The Billionaire From Atlanta

by Susan Westwood

  I’m going to make you sound so bad that they won’t even let you in the building by the time I’m through with you! No way! If you want a good recommendation from me for this job or for any other jobs in the future, you’re going to give me two weeks, and that’s that, missy!”

  Celeste felt her heart pounding and her mouth grow dry. She tried to swallow but couldn’t. “You can’t do that to me! I’m one of your best employees here!”

  “I can do it, and I will do it if you walk out like that. I want two weeks damn it!” he shouted at her.

  She jumped, startled at the volume of his voice. “Listen, I can’t do that! I will be working during the day and going to school at night, I won’t have any time to be here!” She thought that if perhaps she reasoned with him, he might see some kind of common sense and go back on his horrid threat.

  He shook his head slowly and glowered at her. “I don’t care what’s going on with your schedule. You listen to me and you listen good! You come here and work every night for two weeks, and you work during the day at your new job, and I will give you the recommendation you want, but if you stiff me, so help me gawd I’m going to make your professional life a living hell for as long as I can!”

  She knew that he meant it and it felt like the bottom had suddenly dropped out of her world. Everything was crashing around her on the inside, and she felt helpless to do anything about it.

  “I’ve laid down the law and that’s it. There’s nothing more to talk about,” he snapped flatly, and then he turned and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Tears stung at her eyes and welled up, spilling over her thick black eyelashes. She sank down into one of the cheap chairs near a table and dropped her face into her hands. It seemed to her that no matter how hard she tried, her life might as well always be one step forward and two steps back.

  Not knowing how she was going to be able to take care of the issue or solve it, she wiped at her face and thought as clearly and carefully as she was able to. She told herself that there had to be a way around it, that there had to be something that she could do to make it all work.

  Thinking about her professor, she pulled her cell phone from her purse and called him. She was stunned when he answered the phone; she hadn’t expected him to, but she was suddenly tremendously grateful that he had.

  “Professor Larkin!” she gasped.

  “Yes?” he asked in response.

  “I… uh… this is Celeste Everett. I’m in your evening classes.” She wasn’t quite sure where to start with him.

  “Yes?” His tone was level.

  “Well, I’ve had a change at work for the next two weeks, and I can’t get out of having to work the night shift at my job. I’m not going to be able to come to class for two weeks.” Her heart began to race and her palms felt moist.

  He sighed. “Well Celeste, that’s unfortunate. You’ve already missed some of my classes, and if you keep missing them like this, you’re going to fail the class. In fact, I can say without a doubt that if you miss my class in the coming two weeks that there is no chance that you will pass the class or receive the credit for taking it.”

  He sounded to her as if he had just spoken the most casual death sentence ever uttered. He was indifferent; ambivalent to her needs and her quandary. There was nothing that he would do. She was just another student, and it was just another hardship that he couldn’t possibly care less about.

  “But I can’t get there! There’s no way for me to get out of having to work!” she pleaded desperately.

  He sighed again. “Listen Celeste, you signed up for the class, you paid for the class, you’re taking the class. If you don’t show up for it, you fail the class. Even a middle school kid could figure that out. Attend the class or fail. That’s all there is to it.”

  Her body was quivering with sickness, sadness, anger, and frustration. He couldn’t be forcing her, but he was in a subtle way, and so was her boss at the supermarket. There was no way around it. She knew that she couldn’t tell Hector that she couldn’t start for two weeks; she knew she’d lose her new job if she did that. Something was going to have to give. Something was going to have to be sacrificed or everything was going to fall apart.

  “I understand,” she managed to mumble meekly. There was no way around it. She ended the call and slid her phone back into her purse.

  Celeste sat for a long while in the empty break room and then finally rose from the broken plastic seat and walked numbly to the door. She pulled it open and almost shuffled quietly to the front of the store. Keisha and Tonia saw her and went to her.

  “Well? What happened?” Keisha demanded.

  Celeste felt as if she was drowning in a pond, sinking down further and further into dark green murky water, while the light above her began to fade, and she heard Keisha’s voice sounding through it all, muffled as it made its way into her head.

  “What?” Celeste asked, giving her head a soft shake and turning slowly to look at her friend and co-worker.

  “What in the blazes is wrong with you?” Keisha asked in consternation. “I said what happened?”

  Celeste breathed in long and slow and as she exhaled even more slowly, she answered. “What happened… well, I tried to quit and he’s forcing me to work two more weeks of night shifts, which I can’t do because I have school at night, and work at my new job during the day.”

  Tonia tilted her head, puzzled. “So what are you going to do? You can’t do all of it.”

