LOVING HER SOUL MATE (15 page)

Real laughter
from the crowd this time.
 
It took all Shay had not to lash back.
 
John remained stoic, staring at no-one.

McNamara went on.
 
“She claims there were fourteen, no excuse
me, thirteen murders in Dodge, not three as we’ve reported it.
 
Thirteen, folks.
 
That’s what this girl wrote.
 
That’s what this Shay Turner nobody reporter
wrote.
 
Well I will tell you, ladies and
gentlemen, Shay Turner is a damn liar!”

An audible gasp went up into the
rafters of the room.
 
All eyes suddenly
turned to Shay, as if she was going to challenge McNamara right here and right
now.
 
Shay’s heart was pounding, but her expression
remained unchanged.
 
John, however, was
now staring at his boss.

And McNamara could just feel the
stare, and he wondered why John suddenly seemed so hostile, but he went
on.
 
“She’ll write anything to jump-start
her failing career,” he said.
 
“That’s
why they got rid of her in Birmingham, because she wasn’t worth a damn.
 
Yeah, I said it.
 
If you don’t believe me check it out for
yourselves.
 
They got rid of her in
Birmingham too.
 
She’s never been a good
reporter.
 
She just goes around defaming
people’s good names.”

He hesitated, as if he needed to
calm himself down.
 
Shay looked at
John.
 
He looked as if he was this close
to harming his boss.
 
She looked back at
his boss.

“So this slip of a girl,” McNamara
continues, his voice now rising, “decides to write this nonsensical, libelous
nonsense, and I won’t stand for it.
 
She’s
a liar and what she wrote is a dirty lie!
 
And yes, folks, I’m angry about it.
 
I’ve been an officer of the law for dang near thirty years and I have
never been accused of the lies this child accused me of!
 
Not ever!
 
It’s not my problem that she’s some frustrated female who can’t find
herself a man!
 
It’s not my fault that
she’s one of those incompetent journalist whores who can’t---”

“Knock it off, Walt,” John
interrupted his boss so forcefully that everybody in the room immediately
looked at him.

“Eh-what?”
McNamara asked, astounded by the interruption.
  
He turned toward John.
 
“What did you say to me?”

“I said knock it off,” John said,
not backing down.

“What’s the matter, John?” a
reporter decided to yell out.
 
“You
disagree with Chief McNamara?”

“Yeah, John, tell us what you
think!” another reporter yelled out.
 

John moved up to the podium.
 
At first McNamara stood his ground, and then
he slowly stepped aside.
 
He knew John
Malone was a hero in Brady, a man who was far more popular for his fairness
than McNamara or even the mayor ever was.
 

“I think what Chief McNamara is
doing is wrong and I will not stand up here and allow him to denigrate a fine
journalist.”

McNamara frowned.
 
“Denigrate
her
?
 
She’s denigrating
me
, what are you talking about?”

John looked at the assembled
press.
 
“Everything Miss Turner wrote in
that article was the truth.
 
She did not
lie about any of it.
 
And I should know
because I’m the one who told her what was going on in this police
department.
 
I’m the source of her article.”

The murmurings and gasps and
camera clicks were like a sudden bolt of lightning in the room.
 
They were enjoying this.
 
Their readers and viewers were going to enjoy
this.
 
John Malone, McNamara’s right hand
man, wasn’t going along with his arrogant boss any longer.
 
And they loved it.

Shay, however, was terrified for
John.
 

But John kept going.
 
“Chief is upset, and I can understand his
anger.
 
But he’s pointing his fingers in
the wrong direction.
 
This nobody reporter,
as he calls Miss Turner, is a young lady with more backbone and guts than all
of these back-scratching, ass-kissing, so-called veteran journalists
combined!
 
I stand by every word she
wrote, because she wrote the truth.
 
I
know it, McNamara knows it, and all of you would know it too if you took your
faces out of his butt crack long enough to see this department for what it
really is.”

“And what is it, John?” yet
another reporter yelled.

“It’s a cesspool of corruption,
that’s what it is,” he said.
 
And then he
stepped aside.

The amazement in the room was
palpable.
 
McNamara, stunned witless,
looked over to the mayor for help.
 
But
the mayor wanted no parts of this. McNamara therefore stepped back up to the
podium and attempted to smile it off.

“What a card,” he said smilingly.
 
“You know John.
 
Always kidding around.”

Only this time nobody, not even
the chief’s most ardent butt-kissers, bothered to laugh.
 

Shay wrapped her bathrobe around
her just-dried body and hurried from the master bath.
 
She glanced at the clock on the nightstand as
she hurried.
   
When she saw that it was
nearing eleven at night, however, she became worried.
 
Who, she wondered, would be ringing her bell
this time of night?
 
But when she made
her way up the hall and into her living room, and was able to look out of the
window onto her driveway, she sighed relief.
  
John’s big Chevy Silverado sat quietly on that driveway.
 
She quickly opened the door.

John walked in looking so drained
that Shay was immediately concerned.
 
