LOVING HER SOUL MATE (33 page)

The question, for some reason,
threw Shay.
 
She was expecting something
far more personal.
 
Like how are
you?
 
Or, what in the world are you doing
back here?
 
But he had decided to keep it
professional.
 
So could she.
 

“I didn’t stop in time,” she said.

John’s eyes looked back at
her.
 
Oh, how he wanted to feel her in
his arms.
 
“Were you hurt at all?” he
asked her.

“No, thank God.
 
Neither was the guy in the other car.
 
He said he barely felt the bump.”

“Hello, chief,” the young officer
on the scene said as he scrambled out of his cruiser and hurried toward his
boss.
 
He had been on his cell phone,
running his mouth with his girlfriend, and hadn’t realized John had arrived.

“Malvaney, is it?” John asked the
officer without looking at him.
 
He,
instead, looked once again at the damage.
 

The officer smiled.
 
“That’s right, sir.”

“This is quite a bit more damage
than you had led me to believe,” John noted.

The officer’s smile disappeared,
and anguish replaced it.
 
“I didn’t mean
to mislead you, sir.”

Shay could have told John that the
damage looked worse than it was, and would have probably not even been reported
at all but for his young officer being nearby when it happened and, by
blaring
his sirens and rushing over, removed the choice.

She watched John as he walked
around to the opposite side of the bumper.
 
She’d known attractive men in her day, very attractive men, but John
Malone, in her mind, always stood head and shoulders above them all.
 
He had a face that was more wide-jaw than
angular, a smooth rather than sharp nose,
full
lips
for a white guy, and narrow blue eyes that glistened against his tanned skin
and gave him a deceptively gorgeous look.
 
At first glance you didn’t see it.
 
You only saw a fairly nice looking man, but nothing spectacular.
 
But you looked again and wow, you saw it as
if you could hardly believe just how beautiful he really was.
 
For Shay, and for most women, John Malone had
that kind of wow factor in spades.
 

He also had a ripped, athletic
body, all thighs and
biceps, that
could still rival a
twenty-year-old’s any day of the week.
 
And
that look
of unyielding control he always
had on his face exuded a kind of strength and power that Shay used to find
intimidating, but eventually found downright sexy.
 

“This is a little more than a
fender bender, officer,” John pointed out to Malvaney and then looked at him, a
look of slight irritation on his face.

Malvaney swallowed hard.
 
He knew how rough on rookies Chief Malone
could be.
 
“Yes, sir, I agree, sir, but
what I meant to tell you was that nobody was hurt or in any serious peril is what
I meant.
 
And the other car barely had a
scratch.”

“That’s because it was some bubble
Chevy from the eighties,” Shay said.
 
“It
was built like a Mack truck.
 
The guy
didn’t even want my insurance information.
 
He said the little scratch his car sustained fit right in with the other
dents and scratches, so it was no big deal.
 
But your officer wrote it up anyway.”

“He did his job,” John said
firmly.
 
He didn’t allow anyone, not even
Shay, to question the judgment of his officers unless that judgment was a
blatant violation.
 
He therefore moved
his attention away from the car’s damage and back to Shay.
 
He began walking back toward her.
 
His heart was hammering as he approached
her.
 
He was surprised at how just seeing
her again was affecting him so strongly.
 
And he wondered what in the world was it going to take to ever get her out
of his system.
 
A two-year absence didn’t
work.
 
By the way his heart was
hammering, by the way his emotions were all over the place,
it
only seemed to make his feelings for her even more intense.

His eyes began to trail down the
length of her body as he approached her, pleased to see that she had gained a
little weight.
 
She was always small, and
would probably always be petite, but the last time he saw her she was so
wrapped up in the trauma of what they had gone through that she had lost
weight.
 

Shay noticed his perusal of her
body as he approached her.
 
She never
quite knew what to do whenever his eyes would assess her that way, and they
used to assess her often that way.
 
Not
that she would complain; she used to love whenever he showed that level of
interest.
 
Now, however, given her unfair
reputation before she left town, given her need to get it right this time and
avoid as much controversy as she possibly could, she wasn’t at all sure if she
could handle that level of interest right now.

He looked back into her eyes,
placed one hand in his pant pocket, the pocket on the same side as his
holstered weapon, and exhaled.
 
“Have you
tried to crank it?”

“I tried, yes.
 
But it won’t crank.”

“Ah,” John said in that
sympathetic way she used to adore.

“Yeah, it was like the last thing
I needed.
 
I meet with Ed this afternoon
and now I don’t even have wheels.
 
Geez.
 
Some welcome
home.”

John stared at her.
 
He could already see the anguish in her
eyes.
 
“Have you called a tow truck yet?”
he asked her.

She nodded, was about to say yes,
but Malvaney interrupted her.

“She told them to tow it to her
house,” he said with a grin.
 
“I told her
what good’s that gonna do?
 
Why not have
it towed to a repair shop so it can get repaired?”

