The High Price of a Good Man: A Novel - Hardcover

Phillips, Debra

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312305257 ISBN 13: 9780312305253

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2003

Synopsis

"First of all, just for the record, I love me some me. You heard right. . .I truly love Miss Queenisha Renae Sutton. The tall, well-endowed, fine honey-coated sistah that I be."

Queenisha Renae Sutton is always ready, willing and able to walk away from any man who either can't or won't appreciate her, because after all, she is all woman. Then she meets tall and handsome Zeke Washington at a charity fundraiser, and buys him lock, stock and barrel. For one night. Determined to get her money's worth, she approaches their first date with one goal: to make Zeke her man, no matter what the cost. With the help of her best friend, Poetta, who puts a "voodoo hex" on Zeke to help lure him in, Queenisha gets more than she bargained for. And before long she finds herself changing to please a man. And if love wasn't complicated enough, she discovers an even sweeter love where she least expects it.

About this title

About the Author

Debra Phillips lives in Compton, California, and it at work on her next novel.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

High Price of a Good Man, The
One 
 
First of all, just for the record, I love me some me.You heard right. And I'm not ashamed to say it either. I truly love Miss Queenisha Renae Sutton. The tall, well-endowed, fine honeycoated sistah that I be. Every inch of me is special, even if those inches are blown out to the fullest. Call it conceit if you want. Call it an overblown ego if you like. Call it what you want, but that's just how it is.See, that's what's wrong with a lot of folks nowadays. Specially my ebony sistahs on the prowl. The ones that be looking for the elusive "good black man." Sistahs be tripping. Keep trying to love everybody else more than they love themselves. But not this amazon sistah. "If you can't find somebody else to love you," my mama always told me, "then you have to love your damn self." Mama should know because she and God have a close and personal relationship, and because of this, God has blessed her with infinite wisdom."First, you have to love yourself, and others will follow." She was always saying stuff like that, my mama, and some of it went straight over my head like a scent and mixed with the air. But some of it, the good parts, stuck to me like new skin. That's why we women lacking in the ways of love have to listen to the wisdom of our mothers. True,there may be a few mothers who never found out the truth and wisdom about life and love themselves, but on the other hand, there are plenty of mothers who did. Those, I say, are the ones to listen to.Good old "mother wisdom." I listened as much as I could, but everything is everything with me, and my philosophy is what you see is what you just might get, but only if you play your cards right. Like me, for instance. Hmph. I can't be worrying about why my nappy, reddish-brown hair don't grow long and wavy down my ample back when a six-dollar box of relaxer and a nice laser-done weave will do just fine. And no way. You won't find me sitting around feeling sorry for my tall, sweet, honey-brown self, all of six feet tall and a size sixteen, thank you very much, just because diets don't like me and I don't like diets.Amazon diva that I am, when I dress to kill, I strut all my stuff with my head held high like a twenty-eight-year-old proud bird. Some eyes do see and appreciate, while others--well, heck, they don't even matter. Some say I have a very pretty face, something about my almondshaped eyes being filled to the brim with a light of hope, and all warm with mischievous brown. But that ain't nothing, 'cause they're only saying something that I already know. I don't lay claim to being no professional prizefighter, but having big heavy limbs and heavy fists do have its advantage. The big and the bold, like myself, we don't mind handling our business if the need arise. If I have to throw down, so be it, and may the best woman win.I'm the oldest of two daughters born to Odessa and Clayton Sutton. My mama left my daddy in Money, Mississippi, and headed for California when I was three and my sister, Kellie, was age one and still pulling at her tit. My daddy, Clayton, knew that he couldn't let a good black woman like my mama get away, so he tried putting his alcoholism on hold and followed suit within three months. My daddy. God rest his soul. Daddy probably would have been a professional California hoe-chaser by now if he hadn't slipped back into old ways and drank himself to an early grave. And that old saying about it takes a village to raise a child? True, and not so true. Compton was the small village that helped my mama raise me and my sister, Kellie. Helicopters hovering--the sound of bullets flying and ambulances racingthrough the murky night was as normal as the air we breathe. People never forgot to lock their doors at night, and not many of the tiny, rotten-frame houses that lined our shabby street went without security bars. The mean streets of Compton--a place long steeped in bad reputation, true enough, but it's not so bad as most folks imagine. And then again, some days it's worse.Compton was okay, but I wanted to get out, and I did. Keeping it real with a good college education, I now earn a living from nine to five as an executive buyer for a major department store. I don't care to give the name right now. But I can say this much, though, they don't hire a lot of