LOVING HER SOUL MATE (29 page)

“Not that it’s any of your business, but he gave me
permission to drive it.”

“Like hell.”

Shay hesitated.
 
“Okay, now, this is getting kind of unnecessary.
 
I think you need to take up any issue you
have about that car with him.”

“I’m taking it up with you, bitch!” Blair said so
forcefully that it astounded Shay, and caused others at nearby tables to look
their way.
 
Including
two uniformed officers in a side booth.
 
“And I want to know why is some cheap, trash-barrel whore like you
driving around town in my husband’s car?
 
Don’t you know better than to be bothering with another woman’s man?”

Shay was stunned by her aggressiveness.
 
“You’re divorced,” she said.

“And you believed that?” Blair said with an oddly
chilling smile on her face.
 
“Honestly?
 
Are you
that
naïve?”

Shay knew better than to let the ranting of some
bitter woman throw her confidence in John, so she didn’t respond.
 
She knew a confrontation wasn’t worth
it.
 
Especially not with so many eyes
anxious for gossip and possibly even a knock-down drag-out.
 

“How old are you anyway?” Blair asked her.

Shay said nothing.

“He doesn’t like young girls,” Blair
continued.
 
“Never have.
 
And you look to be barely twenty-one.”

Shay started to tell her that she wasn’t as young
as that, but she didn’t even go there.
 
Telling this woman that she was twenty-six, not twenty-one,
wouldn’t change her impressions of her one iota.
 
She therefore remained silent.

“I don’t get it,” Blair said, a puzzled look on her
face.
 
“Why in the world would he give
you, of all people, the keys to his car?
 
He never even liked for me to drive his precious car, but he lets you
drive it?
 
His whore?
 
Seriously?”

Now Shay was getting tired of this fast.
 
“Look, lady--”

“Mrs. Malone is my name.”

“Good.
 
Because I have one too.
 
And it’s not bitch or whore or any other derogatory name.
 
And you will not sit up here and call me
those names.”

Blair laughed one of those joyless laughs mixed
with anxiety and jealousy.
 
And Shay had
had it.
 
She came to grab a quick
breakfast and then head over to the Trib.
 
But when it became obvious that this woman wasn’t about to leave her
table, and was begging for a fight, she wasn’t about to sit there and argue
with her.
 
Or fight her.
 
Not over some man.
 
Not over a man who was this woman’s husband
for six long years.
 
She therefore
decided to find another place to eat her breakfast altogether, and just leave.

But Blair wasn’t about to just let her leave.
 
Not when she saw how much younger Shay
was.
 
Not when she saw up close Shay’s
smooth black skin.
 
Not when she looked
into Shay’s big, golden-brown eyes.
 
She
couldn’t just let it go.
 
It would be
like being robbed and raped in broad daylight, and then ignoring it.

When Shay stood up to leave, Blair stood up, too,
and slung Shay back around.
 
“I’m not
through with you, bitch!” she said so forcefully that one of the officers
stopped eating.

Shay looked at Blair’s hand on her arm and then
into Blair’s pretty face.
 
“Take your
hand off of me,” she warned her.

“Make me, bitch,” Blair warned her back.

Shay angrily flicked Blair’s hand off of her but
Blair quickly retaliated, spitting into Shay’s face, the saliva cruising down
toward Shay’s mouth.
 

And Shay’s retaliation was swift too.
 
She slapped Blair so hard that Blair stumbled
back, lost her balance, and then fell over a chair, crushing it to the floor.
 
The officers quickly hurried to the ladies
and grabbed Shay.
 
Shay was stunned when
they slung her to the ground and began handcuffing her.

“She spit on me!” she yelled repeatedly, but the
officers didn’t seem to be listening.
 
They knew Blair Malone was Captain Malone’s ex-wife.
 
They figured they could get brownie points on
this one.
 
They therefore grabbed Shay,
took her to their patrol car, and tossed her inside.
 

By contrast, Blair was assisted to her feet, and
asked if she needed an ambulance.

TWELVE

John was leaned back behind his desk talking with
Craig Yannick, the detective he was seriously considering promoting to become
his second-in-command, when his door flew open and Wayne Peete, without
knocking, hurried inside.

“Excuse me, Cap.
 
I mean, Chief.
 
I mean . . . I
didn’t know somebody was in here.”

Yannick frowned.
 
“And because you didn’t know somebody was in here that gave you license
to just barge on in?”

“No, sir, but---”

“But what, Peete?”
John
asked.
 
“What is it?”

“Those idiots just arrested Shay Turner, sir.”

John heard it, but it didn’t register at
first.
 
When it did, he jumped to his
feet.
 
“Arrested her?” he asked
angrily.
 
“What the fuck for?”

“For slapping Mrs. Malone.”

“Mrs. Malone?
 
Who the hell is. .
.
You mean
Blair
?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Geez,” John said as he grabbed the suit coat off
of the back of his chair and hurried for the exit.
  
“Where is she?”

“They have her downstairs, in a holding cell,”
Peete said, hurrying behind him.
 

But he couldn’t keep pace with the boss, not this
time.
 
Because John took the stairs,
hurrying down them so swiftly that he barely remembered touching one.
 
And he burst into the holding section of the
jail.

When he saw Shay sitting in one of the cells, his
heart dropped.
 
“Open it,” he ordered the
jailer.

“Sir?” the jailer asked, stunned to see the chief
on site.

