Ding-dong.
Releasing a heavy breath, Jaime rose from the dressing table, her silk robe billowing out behind her as she turned to leave the room. Who could it be? she wondered as she descended the stairs.
Ding-dong.
She passed the large, framed oval mirror on the hall wall and doubled back. She’d forgotten that her hair was still tied up in her silk scarf, she was make-up free, and she wore nothing but her silk robe. Her own husband had never seen her without some sort of make-up on—another of her mother’s marital rules.
She continued on to the door and looked out one of the ornate side windows as she pulled her robe closer around her slender frame. “Jesus, take the wheel,” she drawled, deeply massaging the bridge of her nose before she placed a smile on her face and opened the door wide. “Morning, Mama. Hey there, Daddy,” she greeted them, sounding more like a Southern belle than a city girl.
Her parents lived just thirty minutes away in another subdivision and that meant random drop-ins like this happened quite often.
“Good morning,” they said in unison as they walked into the foyer and presented themselves for the customary air kiss to her mother’s cheek and a big hug for her short, round, and completely loveable father.
“Do you normally answer the door in such attire?” Virginia asked as Jaime led them across the hardwood floors to the family room.
The question was filled with judgments…which was normal when it came to Virginia Osten-Pine, the self-proclaimed wife, mother, socialite extraordinaire.
“No, I wasn’t expecting company,” Jaime said politely, catching her mother drag her finger across the top of the large leather ottoman serving as the coffee table.
Jaime’s home was a showpiece. Pristine, stylishly decorated, and the envy of many of her neighbors. In fact, it had been showcased in the realty section of a small local newspaper. Most people walked in and paused at the first sight of it with its high ceilings, dozens of large windows, dramatic art pieces, and décor.
Not Virginia Osten-Pine, or rather, Mrs. Franklin Pine.
“What brings you to this side of town?” she asked.
“We just thought we would treat you kids to breakfast at our country club,” Franklin said. “Where’s Eric?”
Jaime turned to face him because not to do so would be rude and she knew her mother would’ve called her on it. “He went deep-sea fishing with Kingston and Jackson. They’ll be gone all day, Daddy,” she told him.
“Now, that sounds like a fun day out for the fellas,” Franklin said, folding his hands atop his rotund belly.
“Yes, dear,” Virginia said.
Jaime eyed her mother for a bit before she turned and continued up the stairs. She knew for a fact that her mother hated her father’s passion for fishing, but Jaime would bet her last dollar that Virginia had never questioned her husband about it. She saved her opinions and judgments for anyone and everyone else except her husband.
Jaime couldn’t recall one time her parents had argued. Ever.
Franklin spoke and Virginia obeyed. Chocolate-covered June and Ward Cleaver.
“So I’m going to…going to…” Jaime paused because if she said anything about a spa day she knew her mother might invite herself along. She loved her mother, but the woman could be so overpowering with her thoughts and opinions at times. Jaime had enough on her shoulders to bear without topping it off with her mother’s crap. “I’ll be cleaning all day and preparing a nice home-cooked meal for my husband.”
“Well, you have time to go to breakfast with us,” Virginia said.
Although Jaime didn’t want to, she acquiesced. “Excuse me while I finish getting dressed,” she told them, turning to climb the stairs and to be free.
She figured she could eat with her parents and then head straight to the spa. She shouldn’t be too late. Her friends, unlike her parents, would understand.
Renee felt completely overwhelmed. A major marketing proposal was due on her boss’s desk first thing Monday and she discovered she’d left important files at the office. Her seventeen-year-old son’s room smelled of corn chips and puffy cheese doodles. The hampers were overflowing with dirty clothes, which equaled doing laundry to the fullest. The entire house could use a good deep-down cleaning—including eradicating the dirty dishes in the sink. Her kids wanted to go to Jackson’s parents’ and needed a ride. Side dishes for the fish fry/card party still had to be made. And she was looking forward to the spa day with her friends—she refused to cancel, especially after the “we need to talk” bomb Jackson had dropped in her lap before he left. She absolutely refused. Shit.
In the couple of hours since the men piled into Jackson’s dual-cab pickup, Renee had tried not to think or imagine the worst. But it was hard. “We need to talk” were not the words a woman wanted to hear…especially when her marriage had been teetering on the edge of ruin. Nevertheless, she forced herself to believe that the conversation was all about making things better…and not worse.
Still, her original plans of focusing on her proposal until she left for the spa were out the window. The last thing she needed was for Jackson to come home to a dusty house reeking with dirty clothes.
Prioritize, Renee. Prioritize. Get your shit together.
She was a mother. A businesswoman. A multitasker. A problem solver.
“I can handle this,” Renee told herself as she ignored the doubtful glance Kieran cast in her direction as she sat atop the island, now dressed in a cute T-shirt with a ruffled denim skirt.
She picked up her BlackBerry and dialed. “Darren, this is Renee. I hate to bother you on a Saturday but I need a big favor.”
“Ask away, boss.”
“Good. I need you to go into the office and pick up the files I left. I think they’re in my chair, actually,” she told him as she started dish water in the deep double sink.