African-American women in the kind of position I have--but for me, they pay a sistah well, so I can't complain. Not when I'm buying my second condo in the upscale part of Cerritos, California. Not when my bank account would make the average working man wanna cry. And if I can't get a baby Benz in the color I want, no sense in having one at all. That's why I'm sporting a cold silver one equipped to the full.I may not be the one who coined the saying that a little hard work never hurt nobody, but I know it's true. Sometimes it breaks my heart to say it, but unlike some of my fellow sistahs of today, I have no plans to take care of a man. Nope. Sorry. Not this large and lovely sistah. Not to say that I wouldn't buy my number-one squeeze a nice gift every now and then, but if he's the kind of man that's looking for a woman to pay for every date, wash his dirty drawers, buy his clothes, pay his car note, and dish out some spending cash on top--hmph!--then his eyes be bugging, and he's looking at the wrong honey-brown woman.Which brings me to why I'm having a big problem with this fool, Marcus, sitting up here now in my face telling me that he don't have the money to pay for the cozy lunch we just ate. Ain't this a trip. I feel like pulling a Tyson on him, reaching over and biting off his ear and spitting it out on the floor. But cool, I tell myself. I can be calm. For the last ten minutes he's been sitting across and smirking at me, waiting for me to take my wallet out. And I'm waiting, too. Waiting for him to be joking with me about inviting me to lunch and having no money to pay."Marcus, you really got some nerve. You know that?""Aah, c'mon Miss Lady. Give a brother some slack. I'll set you straight when my funds roll in. I promise."I'm making one of my faces, and I know it. Poetta swears that I always make faces when things don't go my way. She's probably right. If looks could kill, Marcus would be on the floor right now clutching his own throat."No, you hold on, now, Mr. Think-You-All-That Marcus. Let me hear it again so I can get this straight. I was all the way in Cerritos, relaxing at my own crib and minding my own business when you called me up. I didn't call you. You called me, and asked me out for lunch. Right?" I could feel my pulse throbbing at the side of my temples. Sometimes when I get a little excited, I have a tendency to get a little loud, but I was making a point of keeping my voice down and leaning in over the small and quaint pink cloth-covered table where the bill for our meal lay waiting like a copy of the state deficit."I said I'ma take care of you next time, girl. Why you sweating me and making a big deal out of it?""A big deal? Marcus, perhaps you don't understand the basic rules of dating. You ask the woman out, you pay. The woman ask you out, she pays." I clucked my teeth and shook my head. I couldn't believe that this was going to be the stumbling block of what could have been a nice relationship. Looks like I've been foolish enough to even think it was the beginning of something special when I should have known better. I hadn't known the man but a good three weeks, but after a few phone sessions I thought there was hope for us--a budding seed of a relationship. Guess I was wrong. Dang. I hate when that happens. And I had it all planned out in my head, too, how I was gonna rock his world between the sheets after our date. Now the only thing I feel like rocking is a big rock upside his head. "Well, how much money do you have with you?" It's the look on his face rubbing me the wrong way. That combination smirk-sneer."About two dollars and forty-five cents." He pushed the bill holder over in my direction. "Stop making a big deal of it, and handle our business so we can go to the pad and get our freak on, woman. You know you wanna.""In your dreams. The only freaky thing that you and I could do right now is me struggling to remove my boot from your behind.""Ooh, aggressive. I like that in my woman. Aggressive and kinky.""Well, you don't have a woman at this table, so pull out some cash so we can get on with our lives." I couldn't stop glaring at him. Such a waste, too. Marcus T. Turner had been one of those chance meetings three weeks previous. Surrounded by my natural habitat, stores at the mall, and doing what I do best, I had been shopping that Saturday three weeks ago, hauling around a slew of packages and trying to have an intelligent cell phone conversation with my homegirl, Poetta, when I bumped into the tall, slender, and somewhat handsome Marcus T.Granted, he wasn't what you could call a superfine brother. In other words, a possible diamond, but still raw and without the shine. But he was a smooth talker. Had a good look working for him with those slightly hungry-looking light brown eyes that looked like he could sop you up with some gravy and two biscuits. Clean-shaven, delicious cocoa skin, except for that floss-thin black mustache hanging over the most kissable thin lips I'd ever seen on a man. If I didn't know any better, lips like his usually came from a skilled doctor's scalpel. Marcus had the lips I dreamed of: flawless.Okay, okay, so I have this thing about lips. Some folks have a foot fetish, but I have this thing going on in my head about lips. If a man has thin, nicely shaped lips, it's like the icing on the cake. But if a man's lips look big enough to curl up and cover his own face, I don't want no part of him. Marcus had these thin and perfect-shaped lips. When he smiled at me, I could see that he didn't have perfect teeth, but a girl can't always have everything in one perfect