Butterfly

by Rochelle Alers

  Seneca, her hand resting on Luis’s jacket, walked into the private cocktail party and was met with applause. Four-inch heels and the black silk slip dress floating around her feet made her look thinner than she actually was.

  “They love you, Luis,” she said close to his ear.

  “No, Mariposa, they love you.”

  “I’m just the vessel through which they see your designs.”

  Luis covered her hand with his. “You are the vessel that inspires me.”

  Seneca jumped slightly when a flute of champagne was thrust at her. A wide smile parted her lips when she realized it was Booth. “Thanks,” she said, accepting the pale bubbling wine.

  His blue-green eyes were sparkling. “You were absolutely magnificent. I didn’t want to believe Rhys when he told me about the Miami show. I’m willing to bet that every man watching you had a hard-on, yours truly included among them.”

  Seneca blushed, then put the flute to her mouth and took a sip of the cool liquid. It was excellent. “I try, Booth.”

  Leaning closer, he brushed a kiss over her soft lips. “You don’t have to try, baby.”

  She didn’t know why, but Seneca felt uncomfortable. Perhaps it was what Booth said about having a hard-on, or it was because he’d kissed her. She hoped he didn’t have thoughts about crossing the line between agent and client. “Could someone please get me something to eat?”

  “What do you want?” Luis asked.

  She smiled. “Anything salty.”

  He lifted his eyebrows questioningly. “Caviar?”

  “That’ll do.”

  Waiting until the designer walked away to get Seneca’s request, Booth cupped her elbow and led her to where they couldn’t be overheard. “I just want to tell you to clear your calendar for the next five years to eight years.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve booked you for Fashion Week in Bangkok, Buenos Aires, of course Paris, Mumbai, London, New York City, Hong Kong, Kingston for Caribbean Fashion Week. Dubai, Cape Town, Barcelona…” He stopped, trying to recall the list. “Oh, there’s Auckland, New Zealand, Montréal and Milan. I’m certain there are many others, but I can’t remember them right now.”

  “But I’ll never be home,” she said in protest.

  “The schedule begins with New York, followed by London, Milan and Paris. These four cities are the traditional big four fashion weeks. They are followed by new emerging fashion weeks globally. I promised to make you a supermodel, and you are, Butterfly. Isn’t that what you wanted?” Booth asked when he saw her crestfallen expression.

  “Yes. It is what I want.”

  Seneca did want to become a supermodel, but at what cost? She wanted to buy property—some place she came home to where she could be Seneca and not Butterfly. Even before her final walk she’d felt faint, as if the crowd had sucked up all of her strength.

  “I got a call from the producer of a daytime soap who wanted you to come to L.A. to audition for a limited run, but I told him you’d just lost your father and wouldn’t be available. I thought it best you stay away from television at this time. I’d prefer you stick to fashion: runway shows, magazine covers and photo shoots. There’s more money in it and higher visibility. I’m going to try and get you on the cover of Vogue, Vanity Fair, W, British Vogue, Elle and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. I want you to become most men’s fantasy.”

  “That sounds scary, Booth.”

  “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll make certain you move into a very secure building and whenever you travel you’ll have a personal bodyguard with you. No more commercial carriers and taxis. It’s going to be private jets and car service. After all, I have to protect my client.”

  She gave him a strained smile—a smile she didn’t feel. Seneca had told Booth she wanted to be a supermodel yet hadn’t thought about what went with it. There was no doubt she would make a lot of money, but what good was money when she didn’t have time to enjoy it?

  Her agent had asked for the next eight years of her life, and she would give it to him and an additional two. By the time she celebrated her thirtieth birthday, she planned to get out and go back to school. She’d promised her grandmother and parents that she would finish college, and if she survived the world of high-fashion modeling, she would.

  Luis returned with a small plate with caviar on wafer-thin crackers. He fed her one, and she closed her eyes when the salty fish eggs exploded in her mouth like Pop Rocks. She took another sip of champagne and opened her mouth for another.

