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  BLIND AMBITIONS

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”

  Originally published in hardcover in 2000 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Praise for Blind Ambitions

  —Publishers Weekly

  “This novel does have a vitality and energy that makes it hard to put down. Files packs her flashy and irreverent tale withHollywood shoptalk and doesn’t skimp on Technicolor local detail.”

  —Eric Jerome Dickey, The New York Times bestselling author of Liar’s Game

  “Served up Lolita Files—style, as only she can do it, Blind Ambitions brings to life an entire new cast of hilarious, intriguing, and sometimes tragic characters in fresh situations—with west coast flava!”

  —Karen Stoner, Chicago Tribune

  “A fast, entertaining read that is sexy and suspenseful.”

  —Olivia Ridgell, Chicago Defender

  “Workin’ the pen like only Lolita Files can, she writes with an excellence and flair unsurpassed—often emulated, but neverquite duplicated. Her talent is on a plateau unaccompanied.”

  —Jaqueta Cox, Miami Times

  “With three sharply drawn, strong, and spirited women at its center, Blind Ambitions unfolds, a blockbuster plot pulsing with intrigue…. Propelled by flesh-and-blood characters, plus plenty of warmth, fire,humor, and insight, Blind Ambitions is sure to thrill Lolita Files’s legions of fans and win new readers.”

  ALSO BY LOLITA FILES

  Scenes from a Sistah

  Getting, to the Good Part

  Child of God

  BLIND AMBITIONS

  LOLITA FILES

  POCKET BOOKS

  New York London Toronto Sydney Singapore

  The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and

  incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used

  fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons

  living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 2000 by Lolita Files

  Originally published in hardcover in 2000 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce

  this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Simon & Schuster, Inc.,

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  ISBN: 0-7434-8239-5

  ISBN: 978-0-6848-7144-8

  eISBN: 978-0-7432-1901-3

  First Pocket Books paperback edition June 2003

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Cover illustration by Sergio/Baradat

  Cover design by Jackie Seow

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases,

  please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798

  or [email protected]

  This book is dedicated to the crown jewel of my life,

  my mother, Lillie B. Files.

  And to the loving memories of my father,

  Arthur James Files, Sr.,

  who was my biggest fan and inspired me in so many ways,

  and Carolyn Y. Brackett,

  who touched so many with her love and her life.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  PART 1 Second Winds

  It’s Now or Neiman’s

  Feast or Fashion

  Destination Moon

  Smiles to Go Before I Reap

  Have Your Cake and Meet him, Too

  To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

  Midlogue #1

  PART 2 Transitions

  Thighs Wide Shut

  Them Belly Full

  Breach Blonde

  Wait for the Beep

  Where There’s Toke, There’s Ire

  Wade in Deep Water

  Midlogue #2

  PART 3 Change

  Person to Person

  Pants on Fire

  Ask, and Ye Shall Deceive

  Midlogue #3

  PART 4 Decisions

  Net Noir

  Pitching a Fit

  Just When You Thought It Was Safe

  Epilogue

  BLIND

  AMBITIONS

  PROLOGUE

  “Why you sittin’ way over there? Slide over here a little closer to me.”

  Nervous, the girl cautiously scooted across the seat. They were at a dark corner of a neighborhood park. She had been patiently—no, anxiously—waiting for this date for a very long time. At last, it had come.

  When they got to the park, they had gotten out of the car, taken what must have been the shortest walk in history, and, somehow—the girl still couldn’t quite figure this one out—were now sitting in the back seat of the car.

  Tonight, they were going to see a movie. A movie her cousin suggested they go see. Something strange with Jack Nicholson and a little boy screaming about “Red Rum.” The girl liked Jack Nicholson. Ever since she snuck into the theater and saw him in Carnal Knowledge, he had been one of her favorites.

  As soon as she slid over, a barrage of Tommy’s hot, breathy kisses rained upon her neck. She squirmed and giggled, but he quickly covered her mouth with his own, and she quietly gave in.

  It was her second tongue kiss, ever. Her body felt like it was on fire.

  “Mmmmph,” she mumbled, trying desperately to wrestle her mouth away. “We better stop.”

  She was shaking, but she wasn’t sure if it was from the cold night air, or the excitement of the moment. The boy pulled her closer to him and found her lips again, his tongue searching hotly as if her mouth belonged to him.

  “Tommy, stop,” she insisted. “I’m not even supposed to be out …”

  “Shhhhh,” he whispered. “You’re always talking about how strict it is at your house, so I figured you’d be happy to be out for a minute. With me. But, hey, I can take you back, if that’s what you want.”

  The boy straightened up, adjusted his clothes, and opened the car door, as if he was going to get out.

  “No!” the girl cried, reaching out for him.

