ROMANCING HER PROTECTOR by Mallory Monroe

limousine.” He grabbed her by the hand. “Come with me,” he said and
    escorted her out of his home, down the first and then second flight of steps, to a brand new,
    pearl-white BMW convertible seated in front of those steps. He then handed her the keys.
    “What’s this?” she asked him.
    “Yours, my dear,” he said.
    Shay was floored. “Mine? You mean. . . But Dresden is small. I don’t need a car to
    get around, I catch the bus to go wherever I need to go.”
    The look on Matty’s face changed, and Shay could tell it was that stern look he used
    that probably made him the successful businessman he was today. “No woman of mine is
    catching anybody’s bus, okay?” he said to her.
    “But Matty,” she started, a worried look crossing her face.
    “Shay, you need a car.”
    “A car, yes. But this ?”
    “Something nice, of course. What do you expect me to do? I’m not going to give you
    just any old thing. Not you.”
    Shay started to protest again, but then she remembered what Jordy had said . If he wants to
    treat you like his queen, dear heart, let him .
    She smiled. Looked at Matty. He really was one of the good guys. “Thank-you so
    much, Matty,” she said heartfelt, and then reached up and initiated a kiss for the first time in
    their short relationship.
    And the thought of it, of kissing her the way he wanted to again, of having her wiggling
    beneath him again, was too much for Matty.
    “Oh, damn ,” he said, grabbed her by the hand, and then ran with her, in a near-sprint,
    her entire body shaking with laughter, back inside his home.

    SIX

    It took two weeks. Just two weeks after Shay drove onto the campus of Franklin
    University with her brand new BMW, before her roommate was trying to inject her wants and
    needs into Shay’s good fortune. First Jessica was uncharacteristically silent on the matter.
    Didn’t want to know anything at all about how a poor girl like Shay could end up with a car
    like that. Shay didn’t say anything, either, she was always private with her private life. But
    she knew Jessica too well. She knew it was just a matter of time before that opinionated,
    what’s in it for me roommate of hers would work out a way of getting in on the action, too.
    They were in their small dorm room, Shay and Jessica, with Hector, one of Jessica’s
    numerous boyfriends, seated beside Jessica on her twin bed. Shay was seated at the desk,
    attempting to study for her Investigative Journalism exam, an exam Matty had already told her
    she had better ace, and Jessica and Hector were nagging her no end.
    “No,” she said again when their insistence would not let up. But they continued at it.
    Jessica, the Drama major, was into her overacting big time, with her head bobbing and her
    hand snatching at air as if she were demonstrating some odd sign language. When she was like
    this, Shay knew there was no reasoning with her. So she didn’t try. She just made clear,
    when she finished, that her answer was still no.
    “But why not Shay?” Jessica asked, her pretty face a mask of puzzlement. “He’s rich,
    you said so yourself.”
    “You are such a liar, Jess. I never said any such thing!”
    “You didn’t have to say it,” Jessica said, correcting herself without admitting ever being
    wrong, “but it’s obvious he is. What poor man you know pick a girl up in a limo and then
    buys same girl a spanking brand new BMW? I don’t know why you would accept that kind of
    a gift, personally, and from a white man at that, but hey, that’s you. That’s your conscience.”
    Shay looked at Jessica. “What does his race have to do with anything?”
    “What you think? It just smacks of slave mentality, that’s all I’m saying.”
    “Slave mentality?”
    “Yes, slave mentality. Slavery times! Remember that bit of history of ours? When
    we black women were expected to be the white man’s hoe, slut, trick, whatever they wanted
    us to be? I don’t know about you and your values, but that’s