  With a slow shake of her head, Celeste raised her eyebrows and stared ahead. “No, I can’t. If I don’t give two weeks’ notice here and work that night shift, the boss is going to give me a bad reference. He said he’ll destroy my professional career, and you know he’s just spiteful and cold enough to do it.”

  “Yes he is!” Tonia added in passionately. “So what are you going to do?”

  Celeste couldn’t believe that she was saying it. She hated thinking the words. She hated thinking the thoughts and knowing the truth, but more than that she hated saying them out loud and having to hear them voiced from her own mouth. It was like dropping the ax on herself.

  “I’m going to have to miss the next two weeks of school and fail the class, and then I’ll have to take the class again and pay for it again. There’s no way out of it. If I don’t go to class over the next two weeks, then I fail, and that’s that.” She sighed and her shoulders slumped as her eyes fell to the floor.

  Keisha snorted. “Oh hell, look at you, all worked up over this. You get too dramatic. You doin’ too much and you tryin’ to be so much more than what you really are. I keep tellin’ you this and you just don’t listen to me and you don’t listen to reason. You a black woman in the South honey, born and raised on the wrong side of the tracks.

  There ain’t no way out for you and there ain’t never going to be any way out for you, and that’s just all there is to it. You keep thinkin’ too much of yourself, you keep tryin’ and workin’, thinkin’ you can do so much better, and you can’t. And I keep telling you that you can’t, but you deaf and stupid.”

  She planted her hands on her hips and kept on with her tirade as Celeste stared at her in horror.

  “You tryin’ too hard. You need to quit messin’ with your life. You are just fine where you are with what you got and with what you’re doing. You’re just fine! You ain’t never going to have no better than this and you just need to accept that and find some peace with it, ‘stead of goin’ on and on trying to do so much to better yourself. I don’t know where your head is.

  Get real girl, this is your life! Right here. This store. Your cheap ass apartment. Your broken-down car. That’s all you got and that’s all you ever going to have, now just get used to the truth and quit messing around with it before you really screw it up!” Keisha snorted again and then turned and sauntered back to her register where a line of people waiting to check out was beginning to grow.

  Tonia gave her a silent and sympathetic look for a brief m
oment, and then walked back to her own register, leaving Celeste alone near the door. She gazed at them both for a long moment, standing there behind their registers with their sore backs, sore legs and knees, listening to the beeping of the machines all day and sharing mundane conversations with every person who came through their lines.

  She hated it. She wanted to change her life and no matter what, she was going to do it. She was going to walk away from the wrong side of the tracks and make something of herself and what was left of her life if it was the last thing that she ever did.

  Without another word, she turned and walked out of the door of the grocery store, going to her broken-down heap of a car, and driving it home. She was going to change her life, and she was going to do it starting the very next morning.

  There was only one more thing that she just had to do that day. She picked up her phone and swiped Kevin’s phone number, feeling her heartbeat pick up again as the phone rang, and feeling a smile form over her lips as his deep and sexy voice came over the phone.

  “There she is! How did it go?” he asked jovially and with keen interest.

  Her heart flipped once inside her chest. “It went amazingly! I got the job! Hector hired me!” She tried not to blurt it out, but she was just too excited not to share the great news with him.

  “That’s fantastic!” he cried out jovially. “I’m so happy for you!”

  “I have you to thank for it!” She was giddy again, and some of the sadness from her stop at the grocery store melted away from her heart and mind, like ice on a hot summer day.

  “Hey, it was just a suggestion and a favor. I’m glad that he saw you, and really glad that he hired you!” Kevin sounded as happy as she felt.

  “Look,” she lowered her voice to a soft and sultry tone, “I want to meet up with you. I want to thank you in person.”

  He chuckled and his voice lowered to match hers. “You do?” he asked interestedly. “Well, as much as I would love that, I don’t want you to feel that you have to do anything like that with me to thank me. I didn’t do it so you’d be obligated to me in any way. I did it in earnest to help you.”

  She smiled. He really was a good guy, and she liked that about him so much. “I know that. I want to do it anyway. Will you meet me please?”

  There was hunger and intrigue in his tone. “Well I can’t say no to that! When?”

  “Tonight.” She spoke smoothly. It would be the only night off she would have for two weeks, most likely, and she wanted nothing more than to spend it with him.

  “Done. Same place, same time?” he asked, referring to the hotel where they had met before.

  “Yes. Perfect. I can’t wait.” She grinned, and she could hear in his voice that he was grinning right back at her.

  “I can’t wait either. See you then.”

  Celeste headed for home and planned on a nap, a shower, and then wearing some of her prettiest undergarments, which she hoped were going to wind up on the floor in no time.

  She entered the same hotel again, but this time it was with much sweeter anticipation, because she knew what she was going to find behind the hotel room door, and she could hardly wait to get to him.