  The boy, staring straight ahead, smiled slyly.

  “That’s what I thought. Then stop whining and act like you want to be with me.”

  He turned to her and wrapped his strong, muscular arms around her, this time even tighter than before. He had her fastened so tight, it was as if she were in a cocoon. She was barely able to move. He worked his way down her neck and began to kiss the tops of her breasts. She babbled nervously.

  “Nobody knows I’m gone. I’m supposed to be in bed asleep.”

  “Then that makes this even better,” he replied.

  They were sitting in the back of his old, dusty El Dorado. The seat was well-worn and worked out, its dull pleather having long since seen better days, way before Tommy assumed ownership. Every time he moved, the cushions creaked and groaned. It
was like an alarm going off in her head. Still, it wasn’t quite loud enough to silence the one going off in the core of her body.

  She weakly pushed at him.

  “Put your arms around my neck,” he demanded.

  “Why?” she asked, her voice small and trembling.

  “Because I want you to,” he whispered.

  It was her first time with him like this. After days of his flirting in the hallway at school, a chicken-scratched note he’d had his sister give her, and the kiss, her first tongue kiss, that day he walked her halfway to her house, she was finally out on a date with him.

  She was heady with excitement and lust. The lust part was new. While she’d hugged on her pillow many a night, wrapping her body around it, pretending it was him, that had only been fantasy.

  This was real. This heat, this kind of passion, was stronger than any pillow could ever evoke.

  Tommy Dennis. She’d had a crush on him for three years. But Tommy was popular, and one year older than her. Even though she was quite pretty, Tommy seemed way too far out of reach for her to even dream about.

  Tommy was beautiful. Everybody at school thought so. His eyes were what had always fascinated her. They were deep and hypnotic. She’d seen him with lots of different girls. All of them as beautiful as him, in one way or another. But he had told her that she was the most beautiful. And tonight, she believed him.

  Tonight, she was the one with him. Tonight, none of those other girls mattered.

  Until last week, she’d never even known he wanted her, or that she could have him. Not like this.

  “Put your arms around my neck,” he insisted again.

  Unable to resist his demands, or her body’s, she did. She nervously moved her fingers up to his hair. Tommy rubbed his strong thighs against hers, pressing her downward, deep into the cushions of the car. The seat croaked, creaked, and groaned, and something sharp and gnarled was stabbing the girl in the small of her back, but her adrenaline was too high at that moment to care about anything other than her own mounting passion. The sounds of her and Tommy’s combined heated breathing overwhelmed the cacophony of the seats, and all discomfort became infused into a synchronous mesh of pleasure and pain.

  “Stop it, Tommy,” she mumbled. “I can’t do it with you. I’ve never done it before.”

  “I wish I could, baby girl. But you got me so hot. I’ve been wanting to be with you like this all year.”

  “Nuh-uh!” she replied with surprise, leaning back a little to look into his face.

  “Uh-huh,” he moaned, sliding the thin straps of her summer dress over her delicately shaped shoulders. “And I know you know I’m going away to the Army in three more weeks. I want to spend as much time with you as I can. I need something to dream about during all those long lonely nights in boot camp.”

  The girl, suddenly angry, tried to push him away. She pulled the straps of her dress back up over her shoulders.

  “So you just wanna do it with me, then leave and go away to the Army? Get off me!”

  Tommy pressed her back down against the seat and kissed her neck, mouth, forehead, and shoulders. She began to calm a little. He raised up on his arm above her, his dark eyes staring deeply into hers.

  “Baby girl, do you know how pretty you are? Do you know how many guys are jealous of me for even getting the chance to be with you? I’m not trying to do it with you and leave. Are you crazy? How could anybody leave a woman like you?”

  In the darkness and the unusually chilly night air, the girl peered back into his eyes, looking for the lie. Even though he had called her “baby girl,” he had also called her a woman. She’d never been called a woman before. Now, even in the awkwardness of the back seat and with the uncertainty of his words, it made her want him all the more. Tommy leaned down and kissed her softly on the lips, running his tongue along the outline of her mouth. She smiled and wrapped her arms around him tighter.

  This time, he slid the dress down until it was around the middle of her waist. The cool air washed over her torso, making her already engorged nipples harden to the point of hurting. Tommy hovered over her hungrily. The girl’s breasts were now free for the first time ever in front of a man. Embarrassed, she looked away from Tommy’s wide-eyed gaze and stared into the cracked grayness of the roof of the El Dorado.

  Tommy delicately kissed the swell of her bosom, and she felt as if she were going to faint. When his mouth covered her nipples, her eyes closed tightly, and something wild, big, and wet seemed to well up inside of her. She found herself wrapping her legs around him, just like she’d been doing all those nights, in bed with her pillow.

