Chapter 8
I was up at seven.
I handled my hygiene, brushed my teeth, washed my face and got dressed before I even thought about her.
I had a full day ahead of me and breakfast with my parents was the least of what I needed to get through before noon.
My father wasn’t a man you showed up to late or unprepared and I wasn’t about to give him a reason to start the morning sideways.
I walked down the hall and stopped at her door. Security posted outside nodded at me. I pushed the door open without knocking.
She was knocked out sleep.
Laid across the bed sideways, one leg hanging off the edge, still in her clothes from yesterday. She hadn’t even gone under the covers. She’d probably cried herself to sleep and landed wherever she landed. I stood there for a second then walked straight to the window and yanked the blinds open.
Dallas morning sun was coming through that room like it had somewhere to be.
She shot up gasping like I’d thrown water on her. Looked around wild eyed, disoriented, and then her eyes landed on me and everything on her face settled back into that same hard look she’d been wearing since yesterday.
“Get up,” I said.
“Are you serious right now—”
“I told you about asking me that.” I walked to the closet and went through what my staff had stocked in there. I pulled out a white floral dress and laid it across the foot of the bed. “Put that on. We got breakfast with my parents in less than an hour.”
She looked at the dress. Then looked at me. “I need my phone.”
“You don’t.”
“Kaseem.” She said my name like she was trying real hard to stay calm. “Every Sunday I check in with my family. I can’t miss that. I need my phone for that one thing, that’s it.”
“You haven’t earned that back yet.”
“I’m not talking about keeping it. One call. That’s all I’m asking for. Damn! You already have me here against my will.” She stood up from the bed and crossed her arms. “Please.”
I looked at her for a second. She wasn’t performing. She wasn’t trying to manipulate me into something. Whatever this Sunday check in was, it meant something real important to her and she needed it bad enough to say please twice to a man she couldn’t stand.
“You behave at breakfast,” I said. “You act right, you smile, you answer whatever my mother asks you, you make it through that table without embarrassing either one of us — you get your phone for an hour. Somebody will be in the room with you the whole time to monitor it and assure you not trying nothing funny.”
Her jaw tightened. “You’re going to monitor my call?”
“Every word.”
She wanted to go off. I could see it moving across her face. She pushed it back down and nodded once. “Fine.”
“Good.” I pointed at the dress. “Get dressed.”
She looked at it, walked over to it, picked it up and looked at it for about three full seconds.
“This is ugly.”
“It’s a dress.”
“It’s an ugly dress.” She put it back down on the bed and walked straight into the closet.
I heard her moving things around, hangers sliding, and then she came back out holding something else.
A fitted sundress that she’d pulled from the back of the rack.
She held it up and looked at me like she was daring me to say something about it.
I didn’t say anything about it. She wanted to be in control so damn bad, I was going to let her think she had this one.
“Thirty minutes,” I said, and walked out. This girl was a damn headache. I noted that she valued her family and checking in with them. So now I knew what to withhold if she got out of line.
I could hear the shower water running as soon as I was outside the room door.
—
She was ready in twenty-eight minutes and I liked that she knew how to listen.
I didn’t say anything about that either. She wouldn’t get no praises from me. Not yet.
I led her to the front of my house, then opened the door to the truck for her to get in.
She looked at me like she couldn’t believe that I was being a gentleman.
We pulled out in the truck, just the two of us in the back with my driver up front and one of my men riding passenger.
She sat on her side, I sat on mine, and for the first five minutes neither one of us said a word.
The compound was big enough that getting from my house to my parents place took a few minutes of driving through private roads lined with trees on both sides.
I watched her out of my peripheral the whole time.
She was looking out the window. At the land, the property, the size of everything she was seeing for the first time. Her eyes moved slow, taking it all in, and whatever she was thinking about, she kept to herself. She didn’t ask questions. Didn’t make comments. Just looked.
I noticed but I didn’t say anything.
The main house came into view and I watched her face shift the second she saw it.
