ROMANCING HER PROTECTOR (6 page)

grow faint. What in the world was she thinking? This man didn’t have time for her

foolishness. She could take the financial support or leave it, as far as he was probably

concerned.

Now her great idea, of confronting him to prove to him that she was no slut and

absolutely nobody’s trick, seemed ridiculous. That man would probably laugh in her face. If

he agreed to see her at all.

But she was here now. She wasn’t about to turn around. And besides, somewhere

deep within her knew he’d see her. She felt they had a connection. It wasn’t enduring, it

wasn’t something that would make her daydream about him or anything like that. She knew

how to keep it real.

But she didn’t allow that man to touch her, the first man she had ever allowed to touch

her, just for the hell of it. She felt something that night, something powerful. And she felt it

again, when she saw him walk his beautiful self into Dr. Graham’s suffocating office, and said

hello.

She entered the revolving doors, stood in the huge marbled lobby that was literally alive

with the energy of business executives coming and going and talking on their cell phones,

pushed her book bag further up on her shoulder, and headed, as if she belonged there too, for

the information desk.

***

an even harder push, but he wasn’t ready to commit.

“Not good enough, Sam,” he said to Sam Broughton, his vice president for Latin

American operations.

“Oh, come on, Matty, what more do you want? The cost projections are good, the risk

analysis is favorable, their mutual funds have outperformed their Lipper averages nearly three

years running. What more do you want?”

“Everything you cite is good,” Matty admitted, “but Brazil is a tough market. If I’m

going to commit, and commit that far south, good isn’t good enough. I’m adverse to risk right

now, you know that.”

“Yes, I know,” Sam said, his blue eyes aflame with passion. “And I agree we need to

be cautious in this economy. But we’re talking Brazil, Matty! Brazil is tomorrow’s China.

It’s got everything we want in an acquisition. I say we get in early and stake our territory. We

buy low and that way we can sell high when the markets recover.”

“
If
they recover,” Matty corrected him. “If they don’t recover then going that deep into

the Latin market could backfire big time and make us rue the day we ever considered it.”

Sam knew his boss was right, but he wasn’t ready to concede the point.

Matty leaned forward in his chair, which Sam knew meant that their meeting was up.

Sam stood to his feet.

“Reassess it,” Matty told his VP, “with heavy emphasis on cost containment now, not

future projections, and I’ll revisit it.”

Sam smiled. “Well, at least it’s not no.”

“It’s not no, but it will be if I’m not wowed.”

Sam didn’t like the odds of that, nothing seemed to wow Matty Driscoll, but he knew

he couldn’t argue about it, either. “Yes, sir,” he said, and left.

Matty just sat there for a moment, still bone tired from a marathon session he had had

with his board of directors last night, with little getting accomplished except more dissension

and even more talk of going rogue by some of his minority investors, those who felt DSI

wasn’t being bold enough. But this was Matty’s company, he owned a whopping 77 percent

share, and nobody was dictating to him.

His desk intercom buzzed and Irene, his secretary, asked for permission to enter. He

granted her permission but quickly said, “If it’s not good news I don’t want to hear it,” when

she did walk in.

Irene was accustomed to her boss’s often irascible personality, and survived it by

ignoring it. “Ralston-Corning wants a meeting,” she said, handing him the message, “and they

want one yesterday. They say you’ve been avoiding them.”

“Very perceptive of them,” Matty said, leaning back.

“And Prince Tower desperately wants DSI to bail them out.”

“In this economy? They’d better get in line.”

“That’s what Mr. Lambert told the chairman when they wouldn’t listen to me. Mr.

Lambert knows how to be diplomatic and stern all at the same time, so I asked him to take the

call.”

“Good move,” Matty said, completely confident that Jordan Lambert, his personal

assistant/best friend/Mister Fix It could take care of any of those outsized personality types

whose companies were tanking fast but they still believed they deserved a meeting with the top

man. “Anything else?”

“Yes, sir. There’s this young woman here to see you. She claims you’re expecting

her.”

A young woman he was expecting? “Who is it?”

“A Miss Cooper, sir. A Shakena or Shacana Cooper.”

Matty’s heart actually pounded.
Shay
. “She’s here?”

“Downstairs, yes, sir. She was so insistent that they felt it necessary to phone me.”

“Okay,” he said, knowing why she’d come, “send her in.”

This surprised Irene. “Oh,” she said. “Then you were expecting her, sir?”

“You can say that,” he said and watched as his secretary left to go and get Shay.

He leaned back and ran his hand through his thick mop of hair. Shanita.
Shay
. It

jolted him when he saw her again in Alex’s office. And to find out she’d lost her scholarship

concerned him still. What had distracted her? Was it that night she spent with him? Her

grades couldn’t have gone that south that quickly, but still. And when Alex said she was all

alone in the world, with no parents, no siblings, nobody, disturbed him mightily.

And when Shay walked into his office, her big book bag slung over her little shoulder,

he had a powerful urge to go to her and pull her into his arms. He also had an equally

powerful urge to fuck her.

“That’ll be all, Irene, thanks,” he said as his secretary deposited Shay and left. “Have a

seat, Shay.”

“I’ll stand, thank-you,” Shay said, walking up to his massive desk, determined to keep

her shaky nerves in check by getting to the point. “Did you tell the financial aid office at

Franklin that you’d be responsible for my tuition and room and board?”

