Lying Lips (8 page)

Instantly I wanted him again.

I heard footsteps. Turned to my right and was surprised to see a very tall and thin man walking toward us, toward the exit.

“I’m afraid this is private property and I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he said with a knowing smirk.

He had seen everything. I knew it in my soul.

“No problem,” Asanti spoke to him with authority, as if he was in charge.

We exited the alley in the garden quickly and began walking in no direction in particular. When I realized we were out in the open with nowhere to hide I was a nervous wreck. Afraid that someone would see me. Recognize me. And see that I was with another man. A man that was my husband, but that they didn’t know was my husband.
My other husband
. I was terrified that I would be found out. But what could I do? Nothing. So I forced myself to relax and play along.

“I’m really sorry that I didn’t call you or answer your calls.” I spoke honestly now. “I was just feeling overwhelmed with everything and needed some space.”

The look on his face was disapproving but understanding at the same time. “Why couldn’t you just tell me that?” He asked me, considering.

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully again. “I just reacted.”

“Sweetheart, you can tell me anything,” he grabbed my hand as we continued to stroll. “
Anything
, Legaci. There is nothing I will ever hold against you if you’ll just be honest with me.” He stopped walking and turned to me. “I’m not like most men, Mrs. Styles. I may not always like what you have to say, in fact I’ll probably be pissed at much of it, but I will never hold that honesty against you, okay?” He cupped my chin and lifted it so that he could see my eyes.

“Okay,” I answered him. I lied. I looked him in the eyes and I lied.

With a straight face.

I would never tell him the truth. Not about everything. How could I? How could I look him in the face and say,
Hey hubby, by the way I’m married to another man?
I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Honestly didn’t want to. Not like that anyway. I’d end this farce of a marriage, but I’d do it my way. Without hurting anyone any more than I already had.

And so my destiny was written and my fate sealed. I began shaking at that thought and a whole new fear took over me as I wondered how the hell I would get out of something that was so detrimental. Something that was so terribly easy to get into, but could turn deadly on the way out.

Fatal consequences for a lethal situation.

I was now playing with fire. But I’d be damned if I got burned. I’d find a way out, I told myself as we strolled the city I called home. I had to. Even if I had to die trying to.

“You cold?” He noticed me shiver. Then he wrapped his arm around my shoulder as we resumed walking again.

“Yeah,” I told him.

That was the truth.

Asanti had no idea how just how cold I really was.

Chapter 8

“How long have you been here?” I asked him when I was a bit calmer.

“I’ve been here for little more than two and a half hours. The minute I touched down in the city I started calling you. I hailed a taxi to the Crowne Plaza Hotel and told him to wait. I checked in, got back in the cab and drove around the city for a few minutes before I started calling you and you finally picked up. When you mentioned your location, I got the driver to redirect and made my way straight to you.”

I was stunned.

“What made you come here?” Stupid question, I knew.

“You don’t want me here?”

“Of course I want you here, baby, I just wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

“When I don’t know what’s going on with the woman bearing my last name, I need to drop everything and find her. So I did.”

His words were simple. And sobering.

I simply shook my head in understanding. “Okay,” I spoke somberly. Then considered momentarily. “Now what?” I asked him. “Do we go to your hotel and make things right between us?”

“I think I took care of that,” Asanti answered me quickly and with a smug smirk. I blushed. I knew damn well he did. “But to answer your question, how about we go home?”

“Asanti, I’m not leaving New Orleans,” I began immediately. “I have a job to do, a job that I love and I’m going to do—”

Before I could complete my thought, Mr. Styles grabbed me by the collar and dragged my body to him moments before smothering my mouth beneath his own.

Dizzy and a little spent, my head spun and my legs got weak.  “What was that for?”

“That was my polite way of telling you to shut up.”

I looked up at him, surprised, but kept my mouth shut just like he wanted me to.

“When I say I want to go home, Legaci, I don’t mean to Washington.” He looked me as if I was a child that needed slight reprimanding. “When I say home, I mean to our home here.”

“Huh?” That was all I could think to say.

He chuckled.

“Where do we live, baby?” My husband asked me. “I’d like to see our house here in New Orleans.”

Oh shit!

“Huh?” It was all I could say again as the realization of what he was asking me punched me in the gut.

“Now that I’m here, I’d like to see where we live. Where you’ve been living before we married. Where you laid your head last night.”

