Dangerously In Love
Page 8
He thinks you’re pathetic.
Did he say that?
He just as well should have. Now he’s going to give the ring to its rightful owner. You know he’s giving her back the ring.
When?
Didn’t he tell you he was supposed to give it to her last New Year’s Eve?
Yes.
Then that’s what he plans to do. He’ll make up for lost time and give it to her tomorrow night.
But he promised to spend New Year’s Eve with me.
Somehow that doesn’t look promising.
What am I to do?
I think you know what you have to do.
The telephone ringing startled me. I let my machine pick up.
“Hello, this is Jovie, please leave a message.”
“Jovie, this is Dr. Welch. Jovie, I’m concerned. You’ve missed several appointments. We need to talk. Please callthe office as soon as possible to schedule an appointment.”
“Dr. Welch, I can’t see you right now. I’m in the middle of a crisis,” I said to myself as I looked at the telephone. Then I laughed. Why was all of this so very funny?
London
New Year’s Eve 2005
I was on location with Jessica, the pop star, in lower Manhattan while she shopped for a few items for her New Year’s Eve party. She was having a masquerade at her duplex on Park Avenue. The Gucci store on Fifth Avenue had to shut down to all other patrons while she strolled the aisles. In less than an hour, she’d already gone through what was equivalent to six months’ pay for me. After she’d finished spending an obscene amount of money, I had just enough time to drop her off, run home and shower, and return to her duplex in time for the festivities.
I entered Jessica’s New Year’s Eve party listening to the deafening music of the live band she hired. Her duplex apartment was packed to capacity. By nine o’clock everyone was intoxicated. Jessica immediately scoped me out and came rushing over. I handed her a bottle of champagne I’d picked up.
“Dom Perignon. You have good taste. But you shouldn’t have.”
“It’s just a gesture,” I retorted. I was still in a sour mood.
“Give your overcoat to my butler, and let’s dance,” she yelled. She threw her arms in the air, twirled around like a prima ballerina and headed to the dance floor. The band was playing The Black Eyed Peas’s “Let’s Get It Started.”
I met up with Jessica on the dance floor and showed her a few of my moves. She tried to keep up, but she was no match for a brother from Harlem. As she caught every third beat, I watched as her titties jiggled up and down. Then I grabbed her by her waist, pulled her in close to my dick and started to grind on her. I could tell she was excited.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
“What’s the rush? I just got here and I’d like to enjoy the party. Isn’t that the actor from Rush Hour?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Introduce me,” I urged.
“Go introduce yourself,” she retorted and walked away.
“I guess I have no choice,” I replied to no one.
After meeting the actor and telling him all about my screenplays, I networked with a few other celebrities. I was enjoying myself until I remembered how I had spent last New Year’s Eve, alone in a hotel room crying my eyes out. That memory prompted me to have a drink. As I picked up a glass of champagne, a beautiful, dark chocolate sister came over to greet me. I recognized her immediately. She was Playboy’s Miss November centerfold.
“Drinking alone?” she purred.
“Not anymore,” I said and winked. Before we could go further, Jessica appeared and practically pulled me from Miss November’s clutches.
“I’m ready to go,” she replied again, and then pouted.
“Go where?”
“I want to go to your place and screw your brains out,” she said, but instead of turning me on, she turned me off. I wanted to say, I don’t screw—I fuck. Instead, I said, “Sorry, but I have other plans.” I was meeting Su at my apartment for bring-in-the-new-year sex.
Jovie
I stood almost holding my breath inside London’s closet. Watching. I watched as his lips touched her. How he gently caressed her skin. The words of adoration he spoke.
You were supposed to come with me in the pool.
I was afraid.
You never followed . . . but now’s your chance to make it right. Do you want to make it right?
I can’t.
You can . . . I need you. I want us to be together forever. I need you. . . .
London
Maybe it was the alcohol or the fact that I had one of the world’s sexiest women in my arms, but I didn’t have a care in the world. Never mind that I’d just broken off an engagement with a woman I cared about. Or that I’d been sleeping with her sister, who might or might not be pregnant by me. All that mattered was I was about to have mind-blowing sex on New Year’s Eve.
