Pastor Needs a Boo (31 page)

“Yeah. Denzelle's a smooth dancer,” Veronica told them.

“But he ain't quite got it like Marsha. And that's the problem, right?”

“Dayeesha, he ain't even got it close to ‘like Marsha.'”

Veronica was about to say some more but stopped short when she saw Denzelle coming toward them. That cool bravado was gone. Denzelle was frowning and scratching the back of his head like he was trying to figure out the answers to a midterm exam he hadn't studied for.

“You think you have it all down, Pastor?” Dayeesha asked, with mischief lighting up her eyes.

She thought he was getting just what he deserved. Pastor was always acting like he was too cool to like Marsha. And Veronica was right. Reverend Flowers was mad because Marsha could run circles around him in a coma when it came to dancing. And while Denzelle could get out on the floor and look good, Marsha could get out on the floor and give Charlie Wilson himself a run for his money. And Charlie Wilson could dance his butt off.

“So,” Marsha said, bouncing up on them, “are you for ready this thing?”

“I'm always ready, Baby,” Denzelle answered, trying not to laugh when he observed Marsha's discomfort and efforts to remain cool under his fire. He knew he was wrong to say that but couldn't help it. Plus, the expressions on Veronica's, Keisha's, and Dayeesha's faces were so priceless, it made him want to say some more. But he knew that would not be appropriate. He was still their pastor and had to honor his commitment to being a good shepherd.

“You'll be ready, Denzelle,” Veronica put in. “Today is Monday. You have close to two weeks to get this thing wrapped up.”

“Yeah, you'll be ready, Denzelle,” Marsha said, acting like she hadn't heard all of that heat and sizzle in his voice.

 

Chapter Twenty-two

“I gave you specific instructions to sign us up to compete in the
Dancing with the Stars
program at Denzelle Flowers's church, Camille,” Xavier yelled at his wife.

“Why are you hollering at me like that, Xavier?” Camille Franklin screamed back. “It's not like your tired, cheating, no-good, I-can't-stand-you self can dance. You cannot even clap on the white people beat.”

“What in the hell is the ‘white people beat,' Camille?” Xavier said through clenched teethed. He was seething, and the more he looked at his wife the more he hated her. He couldn't stand Camille.

“Xavier, if you have to ask me a dumb-butt question like that, it confirms you can't clap right. I should have known something was wrong with you when you told me that you didn't like Al Green, Eric Benet, Teddy Pendergrass, Mary J. Blige, Stephanie Mills, or En Vogue. What black man on this earth does not like En Vogue, for goodness sake?”

“I like Fergie,” Xavier said calmly.

“Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas?” Camille asked. “I like Fergie, too. But we are talkin' 'bout sistahs. And the last time I checked, Fergie was white.”

“Well then, how about Joss Stone?” Xavier said.

“Joss Stone has great music. But can you dig around in your gray matter and pull up one good-singing black woman?”

“Kathleen Battle.”

“As in the opera singer, Kathleen Battle, Kathleen Battle?”

“None other,” Xavier answered in the middle of sending a text to Tatiana.

“I'm not going to stand here and pretend like you are not texting that skank you are screwing around with, Xavier.”

“I'm not expecting you to pretend anything, Camille. You can read the text if you want to.”

Xavier hit send on his phone and said, “We wouldn't even be in this predicament if you had listened to me. I tried to get you to pay me for a divorce a year ago. Now that I'm running for bishop, we are stuck with each other for who knows how long.”

“I wasn't paying you to leave me,” Camille told him.

“I don't know why not,” he told her in a hard and nasty voice. “Your daddy wrote a pretty big check to get me to marry your ugly behind.”

Camille bit her bottom lip to help her hold back the tears. She'd always known she was not the cutest woman. But it had never occurred to her that she was ugly. She looked just like her father.

“He was ugly, too,” Xavier said, as if he heard her thoughts.

