ROMANCING HER PROTECTOR (2 page)

olds. It’s embarrassing.”

Matty laughed. He could really love this woman, he thought, and then quickly caught

himself.
Love this woman
? Where in the world did that come from?

“So how’s everything been going for you?” he asked her, moving right along. “And by

the by, I’ve always been curious: is Shay your real name?”

“Nall, it’s just what people call me. My real name’s Shanita Cooper.”

“Ah, Shanita.” Shay liked the way he said it with such emphasis. Not plain
Shanita
,

the way most people said it, but
Sha-Ni-Ta
, the way nobody did. “But I take it you prefer

Shay,” he added.

“It doesn’t matter, tell you the truth. But everybody calls me Shay, or ShayShay, so

yeah, I just go with it.”

“From the way they talk in Stop Gap, you’re the conservative of the group.”

Shay shook her head. “Ain’t they crazy? They actually think I’m some innocent air

head who don’t know squat about the world, when it’s really the other way around.”

Matty glanced at her. He never took her for an air head, she was too much her own

person for him to even consider that, but he had thought there to be an innocence about her.

“So you’ve been around?” he asked her, his eyes almost by reflex traveling down to her

breasts.

“I was raised in the streets,” Shay said, glancing at him just as his eyes traveled back to

hers. “What’ll you think?”

As soon as Shay said those words she regretted it. She didn’t mean to imply she had

been around in any sexual way, she was never that kind of girl, but she wasn’t naïve either.

When a man asks a female if she’s
been around
, he usually isn’t referring to how many

libraries she’s been around, or churches.

And although Matty turned his attention back to the road as the rain began to pour

down even heavier, and thunder and lightning began to roar, she kept her eyes on him. At

Stop Gap he’d always treated her with respect, even more so than he treated any of the other

waitresses. It bothered her that he might now believe, however wrongly, she wasn’t worthy of

that respect.

“So what are you at Franklin?” Matty asked. “Sophomore, Junior, what?”

“I’ll be starting my junior year next term, thank God.”

“And then one more year after that, and you’re out of here?”

“As fast as my little feet can carry me.”

Matty smiled, glanced down the length of her body. She was little all right, but with the

right proportions of hip, ass, and thighs that always piqued his interest whenever he’d see her

moving around at Stop Gap. Although he preferred his women to have more meat on their

bones -he was, after all, an ass-man through and through, hers was tight enough and with just

enough bouncy firmness that made him wonder more than once how she would feel to the

touch.

There was also an element of independence about her that he liked. She was a direct,

to the point, don’t have time for anybody’s bullshit kind of operator he respected. And she

had a look about her, with her big, grain-bright brown eyes that seemed to look at the world

with equal combinations of hope and disgust, and with her rich, smooth, dark chocolate skin

that made her not only physically attractive , but somebody he determined would be an

interesting person to get to know. In her style, manner and work ethic she was, in Matty’s

mind, a cut above anybody else working at that traveler’s only café that was on the far edge of

town.

“What’s your major?” he asked her.

“Journalism,” Shay said proudly. “I want to expose corruption in high places.”

Matty looked at her. “That’s an odd reason to want to be a reporter.”

“Yeah, but that’s my reason,” she said with that fearlessness he liked. “It’s a sin the

way people get elected to these high offices and then pass laws that do nothing but hurt the

poor. They campaign on helping the poor, then do just the opposite when they get what they

want.”

“Why do you suppose they do it?”

Shay didn’t miss a beat. “Money, honey,” she said, folding her arms and crossing her

legs, talking as if she was an old pro about something that was probably as foreign to her as

China. And it made Matty smiled.

“Money?” he said.

“Money, honey. It’s all about the Benjamins. They get in office, loosen regulations on

the businesses they’re interested in, cut programs they have no interest in, and then leave

public life to become lobbyists in that same private sector they just helped. But it’s payback

for all of the good work they did. It’s a racket I’m telling you.”

Matty wanted to laugh. Where did this kid get off? She was talking as if she knew the

business community like the back of her hand. But what was even more remarkable to Matty,

who was a major player in that business community, was that she was hitting the nail right on

the head.

Shay exhaled, and looked at Matty. “So what about you?” she asked him. “You know

my name, my major, where I live. What’s yours?”

“What’s my major?”

“No, silly!” Shay said with a laugh. “What’s your name? Your full name, I mean.”

“According to your coworkers, it’s Brad Pitt.”

She laughed. “You know about that?”

Matty nodded. “I do.” Then he paused. “It’s Matthew Driscoll, at your service.”

“But your friends call you Matty, or Matt, right?”

“Wrong,” Matty said with bite, looking at Shay so there would be no

misunderstanding. “Nobody calls me Matt.”

Everybody used to call his father Matt Driscoll, and his father was the most sadistic,

abusive human being he’d ever known, a man who would beat Matty’s mother so mercilessly

that she’d end up hospitalized for weeks. And would still be so afraid of the man that she’d go

running back to him. Matty used to watch the beatings as a kid, and dream of the day. When

he turned sixteen, and was as big as his father, he fought back.

Shay noted the bite in his voice and decided to leave that minefield alone. “You’re a

businessman, aren’t you?” she asked him.

“That’s right.”

“What kind of business?”

“DSI: Driscoll Systems, Incorporated.”

“That sounds impressive. So what does Driscoll Systems, Inc, do?”

Matty smiled. “We do a number of things.”

“Tell me one, at least one I can understand, that is.”

