by Shelly Ellis
“So, did you think about that thing I told you about last week?” Renee asked while trailing her long nails over his muscled torso. She then gave a saucy lick to the corner of his mouth.
Dante cracked open one eye to stare up at her. “What thing?”
She slapped his chest playfully and smiled. “You know . . . that Groupon deal to Barbados!”
Dante closed his eye again, pretending like he hadn’t heard her.
“Well?” she persisted a few seconds later, shoving his chest harder this time. “Wouldn’t it be a bomb-ass trip for us to go on? I’ve never been there before, and my girl Kemayaunda said it’s hella nice! We should go, baby!”
Dante wasn’t sure whether he wanted to take travel advice from a woman named Kemayaunda, but he kept that thought to himself. He turned on his side, opened his eyes, and bestowed Renee with an indulgent smile.
“Look, why don’t we talk about it after your mom’s lawsuit is done?” he answered diplomatically.
“But that could take forever, babeeee! The Groupon deal is only good until the end of May!”
She was whining. Dante hated it when women whined. Those manipulative bitches really knew how to play on a man’s sympathies. Luckily, he wasn’t very sympathetic.
“I get that, honey.” He rubbed her shoulder soothingly. “But your mom doesn’t know what’s going on between us. I don’t think it’s a good idea that she does until the case is over.”
“But why we keeping it a secret, anyway?” She narrowed her eyes and eased away from him. “You ashamed or something?”
Dante was momentarily tempted to give her an honest answer: The reason he wanted to wait until after the case was done was because he planned to dump her as soon as the judge ruled in their favor, or, if he was lucky, as soon as Terrence made an offer to settle out of court. Yes, the sex with Renee was good, but there was no way in hell he would pursue something permanent with this chick. She was so low-class it was almost pathetic. She talked about dinner at the Olive Garden like it was fine dining. He had to constantly fight the urge to correct her grammar. And she dressed like a Las Vegas hooker. He could only imagine taking her out to one of the cocktail parties his law firm regularly held. They would laugh him out of the room!
Besides, he had turned down women who were a lot more deserving of his time and attention than Renee. Hell, he had broken off things with Evan’s wife, Charisse! She was the personification of class, old money, and power with the pedigree she had, even if she was also a sloppy drunk. Unfortunately, Charisse, like Renee, had tried to make their “relationship” into a lot more than what it was. Eventually, he had to let Charisse know she was sadly mistaken. Eventually, he would do the same with Renee—but not tonight.
“Of course, I’m not ashamed of you, honey.” He raised his head and kissed her. “It just would make things too complicated if your mother knew we were together. We don’t want her to get cold feet, now, do we? There’s millions of dollars at stake here.”
Renee rolled her eyes. “She’s already getting cold feet! She asks me all the time when you plan to tell that boy she ain’t really suing him. I told her I don’t know. I think she’s starting to think about tellin’ him herself.”
Dante perked up at that news. He raised himself to his elbows to gaze at her. “Your mother wouldn’t really do that, would she?”
“I don’t know.” Renee shrugged. “Maybe.”
Dante’s brows lowered. He frowned. That old bitch wouldn’t ruin his plans, would she?
“Look, the next time your mother talks to you about this, tell her—”
Their conversation was cut off by the sound of a door opening, then slamming shut.
“Mommy!” a little voice called out.
“Renee, you home?” Dante heard Mavis say. “We’re back from the store. I got Tasha most of those school supplies she needed. I couldn’t get all of it. That stuff is awfully expensive.”
“Shit,” Dante said before shoving Renee off of him and leaping to his feet.
Renee scrambled off the bed, too. She dropped to the floor in search of the shirt and jeans she had discarded earlier.
“I thought you said they wouldn’t be back for hours,” he snarled in an angry whisper as he pulled on his boxer-briefs then reached for his shirt, which was crumpled near her nightstand.
“That’s what she told me!” Renee whispered back with widened eyes.
“Renee? Renee, you in here?” Mavis called again.
