Commitment (35 page)

“I want you to,” Sh
awn said.
“I think you’d like each other.”

Jodi laughed.
“
Smooth
, you still don’t
understand women worth a damn.
Your wife and I will
not
be friends, okay
?
And if she gets even a whiff of
what
went
on
between us
,
she might even
hate my guts.”

“She ai
n’t
nothin’
like that.
And y
ou wou
ldn’t be able to help yourself.
You’d like her,” Shawn
said confidently
.

Jodi shrugged.
“Maybe.
We’ll see.
And I have to admit, I am definitely curious to see who this
chick
is
that was able to convince you to get married
.
Brendan
says
she got
you
straight
sprung.”

“
Is that what I am?”
Shawn asked, surprisingly untro
ubled by Brendan’s assessment.
“
But
she
didn’t convince me of anything.
I had to convince her.”

Jodi nodded.
“Sprung,” she confirmed.
“But I see your appeal with the lad
ies hasn’t changed
, married or not.”
She inclined her head in the direction of the studio control room.

It took Shawn a moment to realize she was talking about Keisha.

“That ain’t nu
thin’,”
he dismissed.
“She’s somebody’s cousin.”

“She was
looking
at
you like my fat aunt looks at a piece of sweet potato pie.”

Shawn grinned.
“You ain’t changed a bit, with your country ass.”

“Speaking of which.
When’s the last time you been
back home
?” 

Jodi was from Portsmouth, Virginia and had lived in DC while she attended
Howard
University
.
She and Shawn had bonded in part over their memories of Georgia Avenue and
parties near
the dorms
where he
hung out,
try
ing
to
mack
on college girls.

“About six weeks ago.
Sold my place in Largo.”

“Word?”Jodi looked surprised.
“So you’re a bona fide New Yorker now, huh?”

Shawn
shrugged.
“Guess so.”

“So much for your DC cred,”
Jodi teased.
“Is that what she wanted?
To live here?”

Shawn tried not to so
und defensive.
“She works here and
her life is he
re, so I did what I had to do.
Besides
, it
doesn’t
matter where I live.
Traveling as much as I
do
.”

Jodi shook her head.
“I’m not sure I know how to handle
the new, improved and mature K
Smooth
,” she said.
“Putting his woman first.”

Shawn heard the hidden rebuke and touched th
e side of Jodi’s face briefly.
“I wasn’t
nowhere near
ready then,
J
o-
Jo,
” he said quietly.

J
odi moved away from his touch.

“
A
ncient history,
Smooth
.
I’m just sayin
’.
N
ice to see this change in you.
Now c’mon let’s go see what’s these young guns talkin’ ‘bout.”

g

The apartment was stuffy, hot and smelled as though they’d been gone
for a lot longer than
one
night.
Shawn threw open a window and
tossed their bags on the sofa.
The day they moved out of this place could no
t come soon enough to suit him.
The entire building smelled like
day-old
Chinese food, and the temperature controls were on another floor entirely, making it impossible to predict whether you were coming h
ome to a sweatbox or a freezer.
And that nosy
landlady was no bargain either.
Shawn
saw the way she looked at him,
as though she expected him to m
ug her or something.
He’d even heard her ask
a few times
what happened to that “nice boy, Brian” and
Riley
would explain patiently over and over that she was marrie
d now, and that Brian was fine.
But still,
she
kept asking, like she was holding out the hope that one day Shawn would be replaced.

Riley
was checking
voicemail
messages
, hitting the forward button after listening to the first five
seconds or so of each message.
She didn’t say it, but Shawn knew she was hoping t
hat her mother had called.
They hadn’t spoken since two days before the
wedding
ceremony, when
Riley
called to let her
know when and where, she’d responded that she didn’t think it would be “
real
” of her to be in attendance
or some weak shit like that.
   

“There
were a couple
message
s
for you,”
Riley
said, sitting on the
back of the
sofa for a mom
ent to loosen her bootlaces.
“One from t
hat guy from EMI.”

“Yeah?”

