If I Can't Have You Read online

  “Yeah!” I grunted. “You know you love me.”

  Loretta marched out of the restaurant.

  I snatched my hat off the window’s ledge and put it on as I chased her past Carter’s, down to Marshalls, and to her car. “Wait, give me one more chance.”

  “Ugh!” Loretta stopped, waved her hands in front of my face. “What is wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong with you, skank-ass bitch? You’d better get your hands out my face. Hit me again and you gon’ need medical attention. I told you I’d put you on my health insurance. You’d rather be a hometown ho, spreading your pussy around Houston like pollen, than to let me take care of you?”

  Calmly she said, “Yes.”

  “You trifling bitch! You’re not going nowhere,” I said, blocking her driver’s-side door.

  “You need to get your fucked-up, crooked yellow teeth, nasty-ass crusty feet, ‘slobbering like a dog in heat’ self away from me and my brand-new BMW.”

  Fuck her 700 Series. I should kick a dent in it. Now, all of a sudden, she’s trying to say I’m ugly. She wasn’t complaining when I was giving her this big, hard dick. My shit was long, wide, circumcised, and worth worshiping every day.

  My mother’s voice echoed in my ears, “You can catch more bees with honey, honey.”

  I calmed down. This wasn’t about me. It was about Loretta. I told my lady, “You’re right. I apologize. Please forgive me. This won’t happen again. Marry me.” I fought to put my ring on her finger. She yanked her hand away.

  “Officer!” Loretta shouted. “Help me!”

  I hadn’t noticed the cop getting out of his car until now. Wondered if that Darrin dude called PD on me. Regardless, I wasn’t looking for trouble. I stepped aside, hoping Loretta would get into her car and go home. That way we could continue our conversation in private.

  “Is there a problem, sir?” the officer asked me. His hand was on his gun.

  “No problem. Just a little lovers’ quarrel with my girlfriend.”

  Spectators were gathering alongside the walkway in front of Marshalls. Loretta cried like she was auditioning for the role of Tina Turner in What’s Love Got to Do with It. Made me want to take off my boot and beat her ass like I was Ike.

  “I’m not his damn girlfriend. He’s harassing me. I’m trying to leave, but he won’t let me.”

  “Sir, let me see your identification.”

  “What did I do?” I asked. My eyes narrowed toward Loretta. “She’ll calm down shortly. Women always exaggerate. Soon as you leave, she’ll be begging me to come over to her house and you know what, man.” I hoisted my big Texas belt buckle.

  After all this shit was over, I needed to go kick it at Grooves Restaurant and Lounge tonight. Meet me a down-to-earth woman who knew how to enjoy herself minus all the drama. Buy her a few drinks. Toss back some more brews. Get wasted. Get my dick sucked and forget about Loretta until tomorrow.

  “I’m not going to ask you again, sir.”

  Fuck!

  I eased my wallet out of my back pocket and handed my license to the officer.

  “Wait right here,” he said. “Better yet, you come with me. Ma’am, you wait here.”

  I had to follow that nigga all the way over to Old Navy. Stood beside his car. Women could fuck things up in a heartbeat. When shit didn’t go their way, they wanted the police to rescue their ass. Just like that, Loretta was about to know what I didn’t want her to ever find out.

  The policeman opened his door, got into his car. Ten minutes later he got out. “Put your hands behind your back and turn around.”

  “Why? What did I do?”

  “I’m not going to ask you again . . . sir.” The officer unfastened the latch securing his stun gun and pulled it out.

  I faced the fuckin’ patrol car, did as I was told. I knew the routine. The officer removed my hat, tossed it on the backseat, placed his hand on top of my head, shoved me into the car, and left the door open.

  I sat there, feeling like an idiot. Watched him motion for Loretta to come over to his patrol car. She stared like I was in a lineup and she needed to ID me. I stared back at that ho. After all I’d done for her, that bitch didn’t have an ounce of empathy for me. Just like the rest, she’d get hers.

  “Let me see your license,” the officer told Loretta.

  She opened her purse and handed the ID to the cop.

