Larger Than Lyfe (16 page)

“Fuck!” Keshari snapped.

“Manage the affairs of the talent search project,” David advised. “This will pretty quickly blow over. With the Whitney Houstons and Britney Spearses of the world maintaining constant drama, there will be a new, sensationalized story that bumps you out of the spotlight in no time.”

“I certainly hope so,” Keshari said. “All of this personalized press coverage is definitely not something that I need right now.”

After more than a week, the loss of privacy began to wear on Mars’s nerves and patience almost as much as Keshari’s. For the first time, Mars considered the potential repercussions that the media circus could have directly on his own affairs. On any given day, phone calls could come through from the East Coast ASCAP offices regarding the intensive media coverage o
f his new relationship,
particularly considering the morals clause in his contract with ASCAP. Mars had been so caught up in his pursuit of Keshari that he had never even taken the time to seriously think and anticipate the degree of media coverage that his new romance with her might receive. He’d worked in the entertainment industry since graduating from law school and, now, he had a far better understanding from personal experience how troubled and eccentric some celebrities became from having to live their lives in a fish bowl, tracked incessantly by media. The media coverage, however, did nothing at a
ll to put a damper on what was blossoming between Keshari and Mars. If anything, it brought them closer. Over the duration of a few days in Caribbean paradise, Keshari had opened her heart to Mars and he had done the same for her. They were falling in love and it was amazing. They were perfect for each other and the positive energy that was created within their new relationship radiated from the both of them and bathed the people around them in its light.

For Keshari, Mars was not only gorgeous, incredibly sexy from the top of his bald head to his feet, he was super-intelligent and driven, the youngest person to ever command the role of general counsel for ASCAP. He was also responsible and funny and sensitive and caring…and positively wicked in bed. Mars brought a level of happiness and peace to her very complicated world that she could not remember having felt since she lost her mother. When Mars wrapped his strong arms around her and kissed her, all of the chaos that crowded her mind seemed to drift away. After Ricky had instru
cted her to break things off with Mars and focus on running the affairs of The Consortium in his absence, Keshari was literally risking her life to be with Mars…and, when she considered the unbelievable way that he made her feel all of the time, she didn’t care.

For Mars, everything about Keshari was to be admired and adored. He’d been drawn to her like a moth to a flame from the moment that he’d accidentally spilled champagne on her. She was the most physically beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes on in his entire life, but that was merely the tip of the iceberg about her. She possessed one of the most shrewd business minds he’d ever had the opportunity to encounter. Then there was the side of her that she kept tucked so carefully away, an unbelievable sweetness mixed with an almost childlike vulnerability. As a powerful executive in the
music industry, Mars had certainly been through his share of beautiful, amazing women, but there were qualities about Keshari that were simply extraordinary. It made him want to turn in his “player card” with no regrets. When he stared down into the deep mystery that her green eyes held, he had hopes of the future…with her.

The media, the paparazzi, and the public loved every single second of the two of them together. It was better than romance fiction.

On her way to a morning meeting with a client, Portia stopped at Starbucks in Brentwood for a latte, and then ran across the street to the sidewalk magazine vendor to pick up a
Los Angeles Times
and a stack of copies of the new issue of
Interior Design
. Her firm had been featured in
Interior Design
in a story called “Ultra Modern Meets Africa” that had depicted what she’d done to her very own Beverly Hills loft. The cover of
Entertainment Weekly
caught her eye.
“Love Is in the Air: Record Mogul Keshari Mitchell Connects with ASCAP General Counsel.”

Portia saw bright red as she stared furiously at the tabloid ph
otograph
of Mars caught in a passionate lip lock with Keshari Mitchell, CEO of Larger Than Lyfe Entertainment, on a private stretch of beach in Negril, Jamaica. The tropical setting and the two beautiful people in it were perfect, as if it were all an orchestrated scene photographed for a postcard. Keshari was wearing a black, Versace bikini that Portia also owned…and that she intended to burn as soon as she got home…and a shirtless Mars wore white linen trousers rolled up at the ankles that highlighted his suntanned, caramel brown skin. The two looked so madly fucking in love and t
he press was clearly eating it up. Portia wanted to scream, vomit, and break some shit all at the same time. She could barely keep her thoughts on her work as she went through fabric swatches and paint colors with her wealthy client in preparation for decorating the client’s new Hollywood Hills home. She couldn’t wait to go to Mars’s condo to confront him.

Just after six o’clock that evening, Portia arrived at Mars’s condo.

“Shit!” Mars snapped under his breath as he looked through the peephole.

Wearing black Sean John sweatpants and no shirt, he reluctantly opened the door. He still wore the amazing tan that he’d acquired in Negril. That suntan made Portia fuming mad all over again as she whisked past Mars through his foyer and into the condo’s huge living room that she had decorated.

