ROMANCING HER PROTECTOR (8 page)

“A courier left it for you this morning.”

“A courier?” Jessica said, snapping shut her cell and walking toward Shay. “What

courier would be leaving you anything?”

Shay didn’t respond. She, instead, dropped her headphones around her neck and

opened the box. Inside was a cell phone, cell phone case, and battery charger. A note was

also enclosed. Jessica, who saw the note before Shay did, snatched it out of the box.

“Give that back!” Shay insisted.

“
It’s charged and ready to go
,” Jessica read. “
Call me. Matty.”
She looked at Shay.

“Who’s Matty?”

Shay snatched the note back. “None of your business. Thanks, Bea,” she said to the

receptionist, and then began heading out of the dorm. Jessica ran up beside her.

“Finally you enter the modern world. A cell phone for Shanita! I never thought I’d live

to see the day.”

But Shay wasn’t even hearing her roommate. She was too busy thinking about Matty.

Yesterday, when she came to his office, she thought it was going to be all about business,

specifically her setting him straight about hers, but it didn’t quite turn out that way. She smiled

still at the thought of how it turned out. He made love to her twice, and she would have let

him do her a third time if he had only asked. And the way he made love to her, including her

first oral, still sent tingles down her spine.

She wanted to phone him desperately. She had been thinking about him all night long.

He even put her in his Mercedes and drove her back to campus yesterday, holding her hand

the entire way, kissing her goodbye and promising to talk to her later.

They’d also made a detour to a drugstore, where he purchased the morning after pill for

her. He then suggested strongly that she get on birth control. What struck her as odd about it

all was that they both were behaving as if they were in a full blown relationship when they

hadn’t spoken about, or so much as mentioned, such a thing.

Now he had given her a cell phone, something she was never able to afford on her own,

and she was pleased to have it. Yesterday, before he made love to her again, she felt burdened

by his gifts. Now she was pleased, which made her queasy. She knew she was operating

more from emotion than her usual good sense, but she’d never experienced these kind of

feelings before. Even old pros like Jessica were still fleshing out their own emotions where

some man was involved. Shay knew it would take time for her to figure it out, too.

But she wanted to phone Matty. But Jessica would give her no peace if she did.

She began to walk at an angle away from Jessica, who noticed immediately. “Where

are you going?”

“You go ‘head on,” Shay said. “I’ll catch you up in class.”

“You goin’ to be late, Shay.”

“You go ‘head on.”

Jessica rolled her eyes, but she went on ahead. Shay immediately opened the note

again, found Matty’s number in the note, and dialed it.

Matty was in the backseat of a limousine on the road to the airport when the call came

in. He smiled when he saw the number. “Hello, sweetheart,” he answered.

Shay smiled too. “Hi.”

“Since you’re calling I take it you got the package.”

“Yes, although I can’t afford no cell phone bill.”

“Didn’t ask you to afford it. Where are you now?”

“Suppose to be heading to class, only I had to ditch my roommate to call you.”

Roommate? He didn’t know she had a roommate. “Have dinner with me Friday

night.”

“Dinner?” Shay asked. She loved remembering their encounters, she loved the idea of

being with him, but the reality of it still scared her.

“Yes, dinner. I’ve got some business to take care of in Florida, but I should be back in

a couple of days. I very much want to see you when I return.”

Shay’s entire body began to ache for him. She was craving him again just that fast.

What was wrong with her? “Okay,” she said. “I guess I can catch the commuter train after

school Friday, and I’ll see if I can get another girl to work for me that night.”

“A car will be in front of your dorm at six p.m. sharp, Friday. All right?”

Shay smiled. She should have known a man like him wasn’t going to have her catching

any commuter train. “Yes, okay, Matty. I’ll be ready.”

Matty smiled. “That’s my girl. You take care, sweetie, and I’ll see you then.”

He hung up. Shay smiled and hung up, too. Maybe it was sex and sex alone that was

driving his interest, and maybe sex was a big part of hers as well. But somehow she didn’t

think that was all there was to this. Somehow she could feel, whenever she looked into

Matty’s soulful eyes, that there was more, much more, to their attraction.

***

however, Jessica was stepping out with her, on her way to the campus cafeteria for dinner.

“Do I get to meet this Matty person?” Jessica asked as they walked out of Devender

Hall.

“Don’t you have enough to worry about with your own boyfriend? Or should I say

boyfriends?”

“So this Matty person is your boyfriend then?”

Shay rolled her eyes. “Bye, Jess. See you later, Jess.”

Jessica smiled, looking around. “So where is he? Don’t tell me boyfriend has stood

you up?”

Shay took a seat on the steps outside of the dorm. Again to her dismay, Jessica sat

beside her. Shay frowned. “What is your problem?”

“I want to see this Matty person. You’ve never mentioned him before ever, and

suddenly he’s buying you a phone and woo-woo-woo?”

“What woo-woo-woo?”

“Woo-woo-woo. You acting all strange and junk, smiling all the time and junk. That’s

what woo-woo-woo. What’s up with that?”

Shay just sat there. Although Jessica was a good friend to Shay, probably her only

friend, and had been there when Shay really needed a helping hand, there was also a side of

her that made Shay uncomfortable. She couldn’t say what it was, nor that she had any

tangible proof that it even existed, but there was something there. Something that seemed

determined to break bad.

“Damn!” Jessica said in a loud voice and Shay immediately looked in the direction of

her roommate’s stare. And driving around the curve that led to Devender Hall was a black

stretch limousine.

Shay panicked.
He wouldn’t
, she thought.
Please tell me he didn’t
!

