Authors: J. J. Murray
I
’m buzzing. First class. Sweet champagne. A smooth flight. Jack’s hand
under
my hand so the world can see my ring. A soft pillow.
No
idea where we’re going only that we’re going to Jamaica….
To get seriously busy.
Oh, and get married, too.
And no amount of squeezing Jack’s leg or whispering in Jack’s ear will get him to reveal all his secrets. But that’s okay.
But then I realize…“Jack, what if our bags don’t catch up to us?”
“We, um, won’t need any clothes for a few days, right?”
And that sets me buzzing again, until I remember…“Jack, I only have shoes, toiletries, and my make-up and hair stuff in the carry-ons. You don’t have a single thing.”
“I know.”
And
that
sets me buzzing until we land, because once I take his clothes off—and hide them somewhere, of course—he won’t be able to leave the room, not that I could either. I could…Hmm. At least my hair and make-up would look good as I walk around in my high heels….
“Jack,” I whisper as we leave the plane, “is this one of those clothing-optional places?”
He kisses me softly on the lips. “It
can
be.”
I may
never
stop buzzing!
Inside the terminal, I see a short black man in a dark uniform holding a sign that says, “Mr. and Mrs. Browning.”
“Is that for us?” I ask. I mean, who else would it be for?
Jack nods and approaches the man. “I’m Jack Browning, and this is the future Mrs. Browning.”
“We’ve been expecting you,” the man says in beautiful, cultured
English
English. “I am Paul. Do you have many bags?”
Jack shakes his head, showing him my two carry-on bags. “Just these.”
“Follow me,” Paul says, and we trail behind him to…a taxi? I was expecting a limo. But once we’re moving through the tropical night, I know why we’re not in a limo—the roads are barely wide enough for this taxi.
Not that Jack lets me look out the window much. We make out and touch and squeeze all the way to…Firefly Beach. It’s too dark to see much, but I do see a skinny
pink
Victorian house and lots of palm trees teeming with coconuts.
Paul opens my door, and I step out. “Thank you, Paul.” I smell a mixture of hibiscus, oleander, and the sea, delightful bougainvillea hedges brightening the night.
“A pleasure,” he says, and he backs away to Jack, who pays him…a
lot
of money. How long were we in the taxi? I was too busy to notice the passing of time.
Jack holds his hand out to me. “Come on,” he says.
I take Jack’s hand. “Where are we going, Mr. Browning?”
“To the beach,” he says.
Now? “What for?” I mean, shouldn’t we be checking in or going to our room and ripping each other’s clothes off?
Jack squeezes my hand. “You haven’t figured it out?”
“Our room isn’t ready or something?”
He laughs. “It’s ready, and it isn’t a room. It’s a cozy cottage just a few yards from the water. We’re just not ready for our cottage.”
And that makes no sense whatsoever until we stop at the edge of the beach, kicking off our shoes. The sand is so soft and silvery. “It’s still warm,” I say, digging in my toes.
He leads me where waves sigh gently on the sand, and we look at the stars lighting up the sky, a little sliver of the moon glowing in the darkest patch. “I wish we could have gotten a later flight so we could do this at sunrise.”
Here? We’re going to do
it
here? This wasn’t in that sex scene. Did I print out all of it?
He steps into the foamy edge of the waves, pulling me close. Somewhere reggae plays in perfect rhythm to the surf. Well, I suppose I could do it here in this paradise, but…
“Diane, um…” He sighs. “I wanted to do this legally, but…” He smiles. “The requirements are a bit much.”
He has completely lost me.
“In order to get married here, we would have had to send our birth certificates one month in advance.”
I swallow. Am I about to—
“And I would have had to bring Noël’s death certificate, too, and we would have had to be in the country for twenty-four hours before we could—”
“Jack?”
“Yes, Diane?”
“You mean, we can’t…” I close my eyes. “But I thought—”
He puts his finger to my lips. “We’re in paradise, Diane, a real Garden of Eden. We have too many clothes on to be Adam and Eve, but…this is how they got married.” He looks up. “In the sight of God.” His eyes, those soft blue eyes of his, rest on mine. “They didn’t need any certificates. They didn’t need any witnesses. They only needed each other.” He squeezes my hands tightly. “Diane Anderson, I will love and cherish you forever from this moment forth, and I will do my best to be a good husband and father to our children.”