I went to my dresser drawer and pulled out the ring I had purchased for her last year.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“I was supposed to propose to you last year this time. But you walked out of my life.”
She was silent. I could tell she was thinking about the possibilities.
“We never would have made it,” she said after a moment.
I smiled. “I know. This ring symbolizes happiness. The woman that will wear this ring will embody everything you’re not.”
“Quit being philosophical so we can do what I came here to do,” she snapped. I just laughed because I knew, if only for a fleeting moment, she wished we could have made it.
I charged Su and threw her on my bed. I ripped open her shirt, and we groped each other hungrily. Her pussy resisted as I tried to enter her, so I went down and tasted her clitoris. I worked her up nicely. When I stuck my finger inside her pussy, warm juices seeped out, and I knew she was ready. I entered her, feverishly ready to beat it up nicely.
“Let me wear the ring while you fuck me,” she breathed. Quickly, I placed the ring on her finger as I pumped in and out.
“Ask me . . . ask me to marry you,” she commanded.
“Will . . . you . . . marry . . . me?” I breathed.
“Yes! Oh, yes,” she crooned.
“Is it good?”
“Oh, yes . . . it’s so-o-o-o-o good. I want to cum as the ball drops,” Su shrieked.
“I’m getting ready to cum,” I moaned.
In the background you could hear Dick Clark’s Rockin’ Eve. It was tradition. As we fucked, I couldn’t help but listen to the television.
“I want to cum as the ball drops,” she begged again.
I rammed my dick inside her pussy to shut her up. She screamed in pleasure.
I could hear Dick Clark counting down the seconds to the new year. Even though my back was to the television, I could still envision the ball dropping.
“Five . . .”
“I’m getting ready to cum,” she moaned.
“Four . . .”
“Oh, Daddy, your dick is the best.”
“Three . . .”
“It’s so good. . . .”
“Two . . .”
“Ahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“One . . .”
Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow.
“Happy New Year!”
Silence.
EPILOGUE
London
The doctors say my chances of ever walking again are slim. I tell them that God has a plan for all of us. Sometimes when we are speeding around on a path to nowhere and somehow life slams on the brakes, the best thing we can do is be still. Quiet. In that instance we will find ourselves.
I’ve been in this hospital for two weeks. It’s truly a miracle that I’m alive. I took two bullets in my back, one shattered my spine and the other lodged in a buttock. Su wasn’t so lucky. She was shot once in the face and was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
Even though it was Jovie who paralyzed me, murdered Su, and the
n killed herself, I take full responsibility for her actions. I did to her exactly what was done to me. Su played with my heart, and I played with Jovie’s. She must have found out that I was sleeping with her sister, Jada. That must have pushed her over the edge.
On New Year’s Eve she was hiding in my closet with my licensed revolver. She must have found it in my nightstand. I guess something inside of her snapped when she watched me make love to Su. I should have recognized the clues, but I was so self-absorbed with meeting my needs, relevant things went overlooked.
At the hospital, I was expecting a visit from my brother when an elderly man appeared. He had salt-and-pepper hair, a black mustache and stood around five-nine. He had a small girl with him. The girl had caramel-colored skin, a small button nose, pink lips and a head full of curly hair.
“Are you London Phillips?” he asked in a thick Southern drawl.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Isaiah Love. I’m the father of Jovie,” he said, and put his head down in shame.
“Please, please come in,” I stammered.
“I wanted to come sooner, but the nurses said you weren’t well enough for visitors. Only immediate family.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” I said as my eyes welled up with tears. “Despite what the papers are saying about Jovie, I don’t blame her for this. I blame me. I was horrible to your daughter, sir.”
“Now, don’t go blaming yourself. That’s why I’m here. I don’t want you to feel any guilt for what happened at your place.”
