Full Figured 4

Book 4: Full Figured

by Anna J., Natalie Weber

Genres: African American Urban; African American Women's Fiction; African American Romance

Synopsis

Carl Weber has the touch when it comes to matching up today's best urban romance writers for his compulsively readable anthologies. Full Figured 4—Plus Size Divas is one of the best!
?Bestselling author (and full-figured model) Anna J contributes the sassy sizzler "Somebody Else's Guy." Wealthy, powerful hair salon owner Valencia McKoy is not quite so self-assured when it comes to her stunning full figure. When her marriage to star stockbroker Sean falls apart, so does she. . .which leads her to the couch of Dr. Alexander Thornton III, a renowned psychiatrist. Can he help Valencia learn to love her bod—without crossing the professional line? He can't help but notice her alluring curves, and the way Valencia sees it, he may just be Dr. Right!
?Natalie Weber (Bi-Curious) rounds out the volume with the riveting "Three the Hard Way." Amber Couture has a curvaceous, bountiful body and an ego just as big. Juggling three adoring men is all in a day's play, but now she's got her hands full with Trevor (the heat between the sheets), Stephen (the cash to keep Amber in bling) and Robert (the nice guy who's determined not to finish last). Amber's playing with fire—and she just might get burned!

Release date: December 1, 2011

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 240

Sample

It felt like I was moving in slow motion as I parked my car down the block and tiptoed carefully up to our gravel driveway. Something just didn’t sit right in my spirit when I drove past our house and saw my husband’s Mercedes parked in the driveway. He’d said he would be away on business when I left this morning, and normally when he was away, he would park his car inside of the garage space he’d rented near the airport. I’d had to double back to get a case of hair color that had come in over the weekend, and I knew I would need one of the colors for my three o’clock appointment. That was the only reason I’d left the shop.

In my heart I was hoping he had only left some papers and had doubled back, just as I had, to get them. Still, something didn’t sit right. Wishing I had parked a little closer, I struggled as I hefted my pear-shaped frame up the steep hill and through the grass so that he wouldn’t hear the rocks crunching under my feet. Sweat began to pour down the sides of my chubby face, and my heart began to beat faster the closer I got to the back door.

Leaning against the door to catch my breath, I peered through the sheer curtain covering the window, hoping I wouldn’t see anything I would regret. Nothing looked out of the norm, so I proceeded with caution as I quietly opened the door and crept into my home. A Victorian-style Tudor that sat way back off the street, with a horseshoe driveway and fourteen-karat-gold door handles attached to French doors. My dream home, which Sean hadn’t hesitated having built for me from the ground up. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sean’s keys resting on the countertop, and I figured that he had indeed left something. He was so anal about everything being in its proper place, so he would have never just left his keys there unless he was in a rush.

Something told me to just grab my case of hair color and go, but I didn’t want him to catch me going back out, and have to face being questioned about why I’d parked down the block. I already had an excuse; I’d just tell him I was exercising. He had been in my face about my weight for a while now, and I knew if I didn’t get it together in a hurry, I would eventually lose him. Still, it was hard to stick to a meal plan when I was standing behind the chair all day. Some days I barely got to eat, and when I finally did sit down to a meal, it was on. Who wanted a salad when they hadn’t eaten all day? Damn that! Give me a rack of ribs and a chocolate shake to wash it down with.

As I sidestepped into the living room, my feet sank into the plush carpeting, which we’d paid way too much for, but which matched perfectly the Egyptian tile that lay in the foyer. Sean wanted me to have the best of everything, and no expense had been spared—I put quite a dent in his checkbook—to furnish our place. As I rounded the winding staircase and came face-to-face with my wedding gown, encased in a glass frame that had been built into the wall, I remembered that day so vividly and wished, for a second, that I could get back down to that size eleven.

Everything was in fast-forward when Sean and I first hooked up. I had just opened my little salon near the King of Prussia Mall, closer to where the movie theater was located, and I was hoping that the few black folks that lived around there would patronize me. It had seemed like a great location at the time, and I had had high hopes about stepping out on my own and doing what I wanted to do. Business was slow at first, and I thought about closing up shop for good. When the one and only Patti LaBelle walked into my shop because her stylist was battling the flu, I felt like I was given a second chance to start fresh. She needed to get touched up for a television appearance, and I knew my thoughts about closing the shop were out the door. After getting over being starstruck, I did the damn thing to Patti’s hair, and had been on the rise ever since.

I was called to do, in a crunch, the hair of some of the brightest stars on the scene, such as Nia Long and Chrisette Michele, and pretty soon I built a name for myself. I was ready for the big leagues and was introduced to Sean while out at a mixer. He was a stockbroker and came highly recommended by everyone. I thought he would be a stiff shirt, wanting to talk to me only about investing my money, but I came to find out, he was really down to earth. After months of dating and jet setting, he popped the question. No, I didn’t have as much cash as he did, but I wasn’t broke, so why not? I made it clear that I wasn’t signing a prenuptial under any circumstances, and he was cool with it, so we moved forward. That seemed like so long ago, and I don’t know what had happened over the years, but I missed the Sean I used to know.