  “I don’t know your relationship to this man, but there’s something you should know,” the officer said. “Granville Washington has three protective orders against him filed in Harris County by three different women. If he’s harassing you, I suggest you do the same, Ms. Lovelace. This man is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.”

  He didn’t know me. If I was such a threat, why was I forty-five years old and making ninety Gs a year busting my ass building offices? What the cop failed to mention to Ms. Lovelace was that all three POs were unwarranted. And even if they were legit, Harris County had nearly 4.5 million residents, and Houston was the fourth largest city in the United States, with over 2 million people. It was hot as hell. Every heat record was broken this year. Folks in Houston were understandably agitated sometimes and the prisons were already overcrowded. So having a few POs was no reason to lock a brothah up.

  “Arrest him! He’s insane. I want to press charges.”

  “Wish I could, ma’am, but I don’t have cause to arrest this man. He hasn’t violated the law.”

  Watching Loretta walk away, I smiled on the inside. It would be in her best interest to take the officer’s advice. I’d never violated a protective order. Better to get another woman than go to jail and become someone else’s woman.

  I wasn’t finished with Loretta Lovelace yet. If she were wise, she’d wear my ring, and she’d never turn her back on me again.

  CHAPTER 1

  Madison

  “ ‘You can’t see it.... It’s electric!’ ”

  The music moved through me like lightning. Happiness filled the room with smiles and laughter. My hips swung to the beat and my feet moved along the hardwood floor as though my Louboutin red-bottom stilettos had wheels.

  I was glad my girlfriend had let me sponsor her post-wedding reception at Black Swan and the Nest at Black Swan. My gift to her cost me twenty grand to rent out the entire space on their most popular night, Saturday. Food, alcohol, the champagne fountain, decorations, party favors, and all the trimmings were an additional thirty thousand, but Tisha was worth every penny.

  We’d been friends since kindergarten, joined at the hip with Loretta. The stories we shared over the years from losing our virginity to pledging different sororities were beyond entertaining. What I loved most was, we weren’t three of a kind. Each of us had unique looks and styles, and we’d taken separate career paths. At times our friendship was tested, but our bond was never broken for long. When things fell apart, Tisha was our glue.

  As I spun around, the split in my green-and-gold spaghetti-strap dress exposed my left leg from my ankle to the space adjacent to my vagina. “Daring,” “diva,” and “delicious” best described my infectious personality. Every day I opened my eyes, I was ready to see the world and all the rich men in it. A broke man couldn’t do anything to or for me.

  I spun again, almost tripping over my man as he got down on one knee. I gyrated in his face. Feeling the heat of his hand against my inner thigh, I moved with an “uh, yeah, take that, and this” motion.

  Damn, if the place were empty, I’d shake out of my thong and let him taste me.

  My man strived to be the best at e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. I did too. Our individual success made us a dynamic power couple.

  “I love you, Madison Tyler. Will you marry me?”

  In the midst of grooving, with over fifty people surrounding us and doing the electric slide, I stopped dancing. The moment I’d been waiting for had arrived in style. I couldn’t hold back the tears. What girl didn’t want a husband to love and adore her for the rest of her life? I was positive I wanted to get married.

  “Yes! Yes, I will marry you, Roosevelt!” I wasn’t sure if he was the one, but he’d do for now. I was attracted to one of his assistant coaches, Blue Waters, but he wasn’t the head coach or close to being hired as executive vice president/general manager like my man. Sorry, Blue. Any girl who knew her self-worth understood that status mattered.

  Roosevelt didn’t like his first name, but I appreciated it more than what everyone else called him, Chicago. I found Southerners strange in many ways. Being the fairest of Creoles from Port Arthur, Texas, I had a bundle of eccentric ways, but I wasn’t crazier than some of my relatives who still lived there.

  A teardrop clung to Roosevelt’s eyelid. He had no middle name, so his family gave him a nickname when he was a toddler. They weren’t from Chicago, and he hadn’t visited the Windy City until he was in college playing football. The only rationale for his nickname was the Bears were his father’s favorite team. Since he was firstborn, the name stuck, but his brother, Chaz, was always called by his real name.

