Every Woman Needs a Wife Page 5

  Tanya held the wallet out to Brandi. “Actually, I figured that since you didn’t have much success keeping your husband, and I didn’t have much success landing one of my own, maybe being your wife might be a better idea all around.”

  Good point. And one that might bear some thought.

  Brandi plucked the wallet from the woman’s pale hand, opened it, removed the cash, and counted it. As an afterthought, she gave Tanya half. “Finders keepers.” She tucked the cash in her bra and tossed the leather wallet, aiming for an obscure spot in the bushes.

  Tanya snatched it from mid-air, took out his driver’s license and the credit cards, and handed them to Brandi, saying, “Identity theft. You’ll still need him to have good credit at some point.”

  “Good thinking,” Brandi replied, tucking the gold American Express, the Diner’s Club, Visa, and MasterCard in her bra next to the cash. “What happened with Vernon?”

  Tanya let out a long, weary sigh. “He told me that I couldn’t stay in the house unless I continued to sleep with him. And I told him that I had a better offer on the table anyway.”

  “Mine?”

  Tanya grinned, shrugging as she said in a humored tone, “But of course.” She leaned back on the bricks, resting a stiletto-clad foot against the concrete. “If he slept around on you, there’s no telling what would happen when my turn came. What goes around comes around. I would’ve never wasted my time if I had known he was married. So my last words to him were, ‘I’ll be seeing you around.’”

  Brandi grinned, feeling a sudden sense of elation as a dynamic plan came to mind. “He just didn’t know that he’d be seeing you around at his house.”

  The door swung open. Donny poked his head out, scowling. “Hey, lil’ sis, you all right?”

  His gaze traveled the length of Tanya’s miniskirt-wrapped body, long legs that didn’t seem to end at her waist, then up to her breasts. Real or plastic? Brandi wondered. Only her cosmetic surgeon would know for sure.

  “This is Tanya,” Brandi said with a flourish.

  Donny winced as thick lips turned into a frown. “He went white? What was he thinking?”

  Tanya glared back at him.

  Brandi grinned. “Same thing he was thinking with.”

  Laughter followed as he pulled his head back in just as the music kicked into “Take it back now y’all. One hop this time…” before fading once again when the door closed.

  Things were shaping up to be a bit more complicated than Brandi had expected. She had wanted to humiliate Vernon, ending things in a way that would make him feel her pain. When she talked to Avie two months ago, she never thought things would turn out quite like this.

  CHAPTER Seven

  It had started with a simple, “Girl, he’s been cheating on me.”

  Avie sighed, swiveling in the green leather office chair, asking, “What do you mean he’s cheating? Who’s cheating?”

  “Vernon! I know the signs: late nights, last-minute travel plans, hanging up the cell phone when I enter a room.” Brandi blinked back tears. “Then there’s new clothes, as if he didn’t already have enough to last him at least three lifetimes.”

  Avie leaned forward on the oak desk. “And new cologne?”

  “Pheromone for Men.” Brandi’s eyes narrowed as she looked at her friend. “How did you know?”

  “Classics, baby, classics. I think you should whip out the knife and go Lorena Bobbitt on his ass.” Her thinly arched eyebrows lifted into half moons. “Try it the next time he wants some nookie.”

  “The only time we have sex is when I ask for it.”

  “You’re kidding!” Avie leaned back in her chair. “The Black Stallion?”

  Brandi laughed at her reference to Vernon’s college nickname. “The Stallion hasn’t been riding the range or grazing the pastures lately. And when he does, it’s more like a ‘you need to be grateful I’m still with your ass’ kind of thing. God, I’m tired of that.”

  “No doubt.”

  “I’m going to stop asking, and start handling things the old-fashioned way,” she said.

  Avie laughed, a soft, silky sound. “Now, I feel you on that one.”

  “No, you don’t!” Brandi shot back. “You’re getting your fair share on the regular. When was the last time you masturbated?”

