The way he studied me, I knew he was going to ask the same question he did every time his results came in. “Any regrets?”
I tilted my head. “How could I have any when I have you and Bella? The two of you . . . you’re all I need.”
He nodded, though I still felt the ache the results left him with each time. He dropped the rest of the mail onto the table, then stood on the opposite side of the island facing me.
At the same time, we spoke:
“Gabrielle, I wanted to talk to you.”
“Mauricio, I wanted to talk to you.”
We chuckled, looked down, then glanced up, our moves in rhythm.
I said, “You first.”
He nodded. “In church this morning, Pastor Ford’s message . . . it was deep.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk about, too.”
He said, “I heard her, but I’m not jealous. I really searched my heart and that’s not what we’re fighting.”
“Okay. Because I wanted to tell you that there is no need for you to be jealous. You will never lose me to anyone or anything.”
He didn’t move, as if he didn’t quite believe my words. “It’s not about losing you, it’s about priorities. When I look at our lives, there is hardly anything that goes on with me that can get in the way of you and Bella. But that’s not the same with you. There are too many times when Bella and I come behind”—he paused as if he wanted to say the right thing—“Media Connections.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t agree. I wanted to acknowledge that I heard him. “You and Bella are my priority. But I’m a new entrepreneur with a business that’s just five years old. I’m far from eight-hour days.”
“I get that. And that’s why I’m willing to always help out. I just never expected it to be like this.”
I rounded the island, then hooked my arms around his neck. “You are the kindest, gentlest, most loving man I know.” Then my lips spread into a slow smile. “And I can’t forget the finest. The only man I can see through my eyes, inside my heart, and in my life . . . is you. I love you with everything in me.”
“I love you, too.”
“And I’m going to work on this. I’m going to make sure you and Bella always know how important you are to me.”
His arms tightened around my waist. “I think this is what lawyers call a deal.” He pressed his lips to mine, and before I even parted my lips and welcomed him in, I sighed.
Our tongues danced a slow waltz, and I could have stayed like this for the rest of my life. My passion was rising, rising, rising, and I pulled back breathless.
I said, “I’m trying to figure this out.”
“What?”
“Well, I’ve told you how much I love you”—I tapped my finger on my lips as if I were in deep thought—“but I think it’s time to show you.”
Now he squinted as if he were wondering about this, too. “How many rooms are in this house?”
“Counting all the bathrooms, I’m not sure. Something like ten, eleven, twelve . . .”
“Stop there. Twelve’s enough. I can think of a dozen ways and a dozen places”—he began to unbutton my blouse—“where you can show me.”
This time when our lips locked, for the next three hours, they hardly parted.
33
Keisha
Gabrielle stepped into her office and closed the door the way she always did. I rounded Pamela’s desk and took what I knew for sure now was my temporary place. Setting my purse down, the first thing that I went for was my phone. I had a message:
Morning, boo. Call me later.
That made me grin. Buck and I had talked last night till like two in the morning. He was as excited as I was about the best weekend of my life.
“Yo, boo. We’re gonna be living large in LA.”
Buck was right about that because as it was all coming together for me, it was falling apart for Gabrielle. When I talked about Justus on Saturday night, Mauricio was like those volcanic rocks in the saunas I’d seen when Mama and I had taken a trip to Hot Springs—he was steaming, and I just kept pouring on the water.
It seemed, though, that by the time Bella and I had come home yesterday, Gabrielle and Mauricio had some kind of truce. I hadn’t expected that, but I’d set up enough trouble between them, and now I could stir up more with what I’d found out yesterday.
I adjusted Pamela’s computer monitor so no one would see the screen, then I typed: low sperm count.
In the two seconds it took for the information to load, I thought about last night when Gabrielle asked me to move the mail from the kitchen table so we could set the plates for dinner. There was lots of mail, but only one envelope was open. It was the word “sperm” on the unfolded page that made me stop.
I’d only had a few seconds to scan it: Addressed to Mauricio . . . low sperm count . . . then dozens of numbers I didn’t understand. With Gabrielle only feet away, I couldn’t study my discovery, so I tucked the mail behind the canisters on the counter.
But when I’d snuck downstairs after everyone was asleep, the letter and the rest of the mail were gone.
So now I had to research on my own. Dozens of sites popped up, all of them having to do with . . . male infertility. I sat back and stared at the screen. Was this a problem for Mauricio? Did this mean he couldn’t have children? Was Bella even his?
“How is that little girl who was supposed to be mine?”
That was what Justus had said to Gabrielle on Saturday. Was Bella . . . his daughter? I had questions with no answers. But what I did know was this was something I could use.
Just as I clicked off the screen, the postman walked in, nodded the way he did every morning, and placed the mail on Mattie’s desk. I gathered the stack addressed to Gabrielle.
Skimming through the letters, one envelope—with a generic return address—made me pause. I felt through the paper . . . credit cards.
