But Justin put a wrench in her ambitious game when he suggested Sherise be a stay-at-home mom after Cady was born. They had at first agreed to a regular twelve-week maternity leave, knowing that Sherise had plans of moving beyond her position as assistant director of communications for the White House’s Domestic Policy Council. She was hungry for power and her ultimate dream was to make it from the Executive Office Building across the street to the West Wing of the White House. After endless fighting, Sherise went the route that had always served her well—refusing affection until she got her way. While she loved Justin, he did not overwhelm her, which made him a good husband candidate for her. She could control the way her body reacted to him, thus control the power he had over her.
It wasn’t as if he wasn’t attractive. He was six feet tall and, while he had an extra ten pounds, he wore it well. He was a sexy dark brown with beautiful light brown eyes and a sturdy face. He wore preppie boardroom glasses that made him look distinguished and was always looking sharp in his expensive business suits. The point was, while she found him perfect husband and father material, Justin had never gotten Sherise to lose control of herself. She could resist him, but he couldn’t resist her. She played her games and made certain he couldn’t resist, which resulted in a quick marriage proposal. This control over him was why her compromise of a six-month leave was quickly accepted and rewarded with access to affection again.
Sherise felt a pull in her gut as Cady called for her again, but she fought it and went to check her briefcase. It made her want to cry, but she wasn’t a stay-at-home mom type. She was too ambitious, too greedy. Did that make her a bad mother? She didn’t know. She only knew that she would be miserable without the challenge of a career. It made her feel strong, safe, and allowed her to do what she did best—power play and win.
“I filled up her bag.” Sherise’s back was to her husband and child as she organized the items in her briefcase on the French-villa style dining room table. “So all you have to do is grab it and walk her over to the day-care-center.”
Sherise almost jumped when she felt Justin’s hand on her shoulder. She turned to face him and was comforted by the compassion in his eyes.
“I know this is hard for you, baby.” He leaned forward and kissed her on her forehead. “You don’t have to pretend.”
“Please,” she begged. “Don’t do that. You’ll make me cry. I can’t walk in there with red eyes.”
“You know that you’ll be back in the swing of things before noon,” he said. “Don’t sweat it, baby. Cady will be fine at day care. I’ll drop her off on my way to work and you can pick her up on your way home.”
“And you don’t hate me?” she asked.
Justin smiled his usual charming smile. “I couldn’t if I tried.”
She knew that. She could always rely on Justin to be a supportive husband and a fully involved father. Which made her feel all the worse knowing that Cady might not even be his child.
Billie Hass felt her stomach getting tighter and tighter as every second passed. Her petite fingers gripped the coffee cup in her hand as she stood at the counter and looked out the window facing the street. The building where she was starting her new job on K Street was right in front of her. She didn’t look much different than any of the expensively suited lawyers who walked inside, but she knew she was different.
Growing up in Southeast DC, Billie had witnessed the injustices against the poor first-hand. A father she watched accused of a crime he didn’t commit and railroaded by the legal system, and a mother who died trying to fight the corruption of health insurance companies had molded her opinion of power. Billie knew two things. She had to get out of poverty and she had to fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves. This motivated her to get through law school, always with the objective of fighting for justice.
She graduated four years ago, at age twenty-five, and began her career as a public defender in DC. She was chided for not shooting for Big Law and six-figure salaries, but was planning for something better. Billie intended to run for office one day and use her power to fight for legislation that spoke for the voiceless. The young men who were guilty until proven guilty and poor women who the system shepherded toward dependency. She had met with a lot of obstacles but was winning more than losing. That was until Porter Hass happened.
Billie met Porter at Georgetown Law School. He was four years older than her, having spent time in the navy before going to school, so she found him a bit more knowlegeable than the average brother she dealt with every day. They had so much in common. While Billie had grown up on the tough streets of Southeast DC, Porter had struggled to survive in the dangerous Highland Park neighborhood of Detroit. Seeing cops shoot and kill his brother at the age often and get away with it, Porter had many of the same plans to fight injustice when he started law school.
But something changed. Another thing Porter and Billie had in common was a desire to live a better life than they had known as kids, to escape the ghetto mentality of “bad is good and there is no way to succeed so why bother.” They wanted to escape always being on the wrong end of . . . well, everything. But unlike Billie, who only wanted to get rid of the bad, Porter began to desire an escape from all of it. Billie didn’t want to forget everything about the hood, but Porter did, and at some point during law school, he decided he wanted to be the power that they were supposed to want to fight.
