“I don’t know what I’ll do if y’all can’t help me. They took my scholarship away and now I may have to drop out if there’s no other funding available.” But his entire attention appeared to be focused on his computer screen. As she talked he began pecking his computer keys furiously, reading the screen, and then pressing Enter over and over.
Shay was hopeful. “You found something?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, although he never took his eyes off of the screen.
“Have you found another scholarship for me?”
“Scholarship?” the counselor asked, still distracted by his screen. “No, of course not.
Besides, it’s covered.”
Shay frowned. “What’s covered?”
“Your tuition,” he said. “According to this, your tuition is covered in full for the remainder of your college studies, with an option for you to get a Master’s if you choose, which I strongly recommend,” the counselor added, looking at Shay over the top tip of his glasses.
“But that’s a mistake,” Shay said, confused. “Dr. Graham said I lost my scholarship.
She said my grades were too low and they took the scholarship from me. That has to be some mistake.”
“This isn’t a scholarship,” the counselor said.
“Then what are you talking about? I already get the Pell grant, but that’s not nearly enough to cover Franklin’s tuition.”
“You don’t have a scholarship, young lady, nor is this a grant. You have a benefactor.” Then he noticed something odd on his computer screen. “Oh. That’s interesting,” he said as he pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his wide, flat nose and began pecking at his keys again.
“What is it?” Shay wanted to know.
“The cost of your dorm room and cafeteria fees are included as well,” he said.
Shay was floored. “I don’t understand.”
“You’re a very blessed young lady, understand that?”
“But do you know who it is? And why would anybody want to do something like that for me?”
“I don’t know and I don’t know,” the counselor said and looked, once again, at Shay.
“But I would advise against too much protestation. You have an anonymous benefactor, that’s all. That’s a good thing.”
“But this is crazy!” Shay was a product of the streets. She was always suspicious of gift givers. “Have you heard of anything like this before?”
“Yes, of course I have. I mean, it’s not the norm, no, but it happens more often than you might realize. Here at Franklin we call people like this ‘protectors.’” Shay frowned. “Protectors? Why protectors?”
“Because it’s in your best interest to continue in college and get your degree. People like this look out for that interest, they protect your interest.” Then he exhaled, seeing the doubt, the concern on Shay’s innocent face. “You’re over-thinking this, young lady. It’s not all that serious.”
“Somebody giving me what amounts to a full scholarship, out of the blue, and you expect me to just accept it? What are the strings? What are they expecting in return?”
“Contrary to what you may believe, there are still good people in this world.” But Shay had her doubts. It had been her life’s experience that nobody had ever shown her much favor, unless they wanted something significant from her in return.
The counselor exhaled again. “It’s probably just some rich old lady somewhere who asked the school to find a deserving student. Maybe it was even Dr. Graham who recommended you when you lost your scholarship. It could be as simple as that. So don’t be obsessing over it, just accept it. Because if it was me somebody was willing to protect,” the counselor said, finally cracking a smile, “I wouldn’t give a good hot damn who it was.” But Shay did give a damn, hot and otherwise. And as she slung her book bag on her small shoulder and hurried out of the chaotic confines of the financial aid office, words couldn’t describe just how much she gave a damn. Because she knew just as surely as she knew her name who this protector was. And he was a far cry from some rich old lady.
But the implication of it all was what drove her mad. If she accepted such a gift from him, it would make her no better than a street corner whore. He was trying to buy her silence, because she now knew why he was always coming to town. According to Dr. Graham, he was one of the school’s business partners. What if he could lose that partnership if they found out he had banged one of their students? Was that why he suddenly became her protector?
To protect his own interest, and buy her silence?
He was wasting his money if that was the case. As if she was going to tell what they did to somebody else. What did he take her for? Did he think she’d tell her roommate Jessica, who didn’t even know she’d lost her virginity, or was a virgin to begin with? Did he expect her to say, ‘hey, Jess, there’s this guy who always comes into Stop Gap. They call him Brad Pitt.
Well my shiftless little stupid behind decided to give that man my virginity, just gave it away to him. And guess who else he’s screwing? Franklin U itself!’ Please! She’d die before another human being knew about her private life that way.
And she’d be damned if Matty Driscoll was going to make her feel even more insignificant than she already felt. She needed the help, Lord knows she needed it desperately, but she’d take out a high interest loan and work triple-shift at Stop Gap, before she sold her soul that easily.
Instead of going to the library to research her term paper, and instead of going to her Comparative Studies class that was due to meet within the hour, she hopped a commuter train and traveled those short, but agonizing forty miles, into the heart of Baltimore.
FOUR
She stepped out of the cab in front of the massive Driscoll Systems, Incorporated building and had to lean back on all fours just to see the full breath of it. It was modern, made of green glass and marble, and immediately, just seeing the scope of Matty’s business, made her heart 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.
***
Matty Driscoll leaned back in his high-back chair and exhaled. It had been a hard sell, and 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! Braz
il 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--”
Romancing Her Protector Page 4