His Third Wife

The reporter grinned and pivoted to face his crew and into the cameras he spoke: “You heard it here first. Mayor Taylor marries his former assistant, ex-stripper Val Long. More later.”

Someone in the crew yelled, “Cut!” and the women around Jamison erupted into a massive storm of curses and impolite commentary ranging from the reporter needing to mind his fucking business to suggestions that he was an Uncle Tom trying to ruin a black mayor’s reputation.

Mrs. Taylor was about to beat him over the head with her clunky Louis Vuitton purse when Jamison got control and ordered the women to march ahead to the cars in the back of the parking lot and wait for him there. A crowd was gathering and he couldn’t risk giving that situation any more weight.

Mrs. Taylor departed, walking backwards and making promises of vengeance against the reporter with each step.

When they were gone, Jamison grabbed the reporter by his shoulder and pulled him away from the camera crew.

“Do we have a problem here?” Jamison asked.

“No problem. I’m a reporter. I was reporting. Everything I said was fact. Right?” The reporter tried to pull away, but Jamison’s hold was unbreakable.

“What’s your name?” Jamison knew the man’s face well. He’d answered some of his questions at a press conference about the bursting pipes downtown last winter. Still, he couldn’t recall his name.

“You don’t know that?” the reporter laughed. “I’ve been following you around for months and you don’t know that?” He seemed insulted, though he knew big dogs like Jamison Taylor seldom remembered the names of street reporters. “I’m Dax. Dax Thomas. Fox Five News.” He put out his hand to shake Jamison’s, but it was left hanging there.

“How’d you know I was here, Dax?”

“I didn’t. I sit out here every day and wait for something to happen. It’s my job.”

“Bullshit. You sit outside the courthouse in Forsyth County?” Jamison would’ve laughed if he hadn’t been the target of Dax’s investigation.

“Plenty of celebrities come here to—”

“Man, don’t play games with me,” Jamison said, suddenly sounding more frustrated by Dax’s play. “I don’t have to tell you who I am, what I can do. We both know you weren’t just sitting out here with a full crew for a possibility. You got a lead. Just tell me—who sent you here?”

“Can’t tell you, man. You know that. I can’t make it in the business if my snitches find out I’m a snitch.”

“So this is about making it?” Jamison asked. “You come out here to interrogate a man and drudge up some innocent woman’s past so you can make it?”

“Everything’s about making it. Right? That’s how you got where you’re at. That’s how I’m getting to where I’m going.”

I was itching something awful waiting in the back of that building for Jamison to come around the corner. The only thing that kept me from going back around to the other side and stabbing that reporter with the eyelash blade I keep in my purse was knowing Jamison knew just how to handle the situation. I’ve been called most anything to my face—bitch ain’t nothing but a common noun in the circles I’ve traveled in. But in those same circles, you have to be prepared for what a bitch is serving back to you if you call her out. I wanted to serve something serious to that reporter. He hadn’t called me a bitch, but that was what he’d meant.

“Here he comes,” Mrs. Taylor said when Jamison finally came walking toward us. She headed toward him with me and Mama behind her. We were standing in the back of the lot beside my car.

Jamison was pulling off his tie and already on the phone yelling at someone about what had just happened.

“Son, who was that reporter? You need to have him fired!” Mrs. Taylor was repeating what she’d already told Mama that Jamison had the power to do when we were waiting for him to meet us in back of the building. “The nerve of him—to disgrace the mayor! And on television! I was about put him over my knee, and I would’ve if my heart could take it! You know I got this bad heart.” She placed a dramatic Southern hand over her heart.

Jamison didn’t acknowledge his mother. He was still spitting into the phone about a leak and his office putting out an official statement announcing our marriage within the hour. His eyes were cutting through me. I felt the fucking blades.

Mama and Mrs. Taylor continued begging Jamison for a response until he got off the phone, but I was quiet. This was everything Jamison had been afraid of. Everything any man I’d ever dated had been afraid of. My past.

Jamison stopped his call and pointed at me. “You’re riding with me,” he ordered.

“I drove Mama here,” I reminded him, but he didn’t respond. He kissed his mother on the cheek while ignoring her steady questions and smiled politely at my mother before walking off to his car expecting me to follow. Instead, Mrs. Taylor was on his heels with more words and nagging that wouldn’t likely stop until Jamison promised to kill that reporter himself.

“Mama, I need to meet you back at my house,” I said, trying to hand my mother my key fob for the car.

“But I can’t drive this car,” she said, looking at the shiny car that was probably the only new car she’d ever been in.

“It’s fine, Mama. Don’t worry,” I said still holding the fob.

“But I don’t know where you live.”

“There’s a GPS system. It’ll take you right to the house. Just press, ‘Home.’ ”