All the while, the duo frantically dressed, tossing one another their clothes wherever they found them.
“Renee,” Mavis asked as she pushed open the bedroom door, “are you asleep? You feeling o—” She paused when she realized Dante was in the bedroom with her daughter. She raised her brows in surprise. “Mr. Turner, what . . . what are you doing here?”
Dante pasted on a smile and buttoned the last jacket button on his single-breasted suit, covering his pants zipper, which he hadn’t had the chance to close before Mavis had stepped into the bedroom.
“I was just stopping by to pay my favorite client a visit,” he said, stepping forward and giving her a hug. “So, how are you doing, Mavis?”
“F-f-fine,” she said uneasily as she shifted her gaze between him and Renee. “I just . . . I just wasn’t expecting to see you here today. You came to Renee’s place to see me?”
“I thought I might find you here. Renee was nice enough to give me a tour of her apartment while I waited. Weren’t you, Renee? And what a lovely place it is,” he lied, gazing at the bedroom’s popcorn-covered, water-stained ceiling, the dirty shag carpet, and the particleboard furniture. “So minimalist.” He turned and ran his hand appreciatively over Renee’s dresser. “Where did you say you got this beautiful piece of furniture, Renee?”
Renee’s mouth twisted and she scratched her head. “Uh . . . Rent-A-Center, I think.”
“Interesting.” Dante wrapped an arm around Mavis’s shoulders and eased her out of the bedroom into the living room. “Look, Mavis, I came here to talk to you today because I wanted to update you on your lawsuit.”
Mavis’s granddaughter, Tasha, looked up when they entered the room. She sat in the adjacent kitchenette at a small table with a coloring book open in front of her and half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich poised near her mouth. She glanced at Dante with mild interest, then returned her attention to her coloring book. She bit into her sandwich.
Dante surmised that she was probably used to finding random men coming out of her mother’s bedroom.
“Well, I’m . . . I’m glad to hear you wanna talk about that, Mr. Turner,” Mavis said, gazing up at him and shifting her purse on her arm. “I was just meaning to ask you about that. See, I thought you told me that we were just going to file a case but not really do anything with it. We just wanted to scare him off. Shouldn’t we tell—”
“Yes, that is exactly what I wanted to discuss.” He walked toward the plaid sofa dotted with mystery stains and sat down before motioning Mavis to take the seat beside him. “We can’t withdraw the lawsuit quite yet.”
She frowned and sat down. “B-but why not?”
Renee flopped in the loveseat facing them and reached for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the coffee table.
“Well, he still could file a civil suit against you, Mavis.”
“But wouldn’t he have done it by now?” Mavis asked. “It don’t seem like that boy is really interested in—”
“And besides,” Dante continued, talking over her, “we have to hold out for arbitration. We have to wait for his lawyer to approach us with an offer.”
Mavis’s frown deepened. “An . . . an offer? An offer for what?”
“An offer to pay you back the income you lost while you were in the hospital. An offer that will help you buy another, nicer car since the one you had was totaled. You’re only asking for what’s due to you.”
She slowly shook her head. “But I thought . . . I thought I wasn’t really asking him for
money.”
“And you aren’t!” Dante assured. His smile widened. “You’re not asking for money, Mavis . . . not real money, anyway. This would be a drop in the bucket compared to how much Terrence Murdoch has in his bank accounts.”
“But I still don’t know if I caused that accident! I wouldn’t feel right asking him for—”
“But think about how useful that money could be for you, Mavis. How you could help make your life better . . . how it could help your family.” He glanced at Renee, who was reclining on the sofa, smoking and looking bored. He raised his brows, beseeching her silently to stop sitting there like a slug and offer him some help.
She immediately sat upright and tugged her cigarette out of her mouth. “Yeah, Mama, just think about how you could help me and . . . and Tasha with that money. You said yourself you couldn’t afford all her school supplies. Wouldn’t have to worry about that no more!”
