by H. H. Fowler
Love the One You’re With
(Real Love Series – Book 5)
Christian Novella
H. H. Fowler
Copyright © 2015 H. H. Fowler
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
All characters, names, descriptions, and traits are products of the author’s imagination. Similarities of actual people – living or dead are purely coincidental.
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Dear Reader,
Off the coast of the Bahama Islands, there is a fictional place called Devin’s Cay. The series consists of seven books, which could be considered standalones, but are intricately tied to each other. My hope is that you will be entertained, inspired and illuminated.
If Only You Were Mine (Book 1)
Second Chances (Book 2)
Hungry Hearts (Book 3)
If Loving You is Wrong (Book 4)
Love the One You’re With (Book 5)
I’m Still in Love With You (Book 6)
Love Knows No Bounds (Book7)
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Epilogue
Excerpt from I’m Still in Love With You (Book 6)
From the Desk of H.H. Fowler
The saddest thing in the world is loving someone who used to love you.
Anonymous
Chapter One
Rena marched into Lewis’ office like she normally did without bothering to knock. She plunged down in the chair in front of him and gave him a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Her chestnut complexion and her light brown hair were the only things she hadn’t gleaned from her father’s genes. Otherwise, she was the female adaptation of the late Rev. T. G. Henderson. They didn’t get along all that well, but how unfortunate that she would never know how much he loved her before he died.
“I have come up with a solution,” she started, “that will allow me to inherit the bulk of my father’s estate, while Drake will receive the smaller portion.”
Lewis pushed aside the document he’d been working on and gave Rena a sarcastic smirk. “Oh, this is gonna be good. What are you up to now, Rena? I’ve already told you that if you contest your father’s will, you will be promptly disinherited. Do you think this is some kind of joke?”
“Lewis, I’m disappointed in your answer, because it shows you have no faith in me at all.” Rena reached into her purse and drew out the revolver she’d purchased a few days ago. She hoisted it in the air, positioning it between Lewis’ eyes. “I’m letting you know right now, you old buzzard, how my father’s estate is going to be distributed.”
Lewis laughed, obviously not taking Rena seriously. “Don’t be stupid. You kill me, you make it all that much harder for you to get the money,” he warned. “And I’m quite sure you don’t want that.”
“Maybe that is exactly what I’m hoping for,” Rena said. “Neither Drake nor I will inherit any of my father’s estate.”
“Clearly you are not astute enough when it comes down to the laws regarding a person’s will. I am the sole executor of your father’s estate, but if anything should happen to me, the court will simply appoint another, which I seriously doubt would be you. Most likely the new executor would be one of the witnesses whose signature is also on the will. However, the terms of your father’s instructions won’t change – you contest it and expect to be cut out of the inheritance. And this new executor may or may not be as lenient as I am with you. So give it up, Rena, because you are fighting a losing battle.”
Rena pushed out her lips in response as she gave Lewis’ words some consideration. Her pensive gaze then glided to the 32 inch flat screen TV that was to the right of Lewis’ head. A trailer showing one of Trinidad’s hottest Soca artists was slated to come to Devin’s Cay. Rena’s gaze dropped to the headline at the bottom of the screen: Armando Beckford – Six Week Caribbean Tour to 7 Islands. She then studied the man behind the name, who was sporting a head full of dreadlocks and a smile so sexy that Rena almost forgot that she was pointing a revolver at Lewis.
However, it wasn’t the shock of seeing Armando or his dashing looks that got Rena’s attention (although she was awestruck at how handsome he’d turned out over the years), but rather a sudden resurgence of regret about the future she could have had with him. Nostalgia was no respecter of persons, regardless of how good an individual was at camouflaging their emotions. Because even now, Rena could vividly recall their last conversation before boarding a plane to Miami.
“You got everything?” Armando asked, his big lips bulging in concern. “Enough money? Warm clothes? It’s a little cold around this time in Miami…”
“Stop worrying about me, boy. I’m fine…you have done more than enough, moving me from sleeping under a bridge to a warm bed and cooked meals. Certainly more than my father would have ever done. I guess he is trying to teach me a lesson on responsibility.”
Armando shook his head. “But still, I can’t believe your old man put you out of the house and hasn’t come around to see how you are faring.”
“He didn’t put me out per se,” Rena corrected. “I walked out. And besides, it was for the best. Things were getting too stuffy between us. I had to leave while I had the chance.”
“Some father he is,” Armando spat bitterly. “Isn’t he supposed to be a preacher?”
“Yup.”
“How ironic.”
“Why’d you say that?”
“Because he’s trying to save everyone else and hasn’t bothered to save his own daughter.”
