No More Good

Book 0: View Park Novel

by Angela Winters

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

Synopsis

Behind the gilded doors of the Chase mansion lies a moneyed world of African-American royalty and family intrigue-where no price is too high to pay . . . Being appointed to the Board of his father's empire means nothing to Carter Chase since his fiance, Avery, left him. Carter intends to use every resource-and compromise every moral-to find her and get her back. Carter's brother, Michael, has a problem of his own. His relationship with his wife, Kimberly, has been strained ever since she exposed a shocking secret from his mother's past. Now Kimberly's own past could destroy her marriage-and the entire Chase legacy. Meanwhile, oldest daughter, Leigh Chase, is being wooed by a hot Hollywood star whose fast lifestyle places her in danger. And with youngest daughter, Haley, creating scandal after scandal, the family may be in hot water even their billions can't buy them out of . . . "Entertaining . . . the pacing is fast and the drama [is] unrelenting". - Publishers Weekly "More backstabbing than a soap opera". - Romantic Times

Release date: August 1, 2008

Publisher: DAFINA

Print pages: 288

Sample

“What is this, Daddy?” Six-year-old Daniel Chase was standing over something in the hallway of his uncle’s penthouse condo in downtown L.A.

“What is what?” Thirty-year-old Michael Chase waited for Evan, Daniel’s twin brother, to get inside before closing the door behind him.

“It’s a bra!” Evan rushed to his brother, picking up the lacy pink lingerie for his father to see, his little brown hand waving it in the air.

Michael sighed, realizing it might be a mistake to bring his boys over to his brother’s place. He should have known something this like would happen. He’d been warned last month when he walked in on Carter and a Brazilian model having very loud sex hanging halfway off the dining room table.

“Put that down,” Michael ordered. “Just drop it.”

“These are panties!” Evan was reaching for the matching bottoms just a few feet away. They were lying on top of a silk cocktail dress.

“Don’t touch that.” Michael took his son’s arm.

“Mommy has these.” Evan struggled to get away from his father. “Is Mommy here?”

“All mommies have these, stupid.” Daniel rolled his eyes.

“Uncle Carter needs to do laundry.” Michael cautiously led his boys down the hallway, praying that he wouldn’t have to explain the birds and bees to them today. That really wasn’t on the schedule.

“Where is he?” Daniel asked impatiently as soon as they were at the steps to the living room of the three-thousand-square-foot, three-bedroom penthouse condo.

“He’s probably working in his office,” Michael answered. “Working hard.”

He led his boys to the living room sofa and reached for the remote control. “You boys stay here, do you understand ?”

Evan was already looking antsy, eager to get out of his church clothes. They were both used to being able to run wild whenever they were here.

Michael found a suitable television station on the large plasma screen on the wall. “Just watch this and don’t move.”

“Why not?” Evan asked.

“Look at me,” Michael ordered, waiting until both of them did so. Keeping stern eye contact, he said, “Because I said so. Do you understand?”

Daniel nodded, but Evan just shrugged, always the difficult one.

As Michael made his way to the master bedroom, passing scattered pieces of clothing along the way, he wasn’t looking forward to the reason he was sent over here by their mother. He had to remind Carter to show up tonight at Chase Mansion, their parents’ fifteen-thousand-square-foot estate in View Park, to celebrate in his honor. Carter hadn’t been answering his phone for three days now, so Janet sent Michael to track him down.

This wasn’t the first time in the last six months Carter had “disappeared.” Ever since his fiancée, Avery Jackson, left him, Carter would leave for long periods of time. Avery not only left Carter, but left L.A. and didn’t want to be found. He’d gone ballistic when he realized she had no intention of coming back.

He had become a Jekyll and Hyde, moving between two states of being. One was an obsessed psycho desperate to find Avery, who he swore on the Bible was the only love of his life, using the considerable means at his disposal whether legal or not. The other was a reckless drunk who didn’t care about Avery, swore he was better off without her, and wanted to prove it by nailing every woman he could get his hands on.

And the bra and panties in the hallway suggested Carter had been doing just that. This was the Carter that their parents were concerned about, the one who could get the family in real trouble.

And trouble for this family meant more than it did for others. The Chase family was American black royalty. They were not part of the entertainment or sports worlds, which high society looked down on. Those people didn’t belong to, nor were they invited into, the world the Chase family ran in. No, the Chases were a cut above that. Filthy rich was where the Chase family stood—or stood out depending on how you looked at it.

