Redemption of the Playboy (book 5)

  Redemption of the Playboy

  Fifth book in the Blessed and Highly Favored Series

  by

  Bestselling author of the Praise Him Anyhow Series

  Vanessa Miller

  Other Books by Vanessa Miller

  After the Rain

  How Sweet The Sound

  Heirs of Rebellion

  Feels Like Heaven

  Heaven on Earth

  The Best of All

  Better for Us

  Her Good Thing

  Long Time Coming

  A Promise of Forever Love

  A Love for Tomorrow

  Yesterday’s Promise

  Forgotten

  Forgiven

  Forsaken

  Rain for Christmas (Novella)

  Through the Storm

  Rain Storm

  Latter Rain

  Abundant Rain

  Former Rain

  Anthologies (Editor)

  Keeping the Faith

  Have A Little Faith

  This Far by Faith

  Love. Hope. Faith.

  EBOOKS

  Love Isn’t Enough

  A Mighty Love

  The Blessed One (Blessed and Highly Favored series)

  The Wild One (Blessed and Highly Favored Series)

  The Preacher’s Choice (Blessed and Highly Favored Series)

  The Politician’s Wife (Blessed and Highly Favored Series)

  The Playboy’s Redemption (Blessed and Highly Favored Series)

  Tears Fall at Night (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  Joy Comes in the Morning (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  A Forever Kind of Love (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  Ramsey’s Praise (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  Escape to Love (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  Praise For Christmas (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  His Love Walk (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  Could This Be Love (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  Song of Praise (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  CHAPTER ONE

  Shawn Morrison, the touchdown king of the New Orleans Saints was in the Déjà vu Showgirls club making it rain for two strippers named Fire and Desire. He and his boys stood at the bottom of the stage flashing dollars and screaming, “Come holla at ya’ boy.”

  The strippers stepped to the end of the stage where Shawn and his boys were. Fire and Desire dropped it like it was hot and picked up the dollars like payday had come early.

  “Man, I might have to get me a private show,” JoJo, short for Joe Johnson, Shawn’s teammate said as he slipped a dollar in Desire’s unmentionables.

  “Me first,” Shawn said like a giddy schoolboy.

  “Haven’t you had enough lap dances for a lifetime?”

  Shawn heard the annoying voice and immediately knew who was standing behind him. Paris Holmes was the most annoying ex-stripper—now reality show princess, he’d ever had the displeasure of sleeping with. He got a skin rash every time he was forced to have a conversation with her, so he just kept passing out dollars and hoping that Paris would fly away.

  “Don’t act like you don’t hear me,” she said as she grabbed his arm and attempted to turn him around.

  But at 6’3 and two hundred and sixty pounds, Shawn was built like a linebacker, even though he was one of the best tight ends the New Orleans Saints had. And no mere woman could move his solid form unless he wanted to be moved. Shawn brushed Paris’s hand away from his arm and said, “I’m busy.”

  “Everybody in here can see how busy you are.” With a smirk on her face, Paris added, “We can all see that you’re a low-life, deadbeat daddy who’d rather spend his money on strippers than pay his child support.”

  Shawn turned hateful eyes onto his nemesis. He threw the dollars he had left, on the floor in front of her. “That’s all you’re getting from me.”

  She laughed at him. “In your dreams, sweetheart. When the DNA comes back on Imani, you’re going to need a second career to pay me off… how’s your batting arm?”

  “Terrible, but I won’t have to worry about a baseball career, because when the DNA comes back, it’s going to be game over.”

  A camera flashed. JoJo quietly said, “Man, you might want to lower your voice.” Another camera flashed.

  “Forget that,” Shawn exploded. “She wants to come in here acting all brand new, when she knows that kid could belong to that senator or that rapper dude she used to date.” He snapped his finger and added, “Or any of them suckas she was kicking it with on that nasty Bad Girls reality show she got kicked off of.”

