Heaven Forbid (31 page)

A READING GROUP GUIDE

HEAVEN FORBID

LUTISHIA LOVELY

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

The following questions
are intended to enhance
your group’s reading
of this book.

1. What were your first thoughts when Passion pulled ladies’ underwear out of Stanley’s luggage?
   
2. Why do you think Stanley acted so strongly to Passion’s demand for sex, to the point that their argument became physical?
   
3. Happily married couple Lavon and Carla Chapman met and began their relationship while Carla was still married to Stan Lee, yet they both feel the relationship is a spiritual one that God has blessed. What are your thoughts about their soul-mate relationship?
   
4. When Dorothea Noble Bates Jenkins first came to Palestine, Reverend Doctor O assured Maxine that their affair was long over. Of course, we found out it wasn’t. Do you think it’s ever possible, or okay, for two people who’ve been involved in an affair to remain “just friends”?
   
5. When Mama Max found the sex doll in Obadiah’s den, she was very upset. What is your view on various sex toys used within the confines of marriage?
   
6. Bryce told Stan that King James, the royal subject who commissioned the world’s most popular Bible, was gay. It is a possibility that has been debated for decades. If this is true, what are your thoughts on it? Would King James being gay change your view of these holy scriptures?
   
7. Once Mama Max discovered the sex toys, she left the reverend and returned to Kansas. Do you think she had a right to leave him, or do you think she should have stayed?
   
8. During a time when Stan opened up to Passion, he admitted that his conservative upbringing prevented him from enjoying himself sexually. Has there been anything in your life—or the life of someone you know—that impacted your sexuality or matters of intimacy? If so, what and how?
   
9. Stan Lee accepted the position on the Cathedral’s board knowing that Bryce Covington was a participant. Do you think he had ulterior motives for doing this? Or do you believe he felt strong enough to work alongside him, given his feelings?
   
10. Passion knows that her past actions played a significant part in Stan and Carla getting divorced. After three years of marriage, she feels a camaraderie with Carla Lee. What do you think about this “what goes around comes around” realization?
    
11. African American women make up the greatest number of new HIV cases in our country. Many of these cases are from men on the “down low,” and many of these DL men are God-fearing, churchgoing Christians. What part do you think the strong antihomosexual stance within the church has in this growing statistic?
    
12. Part of the reason why it was hard for Passion to get a handle on her problems with Stan is that she’d lost herself in the marriage and—in her own words—had become a shadow of the woman who’d attracted Stan in the first place. Has this ever happened to you? In the effort to find someone, have you ever lost yourself?
    
13. Molestation, especially when it involves family members, is often hidden and not talked about. Have you, or someone you know, been sexually molested? Now is the time to claim your strength by releasing the secret!
    
14. What are your thoughts regarding Dorothea’s revelation about aborting her and Obadiah’s love child forty years ago? Does this event somehow validate her love for this married man? Why or why not?
    
15. Lavon and Carla Chapman have a satisfying, uninhibited sex life. How is yours? Has your religious upbringing caused you to be conservative when it comes to sex? Why or why not?
    
16. Carla saw sexually suggestive pictures on her daughter’s screen saver, and then checked out her MySpace and other social networking sites. Would you view your child’s site without their knowledge? Do you feel this is an invasion of privacy or the right of a parent?
    
17. What are your thoughts about Kelvin Petersen? Do you think he really loves Princess, or did the competitor in him rise up when he saw her with Rafael?
    
18. Princess chose Rafael. Do you think he is her true love? Do you think their relationship will last? Would you rather have seen her with Kelvin?
    
19. Kelvin Jr. is not Kelvin’s biological child, but he is the only father the child has known for three years. What role, if any, do you feel Kelvin should play in this child’s future? Should he be obligated to continue paying child support? Why or why not?
    
20. Stan chose Passion instead of Bryce. Do you think his love for God is enough to calm his homosexual desires? Do you think their marriage will last? Why or why not?
    