The family was led by Steven Chase, a man from humble beginnings who built his cosmetics company, Chase Beauty, into a multibillion-dollar corporation. He had become an American titan and used the family’s billions to influence business and politics all the way to Capitol Hill. His money was invested in several industries, including real estate in some of the most exclusive areas in the western United States.

Meanwhile, his wife, Janet, brought social standing to the family as the daughter of high-society East Coast lawyers with a strong heritage and several generations of wealth and community leadership. From their gated palace in the mostly black, affluent suburb of View Park, she single-handedly took over L.A.’s society scene, black and white, and created an empire envied by even the best East Coast families. Together, no one could rival what they had created.

And although it was Steven’s money, influence, and power that put out the fires his children started, it was Janet who was the architect of the Chase family image and publicity. With the recent family scandals still lingering, she couldn’t allow Carter to throw the family into another one. Especially not one of a sexual nature, which of course is what Carter was known for. He not only slept with lots of women, but he also treated them badly when he was through. Word was starting to get around, and that could be dangerous.

Michael stood in the doorway to Carter’s bedroom and observed the mess in front of him. He could only smile because Carter was such a neat freak, almost to the point of obsessive, and here he was, living like a frat boy complete with a naked woman sprawled facedown on the bed.

Carter Chase’s light brown eyes flew open as he heard a loud bang. Had something just happened or was it the awful pounding in his head again?

“Wake up!” Michael yelled, closing the door behind him. “It’s afternoon, boy.”

Carter struggled to sit up on his bed with his hand pressing against his forehead. He felt like shit. “What the fuck are you doing here, man?”

His younger brother, dressed in a sharp gray suit, sat down on the bed looking at him with a smirk on his face. At least Carter thought it was a smirk. Things were a little blurry.

“You know I brought my boys here,” Michael said. “You got her thong in the hallway. They don’t need to see that.”

“Don’t come by uninvited, then.” Carter cleared his throat.

Michael nodded to the naked, chocolate body next to Carter. “She is?”

Carter turned his head slowly, because that was all he could do to keep it from exploding. Nice ass, was all he could think of. “I don’t know.”

“That’s smart.” Michael was envious of his brother’s wanton freedom. With his having been married seven years himself, things were a bit more complicated. “This is what Mom is talking about.”

“Can you not mention her right now?” Carter asked. He leaned back against the headboard. “What day is it?”

“She’s afraid you’re going to get some strange girl pregnant.”

“Like you did?” Carter asked, reminding Michael of how he had introduced his current wife to the family seven years ago.

“Touché.” Michael made a fist and socked Carter in the arm.

“Stop.” Carter pointed to the half-empty condom box on the dresser. “I’m not stupid.”

“But you don’t know her name.”

“Her name doesn’t matter,” Carter said. “She’s getting out of here as soon as she wakes up.”

The woman made a sound as if she’d heard Carter, but didn’t move. It wouldn’t matter to him if she sat up and started a scene. She was just some hot chick who had offered to buy him a drink at Level Three Nightclub. They moved on to one of the club’s infamous beds with the curtains closed. Less than twenty minutes later, he took her home. In these matters, he preferred to go to the woman’s place, so he could leave as soon as he was done, but this one had a kid and a mother at home and . . . well, a very nice ass.

“Mom sent you here?” Carter asked.

“No one has been able to reach you for days. I thought you’d gone off to chase after Avery again.”

Carter felt his temperature boil at the mention of her name. “She’s not in Tampa.”

“Last month it was Atlanta.”

“It was never Atlanta!” Carter swung around on the bed, feeling the room move around him. “I told you she was never in Atlanta. Her stupid sister used to go to school there, so I—”

“Hey!” Michael stood up. “Don’t yell at me. I don’t give a shit where Avery is. And last week you said you didn’t either.”

“I didn’t,” Carter lied. “I don’t. She can be in hell for all I care.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Michael asked. “I’ve seen you break down and all . . . this. Like it’s not all about her.”

“So you’re my therapist now?”

Michael turned away from his brother, not willing to get caught up in this argument again. There was no talking to him when it came to his precious Avery. Instead he walked over to the full-length mirror and checked himself out, something he never tired of doing. He smiled at his fine, dark features. Everyone said he looked like Sidney Poitier at his most handsome, but Michael knew he looked much better than that.

“What about Sunday?” Michael asked.

Carter didn’t feel like facing the family. He was tired of having to put on that perfect front that was such a lie. His life was a mess and he had embraced that. He didn’t appreciate his mother making him act as if everything was okay.