Just as she had been after that press conference.
 
But John, to Shay’s pleasant surprise, was
more worried about her.
 
As soon as she
closed the door, he placed his hand on her robe-clad arm.

“You okay?” he asked her.

“Me?
 
What about you?
 
Did they fire you yet?”

He smiled weakly.
 
“Not yet,” he said.
 
“Although I suspect
it’s
coming.
 
McNamara has been suspended
pending the mayor’s investigation and now the mayor has me and my guys going
through reports to prove my allegations.
 
He says he wants me to prove it.
 
That’s what I’ve been doing until a few minutes ago, when I sent my guys
home and called it a night.”

Shay stood there, her face a mask
of concern.
 

“What’s the matter?” he asked her,
rubbing her arm.
 
“You did nothing wrong,
Shay, you hear me?
 
You may have even
saved a life by asking questions, by digging deeper.
 
By writing that story.”

“And you may lose your job.”

John exhaled.
 
“I know that.
 
But that’s just the price I’ll have to pay.
 
I should have been on this story from day
one, and I wasn’t.
 
That’s just the price
I have to pay.”

Shay had never met a man quite
like John Malone.
 
She realized, standing
there, that she respected him.
 
She just
didn’t know too many men who would give a damn, especially since the victims
were prostitutes, especially since the victims were of a different race than he
was and poor as dirt.
 
But that didn’t
even seem to enter his mind.
 
He just did
what he knew was the right thing to do.

“Thank-you,” she said.

John smiled.
 
He was really fond of this lady.
 
“Come here, you,” he said and
opened
 
his
arms to
her.
 

Shay smiled, wrapped her arms
around his neck, and allowed her body to fall against his.
 
Her robe, however, which had been held
together by her hands, gaped opened and it was her naked, freshly scrubbed body
that fell against his.
 

And they both immediately realized
the difference.
 

Shay’s big eyes stretched bigger
as she felt her nakedness against John’s rock hard body.
 
She, at first, wanted to say oops and play it
off, perhaps even pull back from him.
 
But
his arms felt so good around her that she didn’t immediately make a move.

John, too, felt her nakedness
against him and it was such a wonderful feeling that he closed his eyes and
pulled her closer.
 
And when she
attempted to move out of his embrace, as if she was now realizing the error, he
held her tighter.
 
He didn’t want to let
her go.
 

It was a fool’s game he was
playing at, and he knew it was.
 
Because it wouldn’t work.
 
Because he was a man who abhorred commitment, but yet
he was holding onto a woman who required it if he had any illusions about being
with her.
 
But he couldn’t let her
go.
 
She was unlike any woman he’d ever
met.
 
She had spunk and integrity and a
quiet strength he loved.
 
If he was fire,
she was ice.
 
He somehow knew
instinctively that she’d know how to handle him.

He pulled back only slightly, so
that he could look into her magnificent eyes.
 
And his heart swelled with emotion.
 
She was so much younger than he was, over a decade younger, and he was
well aware that he was everything she didn’t need.
 
But he was so exhausted, and so weak at this
very moment in his life that his need to have her in that life of his overrode
his need to protect her from a man like him.
  
He lifted her chin, looked down at her gorgeous brown, African lips, and
kissed her.

If Helen of Troy had the face that
launched a thousand ships, Shay Turner had the lips that launched John’s heart
into overdrive.
 
He couldn’t stop kissing
her.
 
He moved his head right, then left,
then dead on kissing her.
 
She tasted
like pure honey to him.
 
He never kissed
the women he fooled around with.
 
Never
pretended that he wanted to do anything with them but fuck them.
 

But with Shay, kissing her alone
was giving him that same high.
 
He moved
his arms inside of her robe as he kissed her, to feel what he knew would be her
soft, brown flesh.
 
But as his arms
encircled her bare body, as his hands moved around her waist and rested on her
tight ass, squeezing the life out of her, she was softer than he had even
remembered her being.
 
He closed his
eyes, to fully experience her, as he pulled her tighter against his body.

Shay could feel his hard-on
against her.
 
She could feel his erection
growing with every pulsating second.
 
And
it was a strange, intoxicating, wonderful feeling.
 
This was the legendary John Malone, the man
she’d grown to respect and admire.
 
And
if his kissing was any indication, she knew she was in for a fantastic roll in
the hay.

But it was slightly terrifying
feeling too.
 
Because this was the
legendary ladies’ man John Malone, a man who once mentioned his ex-wife as if
he might very well still be in love with her.
 
What was she getting herself into here?
 
Could she expect anything from this man except one more night of
sex?
 
Would rumors start flying about her
romantic interlude with him, just as the rumors were flying about his romantic
nights with other females in Brady?
 
Was
she about to get on what some around town called John’s hit list?

But as his mouth finally left hers
and began kissing her down her neck, toward her breasts, she ran her hands
through his wonderfully rumpled hair.
 
How in the world was she going to resist this?
 
She knew she should.
 
She knew she was nothing to this man but yet
another willing bed partner; yet another warm body in his arms.