Goose bumps are leaving my body and traveling into space!
He blinks at me several times. Oh. Those were his vows! And now it’s my turn!
“Uh, Jack Browning, I will love, honor, and…” I look down. “Obey you forever.” I look up. “As long as what you ask of me is reasonable.”
He nods.
“And I will be your wife, your best friend, and the mother of your children.”
And I’m not crying, though I have goose bumps even on the tip of my nose!
“I, uh, don’t have a wedding band for you,” Jack says, “but your mother said—”
“I know what she said,” I interrupt. Lord, I’m getting to be more and more like Mama. I know I wasn’t adopted now.
He pulls my ring gently toward the tip of my finger.
“Don’t,” I whisper. “Don’t take it off.”
He stops pulling. “With this ring, I thee wed.”
I put my fingers on the ring. “With this ring,” I repeat, “I thee wed.”
We slide the ring back to its rightful place.
And we kiss, while waves of the warmest water kiss our feet. “Hello, Mrs. Browning,” he whispers.
“Hello, Mr. Browning.”
He turns us slightly toward shore. “We can watch the sunrise from our cottage if you like.”
“I’d like that.”
Then, leisurely slipping through soft sand, we walk into cottage #19, pausing on the veranda to look back at the water. “What time is it?” I whisper as Jack slides off my pants from behind me. The air feels good on my skin, and I barely feel him remove my underwear.
“Maybe…three.”
I turn and take off his shirt, looking past him to two double beds. “There are two beds, Mr. Browning.”
He smiles. “How nice of them.”
He removes my top and bra in mere seconds, and seconds later I’ve reduced him to Adam. We embrace, and though for a fleeting second I worry about someone seeing us, I don’t let go, I can’t let go, and right there with my caboose sitting on the rail of a veranda in cottage #19 at Firefly Beach in Jamaica, I thank God I have this man whom I let completely inside me for the first time in my life—
“Oh, Jack,” I say.
“Are you all right?” he whispers.
“Yes.” I pull him deeper into me. “Can we stay like this until the sunrise?” I don’t want this moment to end!
“Not if we stay out here,” he pants, little beads of sweat forming on his forehead. “You feel so good, Diane.”
Oh, God, if he only knew how good I feel in my
soul
at this moment. I waited twenty-five years for this man and this moment, and it was definitely worth the wait. And I wrap my legs around his back to prove it. “Take me to the bed, Jack.”
He lifts me up. “Which one?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say.
He carries me past the bed closest to the veranda and sits us gently
between
the two beds on a smooth wood floor. “Jack, what are you doing?”
“I’d rather be doing this on the beach, but…”
We’re high enough that we can see over the first bed past the veranda to the water and the stars.
“So,” he says, “we’ll just sit here, moving to the rhythm of the waves while we watch the sun rise.”
“We’ll look like prairie dogs,” I giggle.
“I love your laugh,” he says, kissing my neck. “And I love you.”
I hold him close, saying, “I love you, Jack,” riding him in rhythm to the waves as the sky turns red…then orange…then gold.
W
hen are we going to get into a bed?
If I move, I’ll, you know, again.
We’re going to get splinters.
I don’t care.
I’ll bet we’re making a baby right now.
I hope so. God, I hope so.
“Diane?”
“Hmm?”
She has incredible stamina!
I know!
“Um, Diane, honey, my butt’s asleep.”
She opens her eyes. “Do you want to take me to bed, Mr. Browning?”
I nod.
“Not until I…” And then she grinds against me just right, and I can’t hold back anymore.
At this rate, you’ll have triplets for sure!
She eases off me and climbs into the bed closest to the sunrise, and I slide in behind her, wrapping my arm around her stomach.
“It’s so beautiful,” she whispers.
“You’re beautiful,” I whisper.
She grabs my arms and holds on to them tightly. “Thank you.”
“I’ll bet you never expected this,” I say, snuggling closer.
“Not in a million years,” she says. “Not in a million-trillion years.”
N
o. I didn’t just say—I mean, five months ago, I
hated
that line. And now look at me. Look at us! I may have to make up a whole different definition of romance now.
“Jack?”
“Yes, Diane.”
“
Wishful Thinking
now gets two stars from Nisi.”
He drops his hand to my booty and begins to rub it oh so nicely. Here come the goose bumps. “What rating would Diane Anderson Browning give it?”
