Romancing the Bulldog

by Mallory Monroe

  “It was easy,” Jason said. “Now answer my question. Where were you?” It was too much. All of the recriminations from her father were enough. She’d be damned if she allowed it in her own home, too. “Get out,” she said, opening the door.

  “I’m not going anywhere until you answer my question.”

  “I said get out,” she said, this time unflinchingly plain.

  Jason rushed up to the door, removed it from her hand and slammed it shut. “Make me,” he said, in her face, moving closer and closer to her. Then he put her face between his hands.

  “Who was he?”

  “What are you talking about?” Liz asked, attempting to break free of his hold.

  “Who was the dude you spent half this night with?”

  “It wasn’t any dude and let me go!”

  “Then who was it?”

  “That’s none of your business, what’s wrong with you?”

  It was only then that Jason was able to check himself. His fury began to ebb and he leaned his body against hers, and they both fell against the door. He looked to be in pain, Liz felt. “Just tell me it wasn’t some dude,” he said.

  Liz was drained. Her fight was gone. “It wasn’t any dude,” she said.

  Jason’s body began to relax, he even sighed relief. Then he looked at her, looked her deep into her eyes. “The thought of you with another man nearly drove me crazy. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

  “I wasn’t with any man, not like that. I couldn’t. Not after you and me last night.” Jason looked at her. “Oh, Liz!” he said and began kissing her with kisses that intensified so quickly that he thought he would lose his breath inside her own. He didn’t want to need anyone this badly, but he needed her. He knew it as soon as he arrived at her home and found that she still had not made it in. He needed her.

  It wasn’t long before they both ended up on the floor, taking off clothes as if their very clothes were on fire. But it wasn’t the clothes, it was them, and when Jason entered her for the third time in two days, she wanted to scream out. Through his penetration she put all thoughts of that terrible night behind her. And just experienced him, and his love, and the addictive drug of his sex.

  EIGHT

  The next day, news came that shook Jason to his core. As soon as he walked into his office at City Hall, he was confronted with the shocker. Stephen Armitage and DeeDee Ramstead were the bearers of the news.

  “The Dems have selected their candidate,” DeeDee said, standing in front of Jason’s desk as if she couldn’t wait to tell it.

  “Okay,” Jason said, waiting for her to tell it.

  “Hamilton Morgan,” Stephen said and Jason was walloped.

  “What? Hamp Morgan? Are you positive?”

  “We’re positive,” DeeDee said. “We have a spy in the Democratic ranks and it has been confirmed and reconfirmed. They will announce by the end of the month that Hamp Morgan is their guy.”

  Jason sat, or rather, plopped down in the chair behind his desk. All he could think about was Liz and the fact that he would have to campaign against her father. Her father, for crying out loud! She would have to choose between him, whom they hadn’t even settled on what kind of relationship they planned to have, and her own father. Jason shook his head. He could hardly believe it still. “But why?” he wanted to know. “What’s Hamp up to?”

  “Power, what he’s always up to,” Stephen said. “He sees an opening and he’s taking it.

  And make no mistake about it, Jace. He is revered in the minority communities around here.

  He gets 90-95 percent of the black/Hispanic vote, then all he’ll need is 30-35 percent of the white vote to win. That’s all he’ll need. You, on the other hand, will need virtually all of the white vote to pull this out.”

  “But why now? This will be my third term. Why now?”

  “Who knows?” DeeDee said. “Who cares? The point is he is expected to announce his candidacy in what is supposed to be a surprise announcement at the end of this month. That gives us time to get our act together and get every piece of filth we can on the guy. And I mean every piece of it. When we finish with him, even he wouldn’t vote for him, that’s how low we are going to have to go.”

  Jason leaned back in his chair. Because he knew he was doomed if he even thought about playing that game. His relationship with Liz was just really beginning, and it was too fragile, too undefined as it was. But he also was a politician and he knew that in order to win, you had to play whatever card you’re dealt. Even when it was the other guy with the trump card.

