LOVING HER SOUL MATE (12 page)

“Would you care for something to
drink, Captain?” Shay asked before sitting down.

“John,” John said.
 
“And no, but thanks, I’m good.”

Shay sat down, placing her feet
beneath her butt.
 
John was leaned back
on the sofa, his legs crossed, his body turned slightly toward Shay’s.
 
As he looked around the books-and-newspaper-dominated
room, she took a quick look at him.
 
He
was obviously an attractive man, but it was his midsection that she found her
eyes drifting to.
 
She knew he was
packing a large bundle of joy inside that zipper, and it was beginning to
excite her again.
 
She even found herself
imagining what it would feel like to have that big, thick joystick inside of
her again.
 

And then she caught herself and
smiled.
 
She hadn’t thought about having
sex since she left John’s office three months ago, and now he showed up and she
was behaving as if all she thought about was having sex!
 
Get a
grip
, she told herself.

“You read all of this stuff?” John
asked her, picking up a book off of the coffee table.

Shay knew her need to read didn’t
endear her to most men, but decided she could live with that.
 
“I do,” she said truthfully.

“You know you could have a lot
less mess with a Kindle or a Nook.”

“I know.
 
But I’m still relatively new to Brady so I’m
trying to learn the town’s history and culture.
 
You won’t find these books as eBooks.”

“Understood,” he said, tossing the
book back on the table.
 
“So you want to
add that local flavor to your reports?”

“Exactly.”

What a thoughtful young lady, John
thought.
 
“Well that’s a good thing,” he
said.

His acceptance of her hobby
surprised her.
 
“Really?” she asked.
 
“So you don’t find the fact that a twenty-six
year old is immersing
herself
in old newspaper
articles and local history books odd?
 
Everybody else does.”

“Everybody?”
John asked as he looked intensely at her.
  
“As in your new
boyfriend?”

Shay was puzzled.
 
“What new boyfriend?”

“I assumed, after Resden, you’d
find yourself another guy.”

“Oh.
 
No.
 
I
meant everybody as in Aunt Rae, actually.
 
Although she’s not really my aunt, but just this
elderly lady who took a shine to me when I helped her get her prescriptions
straight at the drugstore.
 
We’ve
been friends ever since.”

“And this Aunt Rae has a problem
with your reading habits?”

“She does.
 
She says I need to get a life.”

John laughed.

“I kid you not.
 
A seventy-seven year old woman told me to get
a life.”

“That’s a shame, Shay.”

“Ain’t it a shame?
 
I told her I have a life, thank-you.
 
But she figures all you have to do is look
around this place to know that’s not quite true.”

A quietness
came over the room when Shay made that statement.
 
John could feel the change.
 

“Where are you from originally?”
he asked her.
 
Seeing her again sparked
his interest in her again.
 
And he
suddenly wanted to know all there was to know about her.

“I’m from right here in Alabama,”
she replied.
 
“Birmingham
born and raised.
 
My parents moved
to Philadelphia when I was still in college, but I didn’t go with them.
 
I love this state.”

“And by your UAB t-shirt,” John
said, looking at her sizeable chest, at the fact that she appeared to be
braless, “you attended college in Birmingham, majored in journalism or communications
or some such major, and decided to plant your career flag in this state that
you love.”

“That’s right,” she said with a
proud smile.
 
“What about you?
 
You’re a ‘Bama man?”

“Bite your tongue, young
lady.
 
I’m an LSU man.
 
I’m originally from Baton Rouge.”

Shay smiled.
 
“I see.
 
Your family still in Baton Rouge?”

“Yeah, but we aren’t close or
anything like that.
 
My mother’s no
longer with us, and my dad’s an asshole, so I don’t spend too much time over
there.
 
But back to
you.
 
What happened after college?”
he asked her, finding any discussion of his father not worth the breath it took
to mention him.

Shay hunched her shoulder.
 
“I got a job.
 
Got my dream job with the Birmingham Union-Star, one
of the most prestigious newspapers in this state.
 
I worked my way up from
their
nobody
roving reporter to one of their top crime reporters.
 
I was on my way.”
 
A faintness
came
into Shay’s eyes.
 
John stared into those
eyes.

“What happened?” he asked
her.
 

“I loved that job.
 
Loved it.
 
Worked my ass off with
every assignment too.
 
Would have stayed there forever if they would have let me.”
 

“But they wouldn’t let you?”

Shay sighed and then nodded, a
kind of stark sadness suddenly coming over her entire demeanor.
 
“They wouldn’t let me,” she admitted.
 
“My forever ended up being only four
years.
 
After that, after they let me go,
I had to grab whatever I could get.”

“And I take it our Brady Tribune
was what you could get?”

“Yeah, it was.
 
But I’m grateful to have it.”

“Yeah, but come on, Shay.
 
You went from the biggest newspaper in the
entire state to one of the smallest.
 