Because I can’t afford a repair bill right now
, Shay had wanted to say to the eager officer when he first came
up with the bright idea, and she still wanted to set him straight.
 
But she wasn’t about to expose just what kind
of dire straits she really was in to him or John Malone or anybody else.

John could sense her
hesitation.
 
He decided to briefly change
the subject.
 
“So were you just passing
through?” he asked.

“No, actually,” she replied.
 
“I plan to stay.”

John was amazed.
 
He stared at her.
 
“You plan to stay?”

“That’s right.”

And when was this plan hatched, he
wanted to ask.
 
“Where are you staying?”
he asked instead.
 
“Malvaney mentioned
your house?
 
What house?”
 
When she left town two years ago, she left
for good the small house she was renting.
 

“It’s a house Aunt Rae left me.”

John frowned.
 
“Aunt Rae?
 
She died?”

“Yeah.”
 
That was perhaps the
biggest regret of Shay’s decision to leave Brady.
 
She also had to leave Aunt Rae behind.
 
But they did stay in touch, talking on the
phone every week.
 
Aunt Rae even broke down
and started allowing the Senior Center’s transport van to pick her up every
morning.
 
She soon started complaining
about that too, although she never missed a day riding it.

“She didn’t want a
funeral,
you know she was kind of eccentric.
 
She wanted her body cremated with no
ceremony, she was firm on that.
 
The
attorney handling her estate didn’t even tell me about the death until after
the cremation.
 
He only called me then because
she left everything she owned in this world to me.
 
Which was only her house.
 
She died a year ago.”

Shay swallowed hard.
 
John could understand easily how that old
woman could take so completely to Shay even though she didn’t know her that
long.
 
He understood it perfectly.

“She passed last year,” he asked,
“and you’re just now taking possession of the house?”

Shay
nodded,
a bewildered look on her face.
 
“That’s
right.”

John stared at Shay.
 
He understood.
 
When she left Brady she was in a bad
state.
 
She’d been through too much.
 
He had been doubtful that she would ever come
back this way.

John’s cell phone began to
buzz.
 
He pulled it out and looked at the
Caller ID.
 
It was the station.
 
“Malone,” he said.
 
He looked at Shay as he listened on the
phone.
 
She seemed flustered to him as
she stood there, her small arms folded in a carefree pose, but her face
revealing a sense of dread.
 
Coming here
was a major move for her.
 
And that house
she inherited was hardly the catalyst.
 
He wondered, however, what was.

“Okay,” he said into the
phone.
 
“I’ll be there.”

He killed the call.
 
And made up his mind.
 
No way was he going to continue to pretend
that he didn’t have strong feelings for this woman.
 
These gossiping townspeople
be
damned.
 
“Get your
things,” he said to her.
 

Shay, however, didn’t
understand.
 
“My
things?”

“Your suit
case,
or whatever else you have in the trunk.
 
I’ll take you where you need to go.”

“Thanks, Chief, but I know you’re
a busy man.
 
I can wait for the tow
truck.”

“No, you can’t,” John said so
firmly it surprised Shay.
 
“What tow
company are you using?
 
Rick’s?”

Shay hesitated, her big eyes
attempting to follow where John was going with this.
 
“That’s right.”

“Malvaney?”

“Yes, sir?”
Malvaney replied as he stepped up toward the twosome.

“Wait here for Rick.
 
Have him tow Miss Turner’s car over to Ace
Garage.”

Shay began to panic.
 
She couldn’t pay for any repairs right
now.
 
Not until she was certain Ed was
going to give her her job back.
 
Because
if she didn’t get the job, she’d need money to survive until she found a new
one.
 
“John, look, I appreciate what
you’re trying to do, but I would prefer to have the car towed to the house
until I can---”

“Tell them to get in touch with me
if they have any questions,” John continued to tell Malvaney.
 
“And to send the bill to
me.”

“Yes, sir,” Malvaney replied and glanced
at Shay Turner.
 
He still didn’t get
it.
 
He still couldn’t see just what it
was about her that had the chief treating her as if she was somebody so
special.
 
To him she was just another
black woman.
 
Cute, yes, she was cute all
right, but hardly fantastic looking.
 
Faylene, whom everybody knew had the hots for the chief, looked way
better than her.
 
He just didn’t get it.

Shay didn’t exactly get it
either.
 
Not when so many women around
town were always clamoring to be in John Malone’s bed.
 
And not when John had to know that those same
rumors of their torrid love affair would start flying yet again.
 

“May I speak with you privately,
Chief?” she asked him.

But his cell phone began buzzing
again.
 
When he saw the Caller ID he held
up a finger to Shay.
 
“Malone?” he said
into the phone, and after a brief moment he frowned.
 
“What do you mean you can’t find it?
 
Didn’t I tell you to tear that place upside
down last night?
 
Without that evidence
we’re screwed!” He began moving away from Shay and toward his truck, his voice
rising with every step.