  The lawyer blushed, dipping her head sheepishly before she stood. “Well, we’re not going to get into that. I have to go to a closing,” she said. “Why don’t you come back to my office on Thursday and we’ll discuss your options.”

  “What time?”

  “About ten.” She flipped open the calendar on her desk. “No, make it twelve, and I’ll spring for lunch.”

  ♥♥♥

  Brandi walked back into the law firm of Davidson, Royal, and Payne, slipped into the soft leather seat across from the desk, and kicked off her heels before propping her tired feet on the desk.

  Avie Davidson reached out, swiping the feet away, forcing them back onto the carpet with a solid thud.

  Brandi shifted in the seat, placing one leg up under her. “I don’t do that when you come to my office.”

  “I haven’t been to your new office.”

  “My point exactly,” Brandi said, leveling her gaze on her friend.

  “Hey, when you decided to move all the way out in Bumfuck, Egypt, you knew I wasn’t coming out there that much. It’s almost an hour out of the way and certainly nowhere near a courthouse.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah” Brandi waved off the excuse with a single hand. “And South Chicago isn’t all that far.”

  “Add in parking-lot traffic coming from downtown and it is.”

  “You’re just lazy, Heifer,” Brandi said, giving her friend a wide grin.

  “Call me what you want, but your tail can get down here in twenty; it takes an hour the other way around.”

  Brandi reached out, scooping up the blue glass paperweight globe in her hand. “Well, I haven’t asked for any nookie, and now I’m sitting home brewing like a bitch in heat while that bastard’s out giving it to some other woman. I’m the only one respecting our vows. How fair is that?”

  “Girl, you need to follow him to her house and beat that ass,” Avie said, propping her feet on the desk. “That woman knows he’s married.”

  “You know, I’m not so sure about that,” Brandi replied, tossing the globe back and forth in her hands, then casting a cursory glance at her friend’s feet. “And why do you get to do that?”

  “Because it’s my damn office,” Avie replied with a little shake of her shoulders. “I can drop my drawers and take a crap right on the wood and nobody can tell me different.”

  “Might lose a few clients, though.”

  Avie shrugged as she grinned. “Yeah, there is that.” Her hazel eyes followed the trail of her favorite paperweight from one of Brandi’s hands to the other and back.

  “Since we’ve expanded and moved the business, he spends so much time away from home that he could probably pull off having more than one woman. The only proof he has that he’s doing what he says is that new accounts are cropping up—and not just in Chicago.”

  Avie reached out, snatching the globe from mid-air and setting it safely back on its perch.

  “So I’m not as angry with her—he probably lied to her, too. If there’s any place my anger should be directed, it’s at him for not being satisfied with what he has, or at myself for putting up with this far longer than necessary.”

  The door opened and Avie’s teenage apprentice secretary brought in two Corner Bakery box lunches. She thanked the girl before passing one to Brandi. “I thought by now he’d change and get over his midlife crisis.”

  “Girl, he hasn’t even made it to midlife yet.” Brandi sighed, then looked down at the tan-and-black cardboard box in her hands. “And trust you to be cheap on lunch. Box lunches.”

  “You can complain or you can watch me eat yours, too.”

  Brandi snatched the box from Avie’s fingers, knowing her friend w
ould make good on the threat and wouldn’t gain a single pound. God just wasn’t fair with this metabolism crap. Brandi could sniff a piece of German chocolate cake through a closed refrigerator door and gain a pound.

  She placed her lunch on the corner of the desk and began pacing the room. “I’ve been silent and it’s been almost six months since he started with this woman.” Brandi turned her back to Avie and gazed out on the foggy view of the Chicago River. “You know, I’m through acting like the content little wife. I’ve done everything a wife should, but Vernon’s still dipping his stick somewhere else.”

  “Time to make some changes?”

  “No lie,” Brandi said with a nod. “I certainly don’t want any more of his used dick.”

