LOVING HER SOUL MATE (34 page)

And Shay gave up.
 
She needed transportation, no doubt about
that.
 
And if Ed hired her on the spot,
as she was praying he would, she’d need wheels right away.
 
Although she would pay her own repair bill,
she wasn’t going to turn down his assistance with a ride.
 
Not when her interview with Ed was mere hours
away.
 

But as she got her luggage out of
the trunk, with Malvaney helping her, her brows knitted in frustration
anyway.
 
Because it was
all so disheartening.
 
She came
back to Brady hoping to be this independent island, a woman who would avoid all
controversy and just do her job.
 
But she
hadn’t been in town a full hour and already needed John Malone’s rescue.

Her return home could not have
possibly started off any bleaker.

His truck pulled into the circular
driveway of his ranch style home in Pace Harbor.
 
It was a sprawling brick home of
well-maintained shrubbery and an elegantly-maintained dark green lawn.
 
A statue of Apollo was in the middle of the
circle as a fountain overflowing with rich spring water, and a double-car
garage at the end of the curve gave the home an almost
too-traditional-for-John-Malone suburban feel.
 
Pace Harbor was one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Brady, home
to many of the town’s movers and shakers.
 
Shay, however, had only been to his new home once, when he first
purchased it and she returned to Brady for that weekend.

But the fact that it was new
didn’t help.
 
The fact that it was new caused
the memories of his old home, and what happened in that old home, to flood back
that weekend like a tidal wave.
 
Shay
left Brady early that next day.

He unbuckled his seat belt and got
out of the car.
 
She fully expected him
to run inside to get whatever he needed to get and then drive her to her own
new residence.
 
But he, instead, walked
around to the passenger side of the car, and opened the door.

Shay looked at him warily when he
opened the door.
 
The reason she hated
being beholden to people was because she felt beholden to them, and would come
off as ungrateful if she didn’t comply with their every whim.
 
But John knew her.
 
She had turned him down once. . .

John knew her all right, and he
could see the hesitation, or maybe even the fear, in her creamy-soft brown
eyes.
 
But it was now or never.
 
Sink or swim.
 
Yes or no.

He crotched
down to her.
 
They were now eyeball to eyeball.
 
He took her hand and held it between both of his.
 

“I want to welcome you home
properly,” he said to her with all honesty.
 
“And I can’t do so out here.”

Shay’s heart pounded when he made
such a blunt utterance.
 
It was as if he
had decided that he wasn’t dancing their mating dance any longer.
 
It was as if he was making it clear that he
still wanted her, but she had to decide, here and now, if she wanted him.

Shay stared at him with a look so
filled with anguish that it broke John’s heart.
 
But he couldn’t run around that mulberry bush with her all over
again.
 
His feelings were still too
strong, even after a two-year absence, and he had to know where she stood.
 
She either wanted to be with him, or she
didn’t.
  

Shay understood clearly what he
was implying.
 
Because
she knew it too.
 
All that time
away, all of those lonely nights, had increased her feelings for him, not
decreased them.
 
And she didn’t have the
energy anymore to keep dancing either.
 

That was why Shay managed to
release her fear and smile.
 
She wanted
to be with him.
 
She knew it all along,
but especially during those dark nights after she left Brady.
 
Her decision, now, was as firm as his.

When Shay smiled through her fear,
it warmed John’s heart.
 
He felt a swell
of emotion so strong he thought he was going to cry.
 
But he held it together and continued to hold
her hand, to squeeze her hand, as she got out of his truck.

FOURTEEN

They didn’t waste time.
 
As soon as the door of his home closed shut,
he was in front of Shay, placing his hands on her beautifully toned bare arms,
moving closer to her beautifully lithe body.
 
His brows were knit now, as pure emotion was beginning to overtake
him.
 
It was uncharacteristic of John
Malone, and nobody had ever seen this side of him.
 
Except Shay.

“I miss you so much,” he said to her, still rubbing
her arms.
 
“There wasn’t a day that went
by that I didn’t want to pick up that phone and call you or just get in my car
and go to you.
 
But you made it clear you
needed your space, you needed time away, and I accepted that.
 
Because I knew you did.”
 
He paused to avoid becoming almost too
emotional.
 
“I thought you had left me,
Shay.
 
I didn’t think you would ever come
back.
 
And I was trying to keep going, to
go on with my life.
 
But I could never get
you out of my system.”

Shay placed her hand on the side of his gorgeous
face.
 
It was only nine am and already he
had a five o clock shadow.
 
She
smiled.
 
“I know,” she said.
 
“I haven’t been able to get over you,
either.
 
And you wouldn’t believe how I
tried.”
 
They both smiled.
 

He pulled her into his big arms, something he had
wanted to do since he first saw her standing on the side of that road.
 
“I hope that trying didn’t include a man,” he
said against her perfumed hair.
 

“And what if it did?”

“I’d understand it, but I wouldn’t like it.”

Shay smiled.
 
“No, there hasn’t been another man.
 
I’ve kept myself for you.”

John’s heart swelled when she said those
words.
 
