All About Eva Read online

  Also by Deidre Berry

  The Next Best Thing

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.

  ALL ABOUT EVA

  DEIDRE BERRY

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by Deidre Berry

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prelude to a Scandal

  Who Wants to Date a Millionaire?

  Allabouteva.org (It’s So Official!)

  Social.Net

  Champagne Wishes

  An Affair to Remember

  Caviar Dreams

  Lost in Translation

  Welcome to the Matrix

  Downward Spiral

  Damsel in Distress

  No Money, Mo Problems

  Taming the Shrew

  God Bless the Child

  Visions

  Truth or Consequences

  Clash of the Titans

  Oy Vay!

  Hostesss with the Mostess

  Start Snitching

  What Would Jesus Do?

  Survival of the Fittest

  Frenemies

  Imitation of Life

  Hell up in Harlem

  The Fun Zone

  America’s Most Wanted

  Hi! My Name Is . . .

  Recessionista

  Poetic Justice

  Defining Moments

  Chi-Town

  Who’s That Lady?

  Deck the Halls

  Family Decisions

  Let’s Make a Deal

  Not for Nothing

  Awakenings

  Love and Deception

  Moment of Truth

  Dirty Money

  Full Circle

  How I Got Over

  Smoke & Mirrors

  The Pursuit of Happiness

  Mama Nita’s Authentic Creole Gumbo

  TURNING YOUR FAMILY RECIPE INTO A FORTUNE

  Teaser chapter

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright Page

  To Richard, as always . . .

  No one should come to New York to live unless they are willing to be lucky.

  —E. B. White

  Prelude to a Scandal

  When the scandal first broke, it was front page news in every major newspaper across the country, including the New York Times:

  Donovan Dorsey, the Wall Street wizard who had amassed a staggering fortune by the time he was thirty years old, now stands accused of padding his personal bank accounts with upwards of $150 million dollars, which he allegedly stole from longtime clients who trusted him implicitly. . . .

  I sure as hell didn’t see it coming. No one did, except for the guilty party, of course. But what’s really unfair about the whole situation is that I have automatically been made guilty by association.

  Whatever happened to “innocent until proven guilty”? Apparently, it’s null and void when you’ve been convicted in the court of public opinion, which I have. Unjustly, I might add; which is why on this day, I take the stand in my own defense.

  Now, to fully understand how and why I found myself in such a predicament, you would have to know the whole story, starting with the day I tucked my life savings securely into my bra ($827.16) and bought a one-way bus ticket to New York City.

  It was four years ago. I was twenty-two years old and fresh out of college when I got off a Greyhound bus at the Port Authority Bus Terminal on West Forty-second Street.

  Up to that point, it was the single most thrilling moment of my life.

  You have to understand that as a little girl, I spent hours upon hours staring out of my bedroom window, letting my imagination take me off to glamorous, faraway places with names that sounded like magic. Greece, Japan, and Tahiti were oceans and light years away from the housing projects where I dwelled, but New York City was a little closer to home, and was the place that I visited most often in my head.

  I had never visited the city in real life, but of all the places in the world, the Big Apple spoke to me the most, and seemed to be seductively calling my name, with promises of a wonderful and exciting life.

  Of course, I had heard all of the sentiments that were associated with “The City That Never Sleeps,” but the one that intrigued me the most was, “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.”

  It seemed like a direct challenge to me, and I was the kind of person who never backed down from a challenge.

  The bus ride was more than 700 miles, and seemed like it took forever. But once I finally arrived, I knew that I would never leave. On that very first day, I stood in Times Square among all the honking, concrete, and commotion, with my neck craning upward. I took in the bustling activity, bright lights, and skyscrapers, and thought: This is exactly why I’ve come here!

  The pulse, vibrancy, and energy that New York has is something you just can’t get in small-town USA, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. If it’s true that every town in the world has its own personality and intensity level, then NYC’s swagger was on a hundred-thousand trillion. We were a perfect match.

  I had been in town all of seven minutes, but I felt as if I owned the place and whatever I wanted to make happen, I could.

  If I had had a hat, I would have thrown it in the air à la Mary Tyler Moore. Damn right, I was going to make it. I had to, simply because there just weren’t any other options.

  For better or worse, I was now one of many transplants who had come from far and wide to try their hand at making it in the greatest metropolis of them all. There were roughly eight million stories in the naked city, and as I would later learn, some of those stories were more remarkable than others, yet all of them were unique in their own way.

  I have come to witness that some of those stories have happy endings, while others end abruptly in a cruel twist of fate.

  Some are able to reach soaring heights, and many more fail to even make it off the ground.

  There are those who meet with triumph and infamy, while others meet with scandal of such proportions that they are sent running back to their hometowns with their tails tucked between their legs.

  Yeah, everyone has a story. Here’s mine.

  The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help me God. . . .

  Who Wants to Date a Millionaire?

