“Hope…y-….safe…”
The line crackled.
“Mama what?”
“I hope you’re staying safe.”
“Yes. I’m gonna make my flight tomorrow. Signal’s really bad so I won’t call most likely.”
“Okay. I’ll be at the airport with Steven.”
My mama had been trying to force her new boyfriend Steven down my throat for the past eight months and it wasn’t going well.
“Steven? Why?” I huffed.
“He’s my man. Maybe if you had a man, you wouldn’t be worried about my man,” my mom started.
I rolled my eyes and ignored her as she trailed off into a rant about how I needed to get laid more so I would stop getting all “up in her business”.
“I just don’t like Steven!” I interrupted.
“Uh huh? You just have a problem with an old lady like me getting busy six nights a week.”
“Mama gross!” I yelled.
“Well it’s true,” she mumbled.
Hoping to spare myself any more disturbing details about my mother’s sex life, I made an excuse and hung up the phone. My mama had been a famous super-model in London, parlaying her olive green eyes and tanned skin into an international career. She’d been in magazines, met the Versace siblings and partied until addiction yanked everything underneath her and sent her spiraling towards rock bottom.
Money corrupts. She’d ended up with a baby — me — a few leaked porn tapes that had excluded her from high society in Los Angeles, and a ten year battle with cocaine and heroin that had only ended once she got pregnant with me. She’d raised me well, but there were times she couldn’t shake the wild child inside of her off. Without me to look after her, I didn’t think she’d make it.
I needed to get back. Steven, her new man, was a former pimp. I suspected he hadn’t left the pimping behind and I needed to get back to her so I could use my inheritance to find proof of who Steven was and chase him away from my mama. She deserved better.
I stayed awake all night thinking about my mama, Steven, and my now deceased father. Jerome had never been a good man to her. My sisters didn’t know it, but he’d paid good money for the night he spent with my mother. He’d only cared about her once the baby was born. Up until he got a paternity test to prove I was his, he’d spent every moment denying me and calling my mama a dirty hooker when he was the one who had paid for her.
You could see why I didn’t tell my sisters…
My mama got on my case for not getting laid but I would have stayed celibate for my whole life if it meant not ending up with a man like my daddy.
My eyes burned in the morning. A knock slammed against my door. I slid out of bed and ordered a simple breakfast — local Costa Rican bread, avocado, scrambled eggs, fresh mango slices and sparkling water. While Dinah’s housekeeper prepared breakfast, I showered and prepared for my flight.
The tropical weather messed up my braids and I knew my mama would comment on my hair the moment I landed in Los Angeles. I took a quick shower, tied my braids up into a tight high bun and wrapped a silk scarf around my forehead to hide my less than perfect edges.
I couldn’t wait to get back to LA where I could wear makeup every day without melting it off. Not even my acrylics survived the weather and the French manicure on my toes were my only ties to good looks that remained.
Breakfast came to me on white platters and I ate in bed. After thirty minutes, the housekeeper entered my room and informed me that Dinah hadn’t slept well and she wouldn’t be getting out of bed to say goodbye.
“Are you sure I can’t sneak in there?” I asked.
“No,” she replied, “Dinah is sleeping.”
“Uh. Okay.”
“Your driver is downstairs,” she said.
“So soon?”
“Yes. You leave early.”
“Oh… Okay.”
Discomfort knotted my stomach.
“Can I at least leave her a note?” I asked.
“No,” the housekeeper replied firmly.
“Oh…”
“Come on,” she smiled, sensing my discomfort, “Let’s go.”
I followed her, tugging my suitcase behind me and deciding whether or not I should make a break for it and say goodbye to Dinah anyway. I decided against bothering her. I didn’t feel we were close enough to justify it.
I followed Dinah’s dark-haired housekeeper outside to the black car with tinted windows that awaited.
“This is it?”
“Sí.”
The driver got out of the car and approached the housekeeper with an envelope. She took it and scurried off. I squinted in the sunlight trying to get a good look at him. The rays blinded me enough that I couldn’t quite see his face. He was pale, freckled and wore thick sunglasses that obscured much of his face.
He didn’t smile.
He opened the front door for me rather than the back. This wasn’t the custom in America, but figuring it was just cultural, I entered the car. He sternly got into the front seat and I tried to work my best Spanish on him.
“Buenos días.”
It’s impossible to live in LA without picking up a little bit of Spanish.
“Buenos días,” he replied in a thick Costa Rican accent.
His voice surprised me as his skin tone was one usually found amongst foreigners or expatriates. However, his accent sounded natural, like he’d been raised in the jungle.
As we drove out of the driveway, a thicket of trees clamored together overhead. He reached for a toothpick and stuck it in his mouth, gripping the steering wheel loosely as we drove.
“Where are we headed?”
He didn’t reply.
“Hablas inglés?”
“No.”
“Cómo te llamas?”
“Leon.”
“Eso es francés, no?”
“Si.”
Not much of a talker, I presumed. Too bad. I had been nervous among my father’s contemporaries but I usually charmed the pants off most people in the real world (not the wealthy world). I’d talk to cab drivers, janitors, and I knew the homeless people on my block like we were family.
Maybe now, I could do something for them, I thought to myself.
I leaned back in the seat, resigning myself to a three-hour early morning drive without a lick of conversation. When we hit the highway, Leon started to speed. The roads wound around and after a few minutes, when I caught hold of my stomach again, I noticed we weren’t getting deeper into the city, but further away from it.
My heart sank. I hadn’t thought much about the envelope exchanged between Leon and Dinah’s housekeeper. The incident flashed into my mind with worry. Oh hell no…
I’d watched hundreds of hours of newsreels about women being kidnapped and sold into sex slavery. In that instant, that was all that flashed into my mind: being sold as a piece of meat for some sicko who would make me regret the rest of my living days.
I went ballistic.
“WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME?!” I shrieked.
“Señora, en español?”
“En fuckin’ español? WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME. DONDE?”
“Señora, calmate!”
“CALM DOWN, ANSWER THE QUESTION NOW! DONDE?”
“Señora, cálmate!” He growled.
Oh, he wanted to get angry? I did what any rational person wouldn’t do. I reached over, grabbing the steering wheel and swerved the car off the road, dragging the wheel to the left and screaming as the car went flying off the edge of the road.
END OF SAMPLE
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The Builder_BWWM Romance Series Page 5