After finding out Carter paid a woman to have sex with her fiancé, Alex, in order to win her away from him, Avery left him. Despite everything he had done—the millions it had cost him to hide his mistake and all he promised never to do again—she handed him his engagement ring and walked away. Carter was devastated, but never considered giving up. He had come to love Avery, the middle-class girl next door, more than he knew he was capable of loving a woman. She was different from him, but she quickly became the only thing that mattered in his life. So there was no doubt in his mind he would win her back. It would take some time and a lot of work, but he would get her back. After all, he was Carter Chase and what woman could resist him?

Then Avery disappeared. Actually, she ran away with her family’s help, and Carter hadn’t been able to find her. It seemed impossible, considering he had the power of the Chase name and all its money and connections. If only her father hadn’t been chief of police of View Park and her brother a detective, he would have been able to impose himself on them more. They were keeping an eye on everything he did in trying to find Avery, waiting for the chance to catch him breaking the law. He’d even gotten a call from the FBI after a bug was found in Nikki Jackson’s car. They couldn’t trace it to him, but they all knew he’d had it done. It was driving him crazy.

He’d begun trying to find her immediately, his only distractions being the law firm he ran and the commitment he’d made to his father to look after Chase Beauty while his parents were away for his mother’s rehab treatment. He had everyone she knew traced and bugged. He put a flag on Avery’s Social Security number and credit cards, but her family found out and he was blocked out after only one week. He tried to get the police involved, but Avery’s father convinced them that she wasn’t missing and of course they sided with him. They were getting in contact with Avery some way that satisfied Missing Persons enough. Even Carter’s deep connections as one of the hottest up-and-coming lawyers in L.A. couldn’t help him.

After a few months, he gave up and decided he didn’t care. It was all a lie, but he knew it would drive him crazy if he didn’t at least try to convince himself he didn’t want her anymore. He called off all but one of the ten private investigators he had on retainer but still remained focused on the Jackson family. The Jacksons knew he was following them and they were able to elude him at every step. Still, whenever they left L.A., Carter had someone on them, searching for Avery. The last trip had been to Tampa, Florida, followed by a rental car driven to St. Petersburg, which was where Avery’s mother, Nikki, disappeared before showing up in Charlotte, where she caught a plane back home to L.A. Carter had sent his P.I. to Charlotte two days ago.

“You’re coming to the celebration whether you want to or not. It’s for you.”

“My birthday was last month,” Carter said.

“It’s not for your birthday, asshole. You better come, you bastard!”

“Stop yelling.” Carter covered his ears.

“Stop being such a—”

“She might be in Charlotte,” Carter said.

Michael sighed, feeling pity for the brother he had always looked up to. Carter had never been this sick over a woman. “You don’t have time for another trip.”

“I’m not going until my P.I. comes back with proof.”

“What about the board?” Michael asked.

Carter made a grumbling sound. “That’s what the party is about, right?”

Michael couldn’t believe this. “You’re going to be made a member of the board of directors Wednesday, Carter. That’s a big deal.”

“I know,” Carter said. “I’ll be there.”

“Do you have any idea how important this is to Dad?”

“Of course I do. It’s important to me too.”

The idea that he would be made a member of Chase Beauty’s board was still odd to Carter, considering that when he made the choice to start his own law firm instead of going to work for Daddy, Steven had all but promised him he’d never be on the board. It had been a major bone of contention between him and his father and their relationship, which had always been on edge. It had been better some times than others, but never recovered from that decision to do his own thing years ago.

“Nothing is important to you anymore,” Michael said, concealing his envy.

Michael was always a little on edge when Carter and their father started getting close again, even though he knew it never lasted. Still, this one-millionth make-up was lasting longer than usual and Michael felt left out. He was the favorite son and that position meant more than anything in the world to him. Chase Beauty was going to be his, and Carter’s so-called invasion didn’t make him happy. Michael had always been fine with Carter as the company’s legal firm on retainer. He enjoyed working with him almost as much as he enjoyed working with his father. But this was more, much more. He loved his brother without question, but couldn’t ignore that he felt uneasy about his formally joining the company.

“You better straighten up,” Michael ordered. “Avery is gone. Stop being such a pussy and get over it.”

Carter stood up from the bed and faced his brother head-on. Both a little over six feet, they met eye to eye. Even though his head was spinning, Carter stayed steady. “Back off.”

Michael didn’t blink. “You lost her, but you keep this up, you’ll lose everything.”

Carter smiled, because at that moment, he believed Michael, but he really didn’t care.

“I need you to tell me what you mean when you say . . . complete renovation.” Marcus Abbott, interior designer to the fabulously wealthy, made a quotation marks gesture around his last two words. “I mean, this pool is only two years old. It has all the state of the art technology, so—”

“It’s ugly,” Kimberly Chase answered with a pout. “That’s what I mean.”