The mansion sat at the end of its own private road, surrounded by land that my father had spent thirty years acquiring.
It was the kind of house that made a statement without trying.
Stone exterior, iron gates, manicured grounds, three floors with a full east and west wing.
It had been my whole world growing up and I’d stopped seeing it a long time ago because when I became a man, I got my own. She was seeing it for the first time.
I still didn’t say anything, I let her take it all in because soon, this life would be hers.
We pulled through the gate and the truck rolled to a stop in the circular drive. I turned to her before either one of us moved.
“Look at me.”
She turned from the window.
“When we walk in there you’re going to act like you want to be here,” I said.
“You’re going to be respectful. You’re going to smile when you’re supposed to smile.
My mother is going to ask you questions and you’re going to answer every single one of them like you’ve got some sense and some home training.
You’re going to entertain her, you’re going to be present at that table, and you are not going to do or say anything that makes this harder than it has to be.
” I held her gaze. “You do that, you get privileges back slowly. You don’t, and the outhouse on the south end of the property becomes your new room until you figure out how to act like a grown woman who understands what’s asked and expected of her. ”
Her eyes went flat. “The outhouse.”
“Like a dog,” I said. “Your choice.”
She stared at me for a long moment. Her jaw was tight and her eyes said everything her mouth was smart enough not to say out loud.
“A lot is riding on this,” I said. “More than you even know right now. So I’m going to need you to make this easy on both of us for the next hour.
After that you can go back to hating everything about your life.
But in there?” I nodded toward the front door.
“You better put on the best show of your life, acting as if you are thrilled to be becoming a Carter. That last name means everything to my mother. Be smart, and don’t disrespect it. ”
She smoothed the front of her dress down. Sat up straight. Looked at me one more time.
“Open the door,” she said.
I almost smiled.
I didn’t.
I got out and she followed and we walked toward the front door of my parents house together for the first time like two people who had something to lose.
—
My mother was already at the table when we walked in.
That was intentional. I felt like she wanted to show her dominance as the woman of the family.
She felt like greeting and waiting on the next woman would diminish her powers.
Zuri Carter didn’t wait on anybody, including her oldest son and the woman he was about to marry.
She was seated at the head of the long dining table with her coffee in front of her and her back straight and her eyes on the door like she’d been counting down the seconds until we walked through it.
My father was beside her, relaxed, one arm draped over the back of his chair the way he always sat when he wanted everybody around him to feel like everything was under control. He stood up when he saw us and spread his arms wide.
“There they are,” he said, like we were guests at a party instead of his son and a woman I’d had snatched out of her driveway less than twenty four hours ago. That was Kadeem Carter. He could make anything feel like a celebration. “Tattiana. Welcome to our home, baby girl. Come on in.”
Tatti smiled. It was the right smile — warm enough to read as genuine, tight enough that I could see the effort behind it. She walked in beside me and shook my father’s hand then said thank you like she meant it.
I watched my father’s eyes move over her in a way that let me know he was trying to figure her out. The look was quick, assessing, filing information away. He nodded once like he’d confirmed something he already suspected.
“Sit, sit,” he said, waving toward the chairs. “Zuri, look at her. Didn’t I tell you?”
My mother looked.
She had been looking since we walked through the door but now she did it openly.
Head slightly tilted, eyes moving from Tatti’s face down and back up again, the way my mother assessed everything that came into her house.
She did it with furniture. She did it with my father’s associates.
She was doing it now with my future wife and she wasn’t trying to be subtle about it.
“Tattiana,” my mother said. Not a greeting. Just the name. Like she was confirming it.
“Yes ma’am,” Tatti said. Still smiling. Still performing exactly the way I told her to. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You can call me Mrs. Carter,” my mother said, and picked up her coffee. “For the time being.”
I saw something flicker across Tatti’s face. It was gone in a second but I caught it.
“Of course,” Tatti said. “Mrs. Carter.”