Romancing Her Protector Read online

  ROMANCING

  HER

  PROTECTOR

  MALLORY MONROE

  c2011

  All rights reserved. Any use of the materials contained in this book without the expressed written consent of the author and/or her

  affiliates, is strictly prohibited.

  ***

  AUSTIN BROOK PUBLISHING

  America’s stomping ground for romantic ebooks

  ***

  This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are fictitious. Any similarities to anyone living or dead are completely accidental. The

  specific mention of known places or venues are not meant to be exact replicas of those places, but are purposely embellished or imagined

  for the story’s sake.

  MORE

  INTERRACIAL ROMANCE

  FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  MALLORY MONROE:

  ***

  THE PRESIDENT’S GIRLFRIEND

  ROMANCING THE MOB BOSS

  ROMANCING THE BULLDOG

  IF YOU WANTED THE MOON

  AND

  MORE INTERRACIAL ROMANCE

  FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  KATHERINE CACHITORIE:

  ***

  LOVING THE HEAD MAN

  SOME CAME DESPERATE

  WHEN WE GET MARRIED

  ALSO

  A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

  YVONNE THOMAS

  ***

  BACK TO HONOR:

  A REGGIE REYNOLDS

  ROMANTIC MYSTERY

  JT WATSON

  ***

  AVAILABLE NOW

  AFRICAN-AMERICAN ROMANCE

  FROM

  Award winning author

  TERESA MCCLAIN-WATSON:

  ***

  AFTER WHAT YOU DID

  ***

  STAY IN MY CORNER

  ***

  COMING SOON

  FROM

  Bestselling author

  MALLORY MONROE

  ***

  MOB BOSS 2:

  THE HEART OF THE MATTER

  ***

  Visit

  www.austinbrookpublishing.com

  for more information

  on all titles

  on all titles

  ONE

  When she left the Stop Gap café that late Sunday evening, determined to catch the six o’

  clock bus for home, she never dreamed she’d end up making love for the first time in her life, in a motel room of all places, with a man like Matty Driscoll. But that was exactly what happened to Shay Cooper when she stepped out of the café, and made her way to the bus stop.

  It started with a downpour when she was but a few blocks away from her destination.

  The rains came down in such heavy sideswipes across her small body that it slowed her progression, causing her to walk nearly sideways to keep her umbrella from flapping, and to avoid a direct hit from the onslaught. But she kept on walking.

  The wind began to pick up, too, causing her to walk even slower, causing her umbrella to become even more unstable. But she kept on walking. She’d been working at the Stop Gap café for little over two years now and knew the bus schedule like the back of her hand. She had five minutes to get there, just five, or she’d miss the six o’ clock and be forced to wait nearly forty-five more minutes for the next bus to arrive.

  Which was exactly what happened when she was within eyesight of the bus stop. The bus was already there. She ran, and tried to wave her hand, the hand she had been using to keep the umbrella from ballooning, but it was too late. The bus drove off.

  “Ah, man!” she said and stomped her feet in the kind of frustration that had been building all day long. She had two choices: either wait at the bus stop for another forty five minutes, where there was absolutely no protection from the rain, or walk back the eight blocks to Stop Gap and see if there was anybody going her way. Although there had been a threat of rain when she first left work, the downpour didn’t start until she was well on her way. Now it felt like a monsoon.

  It began to pour so aggressively, in fact, that the wind also picked up its whip and twirl and swept her umbrella upwards into the balloon she dreaded, completely exposing her to the elements. Within seconds she was drenched.

  She heard the horn blow behind her before she realized a car was even there. When she turned in that direction, still in shock by the heavy rain beating against her, the car, a Mercedes, drove up beside her and the window rolled slightly down.

  “Shay, get in,” the man behind the wheel ordered.

  Shay knew him from Stop Gap. He was one of their regular customers who apparently had business that caused him to journey into town from Baltimore on a consistent basis, and in so doing stop at Stop Gap four or five times every month. The dude who said his name was Matty, but all of the older waitresses called Brad Pitt. Although they were certainly friendly, and she’d recognize him anywhere, she wouldn’t say she knew the man. But Shay had been raised in the streets, a product of all kinds of bad family ties and even worse luck, and from where she came from you never really knew people, anyway.

  Besides, she’d seen him come and go out of Stop Gap for nearly two years now, and had snap-judged him to be good peeps. But if he wasn’t good peeps, she thought, as she dumped her now decimated umbrella and got into his car, her hand firmly on the can of Mace she kept in her book bag, he’d soon find out that she had it in her to break bad, too.

  Matty Driscoll didn’t know why he would even consider picking up some waitress when he was needed in Baltimore like yesterday. But she’d catch her death in this kind of weather if he didn’t do something. Besides, this was Dresden, a small college town some forty miles outside of Baltimore. The school, the historically black Franklin University, was currently between semesters and, because most of the college kids had gone home on break, it looked nearly deserted on this late Sunday evening. He was the only rescuer she was likely to have on this night, was his estimation.

