I started toward the door.
“Can I come? I swear I won’t complain about a thing.” He was talking fast in between breaths. “I’ll eat fast food or Top Ramen. I’ll even cook. Clean, too. Okay, I might hire someone to clean … but the cooking part … Babe, please,” he said after the stillness wore him down. “I’m sorry for every misunderstanding, every word that wasn’t said, every word that was. I should’ve trusted you. Simple. But you’ve got to trust me now. As difficult as that might be, you’ve got to believe in me.”
Mya’s soft voice broke the silence, “Daddy.” She reached out over my shoulder to Jake. When he came to take her, she wouldn’t let go of me, tightening her grip, somehow wrapping us both in her small but powerful little arms, pulling us together head to head.
His arms cradled Mya and me both.
“You really gonna cook?” I asked with my face against his neck.
“I’ll do anything you ask. Can I ask for one thing, though, just one?”
“What?”
He took Mya and put her down gently. “One second, Mya. Daddy has to talk to Mommy.” Jake put my hand on his chest. “You feel that, babe? No one else in this world has my heart.” He looked me in the eye. “Please just know it. I will never shut you out again. You know how much I love you?”
I closed my eyes, pushing out the final tears. “I knowit.”
“You know it?” he asked again.
“I know it,” I repeated until my heart felt the same.
“Hello, everyone.” I tapped the mike. “Thank you all for coming out. I want to thank the sponsors of this great event. Thanks to all of you, we’ve reached our one-million-dollar goal. They say it takes a village to—” I stopped midsentence when I realized no one was really listening. I folded the speech I’d planned to read and laid it down.
“This is the most amazing day I’ve ever witnessed,” I said quietly. “You never know how far you can go until you feel like you can’t go any farther and then someone comes along and offers you a little push, a bit of encouragement and tells you to keep going, you can do it. This day couldn’t have happened without all of you, every single person here. I just wanted to say thank you.” As I was about to step away, I heard one person clapping. I followed the lone cheer to Jake in the audience wearing his blue-and-white T-shirt with Mya perched on his shoulders. He clapped until it caught on with two or three people, then a few more until it rolled over into a thunderous applause. I moved through the crowd, where he met me halfway.
He kept right on clapping with me standing in front of him. Mya clapped, too, wearing her oversize Jackson Memorial T-shirt.
“I’ll always have at least two people who hear me.” I tiptoed and kissed Jake.
“What about little JJ? That makes three.” He rubbed the small baby bump under my T-shirt.
“Are we sure about the whole JJ thing? I mean, JJ Walker from Good Times, remember him?” I made a grimace.
“Gotta have a Jay Junior, absolutely required. You can pick out some fancy name for the next one, like Heathcliff, or Darius.”
“The next one?” I shook my head. “Unh, unh. No. Two is my limit.”
“Hey, you’re superwoman. I’m a witness. We can have like five or six, and you’ll still be able to bring home the bacon, fry it up, and serve Big Daddy all in one sweep.”
“Yeah, with five or six kids, you’ll be starving in more ways than one. I think you know what I mean.”
“Good thing I have faith in you.” Jake leaned in and kissed me.
Faith just happened to be the main ingredient in marriage. I closed my eyes and inhaled the moment. Moments added up to a lifetime. Not one would be taken for granted ever again.
Read on for an excerpt from the next book
by Trisha R. Thomas
UN-NAPPILY IN LOVE
Available in trade paperback from St. Martin’s Griffin
“This way, over here, JP.” The long lens of the camera was pointed our way. The frenzy of photo hounds jostling for spots to get better angles made me nervous. I squinted from the bright flash and saw a long tanned arm reach toward me. I recognized the garish diamond and ruby bracelet before I saw the rest of Jake’s publicist, Ramona Scarsdale. She bore a striking resemblance to the actress Lynda Carter, circa 1970 as the comic heroine, Wonder Woman. Her dark hair freeze-framed high and away from her face cascaded down her back. Her cheekbones and red lips were artificially enhanced, making her look like the wax figure instead of the real thing.
She slipped her cold fingers around my wrist and gave me a tug. “Wait over here,” she growled, adding in a nudge that made me lose my balance.
“Owww.” The wail came from behind me, though the young woman was expressing my sentiments exactly. “You stepped on my toe,” she squealed.
My ankle had twisted awkwardly in the five-inch heels I’d yet to master so I was only half concerned with her pain and thinking about my own. Four inches used to be the legal limit until someone had upped the ante, making it even more difficult to walk, talk, and look beautiful at the same time. “I’m sorry. I fell off balance.”
“I had the perfect shot and you got in my way.” She had an earring in her nose, one in her bottom lip and three in each ear. She held up her phone that was in camera mode. “Okay, so like, move,” she ordered with a lisp indicating a piercing on her tongue, too.
“Sure.” I scooted a bit to the right while she took the picture.
“He is so fine. Even cuter up close and personal. JPeeee…” she sang out.
“Yes, he’s gorgeous,” I said watching proudly as my husband stood against the gold backdrop, poised and looking like a million bucks. His tux was custom-designed and fit over his toned physique.
