ROMANCING HER PROTECTOR (21 page)

shorts, rendering them both naked, and at first just held her against him.

He looked at her, his blue eyes so tired they worried Shay. “I love you, Shanita,” he

said to her.

Shay stared at him. “I love you too, Matty,” she said.

And that was enough. He continued kissing her as he entered her. When they joined,

he felt as if he wanted to cry. It felt as if so many years had been wasted, so many lonely days

when his woman and his child were within a hundred miles of him for more than a dozen

years, and he was living a separate, wasted life so close, but so far away. It felt so painful, so

unfair, so wrenching. He moved deeper and deeper and deeper inside of her, to make sure she

felt every inch of him, and they he began to find their rhythm.

Shay held on, thrilled to be on the ride too, unable to stop feeling as if she was on the

ride of her life. She lay against his chest as he rode in and out of her, over and over, like a

dance that started out as a slow drag, but was now the watusi. She loved this man. She loved

how this man felt inside of her. But what if Dre continued to despise him? What would she

do then?

“Oh, Matty, what are we going to do?” she asked him as the intensity of his gyrations

began to sear her.

“Ride me, Shay,” Matty said, moving in and out, in and out. “Just close your eyes and

ride.”

And Shay did. She decided to just do it, to just close her eyes and ride.

SEVENTEEN

They arrived at the hospital on the day of DeAndre’s release with a sense of purpose, a

sense that they had to be the grownups here and take complete charge of Dre’s life. Before

Dre ruined what was left of it. But when they went into his room and found it empty, and

hurried to the nurse’s station to find out where they had moved him, they were in for a rude

awakening.

“He was released,” the nurse said, confused by their question.

“Released?” Shay said, even more confused by her answer. “But we’re his parents.

Who did you release him to?”

“His older brother.”

Shay looked at Matty.

“Describe this brother,” Matty asked the nurse.

“Kind of short, with dreads, light-complexioned, oh, and he had a gold grill in his

mouth.”

Matty looked at Shay. “Burma?” he asked her.

She nodded. “Burma,” she said and immediately pulled out her cell phone.

“He said he was his brother,” the nurse explained nervously. “I had no reason to dispute

him.”

“Understood,” Matty said.

But DeAndre wasn’t answering his cell phone. Shay was beginning to panic.

“Come on,” Matty said, hurrying her out of the hospital, getting Jordy on his own cell

phone as he did.

“He’s gone back to Philadelphia, Matty,” Shay insisted. “He’s determined to defy us.”

“I know,” Matty said, holding onto Shay as they ran all the way to his car, a silver

Bentley. “We’re going back, too.”

***

them to every one. But all to no avail. They even went by Shay’s house, to see if DeAndre

was there, but he wasn’t. To her surprise, however, her home had been completely renovated,

with the broken glass and evidence of what the police said were “hundreds of rounds of bullet

holes,” no longer present. She looked at Matty when they got back into his car.

“You did this, didn’t you?”

For Matty, however, that small gesture wasn’t even worth responding to. DeAndre was

on his mind. “I need you to think harder, Shay,” he said. “Is there anywhere else DeAndre

could be?”

“Other than with Burma, no. That’s who he hung out with, or at least tried to when I

wasn’t paying attention.”

Matty backed out of the driveway again. “We’ll just have to double back, check the

usual spots again, and just keep looking,” he said and headed, once again, for the hood.

It was a long, drawn-out search, with Shay growing more and more antsy, especially

since DeAndre’s cell phone was now going straight to voice mail. Until they approached a

housing project off Broad Street, and Shay spotted Burma’s old-style Chevy.

“I think that’s him, Matty,” she said, pointing in the direction of the car. Matty’s car

immediately crossed over and drove to the end of the street, a few feet behind the Chevy. Just

as he did, Burma and two of his boys jumped from Burma’s car and began running, guns at

their side, toward another group of unsuspecting young men who were sitting at a picnic table,

laughing and eating outside a rib joint. When DeAndre jumped out of the backseat of the car,

Shay’s heart dropped.

“Oh, my Lord, Matty, it’s Dre! I’ve got to stop him! I’ve got to stop him!”

But Matty wasn’t listening to her. He was already unbuckling his seatbelt and jumping

from the car, ordering Shay to stay put.

But their concern that DeAndre was about to participate in some gangland shooting was

completely unfounded. DeAndre was terrified. He all but begged Burma not to do it, not to

seek revenge on the men Burma believed had orchestrated the drive-by of Dre’s house. It was

his life, his house, DeAndre had attempted to impress upon his friend, and he didn’t want

revenge.

But his desire had nothing to do with it. It was gang pride, Burma said, and nobody

messes with his boys without itching for a fight. Now DeAndre was nearly paralyzed where he

stood, his hands on the top of his head, his every instinct telling him to run, but his feet

wouldn’t cooperate.

Until he felt a strong hand, a firm grip, on his arm. When he turned and realized it was

Matty Driscoll, his father, he nearly collapsed into him. But Matty had no time for sentiment.

He grabbed his son and all be slung him away from the scene, and threw him in the backseat

of his Bentley.

Just as he did, the shooting began. Matty looked, DeAndre looked, Shay looked as

Burma put a bullet in the head of the tallest man seated at the table, while his boys shot the

other young men. It was an ambush and it was bloody. Shay could hardly believe her eyes.