  It started like most things do in this town: at a party. To be more precise, it was one of those mixers that Gotham Magazine throws every other week to celebrate the fabulous and accomplished. That particular soiree was in honor of the city’s fifty most eligible bachelors. Kyle, who does double duty as my gay husband and oldest and dearest friend, invited me to the event, which I quite frankly could not have cared less about attending.

  “Come on, Eva, it’ll be fun!” Kyle had said. “And I need you there as my wing-woman, because you know more than likely that half of those so-called eligible bachelors are on the down low.”

  “Believe it or not, some of us have to actually work for a living,” I’d said. At the time, I was beauty editor at Flirt, a glossy women’s magazine, and was on a tight deadline to edit several articles from in-house writers, and make sure that they were ready in time for the next issue. “Besides, why are you on the prowl for a man? What happened to Jonathan?”

  “Chile, I had to cut that loose, ’cause ain’t nothing worse than closeted trade!” Kyle had said. “And what about you? You look like you could definitely use some pickle in your love life.”

  He knew me so well. It was sickening sometimes.

  It had been a while since anyone had floated my boat. Reason being, I had just gotten a huge promotion at work a
nd was so focused on showing and proving that I rarely had the extra time or energy to give to mixing and mingling.

  But, persistent bugger that he is, Kyle wouldn’t take no for an answer, so that evening after work, the two of us arrived at the Grand in midtown, where along with the fifty-dollar price of admission, we received catalogs that had alphabetical listings of each of the fifty eligible bachelors, including their headshots and business profiles.

  “Eva, girl, we both are gonna find a man up in here, up in here!” Kyle said excitedly.

  I surveyed the scene, which was typical of what could be expected at those sort of things: Each one of the fifty bachelors were respectively holding court for a flock of shameless and desperate women who were all vying to be the chosen one. I wasn’t impressed. I can’t stand those types of parties where there’s nothing but a bunch of egomaniacs taking full advantage of the fact that the ratio of single men to single women is 1 to 80 in New York City.

  That means you take eighty single women, put them all in one room, and there is only one eligible man available, with “eligible” meaning that he is breathing.

  Yeah, 1 to 80. Daunting statistics, right? And that is without taking into account the man’s personality, looks, education, sexual preferences, personal hygiene, financial status, mental health, and credit rating.

  If you want to figure all those things into the equation, then the statistic goes from 1 to 80 to around 1 in a million.

  Since we can’t all be lesbians, what usually happens is that discernment goes out the window, giving rise to the phenomenon known as “interfacial dating.”

  You’ve seen them—they’re everywhere. A gorgeous woman with a less than attractive man, and she’s trying to pass him off like he’s Boris Kodjoe instead of the Elephant Man.

  “Eva,” she says, “meet my new boyfriend John. Isn’t he handsome?”

  “Umm, what’s wrong with his head?”

  “Oh, that’s just a little swelling. It’ll go down.... He’s eligible, you know.”

  Yeah, believe me, I know!

  Daniel was the last “eligible” guy I dated. We met at a cocktail party in Chelsea and got along fine for a few months until it started to dawn on me that he was a compulsive and habitual liar. One day he was 007, and the next day he was the Crocodile Hunter. Daniel claimed to be an international operative for the CIA and had all these fantastic, swashbuckling tales of being on safari in Botswana and being attacked by a pack of rabid hyenas.

  And Dexter, the one before Daniel? Oh, he was real “eligible.” He also had the distinction of being the brokest real estate agent I had ever met. Every time I turned around he was always hitting me up for money and expecting me to pay for everything whenever we went out. Then the break-ins started. At the time, I lived in Fort Greene in what I thought was a safe neighborhood.

  I had never had any problems before, but within three months of meeting Dexter, my apartment had been burglarized on four separate occasions. Now, I may not be a member of Mensa, but I put two and two together very well. “It’s your own fault,” Kyle had told me. “This is New York City, girl. You can’t just be picking up strangers all willy-nilly. I thought I taught you better than that!”

  So yeah, the vibe that night at the Gotham party was all wrong. Ten minutes into it, like Wanda from In Living Color, I was ret-ta-go.

  “About face!” I said to Kyle, looking for the nearest trash can to throw my catalog into.

  “Uhn-uh, I paid too much money to get up in here and I’m not leaving until I find out which one of these guys isn’t playing it straight.”

  “There you go again, searching for the gay needles in the haystack,” I said. “Believe it or not, Kyle, every other man you see is not gay.”

  “Humph! Honey, you don’t know what I know. . . .” Kyle said as he gazed around the room, sizing up the other men with his queer eye.

  I sighed. Since Kyle was my ride, and he was hell-bent on staying, I figured I might as well look around too. It didn’t take long before my eyes settled on one of the few black bachelors in attendance.

  He had virile good looks that reminded me of a young Harry Belafonte, even down to the tall, slender build. Unlike some of the other bachelors in the room, he did not appear to be trying too hard to be suave and cool. Instead, there was an expensive gentleman vibe about him, which he exuded effortlessly. In other words, the man had swagger for days!