  “Thanks, Matty,” she said as she closed the car door. She was immediately horrified as the rain dripped off of her and onto his car seat and floor mates. “I sure hope this is real leather,” she said, concern all over her pretty face.

  Matty smiled. He always liked that about her whenever he saw her at the café. She was always so sincere and serious, and such a hard worker, that he wondered why she wasn’t running the entire establishment. And of all the waitresses that had served him over the years, she was the only one who didn’t try to get him to take her to some motel room, or flirt with him shamelessly to gin up a big tip. For that reason alone he always gave her his biggest tips.

  “It’s real,” he said, “don’t worry.” Then he just sat there.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, feeling, once again, for her can of Mace.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he said, amazed at how serious she took everything. Often he would see her working in the café while her coworkers were basically lounging around doing nothing, and he’d want to tell her to lighten up, too, to take it easy, that it’s not that serious. “I was just waiting for you to give me some idea where you might have been heading?”

  “Oh!” Shay said sheepishly. She always did like Matty, although she wasn’t all out there with it the way those other females were whenever he walked into Stop Gap. Brad Pitt in the house, the older waitresses loved to yell. Or, Walking Sexy has arrived , the younger ones would proclaim.

  He was tall and lean, but athletically built like a track star or a football quarterback, and he had this great tan, these sparkling bright blue eyes, and this dark-brown hair pushed back into a silky, almost severely conservative cut. Although the females at Stop Gap always kept coming onto him and were convinced he was the play-a
round type, Shay didn’t get that vibe about him. He liked the ladies, she decided, but she figured his taste tended more toward the sophisticated, got her own thing going on type, not those chain-smoking, cracked-skin, trailer park older ladies like most Stop Gap’s waitressing staff, or those few college kids like her trying to work their way through school.

  “I stay on campus,” she said. “At Franklin U. Know where it’s at?” Matty could have said, I not only know where it’s located, young lady, but my ex-girlfriend is your Dean of Academic Affairs! But of course he didn’t go there. His relationship with Alex Graham ended nearly a month ago, although she still insisted on calling him whenever she was in a jam, which was why he had been in Dresden to begin with. But it was a relationship that remained far too complicated to discuss even among his friends, forget somebody he hardly knew. “Franklin U, it is,” he said instead, pulling away from the curb.

  Shay looked at him, understanding why the females went so ga-ga over him. He was really a very attractive man, with an alluring quality about him she hadn’t picked up when he was her customer at Stop Gap. Then she suddenly remembered that he hadn’t been coming around as often as he used to.

  “We haven’t seen you much lately,” she said to him conversationally. All she wanted to do was get back on campus, and out of his car, in one piece.

  “It’s been about a month, you’re right.” Not since he was last in town and angrily walked out of Alex’s home, after literally coming to blows with Franklin U’s head football coach, who was now her lover. He almost hung up in her face when she phoned him this morning asking that he come. He came, got into another shouting match with her about same football coach, and left again. He stopped by Stop Gap to calm himself back down.

  “You haven’t missed anything,” Shay said. “Lester’s still working us too hard, and JJ

  still dropping plates almost every day.”

  “Oh my. He’s still the klutz, is he?”

  “For real, though. I don’t know why Les keeps him around, but he does. Not good business in my view, I mean really. But word around the Gap is that he and JJ a little more than friends, if you dig where I’m coming from.”

  Matty looked at her as if he was affronted, suppressing a smile. “Shay, I’m disappointed in you,” he said. “Don’t tell me you’re into gossip, too?” Shay smiled. She always did like Matty. “Nall, but you can’t help but hear it. That’s all a lot of those ladies do around there. And of course many of those same ladies were all excited that you were back today. You should have seen them, Matty. And all of them older than me, some way older, but when it comes to good looking men, they act like two-year-olds. It’s embarrassing.”

  Matty laughed. He could really love this woman, he thought, and then quickly caught himself. Love this woman? Where in the world did that come from?

  “So how’s everything been going for you?” he asked her, moving right along. “And by the by, I’ve always been curious: is Shay your real name?”

  “Nall, it’s just what people call me. My real name’s Shanita Cooper.”

  “Ah, Shanita.” Shay liked the way he said it with such emphasis. Not plain Shanita, the way most people said it, but Sha-Ni-Ta, the way nobody did. “But I take it you prefer Shay,” he added.

  “It doesn’t matter, tell you the truth. But everybody calls me Shay, or ShayShay, so yeah, I just go with it.”

  “From the way they talk in Stop Gap, you’re the conservative of the group.” Shay shook her head. “Ain’t they crazy? They actually think I’m some innocent air head who don’t know squat about the world, when it’s really the other way around.” Matty glanced at her. He never took her for an air head, she was too much her own person for him to even consider that, but he had thought there to be an innocence about her.

  “So you’ve been around?” he asked her, his eyes almost by reflex traveling down to her breasts.

  “I was raised in the streets,” Shay said, glancing at him just as his eyes traveled back to hers. “What’ll you think?”

  As soon as Shay said those words she regretted it. She didn’t mean to imply she had been around in any sexual way, she was never that kind of girl, but she wasn’t naïve either.

