Games Divas Play (A Diva Mystery Novel)

by Angela Burt-Murray

  Marcus King will be mine. And judging from the immediate response to my text, it was going to happen sooner than I planned.

  MK: Damnnnn, baby. U got me horny as hell lookin at ur sexy assssss!!

  Laila: Well, why don’t U come get some of this brown suga. Lap dance? Shower sex? However U want it!

  MK: R U in NYC???

  Laila: Yessssss

  MK: U got my soldier hard as a brick! Meet me at Four Seasons at 6:30. Ask for my man Christian at the desk and he’ll hook U up.

  Laila: See U soon

  MK: And make sure U wear that sexy shit U got on now

  It was only 4:00, so I had time to take care of a little business before I got pleasured. I pulled up the number of Miki Woods, the fast-talking, Emmy-award-winning Glam Network executive in charge of programming who’d been stalking me about doing a reality show. Over the last few weeks, she had been putting on the hard sell to get me to at least consider shooting a pilot. Her concept was kind of hot. It would be the first-ever interactive web-based real-time reality show called Whatever Laila Wants . . . with the tagline “She’s Every Man’s Fantasy and Every Wife’s Nightmare.” It would follow my life as I build my “modeling career,” party in New York City, and look for Mr. Right. Viewers would get to interact during the show through the show’s website. Miki was blowing up my phone, salivating over the opportunity to be the first to capture my rumored relationship with New York Gladiator Marcus King. Showing Miki our X-rated text message exchanges over the past few weeks had only whet her appetite even more, and it was getting my offer price close to seven figures.

  “Hey, Miki, it’s Laila,” I said when her assistant, Tyra, patched my call through to her boss.

  “Hi, Laila!” Miki gushed into the phone. “How are you? Did you see the press conference today?”

  This chick ain’t even slick, but I decided to play with her. Maybe I could even turn this seven-figure deal into eight.

  “Press conference? What press conference?” I asked coyly.

  “Marcus King’s first press conference as a New York Gladiator. Every local news channel carried it live. This is big news, Laila.”

  “Oh yeah. He told me he was doing something like that today.”

  “Now, Laila, let’s cut to the chase. You know Glam Network wants to do this show with you. And I promise you Whatever Laila Wants is going to be huge! We’ll put our entire marketing muscle behind it to ensure it’s a ratings smash, and with Marcus moving to New York, the interest in the two of you is only going to get more intense.”

  “I agree, Miki. But opening up my life to your cameras is a big step. I don’t generally like to . . . well . . . kiss and tell.”

  “I know, but we’d really be breaking new ground in the reality TV space with this concept.”

  “I don’t know, Miki. You’re really asking a lot . . .” I let my voice trail off and heard her breathing quicken, but I could tell she needed a little push to raise her offer.

  “Check your e-mail, Miki. I sent you a little present.”

  “Oh my God” she exclaimed into the phone after she opened the e-mail containing my most recent text exchange with Marcus along with my photo. “Is this from Marcus King? Are you really about to go meet him? Can I send a camera crew to meet you?”

  “Are you crazy? Of course you can’t send a camera crew. First of all, we don’t have a deal, and second of all, you can’t scare Marcus away before I get him. So back the hell up.” This nut was about to mess up everything before things really got official.

  “OK, I understand, but this is too hot! Laila, I’m willing to raise our offer to one million dollars for the first season and will include a guaranteed second-season option for two million dollars if the show hits predetermined ratings targets. I know a hit when I see one.”

  Deciding to do my own million-dollar reality show for Glam Network was a no-brainer. But I knew as soon as I signed those papers and word got out that I was doing a reality show, my married man and New York Gladiator’s new franchise player could get skittish. Admittedly, the gossip blogs were already speculating about our relationship, thanks to some well-placed tips, but an actual show could have Marcus trying to get as far away from me as possible—no matter how good my kitty kat was. So in order to have my cake and eat it, too, I’m going to have to be patient, and so are Miki and Glam Network. It will be worth it in the long run for all of us.