  “Say what you want, Shawn, but I know that Imani is yours.”

  “The jury is still out on that one,” he said. “And I’m not paying one copper penny until Mr. DNA says I have to.” This wasn’t Shawn’s first, second or third time at bat. To date, five women had claimed he was their babies’ daddy, one of them had been his brother Isaiah’s ex-wife, but DNA had told the truth. He hadn’t been the daddy of those kids, and he was positive that he wasn’t Paris’s baby’s daddy either. Shawn only had two children that he knew for sure were his. Those children had been birthed by his ex-fiancée, the love of his life, who wouldn’t give him a second chance. Actually, Shawn was on chance number six with Lily when she’d finally decided that enough was enough and left him.

  “You’re only acting this way because Lily is mad about you having another baby.”

  “Keep Lily’s name out of your mouth. She don’t have nothing to do with what’s going on between me and you.”

  “And I say she has everything to do with it, since you’re taking care of her kids, but won’t do the same for mine.”

  “Is there lint between your ears or something? Did you fail an IQ test? I keep telling you that Lily’s kids are my kids… I know that for a fact, so I handle my business as a father.” He scrunched up his noise as if he’d smelled something foul. “But you and your kid… are suspect.”

  Paris snarled at Shawn, “When the DNA test comes back and proves that you are the father, I’m going to take your deadbeat behind to the bank. Then you’ll be making it rain in my house.”

  With balled fist, Shawn said, “Ooh, I wish I’d never met your conniving, trifling self.”

  “Oh really? Well you didn’t say that while you were spending that weekend in Paris.”

  “I’ll never go back, believe that. It was the worst weekend of my life. I need my head examined for fooling with a money hungry hooker like you.”

  Paris slapped him.

  Shawn grabbed her hand, pulled her closer to him, so that they were face to face when he said, “Don’t ever put your hands on me again. Because you won’t like the lick I give back, believe that, baby.” He then shoved her away from him and turned back toward the stage, grabbed a couple of dollars out of JoJo’s hand and continued on with his evening as if Paris had never interrupted him.

  With tears staining her face, Paris stalks out of the club.

  ***

  Lily Washington took a quick peek in the mirror before leaving the house. She had on a simple no-name blue jean dress that cut off just above her knees. Since leaving Shawn she no longer went on shopping sprees or stepped foot into Neiman Marcus. She made do with what she had. Lily smiled as she looked down at her shoes… before leaving Shawn she packed up most of her collection of shoes and handbags. That day she was rocking her Jimmy Choo Mock Croc pumps with matching handbag, souvenirs she had held onto.

  As she got in her BMW, another souvenir she had taken with her, she almost felt guilty about wearing the shoes and handbag, because they were a part of her old life with a man she truly loved and thought he loved her back. But he turned out
to be a jerk who didn’t know how to come home and kept dropping his pants in the presence of other women.

  Lily had been heartbroken when she left Shawn. But her mom had taken her to church and it was there that Lily finally found peace. She accepted the Lord, Jesus Christ into her life and He had mended her heart. “So what are you doing going back?” she asked herself.

  Well, she wasn’t really going back per se. She wasn’t meeting with Shawn today, but she had agreed to have lunch with some football wives and girlfriends that she had hung out with while in a relationship with her cheating ex-fiancé. She had successfully avoided the women for about a year now. But recently the calls wouldn’t let up. Lily had felt bad for ignoring these women… after all, she had been friends with some of them. So, here she was parked outside of the sports bar that the New Orleans Saints and their groupies hung out in.

  She took a deep breath and got out of the car. The minute her Jimmy Choos hit the pavement, her stomach lurched and Lily thought she was going throw up the oatmeal she’d eaten for breakfast, right there in the parking lot. You have nothing to fear, these people don’t control your destiny, she chided herself.

