What a Woman Wants Read online

  What a

  woman

  wants

  ALSO BY BRENDA JACKSON

  No More Playas

  Unfinished Business

  The Playa’s Handbook

  A Family Reunion

  Ties That Bind

  The Midnight Hour

  The Savvy Sistahs

  ANTHOLOGIES

  The Best Man

  Welcome to Leo’s

  Let’s Get It On

  An All Night Man

  Mr. Satisfaction

  AND COMING SOON

  Slow Burn (A Madaris Family Novel)

  What a

  woman

  wants

  Brenda Jackson

  St. Martin's Griffin New York

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations,

  and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the

  author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  WHAT A WOMAN WANTS. Copyright © 2007 by Brenda Streater

  Jackson. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of

  America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in

  any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the

  case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue,

  New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jackson, Brenda (Brenda Streater)

  What a woman wants / Brenda Jackson.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-35934-8

  ISBN-10: 0-312-35934-9

  1. African American women—Fiction. 2. Female friendship—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3560.A21165W47 2007

  813’.54—dc21

  2006048683

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  Acknowledgments

  To Gerald Jackson Sr., the man who continues to show me what true love is all about.

  To all my readers who continue to enjoy my love stories.

  To the 1971 Class of William M. Raines High School, Jacksonville, Florida, for our 35th class reunion. Ichiband!

  To my Heavenly Father who gave me the gift to write.

  Listen to advice and accept

  instruction, and in the

  end you will be wise.

  —PROVERBS 19:20

  Contents

  Part one

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part two

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part three

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Part four

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Epilogue

  Part

  one

  Hope deferred makes the heart sick,

  but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

  —PROVERBS 13:12

  Prologue

  Adrianna Ross-Fuller walked out of the Hilton Head trauma center’s ER and toward the waiting room. She paused a moment in the corridor and took a deep breath. Although their patient hadn’t survived, she’d thanked her trauma team for doing an outstanding job. It wasn’t their fault the woman stopped fighting for life long before she’d been wheeled through the doors to ER. A shudder ran through Adrianna. Why would that poor woman have wanted to die? Why would anyone?

  “Dr. Ross-Fuller?”

  She recognized the police officer immediately. They had met a few months ago when he rushed into ER on the tails of the EMT crew, who brought in a two-year-old child. The toddler had nearly drowned in his neighbor’s pool and was in shock. That day, hours later, Adrianna walked out into the waiting room smiling, ready to deliver good news: the little boy would recover. Today the news wouldn’t be so positive.

  She shook her head sadly at the inquiry in his voice. “She didn’t make it, and it was apparent she didn’t want to live.”

  Lt. Neil Upshaw nodded. “That doesn’t surprise me, considering this was an attempted suicide.” The fifty-something-year-old man then shook his bald head and hunched his shoulders in absolute desolation.

  “No longer an attempt, Lieutenant. She succeeded. Do you have any idea why?” The words came out in a sigh.

  “I’m sure the letters she left behind will explain all.”

  Adrianna lifted a brow. “Letters?”

  “Yes, four of them. One addressed to no one in particular and three others to women she knew. Those three were sealed. The first one wasn’t, and all it said was, ‘I don’t want to live any longer.’“

  She shivered again. How could a person get so hopeless that they imagined death was far better than living? She couldn’t imagine what would make an attractive thirty-four-year-old woman want to end her life by overdosing on a prescribed medication. Adrianna thought of all the trials she had endured in her thirty-five years as an Amerasian. Even when she’d felt her lowest, she had never thought of taking her own life.

  “Has her family been notified?” she asked. If he was anything like her, the officer probably disliked that part of his job most.

  “Yes, and they’re on their way from Charleston. She has an older sister, a brother, and an elderly mother.”

  Adrianna nodded as she checked her watch. It was almost two in the afternoon. In a few hours she would be catching a plane for Virginia. Tomorrow night her grandparents were throwing a party in her honor to mark the first anniversary of the day she had entered their lives. How unfair that even while the people she most cared about had every reason to celebrate, there was a family on its way to Hilton Head Island with reason to mourn.

  Her heart surged with compassion, and then a cold feeling of loss filled her chest. Times like these, she questioned her decision to become an emergency room trauma doctor. But that reservation was short-lived. As she bade good-bye to the lieutenant and made her way toward the elevator, she knew if she had it to do all over again, she would choose the same profession.

  She shook her head, still thinking of the woman whose life had ended prematurely that day. What a terrible waste.

  1

  “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.”

