Page 6 of Chosen By a Billionaire (Rags to Romance #24)
Later that night, Jayda dropped by her apartment to change out of the muddy clothes she’d been forced to work in all that day after getting drenched by that idiot limo driver.
Her other gig, as a waitress at the Sandhurst restaurant, required her to wear a white, long sleeve shirt, black trousers, and black tennis shoes.
She showered and changed into that outfit, put on her name tag, and then looked in the closet to see if Kenny had come back for the rest of his things.
He had a few more clothing items to get, and paperwork too.
Which only annoyed her even more. They were done.
She didn’t ever want to see his face again.
She almost wanted to bleach the rest of his things the way those ladies did on those TV shows and be done with his ass for real.
But she didn’t have that kind of maliciousness in her.
But one thing for sure: She’d never go back to a man who had spoken to her so nastily as if he couldn’t stand the sight of her.
She’d never go that low. But she had rent that was coming due next month and they always split the rent.
Now it was all up to her? On her two pieces of jobs?
How in the world was she going to manage that?
She wanted to pray about it: She knew prayer changed things.
But she would feel like a hypocrite if she even tried.
Although she was raised in the church thanks to her father, and believed fervently in God, she’d been living for nearly a year with a man who wasn’t her husband, was estranged from her drama-plagued family for even longer than that, and just didn’t feel like she deserved God’s help.
She wasn’t living right. She didn’t feel clean and innocent and full of hope and vitality the way she felt when she first arrived in New York when she was ten years old.
The big city, and all those fated dreams she had of making it big herself, had sucked the girl she used to be completely out of her.
And Kenny and all those heartbreaking boyfriends before him did the rest.
She closed the closet door, looked into the mirror to try and make some sense out of her long, naturally curly hair, but she couldn’t do it. She put it in a ponytail, kept a little bang up front, and took off. She was going to be late if she didn’t hurry.
But she had one problem: She had to avoid, at all costs, her landlord. There was no back way out: you had to go through the lobby. And she was convinced he had cameras in his downstairs apartment that showed him everybody coming and going.
Especially those already on his radar.
She hurried across the lobby and was five feet from the exit door, just five feet, when his grubby little body came out of his apartment like The Flash. He flung open that door so fast, in fact, that it startled her.
“Mr. Tanaka, you scared me!”
“You scare self,” he said in his broken English. Japanese was his native tongue. “That why you try get way. Next month no late. Will no accept late rent. You tell Kenny. No late rent. No accept. Next month no late.”
Jayda always paid her share on time. But Kenny, though he always paid, was always late. “Yes sir.”
“No late. No accept late no more. I clear?”
“Crystal.Sir.”
Then he looked down the length of her body, which made her frown. “What are you looking at?”
“You. I look you. You come bed and be late. Maybe I accept. Black I like. Ass I like. Ass you give. Maybe I accept late.”
Jayda couldn’t believe it. Was that all men ever thought about?
Was that it ??? And it angered her. “Kiss my black ass,” she said to her landlord.
“You’ll have your rent next month and you’ll have it on time.
” She didn’t know that to be true, but she knew it had to be true or she was out on her rear. She hurried out of that building.
She shook her head as she hurried down the steps.
And her reaction, she felt in a nutshell, was why she knew she didn’t deserve any help from the good Lord.
She always put her own foot in it. He was a creep, but she should have learned by now how to manipulate creeps to her advantage.
Her mother always told her that she expected too much from these men out here, and that she could catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
But her mother wasn’t exactly the best teacher.
She talked a good game, but didn’t live it.
That was why Jayda couldn’t wait to leave Kentucky and all that drama in her family.
When her parents divorced, her father made clear she was coming with him.
Her mother objected, but the courts awarded her father custody of her.
Her mother got the rest of the siblings, who wanted to stay in Kentucky with her, but he got their youngest child Jayda.
Which she felt was the best thing that ever happened to her.
Not that Kentucky was bad. It wasn’t. It had beautiful countrysides and blacks and whites got along great where she came from. They were like family to each other. But that only meant they were trainwrecks too.
She hopped on her e-bike and took off.