  ***

  He was a thug, pure and simple, and Liz, Shameika, and everybody else at the Meyers Center knew it. They allowed him access to the ping pong tables, the pool tables, even the basketball courts because they assumed being there, around other young people attempting to live positive lives, would keep him out of trouble. Until he lost a pool game with another seventeen-year-old and pulled a knife. Some of the other youngsters ran for Liz and Liz and Shameika both were in the rec room within seconds of the knife pull. Jason had just entered the Center himself, looking for Liz, when the knife was pulled. Before he realized anything, Liz was moving toward the knife wielder, asking him, begging him, to drop it.

  “It’s not worth it, Armondo,” she said to the young man. “It’s not worth losing your freedom over!”

  “He cheated me, man,” Armondo said.

  “I didn’t cheat you!” the young potential victim said. “You just mad because you lost.”

  “That’s enough, Georgie,” Liz said and looked again at Armondo. “Just give me the knife, Mondo, that’s all you have to do.”

  She began to come toward him, but he turned the knife on her. As soon as he did, Jason was on the other side of the room so quickly that nobody saw him coming. He knocked the knife out of the young man’s hand with one hand and cold-cocked him across the chin with the other, causing Armondo to fall off-balance onto his romp.

  It all happened so fast that Liz, Shameika, and everybody else witnessing it didn’t at first know what to make of it. Then Shameika hurried and picked up the knife. When Liz saw that it was Jason who had knocked Armondo down, she was astounded. Where did he come from ?

  she wanted to know.

  She leaned down, to help Armondo up, but Armondo shrugged angrily away from her.

  “Leave me alone!” he yelled as he stood up, and as the other young people began to laugh at him. When he heard the laughter, he looked at Liz as if she had betrayed him, and then ran out of the Center, his peers laughing even louder.

  “You okay?” Jason asked her, moving toward her, but she was in no mood to be comforted. She gave him a look something fierce and then hurried for her office. He followed her.

  “What did I do?” he wanted to know when he closed the door behind them.

  Liz was standing behind her desk by the time he made his way up to her. And she was still fuming.

  “What?” Jason wanted to know, his hands outstretched in puzzlement.

  “Why did you do that, Jason? You didn’t have to hit that boy like that!”

  “Are you kidding me? He had a knife, Liz, and was about to turn it on you. What the hell do you think I was going to do?”

  “He wasn’t going to use that thing. He was just upset.”

  “Yeah, upset enough to do something stupid.”

  “He’s not like that! Yeah, he’s a thug, but he was trying to get it together. That’s why he kept coming here. Now there’s no telling what trouble he’ll get into.”

  “That’s his problem, not ours.”

  “Spoken like a true conservative. All right, no passion.” Then she frowned, pinched the bridge of her nose as a low-grain headache began to emerge, and then she looked at Jason.

  “Why are you here, anyway?”

  “To see your pretty face again.”

  Liz softened. What was wrong with her? “Sorry,” she said and sat down behind her desk. Jason sat down, too.

  “Tough da
y?”

  Liz shook her head. “No more than usual. It’s just me. I just. . .” Jason exhaled. He wondered if he had been too rough with her last night, if his desperate woman act didn’t scare the daylights out of her. Did she think he was a stalker or something?

  “Liz, look,” he said, moving to the edge of his seat, “if it’s about last night--”

  “It’s not,” Liz quickly replied. Last night, actually, still turned her on. It was exactly what the doctor ordered after the way her father had treated her. She had no regrets whatsoever about last night.

  Jason had none, either. He, in fact, wanted more. She was giving him the best sex he’d ever had, which in the past would have been all he needed to keep coming back. But this time, it was more than just the sex. It was Liz. From that day when he nearly came to blows with Hamp Morgan to this day, it may have always been about her. “I also came over to invite you to dinner,” he said.

  Liz was about to accept, until she remembered Clay. “Can’t,” she said. “Not tonight.” This stopped Jason short. He had not prepared to be turned down. “And why not?”

