LOVING HER SOUL MATE (37 page)

“It was awful,” she said, closing
her eyes and then opening them again.
 
“Ed treated me like I was a piece of trash.
 
You should have heard him, John.
 
It was as if all of those lies about me
breaking up your marriage and causing your ex-wife to do what she did were true
in his eyes.
 
He even began to suggest
that what Ronnie did to me, and the fact that he was now in prison, was
all my
fault too.
 
As
if I somehow came onto Ronnie and led him on or something.
 
It was like he. . . It was as if he---”

John placed his hand around the
front of her body and began massaging her.
 
“It’s okay,” he said.

Shay stared into nothingness.
 
It was still raw, still painful to her.
 
She actually thought Ed was an ally.
 
She just knew she’d always have a home at the
Brady Tribune.
 

“He even had the nerve to say that
I wasn’t worthy to work for his newspaper,” Shay went on.
 
“He said that.
 
He said I wasn’t worthy to work there.”
 

She paused, still battling the
pain and disappointment.
 
And the tears.
 
“When
I tried to tell him that he had it all wrong, that I wasn’t guilty of what I
was being accused of, he didn’t want to hear it.
 
He said even if I didn’t break up your marriage
I should have never been involved with you anyway.
 
You were a divorced man, why couldn’t I be
involved with you?
 
It made no sense, and
I think he knew it, but it was as if he didn’t want to have anything more to do
with me.”

John placed his fingers on her
mouth as her tears began to form. “To hell with what he said.
 
You hear me, Shay?”
 
She looked at him, her tears slowly sliding
down.
 
“Ed Barrington is an asshole and
we don’t give a damn what he has to say.
 
We know the truth.
 
That’s all
that matters.
 
To hell
with him.”

Shay’s bright brown eyes stared
into his bright blue eyes and then she
laid
, once
again, against him.
 
But she wasn’t
telling him the whole story yet.
 
Not
just yet.
 
Because as soon as Ed treated
her like dirt and turned her down, she pounded the pavement looking for
work.
 
She would flip burgers if she had
to.
 
But nobody, not even a burger joint,
would hire her.
 
And that was a shame.

But she was a journalist.
 
So she decided
,
 
instead
of contemplating leaving town
again, to go to the lesser known newspapers in town.
 
The first, the Marchman, turned her down
cold.
 
They didn’t need another reporter,
not even one of her caliber.
 
The second
newspaper, the Brady Beast, accepted her on the spot.
 
The Beast, as it was called, was the town’s
smallest newspaper and was popular primarily in the African-American
community.
 
It was known almost
exclusively for its dogged reporting and its criticisms of the Brady power
structure.
 
A power
structure that had John Malone at its center.

That was why she held her
peace.
 
John would not approve of her
working for the Beast, not by the way he was always complaining about their
coverage of his police department, and she knew getting him to accept her new
position would be a tough sell.
 

But it wasn’t as if she had
options.
 
She was a journalist first and
last,
and she had decided to return to the only town she had
ever felt was home, a town that used to treat her warmly until her hard hitting
reporting became a threat.
 
The Brady
Beast was a major step down for a reporter of her caliber.
 
She knew that.
 
But it would have to do for now, whether John
approved or not.
 
She wasn’t allowing him
or anyone else to be in control of her decisions.
 
And since the Tribune said no, and the
Marchman said no, and even Mickey D’s said no, she had to go where at least she
could pay her bills.
 
And she’d just have
to work for the lesser competitor and work hard until it became the Tribune’s
equal.
 
It was a challenge to Shay.
 
And, given how John felt about the Beast, a
risky one.

“Shay?” he said, when her mind
seemed to be miles away.
 
She looked at
him.
 
He had been dying to ask this
question ever since Malvaney phoned him with word of her return.

“Yes?”

“Knowing what you were up against,
why did you come back to Brady?”

Shay smiled.
 
It was as complicated as it was simple.
 
“Because as bad as it was
here, it was worse in Philadelphia.”

John looked at her.
 
“Worse?”

“Yep.
 
There was a lot of
loneliness.
 
And drift.
 
And the fact that they treated me as if I was
just this hick reporter from Alabama who didn’t know squat.
 
I mean, that’s the way it is in the newspaper
business.
 
It’s a small club and they
guard their little turf like mama hens.
 
And because I was new and young, I could forget about that.
 
The biggest story I ever got there was a
report on a missing manhole cover.”
 
John
smiled.
 
“I kid you not.
 
In the year-and-nine months that I worked for
the Philadelphia Chronicle, that manhole story was the highlight of my
career.”
 

She
sighed
just thinking about it.
 
There was even a
glint of concern in her eyes.
 
“And so I thought
about the house Aunt Rae had left me, and I thought about the good days I had
here before the bad days came, and I, of course, thought about you, and so I
gave Ed a call.
 