But he did. Because as soon as the limo stopped at the curb, the driver stepped out and

walked over to where the two young ladies sat. Even some of the students, who weren’t used

to such a show of extravagance, stopped and stared.

“Miss Cooper?” the driver asked.

Shay wanted to deny any knowledge. “Yes,” she ultimately said.

“Mr. Driscoll has sent his car, ma’am.”

Shay stood and, without saying a word to Jessica because she didn’t want to hear it

from her, walked up to the waiting limo. The driver hurried up behind her and quickly opened

the door. When Shay glanced back, Jessica was staring, not with a look of surprise on her

face, or even envy, but with a look of pure hatred. Shay hesitated. Where did that come

from? But then she got into the limo, and plopped down on the cushy leather seat.

She had hoped to find Matty inside. His presence seemed to have a way of calming

and reassuring her. And there was indeed a man inside the limo. But it wasn’t Matty.

“I’m Jordan Lambert, although you can call me Jordy, everybody does.” He said this

as he extended his hand. Shay shook it with a look of uncertainty on her face. “Oh, honey,

don’t worry. I won’t bite. I’m Mr. Driscoll’s personal assistant.”

“Oh, okay. But he didn’t have to send his personal assistant just to pick me up.”

“Oh-no you didn’t say that,” Jordy said in such a scolding way that it made Shay

almost want to smile. “Yes, young lady, he did. If he cares anything about you, he did. So

don’t you dare declare any expense, any extravagance he chooses to shower on you,

unnecessary, you hear me? I said, do you hear me?”

Shay smiled this time. “Yes, Jordy, I hear you.”

“The man is rich, okay? He got this. He apparently views you as precious cargo, my

dear, and for Matty Driscoll, that’s a rare treat. It’s not for you to view yourself any less.”

She liked Jordy. Liked him instantly. It wasn’t the words that were said, but the way

he had said them, as if he was her protector too, as if he was looking out for her interest too.

It made Shay slightly uncomfortable, however. She wasn’t accustomed to this kind of

treatment.

But Jordy was a talker, and talk he did. All forty miles to Baltimore. He was a

pleasant, attractive man with a nutmeg-brown complexion who seemed closer in age to Matty

than to Shay. He had an easy manner that relaxed her and a slender, well turned out frame

and dress style that reminded her of a younger version of Dwight from
The Real Housewives

of Atlanta
.

But when they arrived in Baltimore and the limo drove through this fancy, tall,

electronic gate and rounded a horseshoe driveway, and when the house, the mansion really,

came into view, Shay’s entire attention shifted. She could hardly believe her eyes. It was big,

it was brick, and when the limo stopped in front of steep steps that went up one level, then

there was like a walking area, then went up yet another level to the double front doors, Shay

thought of a civic center, a bank, a museum, not anybody’s home.

But this was Matty Driscoll’s home. And as she and Jordy, who, to her relief, stayed

by her side, were escorted by the butler to what Jordy called the ‘upstairs residence,’ her

stomach began to churn. What in the world, she wondered, was she getting herself into? She

liked Matty, but she was no fool. He was probably blown away, not by her personality or

brains or even general humanity, but by the fact that they seemed to have the kind of rare

chemistry that made sex between them hotter than he may normally get.

But even that was a stretch for Shay. She was a novice, a recent graduate of the virgin

school of romance, and for a man like Matty to find her sex hotter than those sophisticated

ladies all over this world he probably had at his disposal, was pushing it.

But something was driving his interest, and sex was the main thing she could figure it to

be. And she wasn’t mad at him if that was all he was about. She wanted the experience, she

wanted to feel the way he made her feel, so it wasn’t as if she was getting nothing out of the

deal. But it would be nice if she knew the deal.

She even asked Jordy’s opinion, she felt just that comfortable with him, when they

were seated in a gorgeous upstairs living room that seemed to cover half the length of the

second floor.

Jordy leaned back, crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap. He was really very

pristine, Shay thought. “What do you mean?” he asked her. “Isn’t the fact that he’s interested

in you enough?”

“Yes,” Shay said, “but my question is why. Why the interest in somebody like me?”

Jordy studied her. “And you don’t know?”

“Of course not. What?”

“You’re a very attractive young lady, Shanita.”

“And that’s it? Because I supposedly look good?”

“I’m not talking about looks. Yes, you look good and you have a nice little body going

on with your bad self, but that’s not what gets Mr. Driscoll’s attention. There’s a uniqueness

about you, a freshness, I picked it up when I first saw you myself, that he finds very

attractive. You’re a fresh face in his life.”

Shay looked Jordy dead in the eye, brother to sister, she almost wanted to say. “I’m

the new fresh face in his life, until the next fresh face comes along. Is that what you mean?”

Jordy didn’t skip a beat. “Yes,” he said.

It was another few minutes of companionable silence, as Shay quietly took in the reality

of Jordy’s honest answer, when Matty entered the room talking.

“I apologize, I apologize, please forgive me for my tardiness. Hello, Jordy.”

“Did they bite?” he asked Matty, standing to his feet.

“You bet your life they bit.”

Jordy grinned. “Now that’s what I call good news,” he said as he and Matty gave that

manly half-handshake, half-hug chest bump.

Then Matty looked at Shay. His heart began to race at just the sight of her. It wasn’t

her look exactly that riveted him, yet it was exactly her look. She was pretty in a clean,

innocent way, and her big, bright-brown eyes contrasted beautifully with her smooth dark

skin. She wore what she probably considered was a fashion-forward fuchsia-colored polyester