  “Look, Miki. I love that you believe in me and believe in this show. I really do. I promise you I’ll seriously think about it, talk to my agent, and get back to you.”

  “OK, I know you have to get going to the Four Seasons,” she joked. “Are you sure we can’t send a crew over?”

  “Talk to you later, Miki.” It was showtime.

  I know I’m going to get what I want. After all, I always do. Everything and everyone I’ve ever wanted in my twenty-three years on earth I’ve gotten. I’ve been blessed with model looks and a curvaceous body made for sin, and it hadn’t been difficult for me to learn to work my charms. My mother had groomed me from day one for the good life. And while Daddy did his best to provide for his two angels, I knew that if I really wanted the life I deserved, I was going to have to get it on my own.

  Dropping out of college after two years at Howard University, I had moved to LA with my best friend, Darryl Simmons, so I could pursue modeling and he could start his party-promoting career. I never ran with chicks—too much drama and jealousy. I always got along better with guys. Most of them wanted to get me into bed, of course, and Darryl was no exception in the beginning. But once I put them in the friend box, they were only too happy to hang around, hoping I’d change my mind and give them a little taste.

  Once we got to LA, Darryl and I were like kids in a candy store. We got a cheap but decent apartment, hung out all night at the clubs, and slept most of the day. Darryl hooked up with some Mexican cocaine dealers he met at one of our favorite nightclubs and started his own little side hustle with them. While drugs were never my thing, I didn’t complain because Darryl’s dealing paid for the roof over our heads, put food in the cabinets, and kept me from having to get the typical actor’s job of waitressing at some shit diner.

  At first I really did try to make an honest go of it and made the requisite rounds of the agents and casting directors, but I found the price for signing was usually a taste of my golden kitty kat. Unwilling to get on the casting couch to audition for a tiny part in a local car insurance commercial, I quickly surmised there had to be a better way to become a star.

  Because we went out every night, Darryl and I started to make connections. My looks got us in the door, and Darryl’s cocaine introduced us to a whole new crowd of Hollywood actors, video directors, and athletes. I branded myself the Golden Goddess and started to get requests for video appearances and men’s magazine photo shoots. I shot a few videos for hot rappers and R&B stars. After one video where my entire scene took place in a glass shower, the calls for more videos and dates with rappers started coming in. Everyone seemed to want to work with Laila. But hooking up with rappers who just wanted to pass me around to their crew wasn’t what I wanted. Most of their money wasn’t real, anyway. Everything on the set, including their platinum jewelry, six-figure cars, and clothes, was rented for the shoot. Plus, dating a rapper didn’t have a lot of cachet and wouldn’t put me on a red carpet, in magazines, or on TV. But professional athletes were a different story. They had real paper and an affinity for beautiful women like me.

  Ever the budding entrepreneur, Darryl figured we needed to start self-promoting my “talents,” so he started my GoldenGoddess website, which showcased all my photo shoots, magazine covers, video clips, and my personal blog where I talked about the party life and answered reader questions. While I knew it wasn’t anything more than a site for pervs to jack off to my glossy images, we started to get a lot of traffic. The hot urban
websites started featuring me, and people in the industry took notice. And then I met Marcus King and everything changed.

  Darryl and I had gone to the NBA All-Star game in Las Vegas after getting hooked up with tickets from one of his clients, Kareem Davis. I’d never been to All-Star before, but from what I’d heard, it was a who’s who of pro athletes and the women trying to land them. What I hadn’t counted on was the level of groupie talent, models, and actresses in attendance. Everywhere you looked, there were model chicks looking like they stepped right off the cover of Vogue in the lobby of all the hotels as well as tramps in barely there G-strings and pasties popping it and dropping it like they stepped off the cover of Smooth magazine. And all these chicks were serious about their game. Staying four to six deep in a room, they were decked out in their most scandalous gear and highest stilettos. But never the one to be intimidated by another beautiful chick, I knew I could more than hold my own.

