Who's Lovin' You: A Metamorphosis Christmas Story Paperback (Clean Edition) PREORDER

It's Christmas 1976 when A'Lelia Cesaire and the Black community are kicked out of the "upscale" Murray Hill Hotel on New York City's East Side. Without a venue, one of the biggest events of Black New York- the Annual Christmas Children's Presents - faces extinction. Created to celebrate the end of the Civil War, it's been a pillar of Christmas for more than a century. 

But even worse, the fallout reopens the coffins of Al's celebrated ancestors. Lies long buried and laid to rest will force the young historian to a harrowing choice. One that guarantees devastation now, or later. Either way, the consequences will long outlive her.

While Al works to revive Christmas, and protect her family, she meets an astute Memphis transplant.

Emeric MacPherson doesn't care about Al's money. Or her illustrious family name. This Christmas, he only wants one gift. Yet, after a mortifying revelation, is it a blessing or a curse? 

This Christmas, brew yourself a hot cup of love and treachery. This is the first installment of another sprawling Lula White saga.

Steamy Edition: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/5
Clean Edition: 🌶️/5

“Ms. Césaire?”
She spun around. “Mr. Granger.” Forcing pleasantness, she addressed the hotel manager. “You came to see how it’s going. The parents will be glad to say ‘hi.’”
“I was hoping we could have a word outside.” His expression unreadable, he stepped back to allow her to walk ahead.
“Certainly, but I can only manage for a moment. These young Broadway stars are working pretty hard here.” After motioning for Gloria to take over, Al headed for the doors of the Grand Ballroom, looking for whichever admirer wanted to shake her hands or speak about the youth. She prepared to politely decline any invites for the children to perform at some church or nonprofit event. The Presents had always been private, among New York’s tight-knit families, and it would stay that way. A quick scan of the corridor revealed no one. Perplexed, she remembered her smile. “What can we do for you, Mr. Granger?”
“Ms. Césaire, you’ll have to forgive me.” The hotel manager, with whom she’d negotiated this event for years, now emitted the joy of one burying a pet. “I certainly hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the current owners are selling the hotel. The new owners have asked me to inform you that they are unable to accommodate your children’s Christmas event here.” He lowered his voice. “I’m so terribly sorry.”
Al’s thoughts instantly shifted to fixing whatever small discrepancy that derailed his judgment. “Did we miss something? Was there a mistake somewhere I wasn’t told about?”
His head shake was painfully slight. “No, I’m afraid not.”
“Then what’s the meaning of this?” she asked. Her internal gingerbread house cracked. “Perhaps I can meet these new owners and explain to them how important this event is. How long we’ve been coming here. The Presents has been coming to this hotel so long we’re one of the fixtures.”
“Yes, madam, however—”
“Al, everything alright out here?” Gloria exited the doors and stood at her side.
“This hotel is making a big mistake. Do these new owners know who our families are? Why couldn’t they come tell us this themselves?” Al asked.
Mr. Granger’s Adam’s apple danced up and down his throat. “They have left delivering the news to me, and they’ve instructed me to return your deposit to you.” With a shaky hand, he pulled an envelope out of his pocket and offered it to her.
“What’s that for?” Miss Clara walked out to join them. “What’s going on?”
Refusing to take it, Al let it hang between the two of them. “You can’t just cancel a signed contract. There is nowhere else we can go this close to our event at Christmas.”
“Cancel?” Senator Hayes repeated on his way toward them. “Say what?”
“Apparently, the Shelburne has new owners who don’t want our money.” An astonished Al couldn’t believe she was saying the words.
The Black cliques of New York kept an unwritten list of establishments around the city that never “had anything available,” or were always “remodeling.” Even though this was the seventies, the acceptance of Blacks had only improved somewhat since the fifties and sixties. Since the Black community knew those hotels, they rarely bothered calling anymore. They already operated within a “safe” list of venues, with whom they kept relationships, and the Shelburne had always been on it, just as happy to take Black money as they were anybody else’s.
Mr. Granger’s face now matched the crimson holly berries in the mistletoe strung over the doors. “As I said in the beginning, I am mightily sorry, but this was not my decision, and it’s out of my hands. The hotel staff will be happy to help you all out with your things.”
“Help us out?” What remained of Al’s joy evaporated like hot condensation in cold air. “Help us out? You mean, you won’t at least have the decency to let us stay another hour and finish rehearsing?”
“We don’t need you to help us out.” Gloria glared at the manager with her full hairy eyeball, her tone sharper than Al’s. “We need you to bring our children some of those hot apple cider cups and then leave us to what we were doing. You have no basis to cancel the contract, and until you do, we’re not going anywhere.”
“I’d like to speak with these new owners.” Al took deep breaths. “I insist. If they’re busy, we’ll wait.”
Seeming to squirm in his skin, Mr. Granger faced the group of powerful Black New Yorkers. “And as I said before, madam, they are not available. I negotiate the contracts and bookings here. Unfortunately, I am also the person who handles this part as well.”
Despite her upset, Al managed a reply. “But apparently, you’re not the one with the final say. So I’d like to speak with the person who is.”
Mr. Granger set the envelope down on a nearby table. “I’ll just leave this here and you can grab it on your way out.”
Miss Clara plopped her indignation onto her hips. “On our way out? Now, you wait just one durn minute. We’ve been here for over twenty years. We want to see some kind of legal documentation that you’ve got a basis.”
“We don’t need legal documentation. How many lawyers we got?” Senator Hayes added. “I’ll call Adam and some of our friends to file an injunction. This will be resolved by tomorrow afternoon, tops.”
While he walked over to a rotary phone and started spinning the numbers on the dial, Al watched in disbelief as the hotel staff began entering the ballroom and shoving their decorations and props back in the boxes as if manhandling trash.
