LOVING HER SOUL MATE (20 page)

But for her
to prefer a player like John Malone just angered him.
 
Give me a break
, he thought in his anger.
 
Why all of these women were so nuts about a
guy like that was a mighty mystery to Ronnie.
 
And why a sweet, innocent young woman like Shay would feel she had to
settle for some old-ass jock like John Malone just didn’t sit right with
him.
 
She could do way better than that.

He got a chance to tell her
exactly that a few hours later, when Shay finally left her computer and went
into the break room for coffee.
 

He followed her.

She was pouring coffee into her
cup when he entered.
 
“Want a cup?” she
asked him.

“No, I’m good, thanks,” he said as
he slowly moved toward her.
 
He often
wondered why he was so smitten with Shay Turner.
 
She wasn’t all that great looking.
 
She looked good, but she wasn’t any beauty
queen.
 
And her figure was mostly on the
small side, something else that never really turned him on.
 

But she turned him on.
 
Maybe because she wasn’t
perfect.
 
Maybe because there was
an innocence
to her that he felt was his duty to
protect.
 
And he was going to protect
her, he thought to himself, even if it meant drastic measures.

And as she poured her coffee, he
stood behind her and couldn’t stop staring at that small figure of hers.
 
She was small, but she wasn’t boyish.
 
This girl had curves in all the right
places.
 
And that ass of hers was so
tight, so snugly fit into those blue dress pants she wore, that he was certain
a dime could bounce off of it and put somebody’s eye out.
 
Then he thought again, about John Malone
feeling on that ass, even before he himself had a chance to feast on it, and
his rage returned.

“How about that press conference
yesterday?” he said as he moved over and stood alongside her.

“It was interesting, that’s for
sure,” Shay said, stirring her brew.

“The way McNamara ripped into you,
gosh.
 
He looked like a fool.”
 
Shay smiled.
 
“And then for John Malone to try and take credit for your hard work,
that was insulting too.”

Shay’s smile didn’t disappear, but
it weakened.
 
“What work of mine was he
taking credit for?”

“The fact
that you wrote about the cover-up.”

“Yeah, thanks
to Captain Malone giving me the intel to write about it.
 
So I don’t get your
point.
 
And what was insulting about what
he said?”

Ronnie hated the way she was
defending that creep, but he fought hard not to show it.
 
“The way he went about it is what I mean,” he
said.
 
“The way he threw his own boss
under the bus.
 
Like, who does that?”

“His boss was lying in his face,
and he stood up and called him out on it.
 
I don’t call that throwing anybody under any bus.
 
I call that courage.”

Ronnie snorted.
 
Inwardly he seethed.
 
“Courage?
 
Give me a break!
 
The only courageous thing John Malone has
ever done was when he divorced his good wife, a wife who stood by his side
through thick and thin but who he couldn’t stop cheating on.”

Shay stood erect.
 
“I’d better get back to work,” she said as
she moved to leave.
 
She wasn’t about to
stand there and hear him rag on John.

“And the way he still has sex with
her,” Ronnie threw in, knowing that it would get a rise out of Shay.
 
It did.
 
She turned back around.
 

“Yeah, isn’t it pathetic?” he said
when she turned.
 
“He still fucks his
ex-wife, pardon my French, but he does.
 
I caught him over there just this morning, yes, I did.
 
I have a friend who lives in the same
building where his ex-wife’s condo is and he says John goes over there every
single morning to sex her before work.
 
And he did it this morning too.
 
Went right over there and screwed her.”

Shay’s heart was pounding.
 
“I’m
sure you
nor
your friend have any idea what goes on behind her closed doors so, yeah.
 
But anyway---”

“She told him,” Ronnie said
quickly.
 
Shay looked at him.
 
“My friend, that is,” Ronnie continued.
 
"She told him what goes on when John
makes his morning visits.
 
Sex, sex, and
more sex, that’s the way she put it to my friend.”

Shay stared at Ronnie.
 
What kind of game
was he
playing at, she wondered.
 
“Ed says
you’re now the lead on the Dodge story,” she said.

Ronnie was surprised that she
didn’t want more details, but he knew how to keep it together too.
 
“Yes.
 
Sorry about that.
 
I was as
shocked as you were.”

“We need to compare notes, to see
where we go from here.”

“Right.
 
You bet.” Ronnie ran his
hand through his spiky blond hair.
 
“I
have a couple interviews in a few, but I should be free later today.
 
How’s your schedule?”

“I’m flexible.
 
Just say when,” Shay said and made her way,
quickly, out of his presence.
 

When she made her way back into
the newsroom, however, she stopped in her tracks when she saw John at the front
of that room shaking hands with the copy editor.
  
Although he looked so magnificent to her, in
his tailored light-brown suit, his boyish brown hair in its usual adorably
rumpled mess, she was too amazed that he was in the newsroom at all to be
enthralled.

Ronnie came up behind her,
wondering if she was standing there because of what he had said to her.
 
