The Billionaire From Atlanta

by Susan Westwood

  She didn’t know if she should run or stay put, but she didn’t have to decide because before she could make up her mind, Kevin was there beside her, handing her the big bouquet of red roses and leaning down to kiss her softly. She heard Keisha howl again, and then she heard Tonia shush her up.

  Kevin grinned at her. “Are you ready? Is it okay to leave?”

  Celeste nodded. “Yes, we can go right now.” She wished that he had just waited for her outside instead of walking into the store to pick her up, but she knew that from his perspective, he was being a gentleman with her, and wasn’t intentionally trying to make her life harder, though that was precisely what he had just done by walking in.

  He held his arm out and she slid her hand around it and walked side by side with him out of the store and to his waiting car. It was a silver BMW, sitting just outside of the door. She heard Tonia and Keisha behind her and she didn’t dare turn around and look when Kevin opened her side of the car and helped her into it. She knew that they were watching her, and that there was no way she wasn’t going to hear about every bit of it later on.

  Kevin closed the door and a moment later he was in the driver’s seat, heading away from the grocery store and out of the dark, poor end of town into the center of town, where the city lights shone like diamonds against a black velvet sky.

  She was a kaleidoscope of mixed feelings; part shame for what she knew her coworkers were thinking, part pride for being with such a good-looking and well-put-together man instead of the train wrecks that they were so often associated with in her neighborhood, excitement for the night ahead no matter what it brought, and anxiety about all of it together.

  “It’s awfully late. Are you sure we’ll be able to find something open? We don’t have to do this tonight. I mean, I want to,” she assured him with confliction, “I just feel like there probably isn’t anything open and I am worried we won’t find any place to go.”

  Kevin looked over at her and reached his hand to take hers and hold it. “We’re going to a very nice place, and they’re keeping it open just for us. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  She decided to trust him and just enjoy herself. With some effort, she let go of the knot of anxiety deep in her stomach, and let the feelings of joy and delight that had come with seeing him and being with him fill her. It was their first date, she told herself, and she didn’t want to ruin it by worrying about anything. She wanted to have fun, to savor his company and his time, and to make a memory with him that she would cherish for a long while to come.

  Twenty minutes later, he was parking the car just outside the Ritz-Carlton hotel on Peachtree Street. He helped her out of the car and kept her hand in his as he walked toward the Atlanta Grill that was part of the Ritz.

  She gasped with surprise and delight. “This is where we’re going? I’ve never eaten here. I always wanted to, though. They aren’t open this late, are they? It’s after one-thirty in the morning! There isn’t even anyone here!”

  The lights were on inside, but she couldn’t see any customers.

  “I reserved it for us. The chef is a friend of mine. It wasn’t a problem at all.” He winked at her as he knocked on the door, and a moment later it was opened by a young man who nodded and smiled widely at them.

  “Good evening! Welcome to the Atlanta Grill! Your table is right this way.” He led them through the empty restaurant as old jazz music played over the speakers and filled the air. The whole place was done with an art deco design in black and white with silver accents; a steakhouse with flair and style. It was elegant with just a touch of casual added to it.

  They were seated at a booth that had a high rounded back and could have seated six people comfortably. There was candlelight glowing there already, and two plates were set with some of the finest dishes that she had ever seen, including crystal stemware.

  “Dinner will be served immediately,” the young man told them with a bow, and then he poured champagne for them and discreetly disappeared.

  Celeste could only laugh in amazement and shake her head gently in disbelief. “This is… I can’t…” She shook her head again as she looked over at Kevin. “You’re incredible. I have no idea how you pulled this off, but this is already the best date that I’ve ever been on. Thank you so much. It means a lot to me, and I appreciate it.”

  He grinned at her and handed a glass of champagne to her as he lifted his own in the air. “A toast, to our first date, and to each other. Friends and lovers.”

  She could do nothing but grin right back at him. “To friends and lovers, and each other,” she agreed. They toasted and sipped their champagne, and then she leaned close to him and kissed his mouth softly. He returned her kiss and lingered in it with her for a long moment, savoring her, and when they parted it was as if the whole world around them fell away, and they might have been the only people in the universe.

  Minutes later a silver tray on wheels was rolled out to their table and an elaborate dinner was placed before them. Kevin turned to her with a slightly apologetic look on his face. “Normally this would be a five-course meal served one course at a time and we’d go through a couple of bottles of champagne, and then I’d take you upstairs and wrap myself around you in one of the beds all night long, but I know you’re tired and you need some sleep. So, it’s far less champagne, and all of the meal will be served at once to save on time. I do hope you enjoy it!” He gave her a wide smile and she leaned over and kissed him again.

  “I’m just glad to spend the evening with you, but all of this… picking me up and bringing me here, and spoiling me this way, this is all so wonderful. I love it, thank you.” She could see how happy it made him to do so much for her, and they both enjoyed themselves enormously.