  Our first event was the hottest ticket: the opening weekend blackjack party at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. When we were welcomed into the VIP area, I immediately turned my attention to the evening’s hottest attraction. Standing in a corner of the room surrounded by a group of other boldfaced-named players, Marcus King stood out. He was simply delicious. Wearing a crisp white shirt that showed off his dark ebony skin, he scanned the room, and our eyes connected. I held his gaze, smiled, and raised my champagne glass to him. He raised his own glass and smiled, his sexy lips revealing perfect white teeth. He then turned to a man standing next to him. I assumed the man was his brother because they looked so much alike and had the same gait and mannerisms. The man nodded his head to something Marcus said. I knew I had been given the approval. A shiver went through my body in anticipation of what was to come. The man turned out to be Kareem. He asked me for my number and told me to expect an important call later in the evening.

  Now, because I was a mistress of seduction and master of the game, the one thing I knew about rich black athletes was that groupie ass was a dime a dozen, and if you gave in too quickly, you’d be nothing more than memory and story to share in the locker room. If you wanted to be more than a one-night jump-off, you had to hook them. So I played the game. When Marcus sent me a text, we had a playful and sexy exchange, but I didn’t meet him at his hotel at 2:00 a.m. as he requested. Darryl warned me that I was taking quite a chance because Marcus could have just moved on to the next chick, but I knew if I was going to be more than just a blow job, I had to play my cards right. So I didn’t sleep with him that weekend but kept in contact via text and invited him to check out my website and look me up when he was in town the following month to play the Los Angeles Vikings.

  He called as soon as he landed, and we made plans for a discreet outing—dinner and dessert in his hotel suite coordinated by Kareem. As one of the league’s most visible franchise players and a married man, Marcus could ill afford to have a messy affair splashed all over TMZ. The sex had been as electric as I had fantasized. To keep his attentions and affections, I’d have to keep the intrigue going, so I made sure that every time we saw each other, I surprised him and left him wanting more of the Goddess.

  What married women don’t understand is that when it comes to sex, you can’t just give it to your man whenever he wants it. You have to be excited, enthusiastic, and adventurous. And when you’re dealing with someone like Marcus King, a multimillion-dollar pro-athlete who can jump into bed with a new movie star or model every single day of the week, you really have to step up your game. So whether it was handcuffs, blindfolds, blow jobs on the private jet, or bringing a little blond friend along for the party, I did it all, and Marcus never knew what to expect. And that’s what kept him coming back for more . . . and kept his wife’s bed cold as ice.

  And while I thought we’d have fun for a couple of months and I’d get some wonderful presents and maybe even that fly new Mercedes I had my eye on, what I hadn’t expected was the deeper connection that developed between us. Marcus was funny, sensitive, charming as hell, and the king of the league. He listened to me talk and wanted to hear my opinion. We began seeing each other as often as we could. Kareem would fly me into the cities Marcus was playing, and he whisked me out right after the next game. And after each meeting, it became harder and harder for us to part. I could tell he was getting in deep with me, and I was quickly doing the same.

  I never worried about his wife, and he never mentioned her. And like most NBA wives, the woman soon to be known as the ex-Mrs. King hadn’t really maintained her looks. She was cute enough, but she always had a tired expression on her face. The First Lady of the NBA, as she was known, stood no chance against me and my plans for her soon-to-be ex-husband. Sometimes she did intrude on our evenings together like when his main cell phone would ring while we were in bed and he’d have to answer. He would apologize and take the call in the bathroom. He had recently got a separate cell phone for me because he said wifey was always checking his phone for text messages and e-mails from other women. I never understood why women didn’t know that there was no more of a turnoff than a crazy jealous woman. But she wasn’t my problem, and soon enough she wouldn’t be Marcus’s, either.

  CHAPTER 4

  Nia

  Breaking news alert: Marcus King spotted at NYC hotel with video vixen!!??

  “Dammit, Marcus,” I groaned as I read the e-mail from Che Williams, intrepid DivaDish senior entertainment editor, and tossed my iPhone onto my cluttered desk before staring out the window of my corner office in Midtown Manhattan.