I was back to being terrified again. I wasn’t prepared to take him anywhere, especially not to my house. But I also couldn’t keep him and me out on the streets for all to see. I needed a stall and a cover and I needed them both fast. I looked around desperately, like a wino looking for a drink.

“Asanti, we have forever to be home,” I began, winging it. You can’t always get what you want and at that moment I wanted to disappear into thin air. But no deal. I had to choose either the fire or the frying pan. I chose the frying pan. I decided to walk the streets and risk the possibility of being seen rather than burning in the fire and definitely be figured out and exposed for the fraud that I was.

There was no way I would take him to where I knew we couldn’t go, would never go. My home. The one I shared with my family. The first one. The most important one.

“How about we see the city first?” I moved on, hoping to keep him away from the thought of home for at least another day. I could come up with something if only I had a few hours. Therefore I was going to do my best to buy those hours. “Since you’re here, and we’re still kind of in that honeymoon phase, and I have no more plans for the day, I’d
really
like to show you my hometown.” I pouted and whined like a teenager for the full dramatic effect. “And
then
I’d like to show you where we live.”

My husband looked in my eyes for the longest time. It took everything in me not to squirm. Not to break out in a cold sweat. Not to panic. But none of that would come to pass I knew, when the smile spread slow and full across his lips.

“You’re very adorable right now,” he said as he bent to kiss my forehead. “Whatever the lady wants, the lady gets,” he told me as he grabbed my hand and we resumed strolling the streets of New Orleans.

“Thank you,” I said nervously. He had no clue how truly thankful I was.

Now I was out in the open. Anyone could spot me. What if someone did? How would I handle that? How would I introduce Asanti to them? If I didn’t introduce him as my husband there would be hell to pay. If I did introduce him as my husband, there would be hell to pay. Damn, damn, damn! Me and my lying lips! I needed to pull out a miracle and pull one out fast.

I was so worried about getting caught and finagling my way out of that situation that I was not paying attention to where we were going as we walked. So it was with great pleasure that I suddenly found myself just as surprised as Asanti was when we turned a corner and realized that we were standing face to face with the French Market.

“Sweetheart,” he said with some excitement, “I’ve always wanted to see this place,” he continued as he moved a little ahead of me while investigating his surroundings.

“Thank God,” I breathed on a sigh when he became absorbed in the historical place.

And so went the rest of the day as we visited every famous, infamous, and historical place in the entire city. Asanti was really caught up, enjoying the history of my birth place. And while he was focused on the events of the day, every so often I was slipping away to a restroom here and the ladies room there to make phone calls and lies that would explain my whereabouts to some and then shutting off my other cell phone so that I wouldn’t have to explain anything to others.

When it was all said and done, I had covered my ass to everyone but my family, the Bentencourts. And for more than four hours they had been calling my silent phone nonstop.

What the hell was I going to do?

“My love, I had a great day and now I’m ready for bed,” Asanti told me with the wicked lifting and lowering of his eyebrows.

I knew exactly what that meant. And believe it or not, even with the craziness of the day and the massive amount of stress I was under, when it all came down to it, I was ready for that too. But only with Asanti. I had don’ lost my damn mind.

“Me too,” I replied gladly. I was more than ready to walk to the hotel room and hit the sack with him.

“Good,” he smiled down at me in the darkness of night, “let’s get to the hotel, get my bags and get us home.”

Then my heart sank.

He was still on that.

But lady luck was on my side again when he spotted the carriage ride that the city was famous for.

“Wait a minute,” he began to backtrack. “Are you up to doing one more thing before we turn in?”

“Anything,” I replied desperately. A little too desperately.

Asanti then walked me to the carriages and selected the most elegant one. For the next hour, my second husband and I toured the city through the most romantic means possible and I enjoyed every minute of it. And even though it gave me more time to think of what to do about Asanti, I still came up with nothing.

As the ride was coming to an end, my nerves were on edge again. I knew I had to keep him distracted through the night because I had no home to take him to. The farce was weighing down on me. I began to feel a pain in my stomach as the stress manifested itself physically.

This was too much. Way more than I bargained for and definitely way more than what I wanted to spend my life dealing with. I was a grown woman playing a childish but deadly game. And all I wanted was a way out. All I wanted was for the game to be over.

At that point it was official.

I made it official.

Game over. I had made up my mind that when the carriage stopped, I was going to walk my husband to that hotel, sit him down and tell him the entire truth.

I couldn’t live as a bigamist anymore.

Riiinnngggggg
!