  When a man asks a female if she’s been around, he usually isn’t referring to how many libraries she’s been around, or churches.

  And although Matty turned his attention back to the road as the rain began to pour down even heavier, and thunder and lightning began to roar, she kept her eyes on him. At Stop Gap he’d always treated her with respect, even more so than he treated any of the other waitresses. It bothered her that he might now believe, however wrongly, she wasn’t worthy of that respect.

  “So what are you at Franklin?” Matty asked. “Sophomore, Junior, what?”

  “I’ll be starting my junior year next term, thank God.”

  “And then one more year after that, and you’re out of here?”

  “As fast as my little feet can carry me.”

  Matty smiled, glanced down the length of her body. She was little all right, but with the right proportions of hip, ass, and thighs that always piqued his interest whenever he’d see her moving around at Stop Gap. Although he preferred his women to have more meat on their bones -he was, after all, an ass-man through and through, hers was tight enough and with just enough bouncy firmness that made him wonder more than once how she would feel to the touch.

  There was also an element of independence about her that he liked. She was a direct, to the point, don’t have time for anybody’s bullshit kind of operator he respected. And she had a look about her, with her big, grain-bright brown eyes that seemed to look at the world with equal combinations of hope and disgust, and with her rich, smooth, dark chocolate skin that made her not only physically attractive , but somebody he determined would be an interesting person to get to know. In her style, manner and work ethic she was, in Matty’s mind, a cut above anybody else working at that traveler’s only café that was on the far edge of town.

  “What’s your major?” he asked her.

  “Journalism,” Shay said proudly. “I want to expose corruption in high places.” Matty looked at her. “That’s an odd reason to want to be a reporter.”

  “Yeah, but that’s my reason,” she said with that fearlessness he liked. “It’s a sin the way people get elected to these high offices and then pass laws that do nothing but hurt the poor. They campaign on helping the poor, then do just the opposite when they get what they want.”

  “Why do you suppose they do it?”

  Shay didn’t miss a beat. “Money, honey,” she said, folding her arms and crossing her legs, talking as if she was an old pro about something that was probably as foreign to her as China. And it made Matty smiled.

  “Money?” he said.

  “Money, honey. It’s all about the Benjamins. They get in office, loosen regulations on the businesses they’re interested in, cut programs they have no interest in, and then leave public life to become lobbyists in that same private sector they just helped. But it’s payback for all of the good work they did. It’s a racket I’m telling you.” Matty wanted to laugh. Where did this kid get off? She was talking as if she knew the business community like the back of her hand. But what was even more remarkable to Matty, who was a major player in that business community, was that she was hitting the nail right on the head.

  Shay exhaled, and looked at Matty. “So what about you?” she asked him. “You know my name, my major, where I live. What’s yours?”

  “What’s my major?”

  “No, silly!” Shay said with a laugh. “What’s your name? Your full name, I mean.”

  “According to your coworkers, it’s Brad Pitt.”

  She laughed. “You know about that?”

  Matty nodded. “I do.” Then he paused. “It’s Matthew Driscoll, at your service.”

  “But your friends call you Matty, or Matt, right?”

  “Wrong,” Matty said with bite, looking at Shay so there
would be no misunderstanding. “Nobody calls me Matt.”

  Everybody used to call his father Matt Driscoll, and his father was the most sadistic, abusive human being he’d ever known, a man who would beat Matty’s mother so mercilessly that she’d end up hospitalized for weeks. And would still be so afraid of the man that she’d go running back to him. Matty used to watch the beatings as a kid, and dream of the day. When he turned sixteen, and was as big as his father, he fought back.

  Shay noted the bite in his voice and decided to leave that minefield alone. “You’re a businessman, aren’t you?” she asked him.

  “That’s right.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “DSI: Driscoll Systems, Incorporated.”

  “That sounds impressive. So what does Driscoll Systems, Inc, do?” Matty smiled. “We do a number of things.”

  “Tell me one, at least one I can understand, that is.”

  “Well,” he said, his eyes glued to the road as he couldn’t help noticing that the thunder, the lightning, the rain downpour was beginning to pick up with even more ferocity, “we buy up businesses in need of restructuring, restructure them, and then sell them at a profit. Sometimes a small profit, usually quite a substantial profit.”

  “Oh, I see. Like flipping houses, right?”

  Matty slowed his speed from an already slow thirty-five miles, to twenty. “Flipping houses?”

  “Yeah, like that. I once worked this job where this guy would buy up houses that needed lots of repairs and stuff. We’d repair’em, I was good at drywall repair, then he’d sell the houses at a profit.”

  Matty smiled. It was the most simplistic way anyone had ever explained his very complicated and involved business. “Then I guess you’re right, young lady. DSI is akin to flipping houses.”

  But the kind of ‘houses’ he would probably flip, Shay thought, looking at Matty as he returned his attention to steering them safely through the heavy downpour, were more like million dollar mansions than the shacks her former boss renovated. She left that job, in fact, after she had to kick same boss in the groin when he kept trying to kiss her.