  “I’m having dinner with a friend of mine.” She was about to tell him who, but he interrupted.

  “Another friend?” he said snidely. “Who is it this time?”

  Liz didn’t like his insinuation. Last she looked they hadn’t committed to anything. Yes, it was headed in that direction, certainly. But it wasn’t there yet. Besides, she didn’t question what he was up to when he was out of her presence, why should he question her? It almost made her feel like that teenager ten years ago, when he dragged her out of that nightclub with no regard whatsoever to what she wanted. He was probably right to drag her out, even she knew she was getting in over her head, but the way he did it. As if he had all rights to her.

  “What difference does it make, Jason?” she asked him. “A friend.”

  “A male friend?” Jason felt like a chump, which drove him nuts.

  “Yes, it’s a man. I knew him when we were kids, it’s no big deal.” Why she had to explain that to him was a mystery to her. But she did feel a need to explain. And it seemed to help, as Jason slid back in his chair and appeared to relax again.

  Although Jason crossed his legs, leaned back in his chair, and continued to talk with her, he was inwardly seething. Didn’t she realize what happened last night? Here he was so smitten with this woman that he couldn’t wait to see her again, and already she had planned a dinner date with another man. Her second night out with somebody besides him. He desperately wanted to know more about this childhood friend of hers, and he wanted to ask her more about him, but he didn’t go there. He’d find out. And this childhood friend, whoever he was, was going to find out the hard way that nobody was laying claims to Liz Morgan, unless that somebody was Jason Rascone.

  NINE

  Mama’s Finger Lickin’ was a soul food restaurant in the heart of the hood in Jacksonville. Liz and Clay arrived within minutes of the other and were seated at a back table near the jukebox.

  Clay was always a good looking man with more an intellectual look than a bad boy look, and now, with Liz seeing him not in the night on the stoop of her father’s house, but in the light of Finger Lickin’, and she was impressed. He had grown into his handsomeness with great dignity, with those prescription glasses that catapulted him to nerd status back in the day, now looking as if they were a fashion statement on him. And when he smiled that clean, white smile of his, Liz remembered just how much she had missed his friendship.

  “So,” he said, pushing those glasses up on the bridge of his nose, “you’re a youth center director. What a . . . surprise, actually.” They both laughed. “The way Mr. Morgan had you so under his thumb I would have never believed he’d allow you to go the social worker route.”

  “I know,” Liz said. “That’s probably why I went that route.” Clay smiled. “Have you been to his nightclub since your return to J-ville?” Liz shook her head. “And I have no intentions of going. I am so not feeling that man right now that it’s not even funny.”

  Clay hesitated. “I heard he lit into you last night.”

  “You heard right. I thought he wanted to make amends. That’s what Mal said, anyway. I should have known better then. Mal and Dad don’t make amends. They get even. That’s the Morgan way.”

  “So they invite you to dinner, and me along with you, so that they can show you the error of your ways. And also, I’ll be willing to bet, so that we could reconnect.” Liz frowned. “Why in the world would my father care about whether we connect or not?”

  “From what I could get out of Malcolm, and you know that’s never much, your father still wants to make a quote, unquote, ‘honest’ woman out of you. He figures you hook up with me, a rather bland but dependable bank vice president, then he can legitimately welcome you back into the fold.”

  “That is so ridiculous. He was like that when I was a child. Always wanting to control everything about me. Even down to my friends. That’s how we became friends from the beginning.”

  “I know. My parents were doctors and we lived in the right neighborhood. That’s all Big Hamp needed to know.”

  Liz shook her head. “He is so shallow.”

  “He also loves you, Liz, in his own way.”

  “Sell it to the birds, my friend, because I’m not buying it. He loves me only when I do exactly what he says, if that’s what you want to call love. But when I rebel, when I choose to go my own way, he can’t stand the sight of me. I don’t know. My father and I seem destined to never click. We never have.”

  “I have faith. You guys will come together. At least I pray so.” Liz looked at him. “So you’re a praying man?”