  “Ooh, girl,” said MJ as he walked into my office, his iPhone in one hand and another large brown box from my mom with more clothes from the HSN that she bought for my new job. He dropped the box on the coffee table in the seating area of my office, slid the frosted glass door closed behind him, and flopped his slim frame in one of the smoky Lucite chairs facing my desk. “Did you see Che’s e-mail?”

  “Of course I did,” I snapped as I sat down in the black leather chair behind my desk and raked my fingers through my new short, spiky do. When the DivaDish reporters had breaking news that needed an immediate response, I instructed them to copy MJ on the communication so that he could find me quickly for approval.

  “Whatcha gonna do, EIC?” he drawled. “You know this is a big story, and our readers are obsessed with Marcus King since he got traded to New York. Whenever the writers post anything about him on the site, it gets tons of page views and comments. I bet you that tramp-ass Laila James is the one that leaked the story. Golden Goddess, my ass.”

  Suddenly both of our iPhones buzzed with another incoming message from Che.

  Got video!!!

  I clicked on Che’s message, and the short video clip opened on my screen.

  Shit . . .

  Marcus King was hard to miss. And with a $150 million contract with the New York Gladiators, he had a target on his back for every reporter and every wannabe paparazzi with a cell phone camera. The clip was grainy and unsteady, but I could hear Che’s persistent voice yelling in the background, “Marcus King, over here!”

  When he saw Che’s camera aimed at his grill, he threw up his hand to block his face as he walked out of a Manhattan hotel lobby holding a woman’s hand. The woman, dressed in a short, tight turquoise Hervé Léger dress, quickly pulled the dark glasses off the top of her long dark hair, slipped them on, and then dropped his hand. But it was too late. The video ended as Marcus rushed by Che and jumped into a waiting car. The woman immediately turned and ran back into the hotel.

  It was definitely Marcus in the video. And it was definitely Laila James, the Golden Goddess, with him.

  “Damn . . . How dumb do you have to be to try to leave a hotel with your ho in the middle of Manhattan in broad daylight?” MJ asked as he shook his head.

  I knew Che was waiting for my response before she posted her latest scoop to the DivaDish website. It was sure to get a lot of traffic and put our fledgling s
ite on the map.

  But I wasn’t sure what to do with this juicy exclusive because, after all, it would kill my girl Vanessa, and she was the one who helped me get this new job.

  Vanessa had hooked up an e-mail introduction to her soror DeAnna George, the president of PrimeTime Media’s publishing unit, just as she had promised. Desperate for a new job and anxious to get the hell out of Los Angeles and as far away from Eric as possible, I quickly drafted a twenty-page proposal for DeAnna, outlining my vision for the magazine and website. Shortly after receiving my proposal, DeAnna, who, as fate would have it, was in LA to meet with advertising clients, arranged to meet for lunch at her suite in the Beverly Hills Hotel.

  It was apparent immediately that DeAnna George was wicked smart, had an edgy sense of humor, and played to win. One of the only female presidents at PrimeTime Media Group, a New York–based conglomerate of publishing, social media, and TV networks, she hadn’t gotten to the top by playing nicely with others and sharing her toys. Average height and well toned, she had a light brown complexion and a razor-sharp, chin-length jet-black bob with a widow’s peak. I took her age to be a well-preserved fiftyish. A Google search had yielded several business accolades and a few nasty stories about her underhanded office politics and quick temper, so I’d need to push for an ironclad contract to protect myself if she offered me the job. I walked her through my proposal, laying out my vision for the weekly magazine and daily website, which seemed to impress her.

  “I want the DivaDish brand to be the must-read for women of color both in print and online, and I think you’re just the woman to take the brand to the number one position,” she said with a hard glint in her dark eyes as she slid a black folder across the table to me. When I opened the folder, I was happy to see an employment contract. The salary, while in the mid six figures, was a little lower than I would have liked for this type of position, but when I tried to address that, she quickly shut me down.