My hubby’s new world was filled with flashing lights and admiring fans. Exotic locales for filming and promoting his new career as a movie star. One day he was my house husband, basically sitting around waiting for tomorrow and more broken promises from his agent, and the next he was being asked to co-star in a movie with Sirena Lassiter, the Billboard -topping “it” girl turned actress. Jake and Sirena Lassiter knew each other back when Jake, or JP as everyone knows him, had been a rap artist.
We met six years ago when he’d hired me as a marketing consultant for his hip-hop clothing line, JP Wear. At the time I was engaged to another man, but Jake didn’t see that as a hindrance to getting what he wanted. At the time it was me, Venus Johnston, thirty-something, with as Jake likes to say, hips you can’t miss, lips that you want to sink into, and eyes that save the day. He’s a songwriter by nature, so he’s a bit poetic in his descriptions. But on the inside, I was closed off and a bit lost. He found me.
Till this day I question his good sense. Having just found out my mother had breast cancer and my fiancé was under investigation for securities fraud, I was hardly considered an ideal good time. But that didn’t stop Jake. He stepped right up to the plate, determined to hit a home run. He was confident like that. Forget about a base hit, getting to second, and hoping to slide into home. He was an all-or-nothing kind of guy.
Looking at him now, thinking about all we’d been through together, made me puff up with pride. Smooth, elegant, with integrity to boot. I slid the tear aside that escaped, threatening to mess up my airbrushed makeup. In such a short time, our lives had come so far. We had a daughter, a beautiful home in Atlanta, and enough history, love, and intrigue between us to make a Friday night movie on a steamy channel seem pretty tame.
We fought for each other when we had nothing left to fight for ourselves.
The minute the crowd started cheering and screaming I knew why. Sirena Lassiter had arrived at Jake’s side. He slipped an arm around her waist. She kissed him on the cheek. The on-screen couple oozed chemistry, the kind that made it easy to believe he’d take a bullet for her the way he had in their box office hit True Beauty.
“Sirena, JP, over here. You guys are hot.” The cameraman with the best pictures would get the most money from the celebrity
-filled magazines. Jake’s pictures always came out flawless. He gave a sexy smile, then turned toward Sirena who was already staring up at him.
Perfect shot. I could already see the headline, especially since she was engaged to be married to Earl Benning, CEO of Rise records and also producer of the film they’d starred in together. Anywhere Earl Benning walked, a camera followed. Anywhere Sirena Lassiter sneezed, a newshound reported and offered a tissue. Having Jake in the fold gave them something to speculate. Was Sirena Lassiter falling for her co-star even though she was engaged to one of the most powerful men in the business?
Not a chance. I knew these Hollywood types. It was all an act. The way she looked at him was planned and rehearsed simply to keep everyone speculating long enough to get them to the box office. In a nutshell, I wasn’t worried about Sirena Lassiter or anyone else. Jake and I were locked and loaded. Nothing could come between us. We’d proven it time and time again.
“Okay, this way. Let’s move.” Ramona waved the order and her two assistants closed ranks. Each assistant took Sirena and Jake by the elbow. We were on the move until I was suddenly stuck behind a barricade.
“Wait a minute. I’m with them,” I told the large man wearing a suit jacket over a yellow security T-shirt. Jake stopped abruptly as if he’d forgotten something. I lifted my arm and waved, glad I’d been waxed under the armpit instead of my usual cheap shave. “I’m over here, baby.”
I knew he wouldn’t leave me behind. Six years of a rocky marital ride, we’d made it through the storm. The official report was in, we were no good without each other. Side by side, ready to get through any crisis. I was the index finger and he was the thumb, or vice versa. I tried not to quibble about who was in charge.
Ramona whispered something in his ear. He nodded and then kept marching as she’d ordered.
“Ramona, I’m over here.”
She looked back and barely swept her eyes across the crowd. How many fans were dressed in a red shiny tight dress? I stood out like a chili pepper. It was my first thought when the dress had been sent over by the stylist, hired by Ramona, Hand picked especially for you, the note read. The stiff fold on one side kept poking me in the ear. “Ramona,” I screamed, the same way I’d done a few hours ago, squeezing into this damn dress. And now she couldn’t see me. Beautiful.
I scooted to the last pole of the velvet rope. I tapped a female security staffer on the shoulder. She was mountain large with a melon-sized hair bun.
“My husband is Jake Parson.”
“Who?”
“Can you please let me through? My husband is JP,” I confirmed. J-P, just two initials like the diamond-laced bling he wore with a swoop on the end. Sirena had it custom-made for him as an end-of-filming gift. I thought about him wearing the chain around his neck and not until this very moment had it bothered me.
The female security guard kept her eyes straight ahead. “Sorry, not without ID.”
“Do I look like one of the gang? I’m freezing out here in this dress with shoes that are killing my feet.”
Her eyes rode me up and down, then focusing on my glowing shoulders. I’d been spray-tanned with Honey Gold #6, the darkest color on the chart, yet I had still turned out radioactive red. Typical Hollyweird. Enough said. She unclipped the velvet rope and stood aside to let me through.
Don’t miss the other novels in Trisha R. Thomas’s
Nappily series!
NAPPILY MARRIED
ISBN: 978-0-312-36130-3
NAPPILY FAITHFUL
ISBN: 978-0-312-36131-0
NAPPILY IN BLOOM
ISBN: 978-0-312-55764-5
UN-NAPPILY IN LOVE
ISBN: 978-0-312-55763-8
Nappily Married Page 26