I told him I was
thinking about relocating back to Brady and wanted my old job back.
 
He wasn’t jumping up and down, but he never
does anyway, so I thought the fact that he said he’d meet with me was just a
formality.”

Another
pause.
 
“So it all started lining up perfectly for me, and all signs were
pointing to Brady.
 
Besides, the
Chronicle was already whispering about
laying
off a
ton of reporters and I knew I would most certainly be in that group if it
happened, given the fact that I contributed nothing worth a damn my entire time
there.
 
So the writing
was on the wall really and I decided to go back home.
 
It had been like a nightmare just before I
left here, yes, I can’t even front.
 
It
was awful.
 
But I missed this place.
 
And I missed working here.”
 
She paused.
 
“And I miss you.”

John pulled her tighter into his
arms when she said those last words.
 
And
he knew, as he held her, that he was all-in once again.
 
He would have to take care of her, not just
financially, which would be the easy part, but emotionally, which would be the
test.
 
And as she lay in his arms, and as
she trusted him to be her man again, his heart was hammering against his
chest.
 
There had never been a woman who
made him feel so alive and so inadequate at the same time.
 
And for a jackass like Ed Barrington to call
this woman, this virtuous woman, unethical and unworthy had him so angry he was
practically enraged.

But he kept his feelings in
check.
 
For Shay.
 
For this young lady who was nothing short of
gold in his arms.

FIFTEEN

Nearly an hour later Shay was fast
asleep.
 
John lifted her and laid her
between the sheets.
  
And just looking at
her nakedness caused his maleness to react and want her again.
 
He wanted to squeeze those breasts and taste
her again.
 
But his humanity, and that
decency Shay once told him was what she liked the most about him, wouldn’t let
him do it.
 
He knew she had to be
emotionally spent after a day like this day, and needed her rest.
 
He therefore pulled the covers up on his
sleeping beauty, stared at her for a long, long time, kissed her on her forehead,
and left.

But he didn’t go home.
 
Even though he was so exhausted he could
barely keep his eyes open.
 
He, instead,
drove across town, to a home in the Brady Hills subdivision, after getting the
address from his resourceful dispatcher at police headquarters.

The doorbell chimed through the
stained-glass door and was eventually opened by Ed Barrington, City Editor of
the Brady Tribune newspaper.

“John?” Ed said with surprise in
his voice as he tied his brown bathrobe around his body.
 
“What are you doing here?
 
Come in.”

“No.
 
I’d rather stay out here.”

Although Ed found it odd that he
would turn down an invite to come inside, he nonetheless stepped outside, onto
his wraparound porch, and closed his front door.

“Forgive me,” he said as he exited
his home, his small eyes puzzled, “but I’m rather surprised to see our chief of
police on my doorstep this time of night.
 
Is it about the arrest?”

John frowned.
 
They hadn’t made that arrest public yet.
 
“What arrest?”

“The arrest
of the boyfriend of that victim from Hash Street.
 
My sources tell me that
Pamela’s getting ready to charge him with murder.
 
Is that why you’re here?”

“You had a meeting with Shay
Turner today,” John said, not about to discuss that arrest with him.

Ed suddenly seemed less sure-footed.
 
“That’s right.”

“You called her unethical.
 
You accused her of being responsible for what
happened that night with my ex-wife.
 
You
said she wasn’t worthy to work at your sorry excuse for a newspaper.”

Ed just stood there.

“What’s the matter?” John asked,
walking closer to him.
 
“You got nothing
to say now?
 
You had a lot to say when it
was Shay.”

“Now look here, John, I don’t know
what she told you but it wasn’t the way she’s making it out to be.”

“So you’re calling her a liar
now?” John asked, moving even closer, completely obliterating Ed’s personal
space.

“I’m not calling her anything, all
right?
 
I just---” He tried to back up
but found that his back was against his storm door.
 
John backed up.
 
“I just don’t think she’s the right fit for
our newspaper right now, that’s why I didn’t give her the job.”

“And that would have been
fine.
 
You could have told her that.
 
But to insinuate that the reason you don’t
want to rehire the best reporter you’ve ever had is because of her lack of
ethics is what I can’t believe.”

“That wasn’t what I was
saying.
 
I was saying that I didn’t want
to take my readers through that again.”

“Through what
again?
  
What the fuck does any of what happened between me and my ex-wife have
to do with your readers?”

“Nothing, but---”

“That’s all you talked about.
 
How Shay supposedly broke up my happy
marriage when we both know my marriage to that crazy-ass ex-wife of mine was in
shambles the moment after we said ‘I Do!’”
 

“Okay,” Ed said, “you’re
right.
 
It wasn’t about that.
 
I just didn’t want to rehash what happened
all over again.”

“So you throw Shay under the
bus?
 
Is that it?
 
What has she ever done to you, Ed, but give
you her all?”