  Clay nodded. “Yup.”

  “Are you married?”

  “Not yet, no,” he said. Then he looked at Liz. “But I hope to be someday.”

  “Look, Clay, you seem like you’re still a wonderful guy--”

  “I know. But I’m not for you.”

  “It’s not that. It’s not that at all. It’s just that it’s getting a little too complicated in my life right now when the last thing I wanted, when I came back here, was complications. I had more than my share of those in Philly.”

  “Understood. So you’re doing good for yourself then? Driving that gorgeous Aston Martin. I ain’t mad at ya’.”

  Liz smiled. “It’s not mine.”

  “No?”

  “Nope. My car is an old mustang and it’s in the shop awaiting three thousand dollars to be repaired. I couldn’t afford an Aston Martin if it was on sale for next to nothing. Because that’s about the size of my bank account: next to nothing.” Clay laughed. “I see.”

  “I’m a youth center director, remember? There’s no big bucks in that.”

  “That was my assumption. The Meyers Center. I’ve got to put them on the bank’s donations list.”

  Liz looked at Clay. “That would be wonderful, Clay, thanks. We’re always looking for more donors.”

  “Not a problem. We’re always looking for worthy causes. And I know for a fact that that particular Center keeps a lot of otherwise troubled kids off of the streets.”

  “Right. We try to keep them from being idle, with nothing to do except robbing and bothering people. For some it works, for some it doesn’t.”

  “That’s the challenge of social work, isn’t it? Everybody who needs it may not want it.”

  “Especially those who need it the most.” She thought she saw something odd out of the corner of her eye. When she looked she saw nothing. “But we keep trying to--” She looked again, and this time she did see something odd. Jason, of all people, was in Finger Lickin’

  being escorted, not to a table of his own, but directly to her table.

  “What’s the matter?” Clay asked, following Liz’s eyes. When she saw Jason heading their way, he was astounded. “Isn’t that Mayor Rascone?” he asked. Then added: “What is he doing in here?”

  To terrorize me, Liz wanted to say. B
ut she didn’t. Jason was upon them.

  “Hello, Liz,” he said without preamble. Then he looked at Clay. “And you are?” Clay stood to his feet and extended his hand. “I’m Clayton Davis. It’s an honor to meet you, sir.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Jason said, shaking his hand. “May I join you guys?”

  “Yes,” Clay said, almost as simultaneously as Liz said no.

  Jason sat down, beside Liz. His nearness immediately caused her to relax, as it usually did. “So,” he said, “Liz tells me you’re a childhood friend of hers.” Clay looked at Liz, slightly befuddled. “Yes,” he said. “I had no idea the mayor was a friend of yours.”

  “He used to be my father’s attorney.”

  “Oh. Right. Of course.”

  “And yes we are friends,” Jason told him. “Very close, personal friends.” Clay understood that hardly hidden hint. “I see,” he said.

  But it wasn’t discussed throughout the evening, as all three ate dinner, had small talk, and attempted to avoid the elephant on their table. Although Jason did everything in his power to make it clear that Liz was his, Clay saw hesitancy in Liz. That was the only reason he bothered to hang around. Liz wasn’t convincing him.

  “Well, gentleman,” she finally said when the conversation began to wane, “I’m a working girl and definitely needs her rest.” She began standing, with Jason and Clay standing, too. “I’d better call it a night. “Ready, Clay?”

  “I’m taking you home,” Jason said as if it were a fact.

  Clay studied Liz, for her reaction. She didn’t resist him. “Well, actually, Mr. Mayor, I usually take home the person I bring to the party.”

  “Except this time.”

  “No exceptions,” Clay made clear.

  “Look, why don’t you go hang out with the other geeks who want--”

  “Jason that’s enough!” Liz said. “It’s okay, Clay. I’ll go with him.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Liz wasn’t, but for peace sake she nodded anyway. “Yes,” she said.

  “You aren’t convincing me.”