows went to the sky and she blinked as if she’d just been punched hard by an invisible poltergeist.

  “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

  Kevin looked amused but he didn’t move.

  “She married her sister’s clusterfuck leftovers??”

  Kevin smiled, amused and selfishly glad she hadn’t referred to him as her “Ex.”

  “Well, she didn’t say it was him for sure, but she did end with ‘send Kenya our love!’”

  “…She’s insane.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does she know where we live?”

  “Unfortunately they both do.”

  “Oh my God,” Kenya shook her head.

  “It may not be him,” Kevin willed to be true.

  “He shoulda moved his ass to Texas.”

  “Kenya, you don’t think he would… try and reach out?”

  “He absolutely would.”

  “What?! Why??”

  “Because he’s a social hurricane and he doesn’t understand emotional boundaries.”

  “Yeah, but… wouldn’t it bother him to see us together?”

  “Probably.”

  Kevin furrowed his brow in confusion.

  “Yeah. I was married to that.”

  “So you’re saying they might actually try and hang out with us?”

  “I mean, I don’t know what Henley’s angle is, but I don’t see her keeping this little run-in to herself, do you?”

  “No,” he scoffed, thinking of her gossipy blabbing mouth.

  “I’m probably gonna get a call, from either him or my mom.”

  “I cannot believe your mom is still talking to him.”

  “Honestly? She might be in love with him. It’s the only explanation.”

  “How does he think we would even stand to be around him?”

  “He knows me well enough and probably assumes I’ve forgiven him by now, which he’d be right about. Assuming he even gives a shit about my feelings. But you, you’re a Marine. He’d still fuckin’ die for you.”

  Kevin shook his head. Kenya tried to decipher him in between the lines.

  “It’s okay to admit you feel… brotherly toward him. In that way.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You two are one fist fight away from being best friends, just admit it.”

  “No. He’s an asshole. I didn’t love everyone in the Marine Corps, it’s full of douchebags like him.”

  She huffed a little laugh.

  “What?”

  “I’m just thinking about him forcing you to befriend him.”

  “You really think that could happen?”

  “No. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter to me. It’s just an amusing thought.”

  “I don’t want him anywhere near you.”

  Kenya tensed a bit, keeping her tone light.

  “Babe, y
ou can’t possibly think I’d—”

  “He’s just not good for you.”

  She stared at him a moment and broke out into a smile.

  She’d been thinking that some part of him might still be sore about Cecil having an affair with Lindsey. She hadn’t been thinking about the fact that he would want to protect her. She hadn’t thought about that fact at all.

  She came around the kitchen island slowly and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, standing between his legs as he sat on one of the bar stools. He put his hands around her waist.

  “You worried about me, baby?”

  He nodded innocently. His hands went to denim of her jean cut-offs that just barely covered her backside.

  “You went outside in these?”

  “Yes,” she laughed.

  “Probably gave poor Earl a heart attack across the street,” he said. She laughed even louder. He smiled.

  “Did you have to bend over in them?”

  “Mm-hm. Would you like a demonstration?”

  “Please.”

  Kenya bent over in full view of her husband.

  “How long until dinner’s ready?”

  Kenya stood up straight.

  “About as long as it would take you to bend me over this here bar stool.”

  Kevin raised an eyebrow provocatively. Her smile went to full wattage.

  “Watch my six, girl,” he said. Kenya laughed. Their lips innocently met.

  “Always,” she said.

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  Sneak Peek: Love on a Lark-- The next Standalone Novel by C.L. Donley out April 12th!

  Lark Chambers was positively spent.

  After training two years with the U.N. as an interpreter in Libya and Haiti, after only nine months in the field she was done.

  She was a failure. She’d let down all the people who’d stretched out their many hands over the years to keep her from dying, the U.N. who’d paid her tuition, only to find that she did not have the stomach for it all.

  Or perhaps she did, but her fragile and fragmented hell of a childhood kept bubbling up to the surface no matter what she tried to do to stuff it back down. In fact, she didn’t try. She couldn’t. Where was there a shoulder to cry on, or a quiet corner to weep in? In Haiti, for God’s sake?

  She was a wreck, deep down. In no state to help anyone else, apparently. She built herself into a monster overachiever, but her shallow-built foundation couldn’t hold up the towering facade. She had no family, no roots, and years worth of faking it until she made it had garnered no interested parties.

  She thought for sure she’d be strong enough to interpret witness testimony for the victims of war-torn and corrupt countries. She could give back the way that she had received, give the voiceless all a voice. But she could no longer bear to hear the atrocities from their lips hour by hour, let alone be forced to process it, and then repeat it in another language, in a palatable fashion.

  Lark had been a child prodigy, but no one noticed, since finding a family to stay with took precedence over everything else. And as a foster kid, Lark hadn’t been a huge fan of standing out. It wasn’t until high school that anyone bothered to note that she was already a polyglot, with six languages under her belt. And that was only because her home life was so tumultuous that she nearly failed her entire sophomore year— including her second language courses— so she was sent to a counselor.

