Page 1 of Chosen By a Billionaire (Rags to Romance #24)

“You can do so much better than her.”

“You think I don’t know that? I know it better than you do. Why you always bringing that shit up?”

“Because you need to tell her, Kenny. I’m tired of all this ducking and dodging. That ain’t my style. Hell, look at me. What I look like ducking and dodging? I can do way better than that.”

“Then do it dammit. Who’s stopping you?”

Makela Fortier looked long and hard at Kenny Jenkins.

Fine as wine that brother was, and all those bitches out there knew it too.

But that never stopped Makela. Since high school she’d been after him.

Always made sure to be in his face. Always made sure to be there for him when he needed a warm body to cuddle up against. Turned down other guys, who wanted her desperately, to be with him.

But he always had his eyes on some other bitch. It never failed.

But she was tired of accepting his sloppy seconds. All of her other girlfriends were already married and having kids like nobody’s business, while she was still out here chasing Kenny. But no more. She was done with that. It was her turn now.

She placed her small, light-brown hand onto his large, dark-brown hand.

He looked at her hand, and then into her face.

She was a pretty girl, he’d give her that.

And unlike Jayda, who was small, Makela had the kind of exaggerated, big-girl curves men like him craved.

But she just didn’t do it for him in bed the way Jayda did.

She just didn’t turn him on the same way.

But that didn’t mean Jayda wasn’t a dead-end street too. She wasn’t good enough for him either.

They were seated at an outdoor table at a Manhattan bar waiting for Jayda to get there. Thursday evening drinks together, it was supposed to be, but as he glanced at his watch he knew he couldn’t wait much longer. He had stuff to do.

He worked for a small marketing firm right now, and was just a junior executive even there, but he still believed he was on an upward trajectory with no limits.

He still believed his dreams hadn’t failed him yet.

And he was still on the hunt for just the right rich girl who could propel him over the top.

He knew he had the great looks to pull it off.

And the body. He also knew he wasn’t pulling off shit with two broke bitches like Jayda and ‘Kela.

Although he knew Makela wasn’t entirely broke.

She was a hair stylist who owned a small beauty salon that kept her in Gucci and pearls without him having to lift a finger, but she wasn’t rolling in the dough the way he needed.

She even bartended part-time to help get herself over the hump.

And even though she was doing far better than Jayda, she was financially nowhere near the kind of sister he was after.

But the main gripe he had with Makela was that she nagged too much.

She was always on his ass about making her his number one, as if that was ever gonna happen.

But Jayda never pressured him that way. She never asked him to put a ring on it or to make a decision about their future or any of that whiny, clinging shit.

Although sometimes, if he were to be honest, he found himself watching her and wondering why she never went there. Sometimes he wondered if Jayda even liked him and was just using him because they split the rent. Sometimes he wondered if he was the one being played.

“Tell her tonight,” Makela said. “When y’all get home just tell her ass. I mean it, Kenny. No more delays. I’m tired of all of this pretending.”

“You’re tired of it? I’m the one that has to deal with her high expectations day in and day out.

That’s the thing with Jay. She expect me to be my best self and live my best life and speak my truth and all that Oprah Winfrey bullshit, when you don’t have any such expectations of me.

But that girl?” He shook his head and tapped his cigarette ash into the tray.

“I don’t know why I even bother with her. ”

But Makela was offended. She sat back in her seat.

He noticed the sudden shift in her mood. “What did I do now?”

“Why you had to say it like that?”

Kenny frowned. “Say what like what?”

“That Jayda expects so much from you and I don’t expect anything. That’s not true.”

“You know what I mean! She thinks I can be this great dude. She thinks that if I can just get my act together and do what she wants then I can conquer the world.” He smiled a smile of regret, because even he knew he didn’t have that kind of goodness in him Jayda sometimes saw.

Although he wished to God he did. And then he shook his head.

“She’s just crazy like that. That’s what I mean. ”

But Makela knew what he meant. She’d been competing with Jayda Robinson since she met her, even though she doubted if Jayda ever knew there was anything to compete about. Makela knew exactly what he meant.

And then, a few minutes later, the very bane of her existence showed up. “She’s here,” Makela said, and Kenny looked where she was looking too.

Jayda Catrice Robinson had rode up and was parking her e-bike in the bike section just off to the side from where they sat. Makela shook her head as they watched her. “Pushing thirty and still can’t afford a car.”

“Will you stop with the pushing thirty?” Kenny was annoyed. “She’s twenty-eight, same as you and me. Twenty-nine is when you’re pushing thirty because it’s literally the year before thirty. She’s not there yet.”

“You know what I’m saying. She’s old enough to have it together by now. We’ve got it together, why can’t she do the same? But you have to help her over and over again just to meet her rent.”

“That’s because I live there and we split the rent,” Kenny reminded her.

“But is that what you want when you can stay with me for free? And get all this for free,” she added with a smile as she looked down at her voluptuous body.

But it was no laughing matter to Kenny. Being with a broke-ass sister like Jayda was becoming a source of shame for him.

Jayda was a good person with a good heart, and she was smart as smart could be.

But she was nowhere near on his level, and he doubted if she ever would be.

Even the guys he hung out with were beginning to tell him so.

Even Jayda’s supposedly best friend Makela, although she was no true friend to anybody, was telling him so too.

Makela, he knew, had her own motives. But his boys had his back.

But Kenny also knew it was more complicated than that.

His boys and even Makela seemed to have forgotten that before Jayda got laid off she was bringing in almost as much money as he was bringing in.

And that nice apartment they live in was in her name only because her credit was great while his credit was so screwed up he couldn’t rent a dog.

