When Love Comes Around (Love Conquers All) (26 page)

“Starr?”

“Huh?”

“Go to sleep. I’m tired of talking about Trina, Nick and Summer.” Nudging her bottom with his male hardness, he told her, “If you’re not sleepy I got other things you can do besides talk.”

Starr nudged him back with her bottom. “Boy, in the last two nights you got enough to last you for the rest of the week.”

Chuckling, he kissed the side of neck. “Night, baby.”

“Night, my love.” Starr whispered.

Hearing his wife’s soft snores brought a smile to his lips as he held her close. It felt good knowing he had won her trust. Getting her to love him had come easy. Getting her to not compare him or their relationship to what she had had with her ex had was difficult, almost impossible. Kevin had learned a very valuable lesson tonight. Never would he hide anything from her again. He never wanted to see doubt in her eyes again. Even if he feared her worst reaction, he would be honest and tell her the truth. More than anything, he wanted her trust. Whatever challenges were in their future, they would face them head on together.
No more secrets.

“Girl, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.” Ava lazily mumbled as she and her friend lounged in massage pedicure chairs.

Opening an eye peeping at Ava, she miserably agreed. “I know…I know. I acted like a brat.”

Ava switched the massage setting to high on the kneed mode. Her back was killing her. She didn’t know if she needed a new mattress or if it were the restless nights she was having.

“I’m not talking about that. But humph, you did better than me. I would’ve started throwing things and breaking stuff.”

Starr laughed. If it had been Ava, everything breakable would’ve been broken. “I know that’s right.” Settling back into the soft leather vibrating chair closing her eyes, Starr asked, “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, just the fact that
you
didn’t come clean with your man.”

Cringing, Starr couldn’t deny her friend’s rebuke. Here she had gotten all bent out of shape, throwing a temper tantrum because Kevin had withheld information, while she wasn’t completely honest herself. Well, she hadn’t actually lied. She just hadn’t told him that her father had all of a sudden dropped back on planet earth from who knows where and had called her.

Starr had thought about changing her cell number because the man had the nerve to contact her again. He gave some lame excuse about needing to talk to her and Karen about something “very important." He was babbling some mess about family business they needed to discuss. As far as she was concerned, she didn’t care if he’d hit the lottery and wanted to give her millions, she wanted nothing to do with him. After the third call, she vehemently told him, “I will have you arrested for stalking if you don’t stop calling me.” He pleaded, “Sweetheart, just let me explain─”

Not hesitating to cut her father off, she hissed between clenched teeth, “Explain to me how you could turn your back on your wife and daughters time after time. Explain how you could make promises knowing you weren’t going to follow through on them. Explain how you sent my mother into a depression so deep she’d almost killed herself and left me and my sister to fend for ourselves. I was barely out of high school and Karen was still in college.”

By this point, Starr’s chest was heaving as silence answered her. She wanted him to say something, anything that would show he had an ounce of regret. She didn’t want to hear some nonsense about him being her father, and because of their biological connection, all should be forgiven. When he didn’t answer, Starr wearily mumbled almost in tears, “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
Click.

It was sad to admit, but the truth was her father was so insignificant to her, she hadn’t thought twice about telling Kevin. But now that her friend had brought it up she realized she had been wrong to withhold her father’s recent attempts to meet with her. Bending down, she pulled her purse onto her lap.

Giving her a quizzical glance, Ava watched Starr fumble through her purse. W
hat in the world is she doing?
Starr had taken everything but the kitchen sink from her handbag. Finally, she pulled out the cell phone that had been buried under all the stuff now sitting on her lap. “Who you are getting ready to call?”

“My honey, so I can apologize. Av, you’re right. I should have told him when my Dad called the first time.”

“Mmm hmm. Handle your business.”

Ava closed her eyes trying to relax as the technicians sat at the end of the pedicure chair pampering her feet. She drowned out Starr’s voice as she confessed her little transgression to Kevin. She didn’t have time to be nosy; she had other things on her mind. Lately, her painful past was coming back to haunt her. She wanted to talk to someone, but didn’t know how to go about doing so. Over the years, she had shared every secret with her two best friends, except for this one. Too ashamed of what she had done, she didn’t know how to go about telling her friends her dirty little secret.
What will they think of me?

Flipping the phone shut, Starr grinned to herself. Kevin hadn’t been upset with her at all. To her surprise, he’d said, “I know you would have told me if things had gotten out of hand.” Sheepishly she confessed, “Things may have already gotten out of hand.”

Starr was furious with Karen when she learned she had met with their father to discuss
family business.
She was flabbergasted to learn their father wanted to reclaim his family. The man clearly believed they were still impressionable children who would be thrilled to have him back in their lives.

As always, the man had an ulterior motive. The only reason he contacted them was because Donna had tracked him down and served him with divorce papers he refused to sign.

During his meeting with Karen, he carried on and on about how he was a changed man and wanted his family back. When Karen didn’t buy into what he was selling, he became irritated and threatened to track their mom down when she refused to tell him Donna’s whereabouts.

Livid, Starr decided to give her mom a visit to warn her of his threat. The last thing she and Karen wanted was for
that
man to track their mom down and sweet-talk her out of divorcing him. For some reason neither of them understood, their father had a strong hold on Donna. They often wondered if he had roots on her. It wasn’t unreasonable for them to think he would be able to worm his way back into their mother’s life after all these years. He’d done so in the past on several occasions.