“I know exactly the ones you’re talking about.”
“Good. Call me when you get them because I might not be home and I’ll have to give you directions to where I am. Okay?”
“No problem, boss.”
Renee sat the BlackBerry by her briefcase as she pointed to Kieran. “You. Dishes. Go,” she ordered over her shoulder as she made her way out of the spacious white kitchen to the laundry room in the finished basement.
This hustle and bustle of trying to juggle her career and her family was the major point of contention in her marriage. Renee always looked and felt like she was one step in front of the eight ball. Nothing came easy anymore, but she saw it as a challenge while Jackson saw it as a hindrance.
“We need to talk….”
She pushed that away, determined to find the balance and make everyone—including herself—happy. She planned to do everything on her recently revised to-do list—including blowing Jackson’s mind with a great “talk” on bettering their marriage and then blowing his dick to top it all off right.
Renee hated to think back to the last time she’d sexed her husband. They had gone from sex at least once a day to barely once a week. And Jackson’s sexual appetite was voracious. She shivered at the very thought of how they used to get down…absolutely nothing was taboo.
And she missed that….
Shaking off a far too distant memory of a steamy night complete with scented body oil, handcuffs, and anal beads, Renee started a large load of whites and headed back up the stairs. She barely stopped when she reached the top to walk down the hall to the staircase leading to the top level.
She didn’t try to fool herself into thinking that busywork was keeping her mind distracted from that talk. As she neared her son’s room at the top of the stairs, she heard the sounds of video games echoing against the wall. She knocked on the door twice before she opened it and walked in.
“Mornin’, Ma,” Aaron, her seventeen-year-old, greeted her.
Renee pinched her nose. “Aaron, this room makes no sense and it reeks. How can you lay up in this pig sty like this?” she asked, stepping over a pile of swea
t-funky football gear to reach his full-sized bed. His room was disaster central. Clothes, dirty and clean, mingled on the carpeted floor.
“It’s just self-expression, Ma,” he said, never taking his eyes off the bright graphic images on the television screen.
“The ability and right to self-expression has a cost…and it’s called a mortgage, which you don’t pay,” she drawled. “Go take a shower and then you have thirty minutes to get this room back to being habitable.”
“Uh-huh.”
Renee did a double take. “Now, Aaron,” she told him in her best prison warden tone.
A second later he reached forward to turn the console off.
“It does smell pretty bad, huh?” he asked with a dimpled grin that truly made him the spitting image of his father.
Renee hugged his slender frame to her side and kissed his cheek.
“Ma,” he complained as he made his way to his private bathroom.
Renee could only shake her head. She hated to admit that this was another example of how little time she spent at home anymore. In the past, Aaron wouldn’t have even tried her by keeping his room this junky. She hardly had time to come in his room and check up on him anymore.
She pulled the football-motif comforter from his bed, planning on washing his linens. She froze and leaned in a little closer. The crusted white spots splattered on his sheets looked a lot like…
Evidence of Aaron’s encounter with Mrs. Palm and her five daughters.
Renee gasped and made a horrid face as she hurried to put the cover back on the bed. She turned and flew from the room, trying to erase the image of her son—her baby—masturbating beneath the covers.
“That is Jackson territory,” she told herself as she headed to the guest bathroom to wash her hands.
Renee had way too much on her plate to tackle Aaron’s puberty. For now all she could do was shake her head.
Aria stretched her nude frame beneath the cool cotton sheets of her bed. After Kingston’s sexy good-bye by the door, she’d headed straight back to bed to sleep off the mini adventure.
She smiled into her plush pillows before turning over onto her back and looking up at her reflection in their mirrored ceiling. It was so eighties but they both loved being able to see the motion of the other’s body as they rode.
Aria flung the covers back and hitched her full breasts higher as she lightly stroked the top of her plump and bald pussy. Kingston loved when she got a Brazilian wax, and Aria always recommended it to her friends because there was nothing like a clever-tongued man licking circles on top and inside a woman’s pussy.
Rolling off the bed, Aria grabbed lingerie from her nightstand drawer. She had to hustle. Her impromptu nut nap had eaten into her work time. Working from home as a relationship columnist and freelance writer was her life’s dream…except when her procrastination kicked in and she was running late on a deadline. It was during those long hours into the night that Aria longed for a day job and a clock to punch.
Overall, Aria loved her life, especially when her career led her to the city. New York was so her vibe and pace. She didn’t mind suburbia, but she craved the city. Still, she would have followed Kingston into the bowels of hell, and Richmond Hills was far from that.
The hospital where he worked as a surgeon wasn’t far from their home, and NYC was just a thirty-minute commute. And he always pointed out that they were more at home in the ’burbs than they would be in New York.
Aria looked around their bedroom and she was amazed that this was her home. It was a long way from the Weequahic section of Newark.
Hell, her life as an Ivy League graduate, wife of a prominent doctor, and successful journalist was far removed from her upbringing. Her past. She felt and appreciated her blessings every single day, but she never forgot where she came from and those still there that she loved and cherished. Never.