She sat down on the leather sectional, crossed her long legs, and came right to the point. She pulled a copy of
Entertainment Weekly
from her bag and dropped it on the glass cocktail table in front of Mars.

“Do you care to explain this?” Portia asked succinctly.

Mars stared down at the photograph of Keshari and him. The passion between the two of them was practically tangible on the page. The icy silence coming from Portia as she awaited his explanation seemed to stretch on and on. Mars really owed her no explanation, but he tried to piece together the right words to say to her nevertheless.

“Portia…look. I hope that you didn’t show up here at my apartment on some sort of jealous tirade. I thought that we had a clear understanding that the two of us are not exclusive. If memory stands correct, it was your idea.”

Portia was speechless, even though she’d spent the entire day composing in her mind, frame by frame, precisely how she planned to curse Mars out once she saw him that evening.

Not exclusive? Not exclusive?! she thought now. Was that the best shit that a high-powered attorney could come up with to defend himself?!

“Not exclusive” was what Mars’s mouth said now, but mixed signals were what he’d been serving up to her for nearly two years. When the two of them were seeing each other on a regular basis during the periods when she was in L.A. for a long stretch of time working on a project, Mars was fucking her every other day AND night, then spending the night at her loft a couple of nights every week…EXCLUSIVELY.

When Mars needed a shoulder of support and a listening ear to hear him vent his frustrations about the rigors of his very demanding job and how “ruthless” the “back-stabbers” in the industry could be, she’d been there practically like a wife would be, providing him countless words of encouragement and advice, even in instances where she didn’t quite agree with him; and she’d done this…EXCLUSIVELY.

What was she?! Some whore to him?! She was good enough
for regular fucking, but not quite good enough for a committed, monogamous relationship?!

“I can’t see you anymore,” Mars said.

The words went straight through Portia’s heart like hot daggers. All Portia could see as she sat there, literally choked up on her hurt and anger, were the many nights when she had stood in her kitchen playing the domestic role, cooked extravagant meals and fed this man, massaged his back, listened to his thoughts and dreams while she shared her own thoughts and dreams with him, bathed him, coddled him, brought him chicken soup when he was sick with the flu, showered him with gifts of thousands of dollars’ worth of rare, African art, sucked his dick and fucked him in every way and in every pla
ce imaginable only to be cast aside as if she were so totally…expendable. She had damned near given her soul to this man and had been patiently waiting for him to overcome his obvious fear of a more committed relationship with her, and now he was giving her the kiss-off for this little, Tracey Edmonds-looking bitch?! What the fuck?!

“Is…is this more than a fling?” was all Portia could muster.

What seemed like an interminable silence passed before Mars answered.

“I’m in love with her,” Mars said quietly, shattering Portia’s entire world.

A single tear rolled down Portia’s cheek and Mars reached out compassionately to wipe it away. Portia smacked his hand away before he could touch her.

It wasn’t that Mars didn’t care about Portia. He did. Portia was a stunning, vivacious, talented, intelligent, amazing woman. She simply wasn’t the woman for him. Ideally, Mars wanted to hold her and reassure her that he would be there for her if she ever needed him. They’d had some good times together and he wanted
them to part as friends. But, realistically, Mars knew Portia well enough to know that he would have to make a clean break with her with no future contact whatsoever. There was no middle ground for the two of them and he did not want to inadvertently give Portia some glimmer of hope that there was still a chance for them.

Portia stood up bravely and tucked her Christian Dior clutch under her arm.

“Mars, baby, I wish you the best…of everything,” she said as she turned to leave. “Goodbye.”

The door closed and Mars found himself dumbfounded but thankful that the whole situation was over and that there had not been an ugly scene. The collected and dignified way that Portia had reacted was not what he’d expected. Drama was much more her style. Drama was what she had initially planned on bringing him that evening and something in his gut told him that things were not over. Mars visualized Portia slipping into his condominium’s subterranean garage in the middle of the night while he was out of town and leaving deep, ugly key gouges down the full length of his $140,000 Mercedes, an
d then flattening its tires as repayment for him breaking things off with her. Several nasty scenarios came to mind that were much more in character for the many-times-driven-to-melodrama Portia that Mars knew than the woman who had so graciously left his apartment.

As Portia slid behind the wheel of her Range Rover and drove away, she solemnly vowed to herself that she would make Mars Buchanan sincerely regret the day that he and Keshari Mitchell had ever gotten together.

R
ichard Tresvant’s murder trial was well into its third week and the media and the public in Los Angeles were still clamoring for the details of the “reputed gangster charged with the first-degree murder of the high-profile corporate attorney” as much as they had been on day one of the trial. News networks like CNN and CSPAN continued their coverage of the sensational, Los Angeles trial and legal experts on truTV discussed daily the trial’s likely outcome and the sordid history of organized crime in Los Angeles all the way back to the Prohibition Era.