She elevated him too. But nobody seemed to remember that part.

All they saw was that he kept moving on up, and she kept getting good jobs and losing them: She kept falling back down.

He and Makela continued to look as Jayda’s small frame grabbed her big shoulder bag and threw the strap across her neck in a slant across her nice-size chest. Which made Kenny crave her again.

That was going to be the hardest part for him to get over: not having Jayda in his bed.

But that big shoulder bag she loved to carry everywhere she went, along with those jeans and sleeveless blouses she loved to wear, only reinforced for him the problem: she was not in his league.

He wore a suit everywhere he went, and look at her!

But Jayda was oblivious to any of his thoughts.

She hurried across the sidewalk to their table in an upbeat mood.

“Sorry I’m so late,” she said breathlessly as she plopped down in the third seat.

“I had a delivery to a sweet old lady who wouldn’t stop talking to me. She even invited me in for a cupcake.”

“Let me guess,” said Kenny as he crossed his legs and tapped the ash of his cigarette into the tray, “you accepted the invite.”

“She was just lonely. I figured what’s a few minutes of my time? It could be the highlight of her day. Maybe the only time she gets to talk to somebody all day long.”

But Kenny wasn’t having it. “So you leave us hanging around waiting on your ass so you can eat a cupcake with some old bitch? Is that how you roll?”

“You maybe,” Jayda said dryly as the waiter came over to their table, “but not me.”

Makela looked at Kenny with that no she didn’t look on her face as if she expected him to set that woman straight. Kenny was staring at Jayda with his own nasty look.

But the waiter interrupted his response. “What would you care to drink, Miss?” he asked Jayda.

“I still plan on working a few more hours, so you’d better just bring me a Pepsi.”

“Coming right up,” the waiter said, and left.

“Imagine coming all the way to a bar for a Pepsi,” said Makela with a grin. “Who knew that was a thing?”

Jayda ignored her snide remark. But Kenny didn’t ignore Jayda’s. “What did you mean by that? I don’t leave people hanging. I don’t roll like that.”

When Jayda looked at Kenny, he could feel her disappointment in him. Because it was those eyes that did him in every time. Those big, tobacco-brown, almond-shaped eyes that looked as if she could see right through him. He wasn’t shit and somehow she knew it. Her eyes showed it.

“Where were you all night?” she asked him.

“Who said I wasn’t home all night? You were sleep. And I left early this morning.”

Jayda gave him that x-ray look again. “You’re gonna outright lie? That’s what we’re doing now?”

“I was hanging with the guys at the club last night, alright? It got late, I got drunk, and I couldn’t drive home. Since one of them lived nearby, I crashed at his place.”

Makela smiled a smile that Jayda caught. She looked at her so-called friend. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.” Makela started looking around as if it was no big deal. “Nothing at all.”

The waiter returned with the Pepsi. “Is that all for this table?”

“Yes thank you,” said Kenny. When the waiter left, Kenny began standing up. “I’ve got to run anyway,” he said as he pulled out his wallet.

“Run?” asked Jayda. “But I just got here.”

“But I’ve been here,” said Kenny as he tossed a fifty on the table, “and I got things to do.” He leaned down and kissed Jayda on her cheek. Smooth as velvet was her skin. He was going to miss that too. But Makela was right. Time for him to drop that zero. And he left.

Makela smiled and looked at Jayda. “When are you gonna wise up and get rid of that cheater, girl? You can do way better than Kenny.”

Jayda sipped from her glass of soda. Boo-Boo the Fool she was not.

“So can you,” she said as she sat her glass down.

She had no proof that Makela and Kenny were hooking up, or had hooked up last night, but she had plenty suspicions.

But she’d been judged falsely her whole life based on suspicions too. She wasn’t doing that to somebody else.

Besides, Makela was always going to be Makela.

They’d been so-called besties ever since Jayda and her father moved to Harlem when she was ten, and neither one of them had ever truly trusted the other one.

It wasn’t even a friendship in Jayda’s eyes.

Just somebody to hang out with. But Makela wasn’t her problem.

She knew who Makela was. Kenny was her problem.

But a sadness overtook her nonetheless. Because she knew eventually she had to face the truth that she was in yet another dead-end relationship that was going nowhere fast, doing nothing for her but making her feel worse about herself, and would lead to a breakup in the end anyway.

And one thing every former boyfriend knew about Jayda Robinson: once they dumped her (and it was always them to do the dumping because of her unrelenting need to always hold on to something rather than nothing), she never looked back. Never any breakup to makeup. Just breakups.

But she’d been with Kenny for over two years and knew him since high school.

She had hoped he would somehow work out.

She knew he wasn’t there yet. Not by a long shot.

But she had hoped he could get close enough.

All her other girlfriends settled down by settling for close enough . Why couldn’t she?

Because she wasn’t built like her girlfriends and she knew it.

He had to show her way more than he was showing her before she fully committed her heart.

She’d had her heart broken before by other boyfriends in the past whenever she leaped in too soon, and none of them had the potential of being husband material to her like Kenny had.

But Kenny had a long way to go in the character department, and she was getting tired of dragging him along.

She took another sip and then stood up. “I’d better grab some more gigs,” she said. “Time is money.”

Makela smiled. “And we all know you work hard for that money girl.”

Jayda didn’t return the smile. “See you later.” And she was off too.

Makela’s smile left as soon as Jayda left. Then she pulled out her phone and text Kenny.

Dump her ass tonight, Kenny. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Tonight !

And then she sat her phone on the table, picked up her glass of wine, crossed her legs, and smiled again. Enough with that bitch. It was her turn now.