The pool wasn’t the only thing Kimberly hated about the new house. Actually, the house was beautiful. Nestled in the ultralux Hollywood Hills, the gated, Tuscan-inspired villa was six thousand square feet with four bedrooms, sixteen-foot-high ceilings, and opulent furnishings purchased by a world-famous designer from every end of the globe. It had everything Kimberly wanted: oversized French doors, large windows for ample sunlight, precision-cut inlaid imported marble, custom wood floors, an enormous gourmet kitchen, a dramatic rotunda entryway with an Italian Renaissance–styled garden and a four-car garage.

There was one problem; it was a consolation prize.

It was a rushed choice made so because of a plan gone horribly wrong. Under any other circumstance, it might have been her dream home and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried to make it so. They had been living in the house for four months now and Kimberly was miserable. She believed if she could change everything, it might make her happy. She was starting with the pool, expecting to spend much of the upcoming summer out back.

“This whole area looks like it’s from the eighties.” Kimberly’s Jimmy Choo heels clacked against the stone-paved ground surrounding the house’s backyard pool as she walked the length of it. “Plus, it’s . . . it’s a square.”

Marcus nodded with an upturned nose. “I can’t imagine what the designer was thinking. This beautiful house and then this pool? Must have been designed by a straight man.”

“Even a child would have been more creative,” Kimberly said, hands on hips. “I want it to be beautiful and luxurious.”

“Speaking of children.” Marcus looked around. “Where are those little hell-raising munchkins of yours?”

“At church.”

Kimberly had known Marcus for a while through friends he had decorated for, but hadn’t really spent time with him until she moved into her new home. The few times they’d been together, he was getting increasingly personal with his questions. He was fabulous with a capital F and reminded her of the best parts of her life as a model in New York. The life she’d had before she met and married Michael Chase and entered the world of unreasonable expectations and unheard-of snobbery. Besides, she needed a friend. She was all alone now.

“They are with my husband,” she finished.

He looked down at his watch, the only thing shinier than the silver-sequined top he was wearing. “They must love them some Jesus to still be there at this hour.”

Kimberly looked down at her watch too. It was getting late in the afternoon. She didn’t want to worry because he had the boys, but Michael was so unpredictable of late. Not really of late. He’d been this way for the last six months. Ever since the incident they never talked about, the one where he blamed her for almost killing his mother, Janet, even though she was never really near death.

Although she had fantasized about the death of the woman who had treated her like trash from the first moment she met her, Kimberly never really intended for Janet to end up in the hospital. No one would have been good enough for her precious Prince Michael, but certainly not a piece of nothing from nowhere with no family, education, or social status who showed up pregnant and completely oblivious. And Janet had reminded her of that every day; made much easier by the fact that Michael insisted they live at Chase Mansion.

Kimberly had had her fill. The emotional, verbal, psychological torture was too much to take and this was saying something considering the childhood she had had. Growing up poor with an alcoholic mother, an absent and mostly in-jail father, and a gang-banging brother who was shot to death in the alley behind a strip club, Kimberly had withstood a lot. She had run away and been pimped out at fifteen. After two years on the streets, she found her way into modeling, realizing that her exceptional beauty could be good for more than a cheap blow job.

Michael had accepted her past because he loved her so much, but he warned her that his family wouldn’t, and when he found out she was pregnant, he told her they would have to get married because of who he was. He would also have to erase her past. Kimberly should have known what she was getting into when a man as incredible as Michael was too scared to tell his parents the truth.

But she wasn’t the only one with a secret. Janet had one, a much smaller one, but to a woman obsessed with perfection who presented herself as the paragon of virtue, a small secret could be bigger than a bomb. Kimberly thought she could bring Janet’s French ex-lover, Paul Devereaux, back to L.A. to reveal, and hopefully rekindle, the affair they had while Janet was engaged to Steven, while threatening to expose the abortion Janet had as a result of the lurid summer getaway in Paris.

And it was working. Steven had walked in on Janet kissing Paul and he’d left her. Janet was falling apart and Kimberly had her where she wanted her. She just hadn’t counted on the old hag being so much of a drug addict that she was taking uppers and downers together. One bad drug interaction, washed down with a bottle of champagne, led to a trip to the hospital and Kimberly’s plan went down the tubes.

Being the genius she was, Janet spun everything in her favor. Instead of being the lying, deceitful bitch she truly was, she became the victim of her regretful past dredged up by the evil, low-class daughter-in-law who showed her true ghetto character and almost killed the matriarch of the untouchable Chase family. She played it beautifully.