  Faith Gilmore watched as the coffin was lowered into the dark earth. A part of her still could not believe what she was seeing. She glanced over at the two other women standing beside her. Monique Hardings and Shannon Carmichael were in the same daze of disbelief as she was. It was like they were all stuck in some sort of weird dream.

  Tomorrow they would wake up from it, and Cely would take them all to task when they told her about their strange nightmare. Me commit suicide? No way. There isn’t that much de
pression in the world. I am the most levelheaded, laid-back, not-a-care-in-the-world person you know. There’s no way I would ever get in a funk so blue that it would trigger me to take my own life.

  Yet she had done exactly that, and this was no dream.

  “This ends the memorial service for Cecilia Graham,” the minister was saying. “You may all return to your cars.”

  Faith blinked. Return to their cars and do what? Mourn some more? Leave? Ask themselves for the thousandth time how could this have happened? Why this happened? Especially to Cely, who had always been the strongest of the four of them.

  She felt someone touch her hand, glanced up to see Monique and Shannon standing right in front of her. Faith looked at them mutely, noting that their eyes were as red as hers, their cheeks just as tear-streaked.

  “It’s time to go,” Monique said softly, and Faith could hear her fighting to hold back more tears.

  “Yes,” Shannon chimed in, her voice just as tight. “I need to get away from this place. Quick. I need a thick slice of pizza, a strong drink, and to get laid. Hell, I need something, anything, to make me forget everything I’ve gone through today. This week.”

  Faith almost rolled her eyes. Shannon had always been the one they all thought had the weakest disposition. Cely had always worried about how Shannon went about dealing with stress. “How about if we go back to my hotel room, drink some wine, and chill, I’m really not in the mood to go to the repast,” Faith suggested.

  Monique understood. “Neither am I. I’m sure Cely’s family will understand if we wait and visit tomorrow before we leave.”

  “Yes, I’m sure they will,” Shannon agreed. “They know Cely was more than a friend to us. She was like our sister.”

  Faith nodded. That was true—ever since the four of them had met so many summers ago as teens on Hilton Head Island, they were sisters. Cely’s grandparents had operated a hot dog stand on the beach, and she had been their little helper. Like Faith’s parents, Monique’s and Shannon’s families had owmed time-share condos and made the trip each summer to the island, where the four girls had become the best of friends for life.

  But now one of their lives had ended. The circle they had formed more than twenty years ago was broken, and somehow they had to repair it and move on. “All right, let’s go. But first let’s say good-bye to Mrs. Graham. I don’t want her to think we’re deserting her.”

  A couple of hours later, Faith, Monique, and Shannon had replaced their dark mourning dress suits with slacks and blouses, and they were sprawled on the bed in Faith’s hotel room. They were remembering the good times they’d shared all those summers long ago, from the time they were thirteen.

  “Do you remember the summer when we began noticing boys for the first time?” Shannon asked, laughing between sips of her wine. “Cely was acting so shy that day when that hunk from FAMU tried to come on to her. That was the first time any of us had been noticed by a college guy.”

  Faith chuckled. “Yes, I remember! We were sixteen, and the guy thought we were naive enough to fall for his game.”

  Monique nodded, grinning. “Yeah, he wasn’t very smart.”

  “But he sure was a looker,” Shannon couldn’t help but add, her eyes twinkling in mischief. “I think he really did like Cely, though.”

  “Yes,” Faith said, “and I think she really liked him, too, which is why she did sneak off to see him that night.”

  The room got quiet for a moment. Then Faith finally asked the question she’d been dreading: “Have either of you read the letter Cely left for you?”

  Monique shook her head. “I couldn’t make myself do it. I can’t imagine how depressed she must have been to do what she did. And to know even then she had been thinking about us, our friendship.”

  Shannon placed her wineglass aside, inhaling sharply. “I haven’t read mine either, although a part of me is very curious. Maybe it will explain why she did it.”

  Faith nodded. “I think we should read them now. Here. Together. There must be something she wanted to tell us—otherwise she wouldn’t have written them.”

  Monique took a sip of her drink. “I’m not sure I want to know what she was thinking that day. Cely was the most fun-loving of all of us. I remember how things were for me after Paul’s death. When things seemed to fall apart, she was there to help me keep things together. I can’t imagine anything getting her so down, she thought she couldn’t share it with us or wouldn’t know we were there for her, no matter what. Nothing could have been that hopeless when she had everything going on. The last time I talked with her—a few weeks ago—she was doing great. She had met this neat guy, she had finally made the decision to have her mother move in with her instead of go to a nursing home, and she was up for a promotion on her job. I can’t imagine what would make her do what she did.”