“Gimme a second, sweetie,” Asanti told me as he retrieved his phone from his pocket. “Yeah?” He spoke impatiently into the phone. The numerous expressions crossing and uncrossing his face told me that something was seriously wrong. I became concerned. As much as I was planning on hurting him in a short while, I didn’t want anyone else to hurt him. I was being selfish. Asanti ended the call quickly. “Got it. Thanks, Bernard.”

Before he could get the phone back into his pocket, the ride came to an end. With no words Asanti exited the carriage and reached in to assist me down.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him.

“One of my restaurants had a fire tonight.
Is
having a fire right now,” he corrected.  He inhaled and exhaled deeply. “I have to be on the next flight out of here.”

I had no idea what to do or say, so I hugged him. “I’m so sorry.” Then something in my twisted mind began to rejoice. And rejoice big time. I was off of the hook. There would be no honest talks tonight. No more having to distract him. He was leaving ASAP. And I was ecstatic. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Yeah,” he said as he began rushing us toward a cab that would take us the mile or so to his hotel. “Could you accompany me to the airport, then check me out of the hotel? You don’t have to do the latter until tomorrow around noon. I don’t have time to do it now. Just grab my things and take them home please.” His brows furrowed and I could see the stress visibly displaying itself on his skin. In an instant he looked as if he had aged ten years.

“Anything for you, baby,” I told him. “It’s going to be alright.”

“I know,” he grabbed my hand.

We rode to the airport in complete silence. When we arrived and he got out I was on his tail, but he leaned back into the car and stopped me. “Go home and get some rest, you look exhausted,” he advised like a concerned father. He had no idea how truly exhausted I was. “I’ll call you as soon as everything is under control.” He kissed me good and hard. “Driver, take my wife home,” he spoke as he handed the man a wad of dough thick enough to choke a horse.

“Yes, Sir!” The man spoke enthusiastically after getting a look at what was in his hand. “Will do.”

After one more searing kiss, Asanti closed the door and watched as the cab drove away from him. When I could no longer see him, I turned and sat back in the seat.

I had dodged a big bullet.

A really big bullet.

And I thanked God all the way home because of it.

But when I arrived home and stepped out of the cab, I stood there like a fool holding the passenger door open as I looked over at my house. Now what? I had just dodged a big bullet with Asanti, could I now do the matrix and dodge a barrage of bullets from my family. I wasn’t so sure about that.

I had been gone all day. They had no idea where I had been or even if I was okay. That was so far outside of my normal character that I needed a good and a big excuse to give them.

But what excuse was I going to give when I went inside?

Honestly I had none and it was a guarantee that they’d be looking for one. That Ashton, especially, would be looking for one.

My family had been calling me all day, worrying about me, and I had nothing to give them of my whereabouts. At least nothing that wouldn’t rip them, rip us all, to shreds. I had no idea what to say to them. Or even how I would say whatever it was that I was going to think to say. This was becoming too hard for me. I thought and thought and could come up with nothing. Nothing but more questions.

And rapid fire is how the questions flew through my head.

What lie was I going to tell when I stepped inside? How was I going to convince my family that everything with me was okay? Did anyone see me and already call the house revealing my true whereabouts? The man I was with?  My heart started to palpitate. Fast. And hard.

Did Ashton already know the truth? Should I just stop the game play and reveal the truth to him? Was he ready for something so life shattering? Was I? If I told Ashton the truth then I would have no choice but to tell Asanti. Was he, Ashton, ready for that? Was he, Asanti, ready for that? Was I ready for that?

Then I thought about my children.
They
were not ready for that.

At this hour the kids were supposed to be in bed but I was positive that was not the case. On this rare occasion, an occasion where their mother was missing, I was sure that everyone in the house was awake, worried sick, and praying for my safe return. And I was sure that my kids were just as worried and praying just as hard as their father.

That’s when the thought hit me again.
My kids were not ready for the drama that the truth of my betrayal would cause.
My decision was made. No truth. No startling revelations. Instead, another lie.

But what new lie was I going to tell to get myself out of the new pot of boiling hot water? My heart fluttered. My breathing became very shallow. I tried to take a step forward, but faltered. My mind went blank. And then darkness was trying to surround me. Cold, terrifying darkness. But I fought it like hell.

“Ma’am, every minute you stand there is a minute you’re being charged,” the cab driver told me, quickly bringing me out of my stifling thoughts and the darkness that was trying to consume me. “That’s money that’s being deducted from the money your man gave me.”