“You don’t understand, and I’m surprised I’m the one to tell you this,” I said as my voice quivered. “Sir, I had been sleeping with both your daughters, Jovie and Jada. I think Jada must have told Jovie—”
“London, there is no way you could have been seeing Jovie and Jada at the same time. Jada died eighteen years ago. She was only six years old when she drowned. I told her and Jovie not to go near the pool, but Jada didn’t listen. At such a young age, Jada was a defiant, rebellious child. Jovie was the complete opposite. The neighbors said Jada screamed for help, but Jovie just stood there. Jovie was too much in shock to run and get help for her sister. I think she lived with that guilt up until the day she killed herself. You know she drowned herself in your tub.”
“Yes . . . yes. I read that in the paper. I didn’t know there was any significance.”
“Jovie always said she’d hear her sister’s voice calling her, telling her to come and join her.”
“Th-There’s no-no way,” I stuttered.
“But it is. For years Jovie had her mother convinced that Jada would come back in spirit and talk to her. Jovie just wouldn’t let Jada rest in peace. First Jovie started having conversations with Jada. Jovie kept telling us that Jada wanted her to drown herself so they could be together. We took Jovie to a million psychiatrists before she reached the age of ten. She’d fool the shrinks, and they’d return her back home and within days she’d start all over again. Finally, when she was in her early teens, the doctors diagnosed her with dissociative identity disorder. A fancy name for multiple personality disorder. They realized that Jovie would involuntarily take on Jada’s identity. Jovie was an eccentric child who was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder at the age of five. When she turned eight, they detected schizophrenia. That coupled with dissociative identity disorder drove my wife to an early grave.”
“So, you’re telling me that the Jovie and Jada I knew were one person?”
“Yes, son, you’re correct.”
“Your daughter needed help, Mr. Love,” I accused, suddenly wanting to place the blame on him.
“And that’s exactly what she was getting. For years she saw Dr. Welch and things seemed to get better. We didn’t hear about Jada until one day Jovie ended up pregnant. She went through her whole pregnancy insisting that it was Jada’s child. Once she gave birth, she gave custody of Joy to me.”
All Jovie’s words came flooding back.
“I fear that I’ll wake up one morning and not know who I am. I’ll be somebody else lying in bed next to a complete stranger. That’s my biggest fear.”
“This is Jovie’s daughter?”
“Yes. She’s the new joy in my life,” he said, and smiled at his granddaughter. Then he got serious again. “When I found out she was seeing someone, I should have intervened. But I truly thought that everything was under control.”
“I had no idea they were the same person. They seemed so different,” I said in disbelief, my voice barely a whisper. I didn’t even notice that tears were streaming down my cheeks.
“Jovie told me you’re a writer,” he stated.
“Yes.”
“Maybe you can write about this experience. Maybe something good will come out of it.”
“Maybe . . .”
I looked at the precious little girl and wondered how much of her mother she had in her. Was she similar to sweet Jovie? Or as wild and rebellious as Jada? As they left she waved and said, “My grandpapa told me that even in love there is hate. And even through devastation and death there can be hope and joy.” She squealed in delight.
Her words were symbolic. “Goodbye, Jovie . . . sweet Jovie . . . ,” I whispered, and closed my eyes as I felt a sudden chill go down my paralyzed spine. I thought about what Jovie had said. She said I’d miss her when she was gone. And she was right. I do.
New Year’s Eve—the perfect time to make a naughty resolution—is right around the corner. Don’t miss these other sultry New Years escapades from three of the hottest writers around.
Since her long-distance boyfriend never makes time for her, this Philly girl is ready for action when her ex-roommate’s latest lover stops by.
My Boo
* * *
After a shoot-out, a doctor ends up with a bad case of amnesia . . . and the hots for her caretaker.
Every New Year
* * *
A brazen older woman breaks up with her best friend’s sexy twenty-three-year-old son, but will he be man enough to rise to her standards?
Whatever It Takes
* * *
ORDER YOUR COPIES TODAY!
We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
* * *
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
Pocket Star Books
An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 by Crystal Lacey Winslow
Originally published in the anthology Kiss the Year Goodbye
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
This Pocket Star Books ebook edition December 2017
POCKET STAR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Cover design by Richard Yoo
ISBN 978-1-5011-7755-2
gerously In Love