I feel him growing again behind me.
Lord, thank You for a virile man
. “Five stars, and if I could give it six, I would.”
“Yeah?” He pulls me closer to him. “Five? Hmm. Well, I’d better get back to work.”
“What do you mean, work? This isn’t work, is it?”
“It is for me,” he says. “I mean, if you want to have five kids, I have lots of work to do.”
“I said five
stars
, Jack.”
“And they will be,” he says.
And in my heart, I know he’s right.
Former boxing champion Dante “Blood and Guts” Lattanza is being featured in
Personality
magazine’s “Sexiest Men Alive” issue, and reporter Christiana Artis has the scoop. There’s just one hitch: she’ll have to fly to her elusive subject’s home in Canada. But once she lays eyes on Dante’s chiseled physique and sultry Italian looks, she decides it was worth every mile. Too bad his icy demeanor doesn’t match his hot body.
Since he lost his last fight ten years ago, Dante has led a reclusive life—and he
never
gives interviews. But he’s making a comeback, ready to prove to the world—and his ex-wife—that he can still win a championship. He gives Christiana an ultimatum: if she can perform five tasks, she can ask him five questions. And then she can be on her way. Yet Dante’s always had a weakness for beautiful black women, and seeing Christiana every day is enough to melt his defenses. Soon Christiana is an intimate part of the very story she came to write. But when the line between personal and professional gets blurred, it can be difficult to see when you’ve found the real thing…
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek at
J. J. Murray’s
THE REAL THING
coming next month!
“D
o you know where Dante Lattanza lives?”
The towheaded child on the wooden dock jutting off Turkey Island whizzes a long silver lure past the prow of my rented aluminum boat. “You talk funny, eh?”
It’s because I’m from Red Hook in Brooklyn. At least I don’t say, “Eh?” after every sentence. “I’m from New York City,” I say not wanting to confuse him. “So, do you know where he lives?”
“Yeah.”
This Canadian kid is obviously more interested in catching a fish than answering questions from a black woman in jeans, waterproof Timberlands, and a red and black flannel shirt.
“Your outfit will help you blend in,” Shelley, my editor at
Personality
magazine told me.
“I’ll still be black in the Great White North,” I had complained, “no matter what I wear.”
Shelley only rolled her eyes. She does that a lot whenever I’m around. I think she has a wandering eye. She never seems to focus on me when I talk to her.
“Um,” I say, turning off the ten-horsepower motor and drifting toward the shore, “where exactly is Dante Lattanza’s house?”
The kid’s eyes stay glued to the lure sluicing through the water. “He lives in a cottage.”
Cottage, house, what difference does it make? “Which
cottage
does he live in?”
The lure flies up from the water and zips immediately toward me, missing the stern of the boat by inches, er, centimeters, or whatever archaic units these Canadians use. “What time is it?”
I ask which cottage, and he asks me for the time. “Almost four-thirty, but I really need to know…”
The kid reels in the lure rapidly, throws down his pole, and takes off up some stairs to a house, er, cottage. It looks like a
house
with a huge screen porch and some decking in front of another house-like section. “Where are you going?”
The kid doesn’t turn or even acknowledge me. What? Is it time for his meds? Maybe he’ll come back with some intelligence and some respect for his elders.
This is such a waste of time. I had gotten an anonymous letter last month telling me where to find the reclusive, elusive Dante “Blood and Guts” Lattanza, former middleweight champion and boxing wunderkind of the mid-1990’s until he lost two bloody brawls to better, faster, and stronger fighters. “He’s training at Aylen Lake, Ontario, from the end of August through November,” the letter said. Retired for ten years, Lattanza was making a comeback just as
Personality
had named him one of the sexiest men alive based on a bit part he had in a recent
Rocky
-rip-off called
Heavy Leather
. Normally,
Personality
magazine only chooses from the Hollywood ranks, but someone in editorial must have a crush on Lattanza.
It has been a slow year for sexy men. “The older ones keep dying off.” Shelley had told me, “and the younger ones just don’t seem to know anything about cultivating sex appeal.” Except for Denzel Washington in 1996, all the winners since 1985 have been white, with Richard Gere, Brad Pitt, and George Clooney winning twice. There has yet to be a single Italian winner, and I, for one, think Italians are very sexy.
Something about their eyes just moves me.