Despite their differences, she married him because she loved him and he had a lot of good qualities. He was smart and sexy and he was a great father to his now fourteen-year-old daughter, Tara. While he was still in law school, Porter fought for custody of Tara when her mother, Shawn, got too deep into drugs to care for her. Porter and Shawn were teenagers when she got pregnant and, while Porter fought his way out of it all, Shawn never bothered. He never turned his back on Tara and for that, Billie love him. That, and the fact that he set her body on fire every time he touched her. She had never felt the passion for a man that she had for Porter. Their sexual chemistry blew her mind.
But while it blew her mind, it wasn’t enough to save their marriage. Billie could handle Porter’s negative comments about the people she defended and even his digs at what he called her “ghetto tendencies,” but if it wasn’t clear they were moving in different directions, his affair with the blond, perky twenty-three-year-old associate at his law firm, Claire Flannigan, was as clear as rain. The heartbreak was followed by a divorce in which Porter’s expertise and connections gave him the upper hand over Billie. It all put her in a position where, financially, she could no longer afford to work for a pittance. She had six-figure student loans, new bills, and Porter had taken everything in the divorce.
Now, here she was on the corner of K Street and Eighteenth in Northwest DC, barely visible above the morning crowd in her petite five-foot-three frame. She had the skills to get a high-paying job in Big Law white-collar criminal defense. Her money problems were taken care of, but starting her life over, divorced and single at twenty-nine, was not what she had imagined.
Feeling her phone vibrate in her pants pocket gave Billie an excuse to wait just a few more minutes before entering the building and leaving the career she loved behind. The fact that it was Tara was just icing on the cake.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Billie said, holding her finger to her free ear to drown out the crowd noise. “What’s up?”
“I hate that bitch!”
“Whoa, Tara. What is going on?” Billie knew her stepdaughter had a short temper just like her father; she angered easily. “What’s wrong?”
“Claire,” Tara said with a voice that sounded a lot younger than fourteen. “Billie, you just don’t know what I deal with.”
“What did she do now?” While Claire was the last person Billie wanted to talk about, she would never turn Tara away. Porter was making it hard enough for her to spend time with the girl now that they were divorced. She loved Tara and missed her terribly, which Porter knew.
“She’s moving
in,” Tara answered.
Billie felt her chest tighten at the words. She tried to control her emotions. Their divorce had only been final three months. “Well, she is your father’s girlfriend.”
“She’s his jump-off,” Tara corrected. “You don’t marry the side piece.”
“He’s not marrying her.” Billie shuttered at the thought. “At least not yet.”
“He married you after you moved in,” she countered. “Only I liked you. This stuck-up Barbie is not going to be my new stepmother.”
Billie sighed. “Tara, I can’t really tell you how to be with her. You know I’m compromised on this.”
“You hate her,” Tara said. “Just like me. She’s selfish and stupid and had the nerve to try and tell me what to do this morning.”
“You really need to talk to your father about this.” Billie’s instinct was advise Tara to tell Claire to go fuck herself, but she knew that wasn’t right. Tara didn’t need to be put in the middle of this more than she already was. “You’re gonna have to sit down and . . .”
“Billie?”
Billie didn’t even need a second to recognize the voice of her ex-husband. Porter had a deep, mesmerizing voice that pulled at something inside her even when he was mad, like now.
“Billie,” he repeated. “Is that you?”
“Yes it is.” Billie could hear Tara complaining in the background. “Look, Porter, I was just—”
“You’re not allowed to talk to my daughter without my permission!”
“Since when?” Billie asked.
“Since I said.” His voice was cold and short. “You’re not her stepmother anymore.”
“But you know I love her and she loves me,” Billie said. “We were just talking.”
“You’re trying to turn her against Claire,” Porter accused. “And I’m not gonna let you do it.”
He hung up before Billie could defend herself. Not that it would have made a difference. While he had promised to give Claire up once Billie found out, she knew he never had. And when she made it clear a divorce was what she wanted, he made it clear that Claire was what he wanted. Ever since, Billie saw only the ugly side of the man she used to love. He had humiliated her and betrayed her and now he was going to try and keep her from Tara, the closest thing she’d ever had to a child of her own.
Which made it all the more insane to Billie that she was still sleeping with him.
DAFINA BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2008 by Angela Winters
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-7228-7
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