CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When the limousine stopped in front of her mother’s rundown rowhouse and they saw her sister Keisha sitting on the steps with two other men drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, Toya felt ashamed. Not of her sister. Not even of the poverty-stricken neighborhood or her mother’s dilapidated house.
She felt ashamed of herself. All her life she worked hard to achieve things.
To break free of that poverty, that always smelled like cheap liquor to Toya, and to be somebody.
To establish herself. Only to be forced to return back home because she had nowhere else to go, and to rely on a family that didn’t want to be relied on.
Watching where Mr. Carrington was about to drop her off made her feel as if she had come full circle.
As if she had gone around the world just to get around the corner.
She was right back where she started from.
But only this time, she was no kid rebooting.
She was a thirty-one-year-old woman trying to get back on her feet.
Grayson was amazed at her environment too.
The peeling paint on most of the house. The beer cans and other trash thrown all over the devoid-of-grass dirt yard.
The stray dogs lounging around. The prostitutes on the corner and the drug dealers in the alleyways.
The loud music from a group of young people in the open field.
And it was eleven o’clock at night. It looked and felt dangerous to him.
And to his shock, he was immediately worried about her.
And not in any superficial way either. He was very worried about her.
He leaned forward looking around. He could not believe it.
But it also underscored to him that he knew absolutely nothing about this woman.
When the limo came to a stop, Keisha and the two men seated on the steps kept drinking and smoking and staring at that limousine.
“Who that is, Keisha?” one of them asked her.
“My sister look like.”
“The one locked up?”
“That’s the only sister I got nut-brain.”
“Who’s the white guy? That her public defender?”
“Hell no,” Keisha said with a frown. “What public defender you know driving around in a limousine? That bitch wouldn’t even have no public defender this fast. Bam ain’t got none yet and he’s the main target. They’ll give him one before they give her one.”
“Then who is he?”
“Hell if I know shit. How should I know?”
“But how she get out of jail without no attorney?” her other drinking partner wanted to know. “Bam ain’t out.”
“Facts,” Keisha said as she nodded her head and batted the ash off of her cigarette. “That bitch out. Why Bam ain’t?”
Inside the limo, Toya knew she was the hot topic of conversation. She always was when it came to her sister, and never in a good way. She could only hope Keisha would behave long enough for Grayson to drop her off and leave.
She removed her seatbelt and looked at him.
She suspected he was a good man from the moment she laid eyes on him.
Now she knew he was. Who else would have, not only come down to the jail house to see what was going on, but to use his power to get the charges dropped?
There was nobody on the face of this earth who would have done that for her.
Not family if they could. Not any friends if they could.
Toya just was never a priority for anybody.
Grayson made her his priority that night. And that touched her deeply.
That was why she was filled with so much gratitude to be free and back home to even this poverty-stricken neighborhood that she leaned over and hugged his neck again. “Thank you so much,” she said.
But he didn’t return her hug, which disappointed her. Maybe he thought she was trying to come onto him? Maybe he thought she’d wasted enough of her time and he just wanted her to get lost?
But that wasn’t it at all. Grayson had too much on his mind to even notice that she had hugged him.
First it was the promises he made to Emily Preston. Promises, he knew, given the nature of his relationship with his father, that were going to be damn-near impossible to keep. And Toya’s freedom was predicated on those shaky-at-best promises? He was most concerned.
But at least she was free for now, he thought, which would alleviate some of his fears and would give his skilled investigators appropriate time to conduct a thorough investigation and, if what she told him was true, and he didn’t doubt it was, clear her of all wrongdoing.
But secondly, it was the neighborhood that caught him off guard too.
He could hardly focus on her for focusing on that neighborhood where he was about to leave her.
It looked rough out there. Third-world kind of rough.
Once when he was a young man he had to make a deal in the backwoods of Guatemala: It was that kind of rough. And he was going to leave Latoya here?
He knew, deep down, there was no way.
Toya had no clue to his thought processes. When he didn’t return her hug, she felt kind of slighted, as if he was already tired of her intrusion into his life. She made it a quick hug.
But that didn’t take away from how she felt about him. She was still enormously grateful. “You don’t even know me,” she admitted, “but you’ve been kinder to me than any human being ever had. And for that I thank you, Mr. Carrington. I can’t thank you enough.”
Those sincere eyes melted him. And he remembered how kind she was to him in that bathroom of all places, and how she shared that overcoat with him. Was she really this good, or was just really good at covering up her true self?
But even if she was, a man couldn’t help how he felt. And for this girl he felt something strong. So strong that every single move he was making went totally against who he was and how he lived his life. It was all about her. And in that instant, he felt it was his job to protect her.
“Go inside,” he said to Toya, “and get you some clothes. Then come on back.”
Toya was confused. This was where he was supposed to give her one of those good luck, sucker, but I’m out kind of farewells. But instead he was talking about clothes? “Get some clothes?”
It was already so not like him that it was almost embarrassing, and even his driver glanced at him through the rearview, but he couldn’t back down. “Get you some clothes to cover a few days.” He looked around her neighborhood again. “Maybe even a week,” he added. “And then come on back.”
Toya saw him look at her neighborhood when he suggested a weeks’ worth of clothing, but something within her wouldn’t question it.
It was that look in his eyes. As if it wasn’t about him feeling superior to her environment, but it was more about him looking out for her.
That was how it felt. And that was how she took it.
“I’ll be right back,” she said as she turned to leave.
But as the driver was getting out to open the driver side back door for Toya, Grayson felt uneasy. That was when he began unbuckling his seatbelt too.
Which astonished Toya. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going inside with you.”
Toya stopped all movement and looked at him.
The idea of a man like him, who was essentially her boss, would even think about walking into her mama’s house, with her mama undoubtedly in that house, was too much overload for Toya.
Most black families in America were great unions that looked out for each other and treated each other with the upmost respect.
But that wasn’t her family. Her mama and sister looked out for each other, but neither one of them had ever looked out for Toya.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said. “I’m coming right back.”
“I’m going in with you,” Grayson said again in that way that even Toya knew wasn’t debatable.
But this was her life and her family. It was debatable to her. “It’s not a good idea,” she said again.
“Noted,” Grayson said as his driver opened her door and Grayson began getting out, anyway, on the back passenger side.
Which shocked his driver. “Oh, sir. I didn’t realize you were getting out too.” It was his job to open the door for the boss, not for his passenger!
But Grayson waved it off and buttoned up his suit coat. He waited for Toya to walk around to his side.
When she made it around the car to his side, she wanted to shake her head. They were in the sho’ nuff hood, and he still looked like he’d just walked out of an evening at Carnegie Hall.
And when Grayson took his hand and placed it on her lower back, as if he wanted everybody watching to know that she belonged to him, that small gesture astounded Toya even more.
She didn’t belong to him, if truth be told.
But when he touched her, it felt like she did.
And that alone weirded her out. So much so that he had to kind of nudge her to get her to start walking.
Inwardly, Toya was still shaking her head.
Had anybody told her that one day she would be at her mama’s house walking beside one of the richest men in the whole state of Maryland, and that he’d have his hand on her back as if she was his woman, she would have told them to get real.
And then she’d tell them to go get themselves some help. But there it was.
Remarkably, Keisha didn’t say a word when they first went inside the house.