Aria took a bath in their black Jacuzzi tub and for now dressed in terry cloth shorts and a cut-off wifebeater. Kingston loved when she wore things like this around the house. It never failed to get his attention—her husband would drop whatever he was doing to do her. Period.
She padded barefoot out of their room and down the hall to her office. Although it was morning, she flipped the switch to bathe the comfy but functional room with light. The chocolate and pink décor clearly spoke that this was her zone and her zone alone. Like Kingston had with his own office downstairs, Aria had decorated it just the way she wanted. They each had their own space within the unisex décor of their home.
She picked up her designer reading glasses and opened her laptop before she sat in her comfy brown leather chair behind her desk. She checked some e-mails, thought twice about updating her blog, In this Life, about her writing adventures, and then allowed herself to get lost in her research notes. She had to finish up her weekly column and finish an interview she had completed with Tyler Perry for Essence.
For the next hour, there was nothing but the steady click-click of her laptop keys as she worked.
Brrrnnnggg.
“Shit,” Aria swore in immediate frustration, fighting the irrational urge to throw her laptop across the room.
When she was in a writing groove, she absolutely hated to be interrupted by someone calling. When a deadline was breathing down her neck, she wasn’t in the mood for random phone calls about shit she considered unimportant to her life.
Brrrnnnggg.
Aria snatched up the hot pink cordless on the edge of her leather-topped desk. “Hello,” she said, just short of snapping.
“Hey, girl, you busy?”
Aria leaned back in her chair at the sound of her cousin Lola’s voice. “I’m working right now,” she said, hoping she caught the hint.
“You got a job?” she shrieked like Aria gave her good news.
Aria rolled her eyes. Her family could not grasp the concept that she was not just at home watching the soaps and chilling like a villain. “Yes, it’s called working for myself. I have a deadline, so unless this is an emergency there will be a dial tone coming in five, four, three, two…”
“Ooh, girl, you don’t have to be rude.”
Aria pulled the phone away from her face to stare at it incredulously before putting it back. “Yes, I do, because I told you I would be tied up with work when you called me last night to fill me in on the argument Grandma had with Uncle One-Eye over using old fish grease.”
“Wasn’t that a mess?” Lola said with a laugh. “You know I had to call and tell you about that.”
Aria felt like she could literally strangle her flamboyant and loud first cousin, who usually was the comic relief in her life…when she wasn’t busy working on a project. “Listen, Lola, when you’re at Wendy’s taking them orders, I don’t get on the phone and call your job, effing up Wendy’s hamburger flow, to tell you something.”
Lola just laughed. “Aria, you a mess.”
“Bye, Lola,” Aria stressed.
“Call me, girl,” she said in a singsong fashion.
Aria gladly ended the call, but as soon as she sat the phone back on its base it rang again. She dropped her head in her hands in frustration. This time she checked the caller ID. It was one of those 1–800 numbers.
“Ignore,” she said pointedly, waving her hand dismissively.
She caught sight of the bifold frame she kept of Kingston on her desk. On one side was a photo of Aria and Kingston at an outdoor jazz concert, and the other side was a photo of a cuddly tear bear.
Kingston was so anxious to fill the frame and their lives with a baby. And the fact that he was so ready to be a family man made Aria love her loving, sexy, strong, and confident man all the more.
CHAPTER 3
For Jaime, image was everything, and in her world, the image was all about perfection. It was a must. The right look. The right hairstyle. The right clothes. The right associates and friends—love them or hate them. The right business contacts. The right thing to say. The right place to be. The right husband, house
, and finances. This was all she knew. It was her comfort zone, and in her life she must find comfort wherever she could.
Jaime pulled her silver convertible Volvo C70 in front of the valet stand of the renovated 1930s Georgian cottage that served as the day spa Serenity. She double-checked her appearance in her Chanel compact. Her bone-straight jet-black hair—the best complement to her cinnamon bronzed skin—was evenly parted down the middle and lying better than Pocahontas’s, thanks to a celebrity hairstylist who catered to East Coast celebrities.
Her MAC make-up perfectly in place on high cheekbones that screamed of her father’s African heritage and deep-set feline eyes that were all about her mother’s Asian legacy. It was that mixed exotic look that first drew her husband to her. Once upon a time, she thought he would never be able to deny her anything because of her beauty. She thought her seat on his pedestal was unshakable. A constant. ’Til death.
She focused her vision on her reflection and tried to avoid the sadness filling her eyes. I was so wrong. She snapped the compact closed and dropped it into her oversized woven straw Coach tote. The diamonds of her two-carat wedding band twinkled brighter than the summer sun, but it was mocking her and so she quickly shifted her gaze away from it.
Literally shaking it off, Jaime slid on her Bottega Veneta shades and climbed from the vehicle, rivaling the sun in a bright lemon Nanette Lepore silk scoop-neck tank and matching flowing pants. If she felt as good as she looked, her walk of confidence into the building would’ve been more than just a front.
“Hello, Mrs. Hall. The ladies are waiting for you in the Heaven Room,” Hannah, the tall and slim receptionist told her as soon as Jaime stepped in front of the solid mahogany desk of Serenity’s foyer. “I have you all set up in changing room number one.”
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