LOVING HER SOUL MATE (6 page)

And they laughed.
 
But then, like an elephant in the room ready to knock them down: reality
came around.
 

And he released his grip on Shay.

Three days later, on a bright Monday morning, Shay
drove her dark blue VW Beetle convertible into the parking lot of the Brady
Tribune newspaper building.
 
She stepped
out into the warm, Alabama sun, her dark shades covering her sensitive eyes,
and retrieved her shoulder bag and briefcase from the passenger seat.
 
Although she was dressed for success in her
short, pastel-colored skirt, her bright orange sleeveless silk blouse, and her
short, white jacket that reached down to her waist, she still felt
nervous.
 
She had only been in town two
weeks, but it hadn’t been going great for her.
 

The editor appointed a fellow reporter to be her
team leader, for one thing.
  
And that
would have been completely fine if she was some rookie who didn’t know squat
about journalism.
 
But she’d been a
reporter for four years, and had been a top reporter at the Birmingham
Union-Star, one of the most prestigious newspapers in the state.
 
The idea that she would need somebody
shadowing her, overseeing her work, making sure she wasn’t incompetent was a
tad insulting.
 
But then again, she
thought as she locked/alarmed her car, she needed this job badly.
 
So she dismissed her complaints, and headed
for the entrance.

As soon as she walked into the newsroom, Ronnie
Burk, that chubby, blond-haired team leader of hers, was standing at his desk,
grabbing his suit coat and keys, preparing to leave.

“Let’s go, Shay,” he said to her.

Shay stood there, her briefcase in one hand, her
shoulder bag in the other, and frowned.
 
“Go where?”

“City Hall,” he said, heading for the exit.
 
“They’re having a presser on background.”

“Oh,” Shay said, following her team leader.
 
“The mayor’s having it?”

“The police.
 
It’s about that big drug bust they scored
over the weekend.
 
Nearly half a million
bucks in dope, can you believe it, headed straight for these quiet streets of
Brady.”

“Quiet my ass,” Shay said and Ronnie laughed.
 

They hopped on the same elevator Shay had just a
minute ago hopped off of.
 

“Just remember,” Ronnie said as he pressed the
first floor button, “you can’t ask any questions on background, and when you
write your story you can’t quote the source.”

Shay wanted to roll her eyes.
 
“Ronnie, I know.
 
I’ve done this job before, remember?”

Ronnie smiled.
 
“Point taken.
 
But this ain’t Birmingham is what I’m saying. We do things differently
around here.”

The elevator doors dinged open at the first floor.

“Who’s going to be our source at the press
conference?” she asked, expecting it to be, as it usually was, Sergeant Riley,
the police spokesman.
 

“It won’t be Riley,” Ronnie said as they stepped
off.
 
“This was one of the biggest drug
busts in city history.
 
They bring out
the big guns for the big busts.
 
John
Malone is our source on this one.”

Shay didn’t miss a beat, as they hurried out of the
revolving doors of the newspaper building, but her heart seemed to skip many
beats.

And it didn’t let up when she arrived at the City
Hall Press Room.
 
She knew she would have
to meet him again.
 
They had kind of
decided to go their separate ways after Friday’s encounter, and she had
dismissed it as just some crazy emotion of the moment.
 
But she never dreamed she’d be face to face
with him this soon.

But she was, as soon as they walked into the Press
Room.
 
The presser had already begun,
with John Malone, his suit coat off, his white dress shirt topped off with a
pair of expensive suspenders.
 
He looked
so sexy that Shay almost stumbled as she walked.
 
But she didn’t.
 
She held it together as she made her way to
the back of the room.
 
She wanted to hide
because she was sure she was blushing.
 
Because as soon as she saw him the memories flooded back.
 
She remembered him so tanned, so ripped, so
naked.
 
She remembered him holding her,
pounding her, tasting her.
 
She
remembered it so vividly that she was already getting wet.

Ronnie felt that they could have squeezed in for a
closer seat, but he nonetheless followed Shay to the back of the room.
 
He liked Shay Turner.
 
He liked her friendliness and her meekness
and the fact that she was easy to work with.
 
He looked at her as she stared at John.
 
She was everything, he felt, a young lady should be.

John commanded the room as he spoke on
background.
 
And although Shay would
never know it, his heart began hammering as soon as she walked through that
press room door.
 
She looked so radiant,
he thought, as soon as he saw her, so beautiful.
 
He was busy all weekend, caught up in the
drug bust of the century as far as Brady’s history went, and he didn’t have
time to even consider phoning her.
 

But he had wanted to phone her.
 
Especially when, late at
night, he finally made it to bed.
 
He’d think about her smile and her sharp sense of humor, and her
intellect.
 
And he’d think about the way
she tasted, and the way that sultry mouth of hers came down on him so
hard.
 
He got a hard-on just thinking
about her.
 
Late last night, after
another long day, he got in bed and couldn’t stop thinking about how tight her
pussy was and how intense she made him feel.
 
It got so bad on him that he actually pulled out his rod, and fondled it
until it spilled.
 

But he didn’t call her.
 