  Avie took a big bite out of her chicken pesto sandwich and scribbled a few notes. “You also shouldn’t leave the marriage without some green-and-white tissue to wipe your tears on—”

  “Yeah, the crisp kind that comes in several denominations,” Brandi said, folding her fingers as though she held a stack of cash inside. “The large ones.”

  “Damn straight,” Avie said, perking up. “How do you want to pull this off? You know I’m not in for playing Mrs. Nice.”

  Brandi sat back down in the chair, popping open the lunch box. “I’m not sure. I don’t want the girls to suffer.”

  “You mean no more than they already have?”

  She had a point. A really good one, too. When was the last time Vernon did something special with them? He had taken them to a client’s house a couple of times—a Mrs. Kaulman or Kaufman or something like that. But that was about business, not about the girls at all. “You know, everything we’ve built together: the business, the house, the cars, the assets—half of it belongs to me.”

  “Actually, more, since you held up your end of the bargain,” Avie said, scribbling more notes on the bright yellow pad while making headway on her sandwich. “Being faithful to him, making a good home for him and the girls counts for plenty. You can’t take the soft road on this, baby girl.”

  Brandi’s gaze focused on the wall behind the desk. Degrees hung between pictures of Avie with her husband, Carlton, and three children—Carlton II, Carrington, and Marilyn. The two friends had all but married Brandi’s girls and Avie’s boys off in the stroller. “Vernon practically insisted I have the children right away. I think he thought that it would make me put up with his crap—”

  “And let’s face it, you have. The children didn’t have anything to do with that,” Avie said in a grim tone. “I told you to watch out for him after that time he met with Mr. Adams and painted you right out of the picture. He played right into that man’s male chauvinist attitude like a champ, acting as though the company didn’t run without him.”

  “Oh, that was an ego thing,” Brandi said, dismissing the memory of the painful episode with a simple gesture. “He can’t admit that I’m just as important to the business as he is.”

  “Let Carlton try to pull that crap. I’d give him directions to his own ass-whipping so he wouldn’t be late.”

  Brandi laughed, realizing that Avie always had a way of lightening up the heaviest mood. When they met at Fisk, they never realized that one day Avie would own a law firm, or that Brandi would marry Vernon, arrogance and all, and start a business with him. She also never thought that she would have two children to look after, when she swore up and down after her thirteenth birthday that she would never have them. God must’ve seen that as funny because he gave her two girls, and she worried every time they stepped out the door. Just like her mother had worried about her. And that worry was warranted. She was lucky she had even been able to have children after the surgery she’d had at thirteen to repair her damaged body.

  Finally taking a tiny bite of her sandwich, she said, “Vernon’s a good man, but it seems that the more successful we’ve become, the more he’s changed.” She rested her chin on the palm of her hand. “We’re able to give our children anything and everything. My girls won’t have to wait years to explore opportunities; they can create their own—like we swore on our wedding day.”

  “And I thought that would never happen,” Avie said softly. “Remember how Vernon’s dad almost cut him off completely because he had him all lined up to marry Veronica? Boy, did that girl have mud on her face.” Avie laughed, a harsh sound that didn’t mesh with an angelic face and model-perfect features.

  “Don’t be bitter ’cause she tried to get into Carlton’s pants.”

  Avie’s smile disappeared as her eyes narrowed to slits. “Wouldn’t have been a problem if I wasn’t already in them.”

  “What did you do to her that day?”

  “I’m not telling on the grounds that it may serve to incriminate me.”

  Brandi roared with laughter, remembering how Veronica had stood up in the middle of Avie and Carlton’s wedding, opening her wide mouth to object when the pastor said, “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

  Avie had yanked off her veil, hiked up her white dress, and stormed down the aisle, train and all. “Can I see you outside, please,” she demanded, yanking the wafer-thin woman by the hair, giving her no choice in the matter. All heads and eyes stayed glued to the mahogany doors, waiting for an outcome.

  Avie, composed and all smiles, appeared five minutes later. Veronica wasn’t heard from until three months later. By then she had packed up and moved to California.

