“Danke,” Seymen-Cansin told him sincerely. “Thank you very much for being so kind.”
“You are welcome,” Isaiah told him and watched him exit the penthouse suite. Turning around he couldn’t hold back the joyful exuberance that built in his chest and poured out into a scream of relief. . . .
“Yes, yes, yes . . . she said YES!”
Change of Life
Michelle McGriff
Prologue
The hotel was expensive. But there was no way he was going to take her to a cheaper one. Besides, he would just write it off on his expense account. It wasn’t as if he’d ever used his entire stipend. His boss would never question this one time.
They were always telling him to have fun on these conference trips and so, Dammit, I’m gonna have some fun . . . right now, he thought, grinning wide and goofy at the young blonde as she looked around the room. It was as if she’d never seen anything like it before. She was impressed, he could tell.
“So you like it?” he asked.
“Sure I do. It’s really cool,” she answered, tossing her blond mane over her slender shoulder. He couldn’t resist. He kissed her. She responded with a fire that shot quickly to his loins.
“I’m glad, baby . . .” he purred, trying to sound hip—youthful. He knew at times his flirtations sounded lecherous—or maybe it was just that he felt that way, being twice this girl’s age and all.
Her name was Candy. He wasn’t sure if that was her real name but nowadays, kids had funny names like that so maybe it was. He thought about his high school days and how all the hippie white kids were changing their names to things like Summer, Autumn, and Freedom, so Candy wasn’t so bad. Perhaps she was a product of one of those “types.”
They’d been seeing each other for about three months, ever since she was hired on as his assistant. It was an automatic attraction.
She had mistaken him for the vice president of the company. He was pretty close to being that, but, “No, I’m his assistant,” he confessed, stretching his actual position as far as he could. Sure, he was indispensable, but not for the reasons he wanted her to believe.
It only took two dates to get her to bed. And funny thing was, he wasn’t even trying to get her there. She brought it up.
Even now thinking about the young girl’s firm body and loud passion-filled outcries, he weakened, nearly overcome with lust for her.
Running to the bed, she jumped on it, bouncing high and giggling.
“Come on, join me,” she invited. “We have two hours before the seminar.”
Two hours?
It took longer than that just to get his wife to agree to come to bed. She was a workaholic and now with the department she headed up under review, she was a downright drag. She was always overworked and stressed out and far too serious.
Candy began to strip while standing on the bed. She loved to tease and play.
Naked, she began to bump and grind, moan and other obscene things that he had only seen done once at a stag party—many, many years ago.
Before he stopped himself he had joined her on the bed, pulling her down to him and covering her body with kisses, closing his full lips around her firm pink nipples, seething with the fever she had caused to come up in him as she quickly reached into his trousers, stroking his manhood.
“Take your suit off so we don’t have to get it pressed,” she whispered, while working on the buttons of his shirt.
Back when he was a young man, a white woman was all but taboo—available to only the most radical black man. Radical was not him. He was shy and reserved, so needless to say Candy was his first.
In the beginning, it bothered him—maybe even scared him a little. But soon, he figured that all he had to do was turn out the light and that would take care of all his fears. Once in the darkness, he could only feel her—tight, taut, and smooth to the touch. She smelled of peaches or some other fruit most of the time. The combination of that scent, his cologne and their love would nearly take him to madness. And the way she would wrap her legs around him, pulling him in all the way . . . well, it wasn’t uncommon for him to go on for nearly a half hour. At first, he worried if she was satisfied. She wasn’t as easy to please as his wife. He knew his wife was always satisfied with what she got, because, what did she know about anything? She was a virgin when they got married and he hadn’t been with many girls prior to that. Together they had managed to fumble their way into a rhythm that, up until now, had worked for them.
Maybe it still worked for them.
He didn’t know. Maybe he was just fooling himself with Candy. But as he closed his eyes and took in the sounds of he and Candy, working together, creating a new cadence, all he knew was this was the beat he wanted to drum to from now on.
He entered her forcefully. She liked it like that. He figured it was part of the myth she had envisioned when seducing him to bed. She told him that she had never been with a black man before, so he figured it was what she expected—rough sex. Therefore, he tried to oblige. He had to admit he liked it too—pulling her hair, biting her. Sometimes she would want him to call her dirty names and he liked doing that too.
When he would release into the sheath that she insisted he wear, she groaned as if receiving his seed with pleasure and full acceptance and then would scratch his back like a cat, purring, moaning, and writhing beneath him, sliding her silky long legs up and down his thighs before going into orgasmic jerks, settling finally into a comfort zone. He had never worn a condom with his wife, but Candy insisted upon it, and it was okay. He was getting used to it. As tight as she was, he almost felt the same sensation as the real thing.
Her pushing against his chest would give the sign that he could pull out—which he would then quickly and carefully do. She was so tiny, and he knew his weight was probably more than she was used to. Having been a football jock—a lifetime ago—he still carried a few extra pounds, of course now it wasn’t all muscle like it used to be. But he tried to take care of his health. His wife was a fanatic about it, but then she went overboard on stuff like that.