  She had to credit her many foster homes for pointing her in the direction of the Spanish, Korean and Arabic— but if it hadn’t been those, it would’ve been others. Lark’s mind was a tangle of signs and symbols and their many verbal forms. Her tongue had a never ending thirst to master whatever strange linguistic quirk it heard. She graduated high school with an armful of scholarships to the school of her choice, which was Syracuse. Before she graduated, the U.N. was courting her and she jumped at the chance.

  Lark sat at her impossibly long table in the dining room, butted tightly up against the small country kitchen of her Tuscan Airbnb— windows open, a line of laundry hanging a story high, overlooking the old cobble pavement below in the courtyard. A simple white mug with its steamy contents rested between soft sinewy hands the same color as her macchiato.

  Her features were dainty and sharp, her movements fluid and purposeful. Her eyes were an arresting copper color. Her thin brown hair was a bit past her shoulders, fine enough that water was no real threat to it— it only needed a little heat to make it shine with smoothness. She kept it pulled back in a demure low bun or a ponytail out of habit, her long bangs hanging down and framing her face. They blew in the wind of the open window. She smiled and breathed the free air, smiling at the sound of Italian out of the mouths of children on the street below.

  Armed with a handful of glowing recommendations and a still otherwise stellar resume, she was back in Europe within a month. The U.N. had given her a tidy severance package, and though she was advised to take the vacation, she preferred to work.

  And there was no better therapy in the world than having Italian food and words on your tongue.

  She had her pick of the litter at LIST, the linguistics agency through which she moonlighted. She initially courted a job at the embassy in Saudi Arabia. But when the last minute job in Italy came available, she canceled her plans and had her flight itinerary changed to a standby seat bound for Rome. A connecting flight later she was back in Florence, her favorite city.

  Italy was a country that understood Lark Chambers fully, while it may not have always respected her way of doing things.

  It was leisurely instead of conscientious, lecherous instead of discreet. It settled matters with passion instead of logic.

  But it accepted her, more than her own country and everyone in it. She felt an unbiased kinship, that anyone who loved Italy as much as Italy itself did was inherently Italian. And when she spent any time there, it was inevitable that she always succumbed in one way or another.

  The Italian job was interpreting Korean and Italian for Di Rossi Textiles, the 4th largest textile company in Europe. There’d be some traveling, a stipend, and of course, working closely with the CEO.

  She tried to console herself with the idea that working for a wealthy Italian company could also be a noble cause. “People need sheets and towels,” she told herself. But Di Rossi Textiles was a billion dollar company, the Di Rossi family one of the wealthiest in the world. They didn’t get that way by dressing naked orphans.

  Suddenly her phone warbled. It was a text from Channing.

  “Be there by 2-ish, your time,” it said.

  It gave Lark a warm feeling knowing she, Channing, and soon Teresa would be in their old stomping grounds together.

  Lark’s former college roommate Channing was a translator at Sotheby’s, an international woman of intrigue now, currently living in the UK.

  Teresa and Channing were coming down for the weekend to help Lark settle in, process the last year of her life, and hopefully get into some mischief as well.

  “Teresa will be here before you,” read Lark’s reply.

  “Keep the drinking to a minimum until I get there!”

  “No paying for booze tonight,” Lark wrote.

  Tonight she was busting out the gold dress, plus Teresa. Teresa reeked of sex. She always attracted the most interesting guys. She’d been saving the gold dress for a special occasion, a wrap dress she’d purchased in Brazil six months before. After six months, however, there wasn’t a special occasion in sight, so she was wearing it tonight. There was a
lways an occasion to turn heads on a Friday night in Italy.

  The ogling, whistles, comments, and spontaneous songs that a single young African American woman walking the streets of Italy inspired took some adjusting. Lark hoped she never got used to it. Channing’s blonde hair, big boobs and Southern accent coupled with Lark’s brown skin practically made them celebrities when they walked the streets of Italy together back in college. Lark had always been a pretty girl, a fact from which she spent her early life drawing attention away, in order to survive. But in Italy, she had been proposed to more times than she could count. By men who looked like they’d gotten bored of heaven and began roaming the streets.

  It was during this international sausage party that Lark and Channing met Teresa in Florence six years ago, all of them in Italy doing study abroad trips from their respective schools. The three became fast friends. And tonight, Lark was going to do her best to let loose. Teresa was French and had done an internship with Di Rossi for her degree from Parsons in Paris. She trusted Teresa to give her the lowdown.

  “I never met Misseur Luca Di Rossi personally, but he did visit the studio quite often. He’s a hot grandpa. Stylish,” she confessed over a cocktail in her beautiful accent later that night.

  She balanced a long cigarette between her fingers, the smoke mingling in her longer than average brunette curls. She had thick brows and full lips. Her eyes were dark and mysterious, a French cliche.

  Each of them was in cocktail dresses, Channing’s a pin-striped halter and Teresa’s midnight blue velvet and spaghetti straps.

  “I think that letter of recommendation gave me the edge I needed to get this job.”

  “I told you,” Teresa grinned.

  Lark laughed, shaking her head.

  “I wish I was there to see you ask him for one.”

  “I couldn’t do it. I just sent him an email.”

  “And he sent you a completely professional and unbiased recommendation??” Channing asked skeptically.