You're the One I Want by Shane Allison Page A

Kashawn, right?”
    â€œLike I said, I’m just out here to make sure we both get what we want. After we lay the groundwork tonight in splitting Bree and your brother up, everything will be butter. After tonight, she’s not going to want to be in the same damn ZIP code as Kashawn.”
    â€œYou just make sure this shit doesn’t get away from you.”
    â€œQuitcha bitchin’. I told you I have everything under control.”
    â€œI’ll go by the house today and see what’s up with Bree,” Deanthony said.
    â€œI’m supposed to be meeting up with Katiesha tonight with the money to discuss the details.”
    â€œLet me know if she’s down or not.”
    â€œOh, she’ll be down once I stick this wad of money in her face.”
    If Deanthony knew what was good for him, he’d stick to the plan. If he fucked me over on this, I was going to flour and deep-fry his ass, Tangela-style.

12
TANGELA
    I hated to do this to Bree. Well, almost. She was out of town in Atlantic City with one of her hoochie stripper friends the night Kashawn and I hooked up. You would think the bitch would get a better class of friends once she married into money and didn’t have to shake her ass in the faces of old white dudes for chump change. She and Kashawn had gotten into one of their knockout drag-outs about who knew what. Bree had the nerve to ask me to take care of Kashawn while she went off to gamble away his money he worked so hard for. She was making the shit way too easy.
    â€œI know you’re busy with your photo shoots and all that for the magazine, but if you could just roll through every now and again, see how he’s doing.”
    Of course, I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to bend Kashawn’s ear about his doting wife. The night before Bree was to return from Atlantic City, I went by the house to check on Kashawn, but not before I freshened up a little, put on one of my favorite outfits that would accentuate my titties and other… assets. I took one look at myself in my vanity and knew for damn sure that if he resisted this, he was out of his mind. When I arrived at their house in Ox Bottom Manor, I felt him give me the look-over, ripping my clothes off with those pretty brown eyes. Married or not, he was a man who knew a fine-ass bitch when one was standing on his doorstep.
    I pampered Kashawn all that weekend: keeping the house clean that I should have been sharing with him instead of Bree, cooking, as well as washing and ironing his clothes. Hell, I even ironed the man’s socks and drawers. I made sure he didn’t want for nothing. We spent the weekend finding out new things about one another, like him being a die-hard fan of Allison Hobbs’ novels. I still hadn’t gotten my copy of Big Juicy Lips back yet, but I didn’t sweat the shit, considering I’d read the book fifty-eleven times. I noticed the book sticking out of Bree’s pocketbook a week ago when we lunched at Bella Bella. That night, Kashawn and I stuffed ourselves to the gills from the lasagna I had prepared for dinner.
    â€œDamn, ma, I didn’t know you could throw down in the kitchen like that,” he said as we made our way to the living room with two glasses of red wine. We settled on the white leather sofa I helped Bree pick out at Aaron’s Furniture.
    â€œOh, I’m full of surprises,” I said with a sinister tone.
    â€œBree doesn’t even cook like that.”
    â€œI didn’t think she cooked at all.”
    â€œShe does all right. She’s gotten better since we got married.”
    â€œYeah, I saw all the cookbooks in the kitchen drawer.” We both grinned at Bree’s sorry-ass attempts at being Top Chef.
    â€œYou can’t blame her for trying.”
    â€œBack when Bree and I were roomies, that girl could barely boil rice without burning it to a crisp, kept the apartment smoked up. So much so I had to