When he saw John Malone, he frowned.

“What’s he doing here?” he asked
her.

Since she had some idea, but
wasn’t about to share that idea with the likes of Ronnie Burk, she didn’t say a
word.
 
She watched as the copy editor
escorted John into Ed Barrington’s office, and then she went back to her desk.

It would be another hour before John
left that office.
 
And when he did, both
Ronnie, near the front of the city room, and Shay in the back, were staring at
him.
 
But he kept it professional.
 
He simply left the newsroom altogether,
without so much as glancing at either one of them.
 

It would be yet another hour after
his departure before Ed would do as she had thought he would do earlier, and
call her into his office.
 
To undoubtedly cuss her out for allowing John to interject himself
in their business to begin with.

As she walked to Ed’s office, she
determined that she wasn’t going to tell him that she had asked John to stay
out of it.
 
She wasn’t going to throw
John under the bus like that.
 
But she
wasn’t going to just sit there and take Ed’s abuse either.
 
So she knew it would be a fine line.

“Sit down,” Ed ordered when she
walked into his office.
 
He was seated
behind his desk, and she could tell he was fuming.

As soon as she closed the door and
sat down, Ed let her have it.
 

“So John Malone’s your boyfriend
now?” he asked her.

Shay frowned.
 
“Is that what he told you?”

“What the hell else could it be,
Turner?
 
I’ve been the city editor of
this newspaper as long as John Malone has been in this town and never once, not
ever, has he walked into my office to defend one of my reporters.
 
And, on top of that, he threatened to cut off
the entire police department from providing any future
intel
to the Trib if I didn’t treat her right.
 
And that’s all he wanted.
 
For me
to treat you right.
 
As if I’m treating
you like some damn dog around here!”

Shay said nothing.
 
She could have said plenty about her
treatment, because John was right about that, but she said nothing.
 
This man was still her boss.
 
She still needed this job.

Ed exhaled, to calm himself back
down.
 
“So you’re sleeping with him now?
 
Is that it, Shay?
 
You’re sleeping with this guy?”

Shay knew what he meant.
 
She turned Ed down, but not John.
 
She knew exactly what he meant.
 
And that was exactly why she held her peace.

“You aren’t the only one he’s
banging, I hope you realize that.”

Now he was going too far.
 
“Is there something you wanted, sir?” she
asked him.

“Yeah, it’s something I
want!”
 
I want to fuck you too
, was what he really wanted to say.
 
But he calmed back down.
 
He wasn’t about to tussle with John Malone if
it was true and she was now one of his.
 
“You’re back on the Dodge story.”

Shay didn’t expect that.
 
“As lead?” she asked.

“As lead,” he said.
 
Her heart soared.
 
“Only continue to work with Ronnie,” Ed
added.
 
“He makes a good back up.”

“Yes, sir,” Shay said with a
smile, standing to her feet.
 
“I’ll
gladly work with Ronnie, sir.”

“And Turner,” Ed said.
 
Shay turned his way.
 
“You’re a good
kid,
I know it even if I don’t act like it sometimes.
 
Be careful with Malone.
 
When it comes to breaking a woman’s heart,
he’s the master.”

Shay didn’t say anything to
that.
 
She just left.
 
And once again, her joy was tempered.
 
It was the story of her life.
 
As soon as it seemed as if she was about to
soar, her wings always managed to get clipped.

NINE

She didn’t see or hear from John
again until later that night.
 
Although
he had said he would phone to set up a dinner date, he never did.
 
And she wasn’t about to phone him.
 
She, instead, went home after work and
studied the research notes she had compiled on the Dodge case.
 
If he phoned, great.
 
If he didn’t, she wasn’t going to worry about
it.
 
She wasn’t going to let this
relationship become the end-all that be-all of her life.
 
She wasn’t going to do it.

And it wasn’t just because of what
Ed and Ronnie had said.
 
She knew John
was a ladies’ man.
 
She knew that going
in.
 
But it was her heart that she had to
protect.
 
Because she
very well may not be enough for him.
 
Not that it would be her fault if he felt that
way,
she knew it would be his own damn fault.
 
But that wouldn’t ease her pain.
 
John had some great qualities.
 
But he also had some great issues, too.
 
Especially, she thought as she sat on her sofa reading over her notes,
if Ronnie’s little comment was true and John got out of her bed, and went
straight to his ex-wife’s.

The doorbell rang just as Shay was
thinking about going into the kitchen and finding herself something to
eat.
 
She sat her notes on the already
crowded coffee table and walked over by her big, living room window.
 
She assumed it would be John.
 
But when she saw, not his big Silverado, but
a green Porsche on her driveway, she frowned.
 
She had been certain that it would be John.

She opened the door.
 
When John was standing there, no longer in
his tailored suit but now in his jeans and a light brown pullover knit shirt,
she was surprised.
 
And she looked past
him.
 
“Is that yours?” she asked him.