  They enjoyed their dinner, and when it was finished, he danced with her to one song before walking her out to the car and tucking her into the passenger seat. She fell asleep on the way home, and when he got to her apartments, he helped her out and walked with his arm around her to her door.

  She was so tired that she didn’t see the look of dismay and near disgust on his face as he eyed the apartments that she lived in. She only focused on the feel of his arm around her. There was a brief moment when she sighed with relief that Darnell wasn’t out slumped in his chair drunk or passed out, sparing her the embarrassment of Kevin having to see or hear the old man.

  Celeste unlocked her front door and Kevin had it closed and locked just a moment later. She turned to look at him with a shy but tired smile. “Are you staying here with me tonight?”

  He shook his head and kept his arm around her. “No, you’re much too tired for me to stay, though I wish I could spend the night with you. You need to sleep.”

  He walked with her to her bedroom and kissed her goodnight just before she crawled into bed. He left then, closing her bedroom door behind him and looking around her home as he started to walk out. Kevin only paused a moment in front of the little makeshift desk where her old, broken down laptop sat, and he ran his fingers over it and frowned, furrowing his brow as he pursed his lips and headed for the door, making sure that it was locked after he walked out and closed it tightly.

  Safe and warm in her bed, Celeste fell asleep to sweet dreams of him.

  Chapter7

  The next two days at the office went much more smoothly, and Hector bought lunch for Celeste as she worked through her lunch hours getting the files done. He told her in no uncertain terms that she was not to be working through her lunches much longer. He insisted that she was given that hour to get away from the job and the desk and refresh herself and her mind, and he told her that past her first two weeks there, he wasn’t going to allow her to work over lunch unless there were extenuating circumstances.

  She had gotten so adept at the work she had been doing that she was getting the files done with enough time to learn other tasks and things about her scope of work that she hadn’t yet learned. Hector continued to become more impressed with her, showing her that he trusted
her more as he got to see her work and they got to know each other better.

  Celeste and Kevin began to text each other during the day, talking more frequently than they had been and growing closer to one another. She tried to keep their texting to a minimum during the day at the office, though they did share a few messages.

  ‘How is it going for you in the job?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘It’s great and I have you to thank for that!’ she answered. ‘I had a great time on our date the other night, and I keep thinking about it.’

  His response was almost immediate. ‘As soon as you’re done working both jobs, we’re going out on more dates together, especially on the weekends when we can stay overnight. I can’t wait to see you.’

  The more Celeste got to know and love her new job, the more she hated the old one, and the more she wanted to leave it. She was growing increasingly exhausted by the day, and no amount of sleep made her feel rested and caught up. She was grateful that it wasn’t going to be longer than two weeks.

  She was standing at her register in the grocery store two nights after her dinner with Kevin when Keisha finally started in on her. She had expected it right after her date, but nothing had been said until the second night after it.

  Keisha eyed Celeste with a smug look and Celeste tried to ignore it, but Keisha made her way to Celeste and leaned over on the counter at her register.

  “I sure am glad you decided to go for that uptown white boy,” she drawled in a smart tone.

  Celeste only gave her a swift, silent look and then she turned away. She didn’t want to talk about Kevin with anyone in the grocery store, least of all Keisha.

  “Did you hear me?” Keisha asked, pushing it further.

  “I heard you, I just don’t have anything to say about it,” Celeste answered evenly.

  “Well I’m glad that you went out with that white boy because I got to go out with Wendell; that hot-looking officer that keeps coming in here making eyes at you. You just ignored him, and so I took it upon myself to let him know he was wanted and that I would treat him right, and that’s just what happened!” She was overflowing with smugness.

  “I don’t care, Keisha.” She was surprised, because Wendell didn’t seem to want to leave her alone, but she didn’t care at all, and in fact she was thinking in the back of her mind that it might be a big help to her if Keisha could manage to distract Wendell and turn his attention away from her.

  Keisha just kept right on talking. “Well we went out in his police cruiser and we did things that should be so illegal! We had a good time! He is one fine man, and I don’t know why you so crazy that you just let him go, but I’m glad you did, ‘cause that means I got him, and I want him. He is a fine man!” She sounded tremendously proud, and Celeste turned to look over at her with a serious look.

  “Good, I’m glad you were with him. I hope you keep him.” She said it and then turned her attention straight back to her work. She meant it, though she knew that Keisha was trying to derive some great satisfaction from having taken someone she thought was an excellent specimen of manhood away from Celeste, as if doing so made her more of a woman than Celeste was.

  Celeste knew that in the depths of Keisha’s subconscious she was of the mind that Celeste could be the same as her on a social level, and that was fine, but she had no business being on what Keisha perceived to be a higher social level. That, in Keisha’s mind, was unacceptable, and it was why she was so constantly derogatory about Celeste trying to better herself. It was also why she thought it was a boon that she had gotten some part of Wendell. It was something Keisha thought of as an achievement; a betterment of her standing than what Celeste had. In her mind, Keisha was winning and had outdone Celeste.