  That’s right. I don’t owe anyone anything and I don’t want anything from anyone. This is just a friendly lunch with the girls, she inwardly told herself as she put one foot in front of the other until she burst through the door with a confident swag most of the women in that bar and grill wished they could have pulled off. She swung her long, silky black hair to the side, ran her hands through it and then paused as she looked for her girl, Cindy.

  In the corner, directly below one of the big screen televisions that hung all round the restaurant— always tuned to a sports channel, Lily saw Cindy waving her over. Lily ignored the astonished looks on the faces of men and women who knew her situation as she strode toward the table that most of the women in the place wanted to be at… the wives club table. Cindy stood and kissed her on the cheek. “Girl, I thought you changed your mind or something.”

  Scooting into the booth next to Darlene, JoJo’s wife, Lily put on her fakest smile of the day. “Hey girl, why are you so late? We didn’t think you were coming, so we put our food order in already,” Darlene said.

  “I had to get my children ready for school.”

  “Mmph, that’s what nannies are for,” Darlene answered smugly.

  “Well I don’t have a nanny,” Lily said in a quiet, non-confrontational voice, but she was beginning to regret agreeing to meet these women today.

  Carmen, the long time girlfriend of one of the team’s linebackers said, “I don’t know why you don’t have a nanny, ‘cause I know Shawn is breaking you off at least ten large every month.”

  She received seven thousand a month from Shawn, and she tithed ten percent of it to her church, paid the mortgage, household bills and the kids’ tuition to their private school with that money. Half of what was left went toward a college fund for her children. But none of that was Carmen’s business.

  “Leave her alone, Carmen. Lily is very thrifty. She saves towards her childrens’ college fund,” Cindy came to Lily’s defense.

  “Well I know that a mind is a terrible thing to waste and all, but Shawn has too much money for you to be going without because you’re saving for future events,” Darlene said.

  “And what if Shawn breaks a leg and can’t run that ball anymore? Do you think the Saints will keep paying him? No, a football player’s career is not promised from one game to the next, so it’s my job to look after my children’s future.”

  “Dang girl, you are taking this ‘do without, so your kids can have a future’ thing a bit far. I mean, open your eyes boo boo; Shawn’s father is practically a billionaire. So, if sonny pooh won’t do right, just call on big daddy,” Carmen advised.

  Lily didn’t respond. She was too busy kicking herself for allowing these women back into her world. When she dumped Shawn, Lily had sworn that she would never have anything else to do with any of the ‘trophy wives’ Shawn had insisted that she hang out with.

  The waitress came to the table to take Lily’s order.

  “Just a glass of orange juice, please.” When the waitress walked away, Lily turned to Cindy, hoping to get this show on the road so she could get out of there; Lily asked, “So why did you ask to see me this morning?”

  Just above Lily’s head, the sixty-four inch television screen switched to a deodorant commercial and Lily had to close her eyes as Shawn’s sexy, caramel chocolate self strutted onto the screen wearing a pair of shorts and nothing else. His broad, muscular chest and arms were in full view for any and every woman who wanted to lust after him. But Lily was through with all that.

  “Girl, open your eyes. That man can’t jump through that television screen.” Darlene shook Lily’s shoulder.

  Feeling foolish at being caught in an awkward moment such as this, Lily opened her eyes. It was at that moment that Shawn lifted the deodorant stick and gave the camera his deep dimpled smile. She wanted to close her eyes again and block him out of her life. It wasn’t fair that Shawn Morrison was so gorgeous and so evil at the same time. God should give all evil people warts and a beer belly. And there should be a sign tacked to the back of their shirts that says, “Stay away from this ugly critter.”

  But unfortunately, evil comes in all packages. Lily massaged her temples. She wasn’t being fair. Shawn was the father of her children and she had stayed with him for five years. There’s no way she would have done that if the man had been pure evil. So, maybe he wasn’t evil… but what he had done to her heart had been evil.

  “Lily, girl, we aren’t trying to stress you out. The girls and I just wanted to talk to you about a business venture that has been presented to us,” Cindy told her.