Xavier didn't know what part of “you ugly” his wife didn't get. He must have been awfully broke to take that little measly fifty grand Dr. Creighton put in his account on his wedding day. He ran through that money like it really was water. Xavier didn't even have sense enough to put it in a CD account to collect interest and grow a bit of capital. It wasn't like he needed the fifty thousand to live off of. Camille's father had given his baby plenty of start-up money for her new marriage.

“I'm not staying married to you, Xavier. And I'm not paying you a dime. We have an airtight prenup. So I guess you and ‘ho-ella' will just have to make do on the cool million you are to receive for being my husband all of these miserable years.”

Camille started laughing at the thought of Xavier and Tatiana trying to have a good life off of $1 million. Heck, they were living off of $1.8 million a year right now. That was only her annual trust fund payment. Did Xavier really think that a Creighton—no, better yet, a Davidson—was going to let go of some cash? She'd rather stay ugly and die first.

Xavier stared at Camille for a moment. She wasn't really what he'd call ugly when in a benevolent mood. Camille was actually what most church folk would describe as plain. She just had a bunch of spoiled and nasty ways that helped to bump her up from plain to ugly.

He had met some very plain women in the churches he pastored who had lovely hearts. Few if any folk would have called any of those women ugly. Even the women who wore painfully plain outfits with those flat shoes that practically screamed “I'm saved” had something special and beautiful about them.

But Camille and women like her? There was little hope of them ever becoming someone's beauty—even with a closet full of incredibly beautiful clothes. Camille had a bedroom-size closet filled up with some of the most beautiful designer clothes Xavier had ever seen. Xavier was a man, and he gaped every time he went into Camille's closet.

However, those fancy clothes didn't do a thing to flatter the girl. Half the time they didn't even fit her right. Xavier didn't know what his wife was doing when she went shopping for clothes. But whatever it was, she needed to quit.

Camille once spent fifteen hundred dollars on some mustard, olive green, and gray–stripped leggings, a mustard-colored tunic, and olive green suede ankle boots. Who wore a mustard-colored shirt next to brown skin with a heavy dose of yellow in it?

“Camille,” Xavier said to distract her. He didn't appreciate the way she was texting and laughing at the responses to the texts she had sent.

“Umm … hmm…,” she responded halfheartedly, and then started laughing and murmuring, “You are too crazy,” when she read the next text message.

Xavier walked over to where his wife was standing and reached out to snatch that iPhone out of her hand.

“I wish you would, Xavier,” she snapped, and then sent another text.

“Your little boy toy can't be all that amusing.” Xavier could not believe he caught Camille having affairs with two men—Jimmy and Ramon. He found out about Ramon first. Then, there was Jimmy. And Ramon's dumb, young self had the nerve to fall in love with his wife. How in the hell did a man fall in love with Camille's evil self? And why did the brother talk about being in love with her so much it got back to Xavier?

“I don't have a boy toy,” Camille said. “He is a grown-tailed man. More man than you are.”

“Are you going to stand in my face and tell me that Ramon Brown isn't a boy toy?”

“Ramon and I broke up,” Camille said calmly, sounding like she was talking to a close girlfriend.

Xavier wondered why she would break it off with a man who he believed made her happy. Camille hooked-up with Jimmy to get back at him, but there was something special about Ramon.

If Ramon wasn't going with his wife, Xavier probably would have liked the brother. She didn't follow Xavier around so much when she was with Ramon. Camille starting making his life absolutely miserable again, when she started fooling around with Jimmy. But when she was with Ramon? Camille was happier and left Xavier alone when she had been with Ramon.

“What did Ramon do to make you break it off with him? I mean, why keep Jimmy and get rid of Ramon?”

“Ramon and I didn't have anything in common, for Pete's sake,” Camille answered.

“And we do?” Xavier asked. “And better yet, you and Jimmy have something in common?”

“No, you and I don't have anything in common either, other than we can't stand each other. But really, Xavier, Ramon and I are worlds apart. And Jimmy? Well, Jimmy is Jimmy. Plus, Ramon and I grew apart when he started going to church on regular Sundays—not just Easter Sunday and Mother's Day.”