  Veronica had been a thorn in Avie’s side since she and Carlton had gotten together. Brandi had had no such problems with another woman. Now she had a big one. “I’ve given my life to my family and to the business. There’s never been time for me…”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  Brandi held Avie’s wedding picture in her hands, trailing her finger across the happy smiles of the bride and groom. “And to think I turned down Michael Cobb, a Fisk man, for Vernon.”

  “And Michael was fine, too—and upstanding,” Avie mused.

  Brandi blinked to clear her vision, thinking of the one she let off the hook and tossed back into the water. “Vernon was a driven, intelligent, but compassionate man in the beginning—all the qualities of a Morehouse man. His only flaws were that famous Morehouse arrogance and being a little under his father’s thumb. And I accepted that. Unfortunately, his ‘flaws’ have snowballed into something I can’t bear.”

  Avie took a sip of Dr Pepper. “Time to pull the rug out from under the Black Stallion.”

  “Yes, it’s time to stop playing at being married, stop giving so much, and start saving my money. My future, Sierra’s, and Simone’s depend heavily on the intelligence I went to Fisk to cultivate.”

  The fact that she had to think that way at all angered her beyond reason. The moment she got pregnant, Vernon had all but insisted she turn the business over to him and stay at home. They had a major argument, one that lasted the entire pregnancy. She worked up until a week before the due date, stopping then only because Sierra had decided to come a few days early. If Brandi had her wish, they would have wheeled her to the delivery room on the copy machine. Pregnancy was a bitch. She couldn’t even keep water down for the first month and spent several days on intravenous feedings to get some nutrition. The smell of food had facilitated payments to the porcelain god so many times, she thought about just moving into the bathroom. She didn’t know how Vernon talked her into doing it twice. He had pushed for a third and fourth. She told the doctor that if she got pregnant again, despite regular use of birth control, he could wake her up after the kid came out and she’d cut and tie the tubes her own damn self.

  “Avie, it’s time to get down to business.”

  “Just so you know, I’m gonna treat you like a real client.”

  Brandi grimaced. “So, after all I did when you bought this place—washing the windows, painting these walls, and scrubbing the floors—now I have to pay full price? What happened to the family discount?”

  “Girl, please, when have you ever paid for me to represent you?”

>   Brandi’s heart pained as she looked up at her friend. “I’ve never needed you this way before…”

  Avie blinked twice before laying the legal pad on her desk. “I’m giving you a list of things to do. I want you to sleep on this tonight. Some of it’s a little under the radar, but you’ll have Vernon by the short and curlies.”

  Brandi turned to face her lawyer. “The who?”

  “Pubic hairs. Trust me, it’s better than putting a vise grip on his balls.”

  After what Avie had done to Vernon’s father—the man didn’t have any “short and curlies” left—Brandi knew her lawyer and friend was capable of bringing any man to his knees.

  In some ways she already felt sorry for Vernon.

  CHAPTER Eight

  As Brandi slid a sly glance at Tanya, standing on the doorstep in all her glory, she saw more than a way to get back at Vernon. She now had an opportunity to strike a blow for every wife who had unwittingly shared time, space, and dick with the unknown and had walked away with a bruised ego, insecurities, and less than their fair share of the financial power they’d helped to build. This was one lesson she wouldn’t fail to teach Vernon, and Tanya would be the main source of his pain.

  Brandi and Vernon’s family were still inside partying like tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough. And probably for him, it couldn’t. She stared at the “other” woman. Moments stretched between the two women before Brandi lifted her fingers to her temples, asking, “You said something earlier about my girls. How do know my daughters?”

  In a somber tone, she answered, “He’s brought them by a few times, but just recently. They call me Mrs. Kaufman instead of Tanya.”

  Realization slammed into Brandi like a crappy old car with a bad set of brakes. “So that’s who they were talking about. He really did set you up in the database as a client. That mother—”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Tanya said softly. The breeze ruffled her hair, causing it to fly in her face. She moved it away with the soft sweep of her hand.