Shelley wants me to get a few good close-ups of Lattanza’s face before Tank “The Lion” Washington, the current undisputed middleweight champion and the man who originally took Dante’s title, splits it open and generally rearranges it during their rematch this December. “We can’t put bloody-faced Italian men in
Personality
” Shelley had explained. “Oh, I suppose we can if it’s a shot from a
Sopranos
episode or one of whosawwhatsit’s model boy-toys.”
I had to fly from LaGuardia to Ottawa and rent a car to drive 225 kilometers (about 135 miles) through the towns of Kanata, Carp, Golden Lake, Killaloe Station, and Barry’s Bay to this little strangely shaped lake. It was kind of like escaping Red Hook, where I live in a renovated warehouse at Reed and Brunt Streets with a lovely view of the East River, which my insane Realtor called “Buttermilk Channel.” It actually looks like buttermilk some days, but…it’s the freaking East River! Calling it something else does
not
make it any cleaner.
Now, I’m floating on Aylen Lake in front of Turkey Island, feeling like a flannelled turkey and waiting for a blonde-headed, freckled kid with selective hearing to—
Oh, there he is, and he’s carrying a…stopwatch? Is he going to time the gaps in his synapses?
“Dante will be by here in a few minutes,” the boy says.
“By here, as in
here
. He’ll be by
this
island?” I take a weather-beaten paddle and dip it in the water, pushing the boat away from the shore.
“Yeah. He comes right by here, eh?”
I look around. I see no boats, canoes, or sailboats on the lake, not a single person other than Towhead out on a dock, not even any of the moose, bear, or loons I’ve read about cavorting on the shoreline. “Really?”
The kid points to a rocky outcropping bathed in sunlight and jutting off the northeast shore maybe a quarter mile away. “He’s about to begin.”
I look at the outcropping and don’t see anyone. “Begin what?”
“The last part of his workout,” the kid says. “He broke his record by twelve seconds yesterday.”
I get my camera ready anyway, screwing on a telephoto lens. “You don’t say? What exactly am I going to…see?”
Then I see a man diving off the rocks at least thirty feet above the water. He wears what looks like a parachute or a backpack on his back.
That’s
Dante Lattanza? He’s also a cliff diver?
The kid starts the stopwatch. “He’ll swim across the channel to the point of our island, run across to the other point, swim the other channel to that cottage over there, run up the hill, ring a bell, run down the hill, and swim back.”
I zoom in on a man’s arms furiously cutting through the waves, his head bobbing up every ten strokes. “What’s on his back?”
“Twenty kilos in a backpack,” Tow Head says. “He has weights on his wrists and ankles to. It adds a total of thirty kilos.”
This means absolutely nothing to me.
I snap a few shots of Lattanza’s flailing arms, the sunny outcropping in the background. He is an extremely strong swimmer, cutting through the water like…well, like a man carrying an extra thirty kilos, practically disappearing underwater occasionally. These shots won’t do. I couldn’t sell these to even the most desperate tabloids. Lattanza isn’t, however, exactly tabloid material. He’s practically unknown.
And then…
Lattanza reaches the northeast point of Turkey Island, rising out of the blue-green water like a cut sculpture, tanned and toned and looking like Carrara marble. He sprints down the somewhat sandy shore in bare feet. I click away on auto as he glides closer.
“Ciao, David,” Lattanza says with a smile as he passes the dock.
“Ciao, Dante,” David says.
I keep my finger on the trigger, so to speak, taking Lattanza in, keeping him framed until he dives off the other point into the water. I sit and review the pictures I’ve taken and see a man defying nature. Lattanza is forty-two but hasn’t an ounce of fat on him. His entire body is cut like one of Michelangelo’s models. He has such dark eyes, dark eyebrows, dark stubble, and thick, wavy black hair. His signature high cheekbones make his smile even more effective because of his squint. I can’t believe Shelley and the rest of the editorial staff only have him at number thirteen.
I’d, um, I’d put him in the top…seven. But then again, I’ve been single a long time. When was the last time? Who was I with? Who was president? Ooh, look at his—
“Hey,” David says.
“Yes?” I look up briefly. Lattanza has a seriously interesting butt, as if he has two huge fists back there. Our readers will rejoice. I my damn self may rejoice a little bit later. He has a nice, muscular booty.
“Listen for the bell,” David says.