Rushing back to Pamela’s desk, with great care I lifted the lip of the envelope so I’d be able to reseal it. There were two credit cards inside, and I laid both on the desk, grabbed my cell, opened the camera, took a picture of the front, and just when I snapped a photo of the back . . .
“What are you doing?”
My head jerked up, and there was Gabrielle’s best witch looking down. She’d slithered in like the snake she was without making a sound.
“What are you doing?” she repeated, now sounding like a growling dog.
“I was taking a picture of this credit card.”
She snatched it from the desk.
I said, “Hey, that’s not yours.”
After she scanned the card, she said, “And apparently, it’s not yours either.”
“I never said that it was. It’s Gabrielle’s, and I was going to show her an app that stores credit cards safely.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Well, the good thing”—I snatched the card back—“is that I don’t have to make sense to you. You can ask Gabrielle if I have permission to do this.”
My bet was that she wouldn’t do that, at least not right now, because she couldn’t take the chance of being wrong in front of me. I won that bet when after another moment of her glaring, she rolled her eyes, then rolled her big ole hips down the hall. She seemed to be getting fatter by the day; I looked much cuter when I was pregnant. I shook that memory away and returned to my task.
Dang . . . I needed to be more careful, and now I’d have to find some kind of app for Gabrielle. In the meantime, at least I had one credit card for Buck.
When Gabrielle opened her door, I stood and tapped on it. “Are you ready?”
She waved me in.
I put the mail on her desk. “Your credit cards came, and I’ve been researching apps that can guard your numbers, and even detect fraud faster than the bank. We’ll go over those later.”
“That’s great, Keisha.” She grinned. “You’re turning out to be a wonderful assistant.”
It was hard for
me to even give her a fake smile when she used every opportunity to belittle me. Why did she always have to say I was her assistant?
To stop the boiling in my blood, I said, “I’d like to review some things for Justus’s event before your conference call this morning.”
Just as I sat down, her cell phone rang.
Gabrielle glanced at the screen. “Speaking of,” she said before she answered. “What’s up, Justus?” Then, “She’s with me now. Let me put you on speaker.” Another pause. “Okay, you’re on.”
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this since Saturday. So, what I want to know is . . . what have you accomplished so far?”
I stiffened.
Gabrielle rolled her eyes. “Really, Justus.”
He laughed. “But that’s how serious I am about this. So can we meet this morning?”
“Sure,” Gabrielle said. “As long as you come in after eleven.”
Every good thing I’d been feeling faded away fast. Because if Justus came to this office, that would give Gabrielle another excuse to shut me down and lock me out.
Justus said, “Nah, I’m waiting on a delivery. So I was thinking you could come over here.”
“I can’t this morning,” Gabrielle said.
“I wasn’t talking about you; I was talking about Keisha.”
His words made Gabrielle sit back in her chair, but to me, they sounded like a new song.
“Oh,” Gabrielle said. “When you said you . . .”
“You already told me all that’s on your plate. I just want to lay out a few things I’ve been thinking about and get it down in a plan before I leave for New York tomorrow.”
“I didn’t realize you were going out of town.”
“Going to have a face-to-face with my literary agent. Tell him what’s up.”
“Well, then you and Keisha need to meet. I’ll have her Uber over.”
“Nah, I’ll send Smokey.” He paused. “How soon can you be ready, sweetheart?”
It took me a couple of seconds to realize he was talking to me. “I’m ready now.”
“Bet. Smokey will call up when he’s downstairs.”
After a few good-byes, Gabrielle hung up, and I had to press my legs together to stop that shaking thing that happened to me with Justus.
I said, “I promise you, I’ll be able to handle this with Justus.”
“Handle what with Justus?”
I didn’t even turn around; just the sound of that witch’s voice sent my blood back to boiling.
“I’m glad you’re here, Regan.” Gabrielle waved for her to come in. “I was gonna call you last night, but we were so busy.”
“What’s up?”
I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to have to worry about the credit card situation for a minute. Because once her best witch heard this . . .
“Keisha has come up with the most fabulous idea to support Justus with his literary career.” She motioned toward the other chair and Regan sat next to me.
Gabrielle went on to tell Regan the details that we had to this point. She ended with, “Keisha’s on her way over to Justus’s place now.”
Regan turned her body around so that she faced me, and then just as dramatically, she swung back to Gabrielle. “Ah . . . events for our clients, especially the major ones, are my responsibility.”
“Of course, but this just came up, and with everything that we’re both doing, I thought it was a good idea for Keisha to get this started.”
Regan shook her head.
“It’s not a big deal,” Gabrielle said. “Justus loves it, and he likes working with Keisha.”
After a few moments of way too much silence, Regan said, “Keisha, would you mind leaving us alone?” She spoke to me, but her eyes were hard on Gabrielle.
I didn’t move. It was bad enough that I was Gabrielle’s assistant. I wasn’t about to jump when the witch said so.
Even when Gabrielle nodded, I took my time standing. I’d only taken two steps when Regan said, “And close the damn door.”
I almost stopped to tell her that she needed to find better words and a better way to talk to me. But then I kept going because this was part of the plan. By the time I finished, maybe even Regan would be gone and I could just work for Justus. With him as my only client, it would still be enough for this life.