“I love you,” he told Candy after wrapping a towel around his waist and climbing back in the bed on top of her, kissing her excitedly and rubbing up against her.
She grabbed his face, kissing him full on the lips, “And I love you too,” she said. “But we better get in the shower and get going.”
The shower.
He knew what that meant. It was usually where Candy treated him to oral sex.
Another intimacy no longer performed on him by his wife.
Maybe he would make a move when he got back home. Maybe he would just tell his wife what was what and get in with Candy for real, in the open. Yes, he needed to make this thing with Candy permanent before anything happened—before anything changed between them. Before Candy woke up and moved on to someone her own age.
Life had a way of changing that way, just when things got good. And things were sure good with Candy.
At this point in his life he deserved something good.
Chapter 1
Glenda was dragging. Two morning cups of coffee and even an afternoon trip to Starbucks wasn’t helping put the spring back in her step.
She read the same sentence three times before finally giving up and closing the file.
Corporate work wasn’t always the most exciting occupation in the world, at least not at her age. At forty-five, staring at the picture pinned to her corkboard, the one of that house nestled in the plush greenery on that hillside, the house with the white picket fence with the colorful pansies creeping along it.... “Now that was exciting,” she said aloud, taking the picture from the stickpin and getting a closer look at it. She sighed heavily and put it back on her corkboard.
“We’re going for drinks after work today,” Dave said, peeking into her of
fice, smoothing down his combover. Dave was a wannabe overachiever. Glenda felt he was more of a brownnoser than anything, but his department was always winning service awards—thank goodness. Being his boss, she would hate to ever have to fire him for poor performance after all these years. Who knows what he would do. He didn’t seem to have much of a life outside of this job.
Dave didn’t linger at her door; he had simply announced their plans and then disappeared without waiting for an answer from her. It was as if he knew she would decline. Lately she had been nothing short of a wet blanket—always so tired. But then, how could she expect a man to understand what was happening to her? She was forty-five now and the dreaded change was upon her. Glenda could tell by the signs. She was coming into menopause.
She was willing to accept it. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t expected it. Actually as soon as she turned forty, she began reading up on the subject.
“I’m an intelligent woman,” she reasoned. “Why live in denial over the inevitable? It’s a fact of life, can’t run from it,” she had told herself.
Her husband, Simi, was a handsome man, barely showing gray around the temple. And a good man, although she’d not reminded him of that much lately and she knew Simi loved her, it wasn’t as if she had to be told all the time either.
“So are you going for drinks?” Gerri asked, stepping into her office, breaking her reverie. Gerri was her assistant.
“Oh . . . oh no, I’m gonna head on home. Simi is supposed to get in this evening and I want to be there when he gets in,” she answered, before realizing she still had the picture in her hand. Gerri looked around nervously and then closed the door behind her.
“Glenda, can I talk to you?” Gerri asked.
Glenda sighed, knowing before she spoke what the young woman wanted to talk about . . . that man.
These young girls these days, Glenda mentally fussed. They just don’t know how to keep their relationships afloat, they are just so fickle; she went on thinking. She had been married to Simi her whole life. He had been her first and only lover, so she didn’t have anything to compare him to, but even with that, she had to figure he was one of the good ones, lord only knew her brothers were no angels. Just remembering them as young bucks sowing their wild oats gave her a chill.
All the girls . . . the babies . . . the babies’ mamas’ dramas . . .
Despite how much she liked Gerri, Glenda felt she was about the worst—always whining and crying over her relationship. Why Gerri went rounds and rounds with that man was beside her.
“It’s about Harold,” Gerri began, sitting down quickly.
“I told you, just make up your mind about him—all this back and forth,” Glenda fussed after hearing again about the planned breakup. Gerri shook her head, allowing the tears to flow now. “Gerri, either get out or you need to try to work it out, but settle on something, all this bickering is distracting to you and your work.”
“But Glenda, you don’t understand. How can you. You have a good husband and . . . besides, life isn’t all about my job.”
“Gerri, please, your job needs to be given a much higher priority, my dear. With your work you measure your worth,” Glenda lectured. “You have to think about what’s important and fighting with Harold isn’t it.”
“Glenda, I can’t believe you can just say that to me, as if love isn’t important,” Gerri whined.
“Love? Is that what you call this?” Glenda laughed. “Please, I would never let my personal life get so distracting and convoluted as you have done with yours . . . honey, love just isn’t crazy like this. Love doesn’t have you acting a fool and—”
“God . . . you are impossible to talk to, Ms. Never Had To Work Out A Thing In My Entire Life Dixon,” Gerri growled.
“And what does that mean? You know Gerri; you come in here to complain,” Glenda fanned her hand. “I don’t come to you, but then again, I don’t have complaints.”
“Ms. Perfection, here we go again with the lecture on how to have the perfect man, the perfect life . . . well, Glenda, life is just not that simple.”