“What bell?”
“Shh. You’ll hear it, eh?”
I look at the southeast shore about another quarter mile away and see Lattanza rise from the water onto a dock, run up some steps, and disappear into the woods…
A bell rings.
Then I hear shouts, “Yoo-hoos,” and car and boat horns honking. What’s all this about?
“He’s ahead of his record,” David says.
“What was all that noise?”
David grins. “I’m not the only one timing him, eh?”
So at least the residents, vacationers, and cottagers on Aylen Lake know they have a celebrity among them. This must be the highlight of their day. Whoopee.
I see Lattanza bouncing down the steps to another dock and zooming off. Thirty kilos extra and he’s flying like that. Tank Washington may be in for more of a fight than he has imagined. Lattanza will still lose, but maybe the fight won’t be the bloodbath Las Vegas is predicting and HBO Pay-Per-View is counting on. They’re already touting the rematch as “The Lion vs. the Legend—
Twice
in a Lifetime.” The first fight was
Ring
magazine’s “Fight of the Year” ten years ago. The two had combined for over eighteen hundred punches, eight hundred of which connected—five
hundred
or so to Lattanza’s face and body. Most folks, though, don’t expect a repeat performance, especially from Lattanza. The experts think he’ll run out of gas after the third round.
I see Lattanza using his legs now, hairy things, strong kicks, no letup as he comes back, silhouetted against the sun, powerful, virile, truly not number thirteen. I let the camera fire away. With that background, that face, and that body, he should be at least in the top five. I’ll have to talk to Shelley about his placement. Unlike many on this year’s list, every bit of Dante Lattanza is real and as God made him. He has no blonde highlights in his hair, no calf implants, no caps for his teeth, and no sex appeal based on whom he’s sleeping with, adopting children with, or dating. In addition, he doesn’t need a personal trainer because he’s his
own
personal trainer.
I am witnessing an atypical typical boxer’s workout. My graddaddy fought in the amateurs, getting pretty far in the New York Gold Gloves, and he maintained a boxing workout throughout the rest of his life at Gleason’s Gym, so I know boxing. Granddaddy ran in the morning, went to work, then picked me up after school to spend a few hours in the gym shadowboxing, pounding the heavy bag, popping the focus mitts, peppering the speed and double-end bags, jumping rope, and sparring whenever he could. Yet here’s Dante swimming a total of a mile or so and playing a hunchbacked lifeguard on
Baywatch
.
Lattanza is on the island again, and he’s not slowing down. He only nods at David, shoots—is that a grin?—at me, and again he’s crunching down the beach to the point and flying into the water again.
I check to see if I snapped the grin, and I did. It’s a nice grin. I’m not sure if all those teeth are originally his, but…Nice. The squint makes his eyes twinkle. On the other hand, maybe they just twinkle and the squint…
Listen to me. Daydreaming about a photograph.
Hmm.
Okay, top three.
David runs out onto the dock. “This is my favorite part.”
I zoom in on the rocks, expecting Lattanza to stop to catch his breath. He doesn’t. He literally leaps from rock to rock, handhold to handhold, almost hopping up that rock formation to the top where he rings another bell.
David clicks the stopwatch. “He beat yesterday by fifteen seconds!”
More noise, yelling—what is this “Yoo-hoo!” business?—horns blaring.
“He’s going to get that title back for sure,” David says.
Not.
Lattanza turns, addresses the noise, and bows, sunlight drenching him in amber.
Damn. I forgot to keep shooting. I click one of him taking off the backpack and raising his arms into the air. It reminds me of a scene from
Rocky
. That scene gave me goosebumps.
I look at my arms. They are long brown goosebumps that end with nails that desperately need a manicure.
Well.
Hmm.
Lattanza’s bow would have been a cheesy shot, but I wish I had taken it.
Hmm.
I may have to, um, make the interview last longer than my usual thirty minutes. You know, stretch it a bit. I need to make sure I probe this man and get to his essence. Except for
Heavy Leather
, Lattanza has been out of the spotlight for ten years. This is an important interview. Readers will want to know why he’s been hiding for so long.
I also, um, have to check out his abs up close.
My last short-lived boyfriend, whose name still escapes me (Chuck? Howard?) had love handles, which turned simply to fat, and I quickly returned to a single life.
Dante Lattanza has love ripples.
I wonder what those feel like.