  She felt one of his hands free itself for a moment, and then she heard a zipper. When he pulled her panties down and slipped himself inside of her, she barely made a sound. She squeezed her eyes together even tighter, and held on to him, just like she’d seen the lady do in the bathtub scene in Superfly.

  She pretended she was covered with bubbles, in a bathtub just like that, and was experienced enough to do it like the woman in the movie.

  Tommy thrust rapidly above her. He wasn’t gently kissing her neck anymore. Now he just pounded his body against hers, whispering into the darkness for her to “do it, do it, do it, do it,” his tongue darting in and out of her ear fast and furiously, until her ear was wet in a way that wasn’t sexy at all.

  This didn’t feel like she imagined it would. It wasn’t the gentle regulated fluffiness she had come to know with her pillow. Tommy’s tenderness had now turned rough. She wondered if he even knew it was her lying there beneath him.

  “Tommy,” she whispered, softly kissing the underside of his neck.

  Tommy pounded on.

  As he pounded, the sharp gnarly thing that was stabbing her on the seat jabbed her squarely in the back.

  “Ow!” she cried, her eyes opening wide.

  Tommy didn’t even notice. He just kept humping away.

  She couldn’t bear to watch him moving like that above her. She squeezed her eyes shut again, and tried to raise herself back to the level of excitement she’d been in before, just before he’d slipped inside of her.

  “Tommy,” she moaned, moving her body beneath him. “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy …”

  “That’s right, baby girl,” he grunted. “Do it like that! Talk to me! Do it, do it, do it!”

  In her fantasy, she became the lady in the Superfly flick. She splashed on, thrashing her body beneath him, covered with the bubbles of a dream.

  She tried to make herself explode the way she had done so many times with her pillow. She moved against him, feeling her body responding to her mind. Tommy’s wet tongue moved in and out of her ear. The pitch of her body grew feverish, and she felt her passion escalating rapidly towards a point of release.

  Tommy thrust fiercely above her, grunted loudly, and collapsed. He was covered with sweat, and the back of the car felt hot, fogged and sticky.

  Pinned beneath him, she was no longer able to move. Everything in her middle just knotted up into an unfulfilled promise. She wasn’t smiling like the lady in Superfly. She wasn’t splashing around happily in a tub of bubbles and dreams.

  She was just hot and uncomfortable in the back of a musty car.

  “Tommy,” she whispered, trying her best to hold on to her dream.

  “What?” he grunted, completely spent.

  “I love you, Tommy,” she dared to whisper. “I’ve loved you for a long time.”

  “What?!” he snapped. “Girl, don’t be foolish! How can you love me? You don’t even know me like that! You know I’ve been going with Peggy for more than two years now!”

  He sat up, tucked his shirt in, and zipped his pants.

  The girl lay there, stunned, her panties around her ankles, her dress around her waist, the dream somewhere balled up on the floor of the car. She didn’t even know who Peggy was.

  “But we just did it,” she whimpered. “I just let you do it to me.”

  “Do you know how many girls have let
me do it? What’s so big about that? You’re just a kid. I’m getting married when I come back from boot camp.”

  “But I thought you were gonna think about me while you were away.”

  “I am,” he said. “But I know you’re not crazy enough to think you’re the only person I’ll be thinking about. Come on. That was me playing the game. You know the game.”

  “No I don’t,” she whispered. “This was my first time.”

  “Oh. Well … sorry. Now you know. Watch out for guys like me. We like to get around. But I’m about to slow down. I’m getting married. So I’ve gotta have my fun while I’ve still got the chance. It’s not like I’m gonna cheat on Peggy. What kinda guy do you think I am?”

  Tommy opened the door and got out of the car. He stretched in the night air, slammed the door shut, then opened the door to the driver’s seat and got behind the wheel. He turned around and looked at her.

  “Fix your clothes and come on. We gotta go.”

  She lay there on the seat for a few seconds, her head spinning.

  “But what about the movie?”

  “You know damn well I wasn’t taking you to no movie. Like you really wanted to go. Who likes that guy anyway? Jack Nicholas.”

  “It’s Nicholson,” she replied softly.

  “Whatever,” he said. “I ain’t never even heard of him.”

  He cranked up the car.

  She adjusted her clothes.

  “I have,” she mumbled.

  A month later, Tommy probably still didn’t know who Jack Nicholson was. And the girl didn’t know who Peggy was either. Perhaps it was someone from another school.

  It didn’t matter. The girl had found out that Tommy and Peggy were definitely engaged.

  And what else she found out was that Tommy Dennis was gone. He had zipped away, off to the Army, leaving nothing behind but a bad memory, and a tiny scar in the small of her back from where the cracked pleather in the back seat of his raggedy El Dorado had nicked her.

  Oh yeah.

  And something that made her period stop.