His contract was up for re-negotiation in a matter of months and
other labels had already begun
the courting process.
Record executives blowing up his phone
and texting him
to try to set up a meeting
.
How they managed to get his private numbers he would never know.

“He left his
call
-
back information
for the hundredth time.
You might want to think about
using it
this time
before he starts camping outside our front door
.” 

She was flipping through the mail now, opening some and discarding others. 

“Look at this
.” S
he handed him an envelope.
“I got a guaranteed acceptance platinum Vis
a.
I swear
,
a
month ago they would have laughed in my face if I dared to apply for something like that.”

“It’s the bank account,
Shawn said, dropping the application on the coffee table.

“Oh
,
yeah.
The account,”
Riley
said
,
making quotation marks in the air with her fingers.

She still wasn’t comfortable with the
fund
his lawyers had set up for her
and
Shawn
would have bet anything she hadn’t touched a dime of it
.
She
told him she
would
have
preferred
a
pre
-
nup
but
even now
, he
hadn’t an ounce of regret for not
asking for that
.
More often than not, he was preoccupied with thinking of
something,
anything
that
he could give
her that she would really want.
And if a bank account with a sum in the high six figures didn’t even increase her pulse, he was at a loss for what that might be.

He walked up behind her
now
and wrapped his arms about her waist, reaching up to tug the mail from her fingers and
scattered
it on the floor at her feet.
She laughed but pressed herself back against him.

“Yo
u can’t be serious,” she said. “Twice
i
n
the last twenty-four hours is plenty enough for me, thank you very much.”

“
Now se
e, that’s just your dirty mind.
All I want to do is
make out
like we’re in high school
.” 

She turned to face him.

“You would never have been in
teres
ted in me in high school.
I was the nerdy girl at the front of the class
that
guys like you ignored.”

“Guys like me?” Shawn said. “What kind of guy was that?”

“The cool guys,” Riley said smiling up at him. “The hot guys.”

“You think I’m hot?”

She twisted her lips. “You know you are.”

“
Oh, you
said I
had two messages,” he realized.
“One was from the EMI guy.
What was the other?”

“Stephanie from Arista,”
Riley
said. 

Shawn
held his breath
.
“What did she say?”

“
Nothing.
Just left a number.”

Shit.
 

“I better call th
em back,” he said pulling away.
“I’ll give them my cell so they
stop
calling here.”

Riley
shrugged.
“Well, you live here, Shawn,
so where else would they call?
”

When she was in the bedroom, Shawn listened to the voicemail and dialed Stephanie’s number on
his mobile as she recited it and deleted the message.

“This is
Smooth
,” h
e said when he heard her voice.
He purposely didn’t use his given name.

“How are you?”
she said, her voice purring.

“Good.
How ‘bout you?”

“Wonderful.
So I thought I’d give you a call to let you know that I’m actually going to be coming your wa
y for business in a week or so.
And I wondered if you wanted to get together.”

An image flashed through Shawn’s head of Stephanie
in that Pittsburgh hotel room
naked, her upper body hanging over the e
dge of
the bed as he labored over her.

Oh god, oh god, oh god
, she
repeated
, her voice rising to such a pitch he’d clamped a hand over her mouth.

“I’m r
eally not in a position to be
negotiating
a new
contract right now,
Shawn said, keeping his tone impersonal.

Stephanie laughed.
“And if you were, I wouldn’t
be the per
son you’d be negotiating with.
This would be
purely
a social visit.”

Shawn took a deep breath
.
“How’d
you get this number?” he asked
lowering
his voice.

“Your w
ife.
Is
listed
,”
Stephanie
said
her tone incredulous.

“So you do know that I’m married.”

“Yes.
I read about it in a magazine.
D
oesn’t matter which magaz
ine.
And
it
doesn’t matter that you’re married either.
Congratulations, by the way.
”

“Stephanie.
It matters to me.”

There was a mom
ent of silence and then a sigh.
“You sure you don’t want to take me out for a drink?”

“
Not
happen
ing
, Stephanie
.”