At her lowest, Kimberly feared losing Michael. He turned colder than the Arctic to her; shut her off, threatened to divorce her, take the boys away, and make her pay. Ultimately, things settled down and Kimberly could once again count on his love for her, their incredible sexual chemistry, and their boys to keep them together.

But nothing had been the same since.

“Gavea, baby,” Marcus said. “That’s what you . . . Kimberly?”

Kimberly broke from her trance. “I’m sorry, what?”

Marcus walked over to her as if he were a runway model. It was the way he walked everywhere. “You gonna break that phone you keep squeezing it so hard.”

Kimberly looked at the phone in her hand. “Michael should have been home by now.”

Marcus made a smacking sound with his lips as he rolled his eyes. “Who is he with, baby girl?”

“No,” Kimberly was quick to say. “He’s not with a woman. He has the boys with him.”

“Are you sure?” Marcus asked, looking her up and down. “You don’t look so sure.”

She wasn’t anymore. Michael was a young, rich, handsome man with a penchant for wrongdoing and Kimberly understood what that meant. Before Janet’s incident, she thought he might have been unfaithful to her, pretty sure of it, but he gave no indication. He was loving, always attentive, and came home at night. Their sex life was still mind-blowing, but she wasn’t a fool. However, without any proof, Kimberly refused to live with worry.

But since they had been forced to leave Chase Mansion and find a place of their own, it was as if Michael no longer felt the need to appear above suspicion. She realized it was living in the same house with the father he worshipped and constantly sought to impress that made Michael want to be the perfect husband. Since leaving, he spent more time away from home than ever and felt less and less need to explain himself about it.

“He’s probably just at the mansion,” Kimberly said. She pressed the speed dial for Michael’s cell phone. “Don’t try to get me riled up. I know my husband. You don’t.”

“True,” Marcus said, flipping his head back so his shoulder-length braids would fling in the air. “However, my living is made working with women like you.”

“Women like me?” Kimberly hung up as soon as she got his voice mail.

“Wives of rich men,” he answered. “I know your looks, Mrs. Chase.”

“You’re being too forward,” Kimberly admonished, phone at her side. “Now get back to pool talk.”

After rolling his eyes, Marcus said, “I was suggesting Gavea Stone tile to replace . . . whatever this crunchy mess is we are standing on. It will complement the desert-tan concrete and cultured stone along the edges.”

“Sounds good.” Kimberly’s mind wasn’t at all on the pool. Michael was never without his cell phone.

She was a complete outsider now, although she always had been. Upon showing up in View Park, Kimberly was made aware she didn’t belong in the world of the upper crust, but she had Michael on her side and she had the only Chase babies. Michael’s sister Leigh was kind and of course Carter was cool because he was so close to Michael, but that was it. Steven acted as if she wasn’t even there most of the time and Haley treated her as if she’d never seen her before.

She had grown used to that, but even that was all over now. Everyone in the Chase family hated her, even the angelic Leigh, despite being herself a victim of Janet’s obsessive control her entire life. Carter, being as close as he was to Michael, was polite, but no longer friendly. The only friend she really had was Carter’s fiancée, Avery, who had left town.

She was never invited to family events anymore, just Michael and the twins. She missed Leigh’s and Carter’s birthdays, Steven and Janet’s anniversary party, several charity events held at the mansion, and other special occasions she had enjoyed in the past.

Michael never suggested she come or offered to stand up for her in case anyone gave her a hard time. And in order to get back in his father’s good graces to make up for what his wife had done, he spent more time than ever at work and at Chase Mansion. It was as if he still lived there.

“We also need to resurface the pool with a quartz finish,” Marcus said, seeming almost giddy over his own idea. “It will be brilliant, Kimberly. You’ll be entertaining your ass off out here.”

Kimberly laughed. “Entertaining who? No one ever comes over here.”

Marcus frowned, confused. “Do you want to get personal or not?”

“I don’t . . . . Just ignore me.”

“It’s hard to, Ms. Head-to-toe-Gucci-looking fierce, but if it’s the family thing, no matter. You still have the husband, the money, and the munchkins.”

And she would fight to the death to keep it all. “Do whatever you want. Just make it beautiful. It’s March now. I want it ready by the time it gets warm.”

“Let me get some samples for the furniture out here. I’m thinking azul and coral.”

As Marcus cat-walked away, Kimberly hurried to press the speed dial for Chase Mansion before she could change her mind. She knew it was stupid to call . . .