“Don’t touch those!” Gloria called out, beating Al to the punch.
“Ma’am, we’re just doing our jobs,” one of the staffers replied.
“We’ll do it! Don’t touch anymore, like she said!” Al cried, losing more of her cool by the second.
This couldn’t happen. Where else would they find another venue three weeks before the event? Venue contracts needed to be signed months in advance, at best a year, and at worst six months. Then, negotiations for room blocks, perks, discounts, the menu—the menu!—sometimes took weeks to months to nail down.
Al would not cancel. She would not. She didn’t care if they had to have it in the middle of Fifth Avenue. These hardworking children would have their day. Most other “society” events throughout the year were adult-oriented, but not the Presents. Though adults used it for high-level posturing and elbow-rubbing, the focus was the youth. In the back of her mind, some of her warmest moments included excitement to show off her ballet work in front of the girls at the Presents before opening her Christmas gifts.
Aside from all that, how could she let the Presents die on her watch?
“Don’t worry, honey.” Miss Clara rubbed her back. “We’ll handle this. Like Hayes said, this will be over by tomorrow evening.”
Uncertainty all over them, the teenagers began packing up their homework they’d brought to study during scenes that weren’t theirs. But some of the younger ones were frozen, their gazes glued to the scene unfolding in front of them, especially the younger ones who hadn’t yet taken this bitter pill of being Black. The community always tried so hard to insulate them as long as they could, and now, out of nowhere, it was slapping them in the face much sooner than the adults would have preferred.
“Miss Cesaire.” Little Tarvis came to pat Al’s hip while his stubby finger pointed in the direction of the hotel workers. “They didn’t say ‘excuse me.’”
“Tarvis, it’s…they just…” How did she explain this away to eliminate the sting? “They forgot. They’re so busy doing their important work of helping you that it slipped their minds. I’ll make sure and remind them so they remember next time.” When all else failed, lying was an option.
On the outside, she maintained her composed facade so they didn’t feel the fallout of disrespect, but on the inside, Al was reeling.
“Are we getting kicked out?” a nine-year-old asked more bluntly, not quite old enough to understand, but old enough to feel something wasn’t right.
“No, an emergency came up, we asked for help and they’re assisting us is all,” Miss Clara explained. “You just focus on memorizing your lines, baby. We’ll be back in a day or two.”
The coldness of hotel workers carrying their things underneath inviting Christmas decorations was a vicious kind of irony. Toting her things, scraping her mind for a plan, she spun around to go make some calls of her own before she left—primarily to her Meme and Mamman, so they could get to work on this.
“I can take this out for you, ma’am.”
“We already said not to touch our things,” an upset Al snapped, despite how she was juggling a box stuffed with Christmas scripts, chorus books, fake candles, and robes, and might have been carrying too much. “We’ll manage our own stuff.”
Somewhere in the corner of her eye hovered a white-jacketed hotel worker. While onlookers and staffers gawked across the lobby, Al just wanted to remove the youth from this embarrassment as soon as possible.
“You look like you’re having trouble with that, though.”
Not looking over her shoulder, she instead scanned the lobby for another phone. “I’m having more trouble with your boss. If you’re not bringing him to me so I can speak to him personally, get out of our way.” The moment she said it, she tripped over somebody’s scarf, and her entire box of contents spilled across the marble floor.
They both dropped to start picking up items at the same time.
“Ow!” That hurt!
“Mmph.”
Acute pain shot across her forehead, having collided with the hotel worker’s.
“Sorry about that.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it. I had already told you I’ve got it.” She refused to let the hotel embarrass her by having staffers to “escort” them out. Al shot out her arms to block him from touching anything. “If you really want to help, go tell your boss to make this right or we will sue him.”
“Ma’am, it doesn’t look to me like you can manage all that. And I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“This hotel is making a big mistake.” Still not bothering to look up, fussing, she duck-walked across the floor, shoving things back in her box. “Sending their workers to push us out only pours vinegar on the disrespect.”
“What?” he asked, confused. “Look, I’m sorry you’re not having a good night—”
“Not as sorry as all of you will be.”
When Al rose again, her eyes finally met his. On the other side of the box stood a rather discombobulated worker in a uniform that varied slightly from all the others, as if the hotel had even sent one of the cooks to help put them out. Although, he smelled like they’d just pulled him from an antiseptic closet. With polished, eggshell skin underneath his connecting mustache and light beard, he had a calmness about him that did not become frayed in the face of Al’s upset. A tiny mole at the corner of his top lip, bony nose jutting slightly left, autumn foliage in his eyes, hidden under long lashes that almost kissed when he squinted slightly, he emitted quiet intensity. It spoke without speaking. He would have been attractive if he hadn’t been kicking her out.
“Ms. Césaire,” one of the others called to her. “Can you do a meeting at your apartment tomorrow?”
“Yes, I sure can.”
“Six o’clock?”
“Yes.” Al fumed the hotel had the audacity to send this guy over here to try and work her. “You and your coworkers will be really embarrassed once we send the newspapers.”
Hotter than the lights burning down from above was the gaze of curious, wealthy onlookers. Some of them sympathetic, others smug, hotel patrons filled the lobby with whispers and snickers, their intrigue shoving Al and the people she cared about into a glass jar, as if they were bugs.
Under the torture of humiliation, holding off tears she refused to let them see, Al pushed her head up high and exited the lobby. One of New York’s oldest Christmas celebrations was not over. Whoever these new owners were, they would be dismantled long before they could have an epiphany and issue their convenient apology. Al would see to it.