  As far as Celeste was concerned, it was a positive step forward in getting rid of Wendell, and a pitiable situation for Keisha, because Keisha was getting herself in bed with a man who was dangerous, possessive, controlling, and narcissistic. Celeste also strongly suspected that he could be abusive, if given the chance, or pushed to a level where he felt like he might need to make it clear to anyone else that he was in control.

  It was not a place that she ever wanted to be in again herself, and it was not a place where she would ever want one of her friends to be, but Keisha was a grown woman and she could make up her own mind.

  Seeing that nothing she was saying was going to impress Celeste, Keisha gave her a smug look and walked back to her own register.

  Celeste was relieved to get rid of her. Just as she was thinking that there wouldn’t be any more repercussions about her involvement with Kevin, Tonia came to her at her register partway through her shift, and leveled her with a cold and hateful gaze, which was something that Celeste hadn’t expected at all. Tonia was never one to be confrontational, but it was clear as Celeste looked into her eyes that Tonia had been holding back all kinds of things that had been going on in her heart and mind.

  Tonia spoke in a low voice, just about a grumbling growl, as if she was an animal with a deep and bitter anger.

  “You from this place, you from this neighborhood. You act like you better than all the rest of us here. You going to school pretending that you’re going to learn your way out of this hellhole we’re in, but you can’t do that. This is where you from and who you are, those crappy apartments where we live, this pathetic store where we work.

  This is your home, and you can’t ever leave it. You keep trying, thinking you’re better than all of us, but you’re not, and you sleeping with some white man from the other side of the tracks in a fancy car isn’t going to do it. You a ho now. You ain’t his woman. He ain’t never gonna make you his woman. Hell, he probably got a white wife and two or three white kids in a big house in the rich neighborhoods, and he just getting himself a little bit of brown sugar on the side, screwing you when his wife thinks he’s working late.

  You ain’t nothing to him and you ain’t ever going to be. You pinning your hopes and dreams on that white man, you a fool. You trying to go to school, trying to work in some office downtown, you trying to pretend like your life ain’t crap, but it is. Just like my life, just like Keisha’s life, it’s all crap. We ain’t never gonna have it any better than we have it right now, and there’s nothing that we can do about that.

  So, stop trying, and stop acting like a street walker and screwing some rich white man from the other side of the tracks. That ain’t who you are. You need to remember who you are, remember your place, ‘cause you ain’t in it right now.” Tonia was being as serious as a heart attack.

  Celeste was torn. She wanted to say something. She wanted to say several things, but she knew that it wouldn’t really do much good because she was leaving the job. She was slowly, brick by hard brick, leaving the life that she had been born into and wanted so much to get away from. She knew where she was from and she didn’t want to stay there. It wasn’t who she was and it wasn’t who she wanted to be for the rest of her life. She wanted to change her life and she was willing to work for it, no matter what, it was going to happen.

  Her first instinct was to tell Tonia all of that; all of her reasons and plans and about the faith she had in herself, but then she stopped because she knew that Tonia really believed what it was that she was talking about. She really believed that once a person was born in the gutter, there was no way for them to get out of it. Celeste knew that if she believed that, it was probably going to be true for her.

  If Tonia didn’t believe she could get out, then she was right, she would never get out. If she believed that she could get out, like Celeste did, then there was a chance that she could. Tonia wasn’t willing to make the sacrifices necessary to make it a reality. Talking to her would do no good. Reasoning with her, explaining to her, arguing with her; none of it would make a difference. None of that would change her mind, and Celeste knew it, so she let it all go.

  “Get back to work Tonia.” It was all she said. There was no reason to say anything else.

  They had their lunch
break and Tonia and Keisha went out to Tonia’s car while Celeste stayed in the staff room to eat. She was nearly done with her break when Keisha came back in and confronted her.

  “Tonia told me what she said to you earlier. You don’t have anything to say to her or me about what you’re doing?” She was angry; as angry as Tonia had been.

  Celeste had had it with both of them. They were pushing her hard and she was too tired and fed up with all the crap she was going through to put up with them. She stood up and walked over to face Keisha where she stood beside the door.

  “You know what, I didn’t want to talk with either of you about it because it’s none of your damn business!” She sounded as fierce as she felt. “Just like whatever you want to do with Wendell is your own business, though I would warn you about him. He’s not a good man, Keisha.”

  “Hey!” Keisha snapped back at her. “At least he’s a black man from this side of the tracks! I’m not doing what you’re doing, going over to the rich side and screwing some white guy who will never stay with you! You need to remember who you are and where you’re from instead of pretending to be someone you’re not on the rich side of town! You’re letting that rich guy take you to bed and use you, like a hooker!”