Secrets On Lake Drive

Secrets On Lake Drive – A Novel

By Tina Martin

Copyright @ Tina Martin.

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means,
including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior
written consent of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and products are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual
events is entirely coincidental.

Visit the author’s website at:
www.tinamartin.net

Cover design by:
www.twasolutions.com

April 2004

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

“Girrrl, look who just walked up in here,”
Keisha ran over and whispered in my ear after her eyes caught sight
of Sean Beauvais. Never mind the fact I was busy talking to one of
my student’s parents. I mean, after all, it was parent-teacher
conference night for Milwaukee Public Schools.
Sheesh!
 I guess that’s what I get for having a best friend as a
coworker.

Obeying her order, I looked up at him, but I
wasn’t as excited as she was. Don’t get me wrong, the brother was
flyy…dressed a little too over-the-top for a parent-teacher
conference, but still, he was flyy. Had Keisha not told me that he
had just graced my classroom with his presence, I would’ve seen him
eventually. He had swagger, and his presence didn’t go unnoticed
wherever he was. When he entered a room, people gave him stares
like he had his own star on the Walk of Fame, and by his proud
attitude, he seemed to enjoy all of the attention.

He stepped in rocking a navy blue Sean Jean
pinstriped suit with a crisp white shirt, complete with circular
crystal cufflinks, a frost pink necktie, and some transparent,
smoke-lens shades with white frames, probably made by Gucci or
Versace. Usually I don’t call men pretty, but this man was the
exception. Sean put the F, I, N and three E’s in fine.

“Mo-ni-caaa.” Keisha nudged me again, slowly
enunciating my name as if I didn’t hear her the first time she
called me.

I heard her, but I was busy trying to
concentrate. I didn’t like distractions when dealing one-on-one
with my kids’ parents. I wouldn’t care if P. Diddy stepped in the
room. I took my job very seriously and Keisha knew that.

“Monica,” Keisha whispered again, this time
quickly.

I looked up at her, rocking a frown in my
forehead. We’ve been friends long enough for her to know what I’m
saying by the look I give her. And by the look that I gave her, she
knew she was bugging me, but she didn’t care. She was steering her
head in the direction she wanted me to look, Sean’s direction. By
her movements, it looked like the girl had snapped her neck or
something…like she was working out some kinks or doing some sort of
jacked-up techno dance.

I glanced up at him again as he got a little
closer. Truth be told, the brother was all that and then some. The
closer he got, the more his good looks became prevalent. Sean was a
light-skinned black man with green eyes. I was told his mother was
white and his father was Haitian. From what I could see, he stood a
few inches over six feet tall with a muscular build that would make
Boris Kodjoe jealous. He must have been one of those guys that
couldn’t survive without going to the gym at least once a day. I
would guess that he was also the type of dude to get manicures and
pedicures every two weeks and use those expensive body scrubs to
keep his skin radiant. Speaking of his skin, it was smooth – no
blemishes or razor bumps. His hair was dark black and curly like he
had some sort of a texturizer or an S curl, but it was probably his
genetics that resulted in him having a good healthy head of hair.
With all that good hair, I’m sure he made it a point to see the
barber weekly, probably at times when he didn’t even need a
haircut.

I think to call him a metrosexual would be a
little drastic, but that’s the title society usually pins on men
who obsess about their appearance more so than women. But in
today’s world what woman wouldn’t want a man who loved to look
good? Personally speaking, I sure wouldn’t want to deal with some
scruffy looking man who hasn’t had his toenails clipped in ten
years.

Anyway, I could clearly see he was all man.
He had a strong presence in my classroom, speaking to people whom
he didn’t know while walking with confidence through the crowd of
curious parents with one hand in his pocket. Yep, he was definitely
the pretty boy type.

I heard he was also a cocky son of a gun who
didn’t bite his tongue for anyone. If he had something to tell you,
he would tell you point-blank. If you didn’t like it, that was your
problem. There was no beating around the bush to try and find out
his disposition on matters.

I HAD ALREADY dismissed the Caucasian couple
I was chatting with. Might as well had since Keisha wasn’t about to
leave me alone. I should’ve slapped some sense into her, but I
couldn’t do that, being a kindergarten teacher and all.
What
kind of example will I be to my students?
I hadn’t been
teaching long, only for about ten months or so, and being only
twenty-four years of age, the older teachers would sometimes look
at me and turn up their noses like I was too young to be a teacher.
I mean, is there a rule that teachers have to be old as dirt? I
didn’t think so.

“Girrrl, he’s coming over here!” Keisha
patted my shoulder in a few rapid motions with the backside of her
hand, while panting at the same time.

She just couldn’t let it go. It wasn’t that
she was astounded by Mr. Beauvais’ good looks. Unlike me, she had a
man. Keisha was the proud girlfriend of a tall, sexy, mocha
brother. I was actually jealous the first time she introduced me to
him. He looked like a much younger Brian McKnight, same build and
everything. She just so happened to meet him down on the east side
where all the college students hang out nonstop until the early
morning hours. I always thought it was funny how the one night I
didn’t go out with her, she winds up with Mr. Perfect, and I’m
still single. I haven’t had a man since Cornelius, but whatever.
Keisha and Daryl were good together. She loved him and he loved
her. That’s how I know she wasn’t tapping me because she was
digging on Sean.

Keisha was excited and shocked to see Sean
in my class for one reason and one reason only – Sean Beauvais
never showed up for any of his son’s school activities. He didn’t
even bother to show up for our kindergarten rendition of
‘Goldilocks and The Three Bears’ back in January. No one was there
to watch Roman while he played the teeny tiny bear, and when the
play was over, Roman sat in my car for thirty minutes waiting for
his father’s chauffer to pick him up.