She turned around and looked at DeAndre, who sat in the backseat stunned witless. His big

green eyes were larger than Kennedy Fifty Cents. Shay wanted to scream at him, she wanted

to tell him,
now you see what I was talking about? Now do you get it? Your idol is a

murderer!

But she didn’t say a word. The look in her son’s eyes said it all for her.

Matty jumped back into the Bentley, amazed, too, by what he had just witnessed, and

took off. He could hear the police sirens as he did a U-turn on the street and drove, at regular

speed to avoid detection, away from the crime scene.

Burma and his boys jumped in their Chevy too, after Burma gave one final shot to the

already shattered head of his victim, and he, too, made a U-turn and headed away from the

crime scene. Only the police had already been given a description of the car and U-turned

also, in a chase to catch Burma and his boys.

Matty was picking up speed as he drove, his heart pounding, his only focus was to get

Shay and DeAndre out of harm’s way. Especially when he looked in his rearview and saw

Burma’s Chevy hot on his trail. Unsure if they were chasing him, or fleeing the police, or

both, Matty quickly opened his car’s glove compartment and pulled out a gun. This move

astounded Shay.

“Put on your seatbelt, Dre!” he ordered his son. And DeAndre, so terrified he thought

he was going to wet his pants, did as he was told.

But as soon as he did, the Chevy, which was going three times the speed of the

Bentley, flew pass them in such a whirl that the fifty-times more expensive Bentley felt the

wind shear of the Chevy’s speed by and almost moved sideways.

DeAndre looked at Burma as he flew past, his face a mask of defiance, and his heart

grew faint. That was the man he thought was so special, so tough, so invincible. That same

man who had just gunned down another human being as if he was gunning down a wounded

animal. And he could have been implicated in the murders. But for his father, he would have

still been at that scene when the police arrived, and he would have been implicated in those

gruesome, senseless murders. He closed his eyes and began to pray.

Matty quickly pulled over to the side of the road as the police cruiser also flew past.

But as quickly as the cruiser flew past, the chase came to a deadly end. Matty, Shay, and

DeAndre watched in horror as the Chevy blew through a busy intersection, a red light, and

ploughed, head-on, into an oncoming Van. The Van careened sideways, the impact on it

minimal, but the Chevy lost its traction and flew into the air, flying like a bird, and then landing

in a hard fall face down onto its front bumper. The car immediately burst into flames on

impact, in the kind of high-wattage explosion that made the chance of any survivors a near

impossibility.

“
God, no
!” Shay cried at the sound of the explosion, and Matty quickly reached over

and pulled her face down on his lap, refusing to let her see any more horror. He looked in the

rearview at his son, who’d seen more horror in those few minutes than he’d seen in his entire

lifetime, who wore that horror in the pain, the regret, the enlightened stare of his big, green

eyes.

And Matty closed his, wondering how much more did they have to endure.

To his surprise, he received no objections from Shay or DeAndre as he drove them, not

to their home in Philly, or even to a hotel there, but all the way back to Baltimore, to his home

that was now theirs too.

And when they walked up the steps that led into the magnificent foyer, and all three

were standing like traumatized strangers, DeAndre went to his mother and embraced her.

Shay cried as he did, so very grateful that he was all right, and still so terrified of how close he

came to being in that car when it burst into flames, of being in that group when they killed

those poor young men.

But DeAndre didn’t stay long in his mother’s embrace. He needed more and he knew

it. He left Shay’s side and went to Matty. They stood, the two men, toe to toe. Matty’s heart

was hammering as his son stared unblinkingly at him, sizing him up, ready to blame him or

forgive him for everything.

And the decision became clear. Because DeAndre fell into his father’s arms, felt his

father’s warm embrace for the first time in his natural life, and cried without shame, without

any apprehension of any kind, like a baby. Matty’s baby.

The piano began to play and Matty stood nervously at the altar. Jordy stood beside him,

nervous too. It was an outcome Jordy had hoped for since the moment he met Shanita

Cooper. She could be the one, he had thought at the time. Alex certainly wasn’t the one,

although for many years you couldn’t tell Matty that. But Jordy saw something different in

Shay, something so real he knew Matty would see it too. Now this day, this moment, proved

that he was right. Shay had what no other woman before her had ever fully had: Matty’s

heart.

And it was Matty’s heart that was pounding that day. Especially when the music

started and he watched as DeAndre, with Shay on his arm, began their slow walk to the altar.

To, what he prayed, was their destiny. He had dreamed of this day, had wanted this day to

happen so badly that he could taste it. Shay as his wife and DeAndre as his son. A family unit

now and forevermore. His entire life, his entire being would be devoted to those two people

that were slowly making their way to him now. Those two people that were about to be joined

as his one and only family.

He already felt as if they were a family unit. Especially when DeAndre came to his

office and asked to talk to him. It was nearly a month after that horrible day in Philadelphia.

Matty was busy as usual with an acquisition that would involve a hostile takeover, when his

desk intercom buzzed and his secretary announced that Mr. Cooper was there to see him.

Matty, as was his way, cleared his office to make time for his son. When the managers

left and DeAndre entered, his heart soared. DeAndre now had almost the same effect on him

that Shay did. He always felt better, felt more uplifted, whenever he saw their wonderful,

hopeful faces.

“Come on in,” he said to his son as DeAndre made his way into the big, opulent office.

Although it wasn’t his first time seeing his father at work, there still was an awkwardness