“And how are you, Miss Cooper?” he asked as he stood and walked from behind his

desk.

“Did you do it?”

She seemed so aggrieved to Matty that he got to the point, too. “Anonymously, yes.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean why?”

“Why would you do something like that for me? It was just a one-night stand, Matty,

we decided that beforehand. Now you . . . ”

Matty was standing beside her now, and the idea of his closeness caused Shay to almost

step back. Flashes of that night they shared together, of him entering her, lifting her, pounding

her, kept flooding her memory.

“I did it, Shanita, because you need it.”

“Dr. Graham told you I needed it?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Well, I may need it, but I don’t need it from you. I can’t accept it.”

“That’s bullshit. You know that.”

“I’m not your whore, Matty, I don’t care how low I go, I’m not playing that role.”

“I’m not asking you to play that role. Look, I know you’re Miss Independent. I know

you pay your own way, do your own thing. But this is business, Shay. I wasn’t letting you---

”

Shay frowned. “You wasn’t
letting
me?”

“I didn’t want you get kicked out of a perfectly fine institution like Franklin because of

finances.”

“But you don’t owe me anything!”

“Did I say I owed you something?”

“No,” Shay admitted, “but it’s usually not in what people say, it’s in what they do.

And your decision to pay my way through school like this either says you think of me as your

whore, or you’re trying to buy my silence. Or both.”

Trying to buy her silence
, Matty thought. Where did that come from? The whore part

he could understand, no self-respecting woman wanted to feel as though she was being paid for

sex, although he knew he would never think of her that way. But buying her silence? “I don’t

know what you mean,” he said. “Why would I need to buy your silence?”

“Ah, come on, man, let’s keep it real! I’m not crazy. I see you all up in Dr. Graham’s

office for a business meeting. That means you have business with Franklin U. You can’t be

banging one of their students and have business with them, now that’s a fact. And you don’t

want me to tell it.”

“My relationship with Franklin University hasn’t anything to do with me and you. And

I don’t give a damn who you tell. I don’t buy silence.”

This threw Shay. She didn’t expect him to be so forthright about it. She though he

wanted to forget he’d ever met her. That, after all, was their decision before they went down

that road.

Matty exhaled, as her face still was unable to hide her distress. “Listen, Shay, I

understand how you feel. But it’s not about anything like what you’re thinking. I find you to

be a good, honest, smart young lady doing all she can to make it in this world. When I see

somebody like that I help them. What good is wealth if you don’t share it?”

“So because you’re wealthy, you decide to become my protector? That doesn’t make

sense to me. I mean, who does that?”

Matty, however, was still stuck on one particular word she said. “Your protector?” he

asked her. He would have thought he would be considered her benefactor, surely. But

protector? That word intrigued him.

“Yes. My protector. That’s what one of those financial aid counselors said they call

people like you. Protectors. They look out for the best interest of the person they’re

helping.”

Matty smiled. The thing he loved most about historically black colleges, many of

whom he supported financially, were their creativity, their way of cutting through the nonsense

and making their own sense of it all. “In answer to your question, no, I’m not helping you just

because I’m wealthy. I’m helping you because you need the help, you deserve the help, I can

afford the help, and,” he said, looking at her oh so smooth skin, her long, thin neck, her

beautiful brown eyes, “I like you.”

Shay was beginning to feel the heat of Matty’s stare. He wanted her again, it was as

clear as the blue in his eyes. But did she want him, too? Was that why she came here? To

confront him, or to see him again? To be next to him again? She was a very honest person,

Matty was right about that, but her honesty, it seemed to her, tended to be more about her

experience with other people, than any soul searching of herself.

“Well,” she said frowningly, again refusing to deal with her innermost, raw, unvarnished

truth, “I just don’t want you to think that you can give me things and I owe you things in

return, because I’m not that kind of person.”

“Understood. Have dinner with me tonight.”

“No!”

“And why not?”

“Because!”

“Because why, Shay? I want to spend some time with you.” He meant this. In the

days since that night, he’d thought about her countless times, remembered her even more than

that, and kept getting that sense that she was somebody he should get to know, he should keep

around. Why he felt that way, he couldn’t say. But the feeling was there.

To Shay’s annoyance, she was actually pleased to hear him say he wanted to spend

some time with her. But what would it lead to? That was why it annoyed her. Because she

knew it would lead to absolutely nothing. He’d already made that clear. Their night together

was all about sex, nothing more. A one night stand. He told her that and she accepted that.

But now he wanted an encore? She couldn’t turn her emotions on and off the way an

experienced lover like him could. She was still recovering from that night. Why would she

want to go down that dead end road again?

“Say yes, Shay,” he implored her.

“We haven’t resolved the issue.”

“Yes, we have. You need financial help. I am helping you financially. End of

discussion.”

“But it’s not the end! I can’t take thousands of dollars from a virtual stranger and--”

“
Stranger
?” Matty said, offended. “You must be kidding me? After what we

shared? I’m hardly a stranger to you, Shay. I would wager I know you better than anybody

else.”

Shay stared at him. He was right. That one night with Matty elevated him as the only

human being she had ever been so intimate with. Anywhere close. It was a heady thought.

“Have dinner with me,” he asked her again. He almost felt as if he was begging this

woman, which would be ridiculous. He didn’t have to beg any woman. But Shay was