He closed his eyes.
 

“What about you?” Shay asked, pretty certain his
answer would be the exact opposite of hers.
 
“Have you kept yourself for me?”

John hesitated.
 
Shay inhaled, to steel herself for what she knew would be a no.
 
Then he spoke.
 
“Yes,” he said, and she let out a relieved,
and delightfully surprised, exhaled.
 

“The truth is, I haven’t been with a woman since
the first time I made love to you,” John continued.
 
“You were brand new to town then,” he said,
his lips brushing her smooth, brown cheeks.
 
“You were such a newbie and you didn’t know what the hell you were
doing,” he said with a smile.
 
She smiled
too.
 
“But I think I loved you even then,
Shay.”
 
He found her lips and kissed her
so passionately that she could feel his body pressing closer into hers, and she
pressed closer too.
 
She threw her arms
around his neck and squeezed him as tightly as she could.
 

“You don’t know how much I’ve wanted you,” John
said as he kept kissing her, his breathing almost tortured.
 
“Every night I wanted to see your face, to
hold you, to fuck you, Shay.
 
I wanted to
be so deeply inside of you.
 
I wanted you
so badly I couldn’t sleep.
 
I wanted you
to want me.”

“I want you, John,” Shay said as they kept
kissing.
 
“I’ve always wanted you.”

 
John lifted
her into his arms.
 
She wrapped her legs
around his thighs and her arms around his neck.
 
“Oh, John,” she said as their kissing became even more passionate, “what
are you doing to me?”

“I can’t stop, Shay.”

“I know.”

“I’ve got to have you.
 
I’ve got to feel my dick inside of you.”

“Oh, John,” Shay cried as he began carrying her to
his bedroom.
 
“I want to feel it too.”

“You want it?” he asked her as he hurried.

“Yes.
 
I want
it.”
 
She didn’t think she could ever
want anything more.
 

And he wanted it even more than that.
 

“What time is your meeting with Ed Barrington?” he
asked her.

“It’s at one,” she said.
 
“What about you?
 
Don’t you have to be at the police station?”

“Says who?” John asked as he began carrying her
through his living room, down his long hall, and into his master bedroom.
 
“I’m the boss.
 
And I’ll be there when I get there.”

Shay leaned back with a smile and allowed him to
kiss her cleavage as he carried her.

But as soon as they entered that bedroom, and he
sat her down on the bed, her heart began to pound. This was the moment they
both had wanted for so long, and the pressure of being here with John Malone, a
man who could take her to school and back in the lovemaking department, began
to overwhelm her.

John could see the apprehension in her big,
expressive eyes.
 
And he forced himself
to slow down, and to knell down in front of her.
 
“I’m rushing you into this,” he began.

“No,” she said, shaking her head.
 
“It’s not that.
 
I want it too.”

“Then what’s the matter, sweetheart?”

But Shay couldn’t say.
 
She just suddenly looked so bewildered.
 

John stayed knelt in front of her and pulled her
into his arms.
 
It’s all right, babe,” he
said, moving closer to her.
 
“It’s all
right.”

Shay wrapped her arms around him.
 
They’d had such a complicated relationship
when she lived in Brady.
 
He was fast
becoming her advisor, her best friend, her father, mother and brother all
wrapped into one.
 
But for the last year
and eight months he hadn’t been her lover.
 
Now he was about to take that mantle in her life once again too.
 
And maybe that was her apprehension.
 
When she lived in Brady he quickly became the
most dominant person in her life, supplanting all others.
 
When she was happy, she called him.
 
When she was sad, she called him.
 
When she was lonely, she’d have to see his
gorgeous face just to feel relevant again.
 
He already had her heart.
 
Now he
was about to have her body once again.
 
And that realization, that there would no longer be any part of her life
that was not closed to him, had her trembling.

He could feel her tremble as he held her.
 
And it devastated him.
 
It made him feel like a louse, like some
sex-starved teenager wanting it no matter how the female felt about it.
 
But this was Shay, and her feelings meant
more to him than her body ever would.

He removed his holster and placed it, with his gun,
on the nightstand.
 
Then he lifted her
and got onto his bed with her in his arms.
 
They
laid
side by side, and he pulled her
closer.
 
“It’s all right,” he said to her
again as he held her.
 
“It’s going to be
all right.
 
I’ll never hurt you, Shay.
 
I’ll never hurt you.”

Shay had tears in her eyes as he held her.
 
He rubbed her hair and kissed her cheek and
comforted her in her distress.
 
This was
the John Malone she had always loved so much.
 
This was the wonderful man who treated her with such kindness from the
first day they met.
 
Nothing in her life
was going right.
 
Ever since she was let
go from her dream job in Birmingham, nothing had gone right for her.
 
And her parents were so overbearing in
Philly, so determined to control her life.
 
She felt even more suffocated there.
 
As soon as she got a job, at a decent newspaper in Philly, she
immediately got her own place and took care of herself.
 
Her parents didn’t like it, but they
eventually accepted it.
 
Because they had
to know that the idea of being taken care of by her parents, at her age, was
unbearable to her.