Lutishia Lovely dishes up a sexy new series following the hot tempers and tantalizing temptations of a family whose restaurant is
the
place for a tasty meal….

All Up in My Business

Coming in March 2011 from Dafina Books

Here’s an excerpt from
All Up in My Business
….

Adam Livingston loved the taste of her thighs. Tender on the inside and crispy on the outside, nobody could fry chicken better than Candace, his wife. Even now—after living and working together for more than three decades—his mouth still watered at the thought of this juicy dark meat. Whether the succulent morsels on his dinner plate or those he hovered over when between the sheets, Candace knew how to please him. Unfortunately, the way she sexed him and handled a bird aside, Adam knew that Candace in the kitchen wasn’t necessarily a good thing. His wife rarely cooked these days, preferring to either eat at one of their restaurants or have their on-call personal chef whip up an intimate lunch or dinner with guests. Now, when Candace graced the kitchen with her presence, it usually meant a conversation was coming regarding something he’d rather not discuss with her—namely her extravagant spending sprees, plastic surgery, or the ongoing competition between their sons.

Technically, money wasn’t a problem. The restaurant his parents had opened in Atlanta fifty years ago had grown into a soul food empire—with ten highly successful restaurants in seven Southern states. The barbeque sauce his grandfather had created, which was used to slather on their most popular menu item, baby back ribs, had been sold in grocery stores nationwide for the past five years, and the Livingston empire now included upscale liquor stores and high-end real estate. Still, Candace could spend money faster than Usain Bolt ran the hundred-yard dash. Just last year she’d renovated their kitchen to the tune of fifty thousand dollars, had their backyard relandscaped to resemble the scenic islands they’d visited on their thirtieth wedding anniversary, and had one of the guest bedrooms converted to a closet to handle her almost daily jaunts to Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s and Saks. These renovations had increased the value of their mansion and had made Candace happy. So Adam hadn’t complained…too much.

When it came to plastic surgery, Adam thought his wife had had enough. She’d always been beautiful in his eyes, ever since he saw her walking across the Clark Atlanta campus back in the seventies. She’d looked like a Fashion Fair model to him that day, her dark caramel skin enhanced by the beige mini she wore along with similarly colored thigh-high boots. Her long, thick hair had moved with the sway of her hips as she’d casually chatted with a friend. A couple days later, when he saw her in the cafeteria, he’d immediately gone over and introduced himself. She was even finer up close than she’d been from a distance, and after taking one look into the almond-shaped brown eyes that sat above a wide yet nicely shaped nose and luscious lips, Adam had gotten the distinct impression that he was looking at the mother of his children. This feeling proved prophetic—Candace became pregnant during her junior year, when Adam was a senior. They’d married that summer and welcomed their first, Malcolm LeMarcus, the following December.

Even after having their second son, Toussaint LeVon, Candace stayed slim. Into her forties, when she finally gained thirty pounds that didn’t shed easily, Adam still thought she was fine. She was five foot seven, and to him the extra weight hardly showed. Candace hadn’t seemed that bothered by it, either, until her sister-in-law, his twin brother’s wife, Dianne, had commented on Candace being “fat” during a family get-together and had suggested liposuction as a quick way to take the weight off in time for their cruise to the Fiji Islands. Candace had been so pleased with the results that a tummy tuck soon followed, and breast implants followed that. Any brothah would be pleased to squeeze a set of firm titties, even if he’d had to pay for them, and Adam was no exception. But a couple weeks ago, when Candace started complaining about her wide nose, Adam had shut her down immediately. “You’re becoming addicted to this shit,” he’d warned. “If you don’t stop cutting on the body God gave you, you’re going to become as obsessed as Michael Jackson was, may he rest in peace. You look fine, Can. Give it a rest.” So he hoped she’d gotten the message, because he didn’t intend to pay the highly skilled and equally expensive cut-and-paste doctor another dime.