Sniffing back tears, I rounded the stairs and took the back steps leading to his office. Sliding along the wall, I moved like a cheetah stalking its prey as I crept up on the door, an overweight cheetah, but a cheetah nonetheless. I didn’t hear anything as I pressed my ear against the door and turned the knob slowly. Opening the door to a dark office, I breathed a temporary sigh of relief when I found it vacant. That relief was short lived because I had yet to get to the upstairs. Since I was downstairs, I checked the game room and the exercise room, finding them both empty.

Light on my feet, I took the stairs two at a time, being sure to skip the third step, which creaked when you stepped on it. Back at ground level, I took a second to get my breathing in order, vowing to hit up the treadmill in the morning. As I made my way slowly up the staircase, I noticed that my bedroom door was cracked open. Sean hated open doors, and I wondered if I had left it open or if he had. Or maybe there was a robber on the other side? Who was I kidding? Something just didn’t seem right, and a woman’s intuition never failed.

Looking around for a weapon, all I saw was my crystal Tiffany lotus lamp, which cost way too much to break over someone’s head, but I grabbed it, anyway. Sean would just have to buy me another one. It seemed like my entire life flashed through my mind as I made my way down the hallway. That was when I heard it, another woman’s voice, more like a moan, escaping from the crack in my bedroom door. Maybe I was tripping.. . . There was no way. I stopped for a minute and shook my head back and forth. I knew I didn’t just hear what I thought I heard.

Inching closer, I heard it again. Okay, so maybe Sean had come home, and he was in the bedroom, watching a porno. It had been a few months since our bedroom walls had had something to talk about, and maybe he needed a release. The extra weight I had put on turned him off, and it had got to the point where he didn’t want to sleep in the same bed with me, one more reason to tackle that treadmill in the morning. Still inching closer, I heard it again, but this time the voice sounded familiar.

“You want Daddy to go deeper?” I heard my husband ask in a husky voice that he used only when we were making love.

“Yes, Daddy, go deeper,” the voice responded, halting my steps immediately. Was I dreaming? There was no way....

“Hold it open for me. Damn, you feel good.”

It was like the earth had stopped rotating and all the sound in the universe had been sucked out. I could not believe what I just heard. There was no way my husband and his assistant were in my bed! He’d said he hated a skinny woman, but he definitely didn’t want me at the size I was. He’d said a skinny chick could only take notes for him, because she damn sure wouldn’t eat anything. Would he really do this to me?

I couldn’t take it anymore, and as I eased my bedroom door open, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Stretched out on my cream linen spread with her chicken legs pointed to the ceiling was Sean’s assistant, Carla, with my husband balls deep inside of her. He looked like he was trying to climb inside of her as he used his well-manicured toes to get a good grip on the edge of the bed so that he could, indeed, push deeper. I was instantly sick to my stomach.

The happy couple didn’t even notice me standing in the doorway. My husband’s head was thrown back in ecstasy, and his eyes were squeezed so tight, his expression looked more like a grimace from the side. Carla’s mouth formed a wide O as her small breasts bounced up and down to the motion of my husband’s ocean. They sounded like two savage beasts as I watched her claw at his back. He used one hand to balance himself as the other firmly gripped her side. This shit was crazy. It felt like I was standing there forever as the scent of her vagina blanketed the air around me. The sounds in the room seemed to intensify by a million, and I could’ve sworn I heard her juices slurping as my husband pushed in and pulled out.

The lamp seemed to weigh a ton as I raised it over my head and aimed it at the headboard, throwing it full force across the room. The loud crash startled even me as the lamp made contact with the wall, and crystal shards covered both of their naked bodies. Sean jumped up from the bed with a rock-hard dick swinging in the air. Carla scrambled to cover her naked body with my new linen spread as I snapped and began tossing expensive bottles of cologne and perfume from the dresser, the bottles breaking as they hit the wall. The different fragrances mixing with the aroma of sex in the room made me feel nauseous, and through my blurred vision I tried to aim at both of their heads, hoping to knock the hell out of at least one of them.

This was not happening to me again! We took vows for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death. It was too bad one of us would have to die today, and it wasn’t going to be me. I rummaged through the middle drawer of my princess wicker dresser for the pistol I kept there, not thinking anything about the years I would spend in jail if I actually pulled the trigger. I didn’t deserve this. I was a good wife to him.

“Valencia, you don’t want to do this. I can explain,” Sean began as he inched his way toward me, dick still hard and smeared with her juices. This trifling-ass man didn’t even have the decency to use a condom.