Mavis glanced over her shoulder at her granddaughter. She watched as Tasha grabbed a red crayon and continued to draw.
“Tasha does need a new book bag,” Mavis mumbled. “There’s a hole in the one she has now. And new shoes . . . those tennis shoes she wears are getting too small and—”
“See!” Dante said. “With the money you’re awarded, you could get Tasha a new book bag, shoes, and anything else she needs.”
Mavis seemed to contemplate Dante’s words. Finally, she said, “But we won’t ask him for a lot of money, though, right?”
“We wouldn’t think of it!” Dante widened his eyes in mock innocence. “We’ll only ask for what you’re rightfully due. Only what will help your family.”
She looked down at her wrinkled hands, which were now in her lap. “All right. All right, but please don’t ask for too much.”
Dante grinned. “Of course not!”
Chapter 10
C. J.
C. J. strode into the newsroom, yanking the strap of her satchel over her head as she made her way to her desk.
“Oh, look, everybody, Her Royal Highness is here!” Eddie the sports reporter yelled, glancing up from his laptop. He took a sip from his Big Gulp and grinned.
“No time for your crap today, Eddie. I’m busy,” she mumbled before waving her hand dismissively at him as she passed.
She had just come back from the state police barracks and now had to quickly file a story on a local bank robbery for the paper’s crime reporter. In exchange, said reporter had covered a chamber of commerce meeting chaired by Evan Murdoch that had been assigned to her.
“Why can’t you do it?” Mason, the crime reporter, had whined as she walked out of the newsroom hours ago. “I don’t want to go to that meeting. You’ve got to wear a tie to those things!”
“I have my reasons. Don’t worry about it,” she had halfheartedly explained. “I’ll pay you back with a doughnut and a cup of coffee later.”
The truth was, since that incident at the Medical Center a couple of months ago, C. J. had avoided the Murdochs like the plague. Evan Murdoch’s accusations and anger at her that day still stung. She had been called names by subjects before—many of those names of the four- and five-letter variety—but she had never been called a “parasite” before. She had never been accused of taking advantage of someone else’s pain. It had been way too much to bear and it left her shaken for quite a few weeks afterward.
I’m not a parasite, she would tell herself when she lay alone in her bedroom at night. I’m a human being. I care!
In fact, C. J. wondered every now and then how Terrence Murdoch was fairing. The last she had heard, he had become a bit of a hermit since the accident, as well as a raging alcoholic. She hoped the rumors about Terrence, like many of the other rumors in Chesterton, weren’t true.
C. J. tapped on her mouse pad and stared at the digital clock on the right side of her laptop screen. She only had about an hour or so to write this story. After that, she had to head to the mayor’s office for a scheduled interview about the new Chesterton business incubator. She refused to be distracted by nonsense, specifically in the form of bullshit from Eddie.
She pulled out her rollaway chair, sat down, and frantically flipped in her notepad to the quotes from Sergeant Mitchell.
“You’re back,” Jake, the managing editor, said as he stepped into the newsroom, holding a stack of envelopes, magazines, and folders. “And you’re just in time for the office mail.”
“Ooooh, how exciting!” Eddie exclaimed before twirling around in his chair.
“Isn’t it?” Jake said dryly. He tossed a stack of magazines onto Eddie’s desk. “Here you go, smart-ass.” He then walked toward C. J. and glanced down at a solitary envelope he held in his hand. “Hey, this looks official. You know many people in high places, C. J.?”
He handed it to her and she frowned. It was thick and made out of a parchment that you usually only found in papier and crafting stores. She recognized the gold seal on the back of the envelope instantly. It was the same seal she had stared at for most of her life but hadn’t seen up close in the past few years. Beneath the seal in scrolling blue script were the words Aston Ministries, Inc. with the headquarters address beneath it.
“Anything important?” Jake asked.
C. J. quickly slapped her hand over the seal and stared up at Jake. She forced a smile. “Uh, no! No. It’s . . . uh . . . just . . . just junk, probably. Thanks for bringing it to me.”
