Romancing Her Protector

by Mallory Monroe

  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.

  EPILOGUE

  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 between them. That was why, DeAndre felt, this meeting was so important.

  “Have a seat, have a seat,” Matty said, noticing the awkwardness that was still there too. He and Shay didn’t live with him. He wanted them to desperately, but Shay didn’t think it was a good idea.

  “If it was just you and me that would be different,” she had told him. “But we have a son to consider. And I’m not shacking up with any man, not even his father, in my son’s presence.”

  So on Shay’s request, she and DeAndre moved into the old condo she briefly stayed in when she was a college student, a condo Matty still owned. And although the separation was understandable, he, after all, asked for Shay’s hand in marriage the day after that horrible scene in Philly and knew they would live together soon, it didn’t help the awkwardness he and DeAndre still seemed to feel whenever they were around each other.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” DeAndre said as he took a seat in front of Matty’s desk.

  “Never,” Matty said, standing and walking from around his desk. He sat on the edge of his desk. “So how’s everything going?”

  “Great actually.”

  “Still getting adjusted to school here in Maryland?”

  “Yes, sir. Especially private school.”

  Matty and Shay had made the decision to put DeAndre in private school, at least for the time being, to avoid any unlikely but possible run-ins with gang members who may know the group from Philly.

  “How’s mom?” Matty asked him, folding his arms. “I wasn’t able to come by
and see her last night.”

  “She’s good. Nervous about the wedding, but good.”

  Matty nodded. He was nervous too. “So what’s up? What can I do you for?” DeAndre exhaled. Here goes. He hadn’t even discussed it with his mother yet, although he was reasonably certain she would approve. “I was thinking about this, Dad, and something just doesn’t seem right to me.” He looked up at his father.

  Matty’s heart dropped. “About me and your mother getting married?” he asked, his voice cracking with fear.

  “No, not that,” DeAndre said with a smile, causing Matty to exhale in relief. “But like when you come to pick me up from school, or when I come here to see you. I’m always Mr.

  Cooper or DeAndre Cooper here to see Mr. Driscoll. It just doesn’t seem right to me.” Matty’s heart wanted to soar, but he maintained his composure. “I see,” he said. “And I agree. I’ve felt the same way. So, what do you propose that we do about it?”

  “I think, before the wedding, we ought to change my name. Not my Christian name, but my last name.” DeAndre said this and looked up at his father. “I mean, because I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings. I’m not a Cooper. I’m a Driscoll. I’m your son and I should have my father’s name. I mean, if it’s all right with you.” Before he could even finish speaking, before he even got to the if it’s all right with you part, Matty was already grabbing him into his arms, tears staining his eyes.

  “Is it all right?” he asked his son, as if amazed that he would think that in any way it wouldn’t be. “You bet ‘cha it’s all right,” he added.

  And now it was more than all right. It was here. Shay Cooper being escorted down the aisle by DeAndre Driscoll. His soon-to-be wife with his long lost son. His heart could hardly contain his glee.

  When they arrive at the altar, and DeAndre handed his mother off to his father, DeAndre leaned into his father and whispered in his ear: “You sure you’re ready for this?” he felt duty bound to ask him one final time.

  Matty loved his son’s take charge personality, a personality, he was convinced, that would serve him well when he, DeAndre Driscoll, became head of Driscoll Systems, Inc.

  Matty, therefore, took his son’s question to heart. He leaned over to his bride-to-be. “Are you ready for this?” he asked Shay.

  Shay’s first instinct was to scream no, are you kidding? Who could ever be ready for this nerve-racking ride? But she smiled, and simply told the truth: “As ready as I’ll ever be,” she replied.

  Matty smiled. This was, hands down, the happiest day of his life. He nodded to his son. “Yes, we’re ready,” he said.

  And Dre, relishing his role and remembering the protocol as they had rehearsed it before this big day, slowly but surely nodded back at his father, and then backed out of the way.

  Table of Contents

  EPILOGUE