An excerpt from "Something on the Side" by Carl Weber

Chapter One

Tammy

I love my life. I love my life. I love my marriage. I love my husband. I love my kids. I love my BMW, and I love my house. Oh, did I say I love my life? Well, if I didn't, I love my life. I really love my life.

I stepped out of my BMW X3, then opened the back driverside door and picked up four trays of food lying on a towel on the backseat. I had only about twenty minutes before the girls would be over for our book club meeting, but I'd already dropped off my two kids, Michael and Lisa, at the sitter, so they weren't going to be a problem.

Now all I had to do was to arrange the food and get my husband out of the house. The food was easy, thanks to Poor Freddy's Rib Shack over on Linden Boulevard in South Jamaica. I merely had to remove the tops of the trays from the ribs, collard greens, candied yams, and macaroni and cheese, pull out a couple bottles of wine from the fridge, and voilà, dinner is served. My husband was another thing entirely. He was going to need my personal attention before he left the house.

I entered my house and placed the food on the island in the kitchen, then looked around the room with admiration. We'd been living in our Jamaica Estates home for more than a year now, and I still couldn't believe how beautiful it was. My kitchen had black granite countertops, stainless-steel appliances, and handcrafted cherrywood cabinets. It looked like something out of a home-remodeling magazine, and so did the rest of our house. By the way, did I say I love my life? God, do I love my life and the man who provides it for me.

Speaking of the man who provides for me, I headed down the hall to the room we called our den. This room was my husband's sanctuary -- mainly because of the fifty-two-inch plasma television hanging on the wall and the nine hundred and some odd channels DIRECTV provided. I walked into the den, and there he was, the love of my life, my husband, Tim. By most women's standards, Tim wasn't all that on the outside. He was short and skinny, only five-eight, one hundred and forty pounds, with a dark brown complexion. Don't get me wrong-my husband wasn't a bad-looking man at all. He just wasn't the type of man who would stop a sister dead in her tracks when he walked by. To truly see Tim's beauty, you have to look within him, because his beauty was his intellect, his courteousness, and his uncanny ability to make people feel good about themselves. Tim was just a very special man, with a magnetic personality, and it only took a few minutes in his presence for everyone who'd ever met him to see it.

Tim smiled as he stood up to greet me. "Hey, sexy," he whispered, staring at me as if I were a celebrity and he were a starstruck fan. "Damn, baby, your hair looks great."

I blushed, swaying my head from side to side to show off my new three-hundred-fifty-dollar weave. I walked farther into the room. When I was close enough, Tim wrapped his thin arms around my full-figured waist. Our lips met, and he squeezed me tightly. A warm feeling flooded my body as his tongue entered my mouth. Just like the first time we'd ever kissed, my body felt like it was melting in his arms. I loved the way Tim kissed me. His kisses always made me feel wanted. When Tim kissed me, I felt like I was the sexiest woman on the planet.

From "Something on the Side" by Carl Weber ( Kensington, 2008)