“Take one more step and your left ball sack is history,” I said with venom in my voice as I wiped tears and snot away from my face. I loved this man’s dirty drawers, flaws and all, and this was how it ended up for me?

“Valencia, please put the—” Shots rang out, landing just above Carla’s head, putting two holes in the wall, halting her speech immediately.

“I missed on purpose,” I said in her direction, never taking my eyes off of my husband.

“Valencia, let me explain. It’s not what you think. I was just—”

“Your dick is still hard. That’s amazing all in itself, since you could never stay up for more than three minutes with me,” I spat, cutting him off. I couldn’t believe he had the audacity to try and explain this shit.

“Honey, I just want to—”

“You both have ten seconds to get the fuck out of my house, or the shots start again. One ...”

“Valencia, you’re being irrational. If you hadn’t gained all of that weight ... ,” my husband pleaded with me as he searched the room for his pants.

“Two...”

“Baby, just hear me out. I don’t care anything about her.”

“Three ...” I spoke in a cool tone, sending a shot to the ceiling to let these fools know I wasn’t playing. It was about to go down up in this piece if they didn’t move faster.

“Four ...”

Carla leaped from the bed and haphazardly threw her sundress over her head, leaving her bra and panties in a crumpled heap on the floor. She made a mad dash for her purse just as Sean was stepping, his bottom bare, into his silk slacks. Aiming the gun toward them both, I got a shot off that whizzed between them and landed in the center of our wedding picture, the one that we’d had hand drawn by a prominent artist out of Newark. It was such a memorable night.

“Six ... ,” I barked, purposely skipping five to speed their asses up. I couldn’t stand the sight of either one of them.

Both Sean and Carla inched past me and ran for their lives out the back of the house. I heard Sean’s car start, then shriek out of the driveway, kicking up gravel in its haste. I was like a mannequin as I stood in silence, taking in the scene of the crime. Every man that I’d ever loved had done the same damn thing. Either they cheated on me or I came to find out I was the jump-off from the door. Why did this always have to happen to me?

I took a seat at the overpriced vanity table that Sean got me for my birthday last year; it wasn’t until then that I fully allowed my tears to flow. What a mess my life had become in a matter of minutes. Now I had to find a way to put the pieces back together. I just wasn’t sure if there was a way to do it, or if I wanted to, for that matter.

I sat in a daze for what felt like forever, until the shrill ringing of my house phone brought me out of my astonished state. Looking toward the nightstand, I hated the thought of even going near the bed I used to share with my husband. After all, there was no way I could occupy that space after what I saw today. I could still see them disrespecting our vows right before my eyes, and I could feel my anger rising again. My first instinct was to finish tearing the room up, but what good would that do?

Taking another route, I dragged my exhausted body to the back room where my office was, and answered the phone there. Plopping down in the chair, I used what little energy I had left to pick up the receiver, peeping the caller ID before doing so. There was no way I would talk to Sean right now. I just hoped I wouldn’t kill his trifling ass the next time I saw him.

Satisfied that it wasn’t Sean, I picked the phone up, only to hear Terrell, my close friend and the top stylist at my shop, asking where I was. He had been calling my cell phone for the last hour, and it wasn’t until I heard his voice that I realized how much time had gone by. It was already two thirty, and my three o’clock had arrived early. My cell phone was on the passenger seat of my car. I didn’t think about bringing it in at the time, because I was supposed to be just running in to get my box and jetting back out. Boy, was I wrong.

“T, I need you to take care of my clients for the rest of the day. You are not going to believe what just happened.”

After I ran down the entire scenario and answered the questions that he had, I was finally off the phone a half hour later and back at square one. What was my next step? Sean and I were seven years into our marriage. How did you start over after that? I knew back then that I needed a plan B, or even another plan A, but I didn’t think I would need it this soon. My head was spinning. I mean, I had my own thing going on with running my shop, but I was married. Till death did us part.

Before Sean, I was simply Valencia McCoy, owner of the Real McCoy Salon Experience. I never thought about getting married. I was just trying to maintain after walking away from years in corporate America to be an entrepreneur. It took me only two years to clear up my credit and stack my chips, and then I was able to land a space for my shop without having to take out a loan. I had the first year’s rent in the bank, plus extra, and I was ready to make it work.

I started thinking again about how a year and a half after opening the shop and getting things going, things started to get a little crazy, and I wasn’t building my client base up like I needed to. I was making okay money, but my stash was getting low, and I was just making enough to pay the rent and bills. To be honest, I was dreading having to get back behind a desk, but I had a mortgage to maintain, and I refused to go back to my momma’s house.

On the very day that I decided it was time to close the doors, the limousine with Patti LaBelle pulled up in front of my shop. I was thinking to myself that maybe I had finally won the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes, and Ed McMahon had come to run my money. I had already packed up most of the shop at that point, and one couldn’t tell whether I was moving in or out, because there w. . .