  At that very instant a flash bulb caught the scene of Luis feeding her caviar while she held a flute of champagne between her fingers. The expression on her face was blissful and serene. It was only one of her that appeared in the fashion section of newspapers around the world. Most captions read: Stunning!

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Seneca opened her eyes when she felt the car stop. She’d slept during the transatlantic flight, but her body still felt as if she’d been punched repeatedly. Peering out the side window, she noticed a man standing about thirty feet from the entrance to the building where she’d purchased a duplex.

  “Dwight.”

  The muscular man sitting beside the driver nodded. “I see him.”

  After so many years, she knew the drill. Do not get out of the car until her bodyguard was beside her. She’d gotten a restraining order prohibiting the tabloid reporter to come within two hundred feet of where she lived, but it was apparent the man was either persistent or he liked being locked up.

  Dwight Hudson opened the passenger-side door and stepped onto the sidewalk. His broad shoulders and six-foot-four frame of unadulterated muscle were imposing and threatening. He glared at the reporter who had had the nerve to move to the end of the block. It was only then that Dwight returned to the town car, opening the rear door and extending his hand to assist Seneca Houston alight.

  “Thank you, Dwight,” she whispered. She’d come down with a case of laryngitis within days of arriving in Rome. Her throat didn’t hurt, but it was frustrating not being able to talk.

  “Don’t move,” he ordered again. “I need to get your luggage.” The driver lifted a lever, opening the trunk.

  Seneca closed her eyes again while inhaling a lungful of humid New York City air. No city smelled like the one that been her home for the past four years. She’d come to the Big Apple at eighteen, with stars in her eyes when she’d enrolled in New York University. She’d planned to become a movie director, but a meeting with an aspiring fashion designer had become a temporary detour. Seneca thought of it as temporary because she hadn’t given up her dream to direct movies.

  “Miss Houston, is it true you were once married to Phillip Kingston?”

  With wide eyes, she turned to find the reporter standing only a few feet away. Then, without warning, the flash of light distorted her vision. “Dwight!” His name came out in a croak instead of a scream.

  The bodyguard moved quickly, reaching under his jacket for the firearm concealed in a shoulder holster. However, he wasn’t quick enough when two men took off running in opposite directions. He rushed back to his client. “Are you okay?”

  Seneca nodded. “They just startled me,” she rasped.

  “Go into the lobby and wait for me while I get your luggage.” Dwight watched as the liveried doorman waited with Seneca in the building vestibule before he returned to the car to retrieve her luggage. Five minutes later he left her bags on the floor near a closet in a spacious entryway.

  “Call me if you need me.”

  Seneca rolled her head on her neck. “I don’t plan to go any where for the next three days.” She extended her hand, staring up at the man with the dark-brown shaved pate. “Thank you, Dwight.”

  He took her hand, which disappeared in his large one. “You’re welcome, Miss Houston.” Dropping her hand, he walked to the door, opened it and then closed it softly behind him.

  Kicking off her running shoes, Seneca slowly made her way into the living room and the
staircase leading to the second floor. After showering, she planned to get into bed and sleep until hunger or nature forced her from it.

  She was exhausted from the never-ending shows, posing for magazine layouts and a relationship with a financial planner that was going nowhere. Malcolm had begun whining that they never got to see each other, and the last time she listened to his voice on her voice mail, she deleted the message, then called to tell him she thought it best if they stopped dating.

  Seneca stopped halfway up the staircase, sighed, then continued to the top. Booth had said she had eight good years in the business. Her projection was ten. Now she wasn’t certain she could make five. At twenty-two, she was contemplating retirement.

  Reaching into the pocket of her hoodie, she took out her cell phone. She’d neglected to pack her charger, and after two days she had a dead phone. Plugging in the cell, she walked over to the bedside table and checked the house phone. A blinking red light indicated someone had called.