Sauntering to Pamela’s desk, I went back to my phone, found the picture of the credit card, then texted it to Buck along with a message:
For you, boo.
Then I waited for Smokey to arrive, and it felt like I was waiting for my future.
34
Keisha
I had never been in this part of California, but the signs said we were in Bel-Air. Everyone in the world knew about this place; this was where the Fresh Prince lived.
But what I didn’t know about Bel-Air were the houses. Not that I could see any; they were all behind big iron gates. Bel-Air was like Beverly Hills on steroids.
Finally, Smokey turned the tricked-out SUV into a short driveway with a gate that had a big J in the middle. He eased to the side, pushed the button to lower his window, then pressed numbers into a keypad.
It was magic in Bel-Air. The gate parted. Smokey eased the SUV forward, then drove up a narrow, winding road that was flanked by trees.
It didn’t take too long to get up the hill where a huge fountain with water sprouting out of the trunk of an elephant stood. Smokey rounded the fountain, and my mouth opened as wide as my eyes. I had never—not in any magazine, not on any TV show—seen a house this big. This was a mansion.
I jumped down from the SUV, then followed Smokey up three steps to the front doors, which were tinted glass. Before Smokey could even ring the bell, a man wearing a real butler’s uniform opened the door. That made me think of the Fresh Prince again, and I wondered if every house in Bel-Air had a butler.
“Yo, Ed,” Smokey said to the man.
“What’s up, Smokey?” He turned to me. “Come in, Ms. Keisha.”
I stepped inside, but then all I could do was stand at this front door and stare at this massive space. This place made Gabrielle’s house look like a toy box. She only had one staircase; Justus had two, one on the left and the other on the right. And he had two chandeliers and marble floors.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
I glanced up to where Justus stood above us wearing jeans and a white wifebeater. But he was so high up, his voice echoed down. My hello was a grin—and I hoped I didn’t look too silly.
He did a sexy trot down the stairs. When he got to the bottom, he pulled me into a hug, then told me to follow him. He said to Ed, “Bring us some drinks and snacks.”
As I walked behind him, I tried not to stare at his arms; his biceps bulged more than Buck’s and he had tats, too, which was so sexy to me. Yeah, Justus was older, but he was the kind of older that was kind of fine.
He led me into a room where two walls were completely covered by floor-to-ceiling bookcases. One looked like it held thousands of books, and the other was filled with statues and plaques. I knew what some of them were: a Grammy, an Oscar, and a boatload of NAACP Image Awards.
“Sit over here.” He directed me to a brown leather sofa that faced the opposite wall, where two huge flat-screen TVs hung. Both televisions were on, though muted—one on CNN and the other on ESPN.
When I sat down, the leather reached out and hugged me. Dang, I’d thought Gabrielle’s furniture was lit.
Justus sat at the other end of the long sofa and stretched his arm along the back. I didn’t miss the way he stared at my legs, and I was glad I’d worn this black denim mini with my ankle boots.
“So,” he began, “ready to get working?”
“I am.” I pulled my tablet from my bag. “I’ve been thinking about this all weekend, too. I want you to know, Justus, I’m going to do a good job, so that any time after this if you need me . . .”
He laughed. “Slow your roll, sweetheart. Gabby’s the one who works with me.”
“Of course. I was just saying if anything happened to her . . .”
He frowned.
“I mean if she got sick or whatever, I want you to know I could step right in.”
“I see that, sweetheart. You’re loaded with ambition, aren’t you?”
“I am.” I gave him a grin and again hoped that I didn’t look too stupid.
“So, how do you like being in California and staying over there with Gabby and her husband? It’s working out?”
“Well, they certainly have enough room for me.”
He nodded. “So things are good?”
I bit my lip to stop myself from speaking. Justus was fishing, and I had something for him to catch, but I needed information, too. I had to play this, though, like I wasn’t trying to start trouble.
“Yeah, it’s good,” I finally said, “but I don’t know how long I’ll be there.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
I hesitated, more for affect than anything. “Well, they argue a lot, and I have a feeling they didn’t argue much before. I think it’s because of me.”
He shook his head. “Nah, I know Gabby, and when she told me about you, she was thrilled. If they’re having problems it’s because of that punk she married.”
I laughed. “I have a feeling he’d call you the same thing.”
His eyebrows rose to the top of his forehead. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah, when we came home from hanging out with you on Saturday . . .” I shook my head, letting that gesture finish my sentence.
“He had a problem with that?” He chuckled. “Yeah, that clown knows what time it is. I just hope Gabby comes to her senses.”
“You think they’ll break up?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said with such certainty. “He’ll give her a reason; he probably has already.”
I shrugged. “You may be right. I mean, with all the arguing and the fact that he has a low sperm count and can’t have kids and . . .”
“Wait!” he shouted. “Hold up.”
When he leaned forward, I put my hand over my mouth. “Oh my God. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Envy Page 25