He stared at her quizzically, then shrugged before walking off to deliver mail to another reporter.
After Jake moved on to the next desk, C. J. gazed at the envelope again. Her hands were shaking as she ripped open the seal with her thumb and stared at the handwritten note that was folded inside of it.
You’ve been a bad, bad girl, Court. You and I have a lot of catching up to do. Meet me at my office at 10 a.m. Wednesday.
I’m guessing the people at your little newspaper don’t know who you really are, hence your new name. Unless you want them to know, you won’t think about standing me up.
—V.
P.S. If you didn’t want to be found, you shouldn’t have moved back to the East Coast. You know how Dad is. Not a smart move on your part.
“Shit,” C. J. muttered as she closed her eyes and balled the note in her fist. She ripped the envelope into several pieces before tossing both into her metal waste bin.
“What’s the matter with you?” Eddie asked. “Didn’t get an invite to the debutante ball?”
C. J. gave him the finger before turning back around to face her laptop.
She could ignore the note, pretend like she had never seen it, but she knew the writer well enough that he wouldn’t let this go ignored. He would follow through with his threat to let everyone at Chesterton Times know who she really was, and she had worked so hard to escape the scandal and drama of her past. No, there was no avoiding this. It looked like she would have to make a trip to the Aston Ministries Headquarters in North Carolina. It looked like she was finally heading back home.
C. J. slammed shut the door to her Honda Civic. She leaned her head back and squinted, holding up her hands over her eyes to block out the blinding light coming off the mirror-like exterior of the towering building in front of her. The building was one of many churches owned and operated by Aston Ministries. It was certainly one of its largest. The immense church was flanked on both sides by immaculate landscaping and a series of water fountains rivaling those found at Versailles. The church itself took up several football fields. It not only housed a sanctuary that could accommodate several thousand people, but also enough lighting, electronics, and pyrotechnics for a Las Vegas show. It operated as the headquarters of the religious conglomerate that had been founded by her father, the Honorable Reverend Pete Aston.
The sanctuary itself always looked amazing on television and her father took full advantage of it during his thunderous sermons, which were shown on cable as well as the three Jumbotron screens that hung over the pulpit. C. J. remembered being a young girl and sitting in r
apture with the rest of the parishioners in the audience as she watched her father preach, feeling as if she was watching a grand performance. C. J. didn’t realize until she was older that she was watching a performance—the greatest performance of all—because there was no way her father was the sanctified man he pretended to be. He certainly wasn’t that man behind closed doors. She was sure his many mistresses would agree with her.
C. J. walked across the parking lot to a series of glass doors near the rear of the building that led to the offices of the Aston Ministries leadership. Her father’s office was here and so was her brother Victor’s. She would be seeing Victor today per his note instruction.
C. J. tugged one of the glass doors open and walked into the carpeted lobby. She paused and gazed around her apprehensively, hoping no one recognized her. It was a good chance no one did. She certainly looked different than when she had run away from everything she knew five years ago. She no longer looked like the prim and proper reverend’s daughter. No more expensive dresses and suits that were just the right length and cut to be the perfect mix between demur and attractive. No more pressed and artfully styled hair. Today she wore jeans and a T-shirt along with a casual blazer. Her curly tendrils were pulled back in a ponytail under a baseball cap. She pulled the brim of the cap low over her eyes in a futile attempt to hide her face.
C. J. stared at the receptionist desk. Behind the woman sitting at the desk was a flat-screen television showing one of her father’s sermons.
“Excuse me,” C. J. said softly, making the receptionist raise her head. “I have an appointment with—”
“Courtney?” a familiar voice called from behind her.
At the sound of the voice, she stilled. She slowly turned and found a man gazing at her.
Oh God, she thought with panic. He’s still here?
She had been under the misguided belief that he would have left the church, that the disgrace of what had happened would have made him move on to another flock. But no, Shaun Clancy was still here. And of all the people she had to run into today, it had to be him.