Getting back to Keisha, I had to say
something to the crazy woman. She was putting a hurting on my
shoulder.

“Keisha, if you pat my shoulder
one…more…freakin’ time...,” I said as discreetly as I could, ready
to backslap her.

“Girl, whatever,” she replied, completely
ignoring my prelude to a threat. “Looks like Roman is pulling Sean
over here. I’m out.” After all that nagging to get my attention,
Keisha ran like a coward and dipped in her classroom, which just so
happened to be next to mine.

I watched Roman steer his father the rest of
the way to my desk. Roman was my best student, and though it was
rumored that Mr. Beauvais and his now ex-wife had adopted him, I
swear the boy looks just like his father. When Sean finally gets
over here, I’ll really get to see if there are similarities between
the two. One thing was for sure. They both had those same green
eyes.

Chapter 2 -
Meet and
Greet

Contrary to popular belief, all teachers
have their favorite student, and Roman was mine. I’ll admit that I
showed him special treatment mostly because I felt like he wasn’t
getting any attention at home. His dad was a big-shot realtor and
who knew where the boy’s momma was. I heard she ran off to Europe
with some slick-haired white man. In addition to being without a
mother, Roman had no siblings.

After what seemed to be an eternity, Roman
was finally was able to get his father near me. I stood up to greet
them.

“Hey, Ms. Smith,” Roman said excitingly, all
dimples and red cheeks, looking at me like he didn’t just see me a
few hours ago when class was in session. “This is my daddy.”

Through his shades, I looked Sean square in
the eyes, flashed a quick smile, and stretched out my hand to him.
I was curious to see if the pretty boy had a nice, firm handshake.
They say you can learn a lot about a person by their handshake.

“Monica Smith. Nice to meet you
finally.”

“Sean Beauvais. Nice to meet you, too,” he said in a
masculine voice with a twinge of an accent. I didn’t expect his
voice to be that deep and the accent caught me off guard. I was
quite impressed.
Hmm…I guess you can’t judge a book by its
cover,
I thought to myself. I was also glad to hear the correct
pronunciation of his last name: Bo-vay.

He held on to my hand a little longer than a
normal handshake, and when he did, I had ample time to feel how
soft his hands were. The last time I felt anything that soft, I was
standing by the Kiss FM booth at State Fair Park with my hand
buried in a bag of pink and blue cotton candy, trying my hardest
not to get ran over by unsupervised minors and hormone-raged
teenagers. I wiggled my hand free, almost embarrassed because his
hands were in better shape than mine and I’m a woman
.
Though
his hands were softer than Charmin, he nailed the handshake, which
meant he was an extravert and not some shy pushover.

There was a familiarity about him. I
couldn’t quite put my finger on where I met him before, but there
was something about his eyes and the way he looked at me that made
me wonder if we ever crossed paths before. We couldn’t have,
though. There was no way I could ever forget a man who looked that
good.
Daaang you fine
was my first thought when I saw him
and I smiled to myself just thinking about the notion of actually
telling the man that.

“Roman, why don’t you run off and play,
okay?”

“Okay, Dad.”

Being the well-behaved, six-year-old that he
was, Roman always did as he was told. He wasn’t one of those
spoiled rotten kids who talked back to their parents, like Jill,
the little freckle-faced girl with Attention Deficit Disorder that
I was having problems with in class. Her mom told me that she was
in the process of trying to get some pills for the girl. I was
trying to talk her out of it, but Keisha kept bumping me, trying to
let me know the almighty Sean Beauvais was here. If you ask me, the
only thing Jill needed was a good ol’ fashion spanking. Nowadays
people want to take drugs for everything.

After Sean sent Roman off to play, he looked
at me with both hands in his pockets as if to say,
now what
?
I told him I would be with him momentarily, then leaned over my
desk to grab my grade book. Out of the corner of my eye, I could
see him checking me out, looking me up and down, checking out the
derrière. He was practically undressing me with his eyes. Then he
found an interest in my shoes, staring hard like he wanted to ask
me who the designer was.

Designer brands on my salary?
Puh-leease.
I wasn’t into material possessions. I consider
myself to be a very modest, down-to-earth type of woman, something
rare to find in Milwaukee. Usually in this city you find three
types of women.

You had the high-maintenance types that spent more
time in hair and nail salons than they did at work. Those were the
ones that had to wear clothes with the designer name printed
somewhere on it for public display, like Baby Phat, Juicy Couture,
BCBG and Akademiks. They craved attention, and what better way to
get it than by wearing a halter top, a pair of jeans that are two
sizes too small, and a pair of fuchsia Manolo Blahniks.

Second was the strong, black responsible
woman. This type of woman tried her best to get everything out of
life, living up to her potential every day. She was also the good
wife and mother, a bargain hunter who made sure she spent every
dollar wisely for the sake of her family. Sometimes, “fake it ‘til
you make it” was her motto, but you can’t blame a woman for that.
After all, a Gucci bag doesn’t look so cute when there isn’t any
food on the table.

Then there were the straight-hood, ghetto
girls whose sole intent in life was to be as obnoxious as possible,
wearing chipped red nail polish and an excessive amount of weave in
the high oranges, reds, greens, and burgundies. As if the
outrageous hair color and styles were not enough, they loved
bringing more attention to themselves by talking as loudly as they
can on their prepaid cell phones, while they complained about their
miserable lives in public. They would broadcast all their business
in the store while simultaneously spending their welfare checks and
trying to keep up with three snotty-nose youngins that all have
different daddies.