“I don’t need any sort of ‘saving’ from that man,” Rena snapped. “What I need is to get out of Devin’s Cay, especially if I’m to make it big in the film business. This job has become available and I’m taking it. Plus, I’ll be enrolling in the Florida Film Institute this coming January and the company has agreed to pay 75 percent of my tuition fee. In three years, my goal is to move to Paris and find work there. I want to be as far away from my father as I possibly can.”
“You certainly have some big dreams,” Armando remarked and then suddenly cracked an impish grin. “But I’d take the job too, if it required me to watch people have sex all day. Let me tell you: that’s a very sweet dream for a man like me.”
Rena playfully pushed him away from her. “You are only fifteen. What do you know about sex?”
“You shouldn’t ask such a question if you’re not prepared to hear the answer. Don’t let this innocent face fool you. I’m more a man between my legs than anywhere else.”
Rena blushed at the audacious statement. “Boy, please, you need to go take a cold shower and cool down.”
“Why do you insist on calling me, ‘boy’?”
“Because…that’s what you are to me, Armando. I’ll be twenty years old in six months.”
“And I’ll be sixteen next month. Old enough to make a baby and take care of it. Before you board that plane, I’m gonna French kiss you, which should keep you on cloud nine u
ntil you return to Devin’s Cay for a visit…”
“If you’re not planning on shooting me today,” Lewis quipped, pulling Rena back from the memory of her juvenile years, “please lower that gun and get out of my office. I have a lot of work to do.”
Rena fastened her gaze back to Lewis, savoring the vestiges of that kiss that Armando had so boldly taken all those years ago. However, back then, she couldn’t see herself giving up her dreams for a fifteen-year-old boy. She was a mature female with big plans to rule the world. How could she even allow herself to love someone who was that many years younger than her? Well, four years apart didn’t seem like as much now, as it did when she was nineteen. But still, she’d had plans for her life and they hadn’t included Armando.
Rena stashed the revolver back into her purse and then jumped to her feet as if she’d been stuck with a needle. “This is your lucky day, Lewis,” she announced. “Because there has been a change in strategy.”
“That’s how it’s always been with you,” Lewis said. “But I’m curious to know what’s brought on this sudden switch in behavior.”
“All you need to know,” Rena spat, “is that I have plans to return to Paris very soon. I might even sign the bloody thing and be out of your hair. Have the documents sent to me so that I can properly assess my final decision. I’m staying at The Smithson Hotel.”
Lewis stared at Rena beneath his glasses. “Am I to believe that you’re giving in that easily?” he teased. “No more fight left in you?”
“There’s always fight left in me,” Rena said. “This one, however, is forcing me to give in to my demons. I would be better off in Paris – away from you and this pathetic little island.”
“Well then,” Lewis said smiling. “I’m relieved that you’ve finally come to your senses.”
“Don’t be mistaken for one minute, Lewis that I’m doing this for you, or for my deceased father. Because I could very well change my mind and still put a bullet between your eyes.”
Lewis shook his head. “Rena, I’ve known you since you were a little girl, with a huge smile, running around in the dirt. How’d you ever turn out to be so ungracious?”
Rena stiffened at Lewis’ memory of her childhood, which was the only time she remembered having any affection toward her father. At the time, her father wasn’t trying to proselytize her with religion. It was only after she’d turned thirteen and wanted to ‘express’ her personality that things changed from those loving memories to brawls that lasted for days.
“Like I said, old man,” Rena concluded. “This is your lucky day.”
She exited Lewis’ office, her short strides taking her as swiftly as they could to her rental car. But with every step she took, her thoughts were busy collecting every detail of Armando’s handsome face. The dreadlocks suited him just fine. She wouldn’t change a thing about his looks. Indeed, the Beckford men had excellent genes. And if Armando still possessed those kind and generous traits he’d displayed as a boy, Rena knew it would make him even more attractive as a man. However, she would be back in Paris long before he showed up in Devin’s Cay.
Chapter Two
Tampa FL – Ridgeland House
The building was impressive, pushing some forty-two stories toward the sky. It was a symbol of wealth and power, but also a testament to Kevin’s accomplishments as an extremely successful black businessman and the only black partner of his accounting firm that utilized the entire space on the ninth and tenth floors. He was only twenty-eight years old, but was way beyond his years in that he had a good grasp on business and what it took to stay afloat in an age when technology was constantly advancing.
At precisely eight fifteen, Kevin walked into the boardroom for their usual Friday meeting, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. One of his partners was already in the room, setting up the projector. He was a blond haired Caucasian male, who was at least seven years Kevin’s senior and was a closer friend to Kevin than the other two partners, Brier and Sydney. They were older men who were the catalyst behind Kevin’s and Sam’s successes in achieving such a high level in their accounting careers. Sam looked up and caught Kevin with a far-away smile on his face.