After briefly talking things over with Kevin, they decided to drive down to Virginia to visit her mom. Starr didn’t want her blindsided in the event her father did track her down. The last time she had talked with her mom on the phone she was happy. Getting away from Philly and the painful memories had done wonders for Donna. No way was Starr going to let that shiftless man destroy her mom’s life again.

Hearing Starr flip the phone shut, Ava asked, “Everything okay?”

“Yep. We’re going to drive down to see my mom next weekend.”

“I thought y’all only went to see her on Mother’s Day?”

“We do. But my dad is threatening to track her down. Says he wants her back.”

“What?” Ava yelled jerking her foot, nearly kicking the technician in the face as she applied nail polish to her toes.

The technician huffed, rolling her eyes as she shot daggers at Ava for smudging three of the toes she’d just painted.

“Sorry,” Ava mumbled.

Sucking her teeth at Ava, Starr apologized to the technician. “Please forgive my friend. She hasn’t had her medication today.”

The woman ignored Starr’s apology. Grumbling in Russian under her breath, she yanked Ava’s foot as she removed the smudged polish.

Starr firmly held Ava’s hand, shaking her head no. Ava balled her fist up ready to strike the grumbling woman on top of her head. She hadn’t taken too kindly to the woman yanking on her foot.

“Can’t take you anywhere. Don’t know how to act.” Starr teased.

Ava laughed. “Shut up girl and tell me why your pops is talkin’ crazy.”

“He’s refusing to sign the divorce papers he was served. Talking about he need to find my mom to talk some sense into her. Karen said she got so sick of him going on and on about us still being a family.” Starr sucked her teeth still annoyed with Karen. “I told her that’s what she gets for meeting with that foolish man.”

“Ain’t he a piece of work?” Ava sarcastically drawled out.

“Girlfriend, you ain’t neva lie.”

Each woman fell silent in her own private thoughts. One wondered how she was going to deal with the nightmare of her past, while the other prayed a master manipulator wouldn’t bewitch mother.

♥♥♥

“It’s not working,” hissed the female voice.

“What do you mean it’s not working? You said you had everything covered.” The irritated male voice snapped on the other end of the phone as he watched the two women leaving the day spa on Germantown Avenue.

It had only taken a few months of sweet-talking and a quick romp in the sheets to win over the plain Jane bank teller at Starr’s bank. After one night in the frumpy teller’s bed, she sang like a canary giving him all of Starr’s financial information. He was blown away by the amounts in her checking and saving accounts. The one surprise he hadn’t been prepared for was that she had married. Initially he was furious, that is, until he figured out how this new inconvenience would work out to his advantage. With a little more digging, it wasn’t hard for him to learn she had married well and had access to her new husband’s accounts.

After using the bank teller to get what he needed, he dropped her like a bad habit. Now if he could get the bimbo on the phone to do her part, he’d have the money he needed and then some.

Huffing with an attitude, she snapped, “Like I said, it’s not working.”

“Well, you better make it work. If you can’t get that punk Dawson out of the picture one way, then you’d better do it another way.” A deathly pause hung between the phone lines before he spoke again. “Not unless you want your cousin going to prison.”

Fear quickly replaced her attitude. She knew she should have walked away when he caught her slashing Starr’s tires early that morning. Instead, he had talked her into joining forces in destroying Kevin and Starr’s relationship. He made it all sound so good. “We’ll both get what we want. You’ll get Kevin and I’ll get Starr.”

She had been so caught up in having Kevin she hadn’t been thinking straight when she pulled her younger cousin into her schemes. In a million years, she would have never dreamed the man she was scheming with was an officer of the court. Lady Luck definitely wasn’t on her side. The guy was her cousin’s probation officer. When she contacted him a few weeks ago telling him she was having second thoughts, he wasn’t too pleased. “You know all I have to do is call your cousin in for a piss test and switch the specimens.”

Dumbfounded, she yelled in disbelieve, “You wouldn’t do that. Aren’t you an officer of the court?” Because her cousin had a drug offense, any positive testing for drugs meant going back to jail serving out the remainder of the sentence. His sinister chuckle sent chills down her spine. “Try me.”

Voice trembling, she begged, “Please, I’ve done everything I can do. He’s not interested.”

“You got one month.”

“But─” The phone went dead before she could finish pleading her case.

One month was all he had to get the rest of the fifty thousand he owed. Juggling women with his charm was beginning to get on his last nerves. None of them had enough money for him. A hundred dollars here and there wasn’t getting it. He needed someone with a substantial bank account and Starr fit the bill. Once he got that punk of a husband out of the way, he’d swoop in to save the day with empty promises of forever. Heck, to get at that hefty nest egg she had chilling, collecting interest; he’d be willing to marry her this time right after she divorced Dawson, taking with her a nice sizable settlement.

Pulling off from the curb, he smugly chuckled to himself. “Once I get in those panties, she’ll give me anything I want.

Grabbing the collar of her coat, Starr wished she had worn a scarf. The cool early December air was brisk, chilling her to the bone. Shivering she prayed, “Come on, please open the door.”