  “Then let’s read our letters and find out,” Faith repeated, not really wanting to do so but feeling that they must.

  The other two women nodded. As always, they would share everything. They each left the bed and walked to where they’d set their purses. They had been given Cely’s letters that morning from a kind police officer who had arrived before the start of the funeral. Fifty-something and bald, he had introduced himself as Lt. Upshaw.

  Shannon pulled the letter out of her purse and glanced at it thoughtfully before turning to the others. Tears clouded her eyes. “It doesn’t seem fair. Cely was the one we called when we needed to be told to get our shit together.”

  Faith walked over to a chair and flopped down with the copy of her letter in her hand. “Yeah, she was the first person I contacted when I found out Virgil was one of those down-low brothers. She talked me out of getting a gun and blowing his balls off. Now she’s gone and we have to move on, keep going, the way she would have wanted. Come on, let’s read our letters.”

  They each took a turn and read their letters aloud. Moments later they glanced up at each other with more tears in their eyes. Monique took a deep breath. “Even in what she thought was her darkest hour, she was thinking of us.”

  “Yeah,” Shannon said, wiping her eyes. “But the letter doesn’t explain why she did what she did.”

  “In a way it does,” Faith said in a quiet tone. “There was something going on her in life that made her think she didn’t have an out. And she doesn’t want that from us. She’s pleading for us to live each day to the fullest and do whatever we want to do to enjoy life and not live up to others’ expectations and standards.”

  Monique nodded. “Cely was always trying to please everyone. Maybe she got tired of trying.”

  “But to the point where she would commit suicide?” Shannon snapped, clearly frustrated and hurt. “I can’t imagine her ever getting that low. I bet it has something to do with a man.”

  Faith rolled her eyes. “Why are you so quick to blame the opposite sex?”

  “Because they’re usually the ones who deserved to be blamed. And you said she had met this great guy, Monique. She never mentioned him to me. Who is he? I wonder if the police checked her cell phone to see if he called her right before it happened. I wouldn’t put it past him, whoever he is, to be the one who pushed her over the edge. Maybe we need to do a little investigating of our own.”

  Faith and Monique exchanged glances. Nothing had changed over the years. Shannon still harbored ill feelings for most men because of what her father was doing to her mom, but then Shannon’s mom’s behavior wasn’t too much better.

  “Well, I personally think it wasn’t just a man but probably a mixture of things,” Faith decided to say. “But we’ll never really know, because she didn’t tell us in her letters. And forget about doing our own investigating. There was a suicide note—four of them—so as far as the police is concerned, the case is closed. Even if Mr. X isn’t blameless, the police won’t arrest a man for ‘pushing someone over the edge,’ if that’s what he did.”

  “Faith is right,” Monique said softly. “In her letters Cely is asking us not to dw
ell on the reason she did what she did. She wants us to make changes in our own lives. So what are we going to do?”

  The room got quiet, and then moments later Faith spoke up. “I have an idea. Remember we all said that one of these summers we would get together and spend it on the island like we used to do? I say let’s do it. Let’s have one more summer in Cely’s memory. Let’s get together on Hilton Head Island and do just what she’s suggested, like we used to do all those summers when we didn’t have a care in the world. Let’s plan to take time off our jobs—a month to six weeks—and take on new adventures and broaden our horizons. In Cely’s honor let’s do as she’s asked. Live each day to the fullest and do whatever we want and not worry about anyone’s expectations.”

  “I don’t worry about anyone’s expectations now,” Shannon said curtly, taking another sip of her wine.

  “Don’t you?”

  Shannon cut a quick glance at Monique. “I know when and how to put my parents in their place.”

  Monique rolled her eyes. “If you say so.”

  Shannon opened her mouth to say something but then closed it. She turned to Faith. “I’m all for what you’re suggesting. I just won’t sign up to teach any classes at the university over the summer months. What about you two? Can you take that much time away from your jobs?”

  Faith shrugged. As an advertising consultant, she was constantly in demand, but... “I think I will. I have money saved that I haven’t touched since my divorce. It will be worth it. Besides, I can use a break.”

  “So can I,” Monique replied rather quickly, smiling now. “I hadn’t planned to say anything until later, but Cannon Insurance is downsizing, and guess whose department will be the first to go?”

  Faith leaned forward, giving Monique her full attention. “Yours?”

  Monique said, “That’s right.”

  Shannon looked disgusted. “But you’ve been working there for almost fifteen years, right out of college. Don’t corporations believe in loyalty anymore?”

  “I guess they feel they have to do what they need to do to survive. It’s all about profits, not losses,” Monique said, shrugging.