package. Sometimes it takes a pinch of the good parts and a dash of the bad parts to make it all worthwhile and keep it real. All I'm saying is, the man was all right.Even as large and luscious as I am, I don't usually go around bumping into men, at least not on purpose, so I figured it had be destiny. Everybody knows that the good Lord works in mysterious ways by sending a man your way when you're not looking for one. I know 'cause my mama told me this ever since I was knee-high to a poodle and terrorizing from my crib. But honest to God, a tall and voluptuouswoman like myself hauling a bunch of packages around and trying to talk on a cell phone while strolling through a semi-crowded mall needs to pay more attention.Marcus and I, we bumped, and packages went all over the place. I probably would have gotten mad at him if it hadn't been for the fact that it was mainly my fault and Marcus was so apologetic, and did give me a good view of his well-defined rear in those well-fitted black dress slacks he had on as he bent over to retrieve my things. A wide smile had pulled at my lips while thinking how nice his gray silk banded collar shirt looked on him. Moving swift like the wind, he had my packages spotted, swept up, checked, and back in place, the whole time he kept saying how sorry he was. Sorry this. Sorry that. And then I was saying something, too, like, "Excuse me Poetta, gotta go." Click.Poetta hates it when I cut her off too abrupt by hanging up on her, but I felt like I had an emergency to deal with--some 911 of a possible hunk. Just looking at that man making such a fuss over my fallen things was enough to take my breath away. I didn't see no ring on those fingers, and such nice hands, too--large and well kept. A recent manicure. Another plus in my book. No nasty-looking black, bacteria and goo all up under his fingernails to possibly contaminate my intimate and special places. Things were looking up."Mercy me." I had to fan myself. "There's nothing to be sorry about. I'm sure you didn't mean to." After I composed myself, he helped me over to a stationary wooden bench where I perched to take inventory of my things while he stood over me smiling and looking ever so patient. Even though he didn't have perfect teeth, I liked his smile right off. Sometimes, if you angle your head the right way, even a few crooked teeth can be quite sexy. The man had to be a good six feet two, and that was another plus in my book. Six feet and two inches of testosterone towering over my six-foot frame was right up my alley. I had to look away several times to blush, which isn't the easiest thing for a woman of my complexion."So, what's your name?" he wanted to know.I had looked up at him again and thought that our chance meeting might be something to check out. "Queenisha Renae Sutton. But my close friends call me Queenie.""Well, it's nice to meet you, Miss Queenie. I'm Marcus." He held out his hand, and I took it for a brief shake. "Marcus T."I have to admit now, that day I was impressed. In my mind, that middle T had to be for something good, like tall, teasing, tantalizing, or terrific, and the way he said his name, his confident tone, sounded like it held some kind of importance to him. He sat down beside me along the bench. After we talked awhile, it seemed the right thing to do to give him my beeper number."No home number?" He mocked disappointment."Beeper first, home next.""Oh, it's like that, huh?""Yeah, it's like that." Sometimes a sistah have to learn the hard way, like I did, about giving out my home phone number. Now my number two policy when dealing with a man is, never, ever tell a man your address or home phone number until you're absolutely positive you wanna be hearing from him on a regular basis. This alone cuts down on hang-ups and phone stalking.Marcus beeped me the very next day. Five days into beeping, and me ringing him back, and him saying the right things, he'd earned my phone number. Matter of fact, he's been calling me every day since then. Like clockwork. No sooner after I arrive home from work and have my banana-mango scented bubble bath and a spot of tea--well, more like a spot of sherry--my phone would burr with its own urgency, and to my delight, it would be Marcus. After a short while, I got to liking all the things he was saying, that tint of possibility in his words, and I guess my words were checking out, too. After two weeks and a half, he asked me out to lunch. And before I answered, I had to recheck my mental stats on the man:NAME: Marcus T. TurnerLIPS: Thin, perfect ... kissableMARITAL STATUS: Single, but looking for the right womanJOB: Construction worker (pays well)CAR: Ford Mustang 5.0 (in the shop for repairs)LIVING ARRANGEMENTS: Sharing apartment with brother Gerald in Culver CityGOALS: To someday own his own construction companyMarcus checked out good, so I agreed to have lunch with him that following Sunday. And though I don't like the idea of chauffeuring a man around on the first date, he had explained to me how his car needed major engine work, so I agreed to drive from Cerritos to Culver City to meet him at a nice, cozy little restaurant a few blocks away from the Fox Hills Mall. After weeks of holding back our lustful thoughts like a dam holding back water, we would be on our very first romantic date. But that was then.And here we are. A balmy-looking Sunday afternoon, late June, and I'm beginning to feel like I would have had a bette...

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0312305257
• ISBN 13: 9780312305253
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288