That had to feel like a considerable step backwards.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Shay
admitted.
 
“It was a major letdown.
 
But a girl’s gotta eat.”

John smiled.
 
He was beginning to see why he immediately
liked this particular girl the first time he saw her.
 
“But if you were working your ass off, doing
such a great job, why were you let go?”

Shay exhaled, and that sadness
reappeared.
 
Could he handle the truth,
she wondered, or would he declare, like everybody else she’d ever told it to,
that she had it coming?
 
“They said I was
becoming dead weight.”
 
She said this and
looked at him with an expectation of disapproval that broke his heart.
 

“They said
you
were dead weight?
 
No way.”

Shay stared at him.
 
“How could you be so sure?”

“Doesn’t take
a rocket scientist to know that you’re a very hardworking girl, Shay.
 
You wouldn’t allow
yourself to be anybody’s dead weight.
 
It
doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that much out.”

“Apparently it did take more than
that because they weren’t trying to hear my objections.
 
They just wanted me out of there.”

“So you loaded up the truck and
moved to Brady?”

Shay laughed.
 
“Something
like
that.”
 

“And according to Aunt Rae you
need to get out more.”

“That’s what she says.
 
But right now I’m just trying to get settled
in at the Trib.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

“It’s been challenging, I can’t
even front,” Shay said with a smile.
 
“They either treat me like I’m some idiot who doesn’t know squat, or
some kid who needs to be led all over the place by some male reporter.
 
It’s infuriating really.”

John glanced at Shay’s mouth, the
way it curved at the tip.
 
“Has Ed
Barrington tried to hit on you?” he asked her.

Shay looked at John.
 
Why would he know anything about that?
 
“Ed?” she
asked,
her
eyes wide with hesitation.

“Don’t worry,” John assured her,
“it goes no further than here.
 
I just
happen to know Ed and I know he hits on everything in a skirt.”
 
Especially
somebody with your attributes in that skirt
, John wanted to add.

“It was no big deal.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.
 
I handled it.
 
It’s over.”

“What did you do?” John asked with
a smile.
 
“Tell boyfriend and boyfriend
gave old Ronnie a little visit?”
 
Why he
was so obsessed with her telling him if she had a new boyfriend or not
disturbed him.
 
But it was a fact: he
needed to know.

Shay was a little disappointed
that he would hold such a chauvinistic view.
 
“No, remarkably, no boyfriend had to get involved.
 
I was able to tell Ed myself.”

John immediately realized his
blunder.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
I’m an asshole, right?
 
I didn’t mean to suggest that you weren’t
capable-”

“Oh, I know.
  
That’s just a sore spot with me.
 
Single ladies are always expected to have
some man in their life ready to fight their battles at the drop of a hat, when
many of us don’t even have a man period.”

Don’t have a man
, John
thought.
 
A smart,
thoughtful kid like her?
 
Were
these young guys out here crazy?
 
Or was
it more to it than that?
 
“Do you single
ladies want a man?” he decided to ask her.

Shay smiled.
 
“Some do, some don’t,” she said.

John began rubbing his forehead as
he looked at her.
 
And he couldn’t stop
wishing that his life had been different.
 
If he was younger and wasn’t so messed up, then maybe he could have been
worthy of a woman like this.
 
Maybe he
could have been more than happy to commit to her and her alone.
 
“What about you?” he asked her.
 
“Do you or don’t you?”

Shay hesitated.
 
This wasn’t exactly the conversation she
expected to be having with John Malone of all people.
 
But it was an oddly relaxing conversation for
her.
 
“I do,” she admitted.
 
“I would love to have a companion.
 
But it’s just not the easiest thing in the
world to find that right person.
 
Most
guys just want sex nowadays.”

John felt a twinge of
embarrassment when she said that.
 
“What
about Aunt Rae?
 
I’ll bet she has an
opinion on the matter.”

Shay smiled weakly.
 
“She does.
 
She says I expect too much from these men out here.
 
She’s an old spinster-”

“Never married?”

“Never.
 
That’s why she says she
knows what she’s talking about.
 
She
wanted a good man too, wanted one desperately.
 
Only to discover, she said, that it’s all relative and nobody’s
good.
 
Not even her.”
 
Then Shay frowned.
 
“But she found out too late.”

John and Shay exchanged a
lingering look that caught them both short.
 
There was something about his eyes that startled Shay.
  
She saw such compassion there, such
understanding.
 
Where
did that come
from
, she wondered.

John, too, was caught off guard
when their eyes met.
 
He saw
a sweetness
in Shay’s eyes, and a deep vulnerability that
made his heart squeeze with a need he didn’t recognize.
 
All along, from their very first encounter to
now, his reaction to her had been a stark one.
 
It was as if he saw in her something so unique, and so refreshing that he
knew a man like him hooking up with someone that decent would be obscene.