  “Damn,” she whispered while staring at the display. She had eleven missed calls. Scrolling through the CID, Seneca felt her heart lurch in her chest. All of the calls were from her brother. Without bothering to activate voice mail, she punched in Jerome’s number.

  “Hello.”

  Her sister-in-law had answered. “Maya, this is Seneca. What’s going on?”

  “Hold on, Seneca. Let me get Jerry for you.”

  “What’s up, Jerome?” she asked when hearing her brother’s voice.

  “Where the hell have you been? And why weren’t you answering your cell?”

  “I just got back from Rome. My cell is dead because I forgot to bring my charger. What is going on?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me Mom wasn’t paying her mortgage?”

  “Me!” Oh, how Seneca wished she could scream. “I told you to check with her to make certain she was paying her bills. How far behind is she?”

  “They’ve foreclosed on the house.”

  “What!”

  “The bank took the house and they’ve sold it to someone else. Our mother and sister have a thirty-day vacate order.”

  Biting on her lip, Seneca willed the tears welling in her eyes not to fall. “Jerome, you know Mom won’t speak to me, that’s why I told you to check in with her at least once a week.”

  “I do, but she says everything is okay.”

  “How can it be okay when she’s about to be homeless?”

  “That’s why I called you, Seneca. We have to figure out something.”

  “We! What’s this we shit, Jerome? I ask you to do one thing for me and you drop the ball.”

  “Cut the bullshit, Seneca! You don’t have chick or child, while I have to take care of my family. Maya is pregnant again. This time with twins.”

  Seneca didn’t want to believe it. Her brother was living on one salary while his wife managed to get herself pregnant again. She’d promised Jerome that she would return to teaching when James Scott turned two.

  She cradled her forehead. “I can’t think right now. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Remember, they have to be out by the end of September.”

  “There’s no way I’m going to allow my mother or my sister to be homeless. Goodbye, Jerome.” She slammed the receiver so hard in the cradle that Seneca feared she’d broken the phone.

  “Mother, mother, mother. Why have you become the bane of my existence?”

  Seneca picked up the phone when she heard the buzzer from the building lobby. “Miss Houston.”

  “There’s a Jerome Houston asking for you.”

  “Please send him up.” She’d arranged for her brother to fly into LaGuardia airport, where a driver awaited his arrival. Whatever she had to say to her brother needed to be done in person.

  Seneca stood at the door when Jerome stepped out of the elevator, watching as he came closer. He’d lost weight, and she wondered if it was deliberate or if he wasn’t eating. Tilting her chin, she offered her cheek for his kiss. “Thank you for coming.”

  “It’s your dime, Seneca.”

  She rolled her eyes at him, but he didn’t see her because he was staring over her shoulder. “Come in.”

  Jerome Houston walked into his sister’s apartment, his jaw dropping in awe. It was like a layout in Architectural Digest. His gaze went to the high ceilings and the curving staircase leading to another floor.

  “Very nice,” he drawled facetiously. “It looks as if you’re doing well for yourself.”

  Seneca led him into a room where she spent most of her time whenever she had the luxury of leisure time in her home. “I’m working hard, not smart, Jerome.” Bright sunlight poured in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. She gestured to a table set for two in a corner. “I know you want to get back to D.C. before the last shuttle, so I arranged for you to share dinner with me.”

  Instead of being buoyed by his sister’s success, Jerome suddenly felt a rush of resentment so bitter that he believed he’d just downed a potion of bile. It was as if she was showing off. All she had to do was pick up the phone and order airline tickets, arrange for a chauffer to carry his bags and drive him wherever he wanted. She lived in a duplex in a luxury high-rise overlooking Central Park. She jetted all over the world, and since she’d stared out from the cover of Vogue she’d become fashion’s “It” girl.

  “I know you like steak, so my chef will prepare it any way you like.”

  Inky-black eyebrows lifted in an equally dark face with features much too delicate for a man. “You have a chef?”