That left the topic of his and Candace’s sons. The midyear company meeting was in two weeks, right after Juneteenth, so most likely, Candace would want to butter him up regarding some plan in the works—probably another of Toussaint’s outlandish ideas. Adam loved his youngest son, but he swore that boy didn’t have a fear bone in his body. Where Malcolm was more like Adam, in looks and demeanor, Toussaint was definitely his mother’s child. Like her, he was brilliant, but he’d also inherited her traits of impulsiveness and flamboyance. Toussaint had run an idea by him some months ago, an idea that Adam had nipped in the bud as quickly as he had Candace’s nose-job suggestion. The economy was too unstable to do anything new now, he’d explained. Adam wasn’t sure how the other players would feel about constructing more Taste of Soul locations across the country, but he hoped that his and Candace’s vote would be the same—no f’ing way. The more Adam thought about it, however, the more he thought this might be exactly why he smelled chicken frying.
Damn, I have too much on my mind to argue with Candace about this right now.

One thing on his mind was the e-mail he’d just received on his smartphone, from the woman who’d been trying to seduce him for the past two years. He’d met Joyce Witherspoon in the clubhouse after a golf outing and had exchanged business cards, because she’d told Adam of her plans to start an event-planning business and her desire to contract with Taste of Soul as one of the catering partners. Her e-mails had slowly gone from strictly business to potential pleasure, even as she launched the successful, high-profile business that kept the Taste of Soul catering arm busy. Adam was flattered, and Joyce was attractive, but he had told the sistah that he was happily married. Joyce’s response had been quick and witty. “You’re married, but are you flexible?” Even after assuring her there was no room in his bed for a third party, she’d continued her erotic banter in various phone calls and e-mails. Adam reread Joyce’s detailed description of what she wanted to do to him with her mouth and then pushed
DELETE
. He had always been faithful but could no longer ignore the fact that Joyce’s constant flirtations and rapt adoration was wearing him down.
I’ve got to do something about this…and soon.
Adam picked up the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
and pulled out the sports section, determined to swap thoughts of Joyce’s mouth with those of his wife’s thighs—the ones he’d be eating at the dinner table soon, and in the bedroom later.

Candace Long-Livingston poured melted butter into the baking pan and then sparsely coated each buttermilk biscuit with the warm liquid before spacing the dough out evenly in the bottom of the pan. She loved cooking, especially now that she didn’t do it often. It was a love she’d inherited from the grandmother who’d helped support a family of four by cooking for an affluent family in their hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Amanda Long would tell Candace as she whipped up a slap-your-mama pound cake or an oh-no-you-didn’t peach cobbler. Candace smiled at the memory of those kitchen counseling sessions. Adam may have thought it was her small waist and big booty that had captured his heart, but Candace knew it was those candied yams and collard greens she’d fixed while they were dating. But somewhere between the birth of their first son and the opening of their second restaurant, the thrill had gone. She’d worked long, arduous hours at the Buckhead location, the same tony suburb where they lived, and while it had been a labor of love, her joy for fixing food had been replaced by repulsion. There’d been days when she’d thought that if she fried, smothered, or baked another anything, she’d lose her mind.

Tonight she cooked with love, purpose…and guilt. Love because that when it came to cooking, she knew she could “throw down.” Adam loved food, and her fried chicken was his favorite. Purpose because she thought Toussaint’s latest idea was a stroke of genius, that the timing for said idea was perfect, that Adam would surely be against it, and that if anybody could change his mind, she could by using various types of thighs. And guilt because after months of harmless flirting with Q, the personal trainer she’d hired to help tone the very thighs her husband admired, they’d taken their relationship to another level. During her last two sessions, sit-ups, squats, and running on the treadmill weren’t the only reasons she’d sweated. And while Candace knew that she should stop the madness, should never even have started down this road, she honestly didn’t know if she could heed the red light and make a U-turn back into monogamy. There was no doubt that Candace loved Adam. But thugalicious cocoa cutie Quintin Bright, who was younger than Toussaint, had turned a sistah out for the second time in as many weeks—with sixty minutes of working out followed by nine inches of love.