The Beauty of Summer (A Christian Romance Novel)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER ONE

Six days before

Xavier's marriage proposals were getting more ornate as time went on.

Just two months before, on the fifteenth, Summer Maldonado came to work, sat at her desk, checked her emails, and found a new message from Xavier with a photo attached. The photo was taken of her on a recent romantic trip to the Bahamas. There she was, lying on Paradise Beach in a Caribbean blue one-piece, her perfectly manicured toes dug in the white sand, her natural long black hair pouring gracefully out of a wide-brimmed straw hat, her cinnamon-toned skin glistening in the mid-afternoon sun. The caption on the photo read: "You are the picture of perfection. Will you marry me?"

One month before, also on the fifteenth, a bouquet of fifteen red roses in a tall crystal vase was waiting on her desk upon her return from lunch. The note on the flowers read: “Will you marry me, and let our relationship blossom like the petals of a rose?" The note gave Summer a mile-wide smile. Her boyfriend was corny but thoughtful and sweet.

Summer would answer his last two proposals the same way she answered the eleven previous ones, all tendered on the fifteenth of the month. She would never explicitly tell him no, but always, "Ask me again next month." Xavier would be persistent enough to ask her every month, like clockwork, on the fifteenth.

It was the fifteenth of the month again, and Xavier Williams had texted her earlier that morning to ask her to join him that evening at the Wild Ginger, an Asian restaurant on the western outskirts of Richmond. It was a Thursday night, but still the Wild Ginger would be almost impossible to get into without a reservation, so Summer knew Xavier had planned several days beforehand.

Thursday was casual day at Visual Notions, one of the leading video production companies in Richmond. But Summer, the marketing manager, had chosen not to dress down that day. She wore a simple purple sheath dress, professional enough for the job, but sexy and formfitting enough to make sure Xavier’s eyes didn’t stray, which they did from time to time. Just a few minutes after seven, she left the office, which was on the seventh floor of an office building in downtown Richmond. The restaurant was only a fifteen-minute drive away in moderate traffic, so she had plenty of time to get there before the 7:30 reservation.

During the drive, Summer switched on the built-in MP3 player and allowed Stevie Wonder’s Ribbon in the Sky to drown out the faint street sounds that made it inside the tinted windows of her late model Acura. She had to brace herself to turn down yet another one of Xavier's proposals, and she hoped that the proposal would come at the latter part of the evening, so that it wouldn't dampen the majority of their date. She knew she would have to say yes to him one day, but right now, her mind was not in that space. Her excuse was that she was not ready to be a wife, and that was true, to an extent. But as loving and doting as her boyfriend was, there were some things about him that bothered her. But she had neither the willpower nor the bravery to tell him the truth about himself. So, month after month, she kept hoping he would change and that somehow the rarest of miracles would alight upon him like a feather on the shoulder, and he would transform into a man that she would be comfortable marrying. Someone who was NOT like her father. Xavier did not yet seem inclined to come home drunk and beat her like her father beat her mother. But his controlling nature and his frequent drinking made him a likely candidate.

Summer hadn’t seen Nestor Maldonado in thirty years. She assumed he was still somewhere in Brazil; Summer had no clue where, and she didn't wish to know. But his aura remained with her like a bad odor. He hadn’t always been a drunken looser; he had actually been quite personable, engaging and sober when Susan Wright met him during a vacation to Rio. Enthralled with the idea of living in Brazil, and tired of her hardscrabble life in Atlanta, Susan, an African American janitor, married Nestor a year after meeting him. Summer was born in July a year later. Susan named her after her favorite song, "Summertime," from Porgy and Bess, the one sang by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Most people in the states assumed, without asking, that she was named that way because she was born in the summer, not knowing that Brazilian summers began in December.

The marriage went well until Summer was four years old. Several days after her birthday, Nestor lost his job at the soft drink plant as a result of a layoff, and the hard drinks soon followed, with the beatings right on the heels of the drinking. By the time Summer was five years old, she had heard, and in some cases seen, her mother beaten at least twelve times during one of Nestor’s drunken tirades. Finally, Susan got tired of it.

The fateful day of Summer's introduction to the United States came on September 8th, the day after Brazil’s Independence Day, two months and three days after her fifth birthday. Nestor had come home late the night before, his breath reeking of Skol's, with whatever celebratory spirit he had engaged in long gone by the time he crossed the threshold of his house. Susan met him in the kitchen and accused him of cheating on her, an accusation based purely upon woman’s intuition, but in this case, that was spot on. But for some reason, she never had the gall to confront him about it until then.

The argument in the bedroom became so loud that the words spilled out onto the streets. Susan’s words were spiced with Southern rage, and a deep Georgia accent that Susan had tried to conceal, but surged forth whenever she was angry.

You need to leave those bitches alone!

If you don't stop this, I'm gonna take Summer and leave!

A scream. Several crashes. A door slamming. Spewing of obscenities in Portuguese. Another door slam. Then, eerily quiet.

