When their car finally came to a complete stop, and Maudetta was laid up in a hospital bed, she kept thinking about her mother. And how she had to have seen her father losing control of that car before Jalene saw it, but her mother never said a mumbling word. But she had to have seen they were headed for disaster. But she never warned their father.
She also couldn’t stop thinking about all those sounds of screams and crashing metal and tires squealing and spinning and spinning and then . . . . And then nothing. All of that commotion turned into a quietness so eerie that it scared her more than the crash. She laid prone in that mangled car, unable to see anything because she was face down. And she didn’t hear another sound. Not ever again from her father. Not ever again from her mother. Not ever again even from Jalene’s big mouth. Not. One. Sound. And their silence caused her to scream. And to scream. And to scream.
“Maude!”
Maudetta’s large eyes flew open. In that instance she realized she wasn’t laying in that mangled car over two decades ago, but was laying across her bed and fully dressed for the party. She laid down because it was too early to leave. But she had apparently dozed off.
Then she looked around and saw her roommate standing at the foot of her bed with that constipated look she always gave Maudetta whenever she disgusted her. “What are you screaming about?” A fixed frown was on her face. “What’s wrong with you?”
They were not friends at all. Just two young people splitting the rent and sharing space. Her roommate was still in college and looked down on Maudetta because she never went to college. And Maudetta, who started working as a reporter straight out of high school, didn’t understand the lazy mentality of those college kids as she was only twenty-five years old but already established in her career. They were nothing alike.
“You heard me, Maude? What’s wrong with you? I’m trying to study and you’re back here screaming like you ain’t got no kind of sense.”
Maude looked at her as if she was the one out of order. “Obviously I was having a nightmare, Paige. It’s not like I planned to scream.”
“Whatever. Just stop it. Dang. And I thought you said you was going to a party anyway. I thought I was gonna be rid of you for at least a few hours. Why are you sleeping?”
“I wasn’t sleeping,” Maude said as she sat up. “I was just laying across the bed because it’s too early to leave.”
“Early? I thought you said it started at seven.”
“It does.”
“Girl, it’s after nine already.”
“Nine?” Maude jumped up, looked for her phone on the nightstand but found it on the bed. She grabbed it, checked the time, and then freaked. She was trying not to be too early. Now she wasn’t even fashionably late. She was just late.
She hurried to her bathroom, spruced herself back up, and then grabbed her phone and keys and purse and took off.
Her roommate, who found her to be so unorganized and messy and a general pain in the ass unlike no other, shook her head.What a loser, she said out loud. But only after that “loser” had left the building.
CHAPTER TWO
Edmund Keating didn’t want to be there any more than his sister wanted him there. But their father had insisted he fly out to this Georgia town he’d never heard of to make sure his sister wasn’t blowing smoke up their asses again, and that she was, in fact, the newly-appointed editor of the Dillon Post-Dispatch newspaper in Dillon, Georgia.
His assignment was simple: First, make certain the paper actually existed. Then, second, make sure it was a real job and not just another charade in a long line of charades her sister perpetrated on them. She was older than Edmund by nearly five years, but she was so young at heart that the family viewed her as dangerous to herself. And very susceptible to everybody’s cons and schemes. Especially when those bastards found out that she hailed from one of the wealthiest families in the country.
Edmund, with his bodyguard and driver still outside waiting for him since he had no intentions of staying very long, sat against the wall in a chair and watched Natasha work. She still had that amazing charm about her despite that undisciplined life she chose to live. But she wasn’t fooling Edmund. He knew her too well. But she was impressing the hell out of those hicks in that room.
They were in the home of the paper’s publisher, and although it was nothing compared to Edmund’s lifestyle or even Natasha’s before the family all but disowned her, it was a nice, beautiful home. And it helped to add legitimacy to the fact that his sister just might be trying to get her shit together, after all, and wasn’t pretending so that she could get back into thefamily’s good graces. But he still had his doubts as he watched her. But mostly he hated being there at all. He was bored to tears.
But then a young woman entered the house that immediately caught his attention. Not because there was anything more remarkable about her than anybody else, but because she was the first person of color he’d seen since arriving at that party. That was notable to him.
But also notable was the way she moved around the room. She was being polite, those were apparently her colleagues at that party, but she was being standoffish too. Like she knew those weren’t her kind of people and she wasn’t theirs. But they all played the game.
He also noticed how many of those same white guys that he’d heard earlier disparaging every black person they knew, were breaking their necks to try to get next to the new arrival. Edmund understood why. She had a style about her that was a draw. Slender, but with curves. Pretty, but not so dolled-up that she lost her natural beauty. She was more the girl next door than the bombshell. But what the bombshells didn’t know was that men preferred the girl next door. That was why the bombshells were looking at that young lady, then looking at themselves, and then wondering what the fuss was about.
Edmund knew exactly what the fuss was about as he watched that young lady, in her peach-colored cocktail dress and heels, move around that room like she knew what she was doing. And to her credit, Edmund thought, she didn’t care what those men preferred because she flat wasn’t interested. She turned down those dweebs without even trying to go along with their nonsense. She was not that girl.
And that was what kept Edmund’s attention riveted on her. She was an oddity in that room and she knew it. It would have been so much easier, he felt, for her to go along to get along.But she didn’t do it. And the more she refused to do it, the more he liked her. And the more he looked at her, the more he began to feel that attraction too. Which was outrageous to the extreme for Edmund. She wasn’t his type at all.
But Maude wasn’t trying to be anybody’s type when she walked into that magnificent home. It was the home of the big boss: their publisher. But Maude was just trying to make an appearance and leave. And although it was supposed to be a party honoring their brand new city editor, it felt more like a frat party because of the overabundance of horny males trying to hit on the few females in attendance.
Including Maude. But the only reason she was at that party was because it was mandatory that the staff, includingallreporters, do a meet and greet with their new editor. She met the lady, shook hands with the publisher and the managing editor too, but then she slipped away from all of that brass as fast as she could.
What Edmund also noticed about her was that she was constantly checking her phone. He wondered if it was a nervous gesture, a gesture to ease her boredom, or for real.
It was for real. Maude was waiting for a text from a source that promised to provide her with details about an illicit affair between the mayor and his wife’s best friend. Which was bad enough. But the affair wasn’t Maude’s interest. She was a hard-hitting journalist, not the morals police. But that same source told her that the mayor’s mistress had been given a lucrative government contract after just setting up her company less than a month ago. But somehow she “won” the bid. That part of the story was in Maude’s wheelhouse. But she needed facts, not rumors.