“Well,” he said, his eyes glued to the road as he couldn’t help noticing that the thunder,

the lightning, the rain downpour was beginning to pick up with even more ferocity, “we buy up

businesses in need of restructuring, restructure them, and then sell them at a profit. Sometimes

a small profit, usually quite a substantial profit.”

“Oh, I see. Like flipping houses, right?”

Matty slowed his speed from an already slow thirty-five miles, to twenty. “Flipping

houses?”

“Yeah, like that. I once worked this job where this guy would buy up houses that

needed lots of repairs and stuff. We’d repair’em, I was good at drywall repair, then he’d sell

the houses at a profit.”

Matty smiled. It was the most simplistic way anyone had ever explained his very

complicated and involved business. “Then I guess you’re right, young lady. DSI is akin to

flipping houses.”

But the kind of ‘houses’ he would probably flip, Shay thought, looking at Matty as he

returned his attention to steering them safely through the heavy downpour, were more like

million dollar mansions than the shacks her former boss renovated. She left that job, in fact,

after she had to kick same boss in the groin when he kept trying to kiss her.

“Whoa!” Shay said when a sudden gush of wind caused Matty’s Mercedes to move

sideways. “What was that?”

“Wind shear,” Matty said, able to steer it back onto the road but only after some

effort. “It’s getting worse out here. We’re going to have to pull over.”

“Pull over?”

“Either that or flip over, yes ma’am. We’re still a good distance away from Franklin

U. We’re not going to make it.” A bolt of lightning that gave even Matty pause lit up the sky.

“Are there any lodgings, motels, anything like that near here?”

“A motel?”

“Yes, Shanita, a motel. I don’t trust parking on the side of the road, not with these

winds picking up the way they are. We’ve got to get indoor shelter.” Matty sounded almost

panicky, but Shay couldn’t help it. Just because he was a known face where she worked

didn’t mean she knew him like that. But when the wind, once again, blew the car sideways

and nearly off of the road, she got serious.

“Turn left up on South Benn coming up,” she quickly said. “There’s this little place a

couple blocks from there.”

TWO

That “little place” turned out to be more like a little roach motel in one of the more

dilapidated parts of town. Shay waited in the car while Matty went to secure a room. Or

would he secure two rooms? It occurred to her that he was the type who would do just that.

He was the one, in fact, who had said they would stay in the lobby of the motel and wait out

the storm, only to discover that there was no lobby but only a little cubby-hole where the

attendant took your money behind a bullet proof glass.

He secured one room, with one bed, claiming that that was the only room the place had

available. Shay didn’t know if she was being played, but she knew she couldn’t sit out in the

car, not with the way the wind was whipping and twirling, and the thunder and lightning was

piercing the sky. Had to be 50-60 mile-an-hour winds, if you asked Shay. Not to mention the

rain. She got out of the car, and ran into the room.

By the time they entered the small room that smelled of mothballs and some cheap air

freshener, Shay was so drenched that she looked as if her clothes had been ironed onto her

body, with no daylight between skin and clothing.

“Get in the bathroom and change,” Matty said, turning off the against-the-wall AC,

anxious to get out of his wet clothes too, as soon as she left the room.

“Change into what?” Shay asked in a broken voice as the super-cold room caused her

to immediately get the chills.

“There should be a robe of some kind in there, I would imagine,” he said, looking at her

summer wear of shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt so thin the outline of not only her breasts, but the

flatness of her stomach, could be seen, “or just use the towels if there’s no robe. But change.”

“I’m freezing!” she said as she hurried into the bathroom and closed the door. He

knew they would have to bundle up together if he expected to get her warm. What he didn’t

know was if she would fight it tooth and nail. Although she was young, there was a worldly,

almost sophisticated quality about her that made him wonder if she was more experienced than

meets the eye.

But he didn’t worry about it long, because he was freezing too. He got out of his

clothes quickly, flapping his Armani suit over a broken down chair as if it was some off-the-

rack, buy-one-get-one free polyester number from Sears. When he was naked, down only to

his socks, and was ready to get in bed out of sight of his young companion, a wrenching

scream came from the bathroom as the door flew open and Shay, stock-naked, ran straight for

him and jumped into his arms. She was looking back, toward the bathroom, in terror.

“What is it?” Matty asked, looking toward the bathroom too, ready to drop her on the

bed and hurry to take care of whatever it was. Until he heard what it was.

“A spider!” she yelled, wiggling in his arms, looking back one way and then the other as

if the creature was going to run out of the bathroom like some saliva-spewing, bow-legged alien

out of a Sci-Fi movie.

Matty laughed, enjoying her in his arms. “A spider, Shanita?”

“That thing big as a Volkswagen, it ain’t funny!”

“Okay,” he said, although he really did want to laugh. He turned back the bedspread

and attempted to lay her down on the bed. But she wiggled again, looking this time at the bed

itself.

“There could be spiders in that bed, too, why you laughing?”

“I’m sorry, it’s just that. . . But look,” he said, lifting the bedspread to reveal a clean,

white sheet, “no spiders at all. All right?”

Shay wasn’t all right, but she knew she had to lay or sit somewhere. He found her

ridiculous, but he didn’t understand. She had a fear, an out-and-out phobia, for all things

spider, snake, or rat. Had that phobia when she was on the streets, had it all her life. That

was why, when he did lay her down, she continued to be hyper-vigilant, looking under the

covers again even though Matty had already showed her that the coast was clear, looking