  The waitress put the plates on the table and then handed Lily her orange juice. As she stepped away, Lily took a sip of her juice and then asked, “What type of venture? And what does it have to do with me?”

  “Well,” Cindy, the obvious spokesperson of the group continued, “we’ve been in talks with a producer who wants to air a football wives show with us, here in Louisiana.”

  The excitement in Cindy’s voice couldn’t be missed, but Lily was confused. “Okaaay, but what does that have to do with me?”

  As she asked the question, the door to the restaurant opened and in walked Paris Holmes, the last person Lily wanted to see. She turned her attention back to the women at the table, hoping that Paris would not see her and feel the need to torment her as usual.

  Darlene said, “Duh, you and Shawn have been together for years.”

  “Yeah, but I never married him. Therefore, I am not a,” she put her hands in the air to do finger quotation marks, “‘football wife’.”

  Paris made it to their table in time to hear Lily’s last remark.. She slammed her Coach purse down on the table and slid in next to Cindy as she said, “I never married him either, but we both have babies by the hound dog, so why shouldn’t we earn a little money off of that?”

  “I don’t profit off of my children,” Lily said as she stood up, took three dollars out of her purse and placed it on the table to pay for her orange juice. She then turned cold eyes on Cindy and said, “If this is the only reason you called me, please don’t bother to call me again.” With that she turned and walked out of the restaurant.

  As far as Lily was concerned, those women had an over inflated sense of importance and Lily wanted nothing to do with them or their drama-filled reality show. Lily didn’t even like the slew of reality shows currently on TV. They were filled with such nonsense and filth, that she was ashamed for the people on those shows. And then her so-called friends had the nerve to invite Paris Holmes to breakfast with them, when they knew that Lily would not want to see the woman who claimed to have a child by Shawn.

  “Lily, wait up.”

  Lily turned to see Paris running out of the restaurant towards her. She turned back towards her car, ignoring the woman. But Lily hadn’t been walking fast
enough, because Paris caught up with her as she was opening her car door.

  “Let’s be adult about this, Lily.”

  “What do you want, Paris? I have things to do.” She actually had the next two hours free, but things to do could include getting in her car and driving away from the nightmare she had stepped into.

  “This won’t take long. I just need for you to understand that everyone is counting on you. I worked long and hard trying to get Jason Brooks to produce this show. He’s on board, but he thinks the added drama of you and me trying to deal with Shawn and each other, would give the show the extra somethin’ somethin’ that it needs to be a hit.”

  God help her, Lily wanted to hit this woman. She took a deep breath and repeated, “As I said before, I have things to do.”

  “Who do you think you are?” Paris exploded. “You are no better than me. You got caught up with a baby’s daddy just like I did. You’re not special, so stop trying to act like your stuff don’t stink.”

  “Get out of my face,” Lily warned.

  “And if I don’t?”

  Lord, Jesus, I really want to do this woman harm. So, I need you to help me because I don’t want to go to jail, she silently prayed, calling on the One who had seen her through her breakup with Shawn and so many other tribulations along the way.

  “Is everything okay over there?” Seth, the owner of the restaurant, peeked his head out the door and asked.

  Lily used that opportunity to get in her car and drive off. As she pulled out of the lot, she picked up her cell phone and called her baby’s daddy.

  Shawn picked up on the first ring. “Hey baby, what’s up?”

  “Don’t call me baby,” she yelled.

  “What’s wrong? What happened?” Shawn asked, immediately on alert.

  “Paris Holmes happened. And I’m sick of your little girlfriend approaching me. I’m telling you now, Shawn, if you don’t handle her, I will.”

  “I don’t have nothing to do with that crazy chick.”

  “Whatever, Shawn. Just tell all of your girlfriends to leave me alone.” Lily hung up as tears that she promised herself, would never be shed over Shawn again, traitorously poured down her face.