“You’ve got that goofy smirk on your face again,” he said. “Can I assume that Hunter is the reason behind it?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Sam,” Kevin quipped before he took a seat at the mahogany table. In front of him, he placed a binder of information, which documented the last three years of the company’s quarter financials he was to incorporate as part of his presentation. That goofy smirk gradually turned into a full grin. He couldn’t hide the excitement of knowing that the gorgeous Hunter Rose had agreed to be his wife. “On second thought,” he said to Sam, who was already expecting Kevin to renege on his unconvincing show of reticence. “I trust that you will keep my personal business under wraps until such time.”
The way that Sam’s thick brows danced above his grey eyes gave him a mischievous look. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“Our bet.”
Kevin narrowed his eyes at Sam in a disapproving manner. “Our bet? Man, I told you…Hunter is not that sort of woman. When I said no bets, I meant it.”
“Come on, dude, don’t be a party pooper. I have five thousand dollars riding on this prediction.” Sam walked away from the projector, pulled out a chair and sat opposite Kevin, a look of mock desperation on his face. “Five thousand dollars. That’s no pocket change. Please put my curiosity to rest and tell me that Hunter spent at least one night in your bed while she was here in Tampa.”
“Why do you believe that I have sex with every woman that I date?”
Sam chuckled. “Dude…are you for real? You’ve given me nothing else to go on, the way that you brag about your sexual escapades.”
“I don’t brag…”
“Yes you do, man. Before Hunter, I can recall about half a dozen women you dated who made me about eight thousand dollars in bet monies. What’s her name? The chocolate beauty with those sexy long legs. Shelly…Silo…something with an ‘S’…the business analyst Brier had hired some years ago.”
“Shiloh,” Kevin offered, but her name produced an awful taste in Kevin’s mouth.
“Yes…her. I told Brier and Sydney that within one week that woman would have you wrapped around her little finger. They made me bet on it. It wasn’t even a week later when you announced to me that you had slept with her. My prediction was spot on and it won me fifteen hundred dollars that weekend.”
Kevin squirmed in his seat as Sam recounted Kevin’s adventurous history with the women he’d dated in the past. Back then, spilling his guts to Sam didn’t seem so tasteless and out of the ‘norm.’ He assumed it was just something that guys did during their casual conversations about women. But now that he was in a relationship with Hunter, Kevin felt as if he was betraying some measure of her trust by discussing what they did in private. This was yet another sign that Hunter appeared to be the right woman for him, because with all the women he’d dated in the past, the connection was never to the point where he wanted to protect it.
But Sam was so easy to talk to and although he didn’t approve of the bets that Sam made behind his back, Kevin always gave in to Sam’s friendly personality. Shiloh Bethune, on the other hand, was the last person Kevin wanted to think about. That wretched female had maneuvered herself into his life and had almost cost him his sanity. And even though their last quarrel was almost four years ago, he could still recall how crippling her words had been.
“My father paid for me to have an abortion,” she’d announced over the phone. “I just thought you should know that a baby won’t work between you and me. We’re business associates. Not somebody’s parents.”
“Why should I believe that you were even pregnant?” Kevin lashed back. “It could be another lie coming out that deceptive mouth of yours.”
“Well, I was. Two months up until a week ago. I can give you the name of the clinic and th
e name of the doctor who performed the abortion, if you want.”
“Spare me, because the baby was never mine to begin with.”
“Oh, I can promise you that it was. During these past six months, you were the only man that I was having sex with.”
The amount of gossip he’d heard flying around the office about Shiloh making passes at the mailroom clerks and the security at the kiosk, Kevin highly doubted that she was telling the truth. Despite his effort to remain calm, his grip tightened around the phone. “You are a despicable person,” he told her. “To waltz your way into my life, claiming to be pregnant with my child, only to tell me that you’ve killed it is not only coldhearted, but it’s downright ridiculous. Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I’m the woman who’s helped you make partner,” she taunted. “If it was not for my persuasive skills, Brier and Sydney would have never given you the time of day. And to think it’s only been two years since you graduated from college.”
Kevin fired off a paragraph of expletives. “All that I have achieved at this company and in my life is because I worked my butt off and properly prepared myself for the position. I never once asked you to lift a blithering finger to help me –”
“Don’t delude yourself, Kevin,” Shiloh interrupted. “You’re a twenty-three-year-old black man with a lot of untapped potential. Too eager to please and too stupid to know that the white man’s intention is to keep you out of the elite circle. I infiltrated that ‘circle’ for you and propelled you ten degrees above your contemporaries. And this is the thanks I get for trying to help your black behind make it in white America? It looks as if I made the right choice in killing off that little mutt of yours. You are such an unappreciative bastard.”
“Don’t ever let me see your face around this building again,” Kevin threatened. “You had better resign today…”