“But you go to church on regular Sundays, my dear. What is wrong with that? I would think you'd appreciate that quality in a man. Plus, Jimmy's ugly behind is always up in church. Sometimes I wish that joker would stay home on Sunday mornings so I don't have to look at him.”

“Jimmy is different, Xavier. He only goes to church like some people go to a job they don't really like but like the salary and benefits enough to tolerate it and not quit. He's a big church devil. And church devils LOVE to go to church.”

“Camille, that still doesn't help me understand why Ramon's going to church bothered you enough to push him away from you.”

“Ramon was getting too real about church. He was listening to the sermons and starting to read his Bible everyday. Do you know he had the nerve to call me and ask me to pray for him?”

“Imagine that,” Xavier said, trying not to laugh. This was hilarious. Who knew Camille didn't want a church-going man to be her man on the side?

“And do you know that Ramon put his hands on my head and started praying for my deliverance? And get this, he is saved. I mean, really—the man is genuinely saved and loves the Lord. He wanted me to make up my mind and chose to be either your wife or his wife. He got to quoting Paul, talking about it was better to marry than to burn.”

“So, you're telling me that you don't want to be involved with a saved man.”

“Yeah, that's exactly what I'm telling you,” Camille said. “He can go to church, but I don't want him to be saved. Like you, Xavier. You are always doing something in church, but you are about as saved as I am.”

Xavier just nodded. No use trying to argue with his wife on that one. Bishop Washington once told him that wives, even the ones you wanted to get rid of, knew you in a way no other woman did. One day he would have to tell Bishop he was right.

“But Camille, I hate it that you broke up with Ramon. There was a tiny part of me that kind of liked the brother. He always seemed so in love with you.”

“Yeah, he did. But I couldn't stay with him—especially after he joined Apostle Grady Gray's church. You don't mess with folk at Grady Gray's church. They are saved for real. And you don't want to have to deal with God for trying to mess over one of those people.”

Xavier nodded. Camille was right. It was dangerous to try and mess with folk at Jubilee Temple Holiness Church II.

If Ramon was saved and a member of Grady's church, it was best to let him go. Plus, Camille couldn't get divorced and marry Ramon anyway. Well, she could—but if she did, chances were great that Camille would be resting in that fancy tomb next to her parents before the official separation papers were signed and printed out.

He got a text from Luther Howard asking if he had more information on the
Dancing with the Stars
event at Denzelle Flowers's church. Xavier was about to answer that text when it occurred to him that if Ramon was out of Camille's life, how long had he been gone? And who was she doing all of that texting with? She rarely texted Jimmy when he was around.

Camille was sitting on the love seat in the solarium having a good time texting.

“If Ramon is gone, Camille, and Jimmy won't text when I'm around, who in the hell is it that you are so engrossed with?” Xavier snapped.

Camille looked up at Xavier. He was back to normal. For a moment she had enjoyed being around him. She said, “Do you really want to know?”

“Were you with him when…?”

“When you were with your ho?”

“Don't you talk about Tatiana like that—you understand me, Camille?”

“I am your wife,” she spat out. “My money is what made it possible for you to drive that Aston Martin V8 Vantage your skank is always drooling over. So I can and I will talk about your broke ho anytime and any way I please.”

“Tatiana is far from broke,” Xavier said testily.

“She is a broke ho, and that is the real deal,” Camille told him calmly. She knew Tatiana's husband made very good money. But Todd Townsend didn't have the kind of money Camille Franklin had.

She and Xavier had an official annual couple's income of $1.8 million. But there was another fund that belonged only to Camille. Her trust, which Xavier couldn't touch, paid $4 million a year. They had a disposable income of close to $6 million a year.

Camille was very good with money. Most years they only lived off of $3 million. The rest she invested in a fund that was separate from her trust. She was building up some serious capital from that fund. Camille knew Tatiana didn't have anything close to the kind of money she was used to dealing with.

“You are so stuck-up, Camille.”

“Get over it.”

“Who is your new man?” Xavier asked her. He wasn't comfortable with his wife's new man being all up and about in her world without him having a clue about the man's identity.