Now, as he looked at her walking toward the
back of the room, her short skirt flapping around her shapely brown legs, her
face taking on that confident look he adored, he wished he had.

That was why, after the press conference, as some
of the reporters gathered around John to see if he would answer questions they
knew he wouldn’t, he called her out.
 
She
and Ronnie were heading for the back exit, and she was more than happy to make
a clean getaway.
 
He looked beyond the
crowd.
 

“Turner!” he yelled out.
 

Shay’s heart dropped.

“Shay,” Ronnie said, tapping her on the shoulder,
his face surprised.
 
“I think he’s
calling you.”

It was only then did Shay look in John’s
direction.
 

“I need to see you in my office,” he said, and then
returned his attention to the press of reporters surrounding him.

Shay and Ronnie headed out of the press room
altogether.
 
Ronnie was staring at
her.
 
“What would Captain Malone need to
see you about?” he asked her.

“How should I know?” she replied, although she had
a darn good idea.

John’s office was on the fifth floor of the Police Memorial
Building and his secretary, a young, pretty brunette, told Shay to have a seat
against the wall.
 
It was an
uncomfortable wait.
 
Not just because of
having to deal with John again and therefore having to acknowledge that they
actually went there Friday night, but that secretary of his kept taking peeps
at her as if she was big-time suspicious.
 
It was as if she either knew, by virtue of the fact that Shay was there
at all, that something sexual had happened between her boss and Shay, or she
suspected something had happened.
 
But
either way, she didn’t seem to like it.

 
And that was
why Shay was antsy.
 
She’d only been in
town a couple weeks, but even she had heard how John Malone had a reputation
with the ladies.
 
She knew, if word ever
got out that she’d also been with him, that she’d be categorized too.
 
She’d be considered yet another one of these
silly women around here who too easily gave their bodies to a good looking man,
only to be dumped on as he moved on.
  
But it was a fact: she had given her body to John.

John arrived after about fifteen minutes of Shay
just sitting there.
 
He was still in his
shirtsleeves and suspenders.
 
Still
gorgeous personified.
 
And that cologne
he favored still whiffed into the air like a sweet aroma as soon as he entered
the room.
 
Shay suddenly felt small when
his large presence entered.
 
To remedy
such an odd feeling, she stood to her feet.

“Chief wants to see you, sir,” the secretary said
to him.

“In a minute,” he replied, and then looked at
Shay.
 
“Right this way, Miss Turner,” he
said.

Shay followed him through his office door and
closed it behind them, the secretary still staring as the door shut her
out.
 
Shay suddenly felt suffocated,
especially since John remained at the closed door, directly in front of her.
 

“I know we both don’t have much time, but I wanted
to say hello to you properly,” he said to her.

“Okay,” she said.
 

“You were going to leave without speaking to me?”

“Ronnie Burk, he’s one of my colleagues---”

“Yeah, I know Ronnie.”

“He wanted me to go with him to check out the
Hopson trial over at the courthouse.”

“It would have only taken a moment, Shay.”

Shay didn’t know what to say to that.
 
She was going to leave without speaking, it
was a fact.
 
She didn’t know what else
she could say.

John looked down, at that body he’d been dreaming
about,
and then back into her face.
 
“How have you been?” he asked her.

“I’ve been good.
 
And you?”

“Busy.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard.
 
Congratulations on that drug bust.”

“It was a long time coming, I’ll tell you that,” he
said as he ran his hand through his thick, brown hair.
 
“We’ve been on to those guys for months on
end now.
 
So I’m grateful.”
 

“I’ll bet.”

“I don’t know if you know this, but the
prosecutor’s office declined to file charges against your boyfriend Resden.”

“My ex-boyfriend.
 
Yes, I know.”

“You okay with that?”

Shay thought about it.
 
“I’m okay with it.
 
When I finished with him I felt like justice
had been served.”

John laughed.
 
Looked at her small ears and the curve of her small
neck.
 
“Oh, fuck it,” he said and
moved up closer to her.
 
“I need to see
you again, Shay,” he said.
 
“To be with you again.”

But Shay was shaking her head.
 
“No, John.”

“Why not, babe?”
 
He said this and leaned over and kissed her
on the side of her face.

“Because I can’t---”

He kissed her on her neck.

“I can’t just---”

“You can’t just what sweetheart?” John asked as he
kissed her ear.

“I can’t---”

Then he captured her mouth with his and pressed
down hard.
 
Shay immediately felt the
fire of his tongue as he coursed around hers in a sweet assault.
  
He pulled her into his arms, and she wrapped
her arms around him.
 
And just like that
they were at it again.
 
Shay could hardly
believe it.
 
Was this all it took?
 
She had been certain that she would never
allow anything like this to happen ever again, and just three days later and
she was not only allowing it, but enjoying it!
 

And she was really enjoying it, as he deepened his
kiss, as he pressed his rock hard body into hers as if he wanted to make
certain she understood just how much he was enjoying it too.
 
He reached beneath her skirt and placed his
hand inside of her panties. He began tinkling her clit, rubbing it and pulling
on it in such an expert way that it made Shay moan.
 
And he kept on kissing her.
 
He kept on searing her with his lips.