  Kyle spotted the guy at the same time I did.

  “Hottie at six o’clock!” Kyle said, frantically flipping through his catalog in search of the man’s photo and profile. Once Kyle found what he was looking for, we both inhaled sharply at the same time. In the picture as in real life, the man was insanely handsome and meticulously well groomed.

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “Donovan J. Dorsey . . .” Kyle said dreamily. “It says here that he graduated magna cum laude from Morehouse, and received a business degree from Columbia—come on, let’s go make his acquaintance.” Kyle grabbed my hand and led the way through the crowd of women that surrounded Donovan J. Dorsey. As it turned out, Donovan Dorsey was straight as Indian hair. Kyle was disappointed when Donovan failed to set off his gaydar, but was gracious enough to introduce me and Donovan without missing a beat.

  I had never believed in love at first sight before meeting Donovan. Lust, certainly. However, when Donovan and I shook hands, sparks flew, and there was a current of chemistry between us that was so strong, it felt like I had been struck by a lightning bolt.

  A few nights later we had our first date at Da Silvano, an intimate Italian restaurant in the West Village, where we shared a bottle of crisp pink wine and a four-course dinner for two that started with a hot antipasto and ended with tiramisu.

  Over candlelight, we filled each other in on our life stories and plans for the future. He told me how rough he’d had it growing up in Queens with just his younger sister and hardworking single mother. And I told him about being abandoned by both parents and then raised by my God-fearing maternal grandmother, Juanita Cantrell, who I affectionately called Mama Nita.

  We were so relaxed with each other that our conversation flowed as easily as if it were our one hundredth date instead of our first. We were on the same page when it came to ideals and sensibilities, which is why I was completely open and vulnerable with Donovan as I gave him all the details of how I put myself through college and, soon after graduation, packed up and moved to NYC, where I moved in with Kyle and subsequently landed the job as beauty editor at Flirt.

  “And here you are.” He smiled, reaching across the table to caress my hand. “Lucky me.”

  Donovan and I were so fascinated with each other that three hours had passed before either of us realized it. And even then, we only noticed the time because the server had delivered the check without being asked for it, which was another way of saying, “Come on, I’m working for tips here! Go get a room already, so I can seat another party!”

  After that first date, we went out almost every night.

  Seven years my senior, Donovan was the worldliest man I had ever met. He lived an extraordinary lifestyle and was a connoisseur of all things luxurious. As I would come to find out, he especially had an insatiable taste for fine art, and we began frequenting auctions together, where more often than not, he walked away the highest bidder.

  For me, Donovan’s discriminating tastes were a huge part of his charm. It is also what made me feel so privileged just to be around him. Here was this man who expected and demanded the best of everything; he could have any woman in the world, but yet he chose me.

  Prior to meeting me, Donovan had been a notorious playboy. I mean, after all, he was one of the city’s most eligible bachelors, so my sudden appearance in his life did not automatically stop other women from coming at him. But as our relationship deepened, all of the other women fell to the wayside, one by one, and before either of us knew it, I was the last woman standing.

  And just like that—*finger snap*
—I entered into a platinum-dipped VIP lifestyle that took me to hot spots around the world, including Dubai and St. Tropez, and most of the faraway places I had fantasized about when I was a little girl. Nothing I wanted was off-limits, and when Flirt folded overnight without a word of warning, Donovan insisted that it was the perfect time for me to give up the lease on my Fort Greene apartment and move in with him. And the real kicker was that as far as he was concerned, I didn’t have to work.

  Wait a minute, WHAT!!?

  I don’t care how much of a feminist you are, I don’t believe that there are too many women out there who don’t want to hear those words, or who would turn a man down when he said them. Consciously or subconsciously, aren’t we all searching for a man who has the ways and the means to swoop in and save us? Whether you call him a sugar daddy, a sponsor, a knight in shining armor, your husband, or Captain Save a Ho, it is all one in the same.

  For me, the very thought of being taken care of was in itself a page out of a fairy tale, but at the same time, I was anything but a lazy woman. Ever since I was fourteen years old, I had always kept some type of employment, no matter how menial the labor or how small the pay.

  I wasn’t 100 percent comfortable with the thought of being dependent on Donovan for financial security, so I took up freelancing, even though the jobs were few and far between.

  In the meantime, I found other ways to fill my days, like workouts with a personal trainer, lunch dates with the girls, beauty maintenance appointments, committee meetings, and galas for some foundation or another.

  Oh, and shopping.

  For the first time in my life, price tags became a nonissue, and I began shopping so hard that it became a sport for me.

  It was a wonderful life. One I could get used to, and most certainly did.

  Allabouteva.org (It’s So Official!)

  The city was New York. The month was October, and the day was so damn special that it should have been a national holiday—at least as far as I was concerned.