“Open it,” John said again, this time a little
harsher.
 
When the jailer started moving,
but not swift enough, John almost lost it. “Open it now, dammit!” he yelled.

The jailer jumped fast to the sound of John’s roar
and quickly fumbled with the keys and unlocked Shay’s cell.
 
As soon as he did, John pulled her out of
that filthy place, and hugged her.
 
“Oh,
babe,” he said, to the jailer’s shock.
 

But John didn’t give a damn.
 
There would be hell to pay, he thought as he
held her, when he found out who was responsible for this.

He spent the balance of that day with her.
 
He took her to breakfast, this time at the
high end Carriage House restaurant, and then to the mall where they walked and
talked and shopped like kids.
 
John
fielded many phone calls from his staff, and endured even more stares from the
townspeople, but he didn’t care.
 
He
wanted everybody to know that she was his.
 
That he and Blair were yesterday news and would always
be yesterday news.
 
Shay Turner,
he wanted to get the word out, was his woman now.

He also ordered Craig Yannick to suspend the two
arresting officers pending an investigation into Shay’s arrest.
 
If they saw the whole thing, as Shay said
they did, then they had to have known that Blair was the instigator; that she
spit on Shay first.
 
In Brady spitting in
someone’s face was an assault by any definition, and as officers they knew
it.
 
And they also knew that it was
Blair’s ass that they should have hauled in.

Just thinking about it angered John, so he stopped
thinking about it.
 
He just wanted to
spend the day with Shay.
 
And he
did.
 
They spent all day together.
 
And that night, after walking seemingly all
around Brady and having a picnic at the beach, they were happily
exhausted.
 
They showered together, with
John putting his dick inside of her as they bathe, and then they curled against
each other in John’s bed and slept like babies.

Shay woke up early the next morning.
 
This was to be her first day back to work and
she was anxious to get started.
 
She
looked over at John.
 
He still had his
arm around her in the bed.
 
She smiled at
him and at his sometimes over-protectiveness.
  
Then she lifted his arm enough to slide out of bed.
 
He moved too, onto his back, but remained
asleep.

Shay got into the shower and John continued to
sleep when the front door of the home was unlocked and then opened.
 
Blair Malone entered the home that was once
her residence for almost six years, and made her way up the stairs.
 
Early this morning a former, busybody
neighbor had phoned and told her that John had himself a black woman at his
home.
 
Blair knew immediately that it had
to be that Shay Turner, the chick who had been driving his car.
 
The chick
who
had
slapped her and knocked her down.
 
She
couldn’t believe John would betray her like that.
 
She hung up the phone, dressed quickly, and
hurried over.

 
Once she
made her way up those stairs, she walked along the second floor corridor and
down to the master bedroom effortlessly.
 
Before the divorce, this was her home.
 
Her home and John’s home.
 
And she knew this place like the back of her
hand.
 

She knew John was sleeping around.
 
Hell, he was sleeping around during almost
the entirety of their marriage.
 
So the
mere fact that his big dick, horny ass had some woman was nothing new to
Blair.
 

But she never received any report about him
bringing any of his women to their home.
 
Not ever.
 
And to think that he would
choose Shay Turner of all people, that violent black bitch, to be the only
woman he ever invited to lounge around in their home, was incredible to
Blair.
 
Shay Turner of
all people?
 
After
what she did to Blair?
 
Just
thinking about it caused her anger to rise with every step along that corridor
she took.

By the time she arrived at the closed door of the
master bedroom, she was seething with anger.
 
But she knew she had to keep her wits about her.
 
She wanted to check this bitch right.
 
She didn’t want to give up any of the element
of surprise.
 
So she opened the door to
the master bedroom gingerly, with great anticipation in her hate-filled
heart.
 
She was ready to pounce, but she
knew she had to take it easy.

As soon as she opened the door, she could hear the
water running in the shower.
 
And she
could also see John, stark naked, lying alone on the bed.
 
She looked down the length of his ripped
body, at his pecker just lying there so peacefully, and her heart swelled with
anger, hatred, and love.
 
Her emotions
were just that confusing.
 
She walked
over to him slowly.
 
Why did he have to
look so damn handsome all the time?
 
And
tears began to fill her eyes.
 

She sat on the edge of the bed.
 
Then leaned down, took that wonderful dick
she knew so well, and put it in her mouth.
 

Shay pressed off the water in the shower and
stepped out of the stall.
 
She dried off
quickly, wrapped the towel around her small body, and brushed her hair up into
a band-held ponytail.
 
This was her first
day back to work and she wanted to look serious and strong.

She looked at herself in the mirror.
 
John often said she had a strong but also a
vulnerable look about her, and he always seemed fascinated by her face.
 
When she looked at herself in the mirror she
saw cute, yes, but nothing like what John apparently saw.
 
But that was the beauty of their
relationship.
 
It was more than just skin
deep.
 
Their relationship was layers
deep, with each seeing in the other what they couldn’t see in themselves.
 
It was wonderful actually.
 
Especially after these last
six weeks when she relied so heavily on his love and his strength.
 
She hated relying on it, but loved knowing
that she could.
 
That was why she felt
that their relationship was so special.
 
Because she could rely on him, and he could rely on her.
 
She made a funny face at herself in the
mirror, smiled at her silliness, and then grabbed up the front of her oversized
towel, turned off the bathroom light, and made her way back into the bedroom.