LOVING HER SOUL MATE

    
MORE INTERRACIAL ROMANCE

FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR

MALLORY MONROE:

THE PRESIDENT’S
GIRLFRIEND

SERIES IN ORDER:

THE PRESIDENT’S
GIRLFRIEND

THE PRESIDENT’S
GIRLFRIEND 2:

HIS WOMEN AND HIS WIFE

DUTCH AND GINA:

A SCANDAL IS BORN

DUTCH AND GINA:

AFTER THE FALL

DUTCH AND GINA:

THE POWER OF LOVE

THE MOB BOSS SERIES

IN ORDER:

ROMANCING THE MOB
BOSS

MOB BOSS 2:

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

MOB BOSS 3:

LOVE AND RETRIBUTION

ALSO:

ROMANCING MO RYAN

ROMANCING HER
PROTECTOR

ROMANCING THE
BULLDOG

IF YOU WANTED THE
MOON

AND

MORE INTERRACIAL ROMANCE

FROM

BESTSELLING AUTHOR

KATHERINE CACHITORIE:

LOVING THE HEAD MAN

SOME CAME
DESPERATE:

A LOVE SAGA

WHEN WE GET MARRIED

ADDITIONAL
BESTSELLING

INTERRACIAL
ROMANCE:

A SPECIAL
RELATIONSHIP

YVONNE THOMAS

AND

BACK TO HONOR:

A REGGIE REYNOLDS

ROMANTIC MYSTERY

JT WATSON

ALSO AFRICAN-AMERICAN

ROMANTIC FICTION

FROM

AWARD-WINNING

AND

BESTSELLING AUTHOR

TERESA MCCLAIN-WATSON:

DINO AND NIKKI:

AFTER
REDEMPTION

AND

AFTER WHAT YOU DID

COMING SOON FROM

MALLORY MONROE:

DUTCH AND GINA:

BOOK SIX

AND

MOB BOSS 4

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ONE

I didn’t
mean to hurt her
.
 
John
Malone was certain that was going to be the excuse.
 
It was such a common refrain that he didn’t
even put it in his police reports anymore.
 
Because they did meant to hurt them.
 
Because any man who would beat on a female as
if she was his personal punching bag, meant to do exactly what he had
done.
 

He knocked vigorously on the door of the modest
yellow home.
 
“Police, open up!” he
yelled as he knocked.
 
He wasn’t just the
police, but a police captain who was second-in-command of the entire Brady,
Alabama police force, a man who rarely handled these kinds of calls.
 
But he was only a block away, on his way
home, when the call came in.
 

The door was snatched open by a muscular, t-shirt
wearing black male with a bloody cloth pressed against the side of his
face.
 
His eyes were beginning to show
signs of puffiness and he had that regretful look many abusers often displayed
after the fact.
 
John immediately
unbuckled his sidearm.
 
If the perp
looked this bad, he could only imagine what the victim looked like.

“She’s crazy!” the man was yelling as soon as the
door flew open.
 
“She’s fucking crazy!”

“Step outside, sir.”

“She’s nuts.
 
I’m telling you she’s a nutcase!”

“Step outside, sir,” John said again.

But the young man frowned.
 
“Why are you asking me to step outside?
 
Look what she did to me!”

As soon as the young man began to remove the cloth,
revealing the full extent of his swollen face, John grabbed him, slung him
outside, and threw him, face down, onto the porch.
 

“What are you doing?” the young man yelled in
agony.

But John was not a patient man.
 
He had told him twice to step outside.
 
He wasn’t telling him again.
 
He placed a knee into the small of the
younger man’s back, wrestled control of his wrists, and then removed handcuffs
from his waist belt.

“What are you doing?” the younger man yelled
again.
 
“I could be dying here!
 
I need a doctor and you’re arresting me?
 
Seriously?”

“Where is she?” John asked as he cuffed and began
frisking his perp.
 
“Where’s the victim?”

But the young man was too wrapped up in his own
anger for any of the captain’s words to register.
 
“I’m an attorney, what are you doing,
man?
 
You can’t arrest me!”

John could hear police sirens coming near and he
suddenly could feel a presence even nearer.
 
When he looked up, in the direction of the doorway, he saw a slender
black woman standing there.
 
She wore a
pair of gray workout shorts and a cut-off sweat shirt that revealed the
bellybutton of her gorgeously flat, toned stomach.
 
She was right around the same age as the
suspect, mid-twenties or so, and her huge, golden brown eyes sparkled with
alertness.
 
He stood to his feet.

“Looking for me?” she asked him.

Her longish, jet black hair was framed around her
apple-shaped face in a layered bounciness that made her seem so familiar to
John that it, at first, stumped him.
 
What
the hell
, he said to himself.
 
“Are
you the victim?” he asked her.

“
Victim
?” the young man yelled.
 
“You must be joking!
 
I’m the one who called the cops!
 
Don’t you see what she did to me?

A patrol car arrived at the scene, causing the
young woman to look away from John.
 
She
recognized the arriving officer as Wayne Peete, one of only two blacks on the
Brady Police Force and a young man she once had dinner with.
 
He stepped out of his car and hurried toward
the front porch.

“A victim, no,” she said as she looked back at
John.
 
“I’m no victim.”

It was only then did John realize this woman didn’t
have a scratch on her.
  
“Are you telling
me that you were the instigator here?”

“He was the instigator.”

“She’s lying!” the cuffed man yelled.

“Shut the fuck up!” John yelled back, slamming his
foot into the small of the young man’s back.
 
The woman winced.

“I didn’t expect to see you here, Cap,” Officer
Peete said as he arrived at the porch.
 
Then he looked at the woman in the doorway.
 
“Shay?” he said when he recognized her.
  

“Get this character to the hospital,” John ordered
the officer, lifting the bloodied man by the catch of his collar and slinging
him toward Peete.
 
“Let Doc Harlin have a
look at him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And get a statement if he cares to give one.”

“Yes, sir,” Peete said and began moving the man
down the steps.
 

“All I did was
slap
her,”
the young man said angrily.
 
“I’ll be the
bigger person and admit I slapped her.
 
Shouldn’t have done it, but I did it.
 
But that’s all I did to that bitch.
 
Look what she did to me!”

Peete glanced at the young woman again as he all
but dragged the still complaining man to his patrol car.
 

The young woman looked once again at John.
 
John was already staring at her.
 
Usually she was uncomfortable when men
assessed her, especially when the last thing on her mind was anything
sexual.
 
But for some reason this guy
didn’t turn her off that way.
 
Maybe it
was because he looked like he’d been through hell himself and could use some
care and attention of his own.
 
Maybe
because he favored her favorite actor, Robert Downey, Jr., with his head full
of chestnut-brown hair piled in no discernible style around his strong,
unshaven face.
 
His tired blue eyes were
bloodshot and joyless.
 
His sports jacket
was slung over jeans and a sweat shirt as if by merely putting on a jacket he
could project the image of a cool professional rather than the burned-out cop
he appeared to be.
 
He, in fact, looked
the way she felt: scattered.