  “He only cooks for me when I spend more than a week in town. If he didn’t cook for me I wouldn’t eat. Most times I’m too tired,” Seneca explained when Jerome gave her an incredulous stare.

  “But you’re a fabulous cook, Seneca.”

  “Thanks, but I can’t remember the last time I cooked for myself. Why don’t you wash up before you sit down. There’s a bathroom through that door.” She pointed to the door at the far end of the room. “How do you like your steak?”

  “Medium well,” Jerome threw over his shoulder as he walked to the bathroom.

  Seneca halted putting a forkful of spinach in her mouth when she watched Jerome cut into a piece of aged rib eye steak. He was shoveling food into his mouth as if he hadn’t eaten in days. She made a mental note to send him an order of frozen steaks from a gourmet steakhouse.

  “I want to pay you to take care of Mom and Robbie.”

  Jerome stopped chewing, his eyes wide. “You want to pay me?”

  “Yes,” she said confidently. What she was going to propose to Jerome she’d given a great deal of thought to. “I know you haven’t completed renovating your house. I’ll pay for the renovations. And I’ll also pay for an architect to draw up plans to add an extension, so Mom and Robbie can have their own place with two bedrooms, two baths, full kitchen, living room and dining area. There is space where they can park their cars.”

  Jerome set down his knife and fork. “You want our mother and sister to live with me and Maya.”

  “Are you listening to what I’ve been saying, Jerome? They won’t be living in your house. The addition will be like a guesthouse. When you told me that Maya is pregnant again, I knew there wouldn’t be enough room for two more people. Mom’s social security for Robyn will stop once she turns eighteen, and Daddy’s stipulation that Mom can’t collect his pension until she’s fifty-five isn’t going to kick in for another ten years. And because of this, I’ll pay you and Maya to look after them. I had someone look into how much Maya would earn if she’d returned to teaching. I’ll pay you what she would earn—before taxes.”

  “Will we have to pay taxes on the money?”

  “No, Jerome. It will be a gift.”

  “You’re going pay to complete the renovations, build a guesthouse and pay me and Maya to look in on Mom and Robyn?”

  “You’re going to do more than “look” in, Jerome. You’re going to take care of them like you do your son. Robbie tells me Mom has been ac
ting strangely. She’s forgetting things, names, and she’s having a problem getting words out. I want you to take her to a neurologist.”

  “Mom’s too young to have Alzheimer’s.”

  “She can be the exception. Either you do it, Jerome, or I’ll bring Robbie here to live with me. I’ll hire a live-in house keeper who will look after her when I’m out of town or out of the country. She only has another year before she’s off to college. Somehow I will get Mom evaluated, and if she is ill, then I’ll obtain power of attorney to have her committed to a skilled nursing facility. That way the pressure’s off you and Maya, especially since you’re growing your family.”

  “You have money like that to throw around?”

  “How much money I make or have is none of your concern,” Seneca retorted. “Talk it over with Maya, and let me know tomorrow if you will or won’t do it.”

  “Why the rush, Seneca?”

  “I have to be in Madrid the second week in October, and I’d like to get them settled before that time. If you agree, then I want you to register Robbie in your high school. I’ll arrange for someone to pack up the house and put everything in storage. I know there are furnished apartments in D.C. that offer short-term lease agreements. Mom and Robbie can live in an apartment until their place is ready.

  “I will not leave the States worrying whether my sister and mother are being taken care of. It doesn’t matter whether Mom hates me, or she doesn’t want me in her house. I will not abandon her, Jerome.”

  “I won’t either. I don’t have to talk it over with Maya. Dahlia Houston is my mother, and I can’t abandon her. She and Robyn will move in with us.”

  Two hours after Jerome Houston walked into her condo, Seneca closed the door behind him. The driver in front of the building waited to take him back to the airport for his return flight to D.C. She wasn’t certain her brother was willing to become a caretaker for their mother, but knowing someone was looking after Dahlia had alleviated some of her anxiety.