“Gerri, it’s not about simplicity really. It’s about having yourself together and organized, prepared for the unexpected and you don’t know about that. You think that each day is supposed to be an adventure but it’s not. You are supposed to live by the rules and in doing that life won’t rule you.”
The conversations with Gerri always led to heated debates between the two of them and Glenda never understood why they even would go there. Yet, Gerri would always start it by coming into her office, not the other way around.
“It doesn’t matter who he is or where he is,” Glenda began, trying to keep the sanctimonious tone out of her voice. “If you have love and trust in your marriage . . . the key word being trust, then it’s all good, and especially if you have children with him. You need to give your children a balanced home and two parents that love and respect one another. And . . .”
“So you’re saying that once we set the rules we just live by them as if nothing is going to ever change between us. People change, though, Glenda, life is full of new things and . . .”
Glenda knew from experience at this point in the conversation that no matter what she said, Gerri was going to try to prove why putting Harold out . . . again, was going to be the wise thing to do.
Young folks, Glenda began to believe they just didn’t have a clue what real love meant. It was all a game to them. Thank God she and Simi never had to play this game. Simi would never pull the infidelity card—why would he? She was a good wife. No, she was a perfect wife.
“I suppose if you really love Harold you work it out. Nothing should matter.”
“It does matter,” Gerri cried, tossing her thick mane of red hair over her shoulder. Her face was flush and she was mess. Her eyes were bloodshot and strained. She pulled out a few tissues from the box that Glenda held out to her just in time, as if habit.
“Well thanks to you I guess I’m gonna go home too . . . my night is shot to hell.” Gerri stood, blowing her nose and pouting. “Now I’m feeling all guilty for something I didn’t even do.”
“I didn’t do anything, either,” Glenda defended. “. . . except state the facts on how to make a relationship work. It’s all very logical. You get what you give. You give your all and you get it in return, it’s simple really. Remember Gerri, life is tough, but it’s tougher if you’re stu—”
“I know, I know. Don’t even . . .” Gerri held up her hand to stop the words from coming. “I don’t know why I try to talk to you. I . . . you’re . . .” Gerri stammered and then quickly stormed out, slamming the door behind her.
Glenda wasn’t stupid and so life was easy. Actually going along with things had made life very easy. She would never understand why these woman had made life so hard on themselves by complicating the simplest of things, like their relationships.
The expensive mahogany wood desk clock that she had received as a gift from her best friend Minx said five P.M.
Glenda felt that familiar weight lift off her shoulder and the smile part her lips. Standing quickly she took her coat from the back of her leather chair and swung it over her shoulders. She reached under her desk and pulled out her purse from the small compartment.
Rising, her head lightened. She saw a flash and then felt the pressure against her shoulder as it hit the floor.
Chapter 2
Gerri bit her nails while waiting with Glenda in the ER. Glenda wanted to tell her to stop doing that but her head ached and frankly, at that moment, she didn’t care enough about Gerri’s annoying little habit to say anything. Glenda wanted to know what was wrong too; she wondered if it was her blood pressure, her cholesterol or one of those other little things that go suddenly out of whack with the onset of menopause. She was ready to hear the worst.
The doctor walked in. His expression was unreadable and Glenda felt a little uneasy. She glanced over at Gerri whose eyes were wide with concern. Her gold contacts made her already larg
e eyes look even bigger and wilder than normal.
“Well Mrs. Dixon, I’d say you’re looking great for a woman your age,” he said.
“Thanks,” both she and Gerri answered at the same time. Glenda smirked. She knew Gerri was nervous but still she was starting to work her nerves a little.
“Gerri, why don’t wait out in the lobby. I think if it was bad the doctor would have told me already,” Glenda explained. “So what he needs to say to me from here on out is probably a little personal.”
Gerri’s expression fell but she stood slowly from the little stool beside the bed, still clutching her bag. Glenda felt instant regret. She felt what she had never felt before toward the young woman. Glenda felt friendship. She realized suddenly how many personal things Gerri had shared with her, yet she didn’t even want to share the slightest of things in return. She wanted to change her mind and ask her to stay. But she’d already told her to leave and changing her mind was never one of Glenda’s habits. Gerri hesitated slightly but upon seeing that neither Glenda nor the doctor was going to budge, she left.
“Well, Mrs. Dixon,” the doctor began speaking, sliding the stool up to the bedside. “Like you said, it’s nothing bad . . . I guess. But it’s definitely personal.”
“What does that mean? You guess. It’s menopause and it’s not bad . . . perhaps personal but . . .” Glenda chuckled smugly. “It’s something a woman must face in life. It’s part of what we do. It’s—”
“It’s not menopause, Mrs. Dixon,” the young man chortled. “I see you were more than ready for that one.”
“Then what is it?” Glenda barked, slapping the sheet, growing instantly irritated, without even knowing why.
“You’re pregnant.”
The room grew silent enough to hear the sirens outside the hospital—to hear the traffic in the street, to hear the babies crying on the fourth-floor maternity ward.