The next day, Summer and her mother were hitch-hiking their way to Galeão International Airport, headed to Atlanta with only two garbage bags of belongings and an open-ended plane ticket purchased months earlier by a cousin in Atlanta who mailed it to Susan to encourage her to leave the son-of-a-b***h.

Xavier had not yet deteriorated as drastically. But Summer could see the signs brewing. The drinking, for one. Xavier could knock them back with the best of them, and it was only Summer's interventions that prevented him on many occasions from tipping over the edge of drunkenness. Xavier also had a paternalistic bent that bothered Summer. Xavier, like Nestor, didn't believe in a woman working. It was why Susan quit her $20,000-a-year janitorial job and stayed at home to cook his meals and chase dust bunnies. Xavier also believed that the man was the head of the household and that the woman should obey. To Summer, it was elementary math: head of household = man controls woman; woman has no say, no options, no life. And there was no way Summer was going to quit her $95,000-a-year job for any man, no matter how much he was paid.

Nonetheless, Summer kept hoping that Xavier's love for her would lead him to believe that having a strong, capable, independent woman would prove to be his greatest asset. The drinking she could deal with, but there was no way she was going to marry a man who had every intention of relegating her to housewife.

Summer pulled into the shopping center where the restaurant was located. She found a parking spot near a nail salon, with only a two-minute walk to the front door of the restaurant. Summer's dress was short-sleeved, and it was getting chilly out. She wished she had brought her shawl from the car with her. No worries. She would just send Xavier out to her car to get it.

The restaurant had clean, modern lines, decorated in mauves, grays, and browns, with a huge bar in one wing and a dining area in another, separated by the hostess station and a small waiting area. As she expected, the restaurant was packed, but she had no trouble finding Xavier in the crowd. He was already seated at a small table by himself at the far end of the restaurant, adjacent to a large window with a view of the parking lot. Summer headed to Xavier's table. She drew an admiring glance from a gentleman seated in the waiting area.

Xavier stood as she approached. He was six-foot-one, clean-shaven, with a full head of closely cropped hair and eyeglass frames that would set a full-time minimum wage employee back about two weeks' pay. His fair skin contrasted with his crisply tailored suit, which hung on a thin, not lanky but athletic, build.

Xavier looked just as handsome as the day she met him eighteen months before. Xavier held a plum position as the vice president of media relations at the city’s gas utility. Summer had been trying to get the utility's video production contract, and her attempts brought her in frequent contact with Xavier. They had several business lunches together before Visual Notions won the contract. After the paperwork had been signed, the business lunches turned into dinners. Eventually, Xavier won Summer's heart as well, which was not an easy task. Summer had no lack of men who wanted to court her, but it was Xavier’s earthy charisma, his passionate devotion, and his quiet manner that hooked her. He was drawn to her as a person, and not just for her body. And a man who could afford to book the executive suite at the Jefferson Hotel just because certainly was a plus.

"Meu Amor," Summer said to him as they embraced. They exchanged a simple peck on the lips, which, given the posh surroundings, was a great deal more sedate than how they would have kissed in private.

Xavier motioned Summer to the chair directly across from his. That was odd. Usually they sat at ninety-degree angles to one another. Summer ignored his directive and parked in a chair directly to Xavier's right. She then checked him out in his suit. It looked like the one that she had bought him for his thirty-eighth birthday a few months ago. As her gaze moved up to his eyes, he was looking off into the distance.

Summer followed his gaze but saw that it led nowhere. "Are you alright?" she asked.

Xavier finally looked at her. "I’m fine."

"You look nice. Is that the suit I bought you?”

Xavier looked down at himself, seemingly surprised. "Yeah, I guess it is."

The waiter came over with a wine list. Xavier quickly waved him away. Again, unusual. Summer studied his body language. Xavier seemed tense. His arms were tight against his body; his hands clasped in his lap. His gaze wandered off to nowhere again.

Summer toyed with the white napkin on the table and tried to say something to ease the tension. She was usually the talkative one in the relationship, so she had no problem starting a conversation. "So, how was your day?"

“It was good. Yours?”

“Wonderful. I was excited about meeting you here.”

“Ever been here before?”

“No. First time.” Summer noticed that Xavier’s gaze trailed off again. It seemed as if he was looking at the front door.

Summer asked a burning question. “Are you expecting someone? I mean, other than me?”

Xavier's eyes finally returned to her. "I have something I need to tell you."

Summer swallowed hard. There was no passion, no joy in his voice. She tried to play off the obvious implication in his voice by making jest. "What, you're breaking up with me?" She said it with a bat of her eyes and a bedroom voice.

Xavier was silent.

Summer waited for a laugh, a smile, an angry denial, anything that would acknowledge the humor in what she had said. Instead, he just sat there, carefully avoiding her eyes. Summer drew back in her chair and said, “X, what’s going on?”

“Summer, this is not easy for me to say.”

Summer felt blood rushing from her face. There were only two reasons people made that statement: if someone had died, or if they were about to end a relationship. And Xavier’s incessant staring at the front door give her a clue as to which one it was.