  Kevin had a roguish debonair look about him when he pulled the door open and grinned at her. He took two steps forward and reached for her, pulling her into his arms and kissing her fervently.

  Celeste matched his kiss and they walked slowly together, wrapped firmly in each other’s arms toward the bed. They didn’t stop until they reached the edge of it, and he finally let her go just far enough that he could look at her face as he held her in his arms.

  Breathless and with a pounding heart, she looked up at him and smiled. “Wow!” she panted. “That was quite a hello!”

  “I couldn’t wait to see you!” he told her with a wide smile.

  Her eyes dropped from him to his shirt, which was unbuttoned halfway down, and she chuckled. “I see that!” she teased gently.

  “I left some for you to do.” Kevin winked at her. “If you want to.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh, I want to.” Celeste giggled softly and reached her hands up to the buttons on his shirt, undoing the rest of them swiftly as they shared a few soft kisses in between pulling each other’s clothes off.

  To her surprise, her bra and panties stayed on as he pulled her into the bed, but that didn’t slow him at all as he took his time moving his mouth inch by slow inch over her body, going from her mouth down to her ankles and then slowly back up toward her hips. He bit gently at her core over the outside of her panties, teasing her by tracing his tongue along her skin where the seams of the material touched her.

  Celeste ached for him to bring his tongue into her, and when his taunting grew to be too much, she began to plead with him, but she didn’t have to ask more than once. He grinned at her and curled his fingers beneath the silky material, kissing her over the outside of it before he slid them off.

  “Whatever my lady wishes.” He spoke softly as he slid the panties over her curves and down the length of her legs. They landed on the floor a moment later, and the moment immediately following that found her with a gasp of pure pleasure as his mouth closed over the tender folds of her body.

  She moaned as he buried his tongue inside of her, sucking, kissing, and biting lightly at her as she moved her body against his mouth, losing herself to the power of his passion. At the sounds of her mounting pleasure, he closed his fingers tightly around her hips and held her fast to his ravenous mouth as she lost her breath and came, her body shivering as she clutched the sheets around her, her eyes closed and every muscle in her body tensed.

  As the ecstasy began to subside, and she opened her eyes, trying her best to catch her breath, he pulled his mouth from between her thighs and moved his own body there, desperately hungry for the feel of her around him.

  Pushing his erection into her slowly and tantalizingly, he stared down into her face and her eyes, as if he was making a memory he never wanted to forget, and he filled her body as they began to move together in a rocking rhythm.

  They tried to begin slow, to take their time with each other, but so fierce was their desire for each other that they clung to one another tightly, kissed harder, cried out sooner, and worked their bodies relentlessly in their passionate wrestle.

  Overwhelming release took them both, and they clung to one another as their bodies shared ultimate pleasure, and then they rested for just a short while before he took her with him into the shower and they reignited their flames of lust amidst steaming water and thick bubbles, holding fast to each other again.

  Once they were back in the bed again, Kevin held her against his chest and kissed the top of her head, his eyes seeing things in his mind that were not before him, his thoughts both there with her and somewhere else on things in the future.

  He turned after a long, thoughtful while, and spoke softly to her, touching her face with his fingertips as he gazed into her eyes.

  “I want to keep meeting like this. I want to keep doing this. Do you feel like that? Is this something you’d like to become a regular thing with me?” His voice took on a hopeful note.

  Warmth flooded her and she found herself grinning without even thinking about it. She reached her hand up and took his in it, weaving her fingers in between his and thinking to herself what a good fit their hands made together.

  “I would like to do this a lot more with you. We are good at this, you and me in a bed together.” She felt a rush of happiness inside her. She thought about what he was saying and it appealed to her enormously. She was on the app where they had met, but she didn’t want to sleep around with several different guys, she just needed someone to touch her now and then, to ease her tension and share some pleasure with her. She didn’t have time for anything more, and what they had begun together was working out very well. It was a relief to her to know that he wanted to continue it as well.

  Kevin’s smile nearly wrapped around his face. “Good. No wait… g
reat. That’s really great.” He kissed her long and slow and then looked into her eyes again. “Intimate partners,” he said thoughtfully. “I like that.”

  “I like it too. It’s just right for us. No mess, no hassle, no tangle, just the fun things.” She laughed quietly and kissed him once.

  “I think it’s perfect and I couldn’t agree more.” He laid his head back on the pillow and smiled at her.

  “Thank you for the job interview, it’s going to change everything for me. It’s going to change my whole life,” she told him with a slightly more serious tone in her voice.

  He gave his head a little shake. “No, you’re going to change your whole life, and you already were, by working hard for what you want and going to school… you’re the one who is changing everything. I just gave you a little helping hand in a good direction. That’s all. I know you’ll take that ace and soar with it. I have no doubt about that.”