  The ice cube he was sliding on my ring finger blinded me. Damn! My heart pounded like a drumbeat. I held my hand in front of my face and cheesed the widest grin ever. I pulled Roosevelt to his feet by his lapel, leapt into his arms, smashed my lips against his, and held them there.

  The “Electric Boogie” faded from blasting to silence.

  “Did Chicago just propose to Madison?” DJ Chip asked. He was the DJ for our football team and mixed up the beat every Saturday at the Black Swan.

  My arm shot up in the air. “He sure did!” I flashed my ring to all the bitches at my girl’s wedding reception. All the single females’ eyes melted in my shine. It didn’t matter who caught the bouquet; I was the envy of them all.

  The desperate ladies d
ying to get a man were not my problem. And if they believed catching a bundle of flowers was the way to change their status from single, all I could say to them was “good luck.” I gave Tisha a big hug, because she had to be feeling really small right now. Wasn’t my fault she divorced a cheating millionaire and married her broke-ass high school sweetheart in the name of love. What a joke.

  Tisha trotted upstairs and into the Nest, the private room I reserved for her immediate family and her closest friends. Stealing the spotlight from Tisha wasn’t planned. How was I to know my engagement ring would be a bigger solitaire than all the chips in her wedding band and engagement ring combined?

  I’d turned to kiss Roosevelt again, when someone snatched my biceps. The grip was that of a blood pressure machine about to burst. My fingers automatically curled into a tight fist. As cute as I was, I wouldn’t hesitate to knock a trick on her ass.

  I didn’t want to fight, but I swore if I turned around and saw one of those bold bitches who wanted my man was trying to ruin my moment, I was going to put my rock to work and lay her ass out, then glide over her as though I was on the red carpet.

  These bitches were beneath me. All women were beneath me, including my best friends, Loretta and Tisha. When I saw it was Loretta, I uncurled my fist.

  Loretta didn’t have a date at the wedding because she’d wasted her time dating that loser construction worker, Granville Washington. She should’ve brought him, anyway. It was unladylike for a real woman to escort herself to a function. He worked for me. I’d heard of him, but I had never met him. I had too many employees to meet them all.

  From what she’d told me, I told her not to do him. Told her just because that misfit allegedly had a big dick—“big” was relative to the woman—and since Loretta and I didn’t travel in the same circle of men, I had no idea what he was working with. I said that she should leave him alone. He had nothing to lose. Outside of work, from what my girl said, he had no real interests other than taking her out, gazing into her eyes, drooling in her mouth, eating her pussy, and boning her.

  From all the details she’d given me, Granville was a forty-five-year-old clumsy brute—six feet six inches, 285 pounds of muscle. The worst combination for a blue-collar man was to be good-looking, decent in bed, and to think he knew everything when what he truly was, was ignorant. Loretta should’ve taken my advice: took the dick and kept him moving. But no. Loretta always had to find the good in every man, until he treated her bad.

  “Girl, let me—”

  Before I finished protesting, I was being dragged off the dance floor, up the stairs, out the door, and onto the elevator.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Loretta asked.

  I flashed my ring in her face. “Duh. Trying to enjoy the moment. What’s wrong with you?”

  She pulled me through the lobby, then outside by the swimming pool. “You can’t accept Chicago’s ring. You’re going to ruin another good man. You’ve already got what, six engagement rings collecting dust. It’s women like you who mess it up for women like me.”

  “Correction. It’s eight. This makes nine. And see, that’s where you’re wrong. It’s women like you who allow men to dictate to you, instead of you training them like I’ve taught you. That’s how you end up with fucked-up men like Granville. You give up the pussy, then find out they’re crazy. By the way, have you filed that protective order, like you said you were going to do?”

  “Have you fired him, like I’ve asked you?”

  “He’s not my problem, but I did inquire about him. According to his supervisor, Granville is an excellent worker and does the work of ten men. I’d be stupid to fire him, especially without cause.”

  “Forget Granville. I don’t want you to marry Chicago. What are his parents going to say about this? If he marries you, our entire football team is going to hell.”

  “Not my problem.”

  So what if his parents hate me? I’m not doing them. Hell, they probably aren’t doing one another. If they were, they wouldn’t be all up in my business.

  Roosevelt appealed to me because he managed our professional football team. He was unquestionably a man of power: hiring athletes, chartering planes, making sure hotels, equipment, and food for the players and staff were taken care of. The scouts and video techs reported to him. He dealt with salaries, trades, and contract terminations. Made sure if any of his starters were hurt, he had talented backup. As the general manager, Roosevelt was in charge of everyone around him, except me.

  No man could tame me. I had plans for Roosevelt. My first order of business was to make sure I married him right before he inherited the $20 million his grandfather was giving him and his brother, Chaz. Ten was for Roosevelt and me, and the other ten was for Chaz.

  “Look at it like this, Loretta. The second the pastor says, ‘You may kiss the bride,’ I’m going to be on a first-name basis with the owners, all sixty-one ballers, the assistant coaches, and the head coach. You should be nicer to me. I might hook you up with a millionaire like Blue Waters, girlfriend. Stop hating on me because you can’t find the right man.”

  “Fine, if you want to ruin Chicago’s life, go right ahead,” Loretta said, flinging my arm toward me. “But don’t overshadow Tisha’s wedding day.”

  “Not my problem. Tisha shouldn’t have divorced her first husband and she damn sure nuff should’ve married a man with more money than Darryl. That way he could’ve paid for her ring and their reception.”

  Loretta shook her head. “Damn, Madison. She married her high-school sweetheart. Girl, you’re lucky you’re my friend, or else.”

  Marrying a high-school sweetheart when you’re thirty-five was backtracking to the tenth power. That was a huge mistake for Tisha. Fortunately, her ex-husband paid her a solid $20,000 a month for alimony and child support, but that was about to decrease once the ink dried on her license. Why any woman would marry a liability was beyond my comprehension.

  “You’ve got that one twisted. The soon-to-be Madison DuBois is going back inside to celebrate her engagement. I suggest you stay your ass out here until you cool down. Trust me, you don’t want me to bust your business in front of Tisha’s guests.”

  “Okay, Ms. Thang. Wait a minute,” Loretta said. “Since you’re so great at training men, I bet you that you can’t train Granville Washington.”

  I stared at my girl. She must’ve been insane to give me a dare. She knew me better than that. Nobody challenges Madison Tyler and wins. I’d show her how good I was at getting my way with men.

  “This’ll give me something to do while Roosevelt is on the road. But before I agree, what’s in it for me?”

  Boldly she said, “Whatever you want.”

  That wasn’t specific enough, but it was to my advantage. I could become Loretta’s worst enemy by the time I won this bet. I threw up my hands. Why was I entertaining her?

  “Look, I’m not sure you have enough to lose for me to charm that loser.”

  “Just what I thought. You’re all talk. Just because you have a banging body, booty, you’re gorgeous, and have a bubbly personality, you’re not all that, Madison. Men want women with integrity,” Loretta said, walking away from me.

  “Integrity”? Is she serious?

  I had all the assets men died to acquire. She also left out “scintillating.” If a man could get a beautiful woman whom all his boys wanted to fuck, he wouldn’t give a damn about her morals.

  “Fine, I’ll prove it. But I’m not having sex with him.”

  “That’s the only way you can win.”

  I was so good that I could open an obedience school for men, but sexing Granville would go against my principles of giving charitable fucks. Not sexing him would give Loretta bragging rights . . . never. I’d show her ass. I was going to break this Granville guy in one weekend.

  “Fine,” I said, walking away.

  “One more thing,” Loretta said.

  “What? Girl, what! You are ruining my moment.”

  “Better for me to ruin yours than for me to stand by and let you do the same to Tisha. You never asked me what I wanted.”

  I put my hand on my hip and placed my left foot forward. The split draped both sides of my leg.

  Loretta said, “If I win, you’ll call off your wedding with Chicago.”

  Whipping my dress like a bullfighter, I laughed, then shook my head. “Fine